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Against big tech viewpoint discrimination

James D Miller
Quillette
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 00:01 UTC
steven crowder
This week, YouTube decided American conservative "shock jock" commentator Steven Crowder broke the rules of their Partner Program. Since YouTube is privately owned, shouldn't principled free market advocates support the company's right to purge videos Silicon Valley finds triggering, even if a disproportionate number are created by conservative commentators such as Crowder?

Well, imagine electric companies stood up for progressive values by cutting off power to homes with pro-Trump yard signs. Even staunch supporters of free markets would likely object to these restrictions on expression by privately owned enterprises. When we examine why power companies shouldn't be able to make service contingent on not violating political sensibilities, we see that analogous arguments should stop social media giants from exiling political dissidents.

If Burger King won't sell you a hamburger, so what - buy one from McDonald's. Competition among businesses normally protects you from harm if one refuses you service.

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Down

A Canadian Sunday school teacher says she was strip-searched at Vancouver airport after an angry CBSA guard terrorized her

Erica Johnson
CBC News
Mon, 10 Jun 2019 03:54 UTC
Canada Border Services Agency investigated more than 800 allegations of misconduct over 2-year period

Sunday school teacher strip searched by CBSA

Jill Knapp says an interrogation and strip search at Vancouver International Airport left her so traumatized she developed anxiety. (Nicolas Amaya/CBC)
A former Sunday school teacher who was falsely accused of being a drug smuggler, detained at Vancouver International Airport and eventually strip searched says she is still traumatized by the treatment and is calling for greater oversight of the Canada Border Services Agency.

Jill Knapp's run-in with CBSA agents took place on Jan. 9, 2016, on her way home to Calgary, after visiting her husband in Mexico City. The 39-year-old says she is only now speaking out about her experience because she was diagnosed with anxiety after her airport ordeal.

"It was traumatizing," Knapp told Go Public, explaining that no one told her why she was red-flagged as she attempted to make her connecting flight in Vancouver.

She said she has no criminal record and had nothing in her luggage that would prompt a closer look.

Comment:
  • TSA whistleblowers: Agency has "bully bosses" and "Lord of the Flies" culture
  • TSA Dismisses Seven at Philadelphia Airport
  • ABC producer says TSA agent felt inside her underwear
  • TSA agent films upskirt video and is arrested on voyeurism charge
  • Toddler Terrorist: TSA threatens lockdown over 4-year-old girl


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Dollar

Get woke, go broke: Jury rules Oberlin College to pay $11 million to bakery over racism accusations

William A. Jacobson
Legal Insurection
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 01:44 UTC
Gibson's Bakery Oberlin College
The Jury in the Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College case has reached a verdict.

According to our reporter in the Courtroom, the jury awarded $11 million. Here are the details: Allyn W. Gibson was awarded $3 million, David Gibson $5.8 million, Gibson Bros. $2,274,500. Next Tuesday there will be a separate punitive damages hearing which could be a double award (meaning tripling the $11 million to $33 million).

(clarification) Meredith Raimondo was held liable on the libel and interference with business relations, but not intentional infliction of emotional distress. By stipulation, the college is responsible for any amounts awarded against her, so she will not pay anything out of pocket.
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NPC

Whining weaponized: The latest YouTube ad-pocalypse


TomLuongo.me
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 12:00 UTC
youtube logo
Google and YouTube's war on free speech has just escalated again. And it won't stop, folks. The latest incident involving hard-left Vox writer Carlos Maza whining to YouTube about Steven Crowder making fun of him is not only chilling but pathetic.

Carlos Maza is an activist who makes a living in the public forum. He is openly gay. Uses the twitter handle @gaywonk and regularly spews nothing but thinly-veiled violent rhetoric at anyone slightly to the right of Berthold Brecht.

Crowder's crime is describing Maza in terms that Maza uses himself but does so derisively. And for that Maza believes Crowder shouldn't have a platform on which to make a living.

This is now considered harrassment by emotionally-stunted man-babies.

Comment: See also: Glenn Greenwald Rips Liberals Begging For Censorship After YouTube 'Adpocalypse'

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Ambulance

Horrifying video captures crazed customer striking NYC deli clerk with machete

Alex Taylor
New York Post
Sat, 08 Jun 2019 23:02 UTC
Man attacked by machete in NYC
© New York Post/Michael Dalton
A man being treated after being slashed with a machete in Hell's Kitchen.
Chilling video shows the moment a crazed, angry customer - known only as "Ricardo" - marches into a Hell's Kitchen deli, swings a machete at the clerk behind the counter, then spins on his heel and leaves without appearing to say a word.

The blow to the victim's left shoulder sends the injured man to the floor of the store, Liberty Bagel & Deli on Ninth Avenue between West 48th and 49th streets.

He clutches his shoulder as another employee rushes to his aid.


The attack happened at 11:15 Saturday morning, and by evening police were still seeking the attacker, who they say left his blade behind at the scene.

Fellow deli worker Gurpreet Singh, 30, said Saturday night that victim Sukhdev Singh, who received 8 to 10 stitches to his arm at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, remains in shock.
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Eye 1

Is China's social credit system coming to Australia?

Peter Rogers
The Conversation
Tue, 28 May 2019 21:46 UTC
Australia CCTV
© Dan Himbrechts/AAP Auteur
The Northern Territory government is expanding the CCTV surveillance network.
Privacy was not a hot topic in the recent Australian election, but it should have been. This is because the City of Darwin is adapting elements of the Chinese social credit system for use in Australia. The Chinese system's monitoring of citizens' behaviour has been widely condemned as "Orwellian", with frequent comparisons to the dystopian near-future sci-fi of Black Mirror. But for Australians it's pitched as progress towards a digitally integrated future, embedded innocuously in the "Switching on Darwin" plans for a smarter city.

To see why this is a worrying development for Australian democracy one must first play a patient game of join the dots.

Dot 1. One of Darwin's six "sister cities" is Haikou, capital of the Chinese island province of Hainan. Links established through sister-city relationships are commonly understood to be a springboard to wider networks of co-operative arrangements. Such connections may provide opportunities for cultural exchange, but also for technological exchange.

Comment: Western authorities have proven themselves untrustworthy so this is a very worrying development. And it's interesting that Australia has been chosen as the place for a trial run, considering how it has proven itself to be quite a lackey of US designs.

See also:

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Whistle

UK: 50 schoolboys were infected with HIV after secret blood trial in 1970's, only 16 are still alive

Paul Kelso
Sky News
Wed, 05 Jun 2019 12:00 UTC
blood
More than 50 boys were infected with HIV after being secretly enrolled in a trial of "polluted" blood products, the Infected Blood Inquiry has been told.

The boys were all pupils at Treloars College in Hampshire, a specialist disability school that offered places to haemophiliacs in the 1970s and 1980s.

Of more than 80 haemophiliacs at the school who were given contaminated blood products as part of their treatment, just 16 are still alive.

Ade Goodyear, one of the survivors, told the inquiry his records show he was among a group of 50 boys enrolled in an eight-month trial of a blood plasma.

Comment: The Express provides more details behind the trial itself:
[...]

Joe Peaty, 49, who lives in Coventry and was at the school from 1979 to 1984, was told of his HIV status while preparing to sit his A-levels.

"I hadn't been having regular treatment until I arrived at the school," he said.

"But they persuaded me to try a new treatment and got mine and my parents' consent for it. It meant I was given million of units of Factor VIII, sometimes up to 1,000 units a day.

[...]

"They reassured us time and time again that it was safe. But it wasn't and there will always be a question mark in my head as to why these treatments were used when they had not been thoroughly tested and found to be safe."

Like other HIV haemophiliacs, Richard was made to sign a legal waiver in 1991 in exchange for £20,000, on condition he never pursued legal action should any other viruses be found.

Years later he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. He now has severe Stage Four liver cirrhosis and is on the transplant list.


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House

No Novichok B&B for you: Authorities may buy Skripal house to prevent it from becoming a business


RT
Sun, 09 Jun 2019 18:44 UTC
The house of Sergei Skripal
© AFP / Adrian Dennis
The house of Sergei Skripal, covered by tarpaulin and scaffolding, is seen guarded by the by police on March 4, 2019.
A local authority is considering buying the Skripal's home in Salisbury to prevent it from being turned into a business. The house has undergone decontamination, which supposedly cleared it from the so-called Novichok nerve agent.

The plans to purchase the property were confirmed by officials with Wiltshire county council to the British media on Sunday. The idea to buy the house from the former double agent Sergei Skripal emerged after his neighbors expressed fears that it might be turned into a busy - and rather grim - business, like a B&B hotel.

"The council has committed to ensuring that the property is not used to trade on its history ... and is prepared to purchase it should the owner wish to sell," the director of the council, Alistair Cunningham said, as quoted by the Daily Mail.

Such a purchase by the council would ensure that the property would be used solely for residential purposes, the official added. It remains unclear whether anyone has sought to purchase the property, said to be worth at least £200,000, and actually live in it, given all the Novichok scare surrounding it.
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Dollar

Indian trains turn to massage for revenue boost


RT
Sun, 09 Jun 2019 17:10 UTC
Train
© REUTERS / Shailesh Andrade
Train services in India have added a surprising new benefit for some passengers weary from lengthy commutes: head and foot massages. Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect, though, with critics weighing in on Twitter.

The new massage facility is being rolled out this weekend on 39 Indian Railway services running from Indore in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, according to a regional railway official. In a tweet posted Saturday, the official said the massages are expected to generate some $28,800 a year.
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Boat

Container vessel obliterates newly restored 19th-century wooden ship in Germany


RT
Sun, 09 Jun 2019 15:44 UTC
Sunken sailboat
© Global Look Press / DPA / Bodo Marks
An historic pilot schooner, the 'No 5 Elbe', was sunk after colliding with a container ship near Hamburg, Germany. The sail vessel was carrying 43 passengers and crew on board, five people were injured during the accident.

The schooner was destroyed on the Elbe River on Saturday, when it was hit by a Cyprus-flagged container ship 'Astro Sprinter'. Footage of the collision shows that the tiny boat was literally ran over by the cargo ship, which made a large hole in its hull and demolished one of its masts.

Luckily, rescue ships turned out to be nearby and all those aboard the 'No 5 Elbe' were quickly assisted. Five of them, however, were injured, including one seriously, who was struck by the falling mast. The ship promptly sank in the shallow waters, while the 'Astro Sprinter' escaped the collision seemingly undamaged.
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