Author: VD

A harder line

The media cheers the politicization and weaponization of the social media companies:

The nation’s technology industry has begun taking a harder line against hate speech, misinformation and posts that potentially incite violence when made by President Donald Trump and some of his most extreme supporters after years of treating such issues gingerly amid fear of triggering the wrath of the nation’s most powerful politician.

The moves, such as labeling false posts by Trump and banishing forums devoted to supporting him after years of policy violations, have taken place across the industry in recent weeks, with actions by Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube and the live-streaming platform Twitch.

Even Facebook, which long has given wide latitude in allowing problematic posts by Trump and his followers, on Wednesday closed down a network of more than 100 accounts and pages affiliated with Trump confidante and convicted felon Roger Stone. The action came years after his use of social media first came under the scrutiny of federal investigators and involved issues dating back to 2015 that the company said it had unearthed only recently.

Of course they’re “taking a harder line”. They’re desperate to prevent President Trump’s reelection. It’s long past time for conservatives to wake up and start treating the enemy as the enemies they are.

The decision was correct

It’s fascinating to see “rule of law” conservatives decrying the Supreme Court decision to honor an 1833 Indian treaty that was never abrogated and is still in force:

The Supreme Court’s recognition of half of Oklahoma as Native land appears to right centuries of historic injustice. It could also make the state a chaotic mess of overlapping jurisdictions where hardened criminals walk free.

In a stunning 5-4 ruling on Thursday, the court found that a massive swath of eastern Oklahoma should be recognized as a Native American reservation. The state’s largest city, Tulsa, sits on this land, along with 1.8 million people, of whom only 15 percent are Native Americans.

It doesn’t right any injustices. It doesn’t actually even change anything. It simply respects the actual language of the still-extant treaty. The fact that the US government broke its treaties with casual disregard for the legalities doesn’t justify the consequences or seal them in stone. Every signed treaty should be honored to the letter.

And the appeal to “hardened criminals” walking free is a complete joke in a country that already has tens of millions of criminal invaders due to its failure to stop immigration.

Could be legit

Or it could be the Hellmouth’s attempt to control the narrative, either way, it is a good sign that more and more people are beginning to recognize the youth-devouring evil emanating from Hollywood:

While fame and fortune are an ever-enticing dream, few things seem less appealing than being a child star, and HBO’s Showbiz Kids certainly reinforces that feeling. Awash in anecdotes about the ways in which the industry—and the attendant hunger for the spotlight that consumes both children and parents—warps, alienates and exploits kids, it’s a documentary which illustrates that, sometimes, being nobody is far healthier, and more fulfilling, than being well-known.

Sexual misconduct is the dark cloud hovering over Showbiz Kids, and it comes to the fore when former Diff’rent Strokes star Todd Bridges recalls being molested as a child—a disclosure that, according to Evan Rachel Wood, isn’t unique, as she claims, “In my experience, I know a lot of kids that grew up in the industry. And what surprised me when I got older was finding out that pretty much all of the young men were abused in some way, sexually.” She then relays that, at a recent Golden Globes gala, she watched a pedophile (whom she doesn’t name) win an award, and had to walk out because she was so disgusted by the praise being lavished upon this monster. As she departed, she thought to herself, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I can’t keep watching this happen. I don’t know how to handle this. This has to stop.”

Those moments are definitely the ugliest, and most eye-opening, in Showbiz Kids. Written and directed by Alex Winter, whose big breaks came in Joel Schumacher’s 1987 Brat Pack vampire thriller The Lost Boys and 1988’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the film knows whereof it speaks.

I tend to expect it does, given that the late Schumacher, along with Spielberg, has been repeatedly been rumored to be among the most predatory of the Hellmouth’s more influential denizens.

Mailvox: cutting out the cancer

A CEO’s son writes of an encouraging response to Corporate Cancer:

My father is CEO of a [REDACTED] firm. I gave him my copy of Corporate Cancer after I read it. He read it, immediately sent it to his head of HR and made it mandatory reading for all employees. I’m told his HR manager is close friends with the EVP of HR at [a big bank], who has also now read and is sharing your book. The truth moves silent, but nevertheless moves.

I have a copy to my boss, which was less warmly received… que cera.

I’ve been told by several businessmen that CC is the most important book they’ve ever read, which is encouraging in one sense, and extraordinarily depressing in another. Then again, it probably is more useful in a practical sense than anything Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, or Lee Iacocca ever wrote.

Mailvox: making a difference

Sometimes people are just looking for someone to take a stand:

We belong to a small 400-500 member startup church that I thought was Biblically-based. Several weeks ago, our pastor preached a message on Social Justice.  After several days of consideration, I sent a two-page rebuttal to the sermon.  We fully expected to be asked to leave the church.  Today, the pastor asked me to take one of three eldership positions.

Don’t be afraid to leave. But also, don’t be afraid to lead.

Supreme Court rules against President again

The Supreme Court says the President must turn over his taxes:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a New York prosecutor can obtain President Donald Trump’s financial records but prevented – at least for now – Democratic-led House of Representatives committees from getting similar documents.

Both 7-2 rulings were authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts. One ruling means that the subpoena issued to Trump’s long-term accounting firm, Mazars LLP, for various financial records to be turned over to a grand jury as part of a criminal investigation can be enforced.

But the court sidestepped a major ruling on whether three House committees could also obtain Trump financial documents under subpoena, giving Trump at least a short-term win. Litigation will now continue in lower courts.

In both rulings, Roberts was joined by the court’s four liberals as well as Trump’s two conservative appointees to the court, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

I have no position on this, but things are rapidly getting to the point that one finds oneself beginning to wish Trump would stop arguing and tweeting and start ordering drone strikes.

Another Hollywood “death”

It rather looks as if Maxwell’s arrest is percolating through the Hellmouth:

Actress Naya Rivera is missing and presumed dead today after her four-year-old son was found alone on a boat in California.

The Glee star and her son Josey rented a pontoon boat on Lake Piru on Wednesday afternoon, but three hours later another boater raised the alarm after seeing the vessel drifting and the child asleep on board.

Cops found Rivera’s life vest on the boat and believe that ‘she did go in the lake’ to go swimming, acknowledging that ‘this may well be a case of drowning’. Her car was found nearby.

Four-year-old Josey has told investigators that his mother jumped in the water and didn’t come back up, TMZ reports, but the circumstances are unclear and cops say it is ‘challenging’ to interrogate a toddler.

Given her past association with a known pedo from the Hellmouth, there’s little question about her involvement in Hollywood values. And until a body is found and it is convincingly demonstrated to be hers, I’d be dubious about this being either an accident or a suicide.

Never take “free speech” seriously

Much less those artists who claim to champion it:

Trans writer Jennifer Finney Boylan distances herself from free speech letter – that she signed with 150 other authors and academics calling out cancel culture – after realising JK Rowling also endorsed it.

If you’re capable of deriving the correct conclusions from this little vignette, you can save yourself the trouble of reading John Bagnell Bury’s A History of the Freedom of Thought.

St. Efan banned from Twitter

Unfortunately, this is what happens when you make it clear that you are not a hard out:

Stefan Molyneux has had his Twitter account suspended, just a week after he was banned from YouTube. His removal from the platform comes amid a growing debate over free speech on social media.

The ban came without warning, Molyneux claimed during a livestream in which he discussed the development. “It’s nice to see that Twitter is talking to tech journalists before they would talk to me,” he said. The popular right-wing pundit and intellectual suggested that he was removed from the platform after promoting a new essay that outlines his values and beliefs. “It’s not hard to understand why powerful people might not want you to read what I wrote below,” reads a note at the top of the essay, in which he announced his removal from Twitter.

Molyneux argued that the campaign to deplatform conservative voices has started to “energize” conservatives and that his ban demonstrates “who has the power and who doesn’t have the power.”

Twitter appears to dispute the notion that he was removed for ideological reasons. In a statement provided to CNN, the company said that Molyneux “was suspended for spam and platform manipulation, specifically operating fake accounts.”

Liberal journalists applauded Molyneux’s ban. Jared Holt, a reporter for Right Wing Watch, said the move was “overdue” and expressed curiosity about what finally motivated Twitter to pull the plug on his account.

As someone who was banned from Twitter long ago, and who voluntarily left Facebook, I don’t see any significant harm here. And it’s good for people to see even moderates are too extreme for the SJW-converged corporations. But it also underlines the fact that building one’s own platforms is the only way to proceed, as everyone who has tried to pass as innocuous has been banned anyway.

Mike Cernovich’s comment was both apt and amusing:

The Venn diagram of people who just signed that Against Cancel Culture letter and those who will mention Stefan Molyneux being banned will be two wholly non-intersecting circles.