Tag: FREE SPEECH

COLLUSION: Facebook Bans Top Independent Journalist From Exposing YouTube Censorship on Platform

The tech corporations are colluding to destroy freedom of speech.

By Shane Trejo

Independent journalist Ford Fischer has been temporarily banned from posting links on Facebook after he tried to post an article on the platform exposing censorship on YouTube.

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Fischer explained in a Facebook post that this is the first time the platform has censored him in such a manner.

“I just tried to post a news story about YouTube censorship to Facebook. Facebook banned me from sharing links for 2.5 days without explanation. This is the first time FB has ever suspended any feature for me,” he wrote.

The ReclaimTheNet.org article that Facebook does not want to be shared on its platform explains that 2019 represented a low point for YouTube due to its intensifying crackdown on content creators:

2019 started with YouTube and other social media continuing their account banning and suspending spree, often baselessly – a trend started the previous year. These kinds of blunders were likely caused by overreliance on algorithms and overzealous attempts to keep content under control.

Comedian Steven Crowder’s troubles on YouTube began in February when his annual Anti-Oscars Party live stream was suspended on the grounds of four copyright claims from Disney and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Oscars.

These bogus claims were filed under DMCA rules that are supposed to allow fair use, and Crowder argued that his content as a transformative work fell under the fair use principle. He also said the real reason the entertainment giants came after him by abusing YouTube’s broken copyright system was anti-competitive – simply to keep him off the platform.

Even when the issues were later rectified, it was days after the livestream and the damage was already done.

This system was further exploited later in the year to block President Trump’s “Nickelback Joe Biden meme” video, exploring a corruption scandal involving the former US Vice President in a humorous way. Those who disliked the meme decided to take it down using a questionable copyright claim, ignoring that parody is another example of fair use.

While it would be expected that Facebook would want to proliferate an article bashing their competitor, that is not the case. The Big Tech entities – including but not limited to Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter and Pinterest – are actively colluding to destroy digital free speech.

The tech industry even held a conference earlier this year where the private sector came together to network and devise new ways to choke the freedom of expression of dissidents:

The Koch Brothers and George Soros sponsored the “Private Sector Leadership Summit” last week in San Francisco, CA where the billionaire globalist oligarchs urged tech corporations to increase their Big Brother censorship practices.

The event took place on July 17 at the Airbnb headquarters. The summit is an offshoot of the “Communities Overcoming Extremism: The After-Charlottesville Project.” Top sponsors included the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Soros Fund Charitable Foundation, the Charles Koch Institute (CKI), Comcast NBC Universal, the National Immigration Forum, and neocon Bill Kristol’s organization, Defending Democracy Together.

Speakers at the event included CKI Director of Free Expression Sarah Ruger, Cato Institute Vice President John Samples, ADL Extremism Center Director Oren Segal, ADL Senior Vice President of Programs George Selim, and Americans for Prosperity Vice President for Legal and Judicial Strategy Casey Mattox. The event made official the peculiar union of the Koch foundation with the political Left, as they scramble to protect the globalist status quo…

The event made it clear that there will be many opportunities for funding from the corporate elite to facilitate the Orwellian nightmare in the digital age. If the plotting of the Koch network is ultimately successful, it won’t even require government intervention for Big Brother to become reality.

“The work of combating extremism will require alliances, partnerships, and funding decisions, in many cases between surprising bedfellows. Join a diverse range of leaders for a conversation about how and why they have sought to involve their organizations in the work of overcoming extremism, including through policy alliances and philanthropic investments,” the program reads.

Heading into the next year’s presidential election, the censorship is only going to ramp up, and Big Tech will be working in unison to crush independent voices.

 

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Media hypocrisy is destroying America, but MEMES are the problem? Give me a break!

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Mainstream media are outraged over a meme video depicting President Donald Trump shooting his critics – but they absolutely loved the movie it was based on, and think nothing of actual violence committed against Trump supporters.

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again, as the media mob pursues rage clickbait. This time, the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching is over a meme – excuse me, “fake” and “doctored” – video shown during the American Priority Conference at Trump Doral in Florida this weekend.

Reactions to the video go way beyond what cartoonist Scott Adams has described as seeing “two movies on the same screen.” One liberal comedian – entirely seriously – zeroed in on Trump “killing powerful black people” to lament the “cancer that is Trumpism.”

Actress Kathy Griffin – who once thought it was a great idea to do a photoshoot with a fake severed head of Trump – now claimed she was the real victim, as the video shows her “being murdered” by the president.

“Waiting for Donald Trump to condemn the video of him committing mass murder that was shown at his resort to his supporters, and to apologize to the families of those targeted,” anti-gun crusader Shannon Watts tweeted unironically.

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One possible explanation is that none of the people getting worked up over the video have ever watched ‘Kingsman:The Secret Service,’ that the meme was based on. The 2015 “action spy comedy” revolves entirely around over-the-top cartoonish violence juxtaposed with English gentility – such as the protagonist of that specific scene going berserk inside a church, along with everyone else, due to the effects of an electronic weapon.

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Movie critics and audiences alike – 74 percent and 84 percent, respectively – loved the movie and had no problem with American churchgoers getting massacred in that scene, as journalist Lee Stranahan pointed out.

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More to the point, the same people shrieking now have not bothered to notice the video since it came out in July 2018. So why now? Was there nothing else at the conference they could object to, so some outrage had to be manufactured, and memes were it?

Before long, Twitter was suspending Carpe Donktum, the pro-Trump memesmith who did not even make the video, but defended its display as part of a “meme exhibit.”  

“The Kingsman video is CLEARLY satirical and the violence depicted is metaphoric. No reasonable person would believe that this video was a call to action, or an endorsement of violence towards the media,” he said in a statement on Monday.

Except that people who consider themselves special and above reproach or critique have stopped being reasonable long ago.

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One does not have to be a conservative pundit to point out the obvious hypocrisy. The New York Times sponsoring a theatrical production of Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ depicting Trump getting assassinated; Griffin’s ISIS stunt; music videos depicting Trump getting murdered – all fine in the media playbook, because free speech, First Amendment, and so on. But when some anonymous “peasant” in “flyover country” dares meme a video turning the tables? Red alert!

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For all the media rhetoric about Trump “inciting violence” against journalists, actual political violence in the US has overwhelmingly consisted of Trump critics targeting his supporters – with the June 2017 shooting of Republicans training for the congressional baseball charity game being the deadliest example.

Throughout, the same media now shrieking about incitement have peddled conspiracy theories about Trump’s “treason” and “Russian collusion” and imminent threat to “our democracy” that have actually done more to sow discontent and division among Americans than anything they’ve blamed alleged “Russian trolls” for.

Not to mention that they were perfectly fine smearing and demonizing American citizens, living and working in the US, as “Russian agents” just because they worked at outlets like RT or Sputnik. Wasn’t that an attack on journalists, or is it different when they do it?

Honestly, I’ve had enough of this stone-throwing by inhabitants of glass houses – and I get a feeling a lot of my fellow Americans have as well. As Matt Taibbi observed just the other day, this country has been dragged into a state of perpetual coup, courtesy of the political establishment in Washington and their media enablers, out to get Bad Orange Man at any cost – even if it means destroying the country.

If you don’t understand memes, maybe journalism is not for you, and it’s time to find honest work.

Nebojsa Malic, senior writer

 

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Is This Our Future?

By Mark Dice – Oct 4, 2019

Imagine an AG who really thinks that the first amendment is a “privilege”

Never trust a woman who gets ahead by lying on her back.

2019: The year that Socialist Democrats truly display their fervent disdain of the Bill of Rights & the U.S. Constitution.

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DOUBLE WHAMMY: Calling Someone an Illegal Alien Could Strip You of Your Guns

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By Jose Nino

The Strident Conservative reports that that New York City passed a new ordinance which criminalizes the threat of reporting someone to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the use of phrases like “go back to your own country” or “illegal alien” when these actions are allegedly motivated by hate.

This 29-page directive was published by the New York City Commission on Human Rights and details numerous examples of actions or comments that would be banned under this law. Violators of this law could be punished by fines up to $250,000 per violation.

According to one passage in the law, “The use of certain language, including ‘illegal alien’ and ‘illegals,’ with the intent to demean, humiliate, or offend a person or persons constitutes discrimination.”

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The Commission is open about the fact that the directive intends to reject the federal government’s attempts to crack down on illegal immigration. However, Daniel Horowitz pointed out that no such crackdown has been attempted by the Trump administration.

The author of this Strident Conservative piece, David Leach argues that this law “could have long-term consequences on our liberty.”

First he believes that the NYC law is “a clear violation of free speech rights.” The Supreme Court recently ruled that so-called hate speech is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. However, Leach sees the bigger picture:

But putting free speech aside for a moment, the growing movement by the Far-Left to ban hate speech — and even criminalize it — could give them a foot-in-the-door toward dismantling the Second Amendment as well.

Right before the entire impeachment drama started, Democrats, along with Trump and the GOP, were already pushing for anti-gun legislation. Bans on high-capacity magazines and red flag laws were featured on Pelosi’s gun control wish list.

Hower, Leach notes that “there’s been another piece of anti-Second Amendment legislation flying under the radar.”

He expanded upon this:

Named the Disarm Hate Act (DHA), this little-noticed bill would use hate crime laws to deny gun rights. Using similar laws already on the books in a few states as a template, the DHA would prohibit people convicted of certain “violent” hate crime misdemeanors from possessing a weapon. Currently, federal law only bans people convicted of felony hate crimes from gun ownership.

What would constitute a violent misdemeanor hate crime?  Leach cites the words of Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, the co-sponsor of the Senate version of the DHA:

“Most commonly this category includes low-level assault, threats, harassment, and property damage.”

Indeed, leftists have had trouble trying to subvert the Second Amendment directly. So they’ve turned to more indirect ways of doing so.

By linking it to assaults on free speech, they can now kill two birds with one stone. In doing so, they can eviscerate some of the most time-honored principles of American political freedoms.

 

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Facebook CEO warns breaking up Big Tech will lead to more ‘election meddling’ and less censorship will hurt people in LEAKED audio

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to threaten politicians who want to break up the company with election interference ‘issues’, and warns that unregulated social media would create angry crowds, in recently leaked audio.

Breaking up Big Tech firms like Facebook “is not actually going to solve the issues,” Zuckerberg complained during a July open question-and-answer meeting with employees, a recording of which was obtained by The Verge. Instead, he warned, it’ll make them worse.

It doesn’t make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can’t coordinate and work together.

Why broken-up Facebooklets would refuse to coordinate to quash “election interference,” one can only wonder. The statement, which could be easily interpreted as a veiled threat, comes in response to widespread concern that Facebook is a monopoly with too much power over what information people see online. Facebook previously threatened the journalism industry with extinction if publishers refused to cooperate with the social media behemoth (“I’ll be holding hands with your dying business like in a hospice,” his deputy Campbell Brown warned publishers in a meeting last year, adding that Zuckerberg “doesn’t care” about what happens to them if they scorn Facebook’s olive branch), and Zuckerberg is very much aware of the amount of political power his company wields, especially heading into an election year.

An offer they can’t refuse? Facebook offers mainstream news millions in licensing fees

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But Facebook being broken up isn’t even a concern, as the CEO said the company would “win the legal challenge” should Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren or any other candidate calling for the break up of the Big Tech monopolies actually follow through on that campaign promise. The court battle would “still suck for us,” though, since “I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government.”

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“We care about our country and want to work with our government to do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.” Translation: we care about our country, as long as it doesn’t get in our way. And other countries? Asked about skipping hearings where he was expected to testify in Canada and the UK, Zuckerberg indicated he didn’t care so much about those: “It just doesn’t really make sense for me to go to hearings in every single country that wants to have me show up,” he explained, sounding genuinely bewildered that such a thing might be expected of him.

One particularly interesting employee question concerned how to improve Facebook’s “self-image” – what to tell friends and family who hate or fear the social network. Zuckerberg’s answer was elusive and vague – tell critics that “you care about the problems and acknowledge that there are issues and that you’re working through them.”

And Zuckerberg insisted – despite that boilerplate answer – that caring is genuine. He “really cares” about “making sure that our products promote positive well-being,” he said, adding that this concern was behind the company’s decision to more prominently feature content from “friends and family” in newsfeeds, deemphasizing political and viral content. That decision hurt both the producers of such content and the company itself, which lost $100 billion of market cap in one day as the number of users fell dramatically – a historic record for a single-day drop, according to Zuckerberg, who laughed it off.

He also tried to smooth over the rough rollout of Libra, Facebook’s digital currency that has been panned by governments worldwide, claiming that “the public things” – presumably meaning politicians’ calls for extreme scrutiny of the project owing to Facebook’s history of privacy abuses – “tend to be a little more dramatic” but private meetings with regulators have been much easier.

While Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to be a fan of regulations targeting Libra, he is very supportive of regulation of social media – and it has more to do with dodging the pitchforks of angry users than innate virtue. Without regulation, “people are just going to keep on getting angrier and angrier … demand more extreme measures, and eventually people just say ‘Screw it, take a hammer to the whole thing.’”

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WATCH: CNN’s Fake News Thug Charged with Assault After Being Accused of Accosting a Real Reporter

Fake news reporter April Ryan’s bodyguard is charged with assaulting a real reporter.

By Shane Trejo

A bodyguard for a CNN fake news reporter is facing criminal charges after he reportedly took a journalist’s camera and twisted his arm violently as he removed him from an event in New Brunswick, New Jersey earlier this month.

The event took place at the NJ Parent Summit in the Heldrich Hotel on Aug. 3 where CNN’s White House correspondent April Ryan was addressing the audience. Charlie Kratovil of New Brunswick Today alleges he was violently accosted by 30-year-old Joel Morris, who was working as Ryan’s security detail, for trying to record the event.

The video footage can be seen here:

Kratovil filed a criminal complaint accusing Morris of harassment, assault and theft. He alleges that Morris injured his arm and shoulder while grabbing him and forcibly removing him from the facility before taking the camera. Kratovil was later able to retrieve the camera.

Kratovil claims he was invited to the event by a public relations firm, and recorded other speakers for two hours without any problems until Ryan took the stage. She was apparently the only speaker who didn’t want her words to be heard by the public, and she seemingly sent a thug to do her dirty work and hurt a real journalist for putting her on the record.

“What I will say, when I speak, I don’t have news covering my speeches,” Ryan declared to the crowd, asserting that she is above scrutiny.

The Society of Professional Journalists released a statement in favor of Kratovil and against the CNN fake news hack Ryan.

“While journalists may have no special rights superior to members of the public, they do not have fewer rights than others,” they said in a statement.

“A no-photography policy should apply to everyone. Nor should the perceived viewpoint of a news organization be regarded as grounds to deny admittance to a member of the media; people who make news do not have a license to dictate how and by whom they are covered,” they added.

Ryan has refused to comment about why she was so desperate to deny Kratovil the ability to cover her speech.

“Her silence is deafening at this point. It’s been more than two weeks,” Kratovil said. “Anybody who’s a journalist should be condemning this.”

Ryan has frequently cried and complained about President Donald Trump’s treatment of the media, claiming she has been the victim of death threats. She released a book, “Under Fire,” last year whining about how tough she has it as a corporate news reader in the age of Trump.

“There are people out here who really are concerned with my safety, and there are people out here [who] really could care less about my safety. I don’t like talking about it anymore, but it’s real, and it’s a turning point,” Ryan said while promoting her book in an NPR interview last year.

As usual, the CNN hack was projecting completely. If anyone is a threat to real news reporting, it is Ryan and the rest of the professional deceivers who she works with at the fledgling cable news station.

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WashPo: ‘Free Speech Makes It Difficult to Prosecute White Supremacy’

By Chris Menahan

The Washington Post lamented Thursday that the First Amendment makes it difficult to prosecute “white supremacists” for their political beliefs.

From The Washington Post, “Why free speech makes it difficult to prosecute white supremacy in America”

Federal authorities have used RICO many times to prosecute white prison gangs, but what got the members of organizations such as the Aryan Brotherhood locked up under the statute was not the racism they believed but the acts they committed: crimes including drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping and money laundering.

In the case of mass shootings by those who believe in white supremacy, such as the young white man who allegedly killed 22 people at a Walmart store in El Paso last weekend, prosecutors don’t need RICO to make a criminal case.

But if they wanted to use RICO to hold accountable the collective ideology that radicalized the shooter, they would need to prove that there was an organized enterprise involved with that ideology, that there was a traceable criminal conspiracy to commit violence and that there was a leader or leaders who instructed others to cause harm.

Without that, the collective ideology is not a conspiracy but hate speech. And in the United States, hate speech is not criminal. It’s a right protected by the First Amendment.

C’mon now, where’s your can-do attitude?

This is more like it:

But according to retired law professor G. Robert Blakey, who wrote the RICO statute and is considered the nation’s foremost authority on it, federal authorities should be using RICO to more rigorously investigate white extremist groups without violating free speech protections.

It wouldn’t be easy, he said, but there’s “no excuse” not to try.

Well said. The Bill of Rights is no reason not to start locking people up for their political beliefs!

Incidentally, the Post reported one day earlier how a Trump appointed prosecutor is “putting white supremacists in jail” by hitting them with archaic rioting charges for fighting with antifa (despite one California judge already throwing said rioting charges out for violating the First Amendment):

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By the way, if you’re wondering who classifies as a “white supremacist” in modern America, just ask rapidly-rising Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren:

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That’s all we need to hear, Liz! Lock him up! 

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North Carolina Chocolate Shop Incites Confederate Flag Burning

Matthew’s Chocolates is offering free chocolate to community members in returning for burning a Confederate flag.

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A North Carolina chocolate shop is encouraging members of the public to burn the Confederate flag in response to a feud with a Sons of the Confederacy group.

Matthew Shepard, the owner of Matthew’s Chocolates in Hillsborough, North Carolina, claims to have been engaged in an ongoing dispute with a Sons of Confederate Veterans group. Shepard is unhappy that the group has been holding Confederate heritage events on the street outside of his shop, claiming that they’re there almost every Saturday.

In an attempt to rid the area of Confederate heritage groups, Shepard has offered free chocolate to anyone who burns a Confederate flag outside of his shop. Many liberals and individuals opposed to any and all Confederate memorabilia have expressed their support of his proposition.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans group have said that they reject “acts or ideologies of racial or religious bigotry,” and merely seek to honor the American South’s Confederate heritage. A community member affiliated with the group posted on Facebook about the feud, posing with Confederate flags right next to Shepard’s sign.

Steve Marley claimed that Matthew’s Chocolates is facing other threats to its business model, and claims that Shepard is merely using the Sons of Confederate Veterans group active in the area as an excuse for the lack of business his store is receiving.

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The mayor of Hillsborough has expressed his opposition to Confederate flag display and events, while recognizing that it is protected free speech under the First Amendment.

As the display of Confederate memorabilia continues to fuel a contentious political battle across the American south and the entire country, it’s likely that more municipal feuds like that which has surfaced in Hillsborough will occur.

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