Big free speech case in Britain


Sir Philip Green above.

He is said to have become a billionaire much faster than anyone else in British history. He is Jewish.  He seems a most unpleasant man to me.  He has certainly abused a lot of people.  But for all I know he may be kind to his dog.  Nonetheless I am totally on his side in this matter.

From the confirmation furore over Judge Kavanaugh we now know that half of American politics no longer believes in the presumption of innocence -- but to find the British parliament in a somewhat similar state is a shock.  Britain is the mother of most of our traditional legal safeguards.

Yet Phil seems to have evoked that meltdown in at least the more Leftist quarters of the parliament. His being a big businessman undoubtedly prejudices the hate-filled British Left against him.

Like many prominent men he has been the object of untested allegations and those allegations are being treated by some as if they were convictions. I have enough residual faith in the British system to believe that no action will be taken against him until the allegations are fully tested in a properly constituted court of law but that faith has been rather shaken

Nonetheless, the accusations ARE apparently before the courts so that should finalize the matter one way or the other

And I heartily defend Phil in his attempts to have the accusations against him silenced before they are tested. The very proceedings described below show the wisdom of that.  When allegations are treated as fact, an exoneration in a court of law may do little to restore a man's reputation and peace of mind.  False allegations against Christian singer Cliff Richard left him severely shaken even after £210,000 in compensatory damages was paid to him by the BBC and £400,000 from the South Yorkshire Police

But there is undoubtedly some tension between free speech and non-disclosure.  False allegations are however a type of libel or  defamation and those offences have never been deemed to deserve free speech protection.  When the allegations have been shown to be true is the time to mention them publicly -- with full free speech protections


Sir Philip Green has been named in Parliament as the businessman at the centre of Britain’s #MeToo scandal.

The Topshop owner was identified by Lord Hain, the former Leader of the House of Commons, after two days of speculation over the name of the man behind the injunction.

The former Labour cabinet minister said that he had been contacted by someone “intimately involved in the case” and felt a “duty” to reveal the name using parliamentary privilege.

Following Lord Hain’s comments there were calls for the billionaire to be stripped of his Knighthood and for a crackdown on the use of non-disclosure agreements by “serial offenders”.

Vince Cable, the former Business Secretary and Leader of the Lib Dems, said: “I find it very difficult to see how he could credibly hold on to an honour in these circumstances.

“I think Parliament’s proving its worth. The use of Parliament in this way is healthy and it shows democracy at work.”

Frank Field, the MP for Birkenhead who previously led condemnation of Sir Philip over the treatment of BHS pensioners, said: "The charge sheet against the knighthood is growing. Parliament and the country have made their views clear on this matter. Ultimately it's a decision for the honours forfeiture committee."

He added that he is planning to raise with ministers the need for a mechanism for abuse victims' voices to be heard in Parliament.

Mr Field said: "I have been talking this evening with somebody who witnessed grotesque bullying at work. They would like for what they witnessed to be shared, through the House of Commons, with the nation. I am seeking to raise urgently with the Government the importance of having a mechanism in Parliament through which the voices of victims of abuse can be heard. This would develop the role of the House of Commons in a way which stands up for people who have little money, against those who have much."

Number 10 said that it could not comment on cases which were ongoing.

Sir Philip Green last night refused to comment on “anything that has happened in court or was said in Parliament today” but denied any “unlawful sexual or racist behaviour”.

The Telegraph has spent the past eight months investigating allegations of bullying, intimidation and sexual harassment made against the businessman, and the lengths he has gone to to cover up the claims. However, on Tuesday this newspaper was prevented from revealing details of the non-disclosure deals by Sir Terence Etherton, the Master of the Rolls, the second most senior judge in England and Wales.

The intervention makes it illegal, outside Parliament or in reports of Parliamentary proceedings, to reveal the businessman’s identity or to identify the companies, as well as what he is accused of doing or how much he paid his alleged victims.

It was the latest twist in a legal fight which began in July, which saw the appeal court rule that the confidentiality of contracts was more important than freedom of speech.

It overturned a previous High Court ruling which found that publication of the allegations would be overwhelmingly in the public interest and would significantly contribute to debate in a democratic society.

As well as re-igniting the #MeToo debate, the gagging of The Telegraph has renewed controversy about the use of injunctions to limit British press freedom.

Lord Hain, the former Northern Ireland Secretary [and a former radical protester] , yesterday told a hushed House of Lords: “My Lords, having been contacted by someone intimately involved in the case of a powerful businessman using non-disclosure agreements and substantial payments to conceal the truth about serious and repeated sexual harassment, racist abuse and bullying, which is compulsively continuing, I feel it’s my duty under parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the individual in question given that the media have been subject to an injunction preventing publication of the full details of this story which is clearly in the public interest.”

After his statement Jess Phillips, the Labour MP who sits of the Women and Equalities Committee, said: “I think that today we have proven that wealth and power and arrogance will not always provide you with cover. Whilst people can be silenced with money, as is often the case, I am pleased that actually that has its limits and that we respect the spirit of the law when people like this are revealed.”

Maria Miller, chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, added: “I think that given the huge influence that Philip Green has in the business world and the thousands of people that work for him it is surprising that the Court of Appeal decided that it wasn’t in the public interest to make this more public.

“I think that we now have to answer another question when it comes to NDAs which is how we stop them being used to cover up serial offenders. That has to be a point that is answered by the Government proposals.”

James Cleverly MP, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, said Lord Hain's action had shown "people must now realise that injunctions and super-injunctions are nothing more than a good way to part with large sums of money and a bad way to keep things secret".     

The business world also reacted to the claims. Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI Director-General, said: “Sexual harassment and racial abuse is illegal and has absolutely no place in modern Britain. Accusations this serious must be thoroughly and quickly investigated.”  

There has been days of speculation about the identity of the individual, with several prominent businessmen including Lord Sugar and Duncan Bannatyne taking to social media to state that it was not them.

In light of the scandal, the Judicial Office was forced to issued a rare statement emphasising that this was a “TEMPORARY injunction preventing publication only until there can be a trial.”

There has been growing condemnation over the use of NDAs in this way from both  campaigners and senior legal figures, including three former Home Secretaries, a former Director of Public Prosecutions and a former solicitor general.

Amber Rudd, former Home Secretary, said: “My concern is that these are being used to intimidate people who would otherwise speak up about illegal activity, by that I mean sexual harassment. We need to stop it.”

Lord Falconer, former Justice Secretary, added: “Sexual harassment and bullying should not be covered by NDAs at all. It should not be possible for an employer to use an NDA to suppress any allegation which might be in the public interest. It's a terrible iniquity, it is a very, very clear abuse of power.

The Prime Minister has vowed to bring forward a consultation on reform of the use of NDAs.

Sir Philip bills himself as a rags-to-riches businessman and is renowned for his expletive-ridden outbursts.

A guest at the now notorious President’s Club Dinner, he has previously questioned the MeToo movement, reportedly asking: “Where’s this all going to end? There’s no stag parties, no hen parties, no more girls parading in the ring at the boxing – so they’re all banned?”

Sir Philip said in a statement last night: "I am not commenting on anything that has happened in court or was said in Parliament today. "To the extent that it is suggested that I have been guilty of unlawful sexual or racist behaviour, I categorically and wholly deny these allegations.

"Arcadia and I take accusations and grievances from employees very seriously and in the event that one is raised, it is thoroughly investigated. "Arcadia employs more than 20,000 people and in common with many large businesses sometimes receives formal complaints from employees. "In some cases these are settled with the agreement of all parties and their legal advisers. These settlements are confidential so I cannot comment further on them."

SOURCE






Hate Crime Law Is Both Unwise and Unconstitutional
    
After showing off his swastika tattoo, Randy Metcalf became involved in a barroom brawl. One of his opponents was an African American, who he and his friends knocked unconscious. Metcalf repeatedly kicked him in the head and, according to a witness, said, “Die, [N-word], die.” Metcalf was sentenced to 10 years in prison under the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act that was enacted six years earlier, in 2009.

Soon, perhaps at its conference this Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear Metcalf’s argument that the provision of the HCPA that he was convicted under is unconstitutional because none of the Constitution’s enumerated powers authorized Congress to enact it. The court should hear and endorse this argument, lest the nation’s dangerously attenuated commitment to limited government become even more so.

The HCPA creates criminal penalties for, among other things, crimes committed “because of the actual or perceived race … of any person.” Actual hatred is not required. It is enough that the defendant acted “because of” somebody’s race.

Congress, always eager to slip what little remains of the Constitution’s leash that limits Congress’ powers by enumerating them, frequently justifies doing whatever it wants by saying that the behavior it wants to proscribe or prescribe affects interstate commerce and therefore comes under Congress’ enumerated power to regulate this. But although the Commerce Clause has been construed to be so elastic that it is almost entirely permissive, Congress, perhaps manifesting a vestigial capacity for embarrassment, looked elsewhere for the power to prohibit racially motivated crimes.

Embarrassingly, it pretended to act under the 13th Amendment. Ratified in 1865, it says:

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

"Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

To justify enacting the HCPA, Congress cited the power granted to it 144 years earlier to effectuate the end of slavery, which shows no sign of returning. Congress, surely with more audacity than sincerity, said that the 13th Amendment, written to erase slavery, authorizes Congress to pursue any goal that it asserts is in some way, however attenuated, a response to a “relic” or “incident” or lingering reverberation of slavery.

This, says an amicus brief on Metcalf’s behalf, reflects “a growing movement in both academia and Congress to use the 13th Amendment to address a variety of social ills thought to be in some way traceable to, or aggravated by, slavery.” Yet the amendment’s legal significance is unusually clear and limited: It bans slavery, period. So, in 1883, the Supreme Court held that the amendment did not empower Congress to prohibit race discrimination in public accommodations. Congress did that 81 years later, properly acting under the Commerce Clause. If now the court allows Congress to construe — to flagrantly misconstrue, to its advantage — a notably unambiguous constitutional provision, the damage done by this misguided judicial deference will go beyond injuries to federalism. This dereliction of judicial duty will devalue the written Constitution itself.

Hate crimes (usually vandalism, e.g., graffiti, or intimidation, e.g., verbal abuse) are a tiny fraction of 1 percent of all reported crimes. Almost all states have such laws, and a federal law duplicating them merely serves two disreputable purposes. It allows Congress to express theatrical indignation about hate. And it exposes to double jeopardy, under a federal law, defendants who are acquitted in politically charged state trials, especially ones involving race or religion.

Even though states, unlike the federal government, have police powers, states’ hate crime laws also are problematic on policy grounds. They mandate enhanced punishments for crimes committed as a result of, or at least when accompanied by, particular states of mind that the government disapproves. The law holds us responsible for controlling our minds, which should control our conduct. The law always has had, and should have, the expressive function of stigmatizing particular kinds of conduct. But hate crime laws treat certain actions as especially reprehensible because the persons committing them had odious (although not illegal) frames of mind. Such laws burden juries with the task of detecting an expanding number of impermissible motives for acts already criminalized. And juries must distinguish causation (a particular frame of mind causing an act) from correlation (the person who committed the act happened to have this or that mentality). So, even if the HCPA were not unconstitutional, it would be unwise.

SOURCE






News: Gender Isn't Neutral
    
This isn’t exactly the age of responsible journalism — so this weekend’s New York Times probably doesn’t surprise anyone. But for every American sick of fake news (and according to polls, that’s everyone), Sunday’s headline was one for the record books. “‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined out of Existence under Trump Administration,” the banner read, triggering mass hysteria in liberal quarters across the country. There’s just one problem: not one bit of it is true.

No one is “defining transgenders out of existence.” What President Trump is doing is following the law — which, after eight years of Barack Obama’s overreach, is suddenly a shocking concept. Under the last administration, liberals were so used to the president twisting the rules to suit the Left’s agenda that it’s news when Donald Trump decides to operate within the plain text of law. As far as the New York Times is concerned, the most “drastic” thing any president could do is bring America back in line with legal statutes. And this non-story that’s setting the far-Left’s hair on fire is nothing more than that.

In Sunday’s piece, a trio of reporters argues that the Trump administration is disenfranchising people by defining gender as it always has been: a “biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth.” No one is quite sure how that’s radical, since it’s how the law has been understood both before and since 1964. Not a single president questioned it until Obama, who decided that he didn’t care what the Civil Rights Act said. He was going to “reinterpret” the 54-year-old law on “sex” discrimination to mean “sexual orientation” and gender identity too.

That’s how the Obama administration justified its gender-confused school bathroom and shower mandate. They argued that people who identify as transgender were somehow part of the broad umbrella of “sex” outlined in the law in 1964. But, as FRC and others argued, sexual orientation wasn’t on the minds of legislators 54 years ago when it was trying to weed out prejudice — and more importantly, it wasn’t in the text of the law it passed! Even the courts, where liberals turn when the public isn’t on board with its extremism, called it a bridge too far. A half-century ago, Judge Reed O'Connor ruled, “Congress did not understand ‘sex’ to include ‘gender identity.’”

The Obama White House’s agenda was so unpopular by 2016 that some experts even blamed Hillary Clinton’s loss on her defense of it. Through it all, Donald Trump’s position was clear: “I believe it should be states’ rights, and I think the states should make the decision, they’re more capable of making the decision.” More than that, he understood what his predecessor did not: the White House never had the authority to rewrite the law in the first place! After his election, Trump set to work rolling back the lawless gender policies of the Obama administration — first in schools, then in homeless shelters, prisons, and now in Health and Human Services contracts.

Now, almost two years later, the New York Times still thinks it’s breaking news that this administration is systematically returning America to the status quo. Insisting it found some sort of smoking gun in a leaked HHS memo, the Times implies that President Trump is doing something nefarious by rolling back his predecessor’s orders. “For the last year,” its reporters write, “the Department of Health and Human Services has privately argued that the term ‘sex’ was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them.”

This “new” definition of sex, the Times insists, “would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.” First of all, this “new” definition of “sex” is 54 years old. Secondly, who are these 1.4 million Americans? The Times didn’t bother citing the statistic, and it certainly seems higher than most credible national surveys. Lastly — and perhaps most instructively — people who identify as transgender don’t enjoy special federal recognition under the law, because the American people have never passed any legislation granting it. Liberal activists have had to rely on a handful of courts or lawless administrations like Obama’s to short-circuit the democratic process and force their agenda on America.

The Times’ agenda is obvious — painting Trump as the extremist, when the real radicalism was ignoring the law in the first place. Well, reporters may be out of practice with the truth these days, but it’s time they came to grips with one important reality. The president is not a legislator, no matter how much Obama acted like one. If they want America to change the way it defines discrimination, they need to start by asking the right branch of government.

SOURCE





Vice co-founder and leader of 'new right' men's group Proud Boys to bring his 'western chauvinist' views Down Under

I have been watching McInnes since even before he wore a beard.  He is primarily a talented comedian but he turns his comedic gift on Leftist pomposity and stupidity.  And they give him a wealth of material for that

The founder of far-right conservative men's activist group 'Proud Boys' is set to tour Australia next month.

Comedian and co-founder of VICE magazine turned right wing commentator Gavin McInnes, 48, will tour the nation from November 2 to 11.

Mr McInnes, who describes himself as a 'western chauvinist libertarian' has been labelled by critics as sexist, racist and as a white supremacist.

He is the latest far-righter to be promoted by pornographer Damien Costas and will travel to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide for speaking events.    

Mr Costas was responsible for the tours of US right-winger Milo Yiannopoulos last year and former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage earlier this year.

According to the promoters, Mr McInnes is 'known for his raucous and irreverent take on the world and controversial, no-holds-barred opinions'.

The 48-year-old shot to fame in the early nineties as a co-founder of VICE, but after leaving the magazine, he became more well-known for his political commentary.

He frequently appeared on Fox News and TheBlaze - an American conservative news network - and is a former contributor to Canadian right-wing channel Rebel Media.

'Funny as he is controversial, he's famous for his use of humour and satire to lampoon the excesses of political correctness,' the promoter's website states.

Mr McInnes has referred to himself as a 'western chauvinist' and started the men's club 'Proud Boys' who swear their allegiance to this cause, news.com.au reported.

According to their website, The Proud Boys' values centre on minimal government, maximum freedom, anti-political correctness, anti-drug war, closed borders, ant-racial guilt, anti-racism, pro-free speech, and pro-gun rights to name a few. 

The Proud Boys' passionate views have even seen some of its members get caught up in street violent brawls with left-wing Antifa activists, news.com.au reported.

In August, Mr McInnes and his club were banned from Twitter for being 'violent extremists' ahead of the 'Unite the Right' neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville in the US.

While McInnes has denied support of the rally and its organiser Jason Kessler, he previously said Mr Kessler was thrown out of the Proud Boys for his 'racist views'.

Mr Costas said any allegations that Mr Mcinnes was a 'white supremacist' were 'nonsense', news.com.au previously reported.

'These people are not white supremacists, they're western supremacists, they believe in the great values that built the western world,' Mr Costas said.

'Free speech is the cornerstone of western civilisation.'

Mr Costas said words such as 'Nazi' and 'fascist' were often misappropriated and reappropriated by some members of the public to shut down debate.

He said while it's far easier to shut down debate than argue it out, free speech is a minority group's 'greatest ally' against oppression.

'Handing over free speech to the state to determine what's offensive and what's not, or to the left in general, is the biggest slippery slope we could ever hope to go down,' Mr Costas said.

Mr Costas is currently dealing with the financial fallout from his previous tours with Sydney publicist Max Markson, The Australian Reported. 

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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