90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

The Sordid Origin of Hate-Speech Laws

The Sordid Origin of Hate-Speech Laws

All western european countries have hate-speech laws. In 2008, the eu adopted a framework decision on “Combating Racism and Xenophobia” that obliged all member states to criminalize certain forms of hate speech. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Supreme Court of the United States has gradually increased and consolidated the protection of hate speech under the First Amendment. The European concept of freedom of expression thus prohibits certain content and viewpoints, whereas, with certain exceptions, the American concept is generally concerned solely with direct incitement likely to result in overt acts of lawlessness.

Yet the origin of hate-speech laws has been largely forgotten. The divergence between the United States and European countries is of comparatively recent origin. In fact, the United States and the vast majority of European (and Western) states were originally opposed to the internationalization of hate-speech laws. European states and the U.S. shared the view that human rights should protect rather than limit freedom of expression.

Rather, the introduction of hate-speech prohibitions into international law was championed in its heyday by the Soviet Union and allies. Their motive was readily apparent. The communist countries sought to...

Every day there is a new report about how Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and other giants of social media censor content, banish certain commentators for incorrect views, and otherwise work in a steady if unsystematic way to homogenize political opinion within an acceptably progressive bandwidth. Ideas are scoured for “racism”—as contentiously defined by the intellectual stylebook of the hard left Southern Poverty Law Center, which the media have set up as an “authority” on hate speech; freedom of speech is seen a nuisance rather than a guarantee of personal liberty and true diversity of opinion.

But there is an even more sinister threat to the first amendment than the social media, a threat that operates in a stealth way in the most crucial arena of our economic system. It is corporate giants Master Card and Visa, which now use their unparalleled financial power to determine what speech should be allowed and what speech should be silenced.

Most Americans use a credit or debit card everyday and take these two corporations as much for granted as the light switch or the automobile ignition. We buy things with their cards ranging from the annual vacations to the daily groceries. These two interlocked corporations are the drum majors marching us into a cashless society. They are powers unto themselves, but their eminence rests on our money and the fees they exact to accommodate our transactions.

The cards they issue are even more critical to the vendors whom they pay. Without the ability to accept charges to these cards as payment many businesses would in effect be out of business.

Unlike the comparatively clumsy and very public efforts of the social media to erase “offensive”—all too often a synonym for conservative—opinion, the cognate machinations of Visa/Mastercard take place more remotely and without response in the dark space of the mundane financial transaction.

It is as simple and as faceless as a lethal injection: An individual who wants to support an organization online makes the digital donation and is then informed that Visa/Mastercard will not process it. Neither the individual nor the organization he wishes to support are told that it is on a blacklist, let alone informed how or got there or how to get off. The donor is denied his right to put his money where his mouth is. The organization he supports is condemned to death by strangulation in the dark in a world designed by Kafka.

The Freedom Center had such an experience a few months ago when online donations were overnight peremptorily refused by Visa/Mastercard with no reason given and no...

DOJ handling of Trump, Clinton probes shows potential ‘abuse of prosecutorial discretion’

The Justice Department's divergent handling of the Clinton email and Russia investigations -- avoiding false-statement charges in one, while pursuing several in the other -- could demonstrate an "abuse of prosecutorial discretion," The Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway argued on the “Special Report” All-Star Panel Monday night on Fox News.

She discussed the DOJ and FBI's conduct ahead of former national security adviser Michael Flynn's sentencing, set for Tuesday, on a false-statement charge to which he pleaded guilty. Several other individuals also have been charged for false statements in the Russia case -- though no such charges were pursued during the lengthy investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email use while secretary of state.

“We have a really good test case. We have the FBI and the Department of Justice going after Hillary Clinton for breaking the law on classified information in which we saw the Department of Justice and FBI just bend over backwards, you know, giving immunity -- handing it out like candy, getting nothing in return, declining to prosecute anyone for false statements even though a ton of people have made false statements," Hemingway said.

Hours earlier, former FBI Director James Comey was questioned behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, about the bureau's handling of both investigations. Exiting the interview, he bashed Republicans, demanding that they...

Stephen Miller Decimates Leftists Over Death Of 7-Year-Old Migrant Girl; Explains Importance Of Border Wall

Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday where he blasted “left wing, activist” judges for rulings that have put lives of Americans and migrants at risk by incentivizing the “most vulnerable populations” to come to the United States.

Miller made the remarks in response to a question from CBS’s Margaret Brennan, who asked who was to blame for the death of a 7-year-old migrant girl who died while she was under the protection of Customs and Border Patrol.

Democrat Congressman Hank Johnson Once Voiced Concern That Guam Might Capsize...

Christopher Steele: I Was Hired to Help Hillary Clinton Challenge the 2016 Election Results

Christopher Steele, the former British spy who prepared the Russia “dossier” that has led to more than two years of investigations into President Donald Trump’s campaign, has told a London court that he was hired to provide a basis to challenge the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election in the event that Trump won.

The Washington Times reported Monday :

He said the law firm Perkins Coie wanted to be in a position to contest the results based on evidence he unearthed on the Trump campaign conspiring with Moscow on election interference.

His scenario is contained in a sealed Aug. 2 declaration in a defamation law suit brought by three Russian bankers in London. The trio’s American attorneys filed his answers Tuesday in a libel lawsuit in Washington against the investigative firm Fusion GPS, which handled the former British intelligence officer.

In an answer to interrogatories, Mr. Steele wrote: “Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie. It engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie LLP to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election.

“Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and HFACC Inc. (also known as ‘Hillary for America’) could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.”

Steele’s dossier was used by the FBI to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on several Trump associates. The FBI never told the FISA court explicitly that the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton campaign had paid for the dossier, though it did indicate that the document had been compiled as opposition research.

The dossier, and rumors of its contents, circulated widely throughout elite Beltway circles both before and during the election. The document — whose main claims have never been corroborated — is directly responsible for claims about Russian interference in the election, which Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the media have used to...