Sweden: Christian Website Editor Cleared of Hate Speech

But it had to go all the way to the Supreme Court:

"Sweden's Supreme Court has cleared website editor Leif Liljestroem of charges of acting as an accessory to incitement to hatred of homosexuals. Liljestroem, who runs the Christian website Bibeltemplet, was previously sentenced to one month in prison by the Court of Appeal for allowing the publication of hateful comments about homosexuality. He was originally sentenced to two months in jail for incitement to hatred by Stenungsund District Court.

The court ruled that Liljestroem may not have been fully aware that the comments posted by visitors to the website constituted incitement to hatred. He told the court that he had thought long and hard about removing the offending posts before eventually allowing them to remain on the site where they could serve to generate further discussion, Dagens Nyheter reports.

One of the more extreme comments posted by a visitor to a discussion forum thread entitled 'Sodomy' asserted that "men who cannot summon up the energy to abstain from intercourse with other men should be sentenced to death and hanged from posts in the town square." Although he did not remove it, Leifstroem did in fact criticize this statement and several others on the site's discussion forum.

The Supreme Court ruling was not unanimous, with two judges calling for a conviction. The judges, Per Virdesten and Ella Nystroem, argued that "the statements [posted to the website] went far beyond the bounds of reasoned debate and can be considered deeply insulting to homosexuals as a group".

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Imus has Served his Sentence

We read:

"Don Imus will return to the airwaves Dec. 3 on WABC Radio in New York, Citadel Broadcasting says. Imus lost his job nine months ago after making racist and sexist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

Earlier, the New York Post said Imus would host a morning talk-show, unseating the highly rated "Curtis and Kuby" show. Citing a source, the paper said Imus signed a 5-year deal that will pay him between $5 million and $8 million annually.

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Imus would have been PERMANENTLY out if he had been a conservative.

The ACLU will go Bananas over this!

We read:

"Trustees of the largest high school district in the country voted 4-1 Monday night to mandate displays bearing the nation's motto - "In God We Trust" - and other historical documents in over 2,300 district classrooms and offices.

The display of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights will be included in the posters approved by district trustees in Bakersfield, Calif. Monday night.

Kern County High School District trustee Chad Vegas initially proposed the measure as a way of promoting patriotism. But the idea sparked a contentious debate. "I'm extremely pleased the measure passed and was in fact expanded beyond what I had originally proposed," said Vegas.

In addition to placing the displays in over 2,300 classrooms, the posters will also be hung in district boardrooms, libraries, administrative offices and other rooms.

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Proposed Anti-Gang Law is "Racist"

We read:

"An anti-crime initiative about to hit the streets is "racially loaded," says the California Legislative Black Caucus' incoming chairman, who plans to lead opposition to the measure if it qualifies for the ballot....

The initiative, called the Safe Neighborhoods Act, is being championed by state Sen. George Runner and his wife, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, Republicans from Lancaster, a Los Angeles County desert suburb.....

The measure would stiffen sentences in specific gang-related statutes and bolster civil injunctions against street gangs to the point where violations could carry prison time. More generally, it would create a new 10-year prison term for some ex-felons caught carrying guns and ratchet up penalties on crimes like home-invasion robberies to life in prison.

It would restrict federal court- ordered due process rights for parolees, including the right to a lawyer. It would allow hearsay testimony against defendants accused of dissuading witnesses from testifying.

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Crime committed by "minorities" should just be overlooked, I guess.

Another "Hate-crime" Hoax

This has been going on for years now. There is so little real "hate crime" in America that Leftists have to keep inventing such crimes in order to make themselves feel virtuous and important:

"A George Washington University student who told school officials that someone had drawn swastikas on her dormitory room door was actually responsible for the incidents, a university spokesman said today.

The student, who was not identified, had complained that swastikas appeared on her door over a period of several days last month. A hidden camera positioned in response to the postings in Mitchell Hall, one of the school dormitories, led police to interview the student, who admitted responsibility, according to spokesman Tracy Schario.

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Reporting hoax crimes to the police is normally a prosecutable offence. It will be interesting to hear what happens in this case. Crystal Gail Mangum was not prosecuted for the vast harm she did by her lies so I think I can predict what will happen.

Mild Insults against Hispanics are very Wicked: Unless you also Hate Jews, of Course

Where? At an American university, natch. In this case Rider University in NJ. Its association with Islam seems to be making antisemitism respectable in universities. Antisemites now seem to get the sort of easier treatment that Leftists have always been given:

"We were alerted to a racism incident at Rider University in an article published in The Times of Trenton on Friday, October 26, 2007 about a message board posting on Face Book submitted by Emily P. Howell, a 20-year-old junior from Virginia....

Howell told 19-year-old sophomore Amy Lapaix in a message board posting on Tuesday to "go to another country" after Lapaix posted a flier for the Latin American Student Organization on Howell's Facebook profile. Howell also told Lapaix, "Maybe you could go pick some vegetables or make some salsa for your event." For this, she faces a possible fine, suspension, and charges against her filed with the Lawrence Township Police by Lapaix. Rider President Mordechai Rozanski was outraged at these comments and said, "This posting is disrespectful, repulsive and totally unacceptable. It is contrary to everything we stand for as a community."

According to a Rider alumnus, a different student commonly made even stronger racial comments, as well as anti-semitic remarks. Matthew Volker, who graduated in May, 2007, repeatedly made statements about Blacks, calling them the "N" word, among others, such as "porch monkey," "shinebox," "reggins," and, "mau maus." He also made comments against Jews, calling them "Kikes." He stated that "Hitler was a great man," "The Jews were taking everyone's money and ruining the economy," and, "The collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 was because of the Jews." He also stated, "The Holocaust was a good thing, and that we need a final solution." Volker is a self proclaimed Nazi, and an admirer of Adolph Hitler....

Despite the fact that these comments were quite graphic and disheartening to Lefkowitz, no mention of this was made to the press by then Public Relations Director, Earle Rommel, nor was any public statement released by President Rozanski.

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British Less Hysterical about Slang Term for Homosexuals

"Poof" is the British and Australian word that is roughly equivalent to the American "F*ggot". Ofcom is the regulator of the communication industries in Britain:

""Poof" may no longer be a derogatory word when used on television, Ofcom has said, after rejecting 200 complaints over Big Brother.

A contestant twice used the term on the Channel 4 show - but the first comment went unchallenged and the second earned her only a reprimand in the programme's "Diary Room". A number of viewers complained that the word "poof" is just as offensive to homosexuals as "n*gger" is to black people.

But Ofcom cleared the programme of discrimination and double standards, adding that the word presented some difficulties for regulators.

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California Dems don't like 'job killer' label

The Democrat-controlled California legislature is like a sausage machine always churning out new laws. So the California Chamber of Commerce does something that the Democrat legislators glide over: It looks at the impact of each bill on employment in the state. It labels as "job killers" any bill with a clearly adverse impact. That has spelled doom for most bills so labelled. So what is the Democrat reaction? Exactly what Leftists have always done: Focus on the label rather than the reality. Drawing up employment-friendly bills is not remotely one of their priorities. Telling other people what do is all that matters to them:

"Today, calling a bill a "job killer" is the kiss of death for legislation the chamber deems unfriendly. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed all but three of the chamber's 41 job-killer bills on his watch.

The chamber's job-killer list, a compendium of a dozen or so Democratic bills that would rein in businesses, has become the unofficial score card that industry and trade groups use to measure their success in beating back unfriendly legislation....

But critics charge the chamber simplistically tags as job killers all legislation that would improve environmental protections and consumer protection, including tort reform, insurance reform and landlord/tenant law.

"I think it's part of the whole movement by the free marketeers, extreme right-wing of the (Republican) party that has identified this as an effective phrase," said former Democratic Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson. "Unfortunately, it resonates with people in way that takes the focus off the real legislation."

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Indiana Prayer Decision Upholds Religious Freedom

We read:

"Both sides do agree that a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the 189-year-old tradition of allowing clergy to pray at the opening of each legislative session of the Indiana General Assembly.

They also agree that the judges, in a 2-1 split, overturned a lower-court decision earlier this year requiring the speaker of the Indiana House to review prayers and remove any "sectarian" language before the prayers could be uttered from the floor.

Source

Whether the decision will have much in the way of a flow-on to other cases about public prayer remains to be seen but it clearly should.

Another Noose Scare

Given the big reaction to recent episodes, some people have obviously decided that nooses are rather fun:

"A black mannequin found with a noose around its neck in a county landfill building has triggered a joint hate crime investigation between the FBI and the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department....

The mannequin was found in a machine shop at the county's Kiefer Boulevard landfill. The out-of-the-way building, where tractors that plow under garbage are repaired, is accessible only to employees, said site supervisor Chris Perini.

The county has released few details about the incident. Union officials and the head of the local NAACP said Friday they believed three employees and a supervisor, all of whom are white, work in the machine shop. Still unclear is whether the mannequin was being used as an overt threat, said Betty Williams, president of the local NAACP chapter.

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An Even Crazier Leftist Cry of "Censorship" than Usual

It's even worse than censorship according to this sad soul. It's "silencing":

"If you follow foreign news, you'll remember that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned to her native Pakistan two weeks ago and only narrowly avoided being blown to bits.

I was thinking of this when I saw the reviews of Susan Faludi's new book, "The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America," in which the dyspeptic feminist decries the "silencing" of women after the attacks. Evidently someone in Pakistan wants to "silence" Bhutto permanently, but that's not what Faludi has in mind.

Faludi's idea of "silencing" - and forgive me, but here it's such a preposterous, super-fatted term that I can't help giving it quotation marks - is not a bullet in the head or the detonation of explosives to shut up forever some meddlesome woman. Faludi is distressed that male writers outnumber females on the op-ed pages of American newspapers.

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Women who really are silenced -- many Muslim women worldwide -- are of course no concern of this shrill egotist.

TV Star Ousted over THAT Word

We read:

"Bounty Hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman's television series has been suspended after tapes of him repeatedly using a racist word was published online. The star of Dog the Bounty Hunter has apologised for using the slur, but said the recording of a phone conversation with his son about a new girlfriend was a racist rant, Associated Press reported.

The recording, which was published online by the National Enquirer, reportedly includes Chapman telling his son to break up with his girlfriend. "I'm not taking a chance...not because she's black but because we use the word n... sometimes here," Chapman was reportedly heard telling his son. "I'm not going to take any chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for 30 years because some drunken n... heard us say n... and turned us into the Enquirer magazine."

Source

Is there any such thing as a private conversation these days? Where are all the privacy protections that Leftists are so keen on?

Leftist Australian University Pays up but Free Speech Loses

We read:

"A bitter battle between Queensland University of Technology and two senior academics is believed to have cost QUT almost $1 million. The university has now reached an out-of-court settlement with controversial QUT Creative Industries academics Gary MacLennan and John Hookham.

In a memo to staff on Monday, Creative Industries faculty Executive Dean Professor Susan Street said QUT had reached a settlement with the senior lecturers, who were suspended without pay for six months in June for their outspoken criticisms of a PhD film project formerly entitled Laughing at the Disabled. Their pay was later reinstated.

University sources suggested yesterday the fiasco had cost QUT close to $1 million, with legal fees, legal costs for the academics and payouts to the two believed to be close to $200,000 each. In addition, QUT has been paying the pair full salaries since June.

Dr Hookham and Dr MacLennan would not be returning to the faculty, Professor Street's memo said.

Source

Only a return to their jobs would have cancelled out the harm to free speech done by their firing. They were fired for publicly criticizing an offensive far-Left media project.

A Columbia Coverup

We heard recently vague details about antisemitic incidents at Columbia U that almost all of the media seemed to be ignoring. Some details have however now at last come out.

It seems that an elderly Jewish professor who specializes in Holocaust studies and who lost family to Hitler has received abusive email messages and has now had a large Swastika painted on her office door.

Why would anyone suddenly do such a bizarre thing? Because Prof. Midlarsky vocally opposed the visit to Columbia by Iran's fanatical President Ahmadinejad.

And guess what neither Columbia or the New York Times are being careful NOT to mention? Any connection to the Ahmadinejad visit. So whether the absurd swastika was done by Muslims or by their Leftist supporters, it is Islamic hate speech that is in question and the Left are as usual covering up for their fellow-haters in the Middle-East.

Trochilus has the details.

"Homophobia" in Cobb County, Georgia

An article published last month in "Inkwell" -- Kell High School's student magazine -- was headlined "Homosexuality: Beyond the Bible" and written by football player Thomas Benjamin. It referred to homosexuals as "diseased" and a "mistake of evolution."

The editors of the publication were subjected to all sorts of abuse over it, of course but, rather surprisingly, school officials have defended the article on free speech grounds and no disciplinary measures against anyone have been heard of yet. Instead, there seems to have been a lively debate on the matter among the students. It sounds like there is one High School that is more mature than some Ivy League universities.

Details here.

G*ogle Censoring Criticism of Islam again

Robert Spencer of "Jihad Watch" comments:

"The indefatigable Harrison Sonntag of Dartmouth notifies me that G*ogle has removed the video of my talk at Dartmouth, with this explanation: "As set forth in the Terms & Conditions, G*ogle Video is not required to host or display uploaded content. G*ogle Video may refuse to host content that violates its policies"

G*ogle then lists the things that violate its policies, none of which apply to the video concerned -- which was a factual exposition of Muslim teachings drawn from the Koran and other Islamic sources.

See Spencer's full post here -- including a non-G*ogle link to the speech.

Bias Case at Columbia Goes Largely Ignored

A good comment:

"For an incident that occured last Thursday, you think there would have been a bit more attention. Considering the amount of coverage the purported noose hanging incident received at Columbia, it's curious why there's a virtual media blackout with this latest reported case.

"Police are looking into a new bias incident at Columbia University. The provost of Teachers College told students Friday that two faculty members received an anti-Semitic cartoon and anti-Zionist letters. School officials have not released the names of the two professors. Police say the hate crimes unit is aware of the incident.

Source

That both Columbia and the media are very Leftist and that the Left is very antisemitic these days does of course explain the indifference. They probably think that the letters were a good thing.

And both the ACLU and the ADL seem to be missing in action. But self-hating Jews are nothing new -- from Karl Marx onwards.

Australian jury to decide on meaning of "pimp"

We read:

"Right wing Liberal powerbroker David Clarke is suing a publishing house for defamation following the release of a book in which he claims he is portrayed as a "Nazi" and a "pimp" who would be willing to prostitute his own daughters to further his political career. The daughters of the NSW MP, Ann-Marie and Caroline, are also suing Melbourne University Press over the book, The Education of a Young Liberal, written by John Hyde Page. They claim the book makes them out to be prostitutes of such low moral character that their father solicits for them.

Two recently published judgments in the NSW District Court detail the claims made by the Clarkes and the arguments used by MUP in its defence. Using the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to bolster its arguments, MUP says the word "pimp" has become a colloquial term that now means "cool" or "socially desirable".

Judge Gibson said it was ultimately up to a jury to decide whether the imputations claimed by the Clarke daughters had been made out.... The chapter in which the author describes a meeting with Mr Clarke is headed "Meeting with Nazis". Judge Gibson recounted the passage in the book where Mr Hyde Page goes to the meeting to gain "right-wing support for his presidency" of the Young Liberals and that at the end of the talks Mr Clarke spoke "warmly of his daughters".

The offending line "And did you get a load of Clarke trying to pimp off his daughters? Oi, oi, oi!" is attributed to former Liberal Party member Kyle Kutasi, who was at the meeting with Mr Hyde Page.... The book, published last year, was withdrawn from sale in March.

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The Annual Halloween fight

Excerpt from a good summary:

"Say a prayer, a spell, or a demonic incantation for Halloween. This October, as in past Octobers, many schools are refusing to celebrate the holiday. Others have recast it as "Fall-o-Ween" or "Orange and Black Day" or, in words carefully calibrated to be as generic as possible, the "Fall Festival." In Anne Arundel County, Maryland, one councilman-nominally a Republican, but spiritually a member of the Everything Not Prohibited Is Compulsory Party-has reacted with a resolution to require his county's schools to hold Halloween parties. I don't approve of his solution, but I understand his aggravation....

But the alliance's most important members are driven by fear, not faith. They're the key to the coalition: the risk-averse bureaucrats. Where the fundamentalists would like to see Halloween eliminated entirely and the Wiccans would replace it with a two-day teach-in about the Burning Times, the bureaucrats merely want to drain all the blood from it, eliminating anything that might offend somebody or give a parent something to worry about. Many would be happy to keep Halloween around as long as the witches wear bicycle helmets instead of dangerously pointy hats. Barring that, they'll sadly sacrifice a school's celebrations altogether, suggesting softly as they wield the knife that it's all for the best, really; all those costumes and candies were distracting the kids from their lessons.

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Cartoon ban in Australia?



We read:

" The [Leftist] Federal Opposition is considering banning the use of cartoon characters in the advertising of food and drinks aimed at young children if it wins power. Characters such as animated film ogre Shrek are widely used in advertisements for fast food and breakfast cereals aimed at children.

Labor's health spokeswoman Nicola Roxon says many parents are concerned about their use as marketing tools. She says Labor thinks the use of cartoon characters in promotions is a way of getting around industry codes. "Labor is certainly considering closely whether we could ban the use of toys and kids' giveaways and licensed characters in the advertising and marketing of food and drinks," she said.

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