Bournbrook Live
Our commentary on the news as it comes in.
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Posted 1.15pm UK time
Jordan Peterson is, yet again, making headlines. This time it’s for announcing his new book, which will be a follow-up to his bestselling 12 Rules For Life.
But it isn’t the announcement itself which is making headlines; it is the reaction that it’s drawing from Penguin (the book’s publishers) staffers that is making waves.
According to reports, staff have ‘broken down into tears’ upon hearing the announcement of his latest project — citing Peterson’s ‘white supremacy’ for their emotional spasm. Let’s hope that Penguin doesn’t cave to this ridiculousness as the story develops.
Photo by Gage Skidmore on Flickr.
Posted 12:15pm UK Time
Facebook seems to be up to its old tricks again, though these tricks seem to get increasingly more absurd. The interview with Professor Sucharit Bhakdi by Triggernometry has a warning attached to it saying it may contain ‘partial nudity’:
How on earth can we trust companies such as Facebook to filter news and ‘misinformation’?
On top of this, in the battle to push Professor Bhakdi out of view, a new front seems to have opened. The Wikipedia article on him has been constantly edited in past weeks, though it seems those who seek to discredit him as a crank have won. Of course, his arguments on COVID-19 are not given in the article, and the authors think it sufficient to just label him as ‘a prominent exponent of misinformation about COVID-19’.
Posted 11.50am UK time
Social media undeniably plays a highly influential role in public life and opinion. As such, we should take its increasing obsession with censoring sensible opinions very seriously — especially on the matter of the Government’s response to the coronavirus.
Another example of Facebook’s meddling has been presented by talkRADIO presenter Mike Graham, whose latest interview with Peter Hitchens was flagged up by the powerful social media platform for ‘missing context’.
‘Independent fact-checkers say that this information could mislead people’.
As Mr. Hitchens has commented in response, ‘Power hates dissent’. This is not an issue we should make light of.
Posted 3:14pm UK Time
Toby Young has provided another reason as to why the warning of ‘false information’ is so ridiculous:
Posted 12:37pm UK time
Recently, a long-awaited Danish study on the use of face masks was published, and it didn’t include much in the way of good news for the politicians who have made the usage of such coverings compulsory. However it seems these scientific results, which came out of a randomised control trial, have not been allowed on Facebook without a warning label attached. Professor Carl Heneghan tweeted this yesterday:
This is what happens when people, especially those working for social media companies, are given the power to curb ‘misinformation’ about a disease and the politics around it. Whilst those who advocate the need to prevent ‘misinformation’ dress this up as an attempt to stop conspiracy theorists, in reality it leads to similar situations as that including Professor Heneghan and the article he wrote on the study. Science does not flourish by attempting to shut out perfectly decent debate.
Posted 12:55pm UK time
The Labour Party have said emergency legislation to ‘stamp out dangerous’ information about vaccines should be introduced.
Whilst many of us will agree that anti-vaccine campaigns over the years have caused harm, the main political issue facing us currently is not a debate between ‘pro-vaccine’ and ‘anti-vaccine’. Instead it is a debate between those who think COVID-19 is an especially bad disease and many government restrictions work and are needed, and those who think the threat of COVID-19 has been exaggerated and government restictions have been wildly disproportionate and may not even work.
To give the government power to stamp out information it sees as unfit is surely unwise in the situation we find out today. One could easily see how such legislation could be used to push away those who are skeptical of government restrictions, by grouping them with the conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. This legislation carries with it a scent of dogmatism and an unwilligness to allow for dissent, however it is dressed up.
If those people who think a vaccine is necessary for the whole population are confident with their arguments, they could make their case and convince a large enough proportion of the population to accept a vaccine. After all, many people have already accepted the plethora of restrictions enacted so far. Why on earth would a government need strict legislation like this?