UPDATED: State Control: Limiting The Range Of Thought in Amerika
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no…
censorship
Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Jeremy Appel reports on a new study showing that Alberta has both avoided developing the capacity to manage tailings pond spills, and misinformed…
Fascist Twitter?
Letter to X (Musk) Letter To Elon Musk, Re: My Suspension From Twitter Twitter, “X”, “bastion of free speech”, suspended my account today, saying this: We’ve temporarily limited some of…
Such Elequence!
This took place at a school board meeting in Virginia. The rest is self-explanatory. Recommend this Post
When They Start Talking About Ideologies And Agendas
… you generally know where they are coming from. “We must protect our children from sexual grooming and pedophilia. The sexualization agenda is robbing children of their innocence.” “I am…
The American Taliban
One of the main joys of this part of my life is helping to look after our granddaughter, who is now 18 months old and very, very bright and engaged…
The Flight From Knowledge
There is never a moment in my post-teaching life when I have regretted retiring. The paperwork was bad enough, but in the latter part of my career, the politics were…
Debunking Poilievre’s Tweets, Part 2
This is a continuation of my debunking of a small sample of Pierre Poilievre’s (aka Skippy’s) 2022 tweets. His tweets are presented in italics; my responses follow in roman text.…
Reminder: Occasionally Pop You Filter Bubble
Figure 1 from Cook, Ellerton, and Kinkead 2018. CC BY 3.0 When Russia recently expanded their invasion into Ukraine they clamped down on what they called “fake news”, meaning that…
Milton Was Wrong
In 1644, the English poet and pamphleteer John Milton wrote an impassioned defence of free speech (or, more factually, against censorship of print and in favour of restriction-free publication) called…
When Worlds Collide And Converge
While reading the early part of a recent column by Rosie DiManno, as a Canadian I couldn’t help but feel a measure of smugness, but that sentiment quickly evaporated the…
Book Crime
A column by The Star’s Heather Mallick dredged up memories of my teaching day, memories that are not altogether pleasant. Many years ago I was teaching a Grade 10 advanced…
Things Fall Apart
Can a society that regards books as threats survive? I have my serious doubts, doubts you may share after becoming acquainted with the following story, yet another nail in the…
The Inquiry Cost $250,000 More? Were We Lied To?
Former councillor Tim Fryer is back on the agenda this coming week, making another delegation to the Strategic Initiatives Standing Committee about the true costs of the judicial inquiry (aka…
Sliding Into Irrelevance: Pro-Censorship Stance Obliterates Careers – and Minds
The once-great Naomi Klein. I had great respect for her until she burned her very considerable credibility to the ground, by publicly and viciously attacking Glenn Greenwald recently – after…
Another Sad Day for Collingwood
It’s sad to see any council devolve into pettiness and paranoia, but not surprising when this thin-skinned group does. In a story on CollingwoodToday, council voted 4-3* to censor “fact-check”…
Striving for Mediocrity
On a council laden with dunces, deadwood, and dullards, it must be some consolation to our elected representatives, that they can at least claim to be less mediocre than Councillor…
Freedom of Speech vs Censorship
With the disgraceful behaviour of the Intercept, first censoring the venerable Glenn Greenwald, then attacking and slandering him after he resigned, over his refusal to abide by censorship at the…
Big Exodus from Big Tech
Time for the exodus to begin in earnest from the now confirmed to be fascist and deeply Orwellian Big Tech giants. At the least, we need to begin the migration…
Censorship, Big Tech & The Closing Down of Society
Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and the MAGATs – Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and Twitter – are all now embedded and engaged in censorship, data mining, privacy invasion, the new global…