Society's Child

Young America's Foundation files First Amendment lawsuit against University of Minnesota for censoring Ben Shapiro

Spencer Brown
Young Americans Foundation
Tue, 03 Jul 2018 00:01 UTC

Ben Shapiro

On Tuesday, Young America's Foundation filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the University of Minnesota, in federal court, after University officials engaged in viewpoint-based censorship of conservative students and their YAF-sponsored lecture featuring New York Times bestselling author Ben Shapiro.

School policy permits administrators to wield unbridled discretion to suppress student speech that administrators dislike. The University of Minnesota has a long history of welcoming leftist guest speakers to campus, but when conservative students invited Ben Shapiro to speak at a YAF-sponsored lecture, administrators put the school's Speech Suppression policy into action.

University administrators schemed to limit student exposure to Mr. Shapiro's conservative ideas. They banished Shapiro's lecture to the St. Paul campus, refusing to allow him to speak on the University's main campus in Minneapolis, and they arbitrarily limited student attendance to 500 attendees.

Comment: See also:

Woman who scaled the Statue of Liberty identified as immigrant activist

Larry Celona, Tina Moore and Chris Perez
New York Post
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 17:33 UTC

The woman who scaled the Statue of Liberty on Wednesday has been identified.

Cops say Therese Patricia Okoumou - a 44-year-old immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo - was the person responsible for the Fourth of July protest.

She lives in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island and is currently in federal custody, according to police sources.

Officers from the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit transported her to a federal detention center Wednesday night following her three-hour standoff with authorities. Her case is being handled by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.

Sources said Okoumou told investigators she climbed up to the feet of Lady Liberty to protest President Trump's "zero tolerance" policy on immigration and the separation of families at the border.

Sadiq Khan's Greater London Authority grants permission for obscene Trump inflatable to fly over Parliament during President's visit

Oliver JJ Lane
Breitbart
Thu, 05 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC

A group of self-declared "anti-fascist art activists" have been granted permission by Sadiq Khan's Greater London Authority to fly a grotesque 20-foot inflatable caricature of President Donald J. Trump when he visits the city next week.

The balloon will fly next to Britain's Houses of Parliament at Parliament Square Gardens during the U.S. President's visit, and has been funded with nearly £17,000 in crowdfunding donations. A spokesman for the baby Trump group behind the stunt said of the creation that it is an "obscene mutant clone of the president".

"The Mayor supports the right to peaceful protest and understands that this can take many different forms," a spokesman for Sadiq Khan told Sky News.

"His city operations team have met with the organisers and have given them permission to use Parliament Square Garden as a grounding point for the blimp."

Comment: The anti-Trump resistance continues to showcase its shallowness. London is not only plagued by violence but millions in the UK are homeless or barely surviving in poverty with the vicious austerity measures imposed by successive governments. Just think what that £17,000 in crowdfunding donations could have meant to charities attempting to actually do something useful to alleviate suffering.

Russian MoD: A ceasefire agreement reached by leaders of armed groups, Deraa province

RT
Sat, 07 Jul 2018 07:22 UTC

A ceasefire agreement has been reached with leaders of armed groups in Syria's Deraa province, Russia's Defense Ministry has said. The leaders also agreed to surrender weaponry, according to the ministerial statement.

"Following negotiations mediated by the Russian Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria in the province of Deraa, agreements on [the] following issues have been reached: ceasefire, the start of heavy and medium weapons' handover in all the settlements controlled by the armed groups," the statement read.

The parties have also agreed on a number of other issues, including the settlement of the militants' status. In cases where militants do not wish to settle their status, procedures have been agreed for their evacuation to Idlib province along with their families.

It has also been agreed to resume the work of Syrian government bodies on the territories controlled by armed groups, and on the return of Syrian refugees to their homes from the Jordanian border.

Former Malaysian PM Najib Razak charged in multibillion-dollar 1MBD corruption scandal

Kate Lamb
The Guardian
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 03:54 UTC

The former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has appeared in court in Kuala Lumpur where he was charged with corruption-related offences over his alleged involvement in the multibillion-dollar 1MBD corruption scandal.

In a stunning fall from grace, the former prime minister was charged with three counts of criminal breach of trust and one count of corruption, in a prosecution led by the attorney general, Tommy Thomas. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Najib said: "I claim trial" in a barely audible voice as he stood in the dock at the high court. Prosecutors demanded 4m ringgit (nearly $1m) bail, but the judge granted it at 1m ringgit in cash ($250,000) and ordered Najib to surrender his two diplomatic passports.

The court has also allowed an interim gag order sought by Najib's lawyers, which restricts media discussions around merits of the case, except for what is presented in court. The attorney general said his team opposed the order and they would file a formal response. It is unclear how the scope of the order might restrict reporting of events.

Najib faces allegations that, between August 2011 and March 2015, 42m Malaysian ringgit ($10m) was transferred from SRC International, a 1MDB subsidiary, to his personal bank accounts. Each count carries a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Whipping is also a penalty but Najib, 64, would be exempt because of his age. The charges also carry a possible fine, which would be no less than five times the value of the funds in question.

The Syrian government requests displaced citizens return to liberated areas

PressTV
Tue, 03 Jul 2018 05:27 UTC

The Syrian government has called on its citizens who have fled the conflicts in the country to return to their homes as the majority of areas have been liberated from terrorist groups.

An official source at the Syrian foreign ministry told SANA on Tuesday that the government will provide security and safety for its citizens in the recaptured areas.

The official also called on the international community and humanitarian organizations to facilitate the voluntary return of Syrian refugees to their country.

According to the UN human rights office and refugee agency UNHCR, 270,000 people have fled the recent fighting in the southwestern province of Dara'a.

Two weeks ago, Syria began the operation to recapture Dara'a, which together with the provinces of Quneitra and Suwaida, forms the Arab country's southern tip. During the push, the government first tried to clinch surrender deals with the terrorists before staging anti-terror operations.

In France vegan terrorism is on the rise; but is it winning any converts?

Angeline Benoit
Bloomberg
Fri, 06 Jul 2018 16:24 UTC

In the land of boeuf bourguignon and steak-frites, eating meat is turning controversial. Even selling it is becoming dangerous.

The vegan and animal welfare wave hasn't spared France, where butchers and slaughterhouses are increasingly coming under attack. The French butchers' lobby this week sought police protection after vegan activists stoned a butcher's shop on Sunday. This followed incidents in April when some meat-selling shops were doused in fake blood.

"French consumers are finally waking up, decades after everybody else," said Geoffroy Le Guilcher, author of a book on slaughterhouses and the publisher of another on animal rights activism. "A new generation of activists is making people realize that even in the land of meat, there is very little that makes the case for having it."

Comment: The writing is on the wall? Seriously? You think meat is on its way out in France? It seems there's very little chance that the majority of French citizens are going to be swayed by the deplorable antics of vegan fanatics. If anything, theses disgusting stunts will lose any potential allies from their cause.

See also:

Coding in Gaza: Tech academy aids Palestinians in developing free-lance careers

Oliver Holmes and Hazem Balousha
The Guardian
Thu, 05 Jul 2018 06:00 UTC

Gaza City academy hopes its hi-tech business model will be immune to physical barriers to trade

Inside the Gaza coding school, Gaza Sky Coders

It's a scene straight from a Silicon Valley startup.

Hot-desking twentysomethings type code into laptops covered with stickers. Retro Pac-Man graffiti and motivational slogans like "DO EPIC THINGS" adorn the walls. Bookshelves are filled with the tech classics: The Facebook Effect and The Founder's Dilemmas. Wifi routers hang overhead, as do Edison bulbs, emitting more style than actual light.

But this is not the San Francisco Bay Area. No electric cars quietly whirr by.

Instead, this is Gaza, with its cracked streets and checkpoints manned by militants. On the perimeter of this impoverished coastal enclave are Israel and Egypt, countries that have blockaded this tiny slice of land for years.

Tight restrictions on the movement of goods and, vitally, people, have been the death of much industry here. But Gaza's first coding academy hopes its hi-tech business model - which operates in the virtual rather than real world - will be somewhat immune to physical barriers to trade.

"That's the reason we started this. It ignores boundaries," says 31-year-old Ghada Ibrahim, who was in the first class of coders, which started a year ago. "The blockade is a huge factor. It's a reason why we have a lot of people who have come to sign up."

Comment: Such efforts are desperately needed as the Israeli's have destroyed the economy and infrastructure, making the area nearly uninhabitable:

Is Roe a mistake that needs to be overturned?

Rich Lowry
National Review
Sat, 07 Jul 2018 18:07 UTC

The Supreme Court's abortion mistake deserves to be overturned.

The prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade will be at the foreground of the battle over Justice Anthony Kennedy's replacement, and it should be.

Roe is judicially wrought social legislation pretending to the status of constitutional law. It is more adventurous than Miranda and Griswold, other watchwords of judicial activism from its era. It is as much a highhanded attempt to impose a settlement on a hotly contested political question as the abhorrent Dred Scott decision denying the rights of blacks. It is, in short, a travesty that a constitutionalist Supreme Court should excise from its body of work with all due haste.

Purge continues: Twitter suspends over 70 million accounts in two months 'for your safety'

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sat, 07 Jul 2018 03:25 UTC

Twitter is purging accounts at a rapid pace - suspending over a 70 million accounts in two months as it ramps up its battle against "fake and suspicious" accounts, reports the Washington Post.

The social media giant has more than doubled its rate of suspensions since October, when the company suggested that Russia used fake accounts to manipulate the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

While the 70 million accounts suspended in May and June represent an amount equal to roughly 20% of Twitter's 336 million active monthly users - the company says that the purge mostly applies to inactive users, or bot accounts, instead of the revenue-generating accounts of real people.

[T]he crackdown has not had "a ton of impact" on the numbers of active users - which stood at 336 million at the end of the first quarter - because many of the problematic accounts were not tweeting regularly.

Legitimate human users -- the only ones capable of responding to the advertising that is the main source of revenue for the company -- are central to Twitter's stock price and broader perceptions of a company that has struggled to generate profits. -WaPo

Another aspect of the crackdown is the policing free speech in a world where the 1st Amendment seems to have sprouted a "safe space" clause.

Comment: Twitter execs are proving their allegiance to promoting leftist ideology by attempting to silence dissenting voices:

If you read the linked white house statement try not to puke.

sbc

Let's go, Brandon! Fucking asswipe, worthless, POS. Fraud! Argh! 😤

slbeaudry

I don't think this new requirement has undergone proper public review. There are procedures codified for this sort of thing. If some sort of...

Buffalo_Ken

First it will be 100 employees,then 50, then one. Masses are collectively powerful against the intolerant vocal minority and it is time to wipe...

Bezel Bub

I most certainly would not park my arse on a plane full of vaccinated people and have them infect me with their mutated virus. Whilst my...

Winternights3

Society's Child

Young America's Foundation files First Amendment lawsuit against University of Minnesota for censoring Ben Shapiro

Woman who scaled the Statue of Liberty identified as immigrant activist

Sadiq Khan's Greater London Authority grants permission for obscene Trump inflatable to fly over Parliament during President's visit

Russian MoD: A ceasefire agreement reached by leaders of armed groups, Deraa province

Former Malaysian PM Najib Razak charged in multibillion-dollar 1MBD corruption scandal

The Syrian government requests displaced citizens return to liberated areas

In France vegan terrorism is on the rise; but is it winning any converts?

Coding in Gaza: Tech academy aids Palestinians in developing free-lance careers

Is Roe a mistake that needs to be overturned?

Purge continues: Twitter suspends over 70 million accounts in two months 'for your safety'

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