The greatest threat to your future, the greatest risk to the American Republic, is from the unprecented assault on Free Speech, committed by the media, Silicon Valley, politicians, Hollywood producers, and the academy.

Unlike Antifa, #BlackLivesMatter and a couple of idiots on the far right too, I don’t believe that violence is the answer to political disputes. That’s why I’m staging Berkeley Free Speech Week, a week-long festival of free expression, for libertarians, conservatives, and their liberal friends too, including everyone who has been prevented from speaking at UC Berkeley in the last 12 months.

Hmm, no web site yet. Stay tuned.

News you can use – Getting free of Biased Google: I have not tried all of these yet, so I can’t vouch. Please comment with your experiences. Hat tip, Black Pigeon Speaks.

• Interesting new web browser, Brave.
• Search engines, DuckDuckGo and Qwant.
• Email, ProtonMail.
• Video platforms, DailyMotion, Vid.me, BitChute, Minds.
• Social media (this is more getting rid of Facebook), Gab, Line.
• Smartphone – I’m not sure here; you can ditch Android for iPhone or Windows, but is Apple or Microsoft (co-founder of MSNBC) an improvement?

Just to round out today’s earlier post, we also have new interviews in Breitbart’s Rebels of Google series.

• At Google, minorities and Ivy Leaguers get softball job interviews. An internal study found it out – then was shut down, presumably for having told the truth.
• Google scans your email content and, in the future, there’s no reason they can’t lock you out for political reasons. As they are suspected of having tried to do recently to Jordan B. Peterson, the Canadian conservative professor.
• After all, Google senior management has led the company in #BlackLivesMatter chants. And shed tears onstage, when Trump won.
• And CEO Eric Schmidt has the anti-privacy, Deep State, Big Brother viewpoint about the data you store with Google: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

UPDATE – Everyone we don’t like is Raaaaaaaaaysist: CNN falsely smears the planned March on Google as a “White Nationalist”, “Alt Right” event.

To begin with, the organizers of March on Google are known to be pro-peace, anti-racist and anti-Alt Right. But they also say it pointedly, at this link.

Code of Conduct for March on Google

The March on Google condemns and disavows violence, hatred, and bigotry and all groups that espouse it such as White Nationalists, KKK, Antifa, and NeoNazis.
We will not use messages that are designed to incite anger, hate, or violence.
We will respect the law and the police and cooperate in all matters.
Any violation of these tenets will not be tolerated.
Is this an “Alt-Right” event? The answer is no. This is an event for First Amendment supporters from across the country, from all backgrounds, ethnicity, and walks of life.

CNN could have checked it easily. Instead, CNN published a complete falsehood – once again attempting to smear anyone who challenges them, or Google or the hard Left, as racists.

Hey, lefties: This is why Trump won (be that good or bad). This is why rational, honest people reject and despise the Left.

UPDATE: Peaceful March on Google is postponed, due to Alt Left terrorist threats following the CNN slanders.

A fair argument from Tucker that Google can no longer be trusted and, due to its out-sized influence, should be regulated as a public utility:

I don’t necessarily agree; competition to Google could still punish their evil ways. But I found Tucker’s case interesting.

An editorial from James Damore himself, in The Wall Street Journal.

In my document, I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment.

The March on Google is still on for this Saturday, August 19.

• List of cities here and here.
• Explicit disavowal of the so-called “Alt Right” – and Antifa – here.

There’s a lot in the news about North Korea, but I haven’t the heart to write about that, it’s too depressing. The U.S. should have taken care of that problem 20 years ago.

So, back on Google. First, Stefan Molyneux interviews James Damore. He’s a bit snow-flakey. Molyneux almost has to hold his hand. Seriously, how could the SJWs feel so threatened?

Second, by now you’ve seen Breitbart’s Rebels of Google interviews with dissenters to Google’s left-wing, Social Justice Warrior culture. Of course you have to take it with a grain of salt; these are disgruntled former employees. Nonetheless, many details ring true to those who have worked in Silicon Valley. Put it this way, statements of Google execs and SJWs will tell us one side of the story; Rebels of Google gives us the other.

I’m not sure what goes on at Google exactly, but it sounds like they have a culture of SJW discussions (probably on Google Plus group chat and/or email) that employees can’t escape. I picture an employee signing on to discuss a work-related problem, for example, and then being spammed with HR “diversity” announcements, or political sniping injected by the SJWs into every discussion “just because”.

Anyway, here are the interview bits that jumped out at me: (more…)

I don’t know what to make of this, but it seemed worth a mention. Real chat between two Artificial Intelligence chat robots at Facebook (who were not instructed to restrict themselves to human-understandable phrases):

Bob: i can i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

Bob: i i can i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

Bob: i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i i i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Mark Zuckerberg has been visiting Middle America. You know, to better understand us deplorables.

Here he is with oil workers in the Dakotas. His coveralls are backward. Nobody told him:

UPDATE: All poking-fun aside 🙂 it’s fair to say that we can’t be sure anything is wrong. The inference from the visual is that the standard coveralls there have parallel stripes in front that become crossed stripes in back. Zuckerberg’s could be different. Or for that matter, the guy with the crossed stripes could be different? TheQuietMan notes, “The pocket and collar look correct.”

Per her own LinkedIn profile, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza is a “Leading progressive legal analyst, advocate, and author.”

She says that President Trump blocked her on Twitter – from his personal @realDonaldTrump account (rather than from @POTUS). Her article is called, Trump Blocked Me on Twitter and It’s Costing Me My Career. If you’ve been around kids, you can hear the “whine” in that title.

She’s devastated that, on Twitter at least, she can no longer live off of Trump:

Most of my writing is about the Trump administration…On Twitter, the bulk of my recent follower growth and new relationships with others in the politico-legal sphere have come out of responding quickly when the president tweets…

So when President Donald Trump blocked me in June…he harmed me professionally.

Her language bespeaks her sense of entitlement and self-importance; she makes it sound almost like she discovered Twitter:

Twitter initially became a haven for me when I recognized it as a great equalizer in the media world…

when I make a point pithily and it’s liked and retweeted by thousands of people, some of the people who agree with my point or like the way I make it follow me…

Anyway, she’s suing:

Every day I’m blocked I lose opportunities to advance my views…

I can’t fire off a 140-word tweet… [thus] constraining my career…

When it comes to Twitter, I thought my fights would be confined to threads and direct messages. It never occurred to me that I’d end up in court.

I like the victim-y passive voice. Remember, she’s suing. It’s her choice. No, she didn’t just “end up in court” from, say, getting sued.

But here’s the thing. Does a public figure have an obligation to allow anyone to make a living off of his public activities? For example, if Kanye West denies a particular reporter a photograph on a public street, can the reporter sue?

President Trump’s tweets take probably no more than 20 minutes of his day. Most of his day goes to meetings and phone calls leading to policy speeches and actions. For months, we’ve seen speeches and policy actions from him that the media didn’t cover much – if at all.

In the clip linked here, Rep. Scott Taylor (R – VA) tells it straight to a CNN anchordummy, Alisyn Camerota: He’s playing you, with this Twitter stuff. For your own good, you have to rebalance your coverage toward the news.

Visibly frustrated, she tries to stay on the attack with Taylor. But near the end, this exchange:

Taylor: You’ve got a lot of other things to cover.

Camerota: I agree. We would love to be able to move on. We would love to be able to talk about substance.

Perhaps she never heard of Free Will? She, or at least the producers and bosses who script her prompter, can talk about policy matters – any time they want.

It’s bizarre for them to play victim. “Oh, he put something challenging on Twitter again! Now we have to give it wall-to-wall coverage! We can’t just do 2 minutes and go on! And he eats all the ice creams!!1!!!”

I see Trump’s strategy now. It’s a brand-poisoning exercise. Trump is triggering the media to self-destroy their brand; to put themselves in the political fray, with their own pettiness and weakness on display.

UPDATE: Neil Cavuto calling it Fake News, that the media would flip out over Trump’s tweets as “advocating violence” – while having ignored the Left’s own, very real violence for a long time.

From the comments: Victor Davis Hanson. He orchestrates details like a maestro, reminding you of things you’d forgotten. (Obama trash-talking Sean Hannity, anyone?)

The last few years, amidst Europe’s ongoing terrorist attacks and Muslim-influx crisis, European gun sales have surged. Article from January 2016:

Gun sales have jumped 350 per cent in Austria amid ‘unease’ over increasing numbers of migrants following the Paris terror attacks…

The final months of 2015 showed increases in gun permit applications, while dealers reported huge demand for self defence weapons such as tasers, pepper spray and blank firing-guns.

It comes just months after shotguns were reported to have sold out across the country as residents became increasingly paranoid about refugee numbers.

Article from August 2016:

Applications for gun permits have gone up significantly in Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic. In places with stricter gun laws, such as Germany, non-lethal guns and pepper spray have become alternatives.

“There’s no official explanation for the rise, but in general we see a connection to Europe’s terrorist attacks,” Hanspeter Kruesi, a police spokesman in the Swiss canton of St. Gallen, told Reuters.

Czech Republic’s President saw the light:

President Milos Zeman used to advocate gun control, but called for easier access to guns in July [2016] following the terror attack in Nice.

“Earlier I spoke against possession of large amounts of weapons [in the hands of the people],” Zeman said in a July interview with newspaper Blesk. “After those attacks, I do not think so any more.”

And last week, the Czech Republic began to create their own version of our 2nd Amendment:

Czech lawmakers have passed legislation in the lower parliament that would see the right to bear firearms enshrined in the country’s constitution…

The legislation was passed with 139 deputies agreeing to the amendment to the constitution with only nine deputies voting against. The amendment will now be considered by the Czech Senate where it will require a supermajority of three-fifths…

…the Czech legislation reads: “Citizens of the Czech Republic have the right to acquire, retain and bear arms and ammunition.”

It’s rare to have that right in a country’s Constitution. Hopefully, it’s about to become less rare.

Unfortunately, Germany is busy turning its guns against its own People’s free speech:

German lawmakers approved a bill on Friday aimed at cracking down on hate speech on social networks…

Among other things, it would fine social networking sites up to 50 million euros ($56 million) if they persistently fail to remove illegal content within a week, including defamatory “fake news.”

“Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins,” said Justice Minister Heiko Maas, who was the driving force behind the bill…

Social networks also have to publish a report every six months detailing how many complaints they received and how they dealt with them.

This is fascism: the merger of Business and State, in which the State commandeers Business to achieve the State’s aims – such as, in this case, the enforcement of political purity and consensus. Looks like Mark Zuckerberg has no problem with it.

Are the Germans going to target ordinary citizens’ protests against Germany’s insane Muslim refugee policy? Sadly, yes:

By “right wing extremist” what German authorities really mean is anyone who questions the immigration policies of the Europe, or thinks differently than the general population.

The article cites the relevant sections of Germany’s criminal speech code – that sound good on paper, except they are so subjective that the authorities can, will and do use them to punish any speech they don’t like.

I’m not sure – my German is quite rusty – but I think that in this clip, Germany’s Vice Chancellor is saying that Muslim refugees are more German than the Germans who would object to their presence, and who should therefore be locked up.

Donald Trump is a genius at branding people. I still think that his tweets about Joe and Mika are un-presidential and unhelpful. But I have to admit: From now on, whenever I see Joe and Mika’s faces, I will remember that they’re vain people who have had work done (or at least she has), and that the POTUS shares my view that the two of them say and do some pretty ridiculous things.

There’s also a notion making the rounds that President Trump may have created the controversy for strategic reasons.

…the President couldn’t care less about Mika’s face or ‘Morning Joe’s’ ratings. The sole motive behind the attack was to distract the media from reporting on the travel ban and ‘Kate’s Law’ passing the House. The ‘Muslim Ban,’ as the MSM has coined it, is the most controversial law Trump will likely put into effect during his Presidency.

As Joseph Curl, former Drudge Report editor and Daily Wire writer tweeted… “For those who don’t think Trump is the Master Tweeter, the travel ban is in place and everyone’s talking about — Mika and Joe. Well played.”

I get the point being made. But I don’t quite buy it.

I mean, so what if we talk about the President’s temporary travel ban on 6 countries where the citizens are unusually prone to terrorism – AND have unusually poor documentation (poor proof of identity)? Or if we talk about a new law that cracks down on criminals entering the U.S. illegally?

They’re both good things. Why not let the media talk about them? The more they’re talked about, or the more Antifa is out protesting them: the more Trump’s own stock goes up. He improves his brand among the Silent Majority.

The SCOTUS travel ban decision last week was especially cool. 9-0, baby! It wasn’t a perfect decision; but heck, they had to get Ruth Bader Ginsberg on board. And they did, thus slapping down some real nonsense from the lower courts.

So, my view is that Trump would have been better off letting the media focus on the travel decision, on Kate’s law, or even on Trumprussia – which is increasingly being recognized as Fake News (so that talking about it actually hurts Democrats now). No need for all this Twitter strategery.

As always, feel free to disagree or to express your thoughts, in the comments.

UPDATE: Overnight, Trump got his tweets on, including his re-tweeting a parody video of him punching down CNN. 🙂

UPDATE: CNN’s answer is… a high-brow form of whining to Mommy. In measured tones, they play the victim. Poor dears. There goes what was left of their glamour.

UPDATE: Scott Adams argues that it’s all a big trap for CNN. In particular, CNN must cover – that is, re-broadcast – the parody “CNN smackdown” video. It’s like forcing CNN to advertise their own position of weakness.

It’s fun to watch President Trump troll the media. And MSNBC’s pompous, unhinged Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezeznski deserve it as much as anyone.

But this is too much. (The link is just the first tweet of a two-part tweet.) Trump gloats over his past social snubbing of Joe and Mika as she struggled to recover from a facelift.

Come on, Mr. President. Your internal rhymes are neat and it’s funny…for a blogger, or a cartoonist, or some Millenial in his mom’s basement. But you’re none of those things.

Keep it classy. At your level, people’s personal issues should be off-limits (just like their kids). Bait the dummies over politics and their Fake News addiction.

I don’t think you owe them an apology; but you probably owe us (the People) a small one. For lowering your office.

UPDATE: Just to round out the picture.

• WaPo has background on the Joe-Mika-Trump feud.
• Hannity has a reel of low points from Joe’s TV show, including his poor music video.

So in fairness, Trump’s feelings may be justified. But please, Mr. President, don’t gossip about people. Not even your opponents. Don’t do personal feuds.

The Right-o-sphere is rife with personal stories of Facebook, Google/Youtube and Twitter either de-monetizing, restricting, throttling, censoring or banning conservative and libertarian voices.

Facebook seems happy to do it – while allowing Islamists the run of the place, to the point where PM Theresa May called for Internet censorship after the recent Islamist mass murders in Manchester.

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg said:

[Terrorist attacks are] carried out with a goal to spread fear and distrust, and turn members of a community against each other. I believe the only sustainable way to fight back against those who seek to divide us is to create a world where understanding and empathy can spread faster than hate, and where every single person in every country feels connected and cared for and loved. That’s the world we can and must build together.

This is so misguided that, coming from a nominally-intelligent man, one must almost wonder if some evil force possesses him? Because it happens to be what the wolf would say to the hounds if it could; or what Satan might say when cornered.

Newsflash, Mr. Zuckerberg: terrorist attacks are carried out with a goal of killing infidels and establishing the supremacy of Islam. Period. You have to admit a problem’s true nature, before you can solve it.

I don’t want to “fight back against those who seek to divide us.” Because that makes zero sense. Anyone who ever does anything good or new, or who takes a stand (be it true or false) on anything, “seeks to divide us.” It happens. It makes much more sense to fight back against those who seek to subjugate and/or kill us.

The terrorist losers use your own platform, Mr. Zuckerberg, and it’s not clear if you make much effort to stop them. Much less, an effort greater than what you put into stopping U.S. conservatives, or other critics of Hillary or the Big Government that you love so much.

Recently, a Pakistani man was sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy – on his Facebook page. Facebook claims innocence; “we do not provide any government with direct access to people’s data. We will continue to protect our community from unnecessary or overreaching government intervention.”

But I don’t know if I can believe that. Because:

• Pakistan asked Facebook’s help to fight blasphemy.
• Reports exist that Facebook assisted them.
• Which are credible because of Facebook’s track record. When Angela Merkel pressed Zuckerberg to crack down on posts critical of Germany’s Muslim refugee crisis, he told her yes, they’re working on it.

Is Facebook an accessory to Pakistan’s judicial murder of Taimoor Raza? We need to know. I couldn’t find any recent statement about it.

And of course, that Facebook would ever give a hoot about anti-Jewish or anti-Christian blasphemy is unimaginable. (As it should be; the point here is Facebook’s extreme double standard.)

Right now it appears that Facebook puts WAY more into stopping conservatives and libertarians – people who stand for life and liberty – than it puts into stopping various kinds of Islamic murderer. That’s evil.

Hat tip Steven Crowder. By the way, his Painting Muhammad video is must-see.

Apparently, making fun of their nipples is an effective tactic, if you can get access to pictures of their nipples and their nipples are mock-worthy.

OK, this is kind of an unserious post, but there is a broader more serious discussion going on about fighting the left more aggressively. Since the George W. Bush administration, the right has been lectured that we should take the high ground, that we should be civil and not resort to the kind of violent, deranged rhetoric of left wing politicians, or the obnoxiousness of groups like Occupy Wall Street, Code Pink, Black Lives Matter, Antifa… and the list goes on.

But all these years of Civility haven’t gotten us anywhere. Meanwhile, the left has only gotten more obnoxious. Look at Evergreen State College and Berkeley as only the most recent examples. The failure to push back against the violent left has only emboldened them to push harder and harder, become more extreme tot he point where they think it is okay to sneak up behind a peaceful right-wing protester and bash him on the head with a bike lock.

Not to mention that the right’s limp-mule response to the left gave rise to the alt-right; which is willing to fight back against the left, blow for blow but unfortunately contains some racist and disreputable elements. Someone once said that if good people refuse to fight, then they ought not complain if not-so-good people pick up the fight instead. Or, something like that.

Dems have been complaining for months & months about Dir. Comey. Now that he has been fired they PRETEND to be aggrieved. Phony hypocrites!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017

UPDATE: A commenter has made a reasonable challenge in another thread: (more…)

Your Left at work:

The idiot made a detailed death threat against President-Elect Trump, on social media.

He was then surprised that it got out to society. You know, surprised that people on social media would be social with it.

He tried to plead that it was a joke, that it was alcohol-fueled, and that it was only meant to be private (i.e., he’s sorry he got caught). But those excuses didn’t stop his getting some death threats in return.

Surely those threats were also jokes, alcohol-fueled, and only meant to be private. Even so, when it was done to him, he was shocked – and for some reason he felt a need to go into hiding.

His former company, to its good credit, has gotten rid of him. And he has apologized; God bless him, for that. Hat tip HotAir.

UPDATE: Your Left at work, again. The Left’s New Hot Meme has arrived. Lefties will be labelling all news/opinion sites that dare challenge them as “Fake News”.

We can foresee what comes after: The Left will eventually get its “Fake News”-labelled sites to be banned or boycotted by Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, CNN.com, and so on. In this way, the Left will once again control all discussions and get the peasants to conform. Google has started going there.

UPDATE – Climate of Hate: Daisy Luther on how Obama, Clinton, and Sanders Could Stop the Riots But They Just Watch.

Last month, there was a brief internet infatuation with James Robertson, a resident of the Democrat Stronghold of Detroit, Michigan. People were inspired by his 20 mile daily commute… on foot… to his factory job, and were so moved that they raised over $3oo,000 for him on GoFundMe, and a local Ford dealership presented him with a new car. And this was all done voluntary, without any bureaucratic coercion from the Federal Government, because people wanted to show support for someone who demonstrated good values and a good work ethic.

But after his story went viral, the parasites who make up the city that has been run (into the ground) by progressive left Democrats for fifty years decided that Robertson should… gee, how to say it… “Spread the wealth around.”

After that, everybody knew him. And everybody wanted something. The neighborhood started showing up on his porch with their palms out, though Robertson has yet to receive any of the money. His girlfriend — the one who owns the house and charges him 200 bucks for the bedroom — demanded a payout, he said. So did her ex-husband who lives with them. So did her adult son who lives with them. So did the other dude who lives with them.

Safe bet that none of those people would ever walk 20 miles a day to get to a job. The upshot is, Robertson had to move to a secret location, under police protection, because in Detroit, if people think you have some money, they will kill you to get to it.

I just wonder where they got the idea that just taking stuff from people who are better off than you was fair and just.

Social Justice, Inc,. presents the 2015 White Guilt calendar.

EJI is proud to announce the release of our 2015 calendar, A History of Racial Injustice. This full-color wall calendar expands on EJI’s previous calendars with new historical entries and short essays highlighting historical events and issues in our nation’s racial history.

The 2015 calendar is part of a series of reports and educational materials that explore (America’s) legacy of … slavery, racial terror, and legally supported abuse of racial minorities.

Then again, this calendar may not be for you guys, because some elements of the Racial Justice Movement have decided that Gays are the Oppresor.

We can no longer sit idly by as you, mainstream LGBT organizations, center your movements and advocacy work on some within our varied communities but not others. We are no longer OK with the mainstream LGBT organizations among you who signal your complicity in anti-Black violence through your loud silence and deliberate ignoring of the types of systemic, institutionalized forms of anti-Black racism that negatively impact Black queer and trans people (and all Black people), disallow Black well-being, and deaden us.

Imagine the dillema now faced by Chris Lemon, Michael Sam, and RuPaul.

This could be satire, but considering that the Feminist Left has already gifted us with “Micro-aggresions” and California’s affirmative consent law, is anything too ridiculous to doubt that Progressives won’t make it a thing.

HotAir pointed out yesterday that “Consistent liberals” are most likely to block others on social media for disagreeing with them politically.

Hence, my question. I’m honestly divided. In this complicated world, we’ve all known some lefties who are plain jerks, while some other lefties may be fairly nice people – apart from their never wanting to hear or know of any information that could make them question their prejudices.

I ran into the second kind of person just the other night, at my dad’s. “Cynthia” is a highly-educated neighbor in his retirement community, very nice in terms of watching out for my dad’s disabled girlfriend, and with a pleasant demeanor. So far, “not a jerk.”

But narrow-minded. As one example, she’ll dismiss (as in, will not hear) any information of Sarah Palin being anything other than a total dummy. Which is funny because the prominent Obama supporter and former “green jobs czar”, Van Jones, has now admitted in essence that the Left lied to people about Palin in the 2008 campaign:

“Sarah Palin .. people forget. She had the Democratic party shaking in our boots in 2008. She came out, she gave that speech at the convention. That was, hands down, one of the best convention speeches – not by a woman, by anybody in 2008. People were running for the hills…

Now it can be told! Now it can be told! We were scared!”

It must help the Democrats that their most officially ‘educated’ supporters are among their most dogmatically-gullible supporters. The Democrats can lie to such people and they won’t even care. For another example, we have President Obama’s recent admission that the Democrat candidates who are staying distant from him this year are engaged in a lie:

Well look, here’s the bottom line. We’ve got a tough map. A lot of the states are contested this time are states that I didn’t win. And so some of the candidates there – it is difficult for them to have me in the state…

The bottom line is though, these are all folks who vote with me. They have supported my agenda in Congress…These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me, and you know, I tell them, I said, ‘you know what? You do what you need to do to win.’

Dogmatically-gullible people: They enable the Democrats to get away with it. Some of them are jerks, some of them are nice – but narrow-minded.

Apple, Facebook will pay for female employees to freeze their eggs:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc and Facebook Inc will help pay for female employees to freeze their eggs…

From January, Apple will pay both full- and part-time employees up to $20,000 for procedure and storage costs for female employees to freeze their eggs.

“We continue to expand our benefits for women, with a new extended maternity leave policy, along with cryopreservation and egg storage as part of our extensive support for infertility treatments,” Apple said in a statement.

I’m pretty sure that Apple already covered its employees’ *medical fertility problems*. (If that’s mistaken, please correct me in the comments.) Something else must be new here. What is it?

Could it be, a benefit for egg-freezing as a pure career move? Let’s see:

“We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families.”

NBC News reported on Tuesday that Facebook recently began covering egg-freezing for non-medical reasons…

Egg freezing is a pricey but increasingly popular option for women. It enables women to delay child bearing…

A sign of the times. Now that Facebook/Apple woman can freeze her eggs at 30, work years of 80 hour weeks, and then at 50 when she’s pulling 300K a year (and naturally infertile), pay a surrogate to do that other part of her life for her – you know, having kids from her eggs.

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with it – if she’s doing it all with her own money. The issue I see here is, Apple and Facebook are choosing to engage in a form of discrimination against their employees who don’t make (or shall we say, don’t need to make) that particular, optional choice.

Remember, the money comes from somewhere: the overall “employee comp” budget. Rather than pay tens of thousands of dollars for a hugely *optional* procedure for a special category of employee, why would Facebook/Apple not raise all employees’ bonuses by (say) a thousand dollars? That would empower far more women (and men, and transgenders) and be much more fair.

The free market will (or should) ultimately decide if Apple and Facebook have done the right thing here. In the meantime, some people appear not to grasp that freezing your eggs – purely as a career move – is optional:

“Egg freezing gives women more control,” said Jennifer Tye, marketing lead for Glow, a mobile application aimed at helping women avoid pregnancy or conceive.

“When I turned 30, I had this notion that my biological clock was ticking, but I didn’t know what my options were,” said Tye.

Really? At 30, she didn’t know what her options were? I hope she was misquoted; if not, it’s mind-boggling stupidity.