“You DID NOT originally say that “everyone can make their points without the use of foul or derogatory comments” (which btw who is the arbiter or what is and is not ‘foul’ and ‘derogatory’ – you?). Nor did you originally say that this language is a “part of free speech and legally permitted”. Nor did you ASK that people use language that doesn’t deliberately attack other people. . What you DID say was: 1. A comment “should be deleted“ to “Do the right thing 2. Using the blog to “display discriminatory comments is not a justified use“ 3. People can “say the worst things about people without using language that should be banned“ . These statements are very clear and very specific – – DELETE comment – NOT justified – should be BANNED . For someone who is so keen on language use (and has established herself to be the arbiter in this area), to come back with revisionist language: (” Of course they are part of ‘Free Speech” and are legally permitted”; ” I’m just asking that people use language that doesn’t deliberately attack other people) is disingenuous at best and reveals you to be someone who is quick to criticize and judge others but is above criticism and error and not to be held to your own standard.”
UNL students restricted by new ‘respect’ policy
WILLIAM NARDI – ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY •SEPTEMBER 2, 2016
‘Nonnegotiable’ list of expected beliefs about diversity and inclusion
Calling the University of Nebraska Lincoln a place that “values acceptance,” the institution kicked off the fall semester with its newly installed chancellor essentially telling new students they should not say or do things that might be offensive or cause people to feel disrespected, calling the stance “nonnegotiable.”
“We insist on a culture of respect, and we recognize that words and actions really matter,” Chancellor Ronnie Green said during a speech at the new student convocation on Aug. 19.
While suggesting the university values free speech and freedom of expression, Green – who took the helm of UNL this summer – went on to declare: “We do not tolerate actions of hate and disrespect.”
The policy, being called by campus leaders a set of “belief statements” on diversity and inclusion, is also spelled out on its website.
Green’s comments come as Christianity and conservatism — even support of Donald Trump — is accused of being intolerant, hateful and racist on campuses nationwide.
Students in at least one Rutgers University residence hall are being encouraged to use only language that is “helpful” and “necessary” to avoid committing microaggressions.
The display, which is part of the school’s “Language Matters” campaign, also includes hand-written definitions of the three types of microaggressions, as well as a flyer listing potentially-offensive words and phrases.
Students in at least one Rutgers University residence hall are being encouraged to use only language that is “helpful” and “necessary” to avoid committing microaggressions.
The display, photos of which were obtained by Campus Reform, is titled “Language Matters: Think,” and was placed in the College Avenue Apartments by a resident assistant, according to a current resident of the building who does not wish to be identified.
Ridgewood NJ, Siobhan Winograd, self-appointed Mistress of Niceness, went to the podium and started whining about why can’t everyone be nice and how people’s comments are not pleasant and then she suggested that people’s comments should be cut to three minutes from five. Said she had done a bunch of research about other towns and we have more time allowed than many towns. And then she went on past the buzzer for more than five minutes.
Mayor Knudsen stated that she was trying to think of how to accommodate MORE speakers, not fewer. She was considering one possibility of shortening each speaker’s time but lengthening the time slot to 40 minutes. Clearly the Mayor is an advocate for the people and wants to hear from all of us.
The meeting went really smoothly and was very business like. Even residents who had frustrations to air were treated respectfully. All the former moaning and groaning about CIVILITY was completely unnecessary because really all we had to do was get rid of Aronsohn-Pucciarelli-Hauck and the air in the room cleared instantly.
Ridgewood NJ, as previously reported on this blog the new Council has lead to more positive environment at council meetings. A reader said it best ,”it’s amazing to watch the new council meetings. Respect for all those who ask questions. Even questions that are asked are answered or will be researched and followed up on. Keep up the good work.”
In an article in the Hoboken/Weehawken, News by John Heinis July 25, 2016 , Hennis reports on why a Federal Judge denied Hoboken’s motion to dismiss freedom of speech violation suit.
file photo by Boyd Loving of the 3 amigos
Its seems that speech can not restricted during public comment at a council meeting . The previous mayor Paul Aronsohn and his administration tried many times either through rules, ordinances ,intimidation or silly anti free speech committees like the “Civility Committee”.
“A federal court judge in Newark denied the dismissal of a freedom of speech violation lawsuit filed by a political operative against the City of Hoboken after he was ejected from the October 21 city council meeting.
On July 21, Judge Kevin McNulty denied two motions filed by the city to dismiss the complaint, writing that “the same issues of factual interpretation bar dismissal on grounds of qualified immunity.”
In the 11-page ruling, McNulty earlier noted that “qualified immunity issues (such as whether a violation was ‘objectively apparent’ under the circumstances at the time) may often require the kind of factual context that is only available on summary judgement or a trial.”
McNulty also states that although it is not proven that Liebler’s First Amendment rights were violated, “if it happened as plaintiff claims, then a First Amendment violation would have been apparent to a reasonable official in these Council members’ positions.”
Lucy Horton says she could scarcely believe her ears. Hours after she had called Delran’s mayor Ken Paris “unprofessional and unethical” on her Facebook page, a township police sergeant was on the phone, “informing me that if I didn’t take the Facebook post down, the mayor would be pressing harassment charges.” David O’Reilly, https://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20160521_In_Delran__Facebook_post_brings_a_cop_s_call.html
file photo by Boyd Loving Just shut up and listen, argues newspaper’s data editor
Paul Joseph Watson – APRIL 21, 2016
The Guardian’s Mona Chalabi says that correcting bad grammar is offensive and racist because white people are more likely to be concerned about good grammar.
According to the newspaper’s data editor, grammar rules were invented by wealthy white people and therefore non-whites should be free to ignore them without being criticized.
“The people pointing out the mistakes are more likely to be older, wealthier, whiter, or just plain academic than the people they’re treating with condescension,” states Chalabi.
“All to often, it’s a way to silence people and that’s particularly offensive when it’s someone who might already be struggling to speak up,” she adds.
Chalabi argues that rather than correcting bad grammar, people should just shut up and listen.
“We should spend more time listening to what others have to say and less focusing on the grammar what they say it with,” she asserts.
From 1483 to 1498, Tomás de Torquemada presided over the Spanish Inquisition, the notorious Catholic tribunal used to try heretics and nonbelievers. In order to force their confession, these victims were subjected to gruesome punishments including strangulation or being stretched on the rack. Others were waterboarded or put through strappado, a grueling torture in whichsubjects were hanged by their wrists until their arms dislocated.
By Michael Bielawski / April 6, 2016
RICO 20: Alan Betts, a climate scientist from Pittsford, Vt., is one of 20 environmentalists calling on the Obama administration to use RICO laws to investigate corporate opponents of climate change regulations.
By Michael Bielawski and Bruce Parker | Vermont Watchdog
As more than a dozen states investigate energy companies over an alleged global warming coverup, Vermont “RICO 20” professor Alan Betts says backers aren’t engaged in an anti-free-speech witch-hunt.
Last week, top attorneys led by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Vice President Al Gore announced a collective effort to investigate Exxon Mobil over environmentalist claims that the company misled the public about its role in climate change.
Among those present was Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, who said his office may join the investigation.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt blasted the investigation as a “publicity stunt,” and touted a 27-state lawsuit to fight the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, appearing on the Inside Shale Weekly radio program, responded, “You cannot use the power of the office of the attorney general to silence your critics.”
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The actions are backed by the “RICO 20,” a group of 20 climate scientists that urged President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against fossil fuel companies, especially Exxon Mobil. Jagadish Shukla, a climate dynamics professor at George Mason University, and leader of the RICO 20, has been investigated by Congress for possible abuse of $1.5 million in taxpayer grants.
Alan Betts, a climate scientist from Pittsford, says the professors aren’t attacking free speech.
“It wasn’t about freedom of speech; it was all about Exxon and their deception back in the 1980s,” Betts told Vermont Watchdog.
“(Critics said) we were attacking scientists and things like that, but that was completely untrue. It was about trying to hold Exxon responsible for their deceit over the years, which has led to a great delay in taking action on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
That “deception” and “deceit” refers to reports authored by Columbia Journalism School fellows — and run in the Los Angeles Times — that accused Exxon of expressing climate change doubts while internal company research supported global warming claims. While Exxon has attributed conflicting research to a lack of consensus on what to do about climate change, the New York Post reported that the Columbia Journalism School project was organized by anti-Exxon activist Steve Coll and funded by a host of anti-fossil-fuel foundations.
Despite telltale signs of environmental advocacy behind claims against Exxon, Betts maintains that Exxon’s actions are akin to tobacco companies defending cigarette marketing while knowing the dangers of smoking. That claim could allow states and the global warming industry to reap a financial windfall on par with the $206 billion attained through the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of 1998. That settlement involved attorneys general of 46 states and four leading tobacco companies in the United States.
Walter Olson, a RICO expert and senior fellow at the CATO Center for Constitutional Studies, told Vermont Watchdog claims by the RICO 20 lack merit.
“This does remind me of the old days in which the authorities would decide they need to convict someone and now let’s find a crime,” he said. “… It does rather look as if they’ve decided they want to convict someone of something, and now the question is what remote area of law can they turn to in hopes finding guilt.”
According to Olson, companies — especially ones with tens of thousands of employees like Exxon Mobil — hire experts to pursue “what-if scenarios,” such as a global warming doomsday situation. He said the companies are not legally bound to promote the views of certain individuals or groups within the company. He added that the effort could have a chilling effect on free speech and open inquiry.
“They are attempting to attach legal punishment to businesses that speak their mind on controversial public issues — that is something that should frighten everyone in the business community,” Olson said. “Everyone sometimes has problems with government and wants to be free to speak out without punishment based on the fact that some people think the opinions are wrong.”
Betts denied that environmentalists could be heading for a scandal of their own making, as when leaked emails from East Anglia University in 2009 revealed climate scientists manipulated data to hide information that did not support the theory of global warming — a scandal popularly known as “Climategate.”
“Those allegations were created by the various organizations,” Betts said. “… Somebody hacked into their databases and proceeded to edit their databases and selectively manipulate their emails to try and make a case.”
Olson said fossil-fuel companies can’t be convicted of fraud in this instance because companies aren’t responsible for endorsing any particular internal opinion within a company.
“There is no single unified brain in a company. … There isn’t a requirement that there be a single person knowing everything that everyone knows in the company and then deciding who’s right,” he said.
He added that companies often keep employees with divergent views to gain the best insights, and that no single researcher represents the company more than another.
The Facebook page of FrackNation was suspended for 24 hours at the weekend after a series of complaints by activists who objected to the fact that it was telling the truth about fracking.
Filmmaker Phelim McAleer has been using the FrackNation page to report on the Dimock water trial – in which two families from smalltown Pennsylvania are trying to sue an oil and gas company for millions of dollars, alleging that it polluted their water with fracking fluid.
Thanks to the families’ allegations – eagerly, unquestioningly repeated in the green propaganda movies Gasland and Gasland 2 and frequently cited by activists like Mark Ruffalo and Yoko Ono – Dimock is now synonymous with environmental disaster. Not only have its faucets (taps to UK readers) been on shown on screen to burst into flames when you set a match to them but aggrieved locals have attested to the sickness the allegedly contaminated water has caused them, even to the point where they “won’t even shower in it.”
Now the case has finally come to trial, however, it is proving absolutely disastrous to the fracktivists’ cause: none of the claims by the two families – the Ely and the Hubert family – appear to be standing up.
Despite claiming to have suffered neurological, gastrointestinal, and dermatological damage from drinking the water, the families have had to admit they can produce no evidence of this. Indeed, they never even visited a doctor, not even when their children had supposedly been poisoned.
The Ely family were so oddly unperturbed by the deadly toxic water beneath them that they built a $1 million mansion on top of it.
Posted by Jonathan Levin Saturday, February 20, 2016 at 11:05am
Twitter, an invaluable news aggregator when properly run and used, has seemingly taken aim at conservatives and those advocating conservative causes.
In early January, Twitter stripped Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero on Twitter) of his “verification,” saying he violated the anti-harassment Terms of Service.
A verified account means the user has a little blue checkmark next to his or her user name. It is Twitter’s way of affirming to all other users that this is, in fact, the person he or she claims to be. It sounds like a small thing, but Twitter, like so much social media, is rife with accounts purporting to be or that just look like a real public figure.
That verification checkmark tells all the other users that a particular account is the real thing. Having a verified account can be a big draw and boost followers who are otherwise reluctant to be suckered or drawn in by fakes. Stripping verification takes that mark of legitimacy away. It is also a sort of peculiar way to punish violations of terms of service. Assuming @Nero actually violated the terms of service, is the account somehow no longer Yiannopoulos’s?
Of course not. More important, it is not at all obvious that @Nero violated the terms of service at all. Stipulate that he is a troll who relishes destroying the Left’s sacred cows and laughs at the resulting discomfiture. Stipulate even that it’s really not nice and consciously deprives people of their “safe spaces.” So what? Five minutes on twitter reveals death threats by and against every possible demographic. Terror accounts proliferate. Anti-Semitism is rampant.
Leaving these accounts untouched but de-verifying a public figure like @Nero for violating the Terms of Service in the course of his public persona is nonsensical. Other Twitter methods for stifling anti-PC thought have come to light.
Rumours that Twitter has begun ‘shadowbanning’ politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech. His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher.
According to the source, Twitter maintains a ‘whitelist’ of favoured Twitter accounts and a ‘blacklist’ of unfavoured accounts. Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they’re not the most popular among users. Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines.
Our source was backed up by a senior editor at a major digital publisher, who told Breitbart that Twitter told him it deliberately whitelists and blacklists users. He added that he was afraid of the site’s power, noting that his tweets could disappear from users’ timelines if he got on the wrong side of the company.
Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view.
For site owners, the ideal shadowban is when a user never realizes he’s been shadowbanned.
However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines.
The American traditions of free expression and respectful discourse are slipping away, and college campuses and Twitter are prime examples, according to a member of the Federal Communications Commission.
“I think that poses a special danger to a country that cherishes First Amendment speech, freedom of expression, even freedom of association,” FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai told the Washington Examiner. “I think it’s dangerous, frankly, that we don’t see more often people espousing the First Amendment view that we should have a robust marketplace of ideas where everybody should be willing and able to participate.
Twitter says it wants to strike a balance between free speech and harassment. It didn’t.
Robby Soave|Feb. 9, 2016 3:25 pm
In order for users to feel confident expressing themselves “freely and safely,” Twitter is debuting a new advisory group dubbed the “Trust & Safety Council.” But a quick glance at its membership roster suggests the council is almost as Orwellian as it sounds—and overwhelmingly biased in favor of speech suppression.
If you thought Milo Yiannopoulos losing his blue checkmark was the opening salvo in the next great culture war (I tended to agree with Popehat’s Ken Whitethat the controversy was overblown), then this might be your virtual invasion of Poland.
The council includes more than 40 organizations that will be tasked with helping Twitter, “strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power.” But if the goal was really to find some middle ground between total free speech and safeguards against harassment, one might have expect Twitter to solicit some diversity of opinion. In fact, despite the press release’s claim that the council includes a “diversity of voices,” virtually none of the council members are properly classified as free speech organizations. (Full list here https://blog.twitter.com/2016/announcing-the-twitter-trust-safety-council ).
Some of the groups—such as Hollaback! and the Dangerous Speech Project—don’t think harassment should be criminalized outright. But the vast majority are certainly more concerned about allowing too much speech rather than too little. Notable members include Feminist Frequency—the blog and Youtube channel of anti-Gamer Gate activist Anita Sarkeesian—the Anti-Defamation League, and a host of suicide-and-domestic-violence prevention groups.
While the Washington Redskins trademark is offensive to Native Americans, the courts may not be able to do anything about it. The First Amendment protects free speech, even when it’s hurtful. Donald Scarinci, PolitickerNJ Read more
By Jim Finkle and Dustin Volz
Reuters
December 29, 2015
By Jim Finkle and Dustin Volz
(Reuters) – Twitter Inc has clarified its definition of abusive behaviour that will prompt it to delete accounts, banning “hateful conduct” that promotes violence against specific groups.
The social media company disclosed the changes on Tuesday in a blog post, following rising criticism it was not doing enough to thwart Islamic State’s use of the site for propaganda and recruitment.
“As always, we embrace and encourage diverse opinions and beliefs, but we will continue to take action on accounts that cross the line into abuse,” Megan Cristina, director of Trust and Safety, said in the blog.
The new rules do not mention Islamic State or any other group by name.
“You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease,” according to the revised rules. ()
The company previously used a more generic warning that banned users from threatening or promoting “violence against others.”
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