Tag Archives: free speech

Censorship

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The Chinese Communist Party’s powerful disciplinary wing is taking aim at the country’s internet censors for not pushing a party-line agenda, saying they were “irresolute” in implementing the policies of President Xi Jinping and “not trying hard enough to ensure political security.”

Read: political purity.

…authorities now want people to become absorbed by politics as defined by the party.

“If you let people get too sucked into entertainment, no one will care about what the leaders are saying. If you don’t do this [crackdown], no one will watch the ‘Network News,'” he said, referring to the staid evening news program of the official state broadcaster, China Central Television.

This is the People’s Republic of China’s version of “freedom” and of “free” speech.  The PRC’s presence on the world stage needs to be watched with a careful and jaundiced eye, given how the government so disrespects its own people.

“You clap when they ban entertainment. What will you do when they ban you from clapping?” one user asked on Weibo.

Indeed.

A First Amendment Beef

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This one, I think, is a bad beef.  A Columbia University club known as the Knight First Amendment Institute, styling themselves a First Amendment advocate organization, has taken notice of the fact that President Donald Trump has blocked some folks from his personal twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, an account he’s had since well before the campaign and his election.  The Director of the Institute, Jameel Jaffer, wrote a letter to “the Trump administration” claiming that the Constitution “requires” those accounts to be unblocked.

Users who have been blocked cannot follow you on Twitter, and they are limited in their ability to view your tweets, find your tweets using Twitter’s search function, and learn which accounts follow you….  Blocking users from your Twitter account violates the First Amendment. When the government makes a space available to the public at large for the purpose of expressive activity, it creates a public forum from which it may not constitutionally exclude individuals on the basis of viewpoint. This is true even if the space in question is “metaphysical” rather than physical.

What Jaffer is ignoring, among other things, is that the government did not create the @realDOnaldTrump account; private citizen Donald Trump did.  The government created the @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts.

The President’s personal twitter account is not the same thing as @POTUS or @WhiteHouse, which are public forums created by the White House some administrations ago specifically for the purpose of passing out White House announcements and, perhaps, exchanging views.

So what do we have?  This is what the 1st Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

None of that applies here.  Trump’s blocking some folks from his personal twitter feed has nothing at all to do with religion, nor does it restrict the press—NLMSM or legitimate—at all.  Even the use of social media as press—this blog, for instance, or established press’ and pressmen’s own Facebook pages, twitter feeds, Instagram setups, etc are not restricted in the slightest.

That leaves the question of free speech, peaceful assembly, and petitioning of the Government.

None of these are impacted by blocking some twitterers from a private account, either.  Those folks still have unfettered access to the government via the @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts: they still can engage in free speech activities with the administration and with Trump; they still can peacefully assemble, even if that assembly is “metaphysical,” and they still can fully petition the Government.  And that’s just through the government’s twitter feeds.  These folks also have access via the White House’s Facebook page, email even via old-fashioned snail mail.

This is just some folks with more time on their hands than productive activities along with their rent-seeking lawyers manufacturing another excuse to whine.

Really!?

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The CTL-Left Mayor of Portland, OR, is at it now.  He wants the Feds and organizers of a couple of Trump rallies to shut down those rallies.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said Monday that the “alt-right demonstrations” would only fuel hatred and fear during a time of tragedy.

Never mind that these are pro-Trump rallies that have nothing to do with the NLMSM’s imaginary alt-right.

Never mind that Wheeler clearly wants to impose his concept of free speech: feel free to speak what Wheeler personally approves.  And no other word.

Wheeler is claiming

There is never a place for bigotry or hatred in our community….

My irony meter is pegged.

I have to ask: do Wheeler and guys like him ever listen to what they say, or do they just spout off with whatever happens to pop into their heads at the moment?

Heckler’s Veto

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It’s alive and well in Canada, too.  A Canadian named Lorne Grabher had a vanity license plate on his car, one that he’s had for 25 years.  The plate had his name, GRABHER.  You’d think there’d be no problem here, both on its face and from the fact that there’s been no problem for that quarter century.

But no.

The Toronto Sun, as cited at the link, says that “at least one person complained” about that plate, and that’s all it takes.  One special snowflake with more time on her hands than productive work decided she was going to be offended by the plate—she decided it reminded her of then TV star Donald Trump’s remark about where to grab women—and she went crying to the Canadian authorities.  Those authorities agreed with her.

[T]he Transportation Department in Nova Scotia says that while they understand the roots of his surname, members of the public may not understand its context.

Because Canadian governmental authorities think their citizens are as grindingly stupid as our own Progressive-Democrats think we are.

The Gulag

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…is back and in full force in Russian-occupied Crimea.  Russian dissidents—Tatars, this time—are being “diagnosed” as insane and locked away in “psychiatric” hospitals.

Since the annexation of the region three years ago many ethnic Tatar activists who oppose the occupation have been arrested and subjected to abuse and imprisonment in outdated mental institutions, said Robert van Voren, a Dutch human rights activist and political scientist.

“The number of cases has increased considerably over the past few years, in particular against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian activists who oppose Russia’s annexation,” he added.

Just as in the Soviet Russian gulag, conditions are appalling and along with Russian treatment of the “inmates” are intended to retrain them to ways of which Russia approves.  Emil Kurbedinov, a Crimean civil rights lawyer focusing on Tatar civil rights and himself locked up for 10 days, had this:

Some are placed in isolation and are denied their basic needs, such as access to a toilet. Others are housed with multiple people suffering from severe mental health conditions.

The activists are interrogated about their alleged involvement in “extremism” and their views of the government. They are also deprived of the right to speak with their family, or meet their lawyer on a one-to-one basis without a guard being present.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.