In a great day for tolerance, we read:
"England supporters who give Nazi salutes during this summer's World Cup in Germany will be prosecuted and banned from domestic and international football matches, the home secretary, Charles Clarke, said yesterday... Invoking the Nazi era - including giving a Nazi salute, denying the Holocaust and wearing Nazi symbols - is illegal under German law, and Mr Clarke said he would support the German authorities in prosecuting fans for such offences."
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Not much freedom of expression there. Satire and mockery have always been potent forms of political expression but bans on political expression are what we have come to expect from Europe. The satire in this case might be crude but satire often is. And is it not a good thing to keep alive memory of past follies? I forget who it was who said: "He who does not remember the past is bound to repeat it".
And the ban is in a way self-mocking. It shows that the German conception of individual liberties and human rights still has not completely emerged from Hitler's intolerant shadow. The Muslims protesting against the Mohammed cartoons would understand and agree with the ban.
The pic above is of course of John Cleese -- a great English comedian -- doing HIS famous Nazi "impersonation". I wonder will future screenings of "Fawlty Towers" (the series concerned) be banned in England now?
Insulting Muslims and Homosexuals bad: Insulting Christians OK
Another ruling from the notorious 9th Circuit. No prizes for guessing what they would have decided if it was Mohammed being referred to rather than Jesus:
"An Alaska high school violated a student's free speech rights by suspending him after he unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from the school, a federal court ruled on Friday. Joseph Frederick, a student at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska, displayed the banner -- which refers to smoking marijuana -- in January 2002 to try to get on television as the Olympic torch relay was passing the school.
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The court also ruled that the kid could sue the teacher who reined him in.
Spam Vigilantes
This article is a bit disturbing. Spam blocking is something we all want but it seems that there is a volunteer organization called www.Spamhaus.org that claims to be providing a spam blocking service but which blocks whatever it likes with little or no notification or redress for legitimate emailers whom they decide to block. Reading between the lines, it seems that any conservative sending out a lot of emails could well get categorized as a spammer and be unfairly blocked. There seems to be nothing to prevent it. You could be missing out on emails you would want to be receiving because of their activities. And some of the people behind www.Spamhaus.org seem to be pretty unsavory characters. Probably the only way to make them more accountable would be for someone else to start spamblocking all their emails.
