Important free speech case filed against Twitter

02/26/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, it all started when Twitter banned Jared Taylor and American Renaissance from its platform.
Breitbart has a long report on the case. I think Taylor has a good case, but you know how our court system has become (too often these days) the place where Leftwing ideology has found its home and Constitutional protections are lost, so I won’t dare to predict how this could turn out.
Here is Ian Mason writing at Breitbart about the case filed last week in California:

A group of free-speech lawyers filed the most serious legal challenge yet to Twitter’s censorship policies Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court, seeking a ruling preventing Twitter from banning users purely on the basis of their views and political associations.

The 29-page complaint contends that, under a California legal doctrine that recognizes some private facilities as “public forums,” Twitter may not discriminate against speech on their platform based purely on viewpoint. If successful, it would be the first extension of that doctrine to internet social media platforms and could transform the way free speech is treated online. The suit became all the more relevant Wednesday as Twitter stood accused of locking out thousands of conservatives under the guise of cracking down on “Russian bots.”

The genesis of the suit is Twitter’s November 2017 announcement that they would start banning and sanctioning users based on their offline behavior and associations.

On December 18, 2017, Twitter, five years after their top British executive described the company as “the free speech wing of the free speech party,” made good on this threat, “purging” hundreds of mostly right-wing users. Twitter’s new policy refers to association with “violent extremist groups,” and a company blog post claimed, “If an account’s profile information includes a violent threat or multiple slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear, or reduces someone to less than human, it will be permanently suspended.”

One of those purged is Jared Taylor, founder and editor of “American Renaissance,” a fringe-right journal on race and immigration. He is frequently described as an “extremist” and a “white supremacist” by left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the latter of which sits on Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council,” the largely leftist group of activists and non-profits Twitter assembled in 2016 to help decide which speech to censor.

Taylor is a graduate of Yale University and Paris’s Sciences Po, the former West Coast editor of PC Magazine, and author of several books. He describes himself as a “white advocate” or “race realist” and condemns Nazism and antisemitism.

According to the complaint, in his more than six years on Twitter, Taylor never made threats, harassed anyone, or otherwise came under scrutiny for his behavior on the platform. Even the SPLC notes Taylor “scrupulously avoided racist epithets [and] employed the language of academic journals” in his writings, and Taylor once wrote an article urging people to be more civil on Twitter.

[….]

Yet both Taylor’s personal account and that of American Renaissance were permanently banned. The only explanation Twitter gave was that the accounts were “affiliated with a violent extremist group.” Twitter refused to offer Taylor any further details including to which “violent extremist group” he was affiliated.

There is much more here.

The SPLC and me….

You might also want to know that the SPLC has gone on another of its media hit campaigns. See that the Baltimore Sun has listed me as a “hate group” (taking the SPLC’s word for it!) without ever checking to find out that I am a journalist blogger and have no group!
How many more one-person ‘groups’ are on SPLC’s “hate group” list?
LOL! The Sun says Maryland hate groups are “on the rise” as Maryland gains one “hate group” since the SPLC’s list last year.
The SPLC aimed its big-money guns at me after the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society directed them to my work. Of course HIAS didn’t like anyone questioning their federal funding and their refugee resettlement program.

Australia: Iranian refugees charged in major drug bust, so much for gratitude

02/26/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Were they simply greedy criminals looking to live high by destroying Australia’s youth, or is there more to Middle Eastern drug dealing? Is it a form of warfare on the West?
I don’t know the answer, but I thought about it when reader Jon sent this link from the Daily Mail:

An Iranian couple who arrived to Australia by boat five years ago have allegedly been flooding the streets of Sydney with the deadly drug ‘ice’.

By the way, they must have gotten in just before Australia lowered the boom on boat people and sent them to detention in Papua New Guinea or on Nauru (where Trump’s State Department is vetting them for movement to Any Town, USA.).

Australian drug dealers — Just your everyday Iranian refugees. Photo from the Daily Mail

Ali Maleki and Yosra Rabieh, from the city’s north-west, are two of several Iranians in Australia on temporary protection visas recently arrested over alleged meth trafficking, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The couple, who share two young daughters, were arrested last week after police allegedly seized more than 36kg of ice, over $260,000 in cash, three luxury cars and more than 100 ampules of steroids at homes in Hornsby and Asquith.

Maleki and Rabieh have each been charged with supply large commercial quantity of prohibited drugs and participate in a criminal enterprise.

A third Iranian has been charged with being an accessory after the fact of supplying drugs.

In a separate bust last week, two Iranian nationals were arrested in Sydney, allegedly trying to import almost 10 kilograms of ice hidden in honey jars on a cargo flight to Australia.

Go here for more from the Daily Mail. If guilty they should hope for Australian prison rather than deportation.
See my ‘Australia’ category by clicking here.

USCIS removes "nation of immigrants" from mission statement, Left goes nuts

02/25/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“…..reveals the insidious racism harbored by those in this administration.”

(Eleanor Acer, director of refugee protection at Washington-based advocacy group Human Rights First)

Here is the story at Think Progress (consider the source):

Eleanor Acer cspan — They are one-trick ponies! It is “racist,” Trump is “racist” and you, dear readers, are “racists!”

In a move formalizing more than a year of hardline anti-immigration rhetoric from the White House, the agency responsible for overseeing both green cards and citizenship has wiped a key line framing the United States as a “nation of immigrants” from its mission statement.

In a letter sent Thursday, Lee Francis Cissna, the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), told employees that the statement had been altered to “guide us in the years ahead.”

The original language:

“U.S.C.I.S. secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system,” read the agency’s original mission statement.

The new Trump Admin. language:

The new offering is notably altered: “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland and honoring our values.”

That new statement, Cissna said, “clearly defines the agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system and the commitment we have to the American people.”

In addition to the removal of the “nation of immigrants” phrase, the statement has also eliminated any reference to non-U.S. nationals as “customers” — a decision Cissna said served as “a reminder that we are always working for the American people.”

Did you know that some Native Americans and Blacks never did like the phrase—nation of immigrants—so they must be cheering this move!

The phrase “nation of immigrants” is not without controversy — many Native Americans have argued against the saying, as have Black Americans, arguing that the arrival of colonizers and slaves should not be conflated with immigration more broadly. But the phrase has become a rallying cry for many contemporary proponents of immigration, which helps to diversify the United States and keep the economy strong. Its removal formalizes an agenda long pursued by the Trump administration, which has made cracking down on immigration a key pillar of its tenure.

[….]

“Our nation is one built by immigrants—removing this language does nothing to change that fact, it only reveals the insidious racism harbored by those in this administration,” said Eleanor Acer, director of refugee protection at Washington-based advocacy group Human Rights First, in a statement.

More here. You might find it heartening to read the list of all the “racist” things the White House has been doing!
And, I don’t want to get in to a big yak, but we haven’t been a nation of immigrants, in fact we took about a 40 year break until Senator Ted (don’t bring them to Hyannis) Kennedy pushed the 1965 Hart-Cellers Immigration Act that opened the present day flood gates. Earlier waves of immigration were mostly from Europe (and there was no welfare system. They worked hard or went home). All that changed in 1965. 15 years later he pushed through the Refugee Act of 1980.
I always wondered if ol’ Teddy was a true believer, or did someone have a gun to his head?

Israel set to deport African economic migrants, Canada says wait (they want more)

02/25/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Canada is apparently the leading country to take off Israel’s hands some of the tens of thousands of Africans who entered Israel illegally. Israel says they are mostly economic migrants and not legitimate refugees.
Canada wants a bunch, so why they are dragging their feet isn’t clear.
And, readers, know that the US is taking some too. I just checked data at Wrapsnet and it looks like we have taken 58 during this fiscal year as of January 31.
Here is the news at The Star:

Ottawa has reached a last-minute deal with Israel to suspend the deportation of asylum-seekers who currently are waiting for resettlement to Canada.

Israel refugees — Waiting for a ticket to Canada?

Israel is set to begin deporting some 37,000 asylum-seekers, the majority of them Sudanese and Eritreans, in April after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government issued them expulsion notices.

The asylum-seekers, most of them deemed by Israel to be economic migrants rather than refugees in need of protection, can either leave voluntarily for a “safe” African country and receive $3,500 and a plane ticket, or face imprisonment.

The Canadian government is under the gun to resettle 1,845 of the African refugees whose sponsorship applications are currently in process, some for years.

“Canada does not support policies of mass deportations of asylum-seekers. The rights of asylum-seekers and refugees are laid out in the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, of which Israel is a signatory,” said Adam Austen, press secretary for Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Joanne Beach — Working on finding more churches willing to sponsor one of Israel’s illegal aliens!

“As the country that resettles the highest number of African asylum-seekers from Israel, we are in direct contact with the Government of Israel to convey Canada’s concerns about the situation.”

[….]

Joanne Beach, director of justice and compassion for the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, which has a sponsorship agreement with Ottawa, said Canada must do its utmost to expedite the resettlement of refugees.

“The alliance is still concerned for the welfare of those at risk of deportation in Israel who do not have applications currently in process. We are appealing to churches to consider entering into a sponsorship agreement or partnering with a Canadian Jewish organization to help those at imminent risk of deportation from Israel,” said Beach.

More here.
This post is filed in my Canada category and my Israel and Refugees category.

Investigative reporter and blogger, Leo Hohmann's first-hand account of trip to South Dakota

02/24/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It was an eye-opener on so many levels Hohmann recounted to me and here is the first of a couple of posts on what he saw and learned when he was invited to help educate a South Dakota legislative committee about refugee resettlement and the refugees being secretly placed in American towns in recent years.
Joining Hohmann on a witness panel were James Simpson and Phil Haney, both should be familiar to regular readers here at RRW.
Below is the title and a few snips of the must read post at LeoHohmann.com, but please read it all! (Emphasis below is mine):

GOP governor leads fight against ending refugee influx from Somalia and other jihadist strongholds

Many of you have noticed I’ve been quiet this week, posting only one article about the efforts of Kansas Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins to win amnesty for an illegal-alien Muslim professor with ties to a terror-stained mosque.

Rest assured I haven’t been slacking. I was traveling on special assignment, so let me fill you in.

sen-neal-tapio — SD Senator Neal Tapio is running for Congress. Although Republicans soundly defeated his bill, the hearing served as an educational opportunity that should be replicated in other states.

Refugee resettlement has over the past couple of years become a controversial subject in many state capitals as more Americans educate themselves on the dark underbelly of a program that has been transforming U.S. cities and towns for 35 years.

South Dakota — like Idaho, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Tennessee, West Virginia and Minnesota — is a state where patriotic Americans have formed pockets of resistance to the resettlements. They’ve seen the fraud and greed upon which the program — run by the United Nations in cooperation with the U.S. State Department and its federal contractors affiliated with private agencies like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services — is based.

[….]

My task Wednesday was to testify before the South Dakota Senate’s Committee on State Affairs in support of a bill introduced by Sen. Neal Tapio that would place a moratorium on refugees entering that state from any country that has been placed on a federal travel ban.

Any time a state pushes back against refugee resettlement it is a big deal, so I dropped everything and flew to South Dakota. This federal program has evolved over the decades from a legitimate humanitarian effort into a fraudulent operation whereby agencies like Lutheran Social Services serve as headhunters for industries looking for cheap Third World labor. The cost for U.S. communities has been devastating in terms of crime, terrorism and welfare abuse but the establishment of both parties will tell any lie necessary to keep the cheap labor flowing.

I saw them in action in South Dakota Wednesday and it left me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Continue here for the remainder of part one.
See the Argus Leader here for its sanitized story on the hearing. More later on that!
Go here for my South Dakota archive, a state I visited during my tour of meatpacking states in the summer of 2016.