College Football Coach Allegedly Fired for Removing BLM Poster Sues Former Bosses

A former Illinois State University assistant football coach has filed a lawsuit against the team's head coach and the school's former athletic director over claims that his First Amendment rights were violated after he replaced a Black Lives Matter poster that had been placed on his door with another poster.

The suit, filed Tuesday, alleges that, in September 2020, Kurt Beathard, the former offensive coordinator for ISU, was dismissed by head coach Brock Spack and was later fired by then-athletic director Larry Lyons, according to the Chicago Tribune.

It also claims First Amendment retaliation and viewpoint discrimination against Beathard and asserts that he was terminated because he failed to "toe the party line regarding Black Lives Matter."

Beathard said that a Black Lives Matter poster was placed on his door while he was on leave following the death of his wife, who had succumb to breast cancer. Upon his return, Beathard replaced the poster with one that read, "All Lives Matter to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," the suit notes.

The new poster remained on the door for less than two weeks. According to the suit, Beathard took down the poster before he was fired but after Spack asked that he remove it.

Doug Churdar, Beathard’s attorney, said in a press release that Beathard should not have been disciplined for expressing his views in a public university.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2021/12/04/college-football-coach-fired-for-allegedly-removing-blm-poster-sues-former-bosses-n2600103

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Say the Name That Frightens Iran’s Rulers

Last week, a former Iranian judiciary official charged with war crimes in Iran testified in a Swedish court. The first person to date to face trial for the horrific 1988 massacre, Hamid Noury’s testimony offered revelations that laid bare Tehran’s vulnerabilities and revealed important insights into the regime’s domestic affairs.

Noury, who is accused of participation in the massacre of more than 30,000 political prisoners in Iran in 1988, 90 percent of whom were members of a singular opposition movement – was arrested in Sweden in 2019.

In heated exchanges with confused prosecutors, the defendant doggedly refused to speak the name “People's Mojahedin” to refer to his victims – members of Iran’s principal democratic opposition, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), known around the world as the Mujahedin-e Khalqor, MEK.

Noury’s unwillingness to identify the affiliation of those he reportedly tortured and killed in an international court may have puzzled casual regime observers, but the refusal was hardly lost on those that follow Iran closely.

As the defendant explained in sworn testimony, even speaking the MEK’s official name could result in an Iranian’s arrest and prosecution. And so, to the visible astonishment of the trial judge and puzzled onlookers, the defendant – charged with war crimes and murder – spent a considerable portion of his testimony unpacking exactly why he was so afraid to even utter the name ‘MEK’ in his own defense.

The historical context is important.

The 1988 massacre was rooted in both the MEK’s politics and its rejection of Islamic fundamentalism as a religious ideology. Since 1979, the organization has advocated a democratic and secular republic, putting it at odds with the totalitarian state’s clerical rulers. Compounding the trouble for the mullahs was the fact that the MEK’s democratic aspirations were built on the canons of Islam, the very religion the ayatollahs usurped to monopolize political power.

Acknowledging that MEK dissidents were genuine Muslims would have undermined the mullahs’ reactionary reading of Islam. As such, speaking the name “Mojahedin” became an unforgivable crime against the state. And doing so was deemed an act of legitimization.

https://townhall.com/columnists/ivansaschasheehan/2021/12/05/say-the-name-that-frightens-irans-rulers-n2600054

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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