90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Facebook protest calls for 'blackout' of site over treatment of conservatives

A Facebook event set for August 25th asks users to suspend their accounts for at least 24 hours in protest of what it calls arbitrary and capricious policies targeting conservatives, event organizer John Vigil told
Examiner Friday.

The event, called "Facebook Blackout," also asks businesses to suspend their advertising for the entire day.

When asked what inspired him to do this, Vigil said he was tired of being punished for conservative posts while "Kill Zimmerman" pages were allowed to stay active.

Vigil also said his fiancé was put into "Facebook jail" for using the word "muzzie," referring to Muslims.

"There is no doubt that Facebook has a very liberal bias in terms of meting out discipline," he said.

As of this writing, the event has over 2,500 people who say they intend to suspend their accounts for the full 24-hour period. A similar event on July 4 attracted over 2,400 attendees. That event, called "Freedom from Facebook Day," only asked users to log off the site for 24 hours.

One person at the event said she was banned from Facebook for a day because a liberal didn't like what she said -- a very common complaint.

Another person said he was banned for anti-Islam posts while others complained of being punished for using the "friends" feature.

Yet another said she was blocked for 12 hours for writing "shame on you" in response to a post saying George Zimmerman should have drowned when he was helped family members involved in a wreck.

Complaints like these are nothing new.

In March, conservative blogger Diane Sori was banned from Facebook for a post she never made. Worse yet, she had no Internet access at the time she was banned.

The same month, we reported that a Texas man was punished for comparing a friend to a liberal.

The site has been somewhat schizophrenic over posts involving violence, allowing grisly beheading videos in some cases while punishing others who post links that lead to images of beheadings.

Recently, Facebook took down the very popular "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" page, claiming it contained hate speech and nudity, but we were unable to find anything in that category on the page.

Other pro-veteran pages like "Grunts11Bravo" were also targeted by Facebook.

Administrators we spoke to believe they were targeted by "trolls," people who "like" a page in order to file false reports of hate speech or nudity. Some told us they believe the attacks were coordinated by liberal pages intent on shutting down dissenting opinion.

Recently, Fox News' Todd Starnes was banned by Facebook for a short period over a politically incorrect post referencing Paula Deen and the NRA.

The social media giant recently apologized after it blocked a link to Kirk Cameron's new movie, "Unstoppable."

The event can be seen here.

http://www.examiner.com/article/facebook-protest-calls-for-blackout-of-site-over-treatment-of-conservatives

U.S. Government Poisoning Its Citizenry?

Husband shoots 2 bank robbery suspects who kidnapped him, his wife

Two bank robbery suspects were shot in Colorado County Thursday night by a man who said they kidnapped him and his wife, a bank employee. The Story is HERE

Obama Appointee Inplementing Change...

US Attorney Bill Killian: Posting Something Mean About Muslims on Social Media Might Be a Criminal Action Under Federal Civil Rights Laws

by ACE OF SPADES 31 May 2013
The First Amendment served us well for a time, but now it'soutdated.

Remember reading that England had arrested a guy for anti-Muslim Twitter postings in the aftermath of the Woolrich slaughter? And remember thinking, "Well, this is America, that can't happen here"?

Oh yes it can. Obama's Attorney for the Eastern district of Tennessee wants you to know that if you say something untoward about Muslims, the Federal government may imprison you.

Killian and Moore will provide input on how civil rights can be violated by those who post inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media. “This is an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play into freedom of religion and exercising freedom of religion,” Killian told The News Monday. “This is also to inform the public what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.” ... Killian said Internet postings that violate civil rights are subject to federal jurisdiction.

The posting he offers as a "for instance" is an egregious one. And yet this country has long protected, absolutely, egregious speech, such as hardcore pornography, for a simple reason: Either you are at liberty to say what you will or you are not. If you are constantly double-thinking every word you might say, for fear of being prosecuted, you are self-censoring, in anticipation of a possible prosecution by the government.

Rather than having a system in which people were constantly worried about imprisonment for speech, our country has evolved a simple bright-line code: Speech of all kinds, with a few exceptions that can be counted on three fingers, is absolutely protected.

Remember, the importance of this bright-line, no-exceptions rule of free speech was preached to us, even when some of us might not have liked it so much, as when hardcore pornography was afforded absolute protection under the First Amendment. In the case of hardcore pornography, it was argued -- successfully -- that having each artist weigh the possibility of an obscenity prosecution was too much of a burden on his free speech rights, and would have, unavoidably, a chilling effect on speech.

That was the rule then, and that was the rationale.

But now comes the Obama Administration to tell you that Yes, you just might be imprisoned for something you say online, so you'd better Watch What You Say.

Remember when Ari Fleischer said that, without suggesting any kind of legal penalties? Remember how the media freaked out?

But now comes the US Attorney for the Eastern district of Tennessee explicitly telling you that you may be imprisoned if a political appointee decides your political speech has crossed a line.

Somehow, I don't think Tim Robbins will be portentously howling us that a "chill wind" is blowing across our rights of free expression this week.

Disasters And Their Causes...

All Is Lost...

Talk about first world problems. The entity above has to create drama and apparently other "beings that share her headspace". I don't think Maslow envisioned the need for this level of psychodrama in his hierarchy of needs pyramid..

Here are a few more first world problems: