A mishmash of informed snark, piquant opinions, refined nastiness, occasional schmaltz, & tawdry graphics, served up continuously since 2006 by COSMIC CONNIE, aka CONNIE L. SCHMIDT. Covering New-Age/New-Wage culture & crapitalism, pop spirituality & religion, pop psychology, self(ish)-help, alt-health hucksterism, conspiranoia, business babble, media silliness, Scamworld, politix, & related (or occasionally unrelated) matters of consequence.
Showing posts with label freedom of speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom of speech. Show all posts
Back in March of this year, the Interwebz were
all a-Twitter about a defamation flawsuit filed by Congressclown
Devin Nunes (R-California), who is currently the rank republican
member... I mean the ranking republican member of various
committees and subcommittees of the US House of Representatives,
and who in more recent weeks has taken his comedy stylings to the public impeachment
hearings against #NotMyPresident Donald John Trump.
The Nunes litigation that had, and still has, the
Internet bellowing with laughter is Devin's suit against a fake
cow on Twitter, as well as against various other fake parties.
Actually they're satirical Twitter accounts that make fun of our
little diva Dev. His feelings have been terribly hurt by the
derision. I was one of countless hordes of folks who snarked
about this when the story was new-ish -- here's that Whirled link for you -- and I'm back with another round because of a couple
of recent developments.
The first development is really just a humorous addendum to the ongoing phony-cow saga. Since the lawsuit was initiated in March, Nunes has
been laboring to get Twitter to give up the goods on the anon
Twitter users who run the fake-cow account and another satirical
account by "Devin Nunes' Mom." In October, Nunes'
attorney issued a subpoena demanding records from former
Democratic National Committee employee Adam Parkhomenko, who
presumably had been corresponding with the puckish anons.
Parkhomenko's attorney responded with a filing to quash the
subpoena, arguing that the Twitter accounts are clearly satirical
and do not constitute defamation, and that the courts have a
responsibility to protect anonymous communications, in the
interests of protecting free speech. On November 26, the Sacramento
Bee reported:
“No reasonable person would believe
that Devin Nunes’ cow actually has a Twitter account, or
that the hyperbole, satire and cow-related jokes it posts are
serious facts,” reads the filing in Virginia’s Henrico
County Circuit Court. “It is self-evident that cows are
domesticated livestock animals and do not have the
intelligence, language, or opposable digits needed to operate
a Twitter account. Defendant ‘Devin Nunes’ Mom’
likewise posts satirical patronizing, nagging, mothering
comments which ostensibly treat Mr. Nunes as a misbehaving
child.”
For extended (and well-deserved) mockery, check
out this Damage Report video.
If you can't access the embedded vid, here's the direct YouTube link.
The second development that inspired me to return
to the old blogging board on behalf of our delicate Devin is the
announcement a couple of days ago of yet another
defamation flawsuit he's filed. This one is
about more serious matters. True to recent threats he'd made, Nunes is suing CNN for $435 million over a report that an associate of Trump's personal
ghoul Rudy Giuliani claimed Nunes had met with a former Ukrainian
official late last year in Vienna, in order to help dig up some
dirt on former VP Joe Biden. Since Trump et al.'s shenanigans re
Ukraine are at the center of the impeachment hearings, it's
understandable that Devin would be a little upset.
Indeed, employing his customary histrionics, Nunes disputed the
story and called the CNN report "demonstrably false and
scandalous" and a "hit piece," despite the fact
that other parties in question stated their willingness to
testify under oath that the story is true. Nunes added that CNN
is the mother of fake news and is eroding the fabric of America.
One can only hope that Turley is right. In fact, I'm willing to
exercise some rare-for-me optimism and predict that the efforts
of both Nunes and Turley will strengthen the case for
impeachment. At least I'm willing to entertain that possibility,
or let it entertain me.
* * * * *
It's abundantly clear by now that when he isn't
busy with his overwrought performances in public hearings, and
his other attempts to embed himself even more deeply into Trump's
aperture, Devin Nunes is udderly consumed with suing people and
animals, both real and imaginary. This past October, the LA
Times ran a piece by columnist Robin Abcarian, summarizing the frivolous and vexatious litigation in which Nunes
had been involved up until that time. Besides
the fake-cow litigation, Nunes also sued an organic peach farmer
and various reporters. Abcarian wrote:
To help get a sense of the injury
caused by an organic peach farmer, reporters and a fake cow,
Nunes’ lawsuits first lay outwhat
a fantastic guy Nunes is:
“Nunes’ career as a U.S. Congressman is distinguished by
his honor, dedication and service to his constituents and his
country, his honesty, integrity, ethics, reputation for
truthfulness and veracity.”
This is a helpful corrective, I guess, because most people
think of Nunes as the Trump lackey who sneaked into
the White House in the
middle of the night last year to receive information that he
turned around and claimed to be presenting to Trump for the
first time the next day. Instead of really trying to figure
out how Russia had mucked about in the 2016 election, Nunes
was helping Trump make a case against American spy agencies.
But this current Ukrainian sideshow must really be rattling him.
As Scott Shackford, writing for the Libertarian publication
Reason, noted, Nunes is getting a taste of his own medicine. After all, he once attacked those who wanted to
restrain the NSA's snooping, but now the shoe is on the other
cloven hoof.
Now this surveillance apparatus that
Nunes has long supported has happily provided his political
opponents with information that could destroy his career. The
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (which Nunes
used to chair, and where he is now the ranking minority
member) just published its impeachment report.
It shows calls between Nunes and Rudy Giuliani in 2016, as
Giuliani was making the media rounds arguing that Ukrainian
officials colluded to help Hillary Clinton's presidential
campaign. This information will most certainly be used to
argue that Nunes is not just a defender of Trump but also an
active participant in Giuliani's Ukrainian push.
As the ranking Republican on the
powerful House Intelligence Committee, Nunes holds one of the
top posts in Congress. Nunes should have disclosed to his
committee colleagues that he had those phone calls last
spring. One expert on government ethics took it a step
further and said Nunes should have recused
himself from the
impeachment hearings, rather than acting as No. 1 Trump
defender.
To advance the cause of getting at the truth, Nunes should
come clean on the phone calls and tell the House what was
discussed. He should also provide travel records to debunk
the charge that he met in Vienna last December with the
Ukrainian to get information that might hurt Biden; Nunes
says he was in Libya and Malta.
Short of that, his actions continue to reduce him to being a
mere partisan — the label with which he loves to tarnish
his Democrat colleagues...
Yeah, what the Bee said. And by the
way, their parent company, McClatchy, has also been sued by
Nunes. But if his goal is to chill free speech... well, as the Bee
pointed out in a November 27 editorial, it's
not working (so far, anyway). The fake cow keeps on mooing, and the online jeers
are only growing louder.
Over the past couple of weeks there has been a
great deal of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the
right-wing conspiranoid cartel regarding the recent
"censorship" of conspiracy-porn producer and
right-wingnut Alex Jones, who earlier this
month was booted from several social media platforms, including
Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. Despite the whining, said
"censorship" is benefiting Jones by adding to his
hero/martyr creds, and, to the surprise of no one who has been
following these matters for any length of time, he and his
colleagues in the hate bidness are doing everything possible to
exploit the situation. Wrote Erin Durkin at The Guardian on 11 August, 2018:
Alex Jones says he’s being silenced
– but he isn’t shutting up and you can still listen to
him.
The right wing provocateur’s Infowars was banished from
most of the web’s farthest-reaching platforms this week –
sending him scrambling to find other ways to get his message
out, and appealing to Donald Trump for a rescue from the
companies he casts as big tech villains.
Though he is far from silenced, the "censorship" has
clipped Jones' nasty little flying-monkey wings, making it a bit
more difficult to accidentally or purposely stumble into his
toxic poppy fields. The piece in The Guardian concludes:
In videos posted since the removals,
Jones has alternated between bravado and desperation.
“I am not backing down,” he said in one video, though he
acknowledged feeling “spiritual-level desperation” and
seemed to see Trump as his only hope to regain his larger
platform.
“Come out before the midterms and make censorship the big
issue,” Jones said in an appeal to Trump.
“It’s the right thing to do, Mr President. It’s the
truth,” he said.
So far, Trump has not ridden to the rescue.
Personally, and as I've mentioned on several
social media discussions, I would be more concerned about the Orange Oaf of Office's threats against the First
Amendment than I'd be about social
media platforms putting the reins on lesser oafs like Jones.
In any case, despite Trump's failure thus far to step up to the
plate, some of Jones' most vociferous fans have sprung
to his defense. Apart from Jones' own nonstop hollering about his
repression and oppression, the usual group of loathsome suspects
is having yet another whine-and-cheesiness party on the Internet.
On Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams' Natural News site, f'rinstance, Adams waxed paranoid about "censorship" by the tech
giants.
Even though the criminal justice system
is corrupt and dishonest in its own way, there is at least
recognition that those who are accused may face their
accusers; that the accused has the right to see the evidence
against them; and that evidence may be presented in their
defense.
But in the world of online censorship by tech giants, no
due process exists. You’re banned without
explanation… you cannot face your accusers… you cannot
present evidence in your defense… and no evidence even
needs to be cited against you.
As will be made clear if you watch the video
embedded in that post, Adams framed all of this oppression and
repression as a "liberal" conspiracy. And in a subsequent post on Natural News, another contributor, Ethan Huff, piled it on.
Censorship is one of the ways that
liberals shut down arguments they can’t win. Many of them
can’t even have civil conversations about their beliefs
because they get immediately triggered whenever others oppose
them. To keep up with the latest news on liberal censorship,
visit Censorship.news [another Mike Adams site ~ CC].
Even weasely (no offense intended to weasels) right-wing pols
like Texas' Ted Cruz spoke up for Jones; some have said that this could be a signal that he's
trying to shore up his support from the fringe right. When I shared a post about Alex Jones' tribulations on my Facebook
page -- the post centered around the
Natural News whines and Leonard Coldwell's republication of same
-- I got some no-nonsense responses from a couple of my buds. Dave
wrote:
I'd guess there are still plenty of
outlets for Alex and his ilk - Fox news, Breitbart, etc.
But... that doesn't fit the persecution complex very well.
I love this part"...all sorts of leftist hate speech
that targets white people, Christians, and conservatives
continues to pollute the social media world unabated."
Mr. Clueless to the courtesy phone please.
Nailed it, Dave. And Martin nailed it too:
The typical reaction of these morons.
They never really grasp the fact that there's a difference
between being silenced by the state and being silenced where
they have no right to spout their bile and hatred in the
first place.
Freedom of speech stops at my front door. Spout hateful shit
in my home you either leave or get a smack in the gob or
both.
Yep.
First off, this is NOT a "First Amendment"
issue
In the US Constitution, the First Amendment addresses freedom of
expression, but it doesn't give one carte blanche to say
and write any and everything. This article on the New Statesman site 'splains it in simple terms, complete with Brit-English
spelling, seeing as how it's a British magazine published in
London.
The First Amendment to the US
constitution is wilfully misrepresented by people like Jones
and his supporters. It protects against abridgement of free
speech by the government. What it does not provide for is the
right to place your free speech on someone else’s platform,
like a private website such as YouTube. If I write something
racist or peddle a monstrous and cruel conspiracy theory
against the victims of a massacre like Sandy Hook, it would
not be an abrogation of my free speech when the New
Statesman withdraws their invitation to write for them
again. It's a privilege, not a right, to have a platform like
this.
But free speech as Jones portrays it is not free speech at
all, it is consequence-free speech.
Exactly. And privately owned platforms such as
the social media outlets that ousted Alex Jones have a right to
determine the type of content they want on those platforms.
Nor is it a "left-wing"
conspiracy On most social and political issues I could be
considered left-leaning and liberal, a fact that has turned even some former fans and supporters of this blog against me (they were okay with my claims that Kevin Trudeau is a scammer, but they can't abide my criticisms of Trump).
Yet I've also always leaned
towards letting fools have their say, no matter how foolish their
say may seem to me. Long before Whirled Musings came into
existence, I generally advocated freedom of expression, no matter
how distasteful I personally believed such expression to be. In
more recent years I've tolerated all sorts of verbal abuse and
trolling on the few platforms I maintain, i.e., this blog and my
Facebook page. For years I allowed Leonard Coldwell to repeatedly and publicly and falsely
call me a diseased slut and a prostitute and a sexual harasser
and a killer of dogs. He blocked me
from commenting on, and in some cases even from seeing, the posts
in which he viciously defamed me, so I had no way to defend
myself on those forums. Whenever one of my friends or allies
tried to post even the most polite contradiction to his claims,
he would block them and/or accuse them of being me, writing under
fake accounts. He offered absolutely zero evidence of his
accusations against me, yet he kept making them and continued to
incite his followers to harass me, which they did. Talk about
lack of "due process"...
Even so, I never tried to sue or silence the little perv, and one of his more dimwitted fans privately told me that Coldwell had told him that the reason I never sued him was that I knew that what Coldwell was saying was true, and that I was afraid of being "exposed." Actually, my reasons centered around financial limitations as well as First-Amendment issues, but in any case, what happened was that Coldwell tried to silence me by continued defamation and
incitement, and ultimately by a sham of a lawsuit (which failed). Nevertheless, I
persisted (apologies to Elizabeth Warren).
But I'm not any sort of hero in the ongoing
battle for the right to freedom of expression, which, as noted
above, is often framed in the US as First Amendment rights. I'd
say that my pal and blolleague Jason Jones, aka Salty Droid, is
more of the hero type. Not only has he endured worse verbal abuse
and more disturbing threats than I have, he has also been
repeatedly banned and blocked on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and
other platforms, simply because the scammers he wrote and talked
about didn't like what he had to say.
Yet Jason, despite his own "liberalism" and passion for
legal and social justice, hasn't tried to sue his detractors or
silence them in any way. He could very easily have taken legal
action against some SaltyDroid-haters who posted false and
defamatory videos about him a few years ago. These videos remain
online and are among the top search results for "Salty
Droid," and have been cited by numerous idiot scammers such
as the aforementioned Coldwell. But Jason has chosen not to waste
time and energy and money to silence the liars. In a May 2018 post he wrote this
about his detractors' efforts:
These are defamatory hit jobs that go
way too far, and I’ve done nothing at all about
them. I made no effort to have them removed or delisted. I
did not threaten to sue. I didn’t even complain, and I’m
not complaining now.
I want people inside the Internet Marketing community (and
the other sub-cultures I write about) to read my writing. I
want to be part of the conversation. But lots of other people
in that conversation hate what I’m saying and think my
ideas fall somewhere between extremely dangerous and
completely catastrophic; so I can’t expect smooth sailing.
It seems like the people who most want to have their voices
heard are the same people trying to silence other voices.
It’s hypocritical, pathetic, rampant, and it’s bad for
America...
I've found that to be the case too. Here's another
post about those videos, with more
details about the SEO dirty tricks that kept them at the top of
the search results.
And here is a comment Jason wrote on another one of his posts,
regarding the notion that the right to freedom of expression
applies to everyone.
I was really trying to like my fellow
GW Law alumnus Michael Avenatti [the infamous Stormy
Daniels' lawyer and harsh critic of Donald Trump], but
then he did this:
So he gets to go on every media outlet ever created, all day
and all night, to talk shit. But if someone talks shit about
him he starts whipping out defamation threats?
But it's not all black-and-white Like most stories, this one has nuances that are
often overlooked by both the pro- and anti-Alex Jones camps. An opinion writer on the Libertarian Reason.com site notes that while it's not about the First Amendment,
and while many people would not miss Jones if he disappeared
entirely, that's not exactly the point. The point, the writer
suggests, is the confusion over what exactly defines "hate
speech." And the larger issue is what the author describes as
"viewpoint censorship."
I will shed no tears for Jones. But
social media platforms that take a broad view of what
constitutes unacceptable hate speech have given themselves an
extremely difficult task—one that will likely prompt yet
more cries of viewpoint censorship down the road.
The writer of this piece on the liberal Huffington Post makes similar points, and says that the real problem is
digital platform monopolies. Anti-trust law may be the way to
deal with this issue, the author suggests, though it might not be
the solution that Alex Jones and the hatriots have in mind.
If Twitter, Facebook or YouTube were
constitutionally required to host any and all content anyone
wanted to post to them, they would become unworkable
platforms overrun by spam and bad actors attempting to
distort the platforms to their desires.
And none of this would address the actual underlying problem,
which is that removal from Facebook and YouTube feels like
actual censorship because the major platforms have
monopolized the audience for certain formats of online media
content. If you are creating videos to be distributed online,
you have to be on YouTube. That is where the audience is. If
you are writing articles or other content online, you have to
be on Facebook because it has 2.2 billion users.
There is a way to deal with this problem that doesn’t make
it impossible for platforms to moderate content users post to
them. It’s called antitrust law. If there weren’t one
main platform for video distribution and one main platform
for social media ― and if those platforms didn’t also own their biggest competition ― an actual market for different platforms
that hosted varied content could exist instead of one
platform overrun with every type of jerk.
Something to think about, anyway.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that Alex Jones
and his fellow conspiranoids should get a pass for claiming that
the Sandy Hook school shooting was a "hoax," carried
out by "crisis actors," or for making the same stupid
claims about virtually every other mass shooting that was carried
out by a white guy, or that was perpetrated against a
marginalized group such as LGBT people. Those who make such
claims deserve ridicule, public shaming, and in some cases legal
action. But overall, and to arguably a greater extent than many
of their justifiably outraged critics may want to admit, the
conspiranoids have a right to make fools of themselves in public.
Certainly Alex Jones has a right to freedom of
expression. But so too does Jason Jones...and Trump's legions of
detractors... and for that matter, your very own Whirled hostess.
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