Free Republic

On April 29, the Turkish government announced that it completely blocked Wikipedia over the online encyclopediaÂ’s refusal to delete articles and comments that suggest that Ankara is co-operating with terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.Despite multiple requests by Turkish officials, Wikipedia refused to take down the content the Turkish government objected to. In response, Turkish authorities blocked online access to Wikipedia in all languages across the country.Wikipedia continues to be blocked in Turkey. But it is not the only restricted website in the country. An estimated 127,000-plus websites have been blocked in Turkey, along with another 95,000...

The scientists who produce those doomsday reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finally come clean. The planet has stubbornly refused to heat up to predicted levels. Right now the scientists owe us an apology so enormous that I doubt even a bunch of two dozen roses every day for the rest of our lives is quite enough to make amends for the damage theyÂ’ve done. Thanks to their bad advice on climate change our gas and electricity bills have rocketed. So too have our taxes, our car bills and the cost of flying abroad, our kids have been...

What images should appear when you Google “white couple”? Probably two people of European descent. If you search those words today, though, you’ll find almost exclusively black couples. The results are similarly skewed for “white man & white woman” and “white couple with children”. Try it. Strange, a bit annoying, and vaguely political – just imagine the reaction if a query for “black couple” turned up only whites. I suspect that wouldn’t fly at Google. What results would you expect when Googling “American inventors”? Likely a mix of great innovators from our past and present, from a variety of backgrounds....

Is it decline? We all assume that campuses are getting more fascist towards speech, but I don’t know. It may be that there are more students and locals willing to behave violently to silence a speaker nowadays but whether that means the share who are willing to *condone* violence is higher now than it was, say, in the late 1960s is unclear. It’s counterintuitive but conceivable that colleges are more extreme at the fringes but also more tolerant across the mass of the student population.

Claims in the Mail on Sunday that global warming data had been exaggerated in order to secure the Paris climate change agreement have been criticised by the UK’s press regulator. The Independent Press Standards Organisation censured the newspaper for publishing a story in early February that was flawed in key aspects. The news story suggested that data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one of the world’s gold-standard sources of weather and climate research, had been treated in such a way as to suggest greater warming than had really occurred. The research hinged on the “pause” in...

It cost more than $600,000 for security so that Ben Shapiro could safely deliver a fairly conventional conservative speech at UC Berkeley on Thursday night. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Shapiro (an orthodox Jew and #NeverTrump conservative) was heavily targeted with anti-Semetic attacks by the alt-right. He was nevertheless greeted on the Berkeley campus by signs calling him a “white supremacist.” This was just one more example of how the assault on free speech at America’s college campuses has become pervasive. You’ve probably heard of last year’s high-profile incidents at Middlebury College, Evergreen State College, and (yes) U.C. Berkeley, but...

It was another bad week for ESPN. Controversy erupted when host Jemele Harris tweeted that President Donald Trump was a white supremacist. The network said that this issue had been addressed, and that she readied her actions were inappropriate. Oh, and those tweets don’t reflect the position of ESPN—classic public elations move here. They also didn’t fire her. That’s fine. Frankly, I don’t think what Hill did was an offense that warranted termination. It was worthy of a reprimand and a social media torching. It was a stupid remark. We all know that. Jemele Hill ✔ @jemelehill Replying to @DonnyParlock...

The university that has proudly proclaimed itself to be the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement may also become its graveyard. "In a letter addressed to the UC Berkeley campus and the larger Berkeley community, 76 faculty members from various departments have called for a complete boycott of classes and campus activities during the so-called 'Free Speech Week' to be held on campus September 24-27," Hank Reichman writes in the Academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "The week is sponsored by the Berkeley Patriot, a conservative student newspaper, and includes 'Feminism Awareness Day' and a...

Hillary Clinton's new book about the 2016 presidential race titled What Happened went on sale Tuesday. In the long lead-up to its release, Clinton and her publisher Simon & Schuster promised that the book would be a candid account of the former secretary of state's dramatic election loss to Donald Trump and an honest reflection on what the experience has meant to her. Some book critics say Clinton's latest title delivers the kind of authenticity that she's lacked in the past. The New York Times' Jennifer Senior calls the book a "feminist manifesto," "a score-settling jubilee," and "worth reading." Others,...

Calls to punish global warming skepticism as a criminal offense have surged in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, but it hasn’t discouraged climate scientists like Judith Curry. A retired Georgia Tech professor, she argued on her Climate Etc. website that Irma, which hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on Saturday, was fueled in large part by “very weak” wind shear and that the hurricane intensified despite Atlantic Ocean temperatures that weren’t unusually warm. That is the kind of talk that could get policymakers who heed her research hauled before the justice system, if some of those in the climate...

As Sharia continues to descend over the Internet. Remember Google’s old motto, “Don’t be evil”? It sounds so ironic now, with the social media giants all rushing to implement Sharia blasphemy restrictions and choke off all criticism of Islam. Twitter is working so hard to do this that it should adopt a new motto: “Be evil.” Twitter certainly lives by that motto. It lets stand open death threats against me. It censors content to suit Iran’s Islamic authorities. It has flagged as “hateful” tweets stating the fact that Islam is not a religion of peace and reporting accurately about anti-Semitic...

Berkeley replied in an e-mail to Townhall that given “recent, violent incidents in the City of Berkeley and Charlottesville, the University of California Police Department (UCPD) recently completed a revised security assessment for the September 14th event featuring Ben Shapiro.” They said this is “consistent with demands presented by the BCR to the UCPD in a recent written communication, as well as University’s event policy that applies to all student organizations and clearly states: “If UCPD determines that, because of new information it has received or changing circumstances, its security assessment must be modified, it will schedule additional meetings or...

n a recent ruling, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York found that the website for Blick Art Materials, where customers can purchase products, is a place of public accommodation and thus subject to the ADA.... Of the hundreds of suits filed, so far one has gone to trial, and it didn't bode well for the defense bar. In June, U.S. District Judge Robert Scola of the Southern District of Florida found that supermarket chain Winn-Dixie violated the rights of a blind customer by not making its website usable through screen reader software.

Google, Facebook and the rest wield more power than most governments. The secular Left and the proponents of Islamic blasphemy laws have a new issue on which they are making common cause: the quest to destroy the freedom of speech, the cornerstone of our democracy. After Charlottesville, the Left sees its chance to crush all dissent, and given its alliance with Islamic supremacists, this means the implementation in the West of prohibitions on criticism of Islam, including counterterror analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terrorists. This anti-free speech initiative, if it succeeds, will destroy free society, which cannot exist...

For those unfamiliar with the term, Marranos was the name given to Jews in medieval Spain, especially in the fifteenth century during the Spanish Inquisition, who secretly maintained their Judaism while living as Catholics in public. There is, of course, no Spanish Inquisition in America today – no one is being tortured into confessing what they really believe, and no one is being burned at the stake. But there are millions of Marrano-like Americans: Americans who hold conservative views – especially those who hold to conservative positions on social issues and those who voted for Donald Trump for president. Millions...

There's an interesting article with interviews of conservatives at Google and other Silicon Valley companies about how they have to keep quiet and are fearful of losing their jobs. It is amazing how Libs preach tolerance, but don't practice what they preach. Liberalism really is their religion. They are in love with themselves and their own feeling of self-sufficiency. The article is at Bloomberg, which doesn't allow any FreeRepublic postings. The URL is https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-05/the-lonely-lives-of-silicon-valley-conservatives. Btw, this is my first vanity post, so I hope that I did it okay.

Link

The war on truth has reached a fever pitch as Google has made it their mission to annihilate the independent media. ... Google has announced they will be doubling down on their ‘Orwellian’ practice of making stories disappear from their monopolistic search engine.

"Yesterday morning, we received a very bizarre letter from Google issuing us an ultimatum," Shane Trejo, media relations director of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Michigan, wrote on The Liberty Conservative. "Either we were to remove a particular article or see all of our ad revenues choked off in an instant. This is the newest method that Big Brother is using to enforce thought control."

“Trump supporters (conservatives) wanted to get beat up,” said civil rights lawyer Dan Siegel, according to the East Bay Times. Siegel repeatedly and loudly praised the inactions of the Berkeley Police Department, which allowed a huge mass of hooded, helmeted, masked, Antifa with studded gloves and clubs to jump the barricades and attack the half dozen conservative protesters who had gathered after a “No to Marxism” rally was canceled for fear of violence. There were about 450 police, and about 200 Antifa "soldiers" according to law enforcement reports. Police later claimed their inaction was "necessary to prevent greater violence in...