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When did the left renounce freedom of speech?

Daryl McCann
Quadrant Online
Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:00 UTC
Free Speech Banned
© The Libertarian, UK
Remember the Sixties, when self-styled revolutionaries went to barricades and courtrooms in their crusade for absolutely unfettered free speech? Somewhere between then and now, the long march through the institutions all but complete, freedom lost its appeal

The outrage vented this past week by progressives against freedom of speech has left me wondering, "Where have all the flowers gone long time passing?/Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?" I thought the whole point of the Sixties Revolution was to set the people free so they could express themselves without fear of being busted by "The Man".

Now all we hear is lefty talk along the lines of "freedom of speech needs qualifiers and social agreement". We have the laws of defamation, friends, and racial discrimination is still going to be unlawful. So how, exactly, will the amendment to the Racial Discrimination Act proposed by the Coalition government "open the floodgates" to vilification on the basis of race? Some leftist critics appear not to have even read the planned replacement of Section 18, which is astonishing, considering it totals less than 200 words. How - for heaven's sake - did they miss the bit about it being against the law "to vilify" or "to intimidate" people "because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin"?

What is it with all those anti-bourgeois bohemians at The Age and the ABC and their trepidations about freedom of speech? Even the Baby Boomer contingent of the leftoid commentariat - that is, older folks who were actually around in the freedom-loving 1960s - have turned pro-censorship. What happened to peace, love and understanding? Why so keen to suppress liberty, choice, independence, free will, and - most sacred counterculture virtue of all - looseness?What about the dream, people? Maybe if Pete Seeger were still around he could pen us a new protest song - Where have all the left-wing libertarians gone?
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Quenelle

Oklahoma militia joins Bundy ranch defenders against feds


RT
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 19:09 UTC
Image
© George Frey / Getty Images / AFP
Rancher Cliven Bundy (L), and armed security guards leave his ranch house west of Mesquite, Nevada.
Members of the Oklahoma Militia have come out in support of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who recently found himself in a standoff with hundreds of armed federal agents over land rights related to his cattle ranch.

Earlier this month, a weeklong confrontation between the two parties began when armed federal officials under the US Bureau of Land Management attempted to seize nearly 1,000 of Bundy's cattle, as authorized by a court order. As RT reported previously, the BLM claims Bundy owes the government about $1 million since he stopped paying the fees associated with allowing his cattle graze on federal land in the early 1990s.

Bundy, meanwhile, argues the land his cattle graze on has belonged to his family since the 1870s, and that he's not obligated to pay the government anything.

"I don't believe I owe one penny to the United States government," Bundy said earlier this month. "I don't have a contract with the United States government."
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Cell Phone

Unconscious patient's cell phone captures doctors mocking him during colonoscopy

Sarah Fruchtnicht
Opposingviews.com
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 16:19 UTC
Image
A Virginia man is suing after his cell phone captured audio of doctors allegedly mocking him while he was under anesthesia for a colonoscopy.

The plaintiff, D.B., says doctors joked about firing a gun up his rectum and accused him of having STDs during his medical procedure.

"On April 18, 2013, during a colonoscopy, plaintiff was verbally brutalized and defamed by the very doctors to whom he entrusted his life while under anesthesia," the complaint says.
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Attention

10-year-old boy raped male classmate in Welsh school, 'acting out online porn scene'

Jaya Narain
Daily Mail
Wed, 23 Apr 2014 12:22 UTC
Image
© PA Archive/Press Association Images
Allegations: A 10-year-old boy has been accused of raping a classmate, also aged 10, in the toilets of a school in Colwyn Bay. The boy has pleaded not guilty to two charges. The trial is being held at Mold Crown Court.
A boy of ten raped a classmate in the toilets of his primary school as he 'acted out' scenes from online pornography, a court was told.

The jury heard that he approached a fellow pupil during an English lesson and asked if he wanted to have sex with him. Thinking he was joking, the other boy replied: 'No way.'

But after the lesson the alleged victim went to the toilets and, as he went to leave, the defendant was said to have walked in and grabbed him.

The court heard the boy then pushed him over a sink and raped him.

The victim, also 10, told him to stop and after about 10 seconds the alleged attacker pulled away, and apparently said: 'Oh come on, the party's just starting.'

Yesterday Mold Crown Court in North Wales was told the schoolboy had carried out the rape after watching pornography online. Karl Scholz, prosecuting, said: 'It is almost certain that in this case what was being done was to act out what had been seen in pornographic material.'
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Arrow Down

Epic Fail: Half of Georgia's Obamacare enrollees can't make monthly payments

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 09:45 UTC
obamacare failure
© unknown
The Obama administration has stated unequivocally that the debate concerning whether or not the Patient Affordable Care Act has been a success is over. They've won the argument and its evidenced by the tens of thousands of Americans who have signed up on exchanges across the country.

Here's a small glimpse into just how successful Obamacare has been.

In Georgia, where some 650,000 people are eligible for subsidies only about 220,000 applications have thus far been received. So, to start, we're about 70% short on the originally estimated sign up rate.

Even more successful than that, however, is that of those 220,000 received applications Georgia Health News reports that at least half of the applicants have failed to actually pay their monthly premiums even though most of those people are being subsidized by the government to some extent.
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Wolf

X-Men's Bryan Singer accused in federal lawsuit of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy

Dareh Gregorian and Tim O'Connor
New York Daily News
Thu, 17 Apr 2014 13:58 UTC
Image
© The Source
Famous Hollywood director Bryan Singer has been accused in a new federal lawsuit of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy.

The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Hawaii, accused the 48-year-old "X-Men" filmmaker of first preying on the 15-year-old aspiring actor at a party at a California mansion where underage boys were plied with drugs and alcohol and taken advantage of.

"The stories that I've heard of what went on at the estate are truly despicable," the accuser's lawyer, Miami attorney Jeff Herman, told the Daily News Wednesday night.

Herman identified the accuser as Michael Egan III. Egan, who is now in his 30s and will appear at a Thursday news conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in L.A., was forcibly sodomized by the director when he was 15 in the late-1990s, according to the suit. Singer had promised Egan a role in one of his movies and had numerous sexual encounters with the boy when he was 15 and 16, Herman told The News. Singer also allegedly brought Egan to Hawaii for multiple extended trips when he was 17.
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Bullseye

Ft. Lauderdale proposes measure making it illegal for the homeless to have possessions in public

Scott Keyes
Think Progress
Mon, 21 Apr 2014 10:34 UTC
homeless miami
© AP
A homeless man in Miami is interviewed by a researcher

A backpack. Spare clothes. A notebook. Some keepsake photos. Crackers.

Though they may not have a home in which to secure their stuff, homeless people still have possessions like everyone else.

Yet the city of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida is on the cusp of passing a new regulation that would make it illegal for anyone to store their personal things on public property. Specifically, it would empower police to confiscate any personal possessions stored on public property, provided they have given the homeless person 24-hours notice. If the homeless people wish to retrieve their items, they must pay the city "reasonable charges for storage and removal of the items," though that fee is waived if the person is able to demonstrate he or she cannot afford to pay. The city may dispose of any possessions not retrieved within 30 days. One of the driving factors behind the measure, according to the legislation, is the city's "interest in aesthetics."

Last week, the City Commission gave unanimous preliminary approval to the measure, despite overwhelming opposition from local residents who testified.
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Sheeple

The slow death of free speech

Mark Steyn
The Spectator
Sat, 19 Apr 2014 00:00 UTC
voltaire

voltaire
These days, pretty much every story is really the same story:
  • In Galway, at the National University of Ireland, a speaker who attempts to argue against the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) programme against Israel is shouted down with cries of 'Fucking Zionist, fucking pricks... Get the fuck off our campus.'
  • In California, Mozilla's chief executive is forced to resign because he once made a political donation in support of the pre-revisionist definition of marriage.
  • At Westminster, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee declares that the BBC should seek 'special clearance' before it interviews climate sceptics, such as fringe wacko extremists like former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
  • In Massachusetts, Brandeis University withdraws its offer of an honorary degree to a black feminist atheist human rights campaigner from Somalia.
  • In London, a multitude of liberal journalists and artists responsible for everything from Monty Python to Downton Abbey sign an open letter in favour of the first state restraints on the British press in three and a quarter centuries.
  • And in Canberra the government is planning to repeal Section 18C - whoa, don't worry, not all of it, just three or four adjectives; or maybe only two, or whatever it's down to by now, after what Gay Alcorn in the Age described as the ongoing debate about 'where to strike the balance between free speech in a democracy and protection against racial abuse in a multicultural society'.
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Bad Guys

Hundreds slaughtered by terrorists claiming oil field in West's latest client state, South Sudan


Daily Star
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 08:53 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah
South Sudanese fleeing an attack on the South Sudanese town of Rank, wait to register after arriving at a border gate in Joda, along the Sudanese border April 19, 2014. The South Sudanese army (SPLA) and rebels are currently fighting in Rank, after an attack by rebels on Thursday, reported local media. Picture taken April 19, 2014
Rebel gunmen in South Sudan massacred "hundreds" of civilians in ethnic killings when they captured the oil town of Bentiu last week, the UN said Monday, one of the worst reported atrocities in the war-torn nation.

In the main mosque alone, "more than 200 civilians were reportedly killed and over 400 wounded," the UN mission in the country said, adding there were also massacres at a church, hospital and an abandoned UN World Food Programme (WFP) compound.

Fighters took to the radio calling for rival groups to be forced from the town and for men to rape women from the opposition ethnic group.

South Sudan's army has been fighting rebels loyal to sacked vice president Riek Machar after the insurgents launched a renewed offensive targeting key oil fields.
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Stormtrooper

Footage emerges showing G4S private security force guards violently beating asylum seekers in February riot at super-secret Australian detention center

Michael Gordon
The Age
Mon, 21 Apr 2014 05:45 UTC
Image

Caged beasts? The Australian government thinks so.
Papua New Guinean nationals employed as security guards on Manus Island attacked asylum seekers at the detention centre more than 24 hours before Iranian Reza Barati died in a night of shocking violence, new footage shows.

The footage, obtained by Fairfax Media, shows the security guards attacking a group of asylum seekers who had absconded from the centre after being told they had no prospect of being settled outside PNG if their claims for refugee status were eventually recognised.

There are also images that show no action was taken to rope off the scene of Mr Barati's killing before evidence was either compromised or completely cleared away, including the rock that witnesses say made sure he was dead.

The footage and images raise new questions about what was done to reduce the risk of violence at the centre and the adequacy of the subsequent investigation.

The morning after the violence, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison reported that the centre would resume "normal operations" and maintained: "G4S utilised personal protection gear but no batons or other weapons were in situ and were in control of the centre for the entire period."


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