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Jonathan Turley

University of Colorado Site Declares Misgendering an 'Act of Violence'

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The University of Colorado Boulder (Boulder) is under fire this week for a statement on the “Pride Office” website stating that misgendering people can be considered an “act of violence.”

The guide on pronouns is reportedly the work of students associated with the office and states that “choosing to ignore or disrespect someone’s pronouns is not only an act of oppression but can also be considered an act of violence.”

It is a familiar position for many in higher education. Opposing viewpoints are now routinely declared to be violence. That allows professors and students to rationalize their own act of violence or censorship.

The most vivid example was recently seen at Hunter College, which is part of the CUNY system. Professor Shellyne Rodríguez recently was fired after holding a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter and threatened to “chop you up.” However, Hunter College decided not to fire her over a prior incident in which she trashed a pro-life table run by students.

Rodríguez spotted students with pro-life material at the college. She was captured on a videotape telling the students that “you’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.” Even after a remarkably polite student said that he was “sorry,” Rodríguez would have nothing of it. After all, espousing pro-life views is now “violence.” Rodríguez rejected the apology and declared “No you’re not — because you can’t even have a f–king baby. So you don’t even know what that is. Get this s–t the f–k out of here.”
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No Laughing Matter: John Cleese Holds Line Against Calls to Cancel Scene in Life of Brian

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We have previously discussed how comedians have been objecting that woke activists are killing comedy. The complaint is that a group of perpetually pissed off, humorless people are remaking the world in their own image. It began with college campuses which comedians are now saying are dead as venues since you cannot safely make any joke that insults any group other than white straight males or Christians or conservatives.

Others have objected to hate speech laws limiting comedians, particularly after some comedians have been prosecuted for “malicious communications” or insulting groups or religious figuresSix out of ten students view offensive jokes as hate speech. This week, however, activists appear to have met their match in a legend of comedy who has opposed the cutting of a scene from the movie The Life of Brian. No, activists are not upset with the endless jokes about Italians, Christians, and Jews. It is the scene involving a man who wants to become a women and have a child. John Cleese is refusing to yield.

In The Life of Brian, the scene involves “Stan” who announces that he wants to be a woman named Loretta and have babies. Activists objected that it made fun of transgender people and demanded that it be cut from the film.

The scene shows Stan declaring “I want to be a woman… It’s my right as a man. I want to have babies… It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.” After Cleese’s protest, the character snaps, “Don’t you oppress me!”

Some reported that Cleese had agreed to cut the scene. However, Cleese tweeted out a correction of the “misreporting.”
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Wait! Washington Post’s Bump Makes the Last Pitch for Russian Collusion

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Shortly before the release of the Durham report, I wrote about the concern that we have a de facto state media in the United States. The column explored the pattern of false claims replicated across media platforms in the last four years. Then the Report was released and the media seemed intent to prove the point. However, even in this determined group, the Washington Post (which won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Russian collusion) set a new level of denial with a column by Philip Bump.

Bump has long been controversial for his role in pushing some of the false claims discussed in prior columns. Some of those are worth noting briefly because they share common elements to his most recent column.

For example, Bump was one of those who made the false claims that Attorney General Bill Barr cleared Lafayette Park for a photo op for Trump. He also claimed that Barr lied in his denial of the use of tear gas by federal agents. Bump wrote the Washington Post column titled “Attorney General Bill Barr’s Dishonest Defense of Clearing of Lafayette Square.” Not only did the Post refer to the “debunked claim” that no tear gas was used by the federal government, but goes on to state...
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America’s State Media: The Blackout on Biden Corruption is Truly 'Pulitzer-Level Stuff'

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This week, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donalds tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. “For those in the press, this is easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,” he pleaded.

The response was virtually immediate. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”

For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren.

Last year, I wrote a column about how the media were preparing a difficult “scandal implosion” to protect the Bidens and themselves from the backlash from disclosures of this influence peddling operation.

The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as “Russian disinformation” before the election. That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic.

But the media then ignored what was on that “authentic laptop.” Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries.

When media outlets such as the New York Post confirmed the emails, the media then insisted that there was no corroboration of the influence peddling payments and no clear proof of criminal conduct. It entirely ignored the obvious corruption itself.
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'No Ties to You': MSNBC Host Spins Possible Hunter Biden Charges In Rare Interview With President

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Last night, President Joe Biden did what is a relatively rare thing. He sat down with an actual reporter ostensibly to answer questions. While earlier promising a “major press conference” for the media as a whole to ask him questions, Biden instead did a low-risk interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle. In the interview, Ruhle briefly touched on the possible criminal charges awaiting Hunter Biden. Despite reports of a whistleblower alleging a bribery scandal involving the President, Ruhle assured the President (and the viewers) that the still unknown charges will involve “no ties to you.” Moreover, the interview is most interesting in what was not addressed. It was a vivid example of what I previously called “the art of scandal implosion.”
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ABC News Censors Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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Before he was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy declared that “hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard.” That does not appear to be the view of ABC News, which censored his son who is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination. ABC objected to Kennedy’s views on COVID-19 vaccines, so it simply announced that it was preventing viewers from hearing those views to protect them from dangerous ideas.

ABC’s Linsey Davis began the interview by introducing Kennedy as “one of the biggest voices pushing anti-vaccine rhetoric, regularly distributing misinformation and disinformation about vaccines, which scientific and medical experts overwhelmingly say are safe and effective based on rigorous scientific studies.”

That apparently was not enough. After telling viewers that this is one of his most famous stances (and its own disagreement), it then censored those views.

After airing the interview, Davis announced “[w]e should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines. We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview.”
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Antony Blinken and the ‘Made Men’ of the Biden Administration

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken would really, really prefer to talk about grain in Ukraine this week. But many people are less interested in what Blinken is doing as secretary of state than in what he did to become secretary of state.

This week, Blinken was implicated in a political coverup that could well have made the difference in the 2020 election. According to the sworn testimony of former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell, Blinken – then a high-ranking Biden campaign official – was “the impetus” of the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop story was really Russian disinformation. Morrell then organized dozens of ex-national security officials to sign the letter claiming that the Hunter laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Morrell further admitted that the Biden campaign “helped to strategize about the public release of the statement.”

Finally, he admitted that one of his goals was not just to warn about Russian influence but “to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”

Help it did. Biden claimed in a presidential debate that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” Biden used the letter to say “nobody believes” that the laptop is real.

In reality, the letter was part of a political plan with the direct involvement of his campaign, but Biden never revealed their involvement. Indeed, over years of controversy surrounding this debunked letter, no one in the Biden campaign or White House (including Blinken) revealed their involvement.
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Is Free Speech Killing Us? FDA Commissioner Declares 'Misinformation' a Medical Risk

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Last year, we discussed the declaration of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that censorship was needed to combat what he called the “infodemic.” It was a jarring position given the censorship of experts and scientists who have now been vindicated in raising questions over mask protection to natural immunities to school closings to the origins of Covid 19.

Nevertheless, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf added his own voice to call for censorship. Califf declared that life expectancy rates are being suppressed due to “misinformation.” His call for action against ill-defined “disinformation” or “misinformation” is being echoed throughout the Biden Administration.

In a CNBC interview,  Califf lashed out at “health misinformation” which he said was one of his top priorities to address through “specific authorities at FDA, FTC and other areas.”

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'Connect to Opportunity': State Department Pushed LinkedIn to Censor 'Disinformation'

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We have been discussing the growing amount of evidence of government censorship efforts using third party organizations as well as direct agency action. One source of funding for such effort was the State Department and its Global Engagement Center, or GEC. Now, litigation brought by Missouri and Louisiana shows that State Department officials pushed companies to get onboard with blacklisting efforts. Despite such evidence of direct government censorship efforts, Democratic members continue to oppose attempts to expose the full scope of such government programs and grants. Witnesses who testified about the dangers of such censorship efforts were even denounced as “Putin lovers” and apologists for insurrectionists and racists by leading Democrats.

The latest evidence involves the site LinkedIn, an employment-focused social media site. The concern is that the effort to enlist LinkedIn could reflect an effort to target blacklisted individuals. The company’s “connect to opportunity” takes on a more menacing meaning when used as part of a blacklisting system.

I previously wrote that the congressionally created, federally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) supported blacklisting efforts at the British-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The index was widely ridiculed for targeting ten conservative and libertarian sites as the most dangerous sources of disinformation; it sought to persuade advertisers to withdraw support for those sites, while listing their most liberal counterparts as among the most trustworthy.

Shortly after my column posted in The Hill, the NED wrote to me to say that it was discontinuing support for the GDI. Microsoft also was forced into retreat after it was shown to be pushing the GDI’s biased blacklist.

Then we learned of additional funding through the State Department’s GEC.
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SFSU Responds to Alleged Assault on Riley Gaines . . . By Praising the Protesters

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We previously discussed the disgraceful attack on former swimmer Riley Gaines who was reportedly assaulted when she tried to speak about her views on transgender issues at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Gaines had to be removed to a locked room for hours by police for her own protection. It is now clear why students believed that they had license to engage in such disruptions. SFSU has issued a statement that was conspicuous in its failure to condemn the mob or promise accountability for these actions.

The event was only the latest example of protesters “deplatforming” speakers with opposing views by shouting them down. The mob, however, was so unruly that police had to rush Gaines to safety.

One would think that this would be an easy call for any institution of higher education. Denying free expression and threatening those with opposing views is the very antithesis of core principles.

Instead, SFSU issued a statement that seemed to express sympathy for the protesters and those who were exposed to her views.

After beginning by expressing concern for the transgender community, the statement of Jamillah Moore, Vice President for Student Affairs & Enrollment Management, repeatedly commends students for their protest and says “Thank you to our students who participated peacefully in Thursday evening’s event. It took tremendous bravery to stand in a challenging space.” At no point does SFSU express concern for Gaines or the students who arranged for the event. At no point does SFSU promise to hold students responsible for shouting down the speaker or endangering her.

Gaines has objected to the notion that the protest was peaceful.
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