Genocide in Pajamas

There seem to be very few defenders of comprehensive freedom of speech. The Left defend their right to say their stuff and attack the rights of others while Christians attack "obscene" speech and often lose in defending their own speech. The end result is that everybody feels somewhat restricted in what they can say. Even I do, libertarian though I am. Just to make sure that Google does not take any of my sites down, I always use the form "n*gger" if I have to discuss that word, for instance. I must say that I do not really understand why that small change -- which fools nobody -- makes such a big difference, but it seems to.

And what are we to make of the brave conservative bloggers at Pajamas Media? They have just expelled Gates of Vienna from their organization for using the "G-word": "genocide". GoV is a site that is devoted to defending Western civilization against Muslim attack and they frequently warn against what could happen in the future. One of the scenarios that they warned against recently was the eruption of outright war between Muslims and others in Europe, with one possible outcome of that being genocide of Muslims. The entire aim of GoV is of course to avert any such war by taking action now to defend our freedoms from attack.

GoV was quite clearly, therefore, NOT arguing for a genocide against Muslims -- quite the opposite. It aims to prevent that. But the mention of the G-word in the same sentence as a reference to Muslims was just impermissible speech to Pajamas media. What wimps and wusses they are! They have surrendered. They are doing the job of the Muslims and their Leftist allies for them. I doubt that I will ever again read or link to any of their sites. You will note that I have not done so here.

GoV have themselves been very magnanimous about the matter and have said that the Bananas in Pajamas had every right to do what they did. Undoubtedly they do but what does it say about their character or the value of reading them? Do drop by at GoV and give them what support you can.

More BBC censorship

"Separatist" and "moderate" are apparently bad words:

"The BBC is facing a High Court challenge over its decision to censor a party political broadcast in the run-up to Thursday's local elections. A Christian party has begun legal action after the corporation insisted on changes to a short film in which the party voiced opposition to the building of Europe's biggest mosque next to the site of the 2012 Olympics.

Tablighi Jamaat, the Islamic missionary group behind the 75 million pound Abbey Mills mosque, opposes inter-faith dialogue and preaches that non-Muslims are an evil and corrupting influence. One of its British advocates has said that it aims to rescue Muslims from the culture and civilisation of Jews and Christians by creating "such hatred for their ways as human beings have for urine and excreta".

The Christian Choice election broadcast would have described Tablighi Jamaat as "a separatist Islamic group" before welcoming that some "moderate Muslims" were opposed to the mosque complex.

Alan Craig, the party's candidate in the London mayoral election, also on Thursday, said that he was forced to change the wording at the insistence of lawyers at the BBC and ITV, which will also feature in the court action.

The BBC refused to accept "separatist" - the corporation asked for "controversial" instead - and barred the use of "moderate Muslims" because the phrase implied that Tablighi Jamaat was less than moderate.

Source

As the BBC is compulsorily supported by the taxpayer (and even some non-taxpayers are made to cough up), one would hope it had some obligation to speak the truth rather than cover it up. Silly of me to think that, I guess.

Supermarkets must accept being libelled?

The British literary luvvies are venting their hatred of big business:

"A group of Britain's leading authors has accused Tesco of using "deeply chilling" tactics to silence its critics. Nick Hornby and Mark Haddon are among the writers who have signed a letter in The Times today condemning the supermarket for prosecuting a Thai business leader for making a speech that decried Tesco's expansion. If the supermarket is successful Jit Siratranont could be jailed.

Hornby and Haddon - together with Marina Lewycka, the author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, and Deborah Moggach, who wrote Tulip Fever - have also put their names to a longer open letter arguing that a criminal libel prosecution and two civil actions against journalists represent a breach of their human rights....

A spokesman for the supermarket said that Tesco stood by its Thai subsidiary, which would have informed its superiors in Britain of its actions. "All three of these actions follow a sustained period of attack on Tesco Lotus in Thailand. It is our fervent wish to reach agreement. We are seeking a public apology. It is very regrettable that we have had to take legal action in Thailand. We had hoped that the individuals concerned would apologise for the false and highly damaging allegations they had made about our business over a sustained period of time but despite numerous attempts to get them to set the record straight, this has not happened.

Source

Tesco is a bit like a British Wal-Mart -- that friend of the poor that all good Leftists hate! It seems to me that Tesco are in fact being moderate about this.

Russians prosecute church for antisemitism

This is rather an odd one:

"Prosecutors in Cherepovets, Russia (Vologda region) opened an investigation into the screening of an antisemitic film at a Russian Orthodox Church affiliated library, according to an April 9, 2008 report by the Interfax news agency. The library screened the film "Russia With a Knife in its Back: Jewish Fascism and the Genocide of the Russian People" throughout 2007, despite the fact that the Federal Registration Service lists it as banned extremist material. Local prosecutors assert that the film "contains statements aimed at inciting hatred and enmity, and humiliates the dignity of Jews based on their ethnicity, origin, and attitude towards religion."

Source

I gather that antisemitism is widespread in Russia but having the Russian State prosecute it feels a bit odd in the light of past Soviet persecution of Jews.

Unrepentant Canadian Fascists

A senior official of the kangaroo court that is the Canadian Human Rights Commission has recently commented on criticism of their extreme approach to "hate speech". An excerpt:

"Because to be quite clear about it, we do believe in what we do. We believe that in our society there should be limits on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, that there is a line, not one that we draw, but one that must be drawn nevertheless. We are comfortable with what we do."

Source

No change forthcoming, one gathers. The chances of getting the Fascists tamed by way of an Act of Parliament are pretty slim given the very divided state of Canada's parliament. The haters of free speech are probably in a majority there.

More black hate-speech



Some comments from Daphna Ziman, wife of Richard Ziman, former CEO of the major firm, Arden Realty. The Zimans are Jews and generous donors to many worthy causes.

"I have to tell you of an experience I had last night that was so anti Semitic and frightening: Last night I was honored by Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, for my work with Children Uniting nations with African American children who are living out of home care. I have dedicated my life to saving these children from abuse, neglect and a life of crime. We created `adoption day' and "Day of the child" determined to recruit caring adults to be mentors and life savers for our at risk children in the inner cities.....

After I spoke and thanked the fraternity and their members, Rev. Eric Lee, pres. and CEO of Southern Christian Leadership Conference of greater Los Angeles, was introduced as the key note speaker. He began his speech by thanking Jesus for Obama, who is going to be the leader of the world. He continued by referring to other leaders Like Dr. King,being that this was the moment of celebrating Dr. King's spirit on the anniversary of his assassination, and Malcolm X.

It was right after the mention of Malcolm X that he looked right at me and started talking about the African American children who are suffering because of the JEWS that have featured them as rapists and murderers. He spoke of a Jewish Rabbi, and then corrected himself to say "What other kind of Rabbis are there, but JEWS". He told how this Rabbi came to him to say that he would like to bring the AA community and the Jewish community together. " NO, NO, NO,!!!!" he shouted into the crowd, we are not going to come together. "The Jews have made money on us in the music business and we are the entertainers, and they are economically enslaving us"

He continued as to how now the salvation has come and the gates have open for African Americans to come together behind Barack Obama, because now is the time to show them.(meaning the Jews). He continued to speak about ` White supremacy' vs the talents and visionaries in the core of African Americans. He demeaned being given freedom, by saying "To what?" to a country that kills women and children.

Source

Any recourse against the black bigot? Not that I have heard of -- and the above happened a couple of weeks ago. He eventually had a general rejection of antisemitism squeezed out of him but only after he had reiterated some of his baseless accusations against Jews.

And note that the SCLC is Martin Luther King's old organization so this guy is a prominent member of the black community -- and seems destined to remain so.

More background here -- including testimony from others about the accuracy of Mrs. Ziman's account.

Far Left Brazilian Government Seeks Identities of "Homophobic" Bloggers

We read:

" The Brazilian government has begun to prohibit access to websites that are condemned for violating "human rights", including sites that are deemed "homophobic". The government is also demanding that hosting services divulge the identities of users who post offensive material.

The Google Corporation has reportedly received a court summons with a dossier of 150 pages documenting "homophobic" material on its "Orkut" service, a social networking system popular in Brazil.

Federal Prosecutor S‚rgio Suiama has proposed an information-sharing system for Google that will give the government access to identifying information of posters who violate its restrictions. "With this agreement, which has already been accepted in Brazil by the providers IG, Terra, Click 21, and AOL, Google would agree to, under judicial order, provide information that will help to discover those who are guilty of crimes," Suiama was quoted as saying on the Brazilian government website SaferNet.

However, the government is not waiting to act. After years of warning Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and other companies to remove offensive material from their systems, a state court has ordered internet service providers to prohibit access to a blog hosted by WordPress.com that fell afoul of the government's speech codes.

The order, which was issued recently by the 31st Civil Jurisdiction of the Tribunal of Justice of Sao Paulo, will require Brazilian internet service providers to prevent access to a blog that was judged as violating "human rights". The name and address of the site, as well as the offense committed, are not being revealed to the public.

Internet service providers in Brazil, however, are telling the government that they cannot block a single Wordpress site at a time, and will be forced to block all of WordPress. In the process, they will eliminate access to the second largest public blogging system in the world, one that includes tens of thousands of Brazilian blogs...

Pro-Family blogger Julio Severo, whose Blogger site was temporarily blocked last year by Google after he was accused of "homophobia", says that he is concerned about his blog's future as well as his own safety. He compared the actions of the Brazilian government to Nazism.

Source

Court Rules Unanimously: Illinois School Must Allow "Be Happy, Not Gay" T-shirt

We read:

" The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit reversed a lower court's ruling against an Illinois student Wednesday, saying the district court must order a Naperville high school to suspend its ban on a T-shirt that reads "Be Happy, Not Gay" while the student's lawsuit proceeds. School officials prohibited student Alex Nuxoll, who is represented by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys, from wearing the clothing.

"Christian students shouldn't be discriminated against for expressing their beliefs," said ADF Senior Counsel Nate Kellum. "Public school officials cannot censor a message expressing one viewpoint on homosexual behavior and then at the same time allow messages that express another viewpoint. The court's ruling is a victory for all students seeking to protect their First Amendment rights on a school campus."

Nuxoll, a student at Neuqua Valley High School, desires to express his perspective at various times throughout the year, including the next school day after the "Day of Silence." Other students at the school are permitted to wear shirts with messages supporting homosexual behavior as part of the "Day of Silence," which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. The 7th Circuit ruling prevents school officials from singling out Nuxoll's message for censorship.

Source

Parents warned of 'hate speech' during homosexual celebration

We read:

"A principal in a Massachusetts school district with a well-established reputation of promoting homosexuality to students has written to parents to tell them distributing "religious materials" during the school's annual observance of the pro-homosexual "Day of Silence" is not appropriate.

The letter from Michael Jones of Lexington, Mass., High School also confirms "hate speech" is "subject to legal constraints" and messages communicated through slogan T-shirts, buttons or stickers that express "condemnation" are "discouraged." Students with such a message will be counseled by school officials to meet the guidelines of the school handbook, he wrote.

However, groups that have been given his approval are allowed to hand out promotional materials to others and positive messages about the "Day of Silence" such as "Vocal Supporter" and "Silent Supporter" fall under free speech guidelines, Jones said.

Source

Leftists always seem to think that the law does not apply to them.

"Bullying" as a pretext for hate-speech legislation

We read:

"A bill that would expand Louisiana's anti-bullying law to include race, color and sexual orientation protection for public school students won approval Wednesday in a House committee. The legislation may also cover text messaging that is perceived as bullying, said state Rep. Walt Leger III, D-New Orleans and sponsor of the bill....

Current state law requires local school boards to enact policies that ban the harassment, intimidation and bullying of one student by another. Leger's bill would spell out what those terms mean for local school boards.

It bans verbal abuse or bullying, including slurs, name calling or derogatory statements because of race, color, religion, national origin, disability, physical/personal appearance or sexual orientation.

Source

"Right to speak extinguished"

The heading above appeared on an article about the progression of the Olympic torch through Canberra, Australia's equivalent of Washington, D.C. But it could have been about lots of other places as well.

The "right to speak" that was extinguished was in fact the right to harass and disrupt a legitimate and peaceful sporting activity. Like most people in the Western world, I think that the Chinese occupation of Tibet is deplorable but that the authorities have the obligation to erect barricades etc to protect the torch-bearers from aggressive Leftist demonstrators is also undisputable to any reasonable person. It was not the right to speak that was suppressed but the right to make an asshole of yourself.

If attention-seeking Leftist demonstrators could be relied on to act peacefully, there would no doubt have been the right and opportunity to hold up any number of placards etc. but we know how peaceful the preachers of peace in fact are so if anybody suppressed the right of people to speak it was the thugs who made countermeasures to their aggression necessary.

And that the Chinese sent counter-demonstrators to protest against the protestors is entirely proper in a democratic society. It's an inevitable consequence of taking your politics to the street. But it was not the Chinese who initiated that. Both sides are entitled to their say and if one side uses disruptive tactics the same is to be expected back.

The Prime Minister of Australia went to China recently and -- speaking in Mandarin Chinese -- personally conveyed to the Chinese leadership the disquiet that most Australians feel about China's actions in Tibet. THAT was adult politics and an action that Australians can be proud of. There was NO silencing of what most Australians want to say to the Chinese leaders. Far from it.

Police go after blogger who criticized them

We read:

"An anonymous blogger in Whitewater, Wisconsin has been critical of the police chief and how he runs things. He has been critical of various aspects of the town government as well. He recently criticized government roundups of alleged illegal immigrants for instance.

Police chief James Coan did not take kindly to be criticized so he had city employees begin an investigation in order to try to find out who was publishing the blog. Coan used his position in the police department to get two detectives, the director of public works, the information technology officer and the city clerk involved in searching for the identity of the blogger -- all at taxpayer's expense."

Coan had the blogger listed as a "suspect" even though he had broken no laws. Coan tried to bullshit his way out of the mess he created by claiming that the blogger was a "potential threat" because he was "so extremely angry at me".

Source

Sounds like they didn't find him, though. Lucky for him! More background here.

There is a lot of misbehaviour by police and prosecutors. Strange Justice documents a lot of it.

Britain's House of Lords blocks "hate speech" law

We read:

" A bill to toughen Britain's hate speech law banning attacks on gays has been defeated in the House of Lords. The bill would have provided for jail sentences up to seven years for anyone convicted of using threatening language on the basis of sexual orientation. The legislation already had passed the House of Commons. The Lords voted 81 to 57 to strip prison sentences from the bill, leaving it toothless.

The vote leaves the Labor government with two choices: either let the bill die, or use a procedural vote in the Lower House to override the Lords. Even some gay rights advocates, including Peter Tatchell, opposed the bill, saying it would hamper free speech. Church leaders also fought the legislation claiming it could be used to silence any criticism of homosexuality from the pulpit.

Comedic actor Rowan Atkinson said that if the bill were enacted it would bar humorists and comedians from caricaturizing gays. The bill was put together with the help of LGBT rights group Stonewall.

Source

Must not mention reality

We read:

"A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.

Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy. "We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."

An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.

Source

Hitler political TV ads banned

The ads seem to make valid comparisons to me:

"Mexico's top electoral body ordered broadcasters to stop running a controversial TV ad that compares a firebrand leftist leading a siege of Congress to dictators Hitler and Pinochet. The TV ad, funded by a Mexican businessman angry at a blockade of Congress by opposition lawmakers trying to derail an oil reform plan, says the antics of protest leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador are endangering democracy.

"The complaints committee decided unanimously to order the withdrawal of the spot from today," a spokesman for the Federal Electoral Institute said.

Leftists seized Congress podiums on April 10 to block a government proposal to lower barriers to private investment in the oil sector, controlled by the state since 1938. The action has left Congress paralysed.

"Who shuts congresses? In 1933, Adolf Hitler in Germany. In 1939, Benito Mussolini in Italy. In 1973, Augusto Pinochet of Chile," the ad says, over grainy footage of the Nazi leader, his fascist ally in Italy and Chile's late military dictator.

Source

Including Pinochet with the other two is dubious, however. You will never hear it mentioned in the Left-dominated media but Pinochet acted to depose a law-defying Marxist President at the express invitation of the duly elected Chilean parliament. He also retired peacefully from power when he had put Chile back on its feet.

Ali Eteraz, an American Muslim lawyer on free speech:

His view of Dutch politician Geert Wilders:

"Wilders is a threat to liberal society. I do not believe that Wilders' views must be criminalized by the state, but they should be deemed out of the bounds of liberal society much the same way that we consider discrimination on the basis of gender unacceptable. Further, the threat of a civil and democratic discussion --- yes, the threat of a discussion --- about the criminality of his views should be left on the table as a deterrent. Our aim should be to rid liberal society of people like Wilders.

Source

Mr Eteraz contributes to Leftist organs such as the Puffington Host and The Guardian from time to time. One critique of his views is here

Remarks about China on CNN spark protests

We read:

"Chinese-Americans rallied outside CNN's Hollywood office on Saturday to demand the firing of commentator Jack Cafferty for calling China's goods "junk" and its leaders a "bunch of goons and thugs."

"We understand free speech," Lake Wang, 39, told the Los Angeles Times. "But what if Cafferty said this about other racial groups? I think he would be fired. I think he's jealous of China."

A crowd estimated by police at 2,000 to 5,000 gathered, chanting "Cafferty, Fire," and singing Chinese songs.

Source

These guys have some right to be annoyed. If Muslims and blacks cannot be criticized, why should criticism of the Chinese be allowed?

I personally think people should be free to call China's leadership a "bunch of goons and thugs." Why? Because they are. But could I say that about blacks? No way! Even though blacks are something like 9 times more likely to commit violent crimes than whites are.

The Pirate Bay Launches Uncensored Blogging Service

Most interesting:

"In their ever continuing battle to free the Internet, The Pirate Bay has now launched an uncensored blogging service, called Baywords. The service is intended to be a safe haven for bloggers who want to be able to write whatever they want, without being afraid to get shut down by their blog host. The Pirate Bay is known for defending people's right to freedom of speech on the Internet, and this is exactly what motivated them to start this new blogging service.

Brokep, one of the co-founders of the site, told TorrentFreak that the idea to start a blogging service came up when the weblog of one of his friends was taken down from Wordpress recently, for linking to copyrighted material.

This, of course, goes against the "uncensored web" philosophy of The Pirate Bay team, and they didn't hesitate to start their own blogging service, Baywords, using Wordpress as their blogging engine.

Source

I might need those guys one day. I have grabbed a site there just in case: See here

Praying passenger removed from SF-bound flight

We read:

""A passenger who left his seat to pray in the back of a plane before it took off, ignoring flight attendants' orders to return, was removed by an airport security guard, a witness and the airline said. The Orthodox Jewish man, who wore a full beard, a black hat and a long black coat, stood near the lavatories and began saying his prayers while the United Airlines jet was being boarded at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday night, fellow passenger Ori Brafman said.

When flight attendants urged the man, who was carrying a religious book, to take his seat, he ignored them, Brafman said. Two friends, who were seated, tried to tell the attendants that the man couldn't stop until his prayers were over in about 2 minutes, he said. 'He doesn't respond to them, but his friends explain that once you start praying you can't stop,' said Brafman, who was seated three rows away."

Source

Sounds like a bit of religious intolerance there. Even 2 minutes was too much to ask? I'm betting that it delayed the flight a hell of a lot longer than 2 minutes to take him off it. No brains at all. But brains seem to have flown out the window where air travel is concerned these days.

If he had been a Muslim he would have been treated with much more respect. But he clearly wasn't, of course. If you can't tell an Orthodox Jew in full garb, you don't know anything. And if you can tell one, you know he is harmless.

Court filing seeks elimination of penalties for Christian art

We read:

"A court in Wisconsin has been asked to suspend immediately a policy in the Tomah Area School District that bans Christian symbols in students' artwork, but allows Hindu, Buddhist and satanic representations. The motion was filed yesterday by the Alliance Defense Fund, which has taken on the case of a student identified by the initials A.P.

The ADF launched a lawsuit on the student's behalf after a teacher refused to give him a grade on a project because his work included "John 3:16" as well as "As sign of love."

The school district, however, openly acknowledged and publicized various pieces of art representing Buddhism, and Hinduism as well as several demon faces that appeared satanic.

Source

"Easter Egg Hunt" replaced with "Spring Hunt" in Pasadena

We read:

"In the local news section on Sunday, March 23, there was a nice article about the city of Pasadena's "Spring Hunt" held the day before at Jackie Robinson Park.

It was good to see that the Spring Bunny was able to make an appearance at the worthwhile event.

Unfortunately, the Star-News used the "E" word in a photo caption. How can there be Easter eggs at a Spring Hunt?

This was very offensive to the progressive community, and I trust that an apology and retraction will be forthcoming.

Source

And the amusing thing is that eggs and bunnies are in fact pre-Christian fertility symbols. There is nothing in the Bible about either. If that were explained to the Leftist dictators, they would no doubt be delighted to allow them. It is not religion they oppose, just Christianity.

The Year of Taking Offense

We read:

"The McCain campaign was offended last week, mightily offended. Democratic senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said McCain didn't care about the people he dropped bombs on during the Vietnam war. "You have to care about the lives of people," said Rockefeller, who supports Barack Obama for president. "McCain never gets into those issues."

This was tough criticism. Almost instantly it triggered emails from McCain's campaign headquarters expressing just how deeply offended McCain's allies were. First Orson Swindle, McCain's fellow POW in Vietnam, demanded that Obama "denounce" Rockefeller's statement. Then campaign flack Tucker Bounds zinged Obama for not "personally" condemning Rockefeller. Bounds was echoed by McCain's Senate buddy, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He urged Obama to "step up to the plate" and say Rockefeller's comment was "out of bounds."

What the McCain gang wanted, in effect, was an apology from Obama for what someone else had said. They didn't get one. Instead, Rockefeller said he was sorry for using "an inaccurate and wrong analogy," which scarcely qualified as a sincere apology.

Meanwhile, an obscure Obama press aide was trotted out to say Rockefeller had gone too far. That only prompted the McCain team to demand, once again, that the candidate himself, Obama, repudiate Rockefeller. There was no telling when the flap would end.

Of course the whole thing was largely playacting--in other words, political theater. Sure, Rockefeller's attack was nasty, unfair, and over the top. So what? McCain has heard much worse. He certainly did during his 2000 presidential bid. He did when he championed immigration reform. He's no stranger to the nasty, unfair, and over-the-top side of politics.

One of McCain's strengths has been his ability to stand up to political abuse without flinching or whining. This is surely a presidential trait: the ability to shut out insults and cheap attacks and hostile buzz and concentrate on what's important. Ronald Reagan was particularly good at this. Constant offense-taking wasn't a feature of his campaigns or his presidency.

But 2008 is different and not just for McCain. Peter Baker of the Washington Post has aptly dubbed it the "Year of Taking Offense." It's mostly fake. Candidates and their minions pretend to be offended by some sharp attack by an opponent. And the opponent or a campaign flunky pretends to be sorry.

Baker took note of a 48-hour period last month in which the following happened: Barack Obama's campaign is outraged that Hillary Rodham Clinton's husband supposedly questioned the Illinois senator's patriotism. Clinton's campaign is insulted that an Obama surrogate would compare the supposed attack to McCarthyism. The Obama campaign is shocked that a top Clinton supporter would compare an Obama supporter to Judas Iscariot. The Clinton campaign is beside itself that an Obama state worker would mention Monica Lewinsky's infamous blue dress.

That episode, in which numerous apologies were sought, wasn't the half of it. When Brit Hume of Fox News decided to list the recent cases of offense-taking and apology-demanding, it took five "fullscreens"--that is, five separate pages on a television screen. His list included Clinton strategist James Carville's labeling New Mexico governor Bill Richardson "Judas" for endorsing Obama and Obama's denunciation of his foreign policy adviser Samantha Power for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster." Carville, by the way, refused to apologize.

More here

Ohio teacher vows to keep Bible in classroom

"An Ohio middle school teacher says he won't obey an order to remove a Bible from view of students.

John Freshwater said Wednesday he agreed to remove a collage from his classroom that included the Ten Commandments, but that asking him to remove the Bible on his desk goes too far.

Officials with the Mount Vernon School District say they don't oppose religion but are required by the U.S. Constitution not to promote or favor any set of religious beliefs. Freshwater says being forced to keep the Bible out of sight would infringe on his rights.

Source

Another Leftist mind-reader

There is a fevered article in the LA Times by a David Shipler which makes great efforts to "reinterpret" things that whites say about Obama. It is like so much other Leftist drivel that I was not initially going to comment on it. I see, however, that Taranto thought it interesting enough to comment on so I thought I might take a few moments to point out the glaring weakness in Shipler's thinking. Take the following excerpt:

"But when his opponents branded him an elitist and an outsider, his race made it easier to drive a wedge between him and the white, rural voters he has courted. As an African American, he was supposedly looking down from a place he didn't belong and looking in from a distance he could not cross. This could not happen as dramatically were it not for embedded racial attitudes. "Elitist" is another word for "arrogant," which is another word for "uppity," that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.

What evidence does he offer for any of those assertions? None. Leftists don't need evidence. They are just high and mighty beings who KNOW, without any evidence being needed. He implies that when whites say "elitist" in describing Obama they really mean "uppity", an old Southern Democrat term of criticism for self-confident blacks.

How does he know what goes on in other people's minds? There is only one way he can even hope to know and that is via introspection. He can use his own thoughts and feelings as a model for what others think and feel. And the inference from that is that HE is the one who sees Obama as "uppity". And he is, of course, in harmony with millions of his Democrat predecessors in thinking that sort of thing about blacks. In short, what Shipler says is mere unsubstantiated abuse that reveals more about himself than anything else.

This tendency of Leftists to make Lordly and abusive pronouncements with absolutely no backing evidence is one I almost invariably find in emails that I get from Leftists. They seem to think that because they say a thing is so then I must accept that it is so. I must confess that I do to an extent use their own tactics back on them sometimes. I don't dignify their emails with an argument about the facts. I just answer abuse with abuse. And even then what I say to them is milder than what they say to me. In answer to an abusive email, I might say: "You sure sound full of hate. Get help!" I gather that few conservatives reply that way because it sure rattles the Leftists concerned. They usually reply with either a denial or further abuse. But I keep up pointing out how what they say suggests mental defects of various sorts and they quite often get so upset that they ban my email address so that they cannot receive any further replies from me. What fun!

No freedom to pray

We read:

"A federal appeals court ruled a New Jersey high school football coach who bowed his head while students on his team led prayer broke the law.

The decision against coach Marcus Borden of East Brunswick High School, however, will be appealed, said John Whitehead, president of the Virginia-based civil-liberties group the Rutherford Institute.

"If this ruling is allowed to stand, it will mean that high school teachers across the United States will have no free speech or academic freedom rights at all," he said. "This undermines a time-honored tradition that has less to do with religion that it does athletic tradition. It's a sad statement on our rights as Americans that schools are no longer bastions of freedom."

Source

"Boy" is racist!

We read:

"U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, a Hebron Republican, compared Obama and his message for change similar to a "snake oil salesman." He said in his remarks at the GOP dinner that he also recently participated in a "highly classified, national security simulation" with Obama.

"I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button," Davis said. "He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."

Source

Big uproar on the Left about that, of course (e.g here). In many countries "boy" is undoubtedly a traditional term for a male servant of any age but I would have thought it clear that Davis was referring to the immature level of Obama's behavior.

Australia: Queers want "homophobic" terms -- like "Mom" and "Dad" -- banned from Australian schools

Unlike California, however, Australian legislators are not going along with it:

"Schools will not move to stop using words like mum and dad, or girlfriend and boyfriend, the New South Wales Education Department says, despite reports that public schools are under pressure to provide gay-friendly environments. Changes to terminology, such as using the word "partner" to cover heterosexual relationships, are being sought by gay lobbyists bent on reducing discrimination in a major anti-homophobia push in the state's schools, The Daily Telegraph reports.

But Department of Education and Training director-general Michael Coutts-Trotter says there is no move to stop using terms such as boyfriend, girlfriend, mum or dad in public school classrooms. Media reports that there are moves to stop using these terms are "simply wrong", Mr Coutts-Trotter said today. "Public schools do not tolerate discrimination of any kind, whether on the grounds of religion, race, disability, gender or sexual preference," he said. "Schools have to be sanctuaries for children; they must be free of any sort of discrimination, bullying or harassment. "However, this does not include imposing a new politically correct language in schools."

Source

Anybody who thinks that "Mom" and "Dad" are homophobic is definitely queer in the head

Taranto gets carried away

I am a great admirer of James Taranto (I quote him here fairly often) and I certainly share his low opinion of the ineffable Andrew Sullivan. I have myself largely given up criticizing Sullivan because I think Taranto does a much better job of it than I can. But I think Taranto goes overboard in the following post:

"Andrew Sullivan (sorry, folks, but we think this one is shocking enough to highlight) is unhappy with New York Times columnist Bill Kristol for noting the similarity between Barack Obama's claim that small-town Pennsylvanians "cling" to religion because of economic stresses and Karl Marx's dictum that religion is "the opiate of the masses."

Sullivan asks: "Is [Obama's comment] indistinguishable from saying, along with Marx, that all religion is an obviously false consciousness caused by the alienation of the world-historical class struggle?" He answers: "No, it obviously isn't."

Well, one can argue this either way, but what's shocking about the Sullivan post is the way he characterizes Kristol at the end: "a non-Christian manipulator of Christianity." Kristol is Jewish, and Sullivan's slur is ugly. This is the kind of rhetoric Obama inspires in his supporters. Way to unify the country, Barack

Source

For a start it seems silly to me to blame Obama for Sullivan. Sullivan was a weeper long before Obama came along. And what is wrong with calling Kristol a non-Christian if he is? And why is Sullivan not entitled to believe that Kristol is a manipulator of Christians? Leftists (such as Obama) are constantly accusing Republicans of manipulating Christians so why is Kristol one conservative who must not be accused of that?

A partial answer is that traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories portray Jews as evil manipulators of the rest of us -- but there is no evidence that Sullivan is referring to such nonsense. And in any case Sullivan is surely not to be forbidden from saying what he thinks about somebody just because that somebody is Jewish.

Although I am a cast-iron supporter of Israel, I myself despise some Jews -- Jews who undermine Israel in particular. I would cheerfully see Richard Falk and Noam Chomsky burn in Gehenna, for instance. Why should I not be free to say so? Jews should be treated like any other people and judged on their individual merits -- or lack of same. Criticism of individual Jews is not a slur on Jews generally, though I understand that some Jews (Taranto is Jewish) can take it that way.

As a coda, I should perhaps acknowledge that Taranto is something of an ironist so it is possible that his comments above were not meant to be taken as literally as I have done.

He does have a tendency towards indirection and that does get him into trouble sometimes. On 14th., for instance, he made the reasonable if trivial point that both Ayn Rand and the Communists believe that the workers should be selfish. He expressed that in a rather allusive way, however, and, as we see on 15th., that got him attacked by Ayn Rand devotees who drew what I would regard as unjustified inferences from what he said.

Taranto then defends himself from the Randians by implying that he was only joking. And I agree that his comment about Rand was in fact light-hearted. For that reason I have considered -- and dismissed -- the possibility that his comment on Sullivan was ironically rather than seriously meant.

Obamanuts are OK to use the "N-word"

We see an example of it on Daily Kos, no less. Kos himself did not write it but he has left it up -- despite some objections, apparently.

The writer is John Cole, a West Virginia University communications instructor. The gloss he puts on his post is that he is portraying how Republicans really think. Wonderful mind-readers, these Leftists! They just externalize their own thinking, as far as I can see.

ANY mention of the word is however generally taken as offensive these days (unless spoken by blacks) and there was no need to use it. He could have written "n*gger", for instance, as I might have done under similar circumstances. Though I have no doubt that even that usage is on the brink of becoming forbidden.

As a libertarian, I in fact don't think that use of ANY word should be forbidden. But if a word is to be forbidden, I think it should be forbidden to all -- not just forbidden to Christians and conservatives. After all, Leftists do believe in equality, don't they? So what gives them special privileges?

Prominent conservative blogger Don Surber is very critical of Kos over the matter.

Interestingly, it seems to be the same John Cole who brands himself as a hater -- though it is only a virulent hate of Hillary Clinton that he admits to. My suggestion that his "diagnosis" of what Republicans think is just a projection of what he himself thinks would seem to gain some weight from that.

Update: I note that the Kos article was written by a J. Thomas Cronin. I had some information that that was a pseudonym and that the author was Cole but Cole has now challenged that. The matter is only of ephemeral importance so I do not have time at this stage to follow that up.

Foreigners allowed to be "homophobic"

What do you think would happen to a college student who sent the following email as a response to an email from his college homosexual club?

"If you f---ing fags send me something like that once again or contact me in any other way, I swear you won't be able to study at Sloan for some time because you will spend it at resuscitation department. If this is what you want, go ahead."

That would normally be the end of his college days at least, would it not? But not this time. He got let off with a slap on the wrist. Why? It appears that he comes from a country where homosexuality is still persecuted, like Russia or Jamaica. Nobody is saying exactly which country. Taranto has all the details that are so far available. My guess is a Caribbean country. People from there are mostly black and blacks have special privileges, of course.

Incidentally, I put "homophobic" in quotes because I DON'T believe that disapproval of homosexuality is a mental illness. A phobia is an irrational fear and, as far as I know, homosexuality tends in general to evoke disgust rather than fear of any kind. If it is seriously meant, the claim that people fear homosexuals is itself a delusion, I think. Another twist on that good old Leftist "projection", perhaps.

Update:

Taranto today has a much better guess than the one I made above. He suggests that the offender was from a Muslim country. I should have guessed. Being a Muslim is the ONE group identity that trumps homosexuality in the weird hierarchy of Leftist biases.

Australia: Wicked T-shirts

The feminists in particular seem to be seething over a range of T-shirt slogans:

"One warns that police are "targeting fat chicks", another urges people to "get over" the death of Princess Diana. A provocative new range of T-shirts, created by Sydney-based businessmen Peter Legras and Adam Hunt, have been on sale for just a week but already they are being described as "rude and revolting" by critics.

The clothing, available through the "goatboy" website, has met with a different response online though, with the site being featured by a number of international bloggers.

Mr Hunt, a former advertising executive, said the shirts, bearing 14 different designs or logos, retailed for $49 and $59. The controversial nature of the slogans is addressed in a disclaimer on the site, which reads: "If anyone gets offended by our designs, we'd like to humbly point out that you're wasting your righteous indignation on a bloody T-shirt, when you should save it for something that actually matters."

Source

Note: "Bloody" is an Australian and British expletive with a meaning similar to "goddam".

Free speech center makes annual "muzzle" awards

The report below is about a university-linked body so there is much that they overlook but the picks they do make seem justified:

"U.S. free-speech advocates on Tuesday gave their annual "muzzle" awards to violators including police who charged a woman for swearing at her overflowing toilet, and a motor vehicles department that deemed a "GETOSAMA" license plate offensive.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression said police in Scranton, Pennsylvania had no right to issue a disorderly conduct citation to Dawn Herb, who "let loose a tirade of foul language" directed at her toilet. A neighbor who was an off-duty police officer made a complaint. The charge was dismissed by a judge who concluded that Herb's words, though "offensive, vulgar and imprudent" to some, were nonetheless protected under the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, the Jefferson center said.

The center also gave an award to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles after it demanded the return of the plates reading "GETOSAMA" that had been issued to a retired police officer who wanted to express his desire to capture Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. The DMV argued they could be considered "lewd, lascivious, derogatory to a particular ethnic group, or patently offensive." It later offered to let him keep them to settle a lawsuit claiming violation of his First Amendment rights.

The center, linked to the University of Virginia, reserved special scorn for the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a press conference at which agency staffers posing as reporters pitched soft questions to officials in an effort to show FEMA had done well in tackling California wildfires. "FEMA's incredible and unique attempt to substitute false or fabricated speech for free speech surely merits a 2008 Jefferson muzzle," the center said.

And it gave a "Lifetime Muzzle" to the Federal Communications Commission for years of applying what it said were inconsistent or arbitrary standards of indecency on the airwaves. The center noted that the FCC had ruled in 2001 that "fleeting expletives" would not be deemed indecent but then three years later judged that both the 'f-word' and the 's-word' met its definitions of indecency.

Source

FCC's puritanical actions should be reined in

The comments below seem reasonable:

"There's trouble in National Nanny Land. Several networks are challenging the Federal Communication Commission's indecency rules in the Supreme Court and in the lower federal courts. And Fox Broadcasting, one of the leaders of the rebel charge, has recently refused to pay a $91,000 indecency fine levied against it by the agency.

To make matters more complex, the broadcast giant Clear Channel wants the FCC to force XM/Sirius to obey the agency's indecency laws as a condition of approving the merger between the two satellite radio stations. Meanwhile, On Demand still offers Tony Soprano and his criminal crew who continue to swear like sailors on HBO, which as a cable channel is immune from the FCC's indecency rules.

It's been 30 years since the Supreme Court last visited the indecency question. Now, the justices will consider the matter anew. Though the Fox case is a free-speech case, technically it's not a First Amendment matter. That is, the court will decide whether the FCC acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" when it recrafted its indecency rules and then applied them to "fleeting expletives" mouthed by Cher and later by Nicole Richie on the public airwaves. A lower court concluded that the agency's actions were arbitrary and thus unlawful.

Are such fleeting words enough to bring down the heavy hand of the law? And what about fleeting buttocks shots, as depicted in a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue? The FCC wants to fine ABC and its affiliates for airing that scene. Or what about reading Allen Ginsberg's famous but colorful poem Howl on the airwaves? Last year, Pacifica Radio censored itself for fear that FCC regulators would fine it out of existence. And The Big Lebowski, a widely popular movie, can play on the airwaves only if much of its humorous dialogue is scrubbed puritan-clean.

The FCC justifies such censorship in the name of enforcing "community standards." Of course, how exactly that is determined is anyone's guess. For example, if 200,000 people in the Los Angeles area watched the "objectionable" NYPD Blue episode, how many and what kind of complaints to the FCC would it take to bring an enforcement action? If 75 people complained, would that be enough, even though 195,925 voiced no objection? ...

A half-century ago, Howl was banned because it was deemed "harmful" to kids. Thankfully, a court declared that the First Amendment protects such printed matter. It's high time that the same sober logic be applied to rein in our National Nanny.

Source

Freedom is very dangerous

So says a Saudi cleric:

"The problem is that they want to open a debate on whether Islam is true or not, and on whether Judaism and Christianity are false or not. In other words, they want to open up everything for debate. Now they want to open up all issues for debate. That's it. It begins with freedom of thought, it continues with freedom of speech, and it ends up with freedom of belief. So where's the conspiracy? They say: Let's have freedom of thought in Islam...

They say: I think, therefore I want to express my thoughts. I want to express myself, I want to talk and say, for example, that there are loopholes in Islam, or that Christianity is the truth. Then they will talk about freedom of belief, and say that anyone is entitled to believe in whatever he wants... If you want to become an apostate - go ahead. Fancy Buddhism? Leave Islam, and join Buddhism. No problem. That's what freedom of belief is all about. They want freedom of everything. What they want is very dangerous.

Source

Rather pathetic, isn't it? The cleric goes on to share his insight regarding the use of coloured underwear and how to urinate piously.

Must not mention Nazism at all?

We read:

"An anti-Semitism watchdog has called for a cosmetics company in South Korea to halt an advertising campaign that it said used Nazi imagery to promote a skin lotion.

The television advert for Coreana Cosmetics shows a model, in military garb with a soldier's cap that appears to carry Nazi insignia. The slogan: "Even Hitler didn't have the East and West" has been changed to "No one has ever had the East and the West", but the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said that the advert was still an insult to Holocaust victims.

The company behind the advert said it was meant to imply that the lotion could succeed in both East and West, which Hitler had failed to do.

Source

You can see the ads here

Islamophobia is a disease?

The article below from the Middle East Times says it is. And Islamophobia may well be a mental illness. But first you have to find some Islamophobics. A phobia is an irrational fear. Fears about Islam are perfectly rational. Those crashing planes on 9/11 were not imaginary and they were all controlled by Muslims who justified their actions in the name of Islam. Many Muslims in Muslim countries are constantly shouting hate at the West and attacking Westerners and Christians wherever they can. To fear Muslims is perfectly reasonable.

"The question that seems to bother many Americans is not so much if Senator Obama is a Muslim or not, rather, the issue is centered more on a question stemming from a disease which has been plaguing the United States ever since September 11, 2001. The disease is called Islamophobia. The symptoms consist of the false belief that everything relating to Islam is tied to terrorism.

Source

Columbia noose developments

We read:

"Is the affair of the Columbia University noose finally nearing the end of its rope? The latest twist in the noose mystery will come as no surprise to those who have closely monitored the racial-grievance cauldrons on American college campuses. The Post's Murray Weiss reported exclusively yesterday that a Manhattan grand jury has subpoenaed the university records of Professor Madonna Constantine of Columbia Teachers College, who found a noose hanging from her office door nearly six months ago.

But now, as Weiss notes, this subpoena signals that investigators are now looking at possible links between Constantine, her friends and the racially charged incident. Given the onset of staged hate crimes since the Tawana Brawley hoax two decades ago, skepticism is warranted.

As Weiss reports, the noose-hanging happened at the height of the school's probe of plagiarism charges against the professor - conditions that provide a "possible motive for a sympathetic friend to consider placing a noose on her door - thinking it could whip up support for her."

Stunningly, Constantine got to keep her job after the university determined that she had filched the work of a colleague and several students. Predictably, she cried "systematic racism" about that, too....

* In 2001, Arizona State University student Ahmad Saad Nasim admitted to police that he'd fabricated two anti-Muslim hate-crime incidents against himself.

* In 2002, black students at the University of Mississippi scrawled racist graffiti in campus housing.

* In 2004, Kerri Dunn, an assistant visiting professor at Claremont McKenna College, was sentenced to prison after staging an anti-Semitic hate crime against herself.

* In 2005, a lesbian student at Mt. Tamalpais HS in Marin County, Calif., faked several anti-gay incidents to garner attention and sympathy.

* Last fall, George Washington University student Sarah Marshak admitted scrawling swastikas on her own dorm-room door.

* Last December, an idiot Princeton student, Francisco Nava, falsely claimed he was targeted and beaten because of his politics.

Source

New Comments format

I gather that some of the old commenters have been put off by the new Comments format. The new format does tend to give the impression that you have to have a blogger.com identity. That is not so, however. You can tick the "anonymous" button and comment completely anonymously if you want to.

Google bigotry keeps getting worse

I think the time must come when Christians and conservatives stop using Google and do their searches via Yahoo or live.com

"Search engine Google is facing a global backlash from internet users over its refusal to carry advertisements for a Christian group. The Christian Institute is sueing Google on the grounds it is infringing the Equality Act 2006. The group accused the popular search engine of having a "warped value system" after pointing out that it allows advertisements for "pornography and instruments of violence". Websites selling knuckle-dusters and ouija boards, as well as dating sites designed for married people who want to have affairs, are advertised on Google.

But the company turned down the non-denominational Christian charity that wanted to pay Google so that whenever the word "abortion" was typed in, its link would appear on the right hand side of the screen. The link would have read: "UK abortion law news and views on abortion from the Christian Institute."

Google said it had a policy of declining sites which mixed abortion with religious views. It does, however, accept ads for abortion clinics, secular pro-abortion sites and secularist sites which attack religion. Entering the word "abortion" into the search area immediately brings the user to adverts for Marie Stopes abortion clinics.

Source

Thinking of deleting your Google toolbar?

Hate speech from Father Greeley

We read:

"On April 2nd, the Chicago Sun-Times' Andrew Greeley accused anyone who isn't a Barack Obama fan of having a "sick mind." This takes political name calling to its worst level thus far in the campaign. Sadly - but all too typically - the sort of uncivil ignorance displayed by Greeley is exactly the kind we always see from liberals who want to shut down debate by an out of hand branding of their political opponents as bad people, not just people who have a difference of opinion. To hatemongers such as Greeley, conservatives aren't just wrong, they are evil and now he's decided that anyone who doubts Obama is mentally ill.

Greeley attacked conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, who Greeley claims has a "very clever" sick mind, as well as several others, some by name and others by inference. Greeley claimed that Sowell indulged in "hate" for Senator Obama in his columns. Naturally, Greeley doesn't give us any examples of "hate" for Obama, he merely states it outright as if it were axiomatic. In fact, he ascribes the emotion of "hate" as a result of a "sick mind" to several columns he alludes to but his only examples discuss interpretations of Obama's motivations and actions described by conservatives without any hateful rhetoric involved.

Source

Greeley would no doubt get on well with other Leftist priests such as Father Coughlin, were Coughlin still around.

I remember Greeley from decades ago. He used to be able to make an argument that inspired some thought, rather than mere derision. Perhaps dementia is setting in and it is HE who has a "sick mind". Seeing one's own faults in others ("projection") is after all common among Leftists.

Colorado College Punishes, Deems Students "Violent", for Satirical Flyer

Must not laugh at feminists. We read:

"Two students at Colorado College were found guilty of violating the school's conduct code regarding "violence" after they distributed a satirical flyer mocking a publication of the Feminist and Gender Studies program....

In early 2008, Colorado College's "Feminist and Gender Studies Interns" distributed a flyer called "The Monthly Rag." The flyer included a reference to "male castration," an announcement about a lecture on "feminist porn" by a "world-famous prostitute and porn star," an explanation of "packing" (pretending to have a phallus), and a quotation from The Bitch Manifesto.

As a parody of "The Monthly Rag," Robinson and a second student, who wishes to remain nameless, distributed a flyer in February called "The Monthly Bag" under the pseudonym "The Coalition of Some Dudes." The flyer included references to "chainsaw etiquette," the shooting range of a sniper rifle, a quotation regarding a sexual position from the website menshealth.com, and a quotation about "female violence and abuse" of men from the website batteredmen.com.

Shortly thereafter, Colorado College President Richard F. Celeste sent out a campus-wide email about "The Monthly Bag," stating that "The flyers include threatening and demeaning content, which is categorically unacceptable in this community...

FIRE wrote to Celeste on March 21, 2008, pointing out that any punishment would contradict Colorado College's own policies and advertised commitments to free expression. The school's Diversity & Anti-Discrimination Policy states that "On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful that it may not be expressed." Celeste, a former governor of Ohio, is abroad, and other administrators receiving the letter have not responded.

Source

Some great "hate speech" here

Good to see a Christian clergyman who has not been intimidated into silence about the Bible message. Australia's Sydney diocese is VERY New Testament-oriented:

"A senior minister of a Sydney Anglican parish has made an extraordinary attack on the High Court judge Michael Kirby, warning he would face the wrath of God if he remained unrepentant as a gay man.

The rector of St Stephen's Church in Bellevue Hill, the Reverend Richard Lane, denounced the judge for calling himself a Christian Anglican while living in an openly gay relationship and warned as a "messenger, watchman and steward of the Lord in the Anglican Church of Australia", he faced God's judgment.

To call himself a Christian Anglican was a "perversion of truth" and to continue to do so without changing his lifestyle would brand him, like Herod, a "coward, a liar, a deceiver" and a "lawless one".

"I appeal to you to cast yourself on the mercy of Jesus . That is admit your sin, confess your wrongdoing and turn in humble repentance to the Lord Jesus, who alone can forgive you," Mr Lane said.

Source

I might note that Sydney diocese has a third of Australia's Anglicans. Their churches are full while Anglican churches elsewhere are more likely to have just six old ladies in flowered hats at a Sunday service.

It will be interesting to see if there are any legal repercussions from this. I suspect that it will be given a pass -- if only because the Sydney diocese is influential. Though Justice Kirby could himself initiate some action, of course.

Canadian Conservative Blogosphere Under Attack

Post below recycled from STACLU .

Here is a quick summary of what's going on by Five Feet of Fury, one of the blogs being sued:

Richard “The Boy Named Sue” Warman has finally filed his statement of claim.

Canada’s busiest litigant, serial “human rights” complainant and — the guy Mark Steyn has called “Canada’s most sensitive man” — Richard Warman is now suing his most vocal critics — including me.

The suit names:

• Ezra Levant (famous for his stirring YouTube video of his confrontation with the Canadian Human Rights tribunal after he published the “Mohammed Cartoons”)
• FreeDominion.ca (Canada’s answer to FreeRepublic.com)
• Kate McMillan of SmallDeadAnimals.com
• Jonathan Kay of the National Post daily newspaper and its in-house blog
• and me, Kathy Shaidle of FiveFeetOfFury.com

Richard Warman used to work for the notorious Human Rights Commission, which runs the “kangaroo courts” who’ve charged Mark Steyn with “flagrant Islamophobia.”

Richard Warman has brought almost half these cases single-handledly, getting websites he doesn’t like shut down, and making tens of thousands of tax free dollars in “compensation” out of web site owners who can’t afford to fight back or don’t even realize they can.

The province of British Columbia had to pass a special law to stop Richard Warman from suing libraries because they carried books he didn’t approve of.

Richard Warman also wants to ban international websites he doesn’t like from being seen by Canadians.

The folks named in his new law suit are the very bloggers who have been most outspoken in their criticism of Warman’s methods…

…We can only fight this man’s attempt to silence conservative opinion if we have international support: both moral and financial.

This lawsuit will cost me at least $30,000 to fight.

And fight it I will.

Michelle Malkin has all the info you need to help these guys out.

Atheist gets a blast



Atheists can be so hate-filled towards Christians that I suppose there is a certain justice in them occasionally getting a serve back. How nice it would be, however, if we had a REALLY tolerant society.

"Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, "What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

"This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God," Davis said. "Get out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."

Source

Pic of Ms Davis above. Blacks are allowed to say things that whites are not allowed to say, of course. They can even call New York "Hymietown" and still remain respectable. And Democrats have special rights too.

I am of course myself an atheist but conservative atheists tend to respect Christianity -- as I do. Atheists who hate Christianity are just showing their limitations, in my view.

Judge clears Geert Wilders of spreading hate

From the Netherlands:

"A judge has ruled in a case against MP Geert Wilders brought by the Dutch Islamic Federation that Mr Wilders is not guilty of spreading hate, although his statements are provocative.

The Islamic Federation wanted a judgement on the Freedom Party's leader after he compared the Qur'an to Mein Kampf. However the judge ruled that members of parliament have to be able to express their opinions strongly.

Source

The BBC shows no self-awareness

The report below about net censorship is from the BBC:

"The level of state-led censorship of the net is growing around the world, a study of so-called internet filtering by the Open Net Initiative suggests. The study of thousands of websites across 120 Internet Service Providers found 25 of 41 countries surveyed showed evidence of content filtering.... "In five years we have gone from a couple of states doing state-mandated net filtering to 25," said John Palfrey, at Harvard Law School.

ONI is made up of research groups at the universities of Toronto, Harvard Law School, Oxford and Cambridge. It chose 41 countries for the survey in which testing could be done safely and where there was "the most to learn about government online surveillance".

A number of states in Europe and the US were not tested because the private sector rather than the government tends to carry out filtering, it said.

Source

Since the BBC is both a government instrumentality and a very active filterer of content (see a post here of 2 days ago, for instance), it must have been convenient that Britain was not included in the countries surveyed.

The law protects pole dancing but not destruction of a Mexican flag??

We saw yesterday that penalties can be imposed for destroying a Mexican flag:

We read:

"Texas lawmakers last year imposed a $5-per-patron fee on strip joints to raise more than $40 million annually for anti-sexual-assault programs and healthcare for the uninsured.

On March 28, however, Texas strip club devotees found a powerful ally: An Austin judge declared the pole tax unconstitutional, saying it infringed on expression protected by the 1st Amendment.

A spokesman for Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott said Abbott would "vigorously appeal" the decision. And state Rep. Ellen Cohen of Houston, the former head of a women's shelter, said she was prepared to write a narrower measure.

Source

You can do what you like with the U.S. flag -- but not the Mexican flag

Veteran Sentenced For Desecrating Mexican Flag at UNM Campus:

"Last fall a student La Raza group flew the The Mexican Flag over the UNM campus for several days-- This symbolizes that a US territory has been taken over.

After complaining to campus officials who did nothing Air Force veteran Peter Lynch took the flag down and tore it up.

This week he was sentenced. US Air Force veteran Peter Lynch was found guilty and sentenced Tuesday for desecrating a Mexican Flag that was flying illegally over the University of New Mexico campus.

The flag belonged to the campus group "El Centro de la Raza" who accused Lynch of being a racist for taking down the flag.

Source

Since "El Centro de la Raza" means "the Center of the Race", that they called Lynch a racist is about as hypocritical as you can get.

Lynch received a deferred six-month sentence on supervised probation. He also must perform 48 hours of community service, attend anger management, replace the flag and pay court and probation fees.

No doubt it was wrong to destroy someone else's property but he could have been ordered simply to replace it.

Background here

Starbucks and 'Laissez Faire'

We read:

"Laissez-faire. It's a policy that made Starbucks vastly successful. But don't try to put that phrase on a customized Starbucks Card. The cards are supposed be personalized to reflect customers' tastes and uniqueness. They are available in a range of colors, often given as gifts and used by regular customers who prefer to prepay for their java.

But when my friend Roger Ream, president of the Fund for American Studies, received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas, he found there was a limit to how personalized a card could be. His card required him to customize it on the company's Web site. So he went to the site and requested that the phrase "Laissez Faire" be printed on his card. A few days later he was informed that the company couldn't issue such a card because the wording violated company policy.

Starbucks's company policy is this: "We review each Card before printing it to make sure it meets our personalization policy. We accept most personalization requests, but we can't honor every one. Some requests may contain trademarks that we don't have the right to use. Others may contain material that we consider inappropriate (such as threatening remarks, derogatory terms, or overtly political commentary) or wouldn't want to see on Starbucks-branded products."

Is the phrase "laissez-faire" threatening? Only to officious bureaucracy, I would think. So, it must be that the phrase is considered to be "inappropriate" by corporate Starbucks.... Maybe Starbucks considers the phrase inappropriate because it's "overtly political commentary"? Certainly my friend regards it as a firm statement of political philosophy.

And so, at my suggestion, my friend went back to the Web site and asked that his card be issued with the phrase "People Not Profits." Bingo! Starbucks had no problem with that phrase, and the card arrived in a few days. I wondered just what the company's standards were. If "laissez-faire" is unacceptably political, how could the socialist slogan "people not profits" be acceptable?

Source

There is no doubt that Starbucks is Left-leaning. They come from Seattle, after all. There are however plenty of other places to get coffee and it mightn't be a bad idea if conservatives looked elsewhere. Why would you want to give profits to people who despise you and all you stand for?

BBC censors Harrabin

Roger Harrabin is one of the less ideological reporters for the BBC and he sometimes mentions things that call global warming into question. But that does not suit the British Bias Corporation of course. In this article, Harrabin mentioned recent global cooling. But when someone senior to him saw it, they were obviously not happy. The article was changed after it initially appeared.

I have a PDF of the article produced shortly after it was posted. I also have a PDF of what was up last time I checked. Let us compare the 3rd/4th sentences in each. In V1, they say:

'This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.'

In V2 they say:

'But this year's temperature would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.'

How low the BBC has sunk from the grand old days of Lord Reith when it could be relied on as a source of objective and unbiased information! The Left corrupt anything they get their hands on. As Orwell pointed out, they think that truth is what they declare it to be.

Speech Code of the Month: Murray State University (Kentucky)

We read:

"The Women's Center at Murray State maintains a guide to sexual harassment that provides students with numerous examples of sexual harassment, including (among others):

* "Calling a person a doll, babe, or honey"

* "Making sexual innuendoes"

* "Telling sexual jokes or stories"

* "Turning discussions to sexual topics"

* "Looking a person up and down (elevator eyes)"

* "Displaying sexual and/or derogatory comments about men/women on coffee mugs, hats, clothing, etc."

Harassment by a coffee mug? Really?

In all seriousness, many universities maintain these ludicrous lists of prohibited conduct (see Davidson College, our March 2006 Speech Code of the Month, for another example), and such lists often transform otherwise acceptable sexual harassment policies into unconstitutionally overbroad ones. Murray State is just such an example; while the stated definition of sexual harassment is "conduct that creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working/learning environment," the subsequent list of prohibited conduct (and beverage paraphernalia) would lead anyone reading the policy to believe that the examples on that list were prohibited outright, regardless of whether they rose to the level of severity and pervasiveness necessary to constitute actual harassment.

As a public university, Murray State cannot lawfully prohibit speech protected by the First Amendment, but this policy does just that.

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Susanne Winter update

Previously mentioned here on Jan. 18th. We read:

"The Austrian authorities have indicted politician Susanne Winter on charges of incitement and degradation of religious symbols and religious agitation. This offence carries a maximum sentence of two years. Last January, Ms Winter said that the prophet Muhammad was "a child molester" because he had married a six-year-old girl. She also said he was "a warlord" who had written the Koran during "epileptic fits."

The politician, a member of the Austrian Freedom Party FPO, an anti-immigration party which is in opposition, added that Islam is "a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean." She also warned for "a Muslim immigration tsunami," saying that "in 20 or 30 years, half the population of Austria will be Muslim" if the present immigration policies continue.

Following her remarks, Muslim extremists threatened to kill Susanne Winter and she was placed under police protection. Today, the Justice Department in Vienna announced that Ms Winter will be charged with "incitement and degradation of religious symbols" (Verhetzung und Herabwuerdigung religioeser Symbole). If convicted she may have to serve up to two years in jail for her opinions.

However, Alfred Hrdlicka, the Austrian "artist" who depicted Jesus and his apostles engaging in homosexual acts of sodomy during the Last Supper, has not been indicted. Nor will he be. Depicting Jesus sodomizing his apostles is not considered to be a "degradation of religious symbols" in Austria, but referring to the historic fact that Muhammad married a six-year old girl is "incitement to racial hatred."

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It is hate speech to object to special privileges for Muslims?

This pea-brain says it is:

"I am shocked after reading Georgie Anne Geyer's March 26 column on the culture class at Harvard.

This is hate speech! "This fight with Islam ..." Even George Bush has said that the fight is not with Islam, but with the terrorists, who have in the past killed more Muslims that any other persons.

The fact that your paper has come out against a specific group is upsetting. Every person whom I showed it to was surprised, and thought it incited hatred. Can you imagine someone writing something like this about Judaism (another minority in the U.S.)?

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I guess the comparison with Jews implies that Jews go flying aircraft into skyscrapers too.

The original column being objected to is here. Read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. It is a bit slow to load but you can also find it posted (3rd. post) on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH today.

Censorship OK in Japan

We read:

"It is hardly surprising that Japan's technophile population has created one of the world's most vibrant internet cultures and arguably its biggest blogosphere. What observers consider strange, however, is the muted response to a government proposal to scrutinise and regulate all internet content in the same way that it controls newspapers and television broadcasts.

Some critics have accused the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed the country for all but one year since 1955, of trying to stifle dissent and exert control over political expression. But by and large the controversial proposal, unprecedented for a democratic country, has passed without comment. The suggested regulations are included in a Government report, Comprehensive Legal System For Communications And Broadcasting, and will be put to parliament in a bill in 2010.

Most alarming, critics say, is the decision to target kozensei - an ambiguous term meaning "content that has openness". This would make millions of unregulated services, including blogs, personal websites and bulletin boards, eligible for forcible correction or closure.

Kazuo Hizumi, a journalist-turned-lawyer who blogs on media issues, has been particularly scathing: "If you look at the fascist movement in prewar Japan, the dangers in the regulation of information by the Government are obvious. "That the Government is going to get involved in selecting, by means of filtering software, what information should be blocked - this is completely outrageous. This absolutely cannot be allowed."

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Hatred and bigotry from an "opponent" of hatred and bigotry

So what else is new?

I recently received a letter commenting adversely on one of my posts on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. The post was headed "Another useless (Sorry: "underqualified") Muslim doctor in Britain". The writer took umbrage at that heading. He evidently felt that I was defaming Muslim doctors generally or perhaps Muslims generally. Where have I heard that sort of accusation before? You can say anything you like about Christians and conservatives but some classes of people -- such as Muslims and homosexuals -- are especially protected from criticism.

And that is bigotry. Closing your mind to certain possibilities is a good rough definition of bigotry and my correspondent has clearly closed his mind to the possibility of any general defect among Muslim doctors.

I do in fact suspect that doctors from Muslim countries are in general of lower quality but I don't know that and I have never asserted that. All my post conveyed was that there are some Muslim doctors of lower quality. "Some" could be a small minority and maybe it is a small minority that is involved. I was at most suggesting the hypothesis that the effect might be general. And why should that hypothesis not be suggested? Only a bigot rules out hypotheses in advance.

I reproduce the rapidly deteriorating correspondence concerned below. I give my replies in italics. I kinda feel sorry for the guy. He is so used to having his prejudices celebrated that he is unable to see that they are prejudices.

Dr. Ray,

We look to your web site often as a valuable pointer to information. But your reference to the religion of an incompetent doctor does your site no credit, and it doesn't help the cause of reducing errors. Aside from its irrelevance, do you know of some evidence that doctors who come from predominately Muslim countries commit more errors that doctors trained in the UK? Where in your linked article does it say that he is Muslim? Where does it say that he isn't a native Brit, or mention anything about this religion.

Are you planning to include a mentions from now on like "Another useless Christian doctor botches procedure," Or "Again a Jewish doctor kills a patient"?

Nicolas Martin [aia@iatrogenic.org]
Executive Director
American Iatrogenic Association

There have been some awful Muslim doctors recently so I think "another" is warranted.

His name is a Muslim one

I oppose political correctness
JR

There is a difference between PC and simply being civil. I have had plenty of Arab Christian acquaintances who had what you think is a "Muslim" name. If you really oppose political correctness, then I'll look for that headline that says "Another useless Christian doctor botches a surgery." Now that would be un-PC. As it presently stands, I can't think of anything more PC than to be anti-Muslim. How much guts does it take to libel Muslims? None.

Like I said, you have provided no evidence that Muslim doctors commit more errors that non-Muslim ones, so your objective is more to defame them than to shine a light on the facts. Since there are many Muslim doctors one would hope that you would want them to be oppose socialized medicine, too. And some of them maybe be very receptive to the free market message. But maybe hate is more important to you than freedom.

Nicolas Martin

"Another" does not mean "all". I made no claim about Muslims in general. I just describe reality as I see it. You are reading into what I wrote things that I did not say. Perhaps you should examine your own biases.

JR

That's a joke, right? Then, as I said, I look forward to reading about the religion of all the doctors you mention. You describe reality as a bigot sees it. I'll make damned sure that we don't refer to your site again.

Nicolas Martin

Bigot!

JR

Criticism of immigration is not racist says court

Abuse is the normal Leftist substitute for rational debate and the term "racist" has some very unpleasant connotations so Leftists use it a lot. They particularly apply it to anyone who has any criticisms of immigration.

Conservatives are so used to abuse from Leftists that they usually just let such criticisms pass. Perhaps they should not.

Someone recently was foolish enough to imply that a rich British rock singer (Morrissey) was a racist. Bad move! Out came the lawyers, an action for libel was launched and much grovelling has now been produced by order of the court. See here for details. No doubt the accuser bore significant legal costs too.

The comments by Morrissey that led to the slur against him are here

The British equivalent of "Honey" as a form of address is now forbidden by the EU

In both Australia and Britain it is common for women serving customers to address the customers as "Love" and that form of address is sometimes returned, mainly by regular customers:

"Pub landlords beware: from next Sunday it will be an offence, punishable by unlimited compensation orders, to allow customers to chat up bar staff. No, this isn't an early April fool. It's a European directive, sneaked into British law by Women's Minister Harriet Harman. From April 6, employers will risk being sued if a bar worker or waitress complains of being called "love" or "darling", or if staff overhear customers telling sexist jokes.

So serious is the threat that lawyers are advising pub owners to cover themselves by displaying warning notices declaring: "Harassment is not tolerated."

But why do we need yet another law - and yet more red tape - to enforce what has always been a matter for common sense, to be dealt with by the landlord's ancient right to ban difficult customers? Isn't this an invitation to employees to cash in on imaginary grievances?

In fact, everything about this new law is an affront not only to common sense but to democracy itself. Nobody voted for it. It was dreamed up by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and is now being imposed on Britain without parliamentary debate or division, after a ruling by an unelected judge.

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Andy Rooney on "dirty" words

Excerpt:

"Later this year, the Supreme Court will be deciding whether some broadcasters should be fined by the FCC for the brief use of those dirty words-they call them "fleeting expletives."

No one has ever explained what harm dirty words do but it's like bad manners. I mean life is a bootstrap operation and dirty words may not be much but they diminish the quality of all our lives by just a little bit.

I think if the Federal Communications Commission left broadcasters alone, there would be very little profanity on the air because most people just don't want it, and if listeners don't want it broadcasters wouldn't give it to them.

I was in the Army for four years. I know all the four-letter words, I just don't want to be reminded of them on broadcasts but I don't want a lot of government agencies trying to regulate what I can say or hear on the air either.

Language is one of the best tools ever invented for anything and English is by far the best language. So, we should be careful using it though - so, I'll damn well decide for myself what I can say and what I can't say.

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Leftist hate speech against "The rich" (etc.)

Obama uses such hate speech reflexively -- until he is forced to back off by a reference to reality:

"One need not follow Democratic politics too carefully to hear who the bad guys are. They are often singled out as a specific class, with the phrases "wealthy Americans" or "the wealthiest of Americans." This happens most frequently when Democrats, refusing to acknowledge that taxes were cut earlier this decade for all Americans (the poor and the middle class included), decry the so-called "tax-cuts for the wealthy." But the assailants are also described in other broad, collective terms and phrases, and here`s a brief list: "corporate America;" "business owners;" "big oil;" "Wall Street;" "executives," "pharmaceutical companies;" "CEO`s," "companies that outsource jobs;" and "mortgage lenders."

The most subtle, and perhaps the most damaging outcome of this rhetoric, is that ignores the human toil, risk, sacrifice, discipline, and determination that is required for a person to become a business owner, or an executive, or to operate a pharmaceutical company or be a mortgage lender or to participate in global trade. Call it "class warfare," or "the politics of envy." It is the left's most acceptable form of "hate speech," and it is turning the discontent and fearful in our society against the people and principles that enable economic opportunity for all.

And now, back to Obama. He's had enormous political success with this rhetoric, especially in front of college students and blue-collar manufacturing workers. But then he sat down for a live interview with Maria Bartiromo, Anchor at the CNBC Cable TV financial news channel, and things went quite differently. Roughly half-way into the interview, Bartiromo asked Obama about how high he might like to raise the capital gains tax above its current rate of 15%. Obama explained that he has consulted on this issue with Warren Buffet and "others," and he has been told that a cap gains tax rate of 20 - 25% would not "distort economic decision making" (whatever this means).

"But it's not just the Warren Buffets of the world who own stocks" Bartiromo replied.

"Of course not" Obama responded.

"..Let's hypothetically say that.cap gains goes from 15% to 25%..you're impacting a lot of people.a hundred million Americans own stocks today."

"Absolutely" exclaimed Obama. "So it's not just the rich." "No, no no, absolutely" Obama insisted. "And that's why I think that..uh...for example..you could structure something in which people with certain incomes were exempted from this increase.."

Find the video or transcript and get the full story yourself. The point here is simple: "the politics of envy" works great on the campaign trail, but as fiscal policy it threatens to harm all Americans, and is ultimately untenable. Obama even conveyed to Bartiromo the possibility that taxes might not be raised at all, depending on what the nation's economic conditions might be next year when he hypothetically would begin his Presidency. Obama had to back-away from his own rhetoric when he was put to the test.

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