This site Under Threat?

I have received the following email from a reader:

I am writing you because of a weird thing occurring on the blog Tongue Tied 3. When I access the site using the home computer, everything is fine. When I access the site using the web connection on my cell phone, I see the site fine, but a message comes up in the banner saying I flagged this blog as containing objectionable content! I did no such thing – the idea is somewhat ironic anyway since I don’t subscribe to the notion that we somehow have a right not to be offended. If I were ever going to flag something an objectionable, it would be the ACLU’s site. Anyway, there is no option anywhere on the blog that I can find that will allow me to fix this problem. So, I’m telling you about it in case someone at the blog site or Google or whoever tries to use it as a n excuse to censor you.

If anybody has any thoughts about this, leave a comment. Blogger.com do on rare occasions take down blogs on "hate speech" grounds so make sure you have bookmarked my list of mirror sites.

Blocker of Conservative Sites Identified

It seems that the blocking of "Jihad Watch" and other conservative sites was mainly the work of a "Rev." Jim Sutter, an elderly Leftist clergyman who mobilized his followers to flag and flag again sites critical of Islam. Apparently some services that list wicked sites for the benefit of business customers were more than happy to co-operate -- with an outfit called "Webwasher" being particularly quick to implement blocking. Jawa Report has details. It shows how services primarily designed to block pornography from work computers can be misused.

The latest sadly twisted post on the Rev. Jim's site says that Jihad Watch blames the London bombings on the Church of England! I wonder who the Rev. Jim thinks is to blame? George Bush, probably.

Muslim Denial Getting Worse

I mentioned on July 5 that new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has forbidden reference to Muslims in connection with the recent terror attacks in England and Scotland.

It seems that the worse the Muslim attacks get, the more the Muslim involvement has to get covered up. The New York Times has also come to the party. It claims that the various Muslim attacks in Britian have brought "home to Britain fears of homegrown terrorist attacks among its disenfranchised South Asian population"

Since most South Asians in Britain are Hindus, that is straight-out deception. And how are any of them "disenfranchised"? Nobody is denied the vote in Britain on account of their religion or race. So desperate are they that we are now getting straight lies from the mainstream media. "The people must not be told the truth" might almost be the Leftist motto. It is certainly what they practice whenever they can.

Princeton economist Alan Krueger is one representative of the coverup among academics. He admits that the old fallback -- poverty -- does not cause terrorism and says that it is "suppression of civil liberties and political rights" that causes terrorism. Yet nowhere in the world do Muslims have such great civil liberties and political rights as they do in Britain. So that is why there have been so many Muslim attacks in Britain, you see! Anything at all will be grasped at rather than admit that Islam is the problem.

An Interesting Test in Massachusetts

The Confederate flag should REALLY test the limits in Mass:

"A Watertown man is criticizing the Town Council for adopting a program that seeks to curb hate crimes, saying he believes it violates his right to free speech.

Ralph Filicchia, 71, said he's "not a hater" but believes the town's participation in the Anti-Defamation League of New England's No Place For Hate program infringes on his freedom to hold opinions that may go against the grain. "People should be free to express things without being charged with hatemongering or hate speech," said Filicchia, who is retired but does some freelance writing on political issues. "Isn't the whole idea of free speech to protect offensive speech?"

Filicchia hung a Confederate flag outside his Bellevue Road home last week in protest, saying he would leave it up until a "No Place for Hate" sign in front of Town Hall is removed.

Council President Clyde L. Younger said in an interview he was surprised at Filicchia's stance, since the No Place For Hate program is well-known and not about censoring speech, but fighting bigotry.

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So will they define flying the Stars n Bars as "bigotry"? I suspect that they have not asked themselves how you define bigotry nor have they asked themselves how you "fight" bigotry without fighting expressions of it.

The battle to 'bury the N-word'

Efforts to ban the epithet being stepped up in Texas:

"As a child of the '60s, Tammie Campbell endured an era when white residents frequently used the N-word to degrade black people. Local rapper D-Red knows the word's hateful history but says it's now just a hip-hop expression and a term of endearment.

Those two thoughts about one of the most divisive racial epithets in America are at the center of an extraordinary movement in recent months: to abolish the N-word from our lexicon.

Campbell, 48, is leading a diverse Houston-area group focused on eradicating the term's usage and teaching its history. They are hosting an unusual event at 9 a.m. today at a Pearland cemetery to ''bury the N-word" in a coffin.

"This word wasn't created by blacks," said Campbell, the former president of the Missouri City NAACP. "It was created by whites. They have a responsibility as well as blacks - more so than anybody else - to destroy and annihilate this racial term that has hurt this nation as a whole."

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He's right that blacks did not create the word. It's the ordinary Latin word for "black" in fact -- though pronounced with a shorter "i" sound -- signified by the double "g" -- unlike the single "g" in the Latin "niger". Ban Latin!

Court Overturns Punishment for Fantasy Video

San Francicso:

"The city's police chief did not go through the proper procedures before suspending an officer who produced a Christmas party video criticized as being racist, sexist and homophobic, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.

In a 3-0 ruling, the Court of Appeal in San Francisco suggested that Chief Heather Fong was overly concerned with quelling bad publicity when she suspended Officer Andrew Cohen after the video surfaced in December 2005. Fong failed to show there was an emergency justifying the immediate suspension, the court said.

"Temporary suspensions may not be used as a shortcut method of taking punitive action against an officer or as a tool for conducting public relations damage control," Justice Sandra Margulies said. The city must reimburse Cohen the four days' pay he lost during the suspension.

"They overreacted and then scurried to find some way to make Officer Cohen the scapegoat," said Harry Stern, a lawyer for Cohen.

Source

Blog Comments and Free Speech

Every now and again, somebody comes up with the notion that a blogger is responsible for comments that are left on his blog by readers of the blog. I think that is nonsense myself and so do all blog-savvy people, I think. I would sure have to delete a lot of comments here if I had to be responsible for them! As it is, it is only comments by one particularly foul-mouthed person that I have ever deleted on this site. I have also IP-banned four internet addresses he has used on various occasions. There are no other IP-bans here.

An example of the nonsense I am talking about is recorded here. Some not-very-bright Leftists on Australia's major public broadcaster criticized some of our newspapers over comments people had left on their blogs. One newspaper got its own back a few days later, however, when someone left antisemitic comments on the site of the broadcaster. The newspaper reported that fact with great glee and got lots of people to complain to the broadcaster concerned. The broadcaster actually got a fair bit of flak over it so I imagine they have decided not to throw stones in glass houses in future. See also here.

There is a much more serious case ongoing in Sweden, however. Australians and Americans can do little more than complain to one-another about content that they don't like but in Sweden "hate speech" is against the law. So comments that appeared briefly on the blog of a popular member of Sweden's conservative government are being put under the microscope -- even though the comments were fairly promptly deleted. Swedish officials have already ruled that the blog is not entitled to any free speech protections. See here and here for details.

I am guessing that the case won't go anywhere but it shows how lucky we are in Australia and America to have the freedoms we do.

In the circumstances, I am somewhat surprised that ALL Swedes don't use comment moderation -- where no comment appears until it is approved by the blog owner. Moderation does seriously harm the immediate flow of conversation that blog commenters enjoy, however, so I guess the Swedes don't want to be deprived of that.

Fortunately, Haloscan seems to have pretty good spam-blocking software so I don't have to enable moderation here to stop comment spam -- something that was an horrendous problem on the previous site for this blog. On the old site, I often had to delete over 500 spam comments in one day and legitimate comments sometimes got caught up in that.

Update on the Blocking of Sites that are Critical of Islam

As I noted two days ago, several sites that often feature uncensored reports of Muslim doings have been widely blocked lately -- though CAIR and various Jihadi sites have remained fully accessible.

Publicity about the blocking campaign seems to have had some effect. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch has now been told by many of his readers that they can once again access his site from their work computers.

All readers here should monitor the situation, however. Unless it is nipped in the bud, Leftist censorship will just proliferate. So if you ARE blocked from accessing any conservative sites, protest loud and long about it to whoever is in charge of your work computers.

If Jihad Watch is blocked again, it may also be an idea to let Robert Spencer know. You can email him here: director-AT-jihadwatch.org. Substitute the @ sign for "-AT-", of course.

Naughty Word "Angus" gets the All-clear

We read:

"Fast food chain Jack in the Box can continue to air TV ads that make a rival restaurant the butt of its jokes, a federal judge ruled this week. U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford said he wanted to see more evidence of actual harm before barring the cheeky ads that suggest rival company CKE Restaurants, which operates Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, uses cow anuses to make its Angus beef hamburgers.

CKE sued Jack In The Box in May over two TV ads, including one in which executives laugh hysterically at the word "Angus" and another where the chain's clownish mascot Jack is asked to point to a diagram of a cow and show where Angus meat comes from. "I'd rather not," Jack replies. The employee asking the question traces a circle in the air with his pen while pronouncing the word Angus.

Source

Maybe "Angus" might become a popular term of abuse now that it has been ruled legit!

London court jails 'cyber-jihadis' for incitement to violence

I am inclined towards the moderate libertarian view that incitement to violence is reasonably denied free speech protection so see the verdict as justifiable:

"Three "cyber-jihadis" who used the internet to urge Muslims to wage holy war on non-believers were jailed for between six-and-a-half and 10 years today in the first case of its kind in Britain. Tariq Al-Daour, Younes Tsouli and Waseem Mughal had close links with al-Qaeda in Iraq and thought there was a "global conspiracy" to wipe out Islam, the Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London was told.

Moroccan-born Tsouli, 23, was jailed for 10 years; UAE-born Al-Daour, 21, received a six-and-a-half year sentence; and 24-year-old Mughal, who was born in Britain, was given seven-and-a-half years.

Sentencing them, Judge Charles Openshaw said the men had engaged in "cyber jihad", encouraging others to kill "kuffars" or non-believers. "It would seem that internet websites have become an effective means of communicating such ideas," he said, although he added that none of the men had come close to carrying out acts of violence themselves. Referring to Tsouli, whom he recommended for deportation to Morocco after serving his sentence, he said: "He came no closer to a bomb or a firearm than a computer keyboard."

Al-Daour, from west London, yesterday admitted "inciting another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the United Kingdom which would, if committed in England and Wales, constitute murder." Tsouli, also from west London, and Mughal, from Kent, southeast England, admitted the same charge on Monday. The guilty pleas came part way through a trial which had run for two months.

Source

European Bureaucrats Telling Governments what to Say

Lots of banned words. Policy propagated in secret, of course. They cannot stand the light of day:

"Secret EU guidelines have been drawn up warning governments not to link Islam and terrorism.

The politically correct directives are believed to be behind ministers not using words such as "Muslim'' about Britain's terrorism crisis.

Yesterday the Daily Express reported how Gordon Brown's ministers had been told to avoid inflammatory language when speaking about the attempted car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.

Neither the Prime Minister in a major interview nor Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in the Commons referred to Muslims or Islam.

Last night critics pointed to a classified EU document sent out to all European governments offering "non-offensive'' phrases to use when discussing terrorism.

Banned terms were said to include "jihad'', "Islamic'' or "fundamentalist".

Source

And I don't think any European government has the guts to tell them to take a hike. Poland is the only possibility.

Disturbing Blog Censorship -- in the USA

I have seen a few complaints about this in the last few days. People have been complaining that they cannot access various conservative sites while at work (in their lunchtimes of course!). Far-Left and Jihadi websites are always accessible, needless to say:

"The latest in this series of assaults is the banning of MEMRI, Hot Air, and Jihad Watch websites from the internet systems of the U.S. Government, the City of Chicago, Fidelity Investments, Site Coach, and Bank of America-and surely there are more-over the last few weeks. The reason given: complaints of "hate speech."

Source

The writer attributes these bans to CAIR but I think it is more likely to be the work of much bigger players -- such as some elements in the U.S. government bureaucracy or some of America's Muslim-loving Leftists.

He does however have a point in saying that it is mainly sites that are openly critical of Islam that are blocked. He also points out why it is absurd to equate the criticisms appearing on such sites with "hate speech". And even if it WERE hate speech, it is still protected under the First Amendment as far as U.S. government sites are concerned.

Now we have the "M-word"

The cringing Associated Press says that the would-be bombers in Britain were a "diverse" group! All Muslim doctors! How diverse can you get? In America, "diverse" means black. I guess in Britain it must mean "Muslim".

Gateway Pundit and others are ridiculing the "diverse" description and commenting on how the "M-word" is being avoided in reporting the attacks in Britain.

But I guess that the first names of some of the bomb-plottters does rather give the game away: Mohammed.

The instruction to ban the "M-word" actually comes from Britain's new Prime Minster

A Leftist Defence of Academic Free Speech

On June 12 I reported the case in Australia where two professors had been suspended from their jobs for six months because they spoke out against the "postmodern" crap being preached at their university.

The two professors are in fact moderate Leftists -- but that makes them conservative in a university context, of course. The university concerned has not so far backed down and is defending its actions on very hokey grounds so I am pleased to report that the Australian Left has got itself involved on the side of the professors. Leftists did a lot of protesting against university administrations in the 60s so maybe old habits die hard!

See an article on a Leftist site written by Brian Laver in defence of the professors. I know Brian from way back. He and I were on opposite sides of the Vietnam issue back in the 60s at the University of Queensland. He usually claims to be an anarchist rather than a Leftist but I think that just means that he is a Leftist who really does have some principles. I am delighted that those principles have come to the fore on this occasion.

May I repeat my call for emails to Prof. Peter Coaldrake in protest against his university's action in this matter: Click here to email him.

Another German Attack on Free Speech

I personally think all holocaust deniers are at least slightly deranged but, as many Jewish thinkers do, I don't think holocaust denial should be a crime. If anything, it helps keep alive detailed awareness of the holocaust. In Germany, however, holocaust denial has long been a crime.

In some strange way, however, a German pro-lifer seems to have fallen foul of the law:

"A city court in Erlangen, Bavaria, gave Lutheran Pastor Johannes Lerle a one year jail sentence for the "crime" of comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust.

Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the annual murder of 150,000 babies through abortion in Germany to the murder of thousands of innocent Jews in Auschwitz. The court, which consisted of no jury and a single judge, ruled that this statement made Lerle a holocaust denier.

On 14 June, Judge Erda Erdenhofner convicted Lerle of a particular crime known as "volksverhetzung", or "incitement of the people".

Source

I understand that the pastor doubts the extent of the holocaust -- putting the death toll at half a million rather than six million but why that makes any difference escapes me. Half a million or six million is still a towering crime. But however you look at he is not denying the holocaust, just talking about the details. And how can he be denying it if he is comparing Germany's abortions to it?

The report above says he was sentenced for Volkverhetzung but I believe that he was in fact sentenced under the holocaust denial laws. Totally illogical but I think it shows that speaking out of place is still dangerous in Germany.

Australian TV Show in Trouble Again

Must not joke about hepatitis:

"A comedian on Rove has been told to say sorry to hepatitis sufferers after a "cheap, cruel" joke on the show. Hepatitis Australia said it was offended by a piece on the show by Peter Helliar in which he joked about giving hepatitis C to American actor Pamela Anderson for her 40th birthday.

In a segment of the Sunday night comedy show, the comedian asked what would be the best present for the former Baywatch star, who has everything. "Hepatitis, oh wait, she already got that last year," Helliar said on the program.

Hepatitis Australia chief executive Helen Tyrrell said the "irresponsible" comment was a cruel and discriminatory attempt at humour.

Source

Not long ago, a black rapper got into his sh*t and rolled out of the Rove show -- or so he said

Court Enforces the Law: ACLU Disappointed

Following is from the ACLU:

"We are disappointed that today's decision rejected the Seattle and Louisville plans. A majority of the Court nonetheless recognized that school districts have a compelling interest in racially diverse public schools. The view of Chief Justice Roberts that local school districts lack a compelling interest in racial diversity was emphatically rejected by a majority of the Court as a repudiation of Brown v. Board of Education. In a decisive concurring opinion, Justice Kennedy made clear that he disagreed with how Seattle and Louisville had structured their voluntary integration plans, but not with their efforts to end segregation.

"Even so, the rejection of the Seattle and Louisville school plans represents a significant step backwards in a nation where schools are becoming increasingly segregated by race and ethnicity. The ACLU, along with other organizations and individuals who believe in an inclusive society, will continue its efforts to bring fairness and equality to schools."

Source

What that seems to mean is that the ACLU disagrees with the 14th ("equal protection") Amendment -- which requires equal treatment before the law for all. Nice to be able to pick and choose which amendment you support!

They say that the court still recognizes racial integration ("diversity" in code-speak) as a good thing to be worked towards. No surprise. Very few people will disagree with that these days. But racial quotas have clearly been outlawed as a way to do it.

So how to do it? Through Christian outreach? I don't think the ACLU had that in mind. Reading between the lines, what the ACLU seems to be saying is that they will support sneaky attempts to apply racial quotas -- through selecting kids on the basis of parental income, for example. That too, would however fall foul of the 14th Amendment so should eventually get knocked on the head too, as it certainly should.

Amusing that they say they want to achieve equality when that is what the 14th Amendment MANDATES. It is they and their Leftist ilk who do their best to prevent its implementation

But Leftists have only ever given lip-service to equality, of course. Ever since Marx & Engels, what they have all really wanted to do is to divide people up into large groups and privilege one group over another. Up until quite recently, of course, it was whites that they wanted to privilege. The KKK were all Democrats, Hitler was a socialist and Engels was a fanatical German nationalist who spoke of "n*ggers" with great contempt. The failure of Hitler made Leftists change the groups they favor but they still do not have the mental complexity necessary to treat people as individuals.

Louisiana: Another ACLU attack on a Christian display

Community resisting the attack:

"Standing in the shadow of the Slidell City Court, a swarm of protesters congregated Tuesday night for a rousing and at times revival-like demonstration, denouncing the American Civil Liberties Union and offering a show of unconditional support for the controversial portrait of Jesus that hangs on the wall just inside the courthouse.

Crowe seized on the opportunity to berate the ACLU, which has decried the portrait as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, saying it serves to advance a religious message using a public building.

The picture, which shows Jesus holding an open book of scripture, was identified by a local priest as a 16th century Russian Orthodox icon. The scripture, written in Russian, includes a biblical quotation about judging correctly and wisely. Beneath the portrait, a sign reads: "To know peace, obey these laws."

Attorneys with the ACLU believe that the display gives the impression that only those who believe in the law of Jesus Christ will receive justice in city court.

But protesters claimed that the portrait, which has been on display since the building opened in 1997, has never posed a problem and fairly represents the majority of residents in their largely Christian community.

Originally, the ACLU gave court officials one week to remove the display, threatening to sue if they did not comply by today. The conflict has since cooled, after attorneys with the ACLU agreed to a two-week extension before filing suit, allowing the court to seek further counsel from a team of independent legal experts.

The ACLU has also sponsored six federal lawsuits in 13 years against the Tangipahoa School Board, all involving the promotion of religion in schools.

Among other things, the board has been sued for allowing the distribution of Gideon bibles in the classroom and for sanctioning a teacher-led prayer at a recent high school graduation ceremony. Both actions were filed this spring in U.S. District Court in New Orleans and are awaiting trial.

Source

Are 'Blacks too 'emotional' to obey rules'?

We read:

"So Blacks are unable to control themselves? At least one Black moderator thinks so. The moderator of Thursday's Democrat presidential debate was asked by C-Span host Brian Lamb why he didn't enforce a no-applause rule for his PBS-sponsored debate like other debate formats; moderator Tavis Smiley replied: "Because black people are an emotional people. I know it wouldn't have worked."

Smiley says the black audience attending the 90-minute session at Howard University would not have listened or complied with such a request for silence, suggesting African-Americans are unable to control themselves. He made the remarks on Friday morning's Washington Journal program aired on C-Span.

Interestingly, Smiley is a black talk show host and liberal political activist,

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What he said might be true but you can imagine the fuss if a white man had said that. Statements are no longer judged by the evidence for or against them but rather by the skin-color of the speaker. How deeply into irrationalty America has fallen. And so much for Martin Luther King's "dream".

Florida City backs down over political fliers

I think the ACLU got this one right. As long as Christianity is not involved, they can be rational:

"Orlando officials Thursday averted a free-speech fight that threatened to overshadow the city's annual Fourth of July celebration. The American Civil Liberties Union was girding for battle in support of an Orlando man who originally was told he wouldn't be allowed to hand out campaign fliers for his favorite presidential candidate at the "Fireworks at the Fountain" show at Lake Eola Park.

"I think it's reprehensible that, on the Fourth of July, you'd be threatened with arrest for passing out literature about a presidential candidate in a public park," said Nick Egoroff, the coordinator for the presidential campaign of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.

"Fireworks at the Fountain" is the city's premier public event, held annually in its signature downtown park. About 125,000 people are expected at this year's gathering, featuring food, drink, music and entertainment spread over six hours.

The city has a contract with Cox Radio Inc. to handle the event, which marks its 30th anniversary this year. Orlando officials say that gives Cox the right to treat the Fourth of July party as a private event. Initially, city officials told Egoroff he couldn't pass out literature unless he rented a booth for $1,500.

Egoroff vowed to do it anyway, even if that meant he would be arrested. In a show of solidarity, the ACLU began inviting groups of all political stripes to hand out fliers, too. "We're going to have at least 10 groups out there, hopefully 20," said the ACLU's George Crossley. "There are going to be Republicans, Democrats, everybody with a cause. People against the war, evangelical Christians -- they'll all be invited to come out and pass out fliers."

As the tension mounted, city officials backed down Thursday, saying they had never dealt with a request like Egoroff's and had simply made a mistake. A Cox representative called it a misunderstanding. Now political activists will be allowed to hand out literature, as long as they don't impede people or threaten public safety.

Source

Political speech was clearly protected in a publicly-owned facility. City officials probably just wanted to keep it non-political but there are no exceptions in the First Amendment.