ADL Confusion
The ADL has just had a conference in Israel about “hate speech”. They seem to have put out a very mixed message as a result. On the one hand they say:
“Dozens of experts from Israel and the United States joined Marcus for the first ADL conference on “Hate and the Internet” that was held in Israel Monday. While experts explored the various definitions of hate speech, and how it manifested itself online, the focus of the conference was what should be done to stop “cyberhate.”“We cannot just say we will shut down all these sites and they will go away, and I don’t think ignoring them will help either,” said Marcus. “I think the best approach could be summarized in a phrase that was said by [US Supreme Court Justice Louis] Brandeis long ago… ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant.’” ....
You can’t censor your way out of hate,” said Marcus. “Brandeis knew that a long time ago.”
But on the other hand we read:
“Instead, said Marcus, lawmakers in individual countries should consult with Internet policing units to create legal standards. “It’s not the decision of the private companies or the international bodies or the international experts to say what is and isn’t good content,” said Meir Brand, director of Google Israel. “It’s the decision of the lawmakers, the people elected by government.”
Which seems to be a recommendation that governments SHOULD censor the speech concerned. It seems rather a pity to me that they did not stick to the sensible first part of their message.
But the excerpt I like best is this one:
“The problem is that each country has its own standard of what constitutes hate,” said Marcus, who recounted that during a recent conference in Europe, Russian representatives believed that Seventh-Day Adventists should be qualified as a hate group because of their views on the army and nationalism. “We clearly cannot adopt a universal standard that everyone agrees on.”
Exactly. No comments
Green Week at NBC?
To borrow an idea from Glenn Beck’s radio and television conversations about this issue, what would we think if Haliburton owned a conglomerate of large, well known entertainment and news outlets and overtly advertised and broadcast an entire week of shows relating to threats to our national security and promoting our military? Would anyone notice the connection between the media outlets and Haliburton? Does anyone doubt the wailing and moaning that would result from every liberal in the world, including our own Commiegressional “leaders”?
Who owns NBC? And CNBC, MSNBC, NBC News, NBC Sports, SciFi Channel, Sundance Channel, Bravo, USA Network, Telemundo and Universal Studios and its related theme parks? Who stands to profit from weaving “environmental themes into every program? General Electric!
Hello? Anyone out there in “journalism land”?
No commentsAccordion Hero
Blaze your way through these squeezebox favorites:
Leichtensteiner Polka, Traditional
The Bowling King, Those Darn Accordions
Can’t Touch This, M.C. Hammer
Ya Ya Wunderbar, Frankie Yankovic
Pictures of Matchstick Men, Status Quo
In Heaven There Is No Beer, Traditional
Ride The Lightning, Metallica
It’s all a gag, of course, as you’ll soon gather from some of their other offerings— Cthulhu Karts and Grand Theft Ottoman.
No commentsHAS LGF GONE COMMERCIAL?
Charles Johnson’s LGF is one of the most widely-read conservative blogs. I have often read and linked to it. Its coverage of the Muslim menace is particularly good. For some reason, however, Charles has been running an extensive campaign of attack on two European political parties—in Sweden and in Belgium—that are also energetically publicizing the Muslim menace. There seem to be two elements in his attacks: Attacks on the past of some members of the parties concerned and a very loose and quite Leftist definition of racism.
I know very little about either of the political parties concerned except that their proclaimed policies are clearly not racist. So I will simply make the general observation that large political parties—which the Belgian one certainly is—invariably have a considerable mix of members with all sorts of backgrounds and views. I would not remotely be surprised or alarmed to hear that some of the members had said hostile things in their time which they now regret and which they no longer believe. I would have thought that I did not have to draw attention to the fact that a former Kleagle of the KKK still sits in the U.S. Senate as a representaive of the Democrats. His change of views is accepted as sincere and his past views are seen as no detriment to him so why cannot others be accepted for their present rather than their past views?
Perhaps more surprising is that Charles appears to accept the Leftist definition of “racism”. I have not been able to find any formal definition of the term from him but he appears to subscribe to the view that any mention of group differences is “racist”. Given that definition, some of Charles’ own comments on Muslims are racist and so is the New York Times. Rather strange.
The Leftist view is clearly brain-dead. Racism is hostile behaviour towards someone solely because of his race. Noting interracial differences is simply free speech. As I have often noted before, the erstwhile British Empire is an excellent case in point. Right up to and including Winston Churchill, almost all Brits believed that the English were obviously a superior race. In the addled minds of the Left, that makes it crystal clear that all the Brits concerned were racist.
Yet the British Empire was undoubtedly the world’s most humane polity of the time. At the height of the Empire it had brown-skinned men sitting in its Parliament and had a much-loved Jew as its Prime Minister. And I hope I don’t need to remind anybody that Britain abolished slavery long before the USA did. Some racism!
So why does Charles seem to be influenced by the silly Leftist definition of racism? He is obviously a smart and realistic man in most ways so I can only assume that he wishes to broaden his audience to those who subscribe to such a definition. I understand that he derives considerable income from his blog so it is probably a purely commercial decision.
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