If It Walks Like a Duck . . .

'This is Censorship'

Google suspends evangelical church's app for violating coronavirus 'sensitive events' policy

by Jon Brown
Washington Examiner

An app used by an evangelical church in Idaho to stream Bible lessons and sermons was suspended by Google when the tech giant deemed its content insensitive.

The ministers and staff at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, a college town about 80 miles south of Spokane, Washington, are weighing their options after Google refused to budge on its decision that the church's app violates the company's "Sensitive Events policy" amid the coronavirus outbreak.

".@GooglePlay suspended our app today," the church tweeted on Good Friday. Speculating that pastoral calls for repentance during the pandemic and "short lessons on responding faithfully to the COVID-19 crisis" could have singled them out, the church added a photo of the Google notification informing them, "We don't allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event." The Christ Church app was then scrubbed from the Google Play store, which leaves Android users unable to download it.

Christ Church later tweeted they had appealed Google's decree and had learned Google was suspending all apps related to the coronavirus.

Christ Church received a response to the appeal on Thursday, which reiterated that their app was deemed in violation of the Sensitive Events policy and would not be reinstated until all references to COVID-19 were removed. Google then directed them to a webpage offering examples of "common violations."

Ben Zornes, who has been an executive minister at Christ Church for four years, told the Washington Examiner, "So, essentially, merely referencing COVID-19 is putting us out of compliance with their 'Sensitive Events' policy. We are now evaluating the best way forward as we believe this is censorship, and wrong-headed.

The Worst University in New Zealand

Dumber Than A Sackful of Hammers

"Massey University" is now an official oxymoron.  It must be the worst university in New Zealand.  Degrees earned can't be worth the paper the certificates are written upon. 

Our polite suggestion to all students enrolled at Massey and its satellite campuses would be to take a good long look at their alma mater and consider transferring to another NZ university more worthy of the name.  And what has brought this on, we hear you ask?  Once again Massey University has clamped down on free speech in its less-than-hallowed halls. 

Here is what went down:

17 Oct 2019, 15:06 (17 hours ago)
to John Tertullian

Free Speech Coalition


Dear John,

Last night, Massey University cancelled the “Feminism 2020” event, at which I was due to speak.

The event was organised by Speak Up for Women (an organisation that has featured on our podcast) and was to host a wide array of speakers on various topics related to women's issues. However, some social justice activists believe Speak Up for Women is ‘exclusionary’ of transgender women. Supposedly, Speak Up for Women's speech constitutes violence towards vulnerable identity groups.

Massey University initially resisted pressure from student activist groups to shut down the event. But Massey has now buckled, once again under the guise of “health and safety” obligations it has to its transgender students and the 'wider community'. Read Massey’s public statement here.

Debunked Myth

Google Is Deliberately Biased


Jennifer Smith
Daily Mail

Google whistleblower says the company IS politically biased and says bosses' claims that they are neutral are 'ridiculous' as he warns 'algorithms don't write themselves'.  Greg Coppola, who says he has worked for Google for five years, spoke to Project Veritas

Coppola has worked for Google since 2014 and he says it was fine until the 2016 presidential election when the site turned against Trump.  He says he 'just knows how algorithms are' and said it was 'ridiculous' to suggest that Google is unbiased.  He says there are people whose jobs are dedicated to promoting certain sites.  Coppola works on Google Assistant which he insists has no bias.

Greg Coppola spoke to Project Veritas to share his views and said that while he 'respects' his manager, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, his comments on bias are inaccurate.  He claims to be based in New York and says he has worked for Google since 2014.

Coppola said that there were a 'small number' of people whose jobs were dedicated to promoting certain news sites over others and that the bias is left-leaning, favoring CNN and The New York Times.

'A small number of people do work on making sure that certain new sites are promoted.

Silly Bookseller

Pathetic Paternalism

It's a sad day for lovers of free speech.  Whitcoull's, one of the last remaining bookshop chains in New Zealand, has reportedly removed from sale Jordan Peterson's book,  12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.  Apparently, Whitcoull's senior management has decided that it must treat its customers with extreme, stifling protection, lest they be provoked, woke, or otherwise discombobulated by a grown up book. 

Thanks, Whitcoull's for saving our souls.  We needed you to have our corner, our backs, and our minds.  We deeply appreciate your protection and paternalistic oversight.

Now, it is alleged that your motivation for this bizarre decision had something to do with public safety:

"Unfortunately 12 Rules for Life is currently unavailable, which is a decision that Whitcoulls has made in light of some extremely disturbing material being circulated prior, during and after the Christchurch attacks," Whitcoulls says in an email.

"As a business which takes our responsibilities to our communities very seriously, we believe it would be wrong to support the author at this time. Apologies that we're not able to sell it to you, but we appreciate your understanding."  [Newshub]

For our part, we reject your paternalistic "wokedness".   Last time we checked, 12 Rules has not been condemned by the Chief Censor.  That would be bad enough.  But to have you take the role of "mini-censor" over the public's self-responsibility, and self-governance is unconscionable.

As Jane Austen's  Mr. Knightley would have declaimed, "Badly done!"

More on Massey-Uni-Gate

Massey University is a Joke That's No Laughing Matter

Jarrod Gilbert
NZ Herald

Massey has recently made an interesting decision. Instead of being a university, it has decided to be a joke.

Setting the scene for the madness to come, Massey vice chancellor Jan Thomas wrote a piece for the paper that was weak on free speech. Except she didn't write it, somebody else did and she put her name to it. But that is the least of her problems.

Thomas then cancelled a speech by Don Brash organised by a student politics society citing security concerns. That she never engaged the police raises questions about that, but Thomas assured the chair of Massey's Academic Board that was the true reason and that she had "not considered cancelling the event" before security issues were raised. The chair, in good faith, communicated that message to all staff.

Perhaps Thomas wasn't aware her emails were subject to the Official Information Act.  Thomas' emails show that she is no fan of "racist" Brash and as soon as she heard he was coming she began plotting how to cancel the event.

One of her ideas was to restrict funding to the students' association. In itself that is utterly extraordinary. It's also a pretty creative playbook for somebody claiming to have given no mind to cancelling the event.

Lacking Self-Awareness A Sign of Dementia, They Say

Lords of Conscience, Oozing Arrogance and Suppurating Hate

Picture this scene.  An elderly gentleman with a bouffant hair-style ascends a small platform in Hyde Park.  He begins to declaim the destructive influence of media in the lives of ordinary citizens.  He fears greatly the influence of the "Great Eye" installed in every home in the nation.  In the depths of night, a malevolent glow from the Great Eye begins to gain incandescent strength, he warns.  Hundreds of rapid micro-messages are beamed into the unsuspecting minds of all in the house.  The Great Eye is evil incarnate, he shouts.  Suddenly two burly policeman rush at the man, mount his soapbox, throw him to the ground, cuff him, and frogmarch him to a nearby police car. 

Next day, the regime explains its draconian actions.  "He was guilty of 'hate speech', 'fake news' and 'misinformation'.  Therefore, he had to be silenced.  He was manifestly a great danger to society, etc. etc.

Now, we would expect that, were normality reigning, ninety-five percent of the general population would be aghast.  Ok, so the guy with the bouffant hair-style might be a bit whacky with his conspiracy theories, but it's a free country, and free speech is a fundamental right.  Let someone stand up to counter his claims and demonstrate that the evil Great Eye is a myth. 

Flip over the Atlantic to the United States.

Moral Cowardice and Dereliction of Duty

The Lawlessness of Professor Thomas 

Chris Bishop, MP for Hutt South has penned (and published) a letter to the Vice Chancellor of Massey University.  The latter has been guilty of breaching and breaking New Zealand's Free Speech laws.

I am due to speak to the Massey University Politics Club next Wednesday. I have today written this letter to the Massey Vice-Chancellor. Her decision to ban Don Brash from speaking on campus is highly likely to be unlawful and absolutely outrageous. Below is my full letter.

Dear Professor Thomas

I am writing to you about your recent decision to ban former National Party Leader and Reserve Bank Governor Dr Don Brash from speaking at Massey University’s Palmerston North campus at an event arranged by the University’s Politics Club.

I have also been invited to speak to the club and my talk has been arranged for next Wednesday 15 August.

Freedom of expression in New Zealand is protected in law by section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act. As Justice Anderson, as he then was, famously put it in Hosking v Runting, “Freedom of expression is the first and last trench in the protection of liberty”. The right has been described by the New Zealand Court of Appeal as being “as wide as human thought and imagination.” These quotes encapsulate the protections long given by the common law to free speech, also now protected in international and domestic human rights instruments.

Universities have traditionally been regarded as bastions of free speech and critical thought. In particular, section 162 of the Education Act 1989 recognises the special role of universities as “critic(s) and conscience(s) of society”, while section 161 specifically protects:

the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions.

With this background, your reported comments outlining your rationale for stopping Dr Brash from speaking give me extreme cause for concern and I strongly urge you to reconsider your decision.  Let me take each of your reported statements in turn.

More Reaction to Mayor Goff's Self-Righteousness Priggery

Since When?

Auckland Town Hall Decreed Closed To Divisive Events

John Roughan
NZ Herald

Like many of us this week no doubt, I've put the names Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux into the search engine, curious to find out why the Mayor of Auckland considers their views too dangerous to be given a public platform in our fair city.

The search turned up video clips of Southern, a young Canadian holding a microphone in the middle of a demonstration. A woman with a nose ring was berating her for insisting there are only two genders in this world. Another clip showed her invading a woman's march against sexual harassment. She was asking the marchers whether they wanted "women's rights or Islam?"

She opposes unchecked immigration, particularly if it's Islamic, and she has exposed something that worried me when an Economist report mentioned in passing that Italian naval craft were going almost to the North African coast to pick up "refugees" who had only to jump out of a boat.

Southern is essentially a journalist who asks unwelcome questions, questions that lurk in the mind of probably all of thinking people and challenge the dominant sympathies of the mass media today.

Molyneux is an intellectually heavier proposition.

An Abuse of Power By the Insecure

A Man Unworthy of the Office He Holds

Phil Goff has never been on our list of favorite politicians.  Now, as Mayor of New Zealand's largest city he appears to be running out of loyal allies.  His latest pretentious absurdity is to rule ex cathedra that city council buildings and public venues must not be used for anyone expressing views to which our insecure, autocratic mayor objects.  

A couple of twenty-something Canadians were due to come to New Zealand to set forth their presentation of what is wrong with the world.  Whilst we profess ignorance of their views and precepts, we are certain that they do not carry grenades in their pockets, nor Uzi's in their luggage.  Nevertheless, they have been branded as "right wing extremists".

No Right Turn, a leftist blog, is not impressed with attempts to prevent the pair speaking.

Unfortunately, being insulted is just something people have to put up with in a free and democratic society, and our Supreme Court is on record (in Brooker v Police) as saying so. We have a right to freedom of speech in New Zealand, which covers not just the right of these racists to speak, but also the right of their racist audience to listen. Restricting that right pre-emptively requires a very high test: basicly an announced intention on the part of the speaker to incite a riot. If that test isn’t met, there’s no justifiable reason to prevent them from speaking. And as I’ve said in other cases, the answer to speech you don’t like is more speech, not less. If they’re giving a speech, then protest outside, and make it damn clear to everyone that kiwis don’t agree with their racism and Islamophobia.

Up steps the virtue-exuding Auckland Mayor, Phil Goff.

 A public talk by two controversial Canadians accused of hate speech has been cancelled after Auckland's mayor Phil Goff banned them from all council venues.

Lauren Southern.Canadian conservative and libertarian activist Lauren Southern are planning to visit Auckland next month for talks.   Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux, who are best known for their far-right alternative views on everything from feminism, gender and immigration to Islam, were set to perform at the Bruce Mason Centre on 3 August.

However, Auckland Mayor Phil Goff tweeted that venues should not be used to stir up ethnic or religious tensions and that Ms Southern and Mr Molyneux would not be speaking at any council venues.

Auckland Live which runs the centre as well as the Auckland Town Hall, Aotea Centre and Civic Centre, tweeted the event had been cancelled because of security concerns.  The event organiser said the decision was disappointing and a blow for democracy.  David Pellowe from Axoimatic said Mr Goff had the wrong idea about what the pair wanted to talk about.  "He's misrepresented the purpose of the events as to stir up ethnic and religious tensions. He's misrepresented them as views that divide rather than unite," he said.  "It's very sad for democracy and for debate."  [Radio NZ]

What this represents to our mind is the fundamental insecurity of Mayor Goff and those for whom he is acting as patron.  What a bunch of pansies.  Goff and his cohort have brought shame upon  themselves.  Ironically, he is guilty of stirring up ethnic and religious tensions all by himself.

He should be banned, non? 

"Free Speech For Us; Censorship For Them

Why Liberals Have Flip-Flopped on Free Speech

Thomas Williams
BreitbartNews

In a remarkably honest exposé, the New York Times acknowledged Saturday that “liberals who once championed expansive First Amendment rights are now uneasy about them” ever since conservatives realized they should apply to them as well.

The Times cites First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams who noted that whereas the left once led support for First Amendment protections, they are now “at least skeptical and sometimes distraught at the level of First Amendment protection which is being afforded in cases brought by litigants on the right.”

The difference between then and now? Many of the ideas currently being protected by free speech rights run contrary to progressive ideology. Over the last 13 years, the Supreme Court “has been far more likely to embrace free-speech arguments concerning conservative speech than liberal speech,” the Times said.

One law professor at Georgetown, Louis Michael Seidman, who used to defend free speech now sees his prior position as a mistake.

Removing Jesus Christ From The Public Square

Chic Atheism

Well, that didn't take long.  Broadcaster, Mike Hoskings has begun to voice the need to suppress the Bible.  It's a dangerous book, apparently.  In this regard, Hoskings is following faithfully in the footsteps of the big atheist dudes--Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and latterly, Xi Jinping--all of whom spent a long time and much energy attempting to defame and suppress the Bible.  Nice company there, Mike.  

Hoskings was opining upon the Australian rugby player, Israel Folau's profession of faith, which includes his belief in I Corinthians 6: 9-10.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practise homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Hoskings rejects those statements.  They are untrue, false, misleading, superstitious--we can roll out pejoratives adjectives all day.   Now, the normal pattern in a Western democracy which is supposed to champion liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, is for Hoskings to say, "I disagree with your opinions and views, but I will die defending your right to say them".  One recalls the notorious atheist Voltaire uttering just this sentiment.

But the ostensible atheist Hoskings thinks these Biblical particular statements set a dangerous precedent.

What YouTube Does Not Want You To See

May We Introduce You To the 21st Century's Thought Police

YouTube is currently restricting 21 educational videos from PragerU, a conservative advocacy organization.

According to YouTube, videos that are restricted contain vulgar language, violence and disturbing imagery, nudity and sexually suggestive content, and portrayal of harmful or dangerous activities. Videos that fit this description are not available to logged-out users, those who are under 18 years of age, or those who have activated restricted mode, according to YouTube.

PragerU believes YouTube to be censoring these 21 videos, according to a press release from PragerU.

The list below contains all of the videos currently under question by YouTube.

1. Are The Police Racist?
This video explores the debate that the police are targeting African-American communities.

2. Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?
Why do feminists claim to be champions of women’s rights everywhere, but do not fight for women facing oppression in Muslim countries? This video attempts to answer that question.

3. Why Did America Fight the Korean War?
Due to just slashing its military budget, why did America choose to get involved in this fight?

4. Who’s More Pro-Choice: Europe or America?
This video examines the fact that western Europeans are much more conservative about abortion than American progressives.

5. What ISIS Wants
What is the Islamic State? Where did it come from? What does it want? This video examines all these questions and more.

6. Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?
Israel is a nation of refugees, and especially refugees from Arab countries. This video examines why.

7. Are 1 in 5 Women Raped at College?
According to many gender activists, academics, and politicians, college campuses can be promoters of a “rape culture.”

8. Islamic Terror: What Muslim Americans Can Do
This video examines how American Muslims can lead a winning fight toward radical Islam.

9. Did Bush Lie About Iraq?
This video clarifies the belief that President George W. Bush lied his way into the war in Iraq.

10. Who NOT to Vote For
Without naming parties or names, this video talks about what one should keep in mind when heading to the ballot box.

11. Do Not Murder
Out of all the 10 Commandments, one would think that “do not murder” would be the most self-explanatory of all. PragerU President Dennis Prager examines why this is not the case.

12. Is America Racist?
This video discusses President Barack Obama’s claim that “racism is in our DNA.”

13. Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army
Is the Israeli military “a paragon of morality and wartime ethics” or “an oppressive force that targets innocent Palestinian civilians and commits war crimes as a matter of policy?” Col. Richard Kemp, a commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, answers this question.

14. Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology
In the earlier part of the 20th century, the answer to this question was fascism. Raymond Ibrahim, author of “The Al Qaeda Reader,” examines why the answer to this question today is radical Islam.

15. The Most Important Question About Abortion
Dennis Prager, president of PragerU, discusses the most critical question of this debate.

16. Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?
This video examines what drives a person to become an Islamic extremist and even a suicide bomber.

17. Don’t Judge Blacks Differently
How come the election of this nation’s first African-American president did not usher in a “new era of racial harmony”? This video examines why.

18. What is the University Diversity Scam?
Are colleges places of “racism, sexism, and homophobia?” This video talks about why some believe this to be college culture today.

19. He Wants You
This video discusses the differences between how men and women perceive each other.

20. Israel’s Legal Founding
When Israel was founded in 1948, it was approved by the United Nations. With this being the case, why do Israel’s enemies relentlessly attack this nation’s existence?

21. Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?
Is is possible for freedom to coexist in a country based on “religious Sharia Islamic law?”

A Note for our Readers:

@LRacheldG

Rachel del Guidice

Rachel del Guidice is a reporter for The Daily Signal. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Forge Leadership Network, and The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program. Send an email to Rachel.

Rampant Official Insecurity

China's War on Words

Anything used to insult Xi Jinping, banned

Jamie Seidel
NZ Herald


China's new President-for-life doesn't like criticism.  Since claiming the eternal throne of an Emperor earlier this week, he's clamped down — hard — on any hint of dissent.  Censorship has always been a way of life under China's one party state, reports News.com.au.  But things have just ramped up to a whole new level.

Authoritarian Rule is Being Established.

Earlier this week the Communist Party Council announced (a day before it actually met) that the limit of two five-year presidential terms will be abolished and Xi Jinping's guiding philosophy would be written into the constitution.  Immediately, Beijing's censors set to work.  They've attacked the very words people would need to use to express discontent.

The Cheka Lives On

Google: Toxic and Censorial

It would seem that Google has a toxic work environment.  At one level, this may be surprising; at another, not so much.  For years we have been "blessed" with storied accounts of how laid back, chilled, yet incandescently creative the company's work environment was.  It was a cool, cool, cool place to work.  The coolest place in Silicon Valley. 

The idea of an 8.00am to 5.00pm work day was long gone.  Encouraging creativity, lateral thinking, working outside the box, and having fun was all the rage.  But now Google has unmasked itself.  Underneath the appearance of free, lateral thinking lies the truth: Google is closer to replicating Soviet Russia at its worst.  Its work culture has now been labelled toxic.

Employees at Google used internal company message boards to advocate political violence, recruit for a hard-line left-wing activist group and even propose public "trials" for ideological opponents, documents filed in court suggest.

The nearly 100 pages of internal emails and message board postings are contained in a class-action lawsuit filed by former employee James Damore in California on Monday, accusing Google of discriminating against white people, men and conservatives.  Damore was the author of a controversial internal memo criticising the tech giant's "politically correct" diversity policies. He was sacked last year for "perpetuating gender stereotypes" after the memo was leaked to the media and went viral.

Screenshots of messages attached to the complaint show Google employees attacking conservatives and white people, advocating political violence and even sharing "how-to" guides to join Antifa, a violent left-wing anarchist group reportedly classified as "domestic terrorists" by US Homeland Security.  "Get in touch with your friendly local Antifa," one employee wrote in response to an anonymous thread in January 2017 titled "Whelp, guess it might be time for revolution", in which the questioner asked, "How do people cope with this? I've never been part of a military or war effort before, I guess I can be useful as IT support or for hacking."  [NZ Herald]

Now, all this might seem to be free-spirited debate--a bit like London's Hyde Park, or the Agora in ancient Athens.  But consider: a Google employee was fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes".   So, not so "free-spirited" after all.  As we have seen many times before, the Left lacks sophistication and subtlety in its position and argumentation: shouting down the opponent is a hallmark of an empty mind.

Turning of the Tide in the UK

Militant Atheists Speak Hatefully

Franklin Graham is the son of Billy Graham, the celebrated Christian preacher and evangelist.  He is walking in his father's footsteps.  We well remember his father's evangelical crusades in New Zealand in 1969.  But times have changed.  Franklin Graham is scheduled to conduct some evangelical meetings in the United Kingdom this year.  Public calls have been issued for him to be banned from entering the country.

This stunning developing is a leading indicator of how pagan the UK has become.  Graham's father, Billy conducted many evangelical crusades in the UK in his lifetime.  Today it is doubtful that he would be permitted to enter the country.

Free Market Ideology Goes Off the Reservation

An Inadequate Defence of Free Speech

Correct Speech vs Free Speech.  There is a world of difference between these two.  Increasingly our society insists upon Correct Speech--which is also known as Politically Correct Speech, or PC for short.  

Correct Speech represents the ideas, opinions, or preferences which are endorsed by academia, women's journals, the media in general, and politicians on soap boxes.  Correct Speech rarely argues its positions: it pronounces them then moves rapidly to declaim opposing ideas as evil, hateful, disruptive, discriminatory, and so forth.  Argument against the opinions and views of Correct Speech amounts to little more than Correct Speechers shouting down contrary views, making the classic blunder that volume of speech witnesses its truth.

But the Correct Speech brigade has gone one step further.  It insists that the enunciation of contrary views in and of itself represents offensive behaviour.  And Correct Speechers are a thin skinned lot.  They take offence if a feather were to alight upon their little fingers.  How gross!  How Horrible! How Disgusting. How Offensive is that!

Once the "Offensive" button has been pushed, the non-existent "argument" is over.  Something has to be evil, wrong, harmful, and dangerous if it is offensive.  It's the QED moment.

The Correct Speech movement has got so smothering, so controlling that even an academic from Auckland University has ventured out into the public square to defend one of the most fundamental rights protecting human being against tyranny: the right of Free Speech.

Incandescent Rage & Frothing At The Mouth

The Left Seeks to Silence Pro-Life/Pro-Family Voices

Austin Ruse
C-Fam

Silencing your opponent. That is now the main response of the political left in America.

You have seen the footage of speakers on college campuses being shouted down. You have heard about the liberal professor attacked by students for defending a conservative professor. You have watched black-masked rioters smashing the windows of stores and burning cars.

We are told that views that may conflict with the liberal world-view are no more than violence and hate and therefore may be silenced.  In recent days, C-Fam has come under that kind of attack and I am deeply worried.

C-Fam’s Lisa Correnti was chosen as a public-sector delegate for the Trump Administration to the just-concluded UN Commission on the Status of Women. Almost immediately the left attacked us. They harassed the US State Department for choosing us. The campaign to silence our voice went global. It was covered by the New York Times and Reuters, along with various LGBT blogs and news-sites.

A few days ago, a group of leftwing Democrat Congressmen sent a letter to US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley demanding that C-Fam never be chosen for another delegation and, ominously, that no other pro-life/pro-family group ever be chosen either.

Letter From the UK (About An Open Assault on Free Speech)

Egregious Intolerance From the Secularists

Editorial
The Barnabas Fund

The freedom to report both incidents of anti-Christian persecution and the ideology motivating such attacks is central to what Barnabas Fund and other organisations have done for many years. Yet those freedoms are now under threat, particularly in the UK, but also in other Western countries. This is a three-pronged attack.

First, although the press has been free from government regulation since 1694, there is now a serious possibility that the government will require all media outlets with multiple writers to sign up to a state sponsored press regulator. If they do not, in the event that they are sued, they will have to pay both their own and the complainant’s legal costs, even if they win. In other words, they could be quickly bankrupted. To make matters worse, several senior figures of this new regulator, including its CEO, are reported to be strong supporters of a campaign to stop major brands advertising with the Daily Express and Daily Mail because of their alleged negative portrayal of religious minorities. In fact, these two newspapers have repeatedly spoken out against Islamism and the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries – it was the Sunday Express front page, closely followed by the Daily Mail, that published the story Barnabas Fund first broke of archbishops from Syria and Iraq being denied UK visit visas to attend the consecration of the UK’s first Syriac Orthodox cathedral.

The second threat (as Barnabas Fund reported last summer) comes from an agreement between the EU and Internet companies such as Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter to take down any internet posts within 24 hours if what were termed “civil society” groups claimed they constituted “hate speech”. This effectively allowed lobby groups, including Islamists, to censor opinions they disagreed with by getting their members to mass report them.

Corporate Folly

Self-Righteous Hubris

A free society allows people to do stupid things.  A price of freedom is its tolerance of folly, ignorance, stupidity, and sin.  Moreover, a free society is one which permits many to descend into Hades via their own path.  But, it is far far better to accept this as a price of freedom than force a "moral purity" or a particular version of truth upon others.

In the West it has become not unusual to see corporates and businesses brand themselves in the market place as being "values based".  This is believed to be part of what it means to be a "good corporate citizen" rather than a rapacious capitalist.  But it can rapidly develop into a double edged sword.  Almost inevitably it extends in some cases to businesses getting involved in political debates of the day.  In other words, the business becomes a front for a particular set of values associated with a particular cluster of political parties--whether left or right.

As a shareholder, this would be is disturbing.

Progressive Madness

The "Right" To Be Forgotten

Here is an interesting example of how progressive ideology ends up showing its true colours--the long, black, sable  night of  Mordor.  The example comes once again from Europe, the European Court of "Justice" and ultimately from France.  

These folk want to rule the world--initially with soft power, then the iron fist in a velvet glove, then finally with just the iron fist.  They want to do all this to make their version of human rights sacrosanct, holy, and beyond question, impressed down upon every human being.  Their madness knows no limits.

Article 19 is a protest and information website, seeking to combat censorship and promoting freedom of expression wherever it is traduced.  It recently published the following: