Tag Archives: Alex Jones

media news

Jury makes example of hater

A Texas jury has done the right thing by assessing a hefty punitive damage award against one of the nation’s most noted and infamous purveyors of hate and outright falsehoods.

Alex Jones will have to pay the families of children slaughtered in the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre $44.5 million. The jury awarded that amount in assessing the punitive damages that Jones must shell out.

Of course, Jones claims to be impoverished.

Jones already was found guilty of defamation by declaring that the massacre of those kids in Newtown, Conn., was fake, that it never happened, that it was a staged event designed to gin up opposition to the gun owners’ rights lobby.

This individual is a disgrace to the human race. The jury decided, moreover, to make him pay for the damage he did to the loved ones of those precious children and the educators who sought to protect them against the madman.

What might be the fallout from this award? It is my sincere hope that this jury’s decision to hammer a known hate monger might deter someone else out there who is inclined to spew the kind of filth that comes from the mouth of Alex Jones.

I know all about the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. Gasbags such as Jones use the U.S. Constitution as their first and last line of defense against who seek to muzzle them. The truth, though, is that I don’t want them necessarily silenced simply because they espouse views I find reprehensible. I believe it is important to keep such idiots in plain sight where we all can keep our eyes on them.

However, the jury ruled that Alex Jones took several giant steps too far by defaming the families of innocent victims.

Now he has been ordered to pay for the garbage he has blathered and the damage he has inflicted.

Good!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

If only we could silence this liar

My version of a perfect world suggests that a stiff prison sentence, a hefty fine and a label of “serial slanderer” could silence the likes of Alex Jones.

However, we never will reach that level of perfection. Why? Because Jones, who is on trial for defaming the loved ones of the precious children slain in the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has this “free speech” guarantee that will allow him to continue spewing trash.

Judge scolds Alex Jones at Sandy Hook defamation trial: ‘This is not your show’ (msn.com)

Jones, one of the nation’s more notorious conspiracy fruitcakes, has been sued for saying that the Sandy Hook massacre was made up, that the slain victims were actors, that it was all a ploy to gin up support for legislation to ban guns.

Jones, who lives in the Dallas area, has been defending himself in the trial. He tried to apologize to the parents of some of the slain children, but the judge presiding over the trial shut him down.

To be clear, Jones already has been found liable for defamation by one of the parents he defamed. He is trying at this moment to avoid paying a lot of money that he could be ordered to pay.

Don’t misunderstand me on this point: Even though I am a staunch defender of the free-speech clause in the First Amendment, there are times and instances when I wish the courts could order nimrods like Alex Jones to just shut the hell up!

But … they cannot.

Therefore, no matter how this matter ends up, Alex Jones will continue to have his platform, his proverbial bullhorn — and an audience that is too willing, too stupid and too gullible to ignore his idiotic rhetoric.

I tend to ignore everything that flies out of this loudmouth’s pie hole. But I’m just one guy. The nimrods who listen to this guy need to find some religion.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Idiocy finds its way to Texas

The demonstrations that erupted in places like Michigan, where protesters are griping about mandates for folks to stay at home and practice “social distancing” while we fight the coronavirus pandemic have found their way to Texas.

Idiocy is alive and well in Austin.

The morons who suggest, as they did in Austin, that the pandemic is some sort of “hoax,” need to have their heads examined. They are spewing conspiracy bullsh** about all of this being some sort of phony element contrived to defeat Donald John Trump in the presidential election.

As The Guardian reported: In Texas, where the anti-shutdown protest was organized by conspiracy theorists, the rhetoric was more extreme, with an organizer referring to the “coronavirus hoax,” and the “narratives” of the “Deep State”.

Alex Jones, the InfoWars founder, stood at the center of a packed crowd of hundreds of people on Saturday afternoon and bellowed into a bullhorn, praising attendees for resisting tyranny. Few of the Texas protesters were wearing masks.

The defiance exhibited at demonstrations such as these — not to mention the arrogance and ignorance — reminds me of the truism that you shouldn’t tempt fate … because fate has a way of hitting back much harder than one ever expects.

media news

Alex Jones: no free-speech martyr

Alex Jones has been kicked off some social media platforms.

I have to offer a huge round of applause for those platforms that have seen fit to abide by the standards they set for those who use them. Jones didn’t do that. He’s gone at least from those particular venues.

Who is this clown? He’s a talk-show blowhard and noted conspiracy theorist. His infamy grew exponentially when he alleged that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn. — where 20 first- and second-graders and six teachers were gunned down in 2012 — was a “hoax.” He said the grieving parents were actors brought in by anti-gun activists to carry the cudgel for disarming the American public.

He is a monstrous purveyor of hate speech.

Facebook, Apple, Spotify and YouTube all have banned Jones from using their platforms to spew his garbage.

Jones’s response has been predictable. He says the First Amendment guarantees him the right to speak his mind. No matter how vile his thoughts might be.

Hold on, buster.

This argument reminds me of discussions I had throughout my journalism career with individuals who would submit letters or other commentary that I found unsuitable for publication on the opinion pages I edited.

They would say, “But what about free speech?” My response was the same. “You are free to purchase and run your own newspaper and then you are free to publish whatever you want. We have rules and standards and your submission falls short of them.”

So it is with Alex Jones’s hate speech. The social media platforms are within their own constitutional rights to set standards that those who use them must follow. Jones crossed many lines with his hideous pronouncements.

He’s still able to spew his filth. The U.S. Constitution allows it. He simply is no longer able to do so using the venues whose owners and managers have done what they should have done long ago.

They cut him off.

media news, national news

Why give Alex Jones a platform?

People such as Alex Jones give me heartburn.

I happen to be a First Amendment purist. I believe in the amendment’s guarantee of free speech and I do not want it watered down.

Then along comes people like Jones, the radio talk show blowhard who’s been thrust into the news yet again. Broadcast journalist Megyn Kelly has booked him on her NBC News show and snippets of her interview with Jones have enraged some survivors of one of the nation’s worst tragedies.

Jones has spoken infamously about how the 9/11 attacks against the United States were an “inside job” and then — and this goes way beyond anything resembling human decency — he has alleged that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut was staged; he says the children who were slain were “actors.”

Kelly is giving this guy’s moronic views a platform.

Should he be allowed to spout that trash? Should he be given air time on a major broadcast network? That pesky First Amendment says “yes.” Tenets of good judgment and basic humanity suggest that this guy shouldn’t be given a platform to spout the filth that pours out of his pie hole.

Kelly deserves the criticism she is getting from at least one of the Sandy Hook parents who lost a child in that hideous act of cruelty.

And that damn heartburn continues to churn in my gut.