INGSOC

Mass Media’s Bias = Big Brother

Published by Papa Giorgio

Facebook on Friday issued an apology to PragerU for “mistakenly” removing several videosand limiting the reach of others. (DAILY CALLER)

Confronting The Left’s Agenda To Silence Conservative Voices – The dire lesson of the Freedom Center’s recent victory over censorship. (FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE)

Michael Ledeen is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center and Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

We’re rightly upset at the censorship of the big social media platforms, and our morale wasn’t improved when something north of three hundred newspapers wrote editorials in virtual unison, or when Mastercard, in cahoots with the Southern Poverty Law Center, attempted to shut down our Center.  Thankfully, we won and they lost. But the efforts to silence conservative spokesmen seem to be intensifying, which makes strategic political sense to me.  If you can’t win an argument on the merits, then either discredit or silence your opponents. 

The Left has lost most of the substantive arguments—from health care to taxation, from foreign policy to defense spending–and their best political chance is to silence the opposition.  This campaign rages throughout the society, from social media to the educational system, from publishers to movie makers. 

There is seemingly no limit to their zeal in silencing their opponents, even to changing our Constitutional system.  Did you know that the Democratic Party is on record against the First Amendment?  Officially, publicly, and, in the United States Senate, unanimously.  They tried to rewrite it in 2014, and introduced a Constitutional Amendment that would have enabled federal and state governments to prohibit various kinds of political spending, broadcasting or publishing. 

This remarkable measure, which flew in the face of the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, had no chance of being approved by the requisite majorities in Congress and the states.  It was, therefore, a purely political maneuver, laying down a marker for voters and opinion-makers.  Still, the numbers are astonishing:  49 Senators voted for it, and not one—not a single one—voted to preserve the First Amendment.

It gets worse.  Outraged by the Democratic stance against freedom of speech and press, Senator Ted Cruz introduced his own amendment, which consisted of the First Amendment itself.  Once again, the numbers were remarkable.  Not a single Democrat voted for it, either in committee or in the full Senate……

Instagram Makes Free Speech Disappear – Company owned by Navy SEALs banned for criticizing NFL kneelers. (FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE)

Project War Path, a clothing company owned by Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces combat veterans, Charlie Nash of Breitbart News reported Monday, “has been permanently suspended from Facebook’s Instagram platform for ‘hate speech’ after criticizing NFL players who kneel during the national anthem.”

The post in question read, “This sums it up, Veteran’s defend our freedom and keep us safe. Meanwhile overpaid turds throw a leather ball around in an overpriced stadium and shit on all the men and women who have been killed defending our country.”

Project War Path co-owner Tej Gill, a Navy SEAL veteran, told Breibart “players kneeling really hits home with me and my teammates, I think it’s disgusting, an insult to all veterans, Americans, and especially families of veterans that have been killed and wounded during war.”

The same post on Twitter was not removed but Instagram took it down. As Gill explained to Breitbart, “I tried to reinstate my account, the form I filled out said my account was permanently suspended for hate speech. I have not heard anything back from Instagram since.”

Gill cited “a very aggressive censorship operation that is being conducted by Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the mainstream media.” Instagram, as it happens is owned by Facebook, which purchased the upstart in 2012 and turned it into a profit center……

CENSORED! How Online Media Companies Are Suppressing Conservative Speech (NEWSBUSTERS)

Executive Summary (Full Special Report can be found here.)

Like it or not, social media is the communication form of the future — not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Just Facebook and Twitter combined reach 1.8 billion people. More than two-thirds of all Americans (68 percent) use Facebook. YouTube is pushing out TV as the most popular place to watch video. Google is the No. 1 search engine in both the U.S. and the world.

War is being declared on the conservative movement in this space and conservatives are losing — badly. If the right is silenced, billions of people will be cut off from conservative ideas and conservative media.

It’s the new battleground of media bias. But it’s worse. That bias is not a war of ideas. It’s a war against ideas. It’s a clear effort to censor the conservative worldview from the public conversation.

The Media Research Center has undertaken an extensive study of the problem at major tech companies — Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube — and the results are far more troubling than most conservatives realize. Here are some of the key findings:

  • TWITTER LEADS IN CENSORSHIP: Project Veritas recently had caught Twitter staffers admitting on hidden camera that they had been censoring conservatives through a technique known as shadow banning, where users think their content is getting seen widely, but it’s not. The staffers had justified it by claiming the accounts had been automated if they had words such as “America” and “God.” In 2016, Twitter had attempted to manipulate election-related tweets using the hashtags “#PodestaEmails” and “#DNCLeak.” The site also restricts pro-life ads from Live Action and even Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), but allows Planned Parenthood advertisements.
  • FACEBOOK’S TRENDING FEED HAS BEEN HIDING CONSERVATIVE TOPICS: A 2016 Gizmodo story had warned of Facebook’s bias. It had detailed claims by former employees that Facebook’s news curators had been instructed to hide conservative content from the “trending” section, which supposedly only features news users find compelling. Topics that had been blacklisted included Mitt Romney, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and Rand Paul. On the other hand, the term “Black Lives Matter” had also been placed into the trending section even though it was not actually trending. Facebook had also banned at least one far right European organization but had not released information on any specific statements made by the group that warranted the ban.
  • GOOGLE SEARCH AIDS DEMOCRATS: Google and YouTube’s corporate chairman Eric Schmidt had assisted Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The company’s search engine had deployed a similar bias in favor of Democrats. One study had found 2016 campaign searches were biased in favor of Hillary Clinton. Even the liberal website Slate had revealed the search engine’s results had favored both Clinton and Democratic candidates. Google also had fired engineer James Damore for criticizing the company’s “Ideological Echo Chamber.” The company had claimed he had been fired for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” Damore is suing Google, saying it mistreats whites, males and conservatives.
  • YOUTUBE IS SHUTTING DOWN CONSERVATIVE VIDEOS: Google’s YouTube site had created its own problems with conservative content. YouTube moderators must take their cues from the rest of Google – from shutting down entire conservative channels “by mistake” to removing videos that promote right-wing political views. YouTube’s special Creators for Change section is devoted to people using their “voices for social change” and even highlights the work of a 9/11 truther. The site’s very own YouTube page and Twitter account celebrate progressive attitudes, including uploading videos about “inspiring” gay and trans people and sharing the platform’s support for DACA.
  • TECH FIRMS ARE RELYING ON GROUPS THAT HATE CONSERVATIVES: Top tech firms like Google, YouTube and Twitter partner with leftist groups attempting to censor conservatives. These include the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Both groups claim to combat “hate,” but treat standard conservative beliefs in faith and family as examples of that hatred. George Soros-funded ProPublica is using information from both radical leftist organizations to attack conservative groups such as Jihad Watch and ACT for America, bullying PayPal and other services to shut down their funding sources. The SPLC’s “anti-LGBT” list had also been used to prevent organizations from partnering with AmazonSmile to raise funds.
  • LIBERAL TWITTER ADVISORS OUTNUMBER CONSERVATIVES 12-TO-1: Twelve of the 25 U.S. members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council – which helps guide its policies – are liberal, and only one is conservative. Anti-conservative groups like GLAAD and the ADL are part of the board. There is no well-known conservative group represented.
  • TECH COMPANIES RELY ON ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FACT-CHECKERS: Facebook and Google both had partnered with fact-checking organizations in order to combat “fake news.” Facebook’s short-lived disputed flagger program had allowed Snopes, PolitiFact and ABC News to discern what is and is not real news. Google’s fact-checkers had accused conservative sources of making claims that did not appear in their articles and disproportionately “fact-checked” conservative sources. On Facebook, a satire site, the Babylon Bee, had been flagged by Snopes for its article clearly mocking CNN for its bias. YouTube also had announced a partnership with Wikipedia in order to debunk videos deemed to be conspiracy theories, even though Wikipedia has been criticized for its liberal bias.

[…..]

Fighting Political Desegregation With A Digital First Amendment – Political segregation must end just as racial segregation did. (FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE)

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism

The United States has 325 million people. Facebook has 2.2 billion active users. Google is even bigger. Even a smaller company like Twitter tops the population of the United States with 335 million active users. And not even China has a bigger population than that of the biggest internet companies.

The scale of the internet dwarfs any individual nation-state and obtaining many of the traditional benefits of the nation-state, political freedom, engagement, economic opportunities, requires access through the corporate monopolies that act as the gatekeepers of their own virtual nation states.

Google, Facebook and Amazon aren’t governments, but they have a larger virtual citizenry than any government, and they control access to the marketplace of ideas, determining what ideas billions of people can express, whether they can conduct financial transactions or even exist. Technopolies have a vast sphere of control without having to offer their users any of the personal freedoms of governments.

The virtual state of the internet grew to be controlled by a handful of corporations based out of bicoastal cities, almost universally to the political left of ordinary Americans.

8.8% of tech industry founders voted for Trump, compared to 46% of voters or 56% of the country. 63% of tech bosses are Democrats while only 14% are Republicans. A majority of Americans support the death penalty. A majority of tech bosses oppose it. More Americans want to decrease immigration than increase it. But a majority of tech bosses want to increase immigration levels instead.

60% of Americans oppose socialized medicine backed by tax hikes. 82% of tech bosses support it.

The tools of political participation and engagement, the means by which politicians, political activists and the public interact, are in the hands of leftists. And they’re using them for political segregation.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the left blamed social media for its defeat. Campaigns were launched to scour opposition media from social media under the guise of fighting ‘fake news’, conservative organizations and activists were banned from social media and dropped by payment processors after pressure campaigns by left-wing activists denouncing them as ‘hate groups’…….

Be Intellectually Honest – Who’s Position Is Radical?

Published by Papa Giorgio

With his usual insightful quips, Dennis Prager weaves his way through the control of language the Left/media seems to enjoy. A good short section as well discussing who is the radical regarding definitions and marriage. See my post for more details: “No Religious Or Ethical Leader In History Supported Same-Sex Marriage“

Twitter’s War On Freedom | Project Veritas

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is Sean Hannity interviewing James O’Keefe. This is sort-of an intro to the following videos…. which I will add as they are released.

ONE – A Project Veritas undercover investigation has revealed a senior network security engineer at Twitter suggesting that his company turns over the private communications and deleted tweets of President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice. If true, it is yet unknown whether Twitter is voluntarily disclosing this sensitive information or acting under a court order. Twitter is currently in the midst of defending itself from left-leaning criticism that President Trump hasn’t been removed from the enormous media platform for violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service.

TWO – In the latest undercover Project Veritas video investigation, eight current and former Twitter employees are on camera explaining steps the social media giant is taking to censor political content that they don’t like.

THREE – Project Veritas has released undercover footage of Twitter Engineers and employees admitting that Twitter employees view”everything you post” on their servers, including private “sex messages,” and “d*ck pics.” The engineers also admit that Twitter analyzes this information to create a “virtual profile” of you which they sell to advertisers.

“Suspect” Is Now “Community Member” |Law Enforcement|

Published by Papa Giorgio

(BTW, I was on the other end at one point in my life… I was a suspect)

This is for all my law enforcement readers… this stuff is just crazy! Via LAW OFFICER:

When Seattle police officers write use of force reports they no longer call a suspect a suspect.

“Community member” is the new term. Several officers say the term is offensive, explaining their work with violent suspects.

Sources point to the suspect who shot three officers last month after a downtown Seattle armed robbery. When officers involved in that incident were writing their use of force reports they were required to refer to the shooter, Damarius Butts, as a “community member,” not a suspect, police sources said.

Police fatally shot Butts after they said he shot the officers.

[….]

The online use of force reporting system, called Blue Team, is used for more than just use of force reports and while the terminology changed for multiple forms, it’s only in the use of force reports that officers find offensive.

One commenter said this:

  • As a former Chief there is no way I would ask, order, demand, expect, or permit my officers to use the term “community member” when writing any report. I would also refuse any such request from any civilian who happened to be an elected official and then try to educate them that using such terminology is an insult to all members of the community since using the term in the manner requested suggests every citizen has committed a criminal act or is a criminal. Besides, what if this “suspect” was from out of town? Since they were not a “Community Member” would they then be labeled a “suspect” which would then indicate discriminatory bias on the part of the city?

MOOBATTERY says this:

….They were going to use the word “citizen” to describe suspected criminals, but that would discriminate against illegal aliens, who comprise a high percentage of criminals I mean “community members” in most cities. Says Seattle Police Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey, “we don’t know or inquire about citizenship status, so labeling someone a citizen is arbitrary.”

After the community members have found their way to prison, they continue to be referred to with euphemisms:

Last fall, the Washington Department of Corrections stopped calling inmates “offenders” and instead use the term “student.”

“The term ‘offender’ does have a negative connotation and significantly impacts a broad group of people and communities,” Acting DOC Secretary Dick Morgan wrote in an internal department memo, obtained by KIRO 7.

When the terms “community member” and “student” are no longer regarded as sufficiently obsequious toward criminals, the Newspeak Dictionary will need to be updated again. Maybe they will be called SPORSes, or Special Persons Oppressed by the Racist System.

Another example of Newspeak.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Wants To Control Language (Orwellian)

Published by Papa Giorgio

OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY:

Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz suggested last week that the term “ObamaCare” was disparaging and shouldn’t be allowed on the House floor:

House Republicans and Democrats started Friday morning’s debate over whether to defund last year’s healthcare law, and as part of this debate sparred over whether members should be allowed to call that law “ObamaCare.”

After two House Republicans called it “ObamaCare,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) asked the chairman whether these “disparaging” remarks should be allowed on the House floor.

“That is a disparaging reference to the president of the United States; it is meant as a disparaging reference to the president of the United States, and it is clearly in violation of the House rules against that,” she said.

I’ve found myself referring to the health care reform law in different ways depending on the context or mood of the post I’m writing. Sometimes, it’s appropriate to use the legal name of the bill, but as James Joyner pointed out a couple months ago, that’s as much a product of political propaganda as the term Obamacare is:

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a great example of propagandistic bill naming.  What heartless bastard could oppose protecting patients?  And who doesn’t want care to be affordable?  That the act in question will provide very little in the way of protection and even less to ensure affordability, though, makes it a rather silly name.   And PPACA doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as an acronym or initialism.

ObamaCare, by contrast, is short, memorable, and nonjudgmental.  It has a nice parallelism with Medicare, a very popular program with similar goals, and correctly identifies the president who pushed it through Congress.   And, even as one who opposed Obama’s election and the passage of this act, the term “ObamaCare” doesn’t conjure up negative imagery.

Indeed. Besides, who could think that “ObamaCare” is disparaging? It’s got “Obama” and “Care” in there….

From The Hill:

House Republicans and Democrats started Friday morning’s debate over whether to defund last year’s healthcare law, and as part of this debate sparred over whether members should be allowed to call that law “ObamaCare.”

After two House Republicans called it “ObamaCare,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) asked the chairman whether these “disparaging” remarks should be allowed on the House floor.

“That is a disparaging reference to the president of the United States; it is meant as a disparaging reference to the president of the United States, and it is clearly in violation of the House rules against that,” she said.

Because Wasserman Schultz only asked if it would be appropriate to curb the use of the term “ObamaCare,” the chairman said he would not rule on a hypothetical. But he did urge members to “refrain from engaging in personalities or descriptions about personalities in general.”

The indirect warning had no effect on Republicans. Rep. Denny Rehberg (Mont.), who sponsored the amendment to defund the law, said he refers to it as ObamaCare and said, “You would think he wants his name attached to his signature legislation.

“So we call it what it is,” he continued. “It is ObamaCare. It’s a travesty. It is big government. It is not controlling healthcare costs, and it needs to be repealed and today we’re going to try to defund it to the best of our ability. And if we’re not successful this time, we’re going to try again and again and again until we either have a Senate that’s willing to pass it or a president that understands that we cannot do this to the American people.”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) followed Rehberg, and within minutes also called the law “ObamaCare.”

New Orwellian Attack Makes the Word “Homosexual” a Slur

Published by Papa Giorgio

Gay Patriot writes about how the Left fights the BIG battles facing our nation: over spending, foreign policy pressures, terrorism, freedom, etc. Hahahahaha… just joking:

As noted before, on the right, we worry about actual issues: regulation-fueled economic decline, corruption in Government, the erosion of individual liberty, the unsustainable fiscal path of the national Government.

On the left, they worry about vocabulary.

In part, this is a mark of desperation, David Brock and his merry band of Soros-paid nutjobs desperate for anything they can fling against the one news outlet that airs opposition views to leftist hegemony. There is no real racism, sexism, or homophobia on the right. So the left, in its desperation to remain peeved and aggrieved, must constantly lower the bar and change the rules. Hence, they declare that a previously inoffensive word is now offensive, so they can have their self-righteous tantrums about it. Also, note the new phenomenon of the “micro-aggression,” defined as a behavior that would not bother a normal person, but sends a politically correct leftist into paroxysms of outrage.

Read More ~ Good stuff V-to-the-K! I loved the “micro-aggression” addition.