Anything that looks like a gun must not be seen at a Canadian university

Public ridicule forced a backdown, however

The St. Mary’s University Student Association (SMUSA) in Halifax, Nova Scotia has changed its position on a campus-wide ban on the old Nintendo Zapper toy gun used in the classic game “Duck Hunt,”

The controversy first began when the SMUDent Gaming Society released a promotional poster that displayed the Nintendo Zapper.  The poster was determined to be unacceptable by the St. Mary’s Student Association because it showed a “gun” — even if it referring to an orange toy gun with a long cord coming out of it.

However, after being pelted with criticism, the organization has decided to back down and allow the organization’s planned activities to proceed.

Now SMUSA is saying the poster ban was just a misunderstanding.   This was after they cancelled an interview with Sun News to talk about the issue.

As a result of the “misunderstanding,“ the SMUDent Gaming Society was forced to scrap their plans to host a ”Duck Hunt” party on campus because the plastic toy guns with cords coming out of them were not allowed on school property.

News of the zapper ban at student functions has provoked a flood of responses from Sun News Network Viewers and Sun paper readers.  About half an hour after giving the interview to Sun, SMUSA reversed direction, saying that Duck Hunt, complete with zappers, would be allowed at the Friday pub function after all.

Source

ABC Censors Obama Communist Joke‏

Must not joke about the messenger of hope

The ABC television network has removed jokes about President Obama and former President Clinton from an upcoming episode of  “Last Man Standing,” according to the show’s star – Tim Allen.   Allen told The New York Post that the Disney-owned network yanked a number of political jokes from an episode that is scheduled to air just before the presidential election.

Allen’s character, a conservative, is trying to persuade his daughter to vote for Mitt Romney.

The ABC standards department ordered the show to remove one joke that had Allen’s character called Obama “a communist.”

“I love communist jokes,” Allen told the Post. “The right sees everything as a communist.”

“We also had this line about the Clintons where I say, ‘They’re like shingles; just when you think they are gone, they pop back up,’” he added.

That line was deleted, too.

“ABC won’t allow certain buttons to be touched,” wrote Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the MRC. “It’s almost funny that the censors would be so lax on sex and violence, but will clamp down like Bonnie Bluehair on Obama jokes. Is this their only Thou Shalt Not?”

Source

The whole episode is rather Soviet.  The banned bit was apparently meant to ridicule conservatives but the total lack of humor at  ABC management meant that they were too dim to see that.  The Soviets were humorless too.  They banned P.G. Wodehouse even though his comic novels could well be seen as excellent propaganda against a class system.  Wodehouse always portrayed the aristocrat as dim and the worker as smart.

Must not sign a petition seeking a referendum on homosexual marriage

Homosexuality trumps democracy, it seems.

Gallaudet University President T. Alan Hurwitz suspended the school's chief diversity officer Wednesday after he was made aware that the diversity office, Dr. Angela McCaskill, had signed the marriage referendum petition in Maryland.

In a statement to staff and students of the D.C. university for the deaf and hard of hearing that was sent about noon today, Hurwitz said:  "I want to inform the community that I have placed Dr. Angela McCaskill on paid administrative leave effective immediately. It recently came to my attention that Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as Chief Diversity Officer; however, other individuals feel differently."

Maryland's marriage equality bill was passed earlier this year, but opponents circulated a petition to subject the bill to a referendum vote this fall. The opponents received sufficient signatures, including an individual with McCaskill name and address, according to a document published by the Washington Blade, and the referendum is Question 6 on the November ballot.

According to her Gallaudet biography, McCaskill has worked at the D.C. college for 23 years in various capacities. On January 3, 2011, she was named deputy to the president and associate provost of diversity and inclusion. She also, according to her bio, was the first deaf African-American female to earn a Ph.D. from Gallaudet University.

Regarding the timing of her leave, first reported by ABC 7 News's Mike Conneen, Hurwitz said in the statement, "I will use the extended time while she is on administrative leave to determine the appropriate next steps taking into consideration the duties of this position at the university. In the meantime an interim Chief Diversity Officer will be announced in the near future."

Source

Gender-neutral pronoun debate rocks Sweden
 
Sweden's tradition of gender equality has famously put more mums in the workplace while rising numbers of dads stay at home. Now advocates have a new frontier: they're pushing for a gender-neutral pronoun, "hen", to be added to "han" (he) and "hon" (she).

"There's almost nothing left to do in the field of gender equality, so people are suggesting increasingly strange ideas," said independent journalist Elise Claesson, partly amused and partly irritated by the debate.

The word "hen" was coined in the 1960s when the ubiquitous use of "han" (he) became politically incorrect. It was about "simplifying the language" and avoiding the clumsy "han/hon" (s/he) construction, said linguist Karin Milles.

Another linguist, Mikael Parkvall, is less convinced, however.

"The notion that language determines our way of thinking is very popular, but those of us who are specialists are pretty sceptical," he said.

"The link between language and thought is not very strong, and you don't become more gender equal by using a neutral pronoun," he added, citing Mandarin, the language of male-dominated China, as an example of a language that has such a pronoun.

Wallner said he believes "hen" will soon be as free of controversy as the 1970s decision to abolish the plural form for addressing strangers and instead use the more informal singular.

Source

I am pleased to see that a lot of Swedes regard the whole thing as tedious.  Still, "Ms" as an alternative to "Mrs" and "Miss" seems to have caught on in the English-speaking world so you never know.

The last paragraph of the article above will be incomprehensible to people who speak English only but it is a huge step in European terms.  The polite plural is a feature of all European languages I thought -- but not in Sweden now.  Linguistic change is clearly possible but whether it achieves anything other than satisfying busybodies is the question.

Paleo Diet Lawsuit Dismissed By Court in Blow to Free Expression

The guy was just a diet blogger.  The case was dismissed on the  technicality that the State had only written to him, not yet harmed him so far

“A state licensing board in North Carolina tried to suppress a blogger who talked up and advised people on the health benefits of the ‘paleo’ diet (that is, eating as we think cavement ate, no grains or processed foods), telling him directly what he could or could not say about his belief that the high-meat, low-carb diet helped him with his diabetes. The case was dismissed by a federal court late last week.”

Source

The State can tell you what to eat?  It's not far from that.  You apparently need a license to give diet advice in North Carolina.  I am pleased that the matter is going to a higher court.  I can't see how the ruling is consistent with the 1st Amendment.

Diet is a well known means of dealing with diabetes so this guy is not way outside the ballpark  -- though I myself doubt the generalizability of his claims.

BBC Arabist, Malise Ruthven, says that only "scholarly" criticism of Islam should be allowed

It's a very long-winded article (in the NYT, unsurprisingly)  but the last 3 paragraphs of it (below) seem to be the point of it.  Ruthven burnishes his own scholarly status by using such hard words as "aniconic" and "docetic" but shows how much he really knows by approving of the term "Christianist" as a description of Pamela Geller.  She is Jewish and needs no assistance from Christians or Christianity to form her opinion of jihadists.  Ruthven is obviously far too grand to listen to or respect "ordinary" people

These contrasting responses suggest the possibility of a two-pronged approach to the free speech issues raised by images of the Prophet. “Insulting” the Prophet with the intent of stirring up hatred might be categorized as a form of “hate speech” comparable to anti-Semitism, racism, flag desecration, or Holocaust denial, which are forbidden by law in many countries (though not the US, where a proposed amendment protecting the US flag failed to pass by a single Senate vote in 2006), because the sacred image of the Prophet has become a fundamental part of how Muslim communities have come to define themselves. While in practice it may be difficult to draw the line between “insult” and “criticism,” if there is a distinction it must lie in intention.

In Britain, for example, the government’s effort in the wake of the Rushdie Affair to extend the race relations act in response to Muslims protests opened a legal minefield. It is now an offense (under the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act) to display by writing or other visible representation material that is “threatening, abusive or insulting” with the intention of causing “harassment, alarm or distress.” Yet the law paradoxically protects the right to “insult and abuse” with a proviso stating that nothing in it “shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents.” Intention is clearly the key. Had he been required to defend his book under the 2006 act, Rushdie and his lawyers would doubtless have argued that the storm of controversy it raised was an unintended consequence of a misreading (mostly by politically-motivated parties) of his “serious” novel.

Critical analysis of the Quran that challenges the myths surrounding the primal figures of Islam is another story entirely: it is something that scholars of other faiths have been engaged in since the Enlightenment. Since the nineteenth century, Islamic scholars such as Sayyed Ahmad Khan and Chirag Ali have questioned the authenticity of many of the hadiths (verbally transmitted reports) on which the earliest chroniclers relied for their accounts of the Prophet’s life, exemplary behavior, and ministry. It would be utterly wrong for the law to discriminate in favor of (or effectively against) Muslims by insulating them from this process, because critical engagement—about science, religion, and politics—is a necessary precondition for communities to flourish in a cosmopolitan and increasingly globalized world.

Source

It's absurd to expect everybody to speak with academic precision and yet that is essentially what this guy is proposing.  What about having one law for all and not a law that suits just a few?

Treating everyday speech as scientific or scholarly speech is a very common bad-faith ploy.  For instance, if a man says:  "Blacks are a criminal lot", he will immediately be hounded as some sort of terribile bigot who is obviously wrong because some blacks are not criminal.  But that is bad faith.  That all blacks are criminal is unlikely to be what the speaker meant and instead of people trying to understand what the speaker is really saying he gets condemned.

If however, someone says that "the incidence of criminality is  much higher among blacks than whites"  he gets a pass.  I know.  I once said something similar and even got it published in one of the academic journals of sociology  -- of all places.  But I did have some striking statistics on my side.

There is far too much "hunting" of people according to the way they express themselves.  In a decent world one would try to understand what the average person was saying rather than pouncing on him with vile and superficial allegations because his speech is a bit careless.  That someone has the background to speak in an academic way is no guarantee of wisdom, rightness or moral probity.  The praise recently lavished on the unrepentant and disgusting Communist Eric Hobsbawm is evidence enough of that.

British thug who wore T-shirt with 'one less pig' slogan hours after murders of two policewomen is jailed for eight months

Rather lame that a opinion you write on your shirt can send you to jail but that's Britain

A man who wore a T-shirt with offensive comments about the murders of Pc Fiona Bone and Pc Nicola Hughes on it just hours after they died has been sentenced to eight months in prison.

Barry Thew, 39, who has a lengthy criminal record, wore a T-shirt with ‘One less pig: Perfect justice’ hand-written on it the same day the two women police officers were gunned down.

Thew, of Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, admitted a Section 4A Public Order Offence (displaying writing or other visible representation with intention of causing harassment, alarm or distress) and was sentenced at Minshull Street Crown Court today.

He was jailed for four months and ordered to serve another four months, consecutively, after he admitted breaching a suspended sentence order imposed for an earlier offence of cannabis production.

The sentence, at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court, means he was jailed for a total of eight months. He will likely serve only half of that in custody.

Thew, who has 29 sets of previous convictions for 77 offences since 1983, appeared shaken as he was led away from the dock to serve his sentence.

Mr Duke said Thew has a long-standing dispute with Greater Manchester Police over the death of his son three years ago and repeated 'stop and search' procedures.  'It is an on-going dispute between Mr Thew and Greater Manchester Police. He feels victimised and picked on.

PCs Nicola Hughes, 23, and Fiona Bone, 32, were killed on duty in a gun and grenade attack after they responded to a routine call about reports of a burglary at an address in Abbey Gardens.

Dale Cregan, 29, has been charged with their murders, the murders of father and son David and Mark Short and four other counts of attempted murder.

Source

Famous comedian in trouble for a joke while out of character



Had he made the same joke in character as either Edna or Sir Les, it would have passed unremarked

AN agent for Barry Humphries has apologised for any offence caused by the entertainer's comments referring to the eye shape of new Australians.

Famous for his much-loved and outspoken characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, Humphries, 78, offered his take on Australian citizenship as his wife, Lizzie Spender, joined the dinky di ranks in London.

"At least my wife came to our country voluntarily and not against her wishes. She has the right-shaped eyes. A lot of new Australians are Chinese," London's Evening Standard newspaper quotes Humphries as saying after his wife's citizenship ceremony this week.

Spender, 62, Humphries' fourth wife of 22 years, is most eligible to join the antipodean clan, according to her spouse.  "She's a lot more Australian than our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who is a 10-pound pom with an Adelaide accent," he continued.

A spokesman for Humphries offered an apology on Friday to anyone who took offence at the comments.  "He would never want to offend anybody ... a lot of what Barry says to the press is in jest," the spokesman told AAP.

Source

9th Circus uses delaying tactics to block free speech

SCOTUS has held that the ability to spend as much as you like in support of candidates you agree with is an important part of free speech, including spending by corporations.  The 9th circus   thinks it is a law unto itself, however

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Montana's campaign donation limits, telling the federal judge who struck down the limits that the panel needs to see his full reasoning so it can review the case.

The court intervened late Tuesday less than a week after the judge's decision opened the door to unlimited money in state elections - during the height of election season.

In response, U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell issued a 38-page conclusion Wednesday morning that reinforced his earlier decision finding that the state's limits are too low to allow effective campaigning. He suggested the state Legislature would have a "clean canvas" to perhaps establish new, higher limits that could meet constitutional muster.

The 9th circuit did not immediately respond, leaving the state limits in place - for the time being. The legal back and forth came with less than a month until Election Day.

One of the attorneys working for the Washington D.C.-based American Tradition Partnership, a group at the center of several Montana cases, said they hope the appeals court will lift its stay in the wake of Lovell's full decision.

Montana has seen many of its laws struck down in the wake of the Citizens United decision that opened the door for more corporate spending in federal races, citing freedom of speech issues.

Source

Actress's obsessed female stalker who sent her messages saying she would be raped is jailed

There is a general view that personal threats of violence are not protected free speech

Holby City star Rosie Marcel was told she would be raped and killed in a campaign of intimidation and abuse by a super-fan.

Sarah Rumbelow, 21, has been jailed for two and a half years after she sent hateful emails, tweets, messages and letters to Miss Marcel, who plays surgeon Jac Naylor in the BBC drama.

Rumbelow was completely obsessed with the pretty actress and spent almost a year abusing her in 2011.

To cover her tracks she set up bogus e-mail addresses from where she sent many sick messages.

But after the terrified star called in the police  detectives were able to establish Rumbelow was behind them.

The 21-year-old, of Brockley, London pleaded guilty at St Albans Crown Court to putting a person in fear of violence by harassment.

Source

Jewish choir silenced

Are planting trees, building parks and setting up nature reserves “war crimes”? Apparently so for pro-Palestinian activists who on October 4th stormed a concert of elderly Israeli singers raising money for the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) efforts to rebuild the Carmel Park in Haifa that suffered a devastating forest fire in 2010.

It’s happened at concerts, dance performances and on campus: pro-Palestinian activists speaking their minds, or rather shouting their pre-planned talking points, while at the same time manipulatively blocking Israeli artists’ and supporters’ own right to free speech. And like in past cases, this one pitted protesters vs. audience members in physical scuffles, shoving, and knocking each other to the ground.

It hardly matters that this latest protest occurred in Berlin; in the past these orchestrated interruptions have targeted Israel-supporting speakers across American college campuses, at times with the help of Occupy Wall Street activists.

The Israeli choir Gevatron was performing at a JNF fundraiser in a Berlin church when suddenly about a dozen pro-Palestinian activists barged in, shouting, unfurling banners and throwing leaflets into the audience.

Direct Action Berlin insists its objectives are not anti-Semitic. In a statement it posted on its Facebook page after the protest, it wrote:  Resisting apartheid is not antisemitism. Resisting war crimes is not antisemitism. Critic against Israel is not antisemitism.

Berlin-based Jerusalem Post Correspondent Benjamin Weinthal – who writes extensively about anti-Semitism in Europe spoke to German journalist Alex Feuerherdt, who covers anti-Israel activity in Germany:

“The anti- Semitic character of the ‘protest’ was made clear through two points.” First, he cited the slogan “From the river to the sea: Palestine will be free,” which “can only mean ‘free from Jews.’”

Source

It shows the complete dishonesty of the Left when they call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Different rules for Muslims in Britain

I noted yesterday where a stupid British teen got sent to jail for comments no more offensive than what the Muslim below said

A 20-year-old man who posted a vile Facebook message saying ‘all soldiers should die and go to hell’ just two days after six British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan has today avoided jail.

Azhar Ahmed, of Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, admitted posting the message - and was charged after the mother of one of the soldiers read the comments and was so upset she called police.

The remarks were also called ‘derogatory, disrespectful and inflammatory’ by a district judge at Huddersfield Magistrates’ Court who found him guilty of sending a grossly offensive communication....

He was given a two-year community order with 240 hours of community service and ordered to pay £300 in costs at today’s hearing.

Source

Self-stimulated orgasm at Vassar?

Most of these things at colleges turn out to be provocations by Leftists.  This is likely another such.  But it makes a great occasion to bask in self-righteousness.

I note that the college rag refers to it as: "Recurrant hate speech".  An inability to spell at Vassar?  They seem to think that hate speech has something to do with dried fruit.  What about some sultana hate speech instead?

Within the span of one week, two instances of graffitied hate speech have appeared in Jewett House. The first, which read “I hate niggers,” was forcefully etched with a ballpoint pen onto a west second floor bathroom stall and reported on Sunday, Sept. 23.

The second, which read “She’s just asking for it”, was written in pink lipstick in the elevator and discovered on Friday, Sept. 28.
These incidents, each targeting a specific identity-based group, were both swiftly responded to within and outside of Jewett House.

President Catharine “Cappy” Bond Hill sent out an all-campus email the day of the meeting, alerting the Vassar community to the offensive message and detailing reactive steps that were being taken. “As my statement to the community indicated, the graffiti found on campus violated our core values as a community,” wrote Hill in an emailed statement.

Source

Sick jokes land British teenager in prison

He did no-one any harm and was not inciting violence so this seems disproportionate at least.  No free speech in Britain

A teenager has been jailed for 12 weeks after admitting making grossly offensive comments on his Facebook page about missing youngster April Jones.

Matthew Woods, 19, from Chorley, Lancashire, made a number of derogatory posts about April and missing Madeline McCann after getting the idea from a website that 'trades in sick jokes'.

Today he was sent to prison for three months amid a chorus of cheers and clapping across the courtroom.

Woods realised the strength of animosity over his postings after his own mother posted a Facebook message saying: 'You should stop and think things out before opening ya gob.'

He then left a message saying: 'Sorry to my friends and family that have been brought into all this.  'I’m not a bad guy just took a joke to far

Source

Censoring of Conservatives Proves Liberals' Intolerance

By Bill Donohue

In the course of just one week, I had my speech squashed on three different occasions by the cultural elites. Though I’ve been slapped by the censorial hand of liberals many times before, never have I experienced it so forcefully within such a short period of time.

On September 27, I held a press conference outside the Edward Tyler Nahem gallery in midtown Manhattan to protest an exhibit by Andres Serrano featuring “Piss Christ,” the infamous photo of a crucifix submerged in a jar of the artist’s urine. After addressing the media, I sought to see the exhibit but was stopped in the building’s lobby by gallery officials. I was the only person denied. My offense? They objected to the content of my remarks to the media.

Last month we learned that beginning on October 17, FX will air “American Horror Story: Asylum.” The entire series depicts a habit-wearing promiscuous nun who beats inmates in a home for the criminally insane; for good measure, a doctor tortures his patients in this evil Catholic institution.

I decided to write a full-page ad critical of the series, seeking to place it in The Hollywood Reporter. We were led to believe that everything was fine, including our credit card info, but then we learned via an email on October 1 that the ad had been rejected. Lynne Segall, the publisher, nixed it saying the ad’s message “was not appropriate.”

None of this would matter so much if it were not for the myth that liberals are tolerant, and conservatives are intolerant. Wherever liberals dominate — in the artistic community, Hollywood, the media, education, publishing — there is no shortage of attempts to muzzle the speech of conservatives. They are the masters of intolerance.

Source

Must not mock Muslim prayer -- British sports commenter discovers

Gary Lineker has been forced to apologise after accidentally ridiculing two Muslim footballers during a match commentary on TV.

When the players celebrated a goal by dropping to their knees and bowing their heads in the Islamic prayer position, Lineker said they ‘ate grass’.

The gesture is often used by Muslim players to celebrate.

He was commentating on Al Jazeera TV, which is mainly aimed at audiences in the Middle East and has a huge Islamic audience.

Lineker, who is one of the BBC’s biggest faces in sport, has a clause in his contract that allows him to freelance for the other channel.

The gaffe was made during Wednesday night’s Champions League game between Schalke and Montpellier when discussing the French side’s opening goal.  He said: ‘A terrific effort from Karim Ait-Fana, who scored from just outside the area and then ate grass .... as you do.’

One viewer wrote on Twitter: ‘Lineker’s comment about Muslims [is a] very stupid remark and [one of] sheer ignorance.’

Source

There seems to be no such thing as an Islamic sense of humor

DC to get anti-Jihad ads too

The D.C. transit system must allow a pro-Israel ad that equates Muslim radicals with savages, a federal judge ruled Friday. A spokesman for the Metro system said it would comply with the judge’s decision and that the advertisements would go up over the weekend.

“The result is absolutely correct,” said David Yerushalmi, a lawyer representing the American Freedom Defense Initiative, the organization behind the advertisements. “There simply was no way under the First Amendment jurisprudence that we have today that this ad should not have gone up when contracted.”

The one-page ruling from U.S. District Judge Mary Collyer follows a similar court order in New York that cleared the way for anti-jihad ads to go up in that city’s subway system last month. The ads read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

The New York ads went up in 10 stations across Manhattan on Sept. 24. Since then, two religious groups say that, starting Monday, they’ll hang ads urging tolerance alongside the anti-jihad ones. The ads also appeared recently on city buses in San Francisco, where some have been defaced or have had words removed.

Source

Pro-Muslim judge denies free speech to critic of Islam  -- in America   

Every once-in-a-while a story emerges that distinguishes itself as too-good-to-be-true, but somehow — the facts seem to check out. Last October, TheBlaze reported on one of these uniquely bizarre stories when we brought you the details surrounding “Zombie Muhammad,” an atheist activist who was purportedly attacked by a Muslim during a Halloween parade in Pennsylvania.

While the assault was surprising enough in itself, the court battle that followed was equally unusual (it ended up being dismissed under curious circumstances). The crime was carried out by Talaag Elbayomy, a Muslim immigrant. According to numerous media accounts, the defendant didn‘t know that it’s perfectly legal to insult the prophet in America, so when he saw Ernest Perce V dressed in his Zombie Muhammad costume, he allegedly attempted to physically stop the presentation of anti-Islamic sentiment.

After Perce notified a police officer about what unfolded, the situation intensified. Charges were brought before Cumberland County Magisterial District Judge Mark Martin but, despite an admission at the scene of the crime by Elbayomy that he had grabbed Perce’s sign and pulled his beard, the judge inevitably dismissed the charges for lack of admissible evidence.

The dismissal, itself, angered some onlookers, but the bigger issue seemed to be Martin’s courtroom rebuke of Perce. In handling the case, the judge spoke out against the atheist, telling him that he was wrong for insulting Muslims and, at one point, likening him to a “doofus.”

“What you have done is you have completely trashed their essence, their being. They find it very very very offensive,” Martin told Perce. “If I were a Muslim, I’d find it offensive. But you have that right, but you’re way outside your bounds or first amendment rights.”

Many saw these comments and the dismissal of the case as evidence that sharia (Islamic law) had crept its way into the courtroom. As a result of supposedly questionable details surrounding the dismissal, on September 10, The Legal Project, part of the Middle East Forum, filed a formal request for an investigation into Martin and his alleged judicial misconduct.

In the document that was submitted to the judicial conduct board, the group, on behalf of Perce, called for the judge’s removal from the bench. While Martin has apparently already been reprimanded privately by the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board, the group that oversees judicial action considers the case closed.

The arresting officer, Police Sgt. Brian Curtis, though, was less than content with Martin’s explanation — and his ruling.

“I believe that I brought a case that showed proof beyond reasonable doubt, and the case was dismissed, and I was disappointed,” he said.

For now, Nunberg and Perce will avait a final determination, although there is a chance the board may simply ignore The Legal Project’s grievance.

Source

Facebook in Britain warns it will censor criminal 'tribute' pages

No freedom of opinion in Britain

Facebook's director of policy has warned that offensive "tribute" pages praising criminals, such as the alleged killer of Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes, the police officer shot in Manchester, will not be tolerated.

Simon Milner said there was "no grey area" on the issue and that Facebook would take immediate action against member who set up deliberately offensive groups.  "Our terms of service are absolutely clear on this kind of thing," Mr Milner, who leads Facebook's British public policy unit, said.

His comments follow the arrest last month of a man who created a Facebook group devoted to Dale Cregan, which described the alleged murderer of Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes as a "legend".

"Every police officers death is a course (sic) for celebration," the group said.

John Tully, the Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers in London, said the arrested man could have committed an offense under the Public Order Act.

Source

Must not call a pineapple "Mohammad"

Britain

A group of atheist students were thrown out of their freshers' fair because they included a pineapple labelled 'Mohammed' on their stall.

The Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society (RAHS) said they wanted to celebrate free speech and promote their upcoming debate 'Should we respect religion?'

But they were ordered to remove the offending fruit by union staff who said their actions were causing 'upset and distress' to a number of Muslim students and other societies.

RAHS refused, citing that they had labelled the pineapple after the Islamic prophet to 'encourage discussion about blasphemy, religion, and liberty'.

According to RAHS, a group of students surrounded their stall and removed the pineapple's name tag before the society was 'forced to leave the venue' accompanied by security

Source