FJAG said:Just noticed that the Ezra levant saga is still ongoing but should resolve soon.
The following comes from the Law Society of Alberta's web site:
"Ezra Levant
Type: Hearing
First Date of Hearing: Feb 29, 2016
Last Date of Hearing: Mar 02, 2016
Date/Status Details: Calgary
Hearing Detail:
CO20142249 / HE20150107
It is alleged that you were publicly discourteous or disrespectful to a Commissioner or Tribunal Chair of the Alberta Human Rights Commission and that such conduct is deserving of sanction.
It is alleged that your public comments regarding the Alberta Human Rights Commission were inappropriate and unbecoming and that such conduct is deserving of sanction.
CO20140632 / HE20150107
It is alleged your public comments regarding the Alberta Human Rights Commission were inappropriate and unbecoming and that such conduct is deserving of sanction."
:cheers:
On this one, and until more detail is forthcoming, I tend to disagree.Good2Golf said:..... I would think that the Alberta Bar, from which this professional censure originates, has enough professional balance ....
EXCLUSIVE: Twitter Shadowbanning ‘Real and Happening Every Day’ Says Inside Source
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AP Photo/Isa Simsek, ZamanAP Photo/Isa Simsek, Zaman
by MILO YIANNOPOULOS16 Feb 2016239
Rumours that Twitter has begun ‘shadowbanning’ politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech. His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher.
According to the source, Twitter maintains a ‘whitelist’ of favoured Twitter accounts and a ‘blacklist’ of unfavoured accounts. Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they’re not the most popular among users. Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines.
Our source was backed up by a senior editor at a major digital publisher, who told Breitbart that Twitter told him it deliberately whitelists and blacklists users. He added that he was afraid of the site’s power, noting that his tweets could disappear from users’ timelines if he got on the wrong side of the company.
Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view.
For site owners, the ideal shadowban is when a user never realizes he’s been shadowbanned.
However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines.
Among the users complaining of shadowbans are sci-fi author and alt-right figurehead Vox Day, geek culture blogger “Daddy Warpig,” and the popular pro-Trump account Ricky Vaughn. League of Gamers founder and former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, as well as adult actress and anti-censorship activist Mercedes Carrera, have also reported that their tweets are not appearing on the timelines of their followers.
The pattern of shadowban reports, which skews towards the alt-right, the populist right, and cultural libertarians, follows close on the heels of Twitter’s establishment of a “Trust and Safety Council” packed with left-wing advocacy groups, as well as Islamic research centre the Wahid Institute.
It also follows my prediction that Twitter would use its influence to interfere in the 2016 presidential election by muffling conservative voices on the platform.
For close to a year now, Breitbart has covered Twitter’s march towards political censorship. In May 2015 Allum Bokhari reported that the site had begun to experiment with shadowbans, ostensibly to protect users from abuse. Then, as now, it was suspected that “protecting users from abuse” was an excuse to implement a system that would later be used for political censorship.
With shadowbans now confirmed by an inside source, there is little room for doubt that the platform is intent on silencing conservatives. Furthermore, it has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for transparency, concealing its shadowbanning system from users and hiding its political bias behind a veneer of opposition to online abuse. (In reality, the site turns a blind eye to abuse from left-wingers.)
Users in search of a transparent, politically unbiased platform will soon have to find — or build — an alternative.
Follow Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) on Twitter and Facebook, or write to him at milo@breitbart.com. Android users can download Milo Alert! to be notified about new articles when they are published.
Turning back the leviathan of the administrative state
By DAVID MCINTOSH AND WILLIAM HAUN • 2/12/16 12:03 AM
There are two stacks of papers in Utah Senator Mike Lee's office that should cause all Americans to pause. One stack is 400 pages; the other is over 80,000 pages. The short stack is all of the laws Congress passed in 2014. The 11-foot tall tower is all federal regulations.
Senator Lee and other members of Congress see this disparity as indicative of not just a growing government, but an erosion of the separation of powers. They are correct. When James Madison authored Federalist 47, he gave voice to a sentiment shared widely by the Founders: consolidating executive, legislative, and judicial power into one entity is "the very definition of tyranny."
To preserve self-government, the Constitution separated those powers into three branches. As new laws may restrict liberty, separated power ensures that one faction of society cannot run roughshod over another. Debate, compromise and consensus should ensure that any new regulations are enacted with wide public agreement.
Today, the 80,000-plus pages of federal regulations reveal the extent to which Congress has surrendered its lawmaking power to the administrative state. With one-sentence delegations to agencies, telling them to regulate "in the public interest," Congress has given bureaucrats a free hand to craft rules regulating much of the economy and daily life.
Vague delegations of power remove public accountability from government regulation. For example, in delegating EPA regulatory power through the Clean Air Act, congressmen can say they voted for "clean air." But, when EPA issues a controversial regulation, those same members may try to disown it by saying they did not do it. Consequential, long-term policy choices may now be made by agencies, instead of by the people's representatives, leading to regulations on the Internet, greenhouse gas emissions, and mobile technology, even when Congress had none of these issues in mind when it passed the applicable delegating statute. Broad delegation to the administrative state allows Congress to surrender "check and balance" in exchange for "pass the buck."
Congress is not the only branch to surrender its power. Through judge-made deference doctrines, courts allow agencies to effectively make law. Judges even defer to agency rules about how agencies make rules — letting them circumvent public notice requirements, ultimately blocking the public out of the rulemaking process. When agencies then sue citizens before their administrative law judges for violating their rules, courts will defer to ALJ determinations — even as numerous ALJs report being pressured to side with their respective agency, and many of the procedural protections of courts do not apply. The rights of citizens to hold their leaders accountable to fair legal processes and to have a voice in lawmaking are sacrificed in the name of agency "efficiency" and "expertise."
In a new book Liberty's Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State, we outline the scope and source of this problem, and we propose solutions. We explain that the foundational premises of the administrative state are meant to supplant the Constitution's separation of powers. Progressives grew the administrative state, reasoning that self-government is too primitive to face modern life. Then, having succeeded in tearing down constitutional accountability to the people, the agencies can do work outside the public's eye. They can, for example, engage in judicially-enforced settlements, promising to use power Congress never gave them to make regulations that may not be allowed by the laws Congress passed. Not even political elections that change an agency's leadership are potent enough to stop these processes. In short, agencies have figured out how to circumvent democracy, and Congress has let them do it.
Leadership is needed to return power to the people's representatives. Senator Lee is right to be concerned about congressional abdication to agencies, and the "Article One Project" that he and several of his colleagues are inaugurating is a commendable step. In Liberty's Nemesis, we set forth the concrete executive, legislative and judicial proposals needed to reform both interagency actions and reverse the loss of public accountability. It is not too late to reclaim self-government, but if we want our Republic, we have to keep it — the "experts" have proved they will not.
consolidating executive, legislative, and judicial power into one entity is "the very definition of tyranny."
Why Charles Koch’s awesome Bernie Sanders op-ed matters in future elections
posted at 5:01 pm on February 21, 2016 by Taylor Millard
Charles Koch has written an awesome op-ed in The Washington Post where he explains how he and Bernie Sanders actually agree on an issue. It’s one of the very few issues where the Tea party and Occupy Wall Street seemed to have common ground as well: cronyism and the buying and selling of politicians. Koch’s piece probably won’t matter in the short-term of the 2016 election cycle (and probably the 2018 and 2020), but it could have plenty of influence a decade from now. Koch unhappily writes how the rigged economy has hurt everyone, except the few businessmen that politicians have lavished favors upon.
Democrats and Republicans have too often favored policies and regulations that pick winners and losers. This helps perpetuate a cycle of control, dependency, cronyism and poverty in the United States. These are complicated issues, but it’s not enough to say that government alone is to blame. Large portions of the business community have actively pushed for these policies.
Shocking right? Not to those who have actually followed Charles and David Koch and know how they feel about cronyism. They’re certainly not in favor of it on a federal level and have spent most of their time lobbying against the buying and selling of politicians. But Charles Koch doesn’t just go after government financial handouts; he rails against a federal system which allows “the rich and powerful” to skate by on other things.
Today, if you’re poor and get caught possessing and selling pot, you could end up in jail. Your conviction will hold you back from many opportunities in life. However, if you are well-connected and have ample financial resources, the rules change dramatically. Where is the justice in that?
Arbitrary restrictions limit the ability of ex-offenders to get housing, student or business loans, credit cards, a meaningful job or even to vote. Public policy must change if people are to have the chance to succeed after making amends for their transgressions.
This is all the federal government’s fault (and local and state governments too) for their decision to get involved in issues which go beyond the scope of the Constitution. Koch makes this clear by writing he’s not #FeelingtheBern because their solutions are completely different and Sanders is in favor of “the all empowering state,” while Koch thinks it causes more problems than not (emphasis mine).
Consider America’s War on Poverty. Since its launch under President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, we have spent roughly $22 trillion, yet our poverty rate remains at 14.8 percent. Instead of preventing, curing and relieving the causes and symptoms of poverty (the goals of the program when it began), too many communities have been torn apart and remain in peril while even more tax dollars pour into this broken system.
It is results, not intentions, that matter. History has proven that a bigger, more controlling, more complex and costlier federal government leaves the disadvantaged less likely to improve their lives.
This isn’t going to have a real effect on 2016 because I expect Sanders to keep going on his anti-Koch comments, like when he told Vox last year increased legal immigration/open borders was a “Koch brothers proposal,” and says “essentially there is no United States.” But this might cause things to change in the coming years if those so entranced by Sanders are willing to listen to the differences between larger government advocates versus smaller government advocates (one reason why it’s VERY disappointing Rand Paul isn’t in the presidential race anymore). If Koch’s message is actually heard by those who also listen to Sanders, it might cause them to look elsewhere when they become disillusioned by the idea of democratic socialism and the all encompassing state. The fact Koch’s piece has gotten Leftists racing towards a debunked book claiming Fred Koch was a Nazi sympathizer shows how frightened they are the current crop of Sanders supporters are going to eventually race to Koch’s side if they keep learning more and more about how government is the problem, not the solution. I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to Matt Welch’s piece at Reason pointing out how this shows there’s nothing wrong with praising someone on “the other side” when they actually make a good point. But what this also means is the Right (specifically those in the freedom and liberty category) have to keep pressing on issues like justice reform and how the government helps keep wealth inequality in place, instead of actually helping people get out of one class and into the other. This is a long-term battle unwinding over 100 years of thought that the government is the best way to solve things, which means you and I won’t see this happen in our lifetimes. But if it leaves America in a better spot in 2116 and the all encompassing state has been felled to the ground like Jormundgandr after his final battle with Thor, it’s worth it.
THERE’S SOMETHING GOING ON HERE, BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS, DO YOU, MR. BROOKS?“Trump voters are a coalition of the dispossessed. They have suffered lost jobs, lost wages, lost dreams. The American system is not working for them, so naturally they are looking for something else. Moreover, many in the media, especially me, did not understand how they would express their alienation. We expected Trump to fizzle because we were not socially intermingled with his supporters and did not listen carefully enough. For me, it’s a lesson that I have to change the way I do my job if I’m going to report accurately on this country.”
Well, David, you should get out more. You might also try reading InstaPundit regularly. But mostly, you owe a bigger apology than this.
The Tea Party movement — which you also failed to understand, and thus mostly despised — was a bourgeois, well-mannered effort (remember how Tea Party protests left the Mall cleaner than before they arrived?) to fix America. It was treated with contempt, smeared as racist, and blocked by a bipartisan coalition of business-as-usual elites. So now you have Trump, who’s not so well-mannered, and his followers, who are not so well-mannered, and you don’t like it.
This may be the week the SJWs lost it all
Posted on 2016-04-03 by Eric Raymond
This may be the week the SJWs lost it all…or, at least, their power to bully people in the hacker culture and the wider tech community.
Many of you probably already know about the LambdaConf flap. In brief: LambdaConf, a technical conference on functional programming, accepted a presentation proposal about a language called Urbit, from a guy named Curtis Yarvin. I’ve looked at Urbit: it is very weird, but rather interesting, and certainly a worthy topic for a functional programming conference.
And then all hell broke loose. For Curtis Yarvin is better known as Mencius Moldbug, author of eccentric and erudite political rants and a focus of intense hatred by humorless leftists. Me, I’ve never been able to figure out how much of what Moldbug writes he actually believes; his writing seems designed to leave a reader guessing as to whether he’s really serious or executing the most brilliantly satirical long-term troll-job in the history of the Internet.
A mob of SJWs, spearheaded by a no-shit self-described Communist named Jon Sterling, descended on LambdaConf demanding that they cancel Yarvin’s talk, pretending that he (rather than, say, the Communist) posed a safety threat to other conference-goers. The conference’s principal organizers, headed up one John de Goes, quite properly refused to cancel the talk, observing that Yarvin was there to talk about his code and not his politics.
I think they conceded to much to the SJWs, actually, by asking Yarvin to issue a statement about his views on violence. Nobody asked Jon Sterling whether he was down with that whole liquidation of the kulaks thing, after all, and if a Communist who likes to tweet about sending capitalists to “hard labor in the North” gets a pass it is not easy to see why any apologia was required from a man with no history of advocating violence at all.
But, ultimately, they did make the right decision: to judge Yarvin’s talk proposal by its technical merit alone. This is the hacker way.
The SJWs then attempted to pressure LambdaConf’s sponsors into withdrawing their support so the conference would have to be canceled. Several sponsors withdrew (I don’t know details about who; my sources for this part are secondhand).
So far, so wearily familiar – Marxist thugs versus free expression, with free expression’s chances not looking so hot. But there’s where the story gets good. Meredith Patterson and her friends at the blog Status 451 organized a counterpunch. They launched an IndieGoGo campaign Save LambdaConf …and an open society.
I got wind of this a bit less than two days ago and posted to G+ asking all 20K of my followers to chip in, something I’ve never done before. Because, like Merry, I understand that this wasn’t actually about Mencius Moldbug at all – it was about opposing a power play by the political-correctness police. The IndieGoGo campaign was our chance to strike back for liberty.
A day later it was fully funded. ClarkHat’s victory lap makes great reading.
I replied to congratulate ClarkHat: “@ClarkHat I don’t often ask my 20K G+ followers to support a crowdfunder, but when I do it’s hoping for a victory like this one.” And today I have 21K followers.
The hacker community has spoken, and it put its money where its mouth is, too. Now we know how to stop the SJWs in their tracks – fund what they denounce, make their hatred an asset, repeatedly kerb-stomp them with proof that their hate campaigns will be countered by the overwhelming will of the people and communities they thought they had bullied into submission.
I’m proud of my community for stepping up. I hope Sir Tim Hunt and Brendan Eich and Matt Taylor and other past victims of PC lynch mobs are smiling tonight. The SJWs’ preference-falsification bubble has popped; with a little work and a few more rounds of demonstration we may be able to prevent future lynchings entirely.