Categories
Quick Analysis

Substituting Censorship and Lies for Debate

Eight years of Progressive control of both the White House and the national agenda resulted in economic stagnation, a sharply reduced defense environment, a doubling of debt, and deteriorated race relations.  Despite those poor results, hard-core leftists have managed to increase their influence.

Campaigning on the issues is not a winning tactic for an increasingly Progressive-dominated party. Instead, they and their supporters have, with disturbing frequency, adopted a strategy that combines suppression of alternative ideas, along with personal and inaccurate attacks on both rival politicians and anyone else who opposes their perspectives. Character assassination targets extend far beyond President Trump.

Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis and Red Sox baseball star J.D. Martinez provide telling examples.  DeSantis, emphasizing the importance of the issues in his state, urged voters not to “monkey it up.”  According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the similar phrase “monkey around” is defined as “to do things that are not useful or serious: to waste time.”

But DeSantis’s opponents decided that the well-known and oft-use phrase was a racial slur. (His opponent is black.) It was a great way to avoid a discussion of the reality that the radical views expressed by hard-left candidate Andrew Gillum can be readily compared to those which have recently wrecked Venezuela and previously destroyed other nations both politically and economically, and have repeatedly been demonstrated to be a disaster wherever implemented.

An even more startling falsehood was seen in the thoroughly false characterization of the remarks about gun control uttered by Red Sox player J.D. Martinez, an advocate of Second Amendment rights.

Martinez noted, correctly, that the nightmare regime of Adolf Hitler moved to disarm the German population to eliminate the potential of resistance to his unprecedented assault on human rights. The Second Amendment is a target of the Left, but rather than engage in an honest dialogue, they chose to falsely portray Martinez as quoting Hitler in an admiring manner.

Beyond character assassination, suppression of alternative views has become a key tactic.

The moves by Facebook and Google to censor out non-leftist perspectives has increasingly enraged critics, including President Trump.  Google has recently demonstrated its intense progressive leanings by refusing to work with the U.S. Government on defense-related issues, while at the same time cooperating with the Beijing regime in its suppression of dissident views.
In addition to kamagra medicines there are other medications which are responsible viagra generic of ED in a number of guys such as Antiarrhythmics, Histamine H2-receptor antagonists, Muscle relaxants, Chemotherapy drugs etc. At last, of course these remedies are very brand viagra pfizer effective but it must be taken correctly to avoid any unnecessary stress. Researches have shown that ginsenosides in it feature anti-tumor effects which can damage the ovarian cancer cells, cialis 10 mg purchased here prostate cancer cells, lung adenocarcinoma cells, and neurobastoma cells. Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is a process in which both individual and shared goals are identified Promote intimacy by creating a safe space for communication Aid in re-establishing trust after crisis Reconnect clients with positive foundational relationship beliefs Provide support in the deconstruction of old, dysfunctional beliefs and the subsequent embracing of new shared truths Identify and deepen understanding of emotional triggers, ultimately helping generic 10mg cialis to.
Even some Facebook staff have rebelled against this. According to a Daily Mail report Facebook engineer Brian Amerige has described the company’s “political intolerance” and the threats against employees who don’t go along with leftist ideology.

Robert Epstein, writing in U.S. News, states that “Google, Inc., isn’t just the world’s biggest purveyor of information; it is also the world’s biggest censor.  The company maintains at least nine different blacklists that impact our lives, generally without input or authority from any outside advisory group, industry association or government agency. Google is not the only company suppressing content on the internet. Reddit has frequently been accused of banning postings on specific topics, and a recent report suggests that Facebook has been deleting conservative news stories from its newsfeed, a practice that might have a significant effect on public opinion – even on voting. Google, though, is currently the biggest bully on the block.”

A study by PJ media’s Paula Bolyard found that, when searching the term “Trump” on Google, “Not a single right-leaning site appeared on the first page of search results. But it got much, much worse when I analyzed the first 100 items that Google returned in a search for news on ‘Trump.’ CNN, by a wide margin, appeared most frequently, with nearly twice as many results returned as the second-place finisher, The Washington Post. Other left-leaning outlets also fared well, including NBC, CNBC, The Atlantic, and Politico.”

Opportunities for debate on substantive issues have been intentionally sabotaged by Progressives. A National Review article noted that “global-warming public intellectuals have warned the media that if they allow skeptics to have a voice in stories, they will boycott giving comment…no one is obliged to provide them with a platform, much less to appear alongside them to give the misleading impression that there is something substantive to debate.”  This, of course, is comparatively mild compared to the move by Loretta Lynch, while serving as U.S. Attorney General, to refer to the FBI for criminal prosecution consideration those who disagreed with Barack Obama’s views on climate change.

The direction is turning into even more worrisome areas. Despite the overwhelmingly favorable image of leftist candidates portrayed by the media, the mere threat of objective reporting is considered unacceptable by Progressives. New York City’s Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the “Democrat-Socialist” candidate for Congress, moved to ban reporters from her townhall meetings.

The Miami Herald reports that a Democrat candidate for State Senate, Daphne Campbell, “ a politician beset by scandals over the years,” called 911 when a reporter sought to question her. According to the Herald, “It wasn’t the first time Campbell called the cops on a reporter. In May, she also called police on the publisher of RISE NEWS outside a Miami Shores Village Council meeting.”

Illustration: Pixabay

Categories
Quick Analysis

Foreign Censorship Influences U.S. Freedom

It has become disturbingly evident that there is a growing trend against free speech. The increased influence of international norms over U.S. standards bears a significant part of the responsibility, a pattern that will expand significantly when Obama’s move to place the internet under international control becomes complete before he leaves office.

But the President’s inappropriate internet divestment is only part of the problem. The number of excuses used to justify the disregard for America’s greatest achievement—the First Amendment—continues to grow. Political correctness, college “safe spaces,” campaign regulation, and other factors all play a role.

Of extraordinary importance is the desire of major communications companies to appease foreign dictatorships, in order to gain entry into their nations’ marketplace.  Disturbingly, U.S. internet giants have demonstrated their willingness to reject American free speech principles in return for access to foreign markets.

The Bloomberg news service notes that:

“In recent years, founder Mark Zuckerberg has made clear his intention to bring the platform to China. To win favor, much to the amusement of Chinese netizens, he’s handed out copies of  [General Secretary of the Communist Party of China] Xi’s tome, The Governance of China, to Facebook employees; showed off his Mandarin skills; and posted photos of himself jogging through hazardous Beijing smog. It remains to be seen whether that multi-faceted courtship will be effective.”

However, Bloomberg reports that Zennon Kapron, managing director of Shanghai-based consulting firm Kapronasia, believes that unless China’s censorship rules are incorporated into Facebook’s practices, the company will not succeed in its quest, noting that  “All the kowtowing and meeting the leadership maybe won’t matter so much if Facebook won’t agree to allow some level of censorship, or allow the Chinese government access to data on the site, in exchange for market access,” Bloomberg notes that ‘Linkedin operates in China, but only by agreeing to abide by content restrictions.”
Not just children can http://mouthsofthesouth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/PDF-09.19.15-Turlington-correct.pdf cheap viagra be determined to have actually varies among individuals, it is a terrible medical situation affecting millions of men, resulting in the fear of being laughed upon or incurring embarrassment along with a strained sexual relationship. You need to take 8 http://mouthsofthesouth.com/locations/page/10/ buying viagra in australia to 10 drops of this herbal oil and gently massage the male organ until the herbal oil is completely absorbed. So viagra soft it is always advised to contact doctor and then start a proper treatment method for your illness. The effect of exercise is always to regularize the flow of blood in the body and be more energetic. cialis bulk
China has moved to reduce its already limited tolerance for any semblance of free speech. The Financial Times notes that   “Since Xi came to power, China’s situation has become more and more worrisome,’ says Murong Xuecun, a prominent author and commentator. ‘Things that we could openly discuss before, such as the Cultural Revolution, are now considered sensitive or even forbidden. In the past there was some room for non-governmental organisations and rights lawyers. Now all of them have been suppressed.’ In an internal document issued just a month after Mr Xi became president in March 2013 and later leaked, the Communist party identified the very notion of civil society as ‘an attempt to dismantle the party’s social foundation…That puts NGOs, journalists, activists, researchers at a much higher risk……China’s internet regulator moved to rein in original reporting by online news portals, in the latest setback for an already tightly muzzled media sector.”

Facebook has been increasingly criticized for its censorship activities, even outside of China. WND  found that “Facebook…temporarily blocked talk-radio host Michael Savage from posting stories to his page after he put up a link to a story about a Muslim migrant killing a pregnant woman in Germany…In December, as WND reported, Facebook removed a post on Savage’s site of photographs of a 2006 protest outside the Embassy of Denmark in London that featured signs warning of beheading and death for ‘those who insult Islam.’ At that time, Facebook also ‘determined that it violated Facebook community standards.”

During the Cold War era, the influence of foreign information served to open up the closed societies behind the Communists’ “Iron Curtain.” Now, however, the reverse is occurring: the censorship proclivities of dictatorships of all kinds, Communist, Moslem extremists, or others, appear to be changing the free-speech culture of the West.

American cultural tolerance for the repression of free speech continues to grow.  There has been little push back against U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s comments regarding criminal prosecution of those that disagree with the White House’s view on man-made climate change, or actions by state attorneys general to engage in legal harassment of think tanks with views counter to that of the President.

The trend is manifest on the streets, as well. The Gateway Pundit recently reported that “A young white man wearing one of Donald Trump’s red ‘Make America Great Again!” hats was violently forced out of New York City’s City Hall Park by a screaming Leftist racist mob of predominantly self-described ‘black and brown’ activists–all while police stood by and did nothing. The mob was gathered to protest police as part of a “#ShutDownCityHallNYC” rally in the park.