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.

Source

Must not Mention Black Educational Failure

We read:

"The founder of Overstock.com rejected the NAACP's demand for an apology Friday after an Internet video surfaced of him saying that Utah minorities who don't graduate from high school might as well be burned or thrown away.

Patrick Byrne's comments were posted on YouTube. The video clip was from a debate two weeks ago in Provo, where he was speaking in favor of vouchers, public aid for families sending kids to private schools. A statewide voucher program that would grant $500 to $3,000 per child based on family income is on the Utah ballot Nov. 6.

On the YouTube video clip, Byrne says: "Right now, 40 percent of Utah minorities are not graduating from high school. You may as well burn those kids. That's the end of their life. That's the end of their ability to achieve in this society if they do not get a high school education. You might as, just throw the kids away."

Byrne has made similar remarks in other debates. He said Friday he had no intention of apologizing and claimed his comments were taken out of context. "These folks have been selective in their editing," Byrne told The Associated Press. "I very clearly said the system is throwing away 40 percent of the minority kids because they're not graduating. I'm saying that I'm against throwing kids away. "People against vouchers are in favor of throwing the kids away," Byrne said.

Source

NJ voters to decide fate of 'Idiot' language in Constitution

We read:

" In about two weeks, New Jersey voters will decide whether to eliminate insensitive phrasing in the state Constitution that characterizes people with disabilities as "idiots" and "insane."

The offensive language, adopted in the Constitution in 1844, is aimed at barring people with limited mental capacity from voting: "No idiot or insane person shall enjoy the right of suffrage."

At least seven other states _ Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico and Ohio _ have the words "idiot" or "insane" in their constitutions to define who can vote.

Source

I wonder what the replacement terms will be? Maybe "mental defective" and "mentally ill"? Probably not. Or are they going to let morons and madmen vote? I think I can guess which party they would vote for.

Catholic Radio Station in Pittsburgh Rejects Sponsorship by Abortionists

Rare to see ANY media stand up for conservative values:

"A public radio station here stopped running underwriting messages from Planned Parenthood and returned its $5,000 donation after the station's license holder, Duquesne University, decided the organization was "not aligned with our Catholic identity." The decision by the station, WDUQ 90.5 FM, came in the midst of the station's fall pledge drive, and it appears to be costing the station contributions.

Source

It's a long way from balance in the media but maybe it's a start.

Christian Objection to Pro-homosexual "Training" Upheld

We read:

"A federal appeals court has reversed a lower court decision against a Boyd County High School student who claimed anti-harassment training violated his free-speech right to freely practice his religion.

A three-judge panel ruled the lower court should reconsider Timothy Morrison's claim that school policy on harassing speech prevented him from expressing his Christian belief opposing homosexuality. U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning had granted a summary judgment to the Boyd County School District against Morrison.

Morrison's claim seeks only nominal damages. The policy the claim addresses was changed by the school board after Morrison filed his suit.

Two of the judges concluded that even though the policy had been changed, it may have had a chilling effect on Morrison while it was in effect and therefore he should have the opportunity to make that case in court....

No significant monetary damages are at stake, but the outcome of the case remains important, said Kevin Theriot, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based legal organization that takes on religious-rights cases. "It indicates our client's free speech rights could have been violated," Theriot said. "The amount of the damages isn't the issue. It's the principle involved." ....

Source

See here for coverage of the ACLU role in the matter.

Another Leftist Simpleton

There are many things that drive Leftists to hate the world they live in but there is one Leftist enemy of free speech (he condemns a wide variety of conservative utterances as "hate speech") who seems to have a strange respect for society's instititutions. I refer to the "Rev." Jim Sutter. The "Rev." title is at least a mail-order title but the many other titles and distinctions he claims for himself appear to be totally bogus. Below is one of his recent effusions:

"Perhaps someone could help Horowitz understand some basics of politics. First, leftists cannot, by definition, be fascists, they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Secondly, Communist and Nazi ideology are mutually exclusive. It's ironic, in almost every article by these hate mongers about their being greeted with skepticism at best, or being booed off the stage, or being completely banned from most campuses, the hate mongers claim that those who oppose them are "racists", who are stifling "freedom of speech" (even though freedom of speech has no application in this particular situation, see Hate Speech vs. Free Speech entry, this blog), and offer nothing but insults to those who do not welcome Horowitz's brand of racism with open arms.

Source

With that level of ignorance he could of course be an Ivy-League graduate but the ignorance is profound nonetheless. He is clearly a mental midget who NEEDS to claim various distinctions because he is deep-down aware of how little he really knows.

He of course offers no evidence for anything he says but full documentation of how very socialist Hitler was can be found here

Oxford University students stirring the pot again

They have a long tradition of it:

"Less than a month after Columbia University gave Holocaust denier, Iranian president Ahmadinejad, a platform in the name of freedom of expression, the Oxford University debating society has contacted Holocaust denier David Irving using the same argument and asked him to participate in one of the society's forums in November. The club also wants to invite Belarus dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, and chairman of the British Nationalist Party (BNP), Nick Griffin.

Debating society president, Luke Tryl, told the British Guardian newspaper that the Oxford Union debating society "is famous for is commitment to free speech" and that the three had been invited despite their "awful and abhorrent views" He argued that the students at Oxford are intelligent enough to challenge and ridicule them....

Last month Irving told the Guardian that his views on the Holocaust have not changed at all and that his views have become stronger over the years. In several books he plans to publish soon, Irving maintains that "the Jews are the architects of what happened to them in the Second World War" and that the "Jewish problem" has been the cause of most wars in the past hundred years. Irving also claims that the gas chambers in Auschwitz never existed and that the camp was not an extermination camp and has only been publicized because it was well preserved.

Source

"Stirring the possum" (saying deliberately provocative things mainly for amusement) is a popular tradition in Australia too. And if students cannot rebel against conventions, who can? I think Irving is mainly a publicity-seeker these days too. What he says does vary a lot from time to time.

"N-word" OK in an Album Title



We read:

"To some, it's a hurtful racial epithet. For Nas, it's an album title. The rapper told MTV News that he would indeed be naming his new album after the N-word. And he denied earlier reports that the album's title would be spelled "N---a," considered in some circles a less inflammatory epithet. He said the disc is due out Dec. 11. "(People) shouldn't trip off the (album's) title; the songs are crazier than the title," he said in an interview posted on MTV's Web site.

But some have been outraged by the rapper's choice.

"The title using the 'N' word is morally offensive and socially distasteful. Nas has the right to degrade and denigrate in the name of free speech, but there is no honor in it," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a news release. "Radio and television stations have no obligation to play it and self-respecting people have no obligation to buy it. I wish he would use his talents to lift up and inspire, not degrade."

Source

Would Jackson speak of a white user of that word in that permissive way? No way! Which clearly makes Jackson a racist, does it not?

Fascism comeback in Italy?

Italy was where Fascism was invented:

"Recently, Italian lawmakers once again took aim at modern life, introducing an incredibly broad law that would effectively require all bloggers, and even users of social networks, to register with the state. Even a harmless blog about a favourite football squad or a teenager grousing about life's unfairness would be subject to government oversight, and even taxation - even if it's not a commercial website.

Outside Italy, the legislation has generated sniggers from hardly sympathetic industry observers. Boingboing cleverly reports Italy is proposing a "Ministry of Blogging." Out-law.com plays it straighter, calling the measure an "anti-blogger" law.

Source

Some Amusing Recent History

When the comments facility on the first incarnation of this blog began to be grossly abused, I began to take corrective measures -- deleting foul-mouthed abuse etc. This of course caused much anger against me on the part of the deleted ones, anger which still simmers, apparently. Trolls are an old problem on blogs, however, so I just ratcheted up the defensive measures until the offensive commenters went away.

Their departure was facilitated when Kim, one of the regular commenters on the old blog, started her own site with the promise that she would not delete anything. And most of the "old gang" seem to have turned their attention there. The blog concerned gets rather scrappy-looking at times but most of the posts are reasonable so I am happy to give it a link.

After a while, Kim asked me to become a contributor at her blog. Since my TT posts had interested her readers in the past, she no doubt quite reasonably thought that more posts from me would be of interest to her readers too. I accepted. My presence on Kim's blog seemed to stir up quite a storm, however. There were huge numbers of comments on each of my posts -- very few of which I read. All the comments that I did read, however, were most abusive about my being there. In the end Kim bowed to the outrage and un-invited me. So I ceased posting there. I thought it was a rather good demonstration of how childish the commenters concerned were.

For some reason, however, Kim and at least some of the "old gang" have again begun to frequent the comments on this blog. They must have become tired of listening to one-another, I suppose. They are perfectly welcome here while they remain civil and I have had to deal with only one "bad apple" so far. And I have still used only some of the tools I have available to exclude his comments.

OK to Slur Giuliani

We read:

"Josh Marshall/TPM called Rudy Giuliani a fascist and compared him to Mussolini and even posted a video of Benito.

If a right-winger did the same with Obama - and compared him to hmmm let's say Mobuto - the entire MSM would be up in arms. It's a rank slur. But Josh is a Leftie so he will get a pass....

No one could be further from socialism than Rudy. Rudy and the GOP stand for small government, low taxes a free marketplace and liberty. Josh Marshall and his comrades on the Left have more in common with fascism than Rudy and the GOP.

Source

Sen. Joe Biden Says Blacks are Naturally Dumb

Taranto puts this matter rather well so I am reproducing his post below:

"Sen. Joe Biden visited the Washington Post editorial board this week, and the Post reports he did not exactly cover himself in glory:

"Biden also stumbled through a discourse on race and education, leaving the impression that he believes one reason that so many District of Columbia schools fail is the city's high minority population. His campaign quickly issued a statement saying he meant to indicate that the disadvantages were based on economic status, not race.

After a lengthy critique of Bush administration education policies, Biden attempted to explain why some schools perform better than others--in Iowa, for instance, compared with the District. "There's less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with," Biden said. He went on to discuss the importance of parental involvement in reading to children and how "half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom."

The Biden campaign moved quickly to clarify the senator's remarks in a statement: "This was not a race-based distinction, but a discussion of the problems kids face who don't have the same socio-economic support system (and all that implies--nutrition, pre K, etc.) entering grade school and the impact of those disadvantages on outcomes."

Now, we don't think Biden's comments were terribly invidious, and it is true that he has a tendency toward linguistic imprecision. But if a Republican candidate said the same thing, would the Post be as charitable?

Source

A University Gets it Right for Once

We read:

"The University of Maryland is under fire for denying activists from the Clothesline Project, a campus rape-awareness event, permission to publicly name alleged rapists. The university cites the danger of lawsuits from those named, and that's certainly a reasonable fear. Yet the university should also oppose naming alleged rapists because it could defame and harm innocent men.

A significant percentage of allegations of sexual assault are false. According to a study conducted by former Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin and published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, in more than 40 percent of the cases reviewed, the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred. Mr. Kanin also studied rape allegations in two large midwestern universities and found that 50 percent of the allegations were recanted by the accuser.

Source

Another "Noose"

We read:

"A noose was found today in a doctors' break room at LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport. Administrators at the hospital and medical school said they have notified federal authorities and asked them to investigate. An employee about 11 a.m. found a rope with nooses at both ends hanging from a bed. LSUHSC police and administrators were notified.

"This day and time you just can't believe it's going on," hospital employee Janice Priest said. "I am very upset about it." LSUHSC Chancellor Dr. John McDonald issued a brief statement that said an investigation had begun and the U.S. Attorney's office in Shreveport has been notified. They would have jurisdiction if the noose incident was considered a hate crime directed at a particular racial or ethnic group. "Such an event is and will not be tolerated," McDonald said.

The head of the LSU system, John Lombardi, said the medical school and hospital will not tolerate such an incident. "It is not an act of free speech; this is a form of hate speech, which is clearly prohibited in our society," Lombardi said.

Source

Quite aside from Dr. Lombardi's poor grasp of the law, a regular correspondent of mine who is also a senior medical person at a hospital in Shreveport writes: "Hysterical: The noose was found in the Orthopedic Residents' call room. Orthopedic Residents learn to tie special knots to use traction devices to stabilize fractures, including suspected broken necks. This is highly skilled work, and they practice tying knots - like Boy Scouts do.

Update:

My source informs me that the medical person who tied the knots turns out to have been a BLACK female. Much hilarity in certain circles ensued, apparently.

This Could be a Problem for British Leftists

Take away abuse and lies and most of them would be struck dumb:

"Disgruntled fans of Sheffield Wednesday who vented their dissatisfaction with the football club's bigwigs in anonymous internet postings may face expensive libel claims after the chairman, chief executive and five directors won a high-court ruling last week forcing the owner of a website to reveal their identity.

The case, featuring the website owlstalk.co.uk, is the second within days to highlight the danger of assuming that the apparent cloak of anonymity gives users of internet forums and chatrooms carte blanche to say whatever they like.

In another high court case last week, John Finn, owner of the Sunderland property firm Pallion Housing, admitted just before he was due to be cross-examined that he was responsible for a website hosting a scurrilous internet campaign about a rival housing organisation, Gentoo Group, its employees and owner, Peter Walls.

Exposing the identity of those who post damaging lies in cyberspace is a growth area for libel lawyers.

Source

Britain: Must not Notice Skin Color

We read:

"Children were left in tears after they were separated according to their skin colour for school photos. More than 100 boys and girls aged from seven to 11 were lined up from the fairest skinned to the darkest.

But the segregation left several of the pupil so upset they cried to their parents when they got home. One angry mum said: "My 10-year-old was told to go further back in the line as she was not white enough. She came home devastated saying, 'I wish my skin was lighter mummy.'" Another parent, Ann Andrew, 49, said her daughter, Angela, 10, came home in tears and said: "My school's so racist."

Headteacher Val Hughes said pupils had been divided up according to skin tone but claimed it was to make it easier for the photographer. In a letter to Mrs Andrews she said: "Some classes were organised lightest to darkest skin tone and some darkest to lightest. This meant the photographer did not have to keep readjusting his reflector screens."

Source

Local "Hate Speech" (1)

I see that this blog has been "blessed" by having some of "the old gang" return to it -- complete with their accustomed foul-mouthed abuse. I very rarely ban any commenter or delete any comments but I will not tolerate personal abuse. So I do IP ban such commenters.

I have two options in IP bans. I can block comments from a specific computer or I can ban all computers in a certain area. To avoid inconveniencing innocent bystanders, I usually do only the narrow bans. The most obnoxious commenter here has been moving from one computer to another in a given area, however. As I ban one, he moves to the next. In future therefore I will use the wider bans on him.

My apologies to anyone inconvenienced by my response to this sick person.




Local "Hate Speech" (2)

I have recently been "honoured" by being included with Iain Hall as the subject of a long and very abusive tirade from an obscure Australian Leftist blogger who can't even handle line-breaks properly. He calls himself The Happy Revolutionary. If he is a happy one, I would like to meet an unhappy one!

Fellow Queensland blogger, Iain Hall, has undertaken the tedious task of fisking our revolutionary so I will take that task as largely done. I might observe, however, that the Revolutionary is so obviously biased that he could in fact encourage some people to read what I have actually written -- and I of course think that is a very good thing. One thing in his diatribe that did peeve me was his claim that I have only quoted others in my coverage of the James Watson "African IQ" affair. He obviously missed this.

I gather that part of the Revolutionary's ire stems from the fact that his past vituperation has got him IP banned from commenting on Western Heart -- where I am a co-blogger. If any of his brainless abuse pops up on any of my own blogs, I will IP ban him too. I very rarely IP ban anyone but why those whom I do ban think I would tolerate personal abuse on my own blog I have no idea.

N.Y. Lawmakers Move on Anti-noose Bill

This sounds likely to be in breach of the 1st Amendment. If flag-burning and pole-dancing are protected ....

"Following a rash of cases involving nooses, the state Legislature Monday moved toward making it a felony to display the symbol of lynchings in the Old South in a threatening manner.

"We won't tolerate this," said Sen. Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican who sponsored the measure that passed Monday in the Senate. "There is no place for racism and intimidation in America."

The bill also covers etching, drawing or painting the symbol. He said that, as in the case of Nazi symbols and burning crosses, an intent to threaten or harass would be part of an anti-noose law.

Source

Australia: Criticism of Leftists an 'Attack on Freedom' -- Again

The first thing any Leftist does when someone disagrees with him is to question the motives of the other person. Does the other person work for "big oil" etc.? But do they howl when the same is dished out to them! No suggestion that they work for "big Labor" is allowed. And you CERTAINLY must not mention that the Leftist "researcher" concerned is an avowed admirer of Mao Tse Tung! It all shows just how rigid, dogmatic and elitist Leftists are. They really believe that their simplistic theories and demonologies are the whole truth and that any criticism of them is illegitimate:

"Personal criticism of a researcher by Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey was "extremely silly" and an attack on academic freedom, University of Sydney vice-chancellor Gavin Brown said yesterday. Speaking at a forum organised by the National Tertiary Education Union, Professor Brown said Mr Hockey had "played the man and not the ball" in attacking Sydney University's John Buchanan and other researchers over their findings that some workers were paid less under Work Choices legislation.

"It is legitimate for a minister to criticise conclusions but it is extremely silly to simply smear on the fact that the study was partly funded through the union movement," Professor Brown said. "I believe that universities have a sacred trust to do a critique of society. "I certainly think there should be no undue pressure placed upon researchers. Academic freedom is under attack." ....

Fellow academics Rae Cooper, Marian Baird, Barbara Pocock and David Peats had also felt the lash of criticism. [How AWFUL for them!] "If they can't write without being vilified, then it is a very sad state of affairs," Dr Buchanan said.

Source

But calling Christians "Ayatollahs" and "Taliban" is fine, of course.

Germany Still Intolerant

We read:

"Germany's far right political party, the National Democratic Party (NPD), says even the most avid promoters of tolerance in Germany are intolerant of NPD views.

Right wingers complain in anonymous Web chat rooms that German laws banning certain Nazi phrases and symbols stifle their freedom of speech. Some NPD opponents acknowledge an element of truth to those complaints but few would call members of the NPD victims.

Source

The truth that may not be mentioned is that the NPD is an anti-capitalist, pro-socialist party. Calling them Right wingers is a joke. They are just old Leftists. Prewar Leftists were also both socialist and nationalists. Even JFK was a holdover from prewar times when he said: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." The Pelosi/Reid Leftists of today would never say anything like that.

Noose hysteria backfires: Encourages Copycats

We read:

"When he reached his third-story workstation at a construction site near Pittsburgh two weeks ago, Errol Madyun saw the noose -- thick, neatly knotted and strong enough to hang a man. 'It was intimidating,' said Madyun, a black ironworker.

More than 400 miles south in North Carolina, Terry Grier, superintendent of Guilford County Schools, saw the same type of noose last month at predominantly black T.W. Andrews High near Greensboro. 'It was huge,' Grier, who is white, said of a noose he discovered hanging from a flagpole, one of four nooses placed at the school. ...

Law enforcement authorities, including the Justice Department, are expressing concern over a recent spate of noose sightings in the aftermath of events in Jena."

Source

Comcast blocks some Net traffic

A rather worrying precedent. What next will they block?

"Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally. The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users."

Source

Google Earth Swastika Update



A reader writes:

I am sure you remember the story about the U.S. Navy SeaBee barracks at NAB Coronado that looked like a Swastika from the air. Today I was looking at San Diego on Google Earth to check out the areas of the wildfires. So just out of curiosity I zoomed in on NAB Coronado. Above is the image of what I found.

These buildings don't look anything like the picture in the story. Either the picture was doctored or it is really old and additions have been made to the offending buildings.

See my previous post on the subject on Sept. 29th.

Interesting that the original picture came from the L.A. Times -- which has now taken that picture down. Being the cautious conservative type, however, I saved a copy of the original picture to disk and it is that picture which you will now see on my post of Sept. 29th.

It seems unlikely that great alterations have been made to the buildings in the last 3 weeks. Bureaucracies take years to do things, not weeks. They probably haven't even had their first meeting about it yet.

Update:

Another reader writes:

I looked at both pictures and I'm confused. The one from Sept 29 shows one building surrounded by either parking lots or roads but the one on today's blog (October 23) shows two buildings with just grass between them. I cannot reconcile the two pictures as being of the same buildings.

He's right. The two buildings above are just down the road (Tulagi Rd.) from the "Swastika" building -- which IS still there.

That the three buildings are so similar does however tend to show that the swastika shape was just a coincidence arrived at by making variations on a similar underlying idea.

Naughty Halloween Display

We read:

"A dark mannequin figure was hanging from a tree in front of a Greenfield home. Some members of the African-American community complained it was insensitive and had racial overtones.

The homeowner has taken that figure down, but neighbors didn't see this as a racial issue.

The owner says she never intended to offend anyone. The homeowner said the family hung the same mannequin last year for about six weeks without a single complaint and she was surprised by the negative attention it received this year.

The offensive Halloween decoration has been removed, but a makeshift cemetery remains in the front yard with about half a dozen headstones and a partially buried coffin with skeleton heads poking out.

Source

Many lynching victims in the old South were white but a pinker mannequin would no doubt have been OK.

Lynching was a primitive way of dealing with crime and during the period concerned there were not only 3,445 blacks lynched but also 1,297 whites lynched! That's the history of it. Only 72% of lynchings were of blacks, which is about the proportion of all crimes committed by US blacks today.

Big controversy Over Brown Men Insulting Black Man

The Australia cricket team has a very capable player of ultimately African origin named Andrew Symonds. Cricket is a national obsession in India and in games recently played by the Australians in India, the Indian fans tried to put the black player off his game by chants and gestures that referred to him as a monkey. Spectator abuse of African players as "monkeys" is also common in European soccer matches. The Indian authorities have tried to deny the abuse but an Indian writer dismisses their evasions below:

"

The photograph sealed it. Published in the Herald on Thursday, it shows an animated section of the crowd, all Indians, at the one-day game between India and Australia in Mumbai the day before.

Your eye is automatically drawn to a stocky-running-to-fat man near the centre of the frame. He is wearing a blue T-shirt with black sleeves. His cheeks are puffed out as he blows hard on - it seems - a whistle. His raised arms are bent at the elbows. His fingers are crooked, turned downward, somewhat like a fist held back from being clenched; his thumbs are splayed on either side. He has, it seems from the picture, put a lot of effort into his posture.

In the foreground is another man - younger, in a T-shirt, glasses and a baseball cap - who seems to have picked up the cue. He too has his arms bent at the elbow. His approximation of a monkey is not quite as mimetic as that of the man behind, but he is smiling and chanting. You cannot tell for sure from a photograph, but it is fair to guess that it is a monkey chant.....

India has traditionally had the worst crowds at cricket stadiums. They tend to turn hostile whenever things are not going too well for the home side. They can get ugly and violent and have been known to stop games, to set stadiums alight.

Source

It is somewhat to the credit of Indians that the events concerned have caused much heartburn in India but I do think the whole uproar lacks perspective. Trying to help your team by distracting the opposing side is as old as the hills in sport and that a particular episode of such behavior involves racial stereotypes is really incidental.

It does however give the lie to the Leftist contention that only whites can be "racist". I put "racist" in quotes there as I think people should be called racist only if they incite harm or do harm to someone solely because of his race. But if we are going to call mere words from whites "racist", then the same should apply to similar words from non-whites.

Racial abuse from Blacks OK

The familiar double standard:

"About two months ago, I'd spoken with the owner of an Italian restaurant, in Detroit, which is near one of the casinos. The African-American patrons were calling his servers horrible names, which I cannot repeat here. Then when the owner heard it, he approached the table and asked what the problem was. The four men began calling him down because of his nationality and even more horrendous names as well. Those superlatives were even more shocking, so there is no way I can post it. Then the customers waited until the servers and the owner walked away, and the customers rushed out and stiffed the man on the bill.

From what I understood from our conversation, this man has had this happen so much and became so fed up with the attitudes of the patrons, he finally ended up selling his business. His clientele were also multicultural, however, predominately African-American. As a matter of fact, the owner had just listed it with a real estate broker, before we spoke. These consumers had eaten the most expensive items on the menu, and they ate it all, including desert. That particular place had excellent food. This is a true story, but it was NOT on the news.

Source

The abuse was apparently too common to be even worth reporting. Blacks can and do say what they like.

Not Allowed to Say that Minorities Die Younger

Obama huffing and puffing:

"Sen. Barack Obama on Friday demanded the Justice Department fire one of its officials over remarks made about elderly minorities not aging like white Americans, because they die first. Pointing to comments made by Voting Section Chief John Tanner at a Los Angeles event earlier this month, Obama called the language "erroneous, offensive, and dangerous." ....

In a letter directed to Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler, Obama on Friday pointed to one portion of Tanner's comments as evidence that voter ID restrictions "do not disenfranchise minorities, and in fact they actually benefit minorities." "Our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do; they die first," Tanner said.

"There are inequities in health care," Tanner continued. "There are a variety of inequities in this country. And so anything that disproportionately impacts the elderly has the opposite impact on minorities; just the math is such as that."

Source

It seems that Tanner is Left-leaning but even Left-leaning officials are not allowed to speak the truth about minority life expectations, apparently.

Bloomington Bans Bible, but Welcomes Buddha

We read:

"Buddha is welcome but the Bible is banned at the Bloomington, Ind., city hall after officials booted a display of the Ten Commandments erected by Christians wanting equal treatment with the Far East religion promoted by the Dalai Lama.

The dispute arose over a display of religious statues of Buddha and other items, including religious cloth paintings, erected in the Bloomington City Hall to coincide with a coming visit of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's leader of Buddhism.

Amy Bernitt, one of the Christians who made arrangements for the Ten Commandments to be made available for a similar display about Christianity, told WND a few hours after the stone tablets were delivered for display in City Hall, "I got a very rude call from public works, telling us the Ten Commandments had been taken down and we need to come get them."

Source

The Dalai Lama is undoubtedly a religious leader who preaches his religion in what he says so favouring his presentations would seem to be in breach of the establishment clause of the constitution. Where is the ACLU on this one?

The Persecution of a Truth-Teller Continues

No free speech about blacks in either the USA or the UK:

"The Nobel Laureate who provoked an international row by apparently claiming that black people are less intelligent than whites left Britain in disgrace yesterday after being suspended from his job.

James Watson, in London to promote a new book, was forced to return to New York after Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, relieved him of his duties because of his apparent views. It follows a hellish week for the 79-year-old geneticist who helped to unravel the structure of DNA more than 50 years ago.

Source

Note the comments attached to the article excerpted above.

There is also an insightful comment from London's "Evening Standard" below about the silencing of Watson:

"No contrary arguments or evidence need be offered, and no debate entered into (perhaps precisely because debate is feared?) There's an element of blind panic here. It just must not be so, it must be strictly unthinkable. And that's not science, it's prejudice. The disgrace here falls not on the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA but on the supposed guardians of scientific values in Exhibition Road [where Watson was due to speak]

"Weathervane" now a Naughty Word in Canada

We read:

"Politicians in Quebec's legislature will have to come up with a new way to slag their opponents now that the word "weathervane" has been added to the list of unparliamentary language. Speaker Michel Bissonnet judged the word to be "hurtful" as the legislature resumed Tuesday after the summer break.

Premier Jean Charest has called Opposition Leader Mario Dumont a weathervane on numerous occasions recently, elevating him on Tuesday to "national weathervane" during the legislature session.

Charest made the crack near the end of the heated debate as he reiterated his belief that the Action democratique du Quebec leader is like a weathervane in the wind because he is always changing directions.

Source

"Illegal Immigrant" Equivalent to Another Term that Must not be Uttered

The absurdities of the Left's preoccupation with the "correct" words keep piling up. From Poughkeepsie in NY, we read:

"Dutchess County Legislator Fred Bunnell, D-Poughkeepsie, has apologized for twice using the "N" word during heated public debate this week on illegal immigrants being allowing to drive.....

In making his point, Bunnell said calling someone an "illegal immigrant" is equivalent to slurs used against Italians and blacks, using both words.

Source

So you are not allowed to use the "N-word" even to condemn it.

I wonder what the Italian word was: "spic", "wop", "dago"? All those words were much used for Italians in my youth but I have grown up thinking highly of Italians -- so it seems to me that hysteria about slang words is much overdone. The quality of the people concerned (good or bad) will make itself known over time, regardless of the words used. But in their usual shallow way, Leftists always do seem to think that just changing the words used will change the reality.

Eminent Scientist Censored for Truth-telling

Fury that anybody would say publicly what every single scientific study of the subject has shown

"A Nobel prize-winning scientist who reportedly claimed Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence is no longer welcome to deliver a lecture at London's Science Museum, the museum said Wednesday.

James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering DNA, drew widespread outrage when he told The Sunday Times that Africans and Europeans did not share the same brain power.

The newspaper quoted the 79-year-old American geneticist as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really."

The comments drew condemnation from British lawmakers, scientists, and equality campaigners.

Watson, who serves as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, was due to speak Friday at a sold-out event at the Science Museum, but on Wednesday night the institution said Watson's comments had gone too far and the lecture had been canceled

Source

Cautionary note: People have a tendency to see statements about groups as applying to all members of that group. That is rarely so and is certainly not true in this instance. There is no inconsistency in saying that blacks as a whole are less intelligent while also acknowledging that some individual blacks are very intelligent. What is true of most need not be true of all.

Scientists have spent decades looking for holes in the evidence Watson was referring to but all the proposed "holes" have been shown not to be so. There is NO argument against his conclusions that has not been meticulously examined by skeptics already. And all objections have been shown not to hold up. There is an introduction to the studies concerned here

Some commentators have mentioned that old Marxist propagandist, Stephen Jay Gould, as refuting what Watson said. Here is just one comment pointing out what a klutz Gould was. And for an exhaustive scientific refutation of Gould by an expert in the field, see here. Gould's distortions of the facts really are quite breathtaking.

Watson got such a lot of abuse over his comments that he has now denied that he made them. The newspaper that originally reported the comments stands by its story, however.

Mohammed: Woof! Woof!



What fun! The Swedish cartoonist who drew a picture of the head of Mohammed on the body of a dog has gone one better. He has got himself a real dog and calls it "Mohammed"

"The artist Vilks has gotten himself a specially trained guard dog, the dog Muhammed, watching each and every movement 24 hours a day.

When you first get to know Muhammad she sure is likeable, yes, it is a she, but the genus perspective is just a mark. For those who do not know Muhammed, getting close should only be done after taking a lot of precaution.

She seems like every other dog with a bone on its favorite carpet. But nothing is as it appears.

Source

I guess he thinks that if the Islamists do get him he might as well have another laugh first.

Free Speech Defended (by Some) at UM-Flint

We read:

"A derogatory letter bashing Muslims in the student newspaper at the University of Michigan-Flint outraged some campus members, prompting a university apology and pleas for stricter journalism standards.

But the student editors who published the inflammatory letter - which described all Muslims as "ungrateful, self-centered peons who are beneath the rest of civilized society" and "selfish brats" - called it free speech....

"It offended me that someone would single out an entire religion like this," said student Greg Lipinski, 21, who is a Christian. "I think the MTimes runs just about anything. "Definitely there should be a change in standards. You can't just publish everything." ....

Interim Chancellor Jack Kay, who sat on the panel as a hate speech expert, said he would never advocate censorship but denounced the newspaper's decision. [!!!!]

Source

Muslims of course can say anything they like about Jews and Christians. And they do!

Leftist Inability to Handle Criticism in Australia too

The usual Leftist glass jaw again. (In boxing, a fighter who is easily knocked out is said to have a "glass jaw")

"Prime Minister John Howard has told Labor Leader Kevin Rudd to "grow up" and stop complaining about government attacks on him and his party. The government has this week run ads attacking Mr Rudd and his treasury spokesman Wayne Swan as inexperienced L-platers [learner drivers]. Labor quickly launched counter-ads in which Mr Rudd says the ads are part of a government scare campaign.

Mr Howard today said Mr Rudd's complaints about being attacked were "extraordinary". "What the Labor Party is saying is please don't attack us," Mr Howard told reporters in Brisbane. "What they're really saying is it's unfair and illegitimate for the Labor Party to be attacked in this election campaign."

Mr Howard said Mr Rudd and Labor seemed entirely happy to attack the government and were applying a double standard. "Can I just say to Mr Rudd: grow up," Mr Howard said.

Source

Leftists have to use all means to shut off criticism because the facts are so embarrassing to them. In this case they regard it as illegitimate that conservatives have reported (correctly) that the great majority of prominent Labor Party candidates in the forthcoming elections are former labor union officials. Because of their past bloody-mindedness, unions are deeply unpopular with many Australians.

Another "Hate Crime" Hoax from the Left



We read:

"Air America radio host Randi Rhodes is temporarily off the air, but claims she was brutally attacked near her Manhattan apartment are bogus, her lawyer and a police source said today.

Fellow host Jon Elliott claimed on the liberal radio network that Rhodes had been mugged while walking her dog, Simon, on Sunday night. Elliot, who said Rhodes lost several teeth in the attack, waxed about a possible conspiracy. "Is this an attempt by the right-wing, hate machine to silence one of our own?" he asked on the air, according to Talking Radio, a blog. "Are we threatening them? Are they afraid that we're winning? Are they trying to silence intimidate us?"

A police source said Rhodes never filed a report and never claimed to be the victim of a mugging. Cops from Manhattan's 17th Precinct called her attorney, who told them Rhodes was not a victim of a crime, the source said.

Rhodes' lawyer told the Daily News she was injured in a fall while walking her dog. He said she's not sure what happened, and only knows that she fell down and is in a lot of pain. The lawyer said Rhodes expects to be back on the air Thursday. He stressed there is no indication she was targeted or that she was the victim of a "hate crime."

Still, the tale lived on in the blogosphere.... Another blogger shot back, "I very seriously doubt if this unfortunate woman was mugged by a conservative. To jump to the conclusion that she was mugged by someone on the right is bigotry of another kind."

Source

Ms Rhodes (nee Bueten) is of New York Jewish background and is a sort of Ann Coulter of the Left except that, being a Leftist, she has a very shaky relationship with the facts. A sample of her wit and wisdom: "The difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected". So she is unbalanced in more ways than one.

For those who are interested in history, Bush narrowly won power as the result of an election conducted according to the applicable American laws. Hitler did not gain power as the result of an election. He decisively lost the 1933 German federal election. He gained power as a result of post-election negotiations with other political parties.

The distortion of those facts by Ms Rhodes has a certain superficial cleverness but is nonetheless deliberately inaccurate and dishonest.

More Stupid G*ogle Censorship

A blog devoted to doings in the California city of Claremont last month found PDF copies of the pay stubs of all city employees on the city website. The blog put copies of the stubs up in in their original pictorial form. The council objected and complained to G*ogle that the images violated their "copyright". Pay stubs are copyright? There is a post here which points out what a legal fiction that is.

But G*ogle bought the argument and deleted the post. So the blogger just put up the same information in text form -- which apparently passed muster.

It seems that you can get G*ogle to censor anything if you can make even the shallowest claim that it is "copyright".

Slashdot has a good point too: "according to California law, the compensation of public employees is public information" So the city had no real grounds for its hysteria -- which is why it trotted out the phony "copyright" claim. It reflects very poorly on G*ogle that it bought into the nonsense.

Washington: Attempt to Shut Down Conservative Christian Conference

The main mission of Watchmen on the Walls is in fact to pray for and support Israel but to the Left, their completely Biblical rejection of homosexuality is what defines them:

"An anti-gay religious group is planning a three-day conference beginning Friday at the Lynnwood Convention Center. Watchmen on the Walls expects as many as 700 people to attend the prayer gathering, including religious leaders and an anti-gay activist who claims the Holocaust was perpetrated by gays.

Convention center officials said there's little they can do to stop an organization from renting the publicly owned convention center. The venue is owned by the Lynnwood Public Facilities District, a public taxing district that operates the convention center but is separate from the city. "Our understanding is that they're law-abiding. They have a right of free speech just like any other group," said Mike Echelbarger, the board's chairman.

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon said the group's anti-gay message isn't welcome.

Source

The "anti-gay activist who claims the Holocaust was perpetrated by gays" is Scott Lively. What Lively in fact does is point to very clear evidence of homosexuality in Hitler's Nazi party. You can read his claims for yourself here.

There is much support for Lively's thesis in conventional history. In addition to such well-known homosexuals as Roehm and Schirach at the top of the Nazi hierarchy there were others such as Heines -- whom Shirer ("The Rise and fall of the Third Reich") describes thus: "Edmund Heines, the Obergruppenfuehrer of Silesia... a notorious homosexual" (p. 307). Silesia is of course a major industrial area of great historic significance so command of the Nazis there was no mean post.

But Leftists avoid history like the plague, of course.

Orthodox Rabbis Defend Coulter

We read:

"With the secular media trumpeting the outrage of liberal Jewish groups at Ann Coulter's remarks on her desire for all people, Jews included, to become Christian, LifeSiteNews.com spoke with Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Yehuda Levin. Rabbi Levin, the spokesman on moral issues for some 1000 Rabbis, told LifeSiteNews.com, "She said nothing that in any way indicates anti-Semitism."

On CNBC's 'The Big Idea' last week, host Donny Deutsch became hysterical when Coulter tried to explain that Christianity considers itself the continuation of Judaism, and thus Christians wish followers of Judaism to complete the journey - "we want Jews to be perfected" she phrased it.

Deutsch called Coulter's comment uneducated, "hateful and anti-Semitic" and went so far as to compare her to Iran in wishing to "wipe Israel off the earth."

Source

Sounds more like hate speech against Coulter to me

Man cited for burning Mexican flag

But OK to burn Old Glory, of course:

"It caused some controversy, but it was supposed to. Now, one man is headed to municipal court for burning a Mexican flag in protest in front of the Alamo.

The city is charging 46-year old David Bohmfalk with burning without a permit, even though no one gives permits to burn a flag.

Authorities say his actions left some of the Mexican nationals in the Alamo crowd feeling burned. However, Bohmfalk's attorney, Jason Jakob, says, freedom of speech is Bohmfalk's constitutional right. "My client felt so strongly, and exercised protest, by burning that flag," Jakob said.

Bohmfalk says while he was detained by police, he was harassed, his life was threatened, and he was even assaulted by some tourists who spit on him. Ironically, all these offenses are punishable by law. Jakob says flag burning is not.

Source

Controversy over "Blame the Jews" Film

A community TV station in Aspen, Colorado, has been urged by "truthers" (people who believe that George Bush blew up the twin towers on 9/11/2001) to show a film called "Judea Declares War on Germany" -- which says that the Jews declared war on Hitler rather than vice versa. One conspiracy theory deserves another, I guess.

There is always some little fact that conspiracy theorists seize on and magnify out of all proportion and in this case it is the fact that British Jews were aware of what was happening in Germany in the 1930s and proclaimed a boycott of German goods in response. It did about as much good as the sanctions on Saddam Hussein or Iran, of course.

Anyway, the fruitcakes see that boycott as justifying all that Hitler subsequently did to the Jews. I myself have no interest in seeing the film (I think I have heard it all before) but believe that it does include some interesting prewar film clips and documentation. And the more facts we have to form our thinking the better.

Read the debate here on whether the film should be shown on TV. I liked this comment from a lady who supported broadcasting of the film: "I am afraid when I'm told I can't see something," said Sheila Markowitz of Glenwood Springs. "I would rather have this be seen and let people decide."

You can buy the DVD here if it interests you.

The only worrying thing about this business is that about a third of Democrat voters are now "truthers" to at least some degree -- because of their hatred of George Bush. But Leftists these days also hate Israel ("Zionists") so will this latest nonsense end up with a big following too?

At Least One Jew Gets it about Coulter

Further to my post yesterday about Ann Coulter, it seems that someone much more influential than I am has come to the same conclusion:

"David Horowitz, editor of Front Page Magazine, says in his blog today he's received "a surprising number of e-mails from friends basically asking 'What are you going to do about Coulter?'"

"My response is this," Horowitz writes, "What else would a Christian hope for? That's the message of the New Testament: Jesus came to fulfill, complete, perfect the Law. If you're a Christian, that's what you believe." ....

"If you don't accompany this belief by burning Jews who refuse to become perfected at the stake why would any Jew have a problem?" he writes. "Why do some Jews think that Christians should not really believe what they believe while it's okay for Jews to really believe they are God's Chosen People? I don't get it. Whatever happened to the pluralism of ideas?"

Horowitz concludes: "In any case, what I'm going to do about Coulter is finish her latest exhilarating book, "If Democrats Had Any Brains They'd Be Republicans," which happens to be a hall of fame of her so-called "over the top" moments that drive leftists crazy. Right on Ann."

Source

I did a review of one of David's most recent books ("The end of time") here (scroll down). An exceptionally interesting book.

Ann Coulter Claim is "Hate Speech," American Jewish Committee Says

Christians must not say that their religion is right. Only Muslims can do that:

"The American Jewish Committee on Friday announced that the organization is outraged by Ann Coulter's assertion, made while she was on the Donny Deutsch CNBC show "The Big Idea," that Jews require "perfecting" by becoming Christians. Coulter expressed the idea that Judaism should be discarded, that Jews required Christianity to be "perfected", and that Christianity holds out the unique promise of a "fast track" to God.

"Ms. Coulter's assertion that Jews are somehow religiously imperfect smacks of the most odious anti-Jewish sentiment. One would think she would know better than to utter such intolerant words," said AJC President Richard J. Sideman.

Source

Once upon a time every Christian denomination believed that it alone had the whole truth. Many still do. Jehovah's Witnesses refer to their religion as "The Truth". But it is apparently now incorrect for a Christian (which Ann is) to say so.

The numerous Jewish "Haredim" are pretty emphatic that they are right too. The AJC members should grow up. They are just another Leftist outfit anyway.

'Mom' and 'Dad' banished by California

We read:

""Mom and Dad" as well as "husband and wife" have been banned from California schools under a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who with his signature also ordered public schools to allow boys to use girls restrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa, if they choose.

"We are shocked and appalled that the governor has blatantly attacked traditional family values in California," said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute. "With this decision, Gov. Schwarzenegger has told parents that their values are irrelevant. Many parents will have no choice but to pull their children out of the public schools that have now become sexualized indoctrination centers." ....

The bills signed by Schwarzenegger include SB777, which bans anything in public schools that could be interpreted as negative toward homosexuality, bisexuality and other alternative lifestyle choices. There are no similar protections for students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs, however....

The terms 'mom and dad' or 'husband and wife' could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured....

CCF noted that now on a banned list will be any text, reference or teaching aid that portrays marriage as only between a man and woman, materials that say people are born male or female (and not in between), sources that fail to include a variety of transsexual, bisexual and homosexual historical figures, and sex education materials that fail to offer the option of sex changes.

Source

One hopes that there will be an electoral backlash against this. An appeal to SCOTUS on 1st amendment grounds could well succeed, too.

Student's 'English party' deemed racist

We read:

"A student at a university that prides itself on being among the most multicultural in Britain has been branded "racist" after distributing invitations to an "English party".

Rugby captain Timothy McLellan has been forced to apologise after pinning up posters around the campus promising the event would have "no bongos, shisha pipes or Arabic music".

The 20-year-old law student had intended the flyer to be a joke poking fun at parties held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, which typically have an ethnic theme.

Source

The only illegitimate culture is mainstream white culture. Rugby is an English upper-class form of football.

David Irving now Admits Holocaust -- Just won't Call it that

We read:

"He says that a document, which he is 80% sure is genuine, suggests that 2.4 million Jews were killed in Poland, but goes on to claim that the gas chamber at Auschwitz was fake. "It was not the centre of the killing operations - it has only become a focus because it is the site that is best preserved. Much of what is shown the tourists there is faked postwar - watchtowers, even the famous gas chamber."

He added: "In my opinion now the real killing operations took place at the Reinhardt camps west of the Bug river. In the three camps here [Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka] Heinrich Himmler's men (mostly Ukrainian mercenaries) killed possibly as many as 2.4 million in the two years up to October 1943. There is now nothing to be seen of the Reinhardt camps, neither stick nor stone, so few tourists go there. I have visited all four sites earlier this year." ....

Asked if he now accepts there had been a Holocaust against the Jewish people he said he was "not going to use their trade name". He added: "I do accept that the Nazis quite definitely, that Heinrich Himmler, organised and directed a programme, a clandestine programme, for the liquidation of European Jews

Source

He's got a point about the present Auschwitz exhibit. I think it is now generally recognized among involved historians that most of it is a postwar reconstruction rather than original. Irving is an attention-seeker (like the many Leftists who now have similar antisemitic views) but he is also exceptionally knowledgeable and should be heard, if only to see how accepted views stand up to criticism.

G*ogle now Deliberately Evil

G*ogle's censorship of conservative speech is becoming more and more blatant:

"Internet giant G*ogle has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its "General Betray Us" message.

The ads banned by G*ogle were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins' re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term. Earlier this week, G*ogle told Lance Dutson, president of Maine Coast Designs, that the ads he placed for Collins had been removed and would not be allowed to resume because they violated G*ogle's trademark policy.

G*ogle's Web site states, "G*ogle takes allegations of trademark infringement very seriously and, as a courtesy, we're happy to investigate matters raised by trademark owners." That suggests G*ogle acted in response to a complaint by MoveOn.org.

Source

Did you get that? Using the MoveOn name is a "trademark infringement"! There is absolutely no basis in law for that, however. It is just a figleaf to hide their move to the dark side.

As a private company, G*ogle can do what it likes within the law but there is one part of the law they may not be thinking of: Antitrust legislation. They now have a considerable dominance in at least some types of online advertising and if they annoy enough people, they could well be forced by the courts to divest themselves of their non-core businesses. And interfering with political advertising is definitely poison when it comes to antagonizing large numbers of people.

I normally give the name as "G*ogle" when I write critical things about them in the faint hope that what I say will escape the scrutiny of their team that tracks everything said about them. They appear to be evil enough to delete this site and it is within their power to do so if they don't like what I say. If this site DOES disappear some day, don't forget my mirror site

The comments here are hosted separately from the blog (Haloscan is an entirely different company) so what is said in the comments is less important but if commenters could see their way clear not to use the full name there either it might help.

The Columbia Noose Incident Blamed on Conservatives



Even though the KKK were Democrats, it was Democrat governors (Faubus, Wallace) who opposed civil rights and it was a Republican President (Ike) who sent the troops in against them. But we can't expect a Leftist professor to know any history, can we? History is far too inconvenient to them.

"An adjunct professor at Wednesday's protest said she has noticed an increase in discriminatory behavior and attributed it to the current political climate in the United States.

"It's horrifying obviously," said Cris Beam, who teaches creative writing. "We're in a culture right now of escalating racism, in an increasingly conservative (environment). We all live in this country, so it seeps in."

Source

If that is not a slur, I don't know what would be. The fat black woman who was the "victim" is looking mightily pleased with herself in the photo above. The incident has gotten her vast publicity that she would never have gotten otherwise. Given past instances of "hate crimes" faked by Leftists themselves, the possibility that she put the noose there herself cannot be dismissed. There is another good list of fraudulent Democrat publicity stunts here

I wonder if Cris Bream also thinks that it is "conservatives" who are responsible for the big revival of antisemitism among Leftists in recent years.

Fabricating Hate Speech

We read:

"Accusations of hate speech make great headlines for newspapers, even if those accusations turn out to be wrong -- or even worse -- contrived. Such is the case at The George Washington University (GWU). Administrators at GWU are on a rampage against a conservative group on campus for posting anti-Muslim fliers that the group had nothing to do with. The Young America’s Foundation chapter at GWU was blamed for disseminating fliers that read “Hate Muslims? So Do We!!” The flier went on to describe a “typical Muslim” as having “lasers in eyes,” “venom from mouth,” “hatred for women”, and a “suicide vest.”

As it turns out, the fliers were a dirty trick, specifically created to stoke hatred where none had existed. That much is clear from taking a moment’s reflection to view the flier. The bottom of the flier, for instance, spitefully reads “Brought to you by Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness.” And as if that weren’t enough to tip off University officials that this was a stunt of malicious intent, the very last line stating “PS Seriously, do a google video search for ‘The Power of Nightmares’ ” should have ended any doubts. The film argues that the threat of radical Islam worldwide is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in America who have been hoodwinked by neoconservatives.

With the charges of hate speech unraveling before the campus community’s eyes, the University should have cleared the names of the students unfairly targeted and denounced the flier as a cheap attempt to sully the reputation of conservatives sponsoring a forum on the threat of radical Islam. GWU did some denouncing, but astonishingly, made the Muslims, not the conservatives, out to be the real victims of hate and intolerance.

Source

More G*ogle Bias

G*ogle own YouTube and they took down a "graphic" anti-terrorist video within 24 hours -- while a much more graphic anti-American video is still up despite many complaints stretching back nearly a month. Details from Bluto

Profs. don't Like Pro-Israel Center

Hatred of balance again. If it had been pro-Palestinian that would have been fine. Most U.S. universities are one big pro-Palestinian center:

"The establishment of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies on campus has received mixed reviews from the Brandeis faculty. While some professors fear that the center will promote a biased and narrow view of the country due to the pro-Israel ideology of the foundation that endowed it, others argue that the center is academically sound......

"The principle that concerns me is that these centers are openly centers for advocacy, that is they are not there to study the country of Israel," Professor Mary Baine Campbell (ENG) said. She said the worries the center will promote the view of the Israeli government, instead of the broader interests of the worldwide Jewish population. "To establish a $15 million center to promote one view of the situation [is] a very unusual academic thing to do," Campbell said.....

Brandeis, however, could better use $15 million to provide for more classroom spaces and similar university needs, Campbell said, adding that many institutions on campus already fill the same ideological niche that the Israel Studies Center will....

Campbell suggested that Brandeis' donors receive more guidance, and that alumni who wish to make a donation should ask the University how they could best benefit their alma mater. "I'm not sure who at Brandeis would have solicited a center for Israeli Studies," she said....

Prof Gordon Fellman (SOC), however, expressed concern over the center's academic aims. "My concern is that it may be yet another effort to do positive PR for Israel," he said. [But PR for the Muslims is fine, of course]

Source

The shame is that the relentless pro-Muslim and even pro-terrorist bias on American campuses makes specialist centers like this needed.

Britain moves to ban Bible

We read:

"Inciting homophobic hatred will become illegal, the justice secretary, Jack Straw, announced last night, following a campaign by gay rights groups. The introduction of an offence of rallying hatred against gays and lesbians follows similar measures to tackle religious hate crime, which were passed earlier this year after lengthy rows over freedom of speech.

"It is a measure of how far we have come as a society in the last 10 years that we are now appalled by hatred and invective directed at people on the basis of their sexuality. It is time for the law to recognise this," said Mr Straw, introducing the second reading of the criminal justice and immigration bill.

Source

Looks like the British socialists are trying to make the Bible illegal in Britain. Read this: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them" (Leviticus 20:13). If that doesn't "incite hate", I don't know what would.

But the bill may not make it into law. Here's why:

"On Tuesday, Muslim groups vented further outrage, with Massoud Shadjareh of the Islamic Human Rights Commission posing the question to The Daily Express, "If someone is reading the Bible and calls homosexuality an abomination, is that going to be incitement?"

Source

Must not upset Muslims.

California: UCSC promotes one-sided anti-Israel "forum"

No room for dissent:

"As an organization dedicated to balanced, informed debate on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, StandWithUs was disappointed by Provost Castillo and Professor Dodson's op-ed [Sept. 23] and Rabbi Bochner's letter [Sept. 26] justifying the one-sided dialogue series they are helping organize at UC Santa Cruz. In effect, they will be advancing their own personal political views, not educating students. This is contrary to the university's mission, and repeats a disturbing pattern of one-sided presentations about Israel at UCSC.

They claim the series promotes dialogue, but not one invited speaker represents a mainstream perspective. While some recommended readings do, the lecturers who will interact with students do not. All come from far left of center, such as Yossi Beilin whose views are not shared by Israel's general public or the Israeli government.

If the organizers had wanted dialogue and education, they would have invited people like United Nations Ambassador Danny Gillerman or Israeli Consulate members to discuss Israel's policies, or other centrists. Unfortunately, such voices will not be heard and crucial issues, context and realities will be omitted. The result will be monologue, not dialogue.

Instead of addressing concerns raised about imbalance and whether it is right to use the university to advance political agendas, the writers simply defended their own narrow views about the causes of the conflict.

Source

Democrats Still Trying to Silence Talk Radio

Leftists cannot BEAR anybody disagreeing with them:

"Rep. Henry Waxman has asked his investigative staff to begin compiling reports on Limbaugh, and fellow radio hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin based on transcripts from their shows, and to call in Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin to discuss the so-called "Fairness Doctrine."

"Limbaugh isn't the only one who needs to be made uncomfortable about what he says on the radio," says a House leadership source. "We don't have as big a megaphone as these guys, but this all political, and we'll do what we can to gain the advantage. If we can take them off their game for a while, it will help our folks out there on the campaign trail."

Source

Australian Regulators Persist with Stupid Attack on Google

These dimwits cannot tell the difference between the search results and the advertising on a Google page! They probably think that spam is something you put in a sandwich too!

"The ACCC launched legal action against Google Australia, US-based Google Inc., Google Ireland and the Sensis subsidiary Trading Post in July, alleging misleading and deceptive conduct.

In documents filed with the court, the regulator claimed Google did not clearly distinguish between regular - "organic" - search results and ads at the top of the results page, which Google calls "Sponsored Links". Google was therefore misleading customers because it claimed to rank search results based on relevance, not the money it received from advertisers.

Google has refuted the claims, saying the wording "Sponsored Links" and the fact Google used coloured shading when presenting the links clearly indicated they were ads. The ACCC said the shading was "very subtle" and depended on the angle of the screen.....

In court last month, Justice Allsop ordered the ACCC to summarise its allegations against each of the parties in two pages, saying the existing court documents were "incomprehensible" and "somewhat repetitious". The two pages were presented to Justice Allsop today, who said they were written with "admirable clarity", despite Google's claims they were even more confusing than the original statement of claim.

Source

Must not Criticize Terrorists at Columbus State Community College

Mary Rose Oakar is a former Ohio congresswoman. We read:

"In early September, Mary Rose Oakar sent a letter to Columbus State President Valeriana Moeller (vmoeller@cscc.edu) on behalf of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) encouraging the censorship of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events to be held later this month sponsored by the Terrorism Awareness Project student group. Columbus State is just one of dozens of universities and colleges that will be hosting such events. In a bold move of Orwellian irony, ADC bills itself as a "civil rights organization".

In an email to TAP student leaders, CSCC administrator Timeka Rashid appealed to Oakar's letter as the grounds for her denial of the group's posting fliers advertising their Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events. At this time, it still is unknown whether Rashid solicited Oakar's letter as a pretext to censor the TAP, or whether ADC is behind a nationwide push to censor anti-terror student groups. That notwithstanding, this is an unmistakable effort by Mary Rose Oakar and the Columbus State administration to deny these students their civil rights..... the real issue Oakar is concerned with is students challenging the pro-Palestinian terrorist orthodoxy on college campuses - an orthodoxy that Columbus State apparently is desperate to protect.

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Daniel Pipes Speech at Wayne State U Threatened

Pipes is particularly knowledgeable about the Middle East. He due to speak about now. Will he be able to? An organization calling itself Anti-Racist Action (ARA) has been distributing a flyer saying that Pipes must not be permitted to speak. The flyer contains a full measure of the usual lies and distortions. You can see it here. Advertisements for the talk have also been torn down

The ARA is apparently not really a student organization. At a wild guess it is mostly old Marxists -- Stalinist ones at that.

Chickens don't have Breasts



Apparently. Story from Australia:

"A controversial advertising campaign that uses a breast cancer slogan to sell chicken nuggets has been banned. The decision to axe Ingham's "Breast Awareness Week" billboard campaign was made after The Sunday Telegraph revealed viewers were deeply offended by the pun about snacks made from chicken breast.

Breast cancer is Australia's biggest cancer killer among females, with an average 2600 women killed by it each year. The Advertising Standards Bureau received complaints from women who described the ads as "distasteful", "offensive" and "a repulsive marketing ploy to sell chicken".

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The controversy is probably the best publicity the firm has had in years.

Leftists Resort to Attempted Censorship Again



Leftists just cannot stand criticism. They think that they should be able to say anything at all about conservatives but that no criticism should be directed back at them.

An organization called CafePress makes knick-knacks (mugs, T-shirts etc.) with slogans on them designed by members of the public.

The Leftist MoveOn organization attracted heavy criticism for its NYT advertisement defaming General Petraeus so that soon showed up at CafePress, with people designing items that ridiculed MoveOn. The logo above was designed by a DEMOCRAT voter disgusted by the MoveOn advertisement.

The crybabies at MoveOn could not take it, however. They sent off a legal letter to CafePress demanding that CafePress stop selling those items:

"Last week it demanded that the site remove eight items, arguing that they violated MoveOn's merchandising trademarks.

Trademark law doesn't confer monopoly rights over all uses of a registered phrase or symbol, however, and it wasn't created simply to protect the trademark owner's interests. Instead, it's designed to protect consumers against being misled or confused about brands. The courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of parodies and critiques; that's why www.famousbrandnamesucks.com doesn't violate famousbrandname's trademark. And most, if not all, of the items targeted by MoveOn were clearly designed to razz it, not to trick buyers into thinking they were the group's products.

Beyond that, it's amazing that MoveOn would try to squelch political speech.

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I'm not so amazed. CafePress left most of the "offending" items on sale.

Michelle Malkin has a big coverage of the story.

Obscene Editor OK



We read:

"The editor-in-chief of Colorado State University's newspaper will keep his job after he published a four-word column that said, "Taser this: F**k Bush." The CSU Board of Student Communications met Thursday for nearly four hours in a closed hearing before deciding to admonish instead of fire Rocky Mountain Collegian editor-in-chief David McSwane....

McSwane's column resulted in lost revenue for the self-funded newspaper, including 18 advertisers and up to $50,000.

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If he had said "F**k Obama" he would have had to go into rehab at least. "F**k Obama" would even have made (slightly) more sense. The Taser incident he was complaining about happened at a Democrat, not a GOP rally. But who expects sense or logic from the Left? Rage is their specialty -- as we saw in this incident.

The editor concerned was only a stupid 20 year-old kid but the fact that those in authority over his job (The CSU Board of Student Communications) kept him in the job means that they endorse what he did, even if they say otherwise. Deeds speak louder than words.

Maybe CSU has got the message that what you need in order to be as prestigious as the Ivies is to be as offensively Leftist as the Ivies are.

If Harvard can sack their President (Summers) for suggesting that a perfectly sound scientific hypothesis be examined, an American University degree these days is more an indicator of club membership than evidence of any intellectual quality. Bill Gates was right to drop out.

Another Babyish "Censorship" Wail from a Leftist

Leftists seem to be a very fragile bunch. It really seems to destroy Leftists if anyone challenges them. So they call any challenge to them "censorship" or an attack on their freedom of speech. I suppose that seeing they are so destroyed by criticism it does amount to censorship of a sort. It doesn't shut them up or prevent them from getting their wails into the media, though, so it is pretty strange censorship. They really should try to grow a backbone but they obviously have very little of that to start with so I guess it would be difficult for them.

The story below is about an Australian academic (John Buchanan) who did a "study" which tended to discredit the labor-laws of Australia's present conservative government. It was soon discovered, however, that he is a far-Leftist from way back (he even praises Chairman Mao) and quotations from one of his 2005 speeches were produced to show that:

"Dr Buchanan said last night his comments to the 2005 forum were made as a private citizen and his views had no impact on his research. [And pigs fly] "The views I expressed at Politics in the Pub were made as a private citizen and using this against me in my professional life is an attack on the freedom of speech," he said.

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I suppose that if what I believed was as contrary to reality as most Leftism is, I would need everybody to be supportive of me too.

CAIR Tries to Cover up Truth about Islam

The Islamist preachers themselves say all this stuff:

"The Cincinnati office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Ohio chapter Tuesday called for WLW-AM to reprimand talk show host Bill Cunningham for anti-Islamic remarks he made on the air Monday.

"The great war of this generation's time is the war against Islamic fascists," Cunningham said. ".They do not live for life, they live for death. Only through death can they believe they can be with those 72 virgins in heaven and have sex with children for eternity, which is the goal of that religion."

Such remarks "can only serve to promote the kind of anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry that have such a negative impact on our society and on our nation's international image," said Karen Dabdoub, executive director of the Cincinnati office of CAIR.

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School Thinks its Dress Code Trumps the Constitution

We read:

"A Texas high school sophomore's parents might sue after the school booted the student from campus for wearing a John Edwards for 2008 president T-shirt. Pete Palmer, a sophomore at Waxahachie High School, says he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong wearing the political shirt to school.

But according to the Waxahachie Independent School District dress code, students can't wear shirts with political slogans. “T-shirts, other than WISD clubs, organizations, sports, or spirit t-shirts, college or university t-shirts or solid-colored t-shirts, are prohibited," according to the policy.

Palmer's parents argue the policy is inhibiting free speech. “It’s a First Amendment constitutional right that people have fought and died for and I don’t know why he should give it up just because Waxahachie thinks it would be okay or neat for him to do so,” Paul Palmer said.

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SCOTUS has held that schools can limit speech only if it is disruptive to learning. An Edwards shirt that his Mommy no doubt told him to wear might cause laughter but not much else

Crazy General Appoints Himself Chief Censor



In response to Rush Limbaugh's criticism of the phonies that Democrats have often used to criticize the war in Iraq, the Congressional Democrats and their allies insist on misrepresenting Rush as saying that ALL military critics of the war are phonies. One of the critics concerned is retired General Wesley Clark -- well-known for giving an order to oppose Russian troops in Kosovo that his British subordinate (General Jackson) fortunately refused to follow. As we see here, the mad general accuses Rush of "censoring" critics of the war by his comments. Leftists always see any challenge to them as "censorship".

So does the mad general object to any such censorship? Not at all. He wants to censor Rush and all like him. He wants to get Rush off the air. He says Rush stepped over the line. Aren't we lucky to have a mad general telling us what is allowable speech and what is not? More background and comments here and here and here

The mad general is also a seething antisemite. He blames the "New York money people" (rich Jews) for pushing America into war. But the Left still love him all the same. They were antisemitic in Hitler's day and they have gone back to that -- "like a dog returning to it vomit", as the Bible says. (Proverbs 26:11).

Fortunately, the owner of the company that airs Limbaugh's show is not buying any of the nonsense.

Patriot Attacks Insulting Flag Display



We read:

"In an act of great patriotism, Jim Brossard, Vietnam vet and bus driver in Reno, Nevada, took personal action when he saw a Mexican flag flying over the Stars and Stripes, which is in fact a federal crime. Jim decided that couldn't stand, so he cut the Mexican flag down. It is this sort of individual act, simple and right, symbolic and actual, that has kept Old Glory flying throughout our history. We salute Jim, and thank him from the bottom of our hearts.

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It is not in fact a crime. SCOTUS has ruled that ANY use of Old Glory is protected free speech. But if someone had desecrated or insulted (say) the United Nations flag or a pink homosexual flag, the Left would undoubtedly have called it "hate speech". But insulting America is fine, of course.

Rockland, NY: Cultural Differences may not be Mentioned Either?

We all know that mentioning racial differences is a no-no but....

"Democrat Thomas Zugibe yesterday accused Republican District Attorney Michael Bongiorno of making "racially insensitive" remarks about Hispanic immigrants during a forum last week....

Zugibe, a former West Haverstraw justice, yesterday chastised Bongiorno for telling the seniors that the reported increase in rapes were not happening in their community, but mostly in Hispanic areas. Bongiorno's comments came after Zugibe pointed out an increase in violent crime, including a rise in reported rapes from 24 in 2005 to 29 last year.

Bongiorno told the seniors that a major reason behind the increase was statutory rapes involving Hispanic men having sex with underage girls. Bongiorno attributed the reasons to Latino cultural difference in regard to legal ages of consent in their home country. The age of consent in New York is 17. In many Central American nations, the age is far lower....

Bongiorno said yesterday that his remarks were not racist toward Hispanic immigrants but factual and an effort to assure the audience that they were not in danger.

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