Soccer org says refs can halt matches for “racism”

Even sport is being brought under the iron heel of speech conformity

"UEFA reiterated its zero-tolerance policy on racism at a meeting in Sofia on Thursday, encouraging referees to halt matches if need be and encouraging teams to denounce racism among fellow players and fans. UEFA’s executive committee said it 'recommends and fully supports referees to stop matches in cases of racism and calls on national associations and leagues to do the same,' in a resolution drawn up by the Professional Football Strategy Council (PFSC) and ratified Thursday."

Source

US congressman apologises for racial slur

Nobody must be offended any more

LONG-SERVING US Republican politician Don Young has issued an apology after sparking criticism for referring to Hispanic migrant farmworkers as "wetbacks."

"My father had a ranch; we used to have 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes," Young, one of the most senior members of the US House of Representatives, said in a radio interview.

"It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It's all done by machine."

The term "wetbacks" has a pejorative and racist connotation and is occasionally used to refer to undocumented migrants, particularly those who arrived from Mexico.

In a statement, Young apologised for the slur, saying he employed a "term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in central California."

"I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect," he said.

Source

No free speech in Austria

Austria's Roman Catholic Church has forbidden a priest from preaching to his flock at Easter Mass because of his comments against gays and Muslims.

The move comes after the 75 year-old priest, Karl Tropper, has been repeatedly warned to desist from inciting hate against gays and Muslims.

Last week he called gay people ‘homo-deranged’, he has also described Islam as ‘pure racism’.

Tropper has a history of using hate language, in numerous press releases from his Church he referred to LGBT people and Muslims in hateful terms, reported the daily Kleine Zeitung.

Austria’s Catholic Church previously put these comments down to Tropper’s old age but explicitly warned him on Thursday (21 March) to stop inciting hatred or else face retirement.

Tropper ignored the warnings and in an interview the following day (22 March) with the daily Kleine Zeitung he described gays as ‘perverts’, adding: ‘If you can no longer say this, you have to go as a parish priest into retirement’.

Source

No free speech in football

Recently, Chris Culliver, cornerback for the San Francisco 49ers, said on The Artie Lange Radio Show, "I don't do the gay guys, man. I don't do that. Ain't got no gay people on the team. They gotta get up outta here if they do. Can't be with that sweet stuff ... Can't be ... in the locker room, nah."

The backlash began just minutes after Culliver made the remarks and the 49ers were quick to release a statement that made their official stance on the subject clear, "There is no place for discrimination within our organization at any level. We have and always will proudly support the LGBT community."

Culliver, who is required to undergo sensitivity training and work with at-risk youth as part of his punishment, issued an apology the very next day stating, "The derogatory comments I made yesterday were a reflection of thoughts in my head, but they are not how I feel."

Source

PETA "insensitive" to women

PETA, or the People's Ethical Treatment of Animals, claim to recognise the "right of all animals to be treated with respect". They are famous for their outlandish stunts such as dousing Kim Cattrall in red paint and involving celebrities such as Pamela Anderson in their efforts. Although they are most likely the world's largest animal rights group in the world, and certainly the most well-known, PETA seem to care very little for one animal in particular: human beings.

PETA have a long history of using 'scandalous' pictures in an endeavour to gain some edge in their advertising campaigns. Their complete lack of respect in regard to the human female form is incredible, and their adverts frequently engage in some kind of body-shaming message in their endeavours to bring a worldwide switch to vegetarianism or veganism. They have a habit of objectifying women for causes as utterly unrelated to sex as bull-riding and getting your five-a-day. After looking through a selection of their ads, both past and present, what is notably lacking amongst the naked women and attempts at shock value is the presence of any actual animals.

Although they defend their decision to use almost exclusively naked women in their advertisements on the basis that 'sex sells', it cannot be overlooked that by replacing abused animals with abused women, they are hitting much too close to the truth. In a world where violence against women is rife, using shackled and bruised women in an attempt to promote ethical treatment of elephants is inappropriate and insensitive.

Source

White men not allowed to talk about race

All whites are "privileged", apparently  -- and therefore incapable of understanding.  That sure sounds like bigotry against whites to me  -- JR

Most people who are not straight white men would probably smirk at the idea that straight white men feel alienated in the higher education workplace.

Those who smirk, Sandra Miles said here at the annual conference of NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, are hindering meaningful discussion about race.

Miles, whose dissertation on the professional experiences of black women in her field produced an unexpected sub-study about the alienation of straight white men, made this argument to a couple hundred people who turned up to hear more about her research. The ensuing debate was, unsurprisingly, somewhat contentious.

A comment by one white graduate student toward the end of the session summed it up well. He described a recent discussion about privilege in a higher education class, when he was shot down after offering his own thoughts.

“I couldn’t even begin to have that conversation because it was automatically assumed I didn’t understand,” he said. “To go through that experience in a higher education class – which is supposed to be the safest place to talk about that – was just terrifying.”

Source

Must not quote what Muslims themselves say:  That's "hate"

A controversy has been re-ignited this week as ten new ads go up on San Francisco Muni buses containing quotes used by terrorists.

“Killing Jews is worship that draws us closer to Allah,” reads one of the ads, which has people debating the line between free speech and hate speech.

“The purpose of our campaign is to show the reality of Jihad, the root causes of terrorism. Using the exact quotes and text that they use,” said Pamela Geller of the American Freedom Defense Institute.

Several San Francisco city leaders, including District Attorney George Gascon, have condemned the campaign.  “San Francisco won’t tolerate Islamophobic bigotry,” said Gascon.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu said the American Freedom Defense Initiative is made of “well-known hate extremists” and said he is introducing a resolution at Tuesday’s board meeting to denounce the ads.

Source

Obama's anti-gun hate speech

Democrats apparently know no bounds in their quest for gun control.

The Second Amendment and the right to own guns and firearms by law abiding American citizens must not be overthrown or defeated by the current Obama administration.

President Barack Obama and his conspiring drive-by news media have ruthlessly attacked and smeared the tea party, conservatives and talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Mike Savage, Glenn Beck and other voices of freedom and truth.

Now, Mr. Obama will stop at nothing to attack the Constitution and anything or anyone that stands in his way.

There is no excuse or explanation for such uncalled for and savage hate speech being leveled against gun owners and red-blooded Americans. We, the innocent, are being treated like law breakers. Our right to own firearms must not be infringed upon by the current administration.

Source

Mich. Man Fights For Right To Display Anti-Obama Signs on His Property



A Michigan cattle farmer is fighting for the right to display two trailer-sized anti-Obama signs on his property, according to WOOD-TV.

Authorities in Gaines Township, Mich., say the massive signs on Vern Verduin’s property violate local zoning codes, which state that all political signs must be contained to 20 square feet.

The two signs, which are clearly visible from the highway, read “Marxism/Socialism = Poverty & hunger” and “Obama’s ‘mission accomplished.’ 8% unemployment. 16 trillion debt,” respectively.

“I felt that things were going in the wrong direction,” Verduin told WOOD-TV, adding that he’s concerned about hunger and poverty.

But here’s the thing: According to the same zoning ordinances, Verduin is allowed to display a sign that covers more than 20 square feet if it for the purpose of “selling ideas.” So that’s how he plans on fighting the town.

“You can have a 32-foot advertising sign. I don’t get that,” said the cattle farmer.

“This is clearly a violation of his free speech and free exercise right,” attorney Howard Van Den Heuvel added.

Source

Twitter Faces Criminal Complaint Over Hate-Speech Hashtags in France

Twitter has been hit with a $50 million (€38 million) criminal suit in the latest stage of a legal battle over a series of hate-speech hashtags in France. 

The company is being charged with failing to comply with a Jan. 24 ruling to hand over the identifying information of France-based users who participated in a series of anti-Semitic and racist trending topics during several days in October. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo also is named in the suit.

The French Jewish Student Union (UEJF) and anti-racism organization J’Accuse/International Action for Justice (AIPJ) are seeking $50 million (€38 million), an amount the groups say they will donate to the Shoah Memorial Fund. UEJF has repeatedly sought to get the California-based tech company to reveal personal details of French users who have violated the country's strict anti-hate speech laws.

The filing follows a monthslong fight over incendiary hashtags here. In October, after the hashtag #AGoodJew resulted in posts such as “a good Jew is a dead Jew” and spawned several copycat topics such as #ADeadJew, the UEJF requested that Twitter release identifying information of France-based users so that they could be prosecuted under anti-hate speech laws. The UEJF and Twitter entered into negotiations aimed at staving off legal action. Twitter agreed to remove the offending France-based tweets but refused to turn over the requested user information.

The UEJF quickly filed a suit to force Twitter to hand over the information, and a ruling in favor of the group was handed down Jan. 24. At the time, Twitter was given two weeks to comply or face fines of $1,300 (€1,000) per day. Twitter said it would review the decision but has made no move to hand over the data.

Twitter now has 15 days to respond to the criminal complaint and indicated late Thursday it will appeal the Jan. 24 decision. The company has maintained that it will not hand over the user information unless ordered to do so by a U.S. court.

Source

Does free speech entail protection for anonymous speech?  Not necessarily  -- but anonymity is an important protection that allows people to say things that are unpopular or banned.  So I applaud Twitter for protecting anonymity.

Hate speech prosecutions now more difficult in Canada

After the failure of prosecutions under Human Rights law, hate speech prosecutions must now be brought under the criminal code.  Such prosecutions are at the discretion of the provincial attorney general

Among the loudest critics of anti-hate human rights laws was Ezra Levant of Sun News Network. He mocked a group of Muslims who complained to the federal as well as three provincial human rights commissions about what they thought was a hateful tirade against all Muslims in Maclean’s magazine. That complaint was rejected but the campaign by Levant and Co. continued.

Last fall, Levant did an on-air rant against the Roma. Theirs was “a culture synonymous with swindlers,” he said, while commenting on a crime ring operating in the Durham region involving some Roma.

“One of the central characteristics of that culture is that their chief economy is theft and begging ... The phrase ‘gypsy’ and ‘cheater’ have been so interchangeable historically that the word has been entered into the English language as a verb: he gypped me. Well, the gypsies have gypped us. Too many have come here as false refugees.” And so on.

Gina Csanyi-Robah of the Roma Community Centre filed complaints with the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, the Alberta Bar Association and also the hate crimes unit of the Toronto police.

The two broadcast regulatory bodies wrote to say they would await the outcome of the police probe. The bar association, of which Levant is a member, asked whether they could defer their investigation until after police had done their work, she said.

On March 11, Csanyi-Robah says police informed her that they found more than enough evidence to charge Levant under the Criminal Code, and the Crown attorney agreed. But then permission from the Ontario attorney general was not forthcoming, she says, adding that two detectives told her that was highly unusual — they had never seen such a rejection.

She was called to a meeting March 14 with Patrick Monahan, deputy attorney general. The detectives and the Crown attorney were there. So was Mark Freiman, lawyer for the Roma Centre, and two of its board members.

She recalled — and another person corroborated — that Monahan said there was evidence to proceed with the charge but that it could be “a challenging case.” Told that most anti-hate cases can be challenging, he said that Levant was a bully and that he’d turn it into “a bit of circus,” she says.

“They were intimidated about what he’d come out and say on the air,” she told me.

Four days later, Levant issued a rare on-air apology. He said he was wrong to have equated the actions of some individuals with an entire ethnic group. “I must admit that I did more than just attack a crime or immigration fraud problem. I attacked a particular group, and painted them all with the same brush.”

Csanyi-Robah found the apology insincere.

Source

What Levant said about Gypsies is perfectly correct.  They are in general a plague on any community.  But there are exceptions to most rules.  Some Gypsies are no doubt decent.  The exceptions should not however stop us from making  broadly accurate generalizations.  Being aware of probable Gypsy behaviour is some armour against being ripped off by them.

Must not speak the truth at UCB

On Wednesday evening, the Associated Students at the University of California (ASUC) at Berkeley voted unanimously to support a resolution “condeming Islamophobic hate speech at the University of California.”

The resolution focused on the recent incident of the outrageously racist and Islamophobic hate speech of Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, who was videotaped in June 2012 saying that campus activists involved in Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim student organizations have ties to “terrorist organizations.”

Rossman-Benjamin, as The Electronic Intifada has extensively reported, is the co-founder of an outside political group, the Amcha Initiative, which seeks out students and professors who criticize Israel or engage in Palestine solidarity activism, accuse them of “anti-Semitism,” and urge university administrations — or state officials — to take punitive action against them.

Immediately after the video surfaced, Rossman-Benjamin’s inciteful hate speech was condemned by student organizations at UC Santa Cruz and elsewhere across the UC system. However, outgoing UC President Mark Yudof has so far refused to take any condemnatory action against her speech, a demand urged by students; while a report posted by Mondoweiss added that his office has only offered a “no comment” response.

Source

No more asking for permission to speak about the government

The Patriot Act permits FBI agents to write their own search warrants and gives those warrants the patriotic and harmless-sounding name of national security letters (NSLs). This authorization is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that that security can only be violated by a search warrant issued by a neutral judge and based upon probable cause of crime.

When FBI agents serve the warrants they’ve written for themselves – the NSLs as they call them – they tell the recipient of the warrant that he or she will commit a felony if he or she tells anyone – a lawyer, a judge, a spouse, a priest in confessional – of the receipt of the warrant. The NSLs are typically not served on the person whose records the FBI wants; rather, they are served on the custodians of those records, such as computer servers, the Post Office, hospitals, banks, delivery services, telephone providers, etc.

Because of the Patriot Act’s mandated silence, the person whose records the FBI seeks often never knows his or her records have been seized. Since October 2001, FBI agents and other federal agents have served more than 350,000 search warrants with which they have authorized themselves to conduct a search. Each time they have done so, they have warned the recipient of the warrant to remain silent or be prosecuted for telling the truth about the government.

Last week in San Francisco, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston held that the section of the Patriot Act that prohibits telling anyone about the receipt of an FBI agent-written search warrant and the section that requires asking and receiving the permission of the FBI before talking about the receipt of one profoundly and directly infringe upon the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. And the government knows that.

Source

Firing of tech developer who outed inappropriate comments

Another instance of jokes now being dangerous

The company that fired a female tech developer who tweeted about comments she overheard at a Santa Clara conference said in a blog post that "publicly shaming" the men was inappropriate and she had to be terminated for alienating the developer community.

But that firing could be hard to defend in court, say labor law attorneys.  "It's a tough one," said Rob Pattison, a San Francisco attorney who represents employers for the Jackson Lewis law firm. "The law is strong in protecting people who make complaints of harassment, or who participate in an investigation about complaints of harassment."

Adria Richards, a San Francisco "developer evangelist" for SendGrid, an email delivery company, tweeted a photo of a group of men sitting behind her at Sunday's PyCon conference who made a comment about "big dongles."

Richards' tweet set off a social media tsunami with ominous overtones, including threats and name-calling directed at Richards. The fallout led to her firing, as well as the dismissal of one of the men in the photo by his employer, PlayHaven, a San Francisco mobile-game company.

Richards' former boss, SendGrid CEO Jim Franklin, wrote on the company's blog that Richards was fired because "A SendGrid developer evangelist's responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid."

"Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line," Franklin wrote. "Publicly shaming the offenders -- and bystanders -- was not the appropriate way to handle the situation."

Source

It's a sad day if a company cannot fire a bitchy employee

Internet sites targeted by Britain for first time ‘in chilling threat to free speech’... but could bloggers also face huge damages in Press crackdown?

The internet will be targeted for the first time as the 'chilling' Royal Charter attempts to curb free speech on the majority of websites and blogs, experts warned today.

The draft version of the document also suggests that foreign-based or owned websites such as Twitter, Huffington Post, Facebook, Holy Moly, the Guido Fawkes political site and even The New York Times will also be subject to the stifling controls if their articles are aimed at 'an audience in the UK'.

But as confusion mounted about exactly who would be covered, the government said it would leave it entirely up to the new regulator to decide whether major foreign sites should be made to sign up. It also claimed that 'small' blogging sites would be exempt.

Lawyers say large foreign organisations could, like newspapers, be pursued for 'exemplary' damages of up to £1million in defamation and other cases if they failed to abide by its rules - even if they have their business or servers in other countries like America and Ireland.

Even if they won a libel case in the High Court they could also be blocked from claiming back any legal costs under the proposed rules, meaning these huge financial penalties could be an incentive for them to sign up.

The document says: 'The new rules would cover newspapers, magazines and websites containing "news-related material", even if the websites are not connected to a printed paper or journal.

The Royal Charter also states that it will cover 'news-related material' including current affairs news and information, opinion and 'gossip about celebrities, other public figures and other persons in the news'.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: 'The fact that in the proposed regulation all things and all people are covered, is very disturbing.

'That is your blog, your forum, your twitter feed, your Facebook page, in fact almost the whole of contemporary discourse. The only place left to speak out will be in the pub… and they are closing at 10 a week due to a series of ill thought out government measures'.

Source

Dior accused of runway 'racism' by major casting director who says 'pointedly white' catwalk shows 'feel deliberate'

Let me guess that 99% of Dior's customers are white.  So showing what clothes look like on white skin is what is of interest

Luxury fashion house Dior has been slammed by a major casting director for using only white models in their runway shows.

The brand's creative director Raf Simons was criticised by James Scully who heads up model casting at Tom Ford, Jason Wu, Derek Lam, Stella McCartney, Lanvin and Carolina Herrera.

Scully even commented that Simons' message was similar to that of his predecessor John Galliano, who was accused of racism following a drunken, anti-Semitic rant outside a Parisian cafe in 2011.

Speaking to James Lim on BuzzFeed, Scully said: 'I feel the Dior cast is just so pointedly white that it feels deliberate. I watch that show and it bothers me - I almost can't even concentrate on the clothes because of the cast.

'And recently they're changing from a very diverse, worldwide, multicultural cast to just a very Germanic-looking white girl.

Scully went on to accuse further houses - Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton and Chanel - of not being racially diverse enough, saying that in his opinion 'the more diverse, the better'.

Source

BBC digital radio station censors lyric in Elvis Costello hit Oliver's Army

It has been played in full thousands of times and without causing a fuss.

But Elvis Costello’s hit song Oliver’s Army was censored to remove the word ‘n*gger’ when it was recently played on a BBC digital station to the surprise of listeners.

The song, taken from the album Armed Forces, is one of Costello’s best-known and has received endless plays across all BBC radio stations without any complaint – until now.

The line in question is heard at the end of the second verse before the chorus: ‘One more widow, one less white n*gger’.

A listener who heard the edited tune on Steve Lamacq’s show on 6 Music was prompted to complain to Radio 4’s Feedback, stating the word was actually necessary for the song: 'I do know the song inside out, as most people probably do, then all of sudden – clunk- it had the n-word taken out.

The listener said that their understanding of the lyric was that it referred to British troops in Northern Ireland who used the phrase as a derogatory term for the Irish.

He added: ‘Although it is not a nice phrase and I wouldn’t condone the use of the word these days, it is an anti-war song as far as I believe, arguing against British colonialism and the word would be appropriate for that song.’

Source

San Francisco's New Muzzle Zone

San Francisco Supervisor David Campos is about to introduce a law to end the city's 8-foot "bubble zone" around reproductive health clinics in favor of a new 25-foot "buffer zone."

It's hard to imagine City Hall entertaining a law to curb the free speech expression of union representatives, Critical Mass bicyclists or anti-war activists, but anti-abortion protest is not welcome in this town.

"We respect the right of people to have freedom of expression," Campos told the San Francisco Chronicle. "What is happening is more than that; it's intimidation."

Source

Philly Mayor Wants Mag Punished over Race Relations Story


The aptly-named Mayor Nutter

The Philadelphia Human Relations Commission has launched an investigation at the request of the mayor after a well-known magazine published an essay that explored perspectives of white citizens on the issue of race relations.

Mayor Michael Nutter called on the commission to consider rebuking both Philadelphia Magazine and writer Bob Huber noting that “the First Amendment, like other constitutional rights, is not an unfettered right.”

Nutter’s fury was directed at a cover story titled, “Being White in Philly.” The story included conversations with mostly anonymous white residents who detailed race relations in the City of Brotherly Love.

“In a city that is largely poor and segregated, white people have become afraid to say anything at all about race,” Huber wrote on the cover of the magazine. “Here’s what’s not being said.”

But Mayor Nutter believes it should have remained unsaid.

Source

The rest of the article makes some good points

Barack Obama lookalike Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni cast as Satan in 'The Bible'



SOCIAL media platforms erupted on Sunday night when US TV viewers noted an alarming similarity between President Barack Obama and an actor playing the Devil.

Thousands of the 13.1 million viewers of The Bible commented on social media platforms on the resemblance of actor Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni to the 44th President of the United States.

Interest was piqued when right-wing commentator and radio-host Glenn Beck tweeted: "Anyone else think the Devil in #TheBible Sunday on History Channel looks exactly like That Guy?

The show is a retelling of the stories from Genesis to Revelation and is produced by Mark Burnett, who also created Survivor and The Apprentice. He told CBS making The Bible was a “spiritual” calling, not a commercial one.

Burnett says Internet chatter that their Satan character resembles President Barack Obama is "utter nonsense."  He added that the Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni has played Satanic characters in other Biblical programs long before Obama was elected president.

History Channel said in a statement that the network has "the highest respect" for Obama, and that "it's unfortunate that anyone made this false connection."

Source

Obama might look like that in 30 year's time but he sure does not at the moment.  But casting ANY black man as the Devil would probably have riled the "offended" brigade.