Category Archives: Free Speech

US Fascism Rising: 46th Best Country For Journalistic Freedoms

Via The Wire: “The United States took a nasty drop in the World Press Freedom rankings, released on Wednesday by the media group Reporters Without Borders, falling 14 spots to the 46th best country for journalist freedoms. Of the 180 countries ranked, the home of the First Amendment now sits snuggled between Romania and Haiti.”

The U.S.’s jump in last year’s rankings was dismissed at the time as “deceptive progress,” and true to form, America has fallen back down the list. The rankings report blame the U.S.’s drop on its wide-ranging crackdown on whistleblowers, particularly Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning (who got a 35-year sentence for leaking documents), and the attempted 105-year sentence for Barrett Brown. To the American government, “The whistleblower is the enemy,” the report writes. Similarly, the subpoena of Associated Press phone records contributed to that drastic drop.

MORE.

I am a tad surprised at the pass the UK gets. Via RT:

RWB did not considered the most recent revelation about British intelligence, found practicing not just spying but actively using cyber-attacks to deal with such information disseminators as Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists, or that global media watchdogs are planning to investigate press freedom in the UK.

Also, Glenn Greenwald’s revelations about UK and US mainstream media being “devoted servants” of the intelligence agencies seemingly have not affected the rating.

Meanwhile WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is still trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, with the freedom of information campaigner still being pursued by UK and Swedish justice.

UPDATED: WND & EPJ: Unfettered Market-Place Of Ideas (Knockout Reporting)

Free Markets, Free Speech, Journalism, libertarianism, Media, Private Property

THE WND EDITORIAL SPREAD SHOWCASES the site’s tradition of good, vibrant debate. Like it or not, WND is always at the forefront of journalism. Has been since the late 1990s. No censorship, no party-line to toe; just an unfettered market-place of ideas.

The caption places my weekly column’s case that, “Firearms are meant for self-defense, not needless killing”—a case that, if anything, bolsters the 2nd Amendment and the absolute right to self-defense—against Jeff Knox’s utilitarian argument for Esau’s way.

The libertarian equivalent of WND is Robert Wenzel’s lively EPJ. Robert is another editor who knows how to mix it up.

UPDATE: WND was first to “document [the] hundreds of examples of the Knockout Game around the country over the last two years.” Now Fox News is taking credit for being first to do journalistic diligence to this story. Not so.

UPDATED: Don’t Clown With The Clown-in-Chief

Barack Obama, Free Speech, Political Correctness, Race, Republicans, The State, The Zeitgeist

A dapper Erik Rush, my pal and colleague at WND, was on “Hannity” to unpack the crazed reaction to the rodeo clown’s “spoofing” of Obama at the Missouri State Fair. Missouri State Fair fired the poor guy. Pathetic!

Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder, a Republican, tweeted out his disgust and disapproval (or rather, was eager for his followers to witness his moral outrage). Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, a moron in her own right, puled that, “The young Missourians who witnessed this stunt learned exactly the wrong lesson about political discourse—that somehow it’s ever acceptable to, in a public event, disrespect, taunt, and joke about harming the president of our great nation.”

WRONG. The youngins learned the right lesson. Peggy Noonan enunciated the lesson, if too mildly:

… as the noted political philosopher Orson Welles once put it: “It’s the business of the American people to take the mickey out of the president.” It’s not only what we do, it’s what we should do. Welles was speaking on a talk show; it was the 1970s; he was talking about people making fun of some Republican president, Nixon or Ford. So what? They can take it. And they’re not kings.

UPDATE: “The lies that bind: Obama’s race strategy” by Erik Rush.

Paula Deen, Tell ‘Em All To Go To Hell

Conservatism, English, Etiquette, Free Speech, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture, Race

“Paula Deen, Tell ‘Em All To Go To Hell” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“…Blaming Old-South culture—as the prototypical knaves of conservatism are doing— is … unlikely to help exculpate Paula Deen in the minds of the morons who judge her for her words, rather than for her deeds. The bad old South macro-narrative is as ineffective in mitigation as is pointing out that Deen misspoke because of a near-death experience. ‘A black man [once] burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head,’ recounted Deen. ‘I didn’t feel real favorable towards him.’

It is for the same reason that the young mother, seen here in a video gone viral being kicked and punched repetitively and mercilessly by a burly black man, should watch her words in the future. The home of the mom was invaded by the man, who delighted in brutalizing her in front of her toddler.

Instead of sticks and stones that break bones, there can be no doubt that the mother from Millburn, N.J., would have settled during that terrifying attack for the kind of cuss words that ‘will never hurt me’—’cracker,’ to quote Trayvon Martin, RIP.

But those who watched the persecution of the mom from Millburn and the tycoon from Georgia took away a different lesson than the one implied by that wise old adage.

Mind your mouth, mom! The hate crime you endured will not mitigate or explain any future slip-of-the-tongue. You may stereotype an elderly, highly successful white woman, based on her tribe’s past wrongdoing; but you dare not attach statistical significance to the misdeeds of a black man, because of his group’s considerable contribution to crime. …”

Read the complete column. “Paula Deen, Tell ‘Em All To Go To Hell” is now on WND.

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