Alphabet Censorship

Posted on 11 June 2019 by eehines

They’re at it again. This time, it’s Alphabet’s YouTube, owned through Alphabet’s subsidiary Google that’s inflicting censorship.

YouTube has blocked some British history teachers from its service for uploading archive material related to Adolf Hitler, saying they are breaching new guidelines banning the promotion of hate speech.

Alphabet restored the censored data, but only after it had gotten caught in its censorship and the ensuing uproar got too uncomfortable.

Alphabet’s censorship was because the material consisted of

content that promotes hatred or violence against members of a protected group.

Yeah—the protected group here was Alphabet’s censors.

This is a preview of Alphabet Censorship. Read the full post (407 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

“Freedom” in Hong Kong

Posted on 7 June 2019 by eehines

Natasha Khan had a piece in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal concerning the implications of the People’s Republic of China’s 30 years ago Tiananmen Square bloody crackdown on today’s Hong Kong, especially in light of the PRC’s increasing and increasingly direct control over Hong Kong. In the course of that piece, Khan asked about the implications of tightening freedoms on Hong Kong’s position as an international finance center.

To which I answer:

The implications of the PRC’s “tightening” of freedoms in Hong Kong are obvious and universal. The “tightening” is not that, it’s a direct attack on those freedoms with a view to converting them from actual freedoms to freedom to do as the PRC and its ruling Communist Party of China require.

This is a preview of “Freedom” in Hong Kong. Read the full post (279 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

More Censorship Demands

Posted on 3 June 2019 by eehines

There’s a doctored video on Facebook that purports to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) drunk—or in the aftermath of a mild stroke, or…—, it’s been up for several days, and it’s well-known to have been doctored.

Of course, Progressive-Democrats are in an uproar over it and over Facebook’s refusal to remove the video altogether, even though the company has flagged it and downgraded, based on evidence of the video’s faked nature, its rate of appearance in user news feeds. I disapprove of the video, also, but only because there are plenty of things over which to criticize Pelosi and her fellows without making stuff up, too, and the fakery reduces the overall credibility of those with legitimate criticisms. However, I don’t want it taken down; that would be rank censorship.

This is a preview of More Censorship Demands. Read the full post (324 words, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

Charging Assange

Posted on 26 May 2019 by eehines

Julian Assange, of Manning and Wikileaks infamy, has been indicted on violations of the Espionage Act in addition to the existing charges pending against him.

Naturally, the NLMSM is in an uproar over this putative attack on a free press.

…reignited debate over whether pursuing Mr. Assange for publishing classified information could lead to other cases against journalists who receive government secrets.

This is a preview of Charging Assange. Read the full post (499 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

More Censorship

Posted on 11 May 2019 by eehines

Jack Dorsey has chosen to have his Twitter company censor another conservative account, this time @AOCPress. Their crime? They mock a Progressive-Democrat (I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student to figure out who). Dorsey insists the parody account (an obviously parody account—it was labeled “parody”) mislead fellow tweeters. Because, apparently, Dorsey’s customers are mind-numbingly stupid and can’t recognize parody.

Dorsey seems not to like parody in general, too, at least when it comes from Conservatives.

Twitter has also banned an account parodying former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, and another that mocked Russian president Vladimir Putin.

This is a preview of More Censorship. Read the full post (136 words, estimated 33 secs reading time)

A Politician Demands Doxing Occur

Posted on 10 May 2019 by eehines

Doxing is the deliberate exposure of personally identifying information, things like phone numbers and home addresses of individuals—often including family members: wives, husbands, and children—in order for each of those folks to be personally confronted with opprobrium at their homes and schools.

Pennsylvania State Representative Brian Sims, a Progressive-Democrat, called for precisely that when he confronted and harassed a woman and her two teenaged daughters who were praying outside an abortion clinic in Sims’ Philadelphia district. He went far beyond his on-scene harassment, though. He recorded his verbal assault and posted it on line, with this request for doxing:

This is a preview of A Politician Demands Doxing Occur. Read the full post (390 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Censorship Continued

Posted on 6 May 2019 by eehines

The Poynter Institute, an organization that masquerades itself as a…watchdog…built a list of what it claimed to be unreliable news outlets and then urged censorship through boycotting these offending outlets. “Unreliable,” mind you, was determined by Poynter personnel. Then they got caught, and they’re claiming to have withdrawn their list.

Here are two critical clues to the nature of their list. One is [emphasis added]:

…initially released a list of more than 500 “unreliable” news outlets purportedly “built from pre-existing databases compiled by journalists, fact-checkers, and researchers around the country.”

Even those purported researchers were carefully unnamed.

This is a preview of Censorship Continued. Read the full post (370 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

Censorship

Posted on 23 April 2019 by eehines

The Wall Street Journal opined the other day on the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Flyers banning Kate Smith and her rendition of God Bless America from the opening of their home games. The WSJ takes the position that this is overwrought concern for perfection in today’s persons, demanding even perfection of their past. Smith was, as we all are, and the WSJ notes, a person of her time. The WSJ went on:

Smith’s fate suggests the dominant impulse of our era is in fact to censor—and that those rifling through the histories of people long dead for evidence to destroy their reputations are progressive Puritans, seeking to suppress or cover up anything they object to.

This is a preview of Censorship. Read the full post (200 words, estimated 48 secs reading time)

A Few Impertinent Questions about Hate Speech

Posted on 7 March 2019 by eehines

One of the things French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed for strengthening of the European Union’s governance—the EU’s Government—is

enhanced protection against hate speech

In particular, in his op-ed For European renewal [emphasis Macron’s]

creating a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies, which will provide each Member State with European experts…European rules banish all incitements to hate and violence from the Internet

This is to be done under the guise of

respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation of dignity.

My questions aren’t specific to Macron, though, or to the EU—they’re general in their application.

This is a preview of A Few Impertinent Questions about Hate Speech. Read the full post (246 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)

The Problem with this Kind of Law Suit

Posted on 7 March 2019 by eehines

The State of Michigan, through its Attorney General and Department of Civil Rights, has decided to use the Southern Poverty Law Center’s claimed identifications of “hate groups” to spearhead those two agencies’ pretended protection of Michigan citizens from the ravages of hatred.

One of the targets of the State’s AG and MDCR, selected from the SPLC’s smear lists, is the American Freedom Law Center, an Evil Judeo-Christian law firm. Far from being cowed, the law firm is pushing back, in spades: they’ve filed suit against Dana Nessel, the AG, and Agustin Arbulu, the MSCR’s Executive Director. Robert Muise, AFLC’s Co-Founder and Senior Counsel:

This is a preview of The Problem with this Kind of Law Suit. Read the full post (456 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

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