Posts Tagged → free speech
Censoring climate mockers
Guest post, courtesy of Tom Shepstone:
by Vijay Jayaraj
“We have reached the end of the Olympic summer in Paris, comprising of the Olympics and the Paralympics. Though the U.S. finished at the top in the Olympics and in the top three at Paralympics, much of the world’s attention was on the Olympics’ obscene mockery of Christianity in its opening ceremony at Paris.
It also overshadowed some unprecedented events in the city. A few days prior to the games, French authorities fined the country’s second most popular news channel 20,000 euros for challenging the popular narrative about a purported climate crisis.
CNews, a round-the-clock news operation, was charged by the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (ARCOM) with a broadcast’s failing to adequately challenge views skeptical of the global warming scare.
“This is the first time in France and internationally that ARCOM or a regulatory authority has issued a financial sanction for a breach concerning an environmental subject,” said QuotaClimat, an organization that reportedly has complained in the past about the climate reporting of various media.
The case of CNews raises serious concerns about press freedom – a cornerstone of democratic societies — and the public’s access to diverse perspectives on environmental issues. While the regulator argued that the channel failed to provide sufficient context and counterarguments, critics contend that the decision sets a dangerous precedent, effectively requiring media outlets to adhere to a specific ideological position.
The role of journalism in a democracy is not to parrot official viewpoints or consensus opinions but rather to investigate, question and present different perspectives on important issues. By imposing restrictions on how climate issues can be reported, France undermines this crucial function of the media.
This crackdown on climate reporting exemplifies a broader trend of using authorities backed by official powers to curb the expression of views that challenge a government’s preferred narrative, a concerning development for anybody favoring an open society.
The practice has become far too common in academic research as well. Scientists who challenge the crisis narrative are subjected to witch hunts and termination from their professions.
Many climate scientists, influenced heavily by funding sources, are transforming their discipline into something that hardly qualifies as science. While their work has the appearance of scientific research and is conducted by those with scientific credentials, both its methodologies and findings are heavily shaped by the agendas of special interest groups, political figures and international governing bodies.
Researchers and their organizations, in too many cases, have become harvesters of grants rather than seekers of truth. Such scientists are supplicants of governments and wealthy foundations wanting particular findings and willing to pay for them.
Those who champion genuine scientific inquiry must speak out against deliberate efforts by climate alarmists to discredit sceptics, whose questions are manifestations of critical thinking. Inquiry into popular theories should be welcome, not treated as sedition.
From Galileo’s astronomical discoveries to more recent controversies in fields like genetics and nuclear energy, attempts to protect the popular view have often backfired. slowing scientific progress and technological advancement.
In the case of climate change, this is true too. Restrictive energy policies — justified on the basis of addressing a “climate crisis” — already have impeded economic growth and increased prices. Ideologues seek to reverse decades of advancement in clean-coal power generation, oil and gas development and other technologies.
Scientific understanding of Earth’s climate is not furthered by silencing dissent but through rigorous research, peer review and open debate. By allowing a diversity of voices in the media, including those that challenge the so-called “consensus,” opportunities for truth arise.
Isolated intrusions on press freedom are annoying. But actions like that of the French regulator for reporting on a climate story can be replicated by other governments and for other subjects – a certain eventuality without the intervention of honest citizens
For this is the proverbial slippery slope greased by powerful people’s lust for control or money or both. Left alone, only the most ruthless of the politically connected get to say where it ends. Even they can’t say for sure, but history tells us it ends badly.”
This commentary was first published at yourNews on September 10, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K., and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, U.K.
#France #Climate #Jayaraj #CO2Coalition #FreeSpeech #Censorship
“The Elites Have Revolted and Are In a State of World War Against Us”
Today we host Tom Shepstone as a guest here. His essay below is a well written aggregation of some of the different things I myself have written here over the years, and also things which other much better known commenters than either Tom or I have said and written. If I recall right, it was radio show host Mark Levin who first pointed out that the elites are in full revolt against the people. What Tom has done is pull a bunch of these related threads together for a coherent appeal to moderate American voters: If you like your civilization, and you want to keep your civilization, you must vote for the one person who will protect your civilization.
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The Elites Have Revolted and Are In a State of World War Against Us
By Thomas J. Shepstone
Every day there’s further evidence global elites are at war with the people. Western Civilization has periodically been the exception to the rule that the people ordinarily live as serfs in totalitarianism nations dominated by the elites. Those times when the people have actually had a role in governing themselves have been relatively few, in fact, over the centuries. The signing of the Magna Carta by King John giving up some of his rights to lesser nobles was such a moment. The American Revolution was another. Sooner or later, though, the elites claw back their power as the people are conned into giving them a bit of it back only to see the inch given turn into miles and miles.
This process of decay has reached to the very core of Western Civilization at our present point. Free speech is evaporating like a dragster taking off for the hay bales at the end of the strip. Rumble has been banned in France and X chased out of Brazil. The developer and CEO of Telegram has been arrested for not cooperating with government. The UK is jailing people for Facebook posts challenging the government narrative and has threatened to extradite Elon Musk for allowing the same thing. The Biden-Harris administration bullied Twitter into downplaying the significance of the Hunter Biden hard drive during a political campaign.
The mainstream media has allied itself with totally corrupt CIA and FBI agencies. Politicians lie with abandon and tell ever bigger lies with straight faces. The heads of other Federal agencies such as Homeland Security and the Department of Justice make flat out false assertions with no embarrassment whatsoever. The Attorney General [Merrick Garland] refuses to pursue perpetrators of violence against pro-life centers but is willing to put grandmothers in jail for praying outside abortion mills. The main bodies of both political parties have joined forces as a uni-party focused on special privileges for themselves as they bankrupt the country. The President and a Vice-Presidential nominee both appear to be all but Chinese Communist Party agents.
The rot simply cannot be denied. Oh, it’s always been there. Woodrow Wilson was a vicious racist who reduced free speech to whispers and even Lincoln arbitrarily took away many basic rights but those were war-time situations and temporary. There was also corruption with the Teapot Dome scandal, Alger Hiss and so many other cases, but it’s never been as deep and widespread as today. France’s Macron refuses to leave office despite being massively defeated in the recent election. The UK’s new leader replaced one never elected and the new one is more aligned with the World Economic Forum than his own country.
The elites are in full revolt — world war, if you will — against us. They are stealing elections now but hope to end them soon. They are pushing self-appointed world government on every front with phony campaigns against ‘malinformation’ (their invented word for accurate information opposed to the government narrative), proposals for digital currencies, 15-minute cities, health care dictatorships and so much more. It’s all in the name of control, control and more control and it’s mushrooming like crazy.
What can we do about it, short of another dangerous and counterproductive French Revolution like the one two centuries ago that ended up consuming the advocates of revolution? Well, the first thing it seems to me, despite my gloomy observations above, is not to despair. There are reasons to hope after all. It is clear, for example, there is worldwide revulsion of the elites who are currently running our institutions not only of government, but everything else that matters as well. There is also a realignment of some nature taking place.
The new divisions are ever less of a left vs. right nature and more a matter of the elite establishment vs. versus anti-establishment commoners, insane folks who wish to destroy the family vs. normal people who recognize it as the building block for any civilization, and wannabe masters of the universe vs. freedom lovers. Each of these divisions is important because they clarify what the problem is and what must be remedied, which can only happen if we talk to each other and abide our differences. Reforming or abandoning corrupt institutions so as to realign on principles are the only ways that can happen.
That’s how I see what’s happening in the political realm these days. The RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard endorsements of Trump are indicative of what I’m talking about. I strongly disagree with both on certain matters, especially on abortion and, in Kennedy’s case also on climate and energy matters. Yet, look what’s happened. Bobby, Jr. unforgivably helped killed fracking in New York. He once stated, too, that he wanted to jail ‘climate deniers.”
But, in recent speeches and interviews, Kennedy has attacked the billionaire green grifter class sucking up all our money on wasteful green boondoggles. How can we possibly disagree? He also went after Anthony Fauci in a way no else was capable of doing. And, he has defended free speech like a lion. He came to Trump because he had no other principled choice, and so it must be with us. We need to unite with one-time enemies where we can and destroy the old divisions on the way to restoring Western Civilization.
Notwithstanding all this, elections, while mattering greatly, won’t save us by themselves. No one individual can do it and events always intervene, making it extraordinarily difficult in the situation we face, which is a world war of entrenched special interests against those of us who would ask questions. Yet, individuals of principle do make a difference, so it falls on all of us to live by our principles. Chief among them are life, liberty and truth-telling, all of which rest on a foundation of free speech and the elite troops arrayed against are making simultaneous major assaults on this principle on every front.
Free speech is the prerequisite of any truly functioning democratic republic, despite the disingenuous wails of the left suggesting that democracy is threatened by it. They want to separate good speech from bad, but don’t tell us they plan to be the arbiters of what is good and bad. And, what they mean by democracy is anything but the vote of the people. No, what they mean by democracy is no more than the institutions they now control, whether they be government agencies or electoral bodies. They aim to kill true democracy, as in “the will of the people,” to save their captured form of it.
Their so-named democracy lives by lies and, therefore, can tolerate no truth telling. The only way they know to stop others from speaking truth to power is smother it by throwing a wet blanket over all speech on the excuse that some of it’s bad. Free speech, though, has no such distinctions. It is mixture of good and bad and it’s only by comparing the two that free people get to make up their minds. The antidote to bad speech in the eyes of the beholders is always more speech. Even if ends in both sides calling each other liars, those observing the debate get to decide where the truth really lies. That is true democracy. All speech must be protected or there is no speech for any of us.
We will not turn back the elite troops attacking us without free speech. If we do not insist upon it, we are doomed. We will be forced to live in city colonies and give up our right to travel. We’ll be forced to subsidize the lives of elites by paying for unreliable and pricey energy systems that make no sense but fatten the wallets of grifters. We’ll lose the right to farm, to possess our own homes, to vote and to live in a nation of our own making. We will revert to a feudal society.
Let’s all remember this when we vote. Let’s vote like our very lives depend upon it, because they do, but more than that we all owe it to ourselves and each other to speak up and challenge each other. That means getting on social media, becoming activists and talking with others, especially with whom we disagree. There can be no running away from argument.
That doesn’t mean making everything political or acting hostile. No, it simply means engaging others in a civil way. We must cross the divides and ask questions…lots of questions so those aligned against us might understand us better and vice versa with a view toward identifying areas of agreement. We will not win the war against the elites without making friends of some of our enemies. And, we will not wrestle the beast we have created to the ground alone.
#Elites #FreeSpeech #WesternCiviization #Democracy
Should conservative Americans travel abroad?
Earlier this year several news stories circulated about American tourists being jailed in Caribbean island nations, because one or two loose and forgotten hunting bullets were found lodged deeply in remote seams and pocket corners of their luggage.
While firearms are mostly illegal in these Caribbean island nations, American tourists vacationing on Caribbean beaches were treated as violent criminals when single stray bullets were discovered in their luggage upon entering the islands. Reportedly, these bullets were left over from prior hunting trips, and they had escaped the scrutiny of USA TSA security personnel during the first leg of their trip.
Despite having committed a simple mistake, with the help of the TSA mind you, these travelers were roughly handled by island police, jailed, and held without much due process. Their dream vacations turned into nightmares, and spawned a lot of online discussion about whether or not Americans should risk traveling abroad these days. We are clearly no longer valued for our tourist money in these tiny places, but rather we are valued as political prisoners, symbols of an impotent laughingstock America run by a demented old man and his bribery-plagued family. That American government refuses to flex a little muscle to extract innocent US citizens from these ridiculous destinations is yet another indication of our empire’s forced decline.
Were I president of the USA, and one of these microscopic places dared to lay their filthy hands on an American tourist for some silly mistake, I would sail one or two large US Navy ships into their main harbor, and dispatch several thousand armed US Marines to forcefully re-acquire our illegally detained citizen, by any means necessary. Maybe it’s about time an American flag fly over these local places, anyhow.
Shifting gears to another big tourist destination, Americans have always felt most comfortable and welcome in the “United Kingdom” aka Britain, Wales, Scotland, and formerly Ireland, now its own nation. Because English is the native language or the common language in these places, countless American tourists have traveled there to sight-see, see relatives, marvel at world class museum collections. However, one must openly wonder if these destinations are also now tainted and dangerous for us to visit.
Not too long ago, several American hunters in different parts of Scotland ran into unexpected and undeserved criminal charges for doing exactly what Scottish law allowed, exactly following the directions of their hunting guides. These hunters, both women, had done nothing criminal. What they were guilty of was hunting and having anti-hunters get angry about it. Mind you, paid hunting is about eighty percent of the economic activity in rural Scotland, which is about 80% of Scotland itself. I have hunted in Scotland, and the views there are unbelievably majestic, the animals plenty wild and difficult to take, the “stalkers” (hunting guides) and “ghillies” (hunting assistants) incredibly talented.
But what happens if you follow all the laws, all the rules, and still get in trouble with the government? This bizarre official behavior at odds with the basic rule of law is the very core of lawless arbitrary and capricious government, and it is about the most evil sort of criminal law for a government to engage in. After all, how can you trust a government to host you as a tourist if you follow their laws and they put you in jail anyhow?
I don’t think I would return to hunt in Scotland. And while we are on the subject of the United Kingdom and its environs, I am not sure I would return to Scotland, or England or Ireland or Wales for any reason, for the simple reason that these jurisdictions are now enforcing unbelievably arbitrary speech laws.
In fact, over the past two weeks Britain has descended into complete tyranny, with senior police officials threatening to arrest Americans and others living abroad “wherever you live” for violating Britain’s new arbitrary and capricious speech laws. Britons are being jailed right now for posting simple questions on Fakebook, and apparently even criticizing the current government there can get you handcuffed and taken to jail, for years. Even little kids!
Canada’s lawless and violent customs officials are notorious for their brutality towards Americans who even question why their vehicle is being strip searched at the beginning of their family vacation. American families traveling to Canada have had their family dog shot dead in front of the kids by hyper aggressive Canadian customs agents, who unnecessarily but nonetheless sadistically revel in their complete power over helpless Americans. I would avoid Canada if possible, because it is a place that is also presently descending into lawless tyranny, run by people eager to unfairly make examples of political opponents.
(I wonder why the hell America has not turned Canada into our 51st state by now, but again, I am the kind of proud American who believes in using American military force for the benefit of America and Americans, and to send clear messages to our adversaries)
France just arrested the CEO of the social media company Telegram, because he believes in the free speech of his users. Screw France! France does not believe in individual rights or free speech. France also is descending into tyranny, for your own good, as the British tyrant Keir Starmer also asserts.
So one cannot help but wonder if Americans should refrain from traveling abroad much right now. Maybe this is not a good time for us to be tourists abroad. It seems that no one fears us, no one fears our government or military, and we Americans, used to our personal freedoms and free speech rights, and used to expressing ourselves plainly on every topic we wish, are placing ourselves in harm’s way by traveling abroad.
I don’t think the risk is outweighed by any possible benefits. The benefits of traveling abroad are outweighed by the risks right now.
Here in America we have an incredible array of national and state parks and monuments just begging for tourists and appreciative visitors, beautiful beaches from Maine to Texas, and all within the confines of a nation that at least will respect our right to have opinions. And by vacationing within America you don’t get ripped off by the money changers preying upon us in every other nation.
Americans, you and your tourism dollars belong here in America for the foreseeable future. The upsides are many, not the least of which are that you will see just how incredible this huge and majestic nation is, and why so many of us want to keep it free.
US Media: immoral head fake, or illegal “fire!” in a crowded theater?
The First Amendment to the US Constitution is one of humanity’s greatest achievements.
The First Amendment guarantees individual citizens, and the press (media), certain free speech, communication, and assembly protections and rights, as well as religious freedom rights.
But one exception to this amazing free speech right we all know is that the First Amendment does not guarantee a right to yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater, because there is no public benefit, or private right, to cause an injurious stampede. You cannot use a liberty to cause injury to innocent people, which is what yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater does.
One after another fake, manufactured media crises over the past eighteen months have come and gone, and if all of them call into question the meaning of the First Amendment for today’s fake press, any one of them will suffice.
Russia collusion (after two years there is zero evidence, and never mind the FBI\DOJ collusion with Hillary Clinton’s campaign). Stormy Daniels (never mind that rapist and serial sexual harasser Bill Clinton is still a hero to half the nation). Milania’s pathetic shoes or Sarah Sanders’ face structure and clothing (weren’t we -correctly- supposed to not criticize women’s appearances?). Now it’s Hispanic babies fake-crying in English (not Spanish) for long distant parents who sent them alone to break American law and illegally enter America under the care of thieves, pedophiles, and human traffickers.
Every month or so the American press manufactures another crisis meant to stir up the American people, to put people in a panic, to get them racing and stampeding over one another. The press is essentially yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, in an attempt to damage a president they dislike.
Each cry of “Fire! Fire!” by the press is at the very least an immoral head fake meant to distract from the documented crimes by many senior staff of the Obama administration, now wide open to the public as a result of the Dept. of Justice’s Inspector General. Or to distract from the amazing economic news, because they can’t let Trump get any credit or good news.
Incredibly, over 90% of the mainstream press’s coverage of President Trump is negative. That is not honest, it is not reporting. It is straight forward political activism.
The press today is not the press of the First Amendment’s 1787 ratification. Today’s press is not dedicated to serving as The People’s watchdog over government, helping hold government officials to account.
Rather, today’s press\media is a completely partisan, dedicated communication arm of just one political party. The press covers up for the crimes of one party, and helps invent fake crimes for the other political party. And yet, America’s press gets the benefits and protections of the First Amendment, as if press members are doing holy work for the Republic.
The question is, does the First Amendment apply to a partisan activist “press,” whose political advertising and advocacy contributions to just one political party are worth billions of dollars as undeclared in-kind political contributions?
We have to ask, because at a certain point CBS, ABC, NPR, BBC, NYT, Washington Post, et al must have their political contributions assessed. If they are found to have violated campaign election law, then let the legal chips fall where they must.
Did GOP Senator Toomey Really Flush the First Amendment and Side with the Anti-Free Speech Movement?
We have all watched the Charlottesville debacle and its pathetic aftermath.
In sum, the city administration unilaterally decided to remove a neat old statue of some guy named Robert E. Lee, whom no one today can remember.
So a bunch of protestors decided to peaceably assemble and petition the government with their grievance, specifically that the statue no longer means today what it might have meant when it was erected a hundred years ago, and that it is a work of art, and that it is part of American history, and it should stay.
Then other protestors began to rally around this symbol, and these other protestors are a bunch of racist goofs holding up the most embarrassing signs (and hats, so let me ask you, what is worse, a stupid pointy white hood or a vagina hat…your opinion is as good as any, because they are all really embarrassingly stupid hats) America has seen since the Sore Losers March Against Democracy after Trump was sworn in as President.
In America, even racist goofs (including the racist goofs at Black Lives Matter) have a Constitutional right to free speech, and a right to peaceably assemble to protest, and so these racist goofs did that, along with the history buffs, the art buffs, the southern pride buffs, et al. to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue.
Naturally the media and its local affiliate, the mayor of Charlottesville, whipped up this small event into a frenzy, casting it as something it wasn’t, so they could make it into a national event and try to pin it on who else, but President Trump.
After the violent fracas, purposefully created by the mayor and implemented by racist goofs carrying African National Congress flags and using bats to attack Caucasians around them, Trump was repeatedly attacked for not having condemned just the white skinned racist goofs, but for having condemned ALL of the racist goofs at Charlottesville, including the violent leftists and their willing partners the violent white supremacists.
Nothing Trump said was good enough for the Democrat Party and their communications arm, the mainstream media. Everything Trump said was claimed to be insufficient, insincere, etc., though this was obviously just political grandstanding by his political opponents.
But guess who is a political opponent of President Trump, and who also jumped on the grandstanding bandwagon?
Why, Pennsylvania’s own US Senator Patrick Toomey.
In the recent past, Senator Toomey’s weak behavior begged for a primary opponent, and the only reason he did not get one was that he was facing someone even farther to the left than he, Katie McGinty in the 2016 election. And so we are stuck with this sniveling, whining, weak, spineless tepid little man Toomey for another six years.
Senator Toomey refused to condemn the violent leftists and racists who initiated the attacks on the goofball white supremacists, AS WELL AS ATTACKS ON OTHER PROTESTORS AND EVEN PASSERSBY.
Senator Toomey refused to condemn the Charlottesville mayor who manipulated the confrontation by changing the protest venue at the last minute, thereby ensuring physical contact between the opposing sides and also barring his city police officers from making arrests, except in the most egregious circumstances.
Senator Toomey refused to support the US president’s call for calm and a cessation of violence by everyone committing violence there.
Senator Toomey refused to support the US Constitution’s guarantee of peaceable assembly and petition of government, and in fact his own words spell out his hostility to free assembly and free speech.
Rather, Senator Toomey joined in on the leftist attack on Trump, equating equal condemnation of all racists, white and black, with supporting white racism.
Talk about moral equivalence, this sad excuse for an American Pat Toomey is full of moral equivalence himself, as well as full of political opportunism and spineless jellyfish wobbly-kneed “action.”
Earth to Spineless Weakling Pat Toomey: Bigotry is bigotry, and bigoted violence is bigoted violence, no matter who does it, and it all must be condemned. There are no sacred cows in America, so why are you helping create one?
America’s problems are not going to get resolved by weak, fake ‘leaders’ like Pat Toomey, who make common cause with violent rent-a-mob thugs bent on ending the free speech rights of people they disagree with. In fact, Toomey makes our problems worse.
Here is the email he sent out last week; you judge for yourself:
“This past week our nation was rocked by tragedy in Charlottesville, VA. The acts we saw were a horrifying reminder that there are still those who seek only to divide us.
The racism, hatred, and violence seen in Charlottesville were vile and unacceptable. I am disgusted by white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis and believe the racism and hate spewed by these groups have no place in our society.
Furthermore, there can be no moral equivalency between neo-Nazis, bigots, white supremacists, and those who oppose them. Our country has no room for corrupt ideology or violent acts.
I hope that what occurred in Charlottesville will be an isolated incident. Moving forward, I pray that members of Congress will put politics aside, unequivocally condemn hate and bigotry, and find ways to work together to protect our shared American values of equality and justice for all.”
Going where no Western man has gone before
Each day this past week I have waited for the other-other shoe to drop. And sure enough, each day some new incomprehensible surprise greeted us.
Obama’s most endearing trait is his public persona. His smoothness. His likeability. But what has come out more in the past week than in the past six years is how treacherous Obama is, how deliberately two-faced he is, how big of a blatant liar he is, how evil he is and how intent he is upon tearing down America and replacing it with…God knows what.
In his rapprochement with genocidal Iran and his war on Western Civilization Israel, Obama is dragging the United States into a place no Western human has ever gone before: Down.
Obama is dragging all of us into an abyss from which our nation will not climb out, if Iran gets to own nuclear bombs. And it is clear that Obama wants Iran to have them, just as it is clear that he resents Israel having them (note the release of Israel’s deepest nuclear secrets by Obama’s Pentagon this week).
Odd as it is, Obama’s supporters still include most American Jews, whose recent brushes with genocide would under normal circumstances remind them to place their sympathies elsewhere. However, political correctness is the new religion of the people formerly known as American Jews, and political correctness demands utter fealty to The Human One, whomever that may be at any given time, not The One who created Heaven and Earth. This is a sad development because so much of America’s intelligentsia is represented by the people formerly known as American Jews, such as academia and the media.
In going Down, instead of on the Upward trajectory Western Civilization has carried all of us over the past thousand years, minorities are most likely to suffer badly, one way or the other. One of the largest minorities in America today are Caucasians. How will they fare under the new America? Will there be a place for them? Will faux “White Guilt” force them to become willing slaves? Are they becoming that already, working as they do to support a tax-heavy government intent on wiping away their free speech and self-defense rights?
So many have placed their trust in a Muslim Marxist, whose mask is beginning to fall away, and yet they hope, in vain, that the dirty deeds he does now will not really exist later on. That’s the hope they voted for.
Just as surely as you can keep your doctor and your health plan, you can bet on everything working out just fine, folks. That’s the change we got.