This took place at a school board meeting in Virginia. The rest is self-explanatory. Recommend this Post
Continue readingTag: censorship
Dead Wild Roses: Reality Versus Trans Ideology – Helen Joyce & Peter Boghossian
This interview is so good!
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: 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 a very concerned person who has done research on the subject of the LGBTQ ideology” . Thus spaketh Lorraine Hackenschmidt, described
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: 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 in the world around her. Sometimes, in order to ‘coax’ her to eat, we play some children’s programming available on
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: 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 becoming very difficult for someone like me to tolerate. The careerists were always looking over their shoulders, ever fearful
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Twitter Censors Reality – Ominous.
Do think that the gender-magic might be a problem now? This corrosive religion demands absolute conformity to its strictures or you will be punished. Women who have *CORRECTLY* pointed out that this is a man have been suspended from twitter for doing so. Truth matters. Freedom of Speech Matters. Female
Continue readingScripturient: 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. See if you can spot in his words 1) His lack of knowledge about the subject; 2) Blatant lies; 3)
Continue readingThings Are Good: 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 the increased their censorship. Many western-owned media companies were banned from operating within Russia while other companies continued to operate
Continue readingScripturient: 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 the Areopagitica. It was subtitled A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: 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 further I got into her piece. At a school board meeting last month in what I choose to call
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: 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 level English course. The thorn in the side of all of us teaching it was a novel Entitled Obasan, by
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: 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 coffin of the empire known as America. This tale comes from Southlake, Texas, where many are concerned about the ability
Continue readingScripturient: 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 the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry, or SVJI). I admire Tim’s tenacity at trying to get the truth out to the
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: 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 he quit The Intercept, for not agreeing to their new policy of enforced censorship, saying Glenn had “lost the thread”.
Continue readingScripturient: 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” letters or comments from the public. It’s so very Stalinist of them that they need staff to ensure the public’s
Continue readingScripturient: 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 Steve Berman. We all need someone to measure ourselves against, I suppose, and a low bar is so much easier
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: 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 Intercept; and the further disgraceful behaviour of the once-venerable Naomi Klein, who stooped to attacking and slandering Glenn Greenwald for
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: 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 surveillance and police state, and/or state-corporate propaganda, and manipulation of elections and the public mind (ie: the Facebook and Cambridge
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: 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 and the shift, by supporting and using the alternative social media, search engines, email, browsers, etc., which do not data
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Cynicism & Hope
I firmly believe in the fundamental importance of freedom of speech. Without it, freedom dies, and democracy is impossible. I don’t believe in censorship, because censorship always leads to tyranny. But if there were ever a single book worthy of burning, I’d say it is Lord of the Flies. What
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