Censorship

NH Representative Calls For Limits On Conservatives’ Rights

January 15, 2013 By Jeff Altiere 4 Comments

Conservatives and Libertarians alike know that they are put down time and time again (occasionally by each other; but soon, we may have a bigger threat to deal with.) To quote Cynthia Chase (D-NH) in the Union Leader newspaper: “In the opinion of this Democrat, Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today.” She continued, saying that “One way is to pass measures that will restrict the ‘freedoms’ that they think they will find here. Another is to shine the bright light of publicity on who they are and why they are coming.” Now, she was referring to the developing Libertarian Free State Project, which is trying to get people to move to New Hampshire.

To say that the people who believe that Government should be small, that spending should be cut, and that people should be finding jobs (so they can get off Entitlement Programs) should have their freedoms limited is ludicrous. The Constitution of the United States guarantees FREE SPEECH (see Article I, Section I), basically saying that people can say what they want, think what they want, and not be infringed upon. What she proposes, though, goes against the Constitution itself. What she calls for, the censorship of Conservative and Libertarian values and arguments, moves to defy one of the freedoms the Founding Fathers and so many others fought and died to attain and defend. Many people have made the ultimate sacrifice over many years to keep these freedoms alive, and she basically wants to take what they have done and throw it in the trash. She wants to take the freedoms given to us Conservatives and Libertarians, shred them up, and say “you can’t do that”.

America has come very far since the days when the British were in control. We’ve revolted, had a revolution, and gained our Independence. We’ve already been through one Civil War, and we as a nation weren’t even 100 years old. We’ve been through two World Wars, both excruciatingly painful; but we pulled through. We’ve been through countless other wars since. All through those, we have fought to keep our rights, our liberty, and our freedom. Men and women have worked so hard and died to make sure we at home can keep these rights. It would be sad to see those rights taken away not by invasion, but by our own people. By our own neighbors, by anyone. Maybe even a family member. These rights were won so we could all be free.

When one person or group of people believes that they should be taken away for a certain few, or even a certain majority, trouble is only so far in the distance. People constantly say that they will not stand for their government telling them what to do, how to think, what to say, and what they can or can’t have. I for one am one of those people. I will not allow my rights, which are guaranteed by the Constitution, to be limited. “I will not sit by peacefully and watch” is what many people say, and I for one agree with them and see their point. Cynthia Chase’s comments have angered many, for I myself was one of the many. I have seen what some say. They are displeased and disgusted that just because they believe in Conservatism or Libertarianism, they must have their rights limited. We are not pleased and shall not stand for this at all.

Filed Under: Featured Stories, Floyd Reports Tagged With: Censorship

Censorship Row Shows China’s Tight Grip On Media

January 11, 2013 By Breaking News Leave a Comment

GUANGZHOU, China (OfficialWire) — China’s new Communist Party leaders want to appear more open, but they’re not about to give up control of the media. That’s the lesson of a dustup involving an influential newspaper whose staff briefly rebelled against especially heavy-handed censorship.

The staff of Southern Weekly returned to work after some controls were relaxed, but public demands for the ouster of the top censor were ignored. Some observers took solace in the fact that no journalists were punished — at least not yet.

“The fact that no one is being immediately punished is a victory. That is not insignificant,” said Steve Tsang, a China politics expert at the University of Nottingham in Britain. “It’s a smart use of the party’s power but it’s not actually making any compromise in terms of the basic fundamental principles of the party staying fully in control on anything that really matters.”

China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, has raised reformist hopes and struck an especially populist note in vowing to tackle official corruption. In an early December speech he praised China’s constitution and said people’s rights must be respected, comments that helped set the stage for the censorship clash.

Read More at OfficialWire . By Didi Tang.

Photo Credit: johntrathome (Creative Commons)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Censorship, China

Rupert Murdoch Backs Obama’s Gun Grab

December 23, 2012 By Cliff Kincaid 2 Comments

An honest account of media misinformation after the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy has to take into account Rupert Murdoch’s tweet about the need to ban “automatic weapons,” when none was used to kill any of the 26 people. Can the chairman of News Corporation, the parent of Fox News, be this ignorant about the nature of gun laws and guns in America?

He asked, “When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons?” He urged Obama to exercise “bold leadership” on the issue.

Deep inside his story about the comments, Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine noted, “Despite Murdoch’s plea, automatic weapons are already illegal in the United States; Adam Lanza [the killer] used semiautomatics.”

In fact, automatic weapons are not technically illegal but are subject to extensive regulation and are very difficult to obtain.

One interesting aspect of this controversy is that left-leaning reporters such as Dylan Byers of Politico publicized Murdoch’s comments without correcting him. Others followed suit. “Rupert Murdoch demanded tighter gun control in the aftermath of the horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut,” reported The Huffington Post, without noting that his remarks were inaccurate and the “gun control” he talked about was already in effect.

This is fascinating because, in the past, liberal media have tried to claim that Fox News personnel spew misinformation about current events, leading to a lack of knowledge about important matters of public policy. Here is a case of the owner of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and other properties saying something that is completely erroneous and irrelevant to what happened in Newtown, Connecticut.

But why would liberal publications not want people to know that Murdoch was in error? There are several possible explanations:

They do not understand gun laws, either, and didn’t realize Murdoch was wrong.
They don’t care that Murdoch was wrong and wanted to use his mistaken comment to spread misinformation to the public about the killings.
They know Murdoch was wrong but wanted to use his comment to send a message to Fox News Channel hosts and commentators that they should get on the “gun control” bandwagon with their boss.

Some conservative-oriented news sites did correct the media mogul. “Early news reports indicate that automatic weapons were not used in yesterday’s school shooting,” Breitbart News reported, in a brief story about Murdoch’s comments. Indeed, no evidence of automatic weapons being used has turned up. Twitchy Media noted, “Closer attention to the reports coming out of his media properties would have informed Murdoch that automatic weapons weren’t used in today’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.”

Also oblivious to the facts, Malcolm Turnbull, who reportedly knows Murdoch, replied by saying that the politicians would act when pressured by the media and that “I suspect they will find the courage when Fox News enthusiastically campaigns for it.”

This, then, is why the comment is getting so much attention from the left. The political progressives saw it as an effort to send marching orders to the conservative news channel to back Obama’s controversial call for more legislation.

Media Matters, the George Soros-funded left-wing organization, jumped on the comments, contrasting Murdoch’s “Call For [A] Weapons Ban” with how Fox News Channel commentators supposedly were guilty in the past of “Extreme Pro-gun Rhetoric.” The “rhetoric” consisted of comments in favor of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

The New York Post, another Murdoch property, has already demonstrated Murdoch’s influence by following his lead and running an editorial on December 18 insisting that Lanza’s semi-automatic rifle somehow functioned like a “fully automatic” weapon. The editorial seemed like an attempt to justify Murdoch’s erroneous comments.

“It is very discouraging that Murdoch thinks that machine guns have anything to do with these attacks,” noted John Lott, the author of More Guns, Less Crime.“There are strong self-defense reasons for people to have semi-automatic weapons.”

In addition to such figures as Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, Lott has been willing to take on those in the media, especially on CNN, who are guilty of spreading misinformation about the massacre. But he has not been invited to appear on Fox News to rebut gun grabbers like Murdoch.

Referring to Lott’s credentials as a FoxNews.com columnist, Eric Wemple of The Washington Post notes that the Fox News Channel is failing to use its “go-to guy on hand” to counter federal calls for more “gun control” legislation. He said Lott’s “low profile” on FoxNews.com since the killings suggests that the network and its website are “treading carefully” on the subject.

Rather than “treading carefully,” it appears that the Fox News Channel is marching to Murdoch’s directives, as revealed on his Twitter page. Perhaps Lott’s willingness to rebut Murdoch on his blog helps explain why he in particular is not being effectively utilized by the channel.

What’s worse, as Gabriel Sherman has reported, a Lott column about the differences between semiautomatics and so-called military style assault weapons was actually killed by FoxNews.com.

What we are seeing here is a coordinated attempt to use Murdoch’s erroneous comments to further a political left-wing agenda. Murdoch’s employees are capable of understanding that the comments are being exploited for political purposes. But it is quite another thing to say on the air that the boss is wrong and to keep churning out facts that contradict Murdoch’s dubious position.

We appear to be witnessing self-censorship on the part of Fox News, in order to serve Murdoch’s agenda.

Fox News has to be carefully monitored in the weeks ahead to see if the Murdoch comments have a continued impact on the channel and are used to muzzle the case for gun rights as Obama and his other media allies lay the groundwork for further restrictions on the Second Amendment.

The information source many conservatives go to for accurate and informed coverage appears to be going the way of the liberal media.

Photo credit: World Economic Forum (Creative Commons)

MILLIONS OF EMAILS DELETED: Rupert Murdoch May Have Shuttered News Of The World In Order To Destroy Records Following yesterday’s shocking and sudden shutdown of the 168 year…
Rupert Murdoch Eyes Profit, Changing TV History (Again) With Conan O’Brien If the money is right and Conan O’Brien is game,…

Filed Under: Featured Stories, Floyd Reports Tagged With: Censorship, George Soros, Gun Control, Media Matters

The Devil In UN Treaty Details

December 18, 2012 By Richard Larsen 3 Comments

United Nations treaties, much like U.S. legislation, belie their intent when all one looks at is the title or even the stated objective. To really grasp their full intent, it’s incumbent to read the entire treaty in order to not be among the gullible who swallow the superficial explanation. Such is the case with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) treaty, which failed ratification in the U.S. Senate last week.

The CRPD seems ostensibly to be one of those “feel good” measures, based on its summary. Its stated intent is to “promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity” If that’s all the measure did, it would’ve been unanimously approved. However, the objective, along with the title, is as deceptive as the Affordable Care Act, which as we increasingly learn is neither affordable, nor will it provide quality care. It’s legislative deception at its finest. And as with the ACA, the “devil’s in the details” with the CRPD.

The CRPD has fifty Articles and nearly 200 requirements. Many of the requirements are controversial and have little if anything to do with advancing “rights” of the disabled, but address issues like abortion, forced contraception, limiting freedom of speech, restricting freedom of press, altering Social Security benefits, and circumventing parental rights. Walter Olson of the Cato Institute indicates, from a thorough study of the treaty, that “Families, parents, states, Congress, and students all stand to lose some independence” if the CRPD was ratified.

These issues are difficult enough to deal with in the context of our highly polarized political environment and Congress; yet inexplicably, there were 61 U.S. Senators willing to abdicate domestic control over such issues, turning them over to an unelected bureaucracy of the UN.

And that’s precisely what would have occurred had the treaty been ratified. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states: “and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land.” So the bedeviled details of the CRPD would trump federal statute. And true to form, for the colluders in the UN, they even included a clause that would debilitate our 10^th Amendment of state’s rights. Article 4, Section 5 of the CRPD declares: “The provisions of the present Convention shall extend to all parts of federal states without any limitations or exceptions.”

Succinctly, the U.S. would have surrendered our sovereignty on all issues addressed in the treaty had the Senate foolishly ratified it. Sen. James Risch (R-ID) clearly understood what was at stake when he explained after the vote: “I have been outspoken and critical of the ballooning reach of the United Nations into every aspect of our lives. At the end of the day, this is a matter of national sovereignty for the United States and every other country in the world.”

If we, as a nation, ever wanted to make changes to our own Americans with Disabilities Act or any other related federal laws, of which there are half a dozen, we would be unable to do so had the treaty been ratified. All changes to our own code on these subjects would’ve been impossible, for the treaty would have transferred jurisdiction on such matters to an unelected, bureaucratic body in the United Nations. Our sovereignty on all related maters would have been forfeited and ceded to the UN.

And this is by design; for we see it in all such treaties crafted by the United Nations. The UN Arms Trade Treaty, ostensibly drawn up to curtail terrorist acquisition of small arms, is an only slightly masqueraded attempt at identification, control, and regulation of small arms and munitions in every member state. A month-long effort in July to frame the treaty to the liking of all UN members failed. But within hours of Obama’s reelection last month, the administration changed its tone and promised unequivocal support for the measure.

The UN’s Law of the Sea Treaty, which was in its most recent incarnation ratified by the UN in 1994, has never had enough votes in the U.S. Senate to make our country beholden to it. That treaty essentially transfers legal ownership and sovereignty over the world’s oceans and seas to the UN, which then has all rights to royalties and ownership of offshore drilling operations among other provisions. It also has backdoor provisions for enforcing carbon emissions.

The UN Internet Regulation Treaty, currently being drafted at a conference in Dubai, is nothing short of a power and censorship grab by the United Nations, as was revealed just this week. According to Terry Kramer, the U.S. ambassador to the World Conference on International Telecommunications, the treaty has morphed into an attempt to extend internet governance to the UN, grant the UN taxing authority over transnational internet ventures, and control content. Gratefully, it appears that the U.S. will not sign onto this latest UN power grab.

The United Nations has no reservation in purloining the rights of sovereign states and their citizens. As with any legislation, at any level, we mustn’t be lulled into complacency based on the titles or stated objectives from anything emanating from the UN. The devil is indeed in the details, and there was a lot of the devil in the CRPD.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, Idaho, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.

UN Arms Treaty Vs. Our Second Amendment “All countries of the world are coming together in New…
UN Gun Control Treaty Will Kill Second Amendment “Representatives from many of the world’s socialist, tyrannical and dictatorial…

Filed Under: Floyd Reports Tagged With: abortion, Censorship

Anti-smoking Loon Rewrites Classic Christmas Poem

October 29, 2012 By B. Christopher Agee Leave a Comment

In many American homes, reading the 19th century poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” is a major part of each Christmas season.

Even those who have never read the work in its entirety can probably recite its opening lines: “‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring – not even a mouse.”

For one Canadian publisher, this classic piece of literature is due for a politically-correct update featuring a non-smoking Santa.

In an interview, she discussed her hack job on the nearly 200-year-old poem, saying, “I just really don’t think Santa should be smoking in the 21st century.”

Of course, as Michelle Obama tells us between bites of deep-fried snacks, obesity is “the number one greatest security threat that we have.”

The censored St. Nick, though, will be keeping his extra pounds. If this do-gooder is worried kids will start smoking pipes with the classic Santa as a role model, shouldn’t she also do something about his bowl full of jelly?

“He doesn’t eat in the story. That’s not my issue,” she said, dismissing the topic entirely.

Her crusade against Clement Clarke Moore’s brilliant interpretation of Father Christmas did extend to other peccadilloes — primarily related to his wardrobe.

The revamped Santa will be wearing faux fur instead of the real thing. Apparently kids were hearing this poem and immediately running out to round up minks and a can of Prince Albert.

It’s not just the grumpy conservatives like me who think this whitewash of American tradition is utter nonsense.

A spokesperson for the American Library Association didn’t hold back, calling the publisher’s rewrite “an act of censorship that denies the audience access to the author’s authentic voice.”

The National Coalition Against Censorship came out with its own statement, saying that “putting children in an insulation bubble … is not only impossible, it is unproductive.”

Those two quotes sum it up quite succinctly.

Kids are being exposed to so much trash, violence, sex and drugs in the most prevalent forms of media on a daily basis while one vigilante publisher thinks she’s going to make her mark on society by putting Santa on the patch. Let’s try to clean up our present societal decay before we try to sterilize the past.

To see the original version of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” click here.

B. Christopher Agee founded The Informed Conservative in 2011. Like his Facebook page for engaging, relevant conservative content daily.

Photo credit: hegarty_david (Creative Commons)

Lunatic Left Bans Smoking –– At Home! In a political environment that considers the term “illegal immigrant”…
Doctors Tell Barack Obama To Quit Smoking, Drinking Barack Obama is still struggling to kick smoking, according to…

Filed Under: Floyd Reports Tagged With: Censorship, Michelle Obama

NH Representative Calls For Limits On Conservatives’ Rights

Censorship Row Shows China’s Tight Grip On Media

Rupert Murdoch Backs Obama’s Gun Grab

The Devil In UN Treaty Details

Anti-smoking Loon Rewrites Classic Christmas Poem

Help the Cause!

Stay Updated with Impeach Obama

Most Popular Today

Recent Posts

Impeach Obama Archives

Blogroll

Contributors