YouTube - The End Of Freedom Of Speech

http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=3577145

Mark Weitzman UN Testimony

TESTIMONY OF MARK WEITZMAN

DIRECTOR OF THE TASK FORCE AGAINST HATE AND TERRORISM
SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER

BEFORE THE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY



Hearing on

"USING THE WEB AS A WEAPON:
THE INTERNET AS A TOOL FOR VIOLENT RADICALIZATION AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISM"


November 6, 2007

WASHINGTON, DC

TESTIMONY OF MARK WEITZMAN
BEFORE THE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
November 6, 2007

Good Afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, for inviting me to speak to you today on the topic of "Using the Web as a Weapon: the Internet as a Tool for Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism." My name is Mark Weitzman, and I am the Director of the Task Force Against Hate and Terrorism for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. I am also the Simon Wiesenthal Center's chief representative to the United Nations.

While I often begin my presentations by saying that we at the Simon Wiesenthal Center have been tracking extremism online since 1995, the reality is that we actually began much earlier. By 1983 and 1984, various domestic extremists such as George Dietz, Tom Metzger and Louis Beam were already using the Bulletin Board Systems to post material for their followers and others. The potential that these earliest users saw was later realized, leading one United States white supremacist to declare a decade later that “the Internet is our sword.”

Some, like David Duke, saw the Internet as not only being a revolutionary communications medium, but as having great import for their own revolutionary ideas. For example, Duke wrote on his website, “I believe that the Internet will begin a chain reaction of racial enlightenment that will shake the world by the speed of its intellectual conquest.” Duke’s longtime friend, Don Black, together with Duke’s ex-wife(and Black’s future wife), Chloe Hardin teamed up to begin Stormfront on March 27, 1995, which is generally credited as being the first extremist website, and which today is still one of the most prominent and important sites online.

The Oklahoma City bombing brought domestic extremism into sharper focus, and the increasing use by the general public of the Internet quickly led more domestic extremists into the electronic age. At that time we began to publicly track that growth, and have continued to do so. The growth has been explosive, with our database growing from 1 (Stormfront) at the time of the bombing of the Alfred Murrah building on April 19, 1995, to over 7,000 today. Initially, the overwhelming number of those sites came from what could be described as Western extremists. These included skinhead, neo-Nazi, white power, ethnic and religious extremist, homophobic and conspiratorial sites, and the numbers showed steady growth, as did the technical capabilities of the sites. They were used to recruit, to raise money, to propagandize, to incite, and to provide a virtual community to hitherto far-flung fellow believers. By doing so, the Internet came to be viewed as empowering a whole new generation of extremists.

The next defining moment was 9/11. The attacks on the United States signified a new stage in Internet extremism, with Islamist extremism rapidly exploding online. I use the term Islamist in contrast to Islam to signify the radical jihadist and extremist ideology. At the time of the attacks, there were almost no such sites. Today, they number in the thousands.

As might be expected, in some ways the use of the Internet by Islamist extremists resembled the early stages of Western extremist use, as they both began at a relatively simple level before moving on to more complex usage. However, from the very beginning, the Islamists who planned 9/11 were more sophisticated in their approach, using the Internet for planning and communication. Of course, part of that can be attributed to having the benefit of the growing technical capabilities of the Internet, as well as reflecting the growth in cyberknowledge of its users.

The reasons for this phenomenal growth are varied. The Internet is, as an early observer wrote “subversive, because [it] offer[s] potential enfranchisement to the disenfranchised and voice to the voiceless.” It allows individuals who are isolated or alienated, both physically and psychologically, to feel that they are linked, empowered and members of an international movement. For some young Muslims in the West, who are living in an environment where they are alienated both from the majority culture and from the traditional structures of Muslim life that have broken down in the West, the Internet provides access to a radical form of Islam that gives seekers the virtual environment that they are searching for. This is seen as a purer and uncompromised version of the religion, and thus strengthens its appeal by creating a strong demarcation between the moderate version and its more extreme manifestation.

Radicalization can be a result of this relationship. The Internet, and its idealized and radicalized virtual community, overtakes the perceived dismal reality of the real world, and provides an authoritative narrative that creates its own reality. This reality is constructed to fill a void, and its prime target is youth, especially those alienated in some way from their surroundings. The use of professional, slick and appealing sites, videos, chat rooms, newsgroups, etc., are all forms of communication that are commonly used by younger users who are prepared to take the information they receive at face value.

This points out another important aspect of the Internet. As Ian Buruma has written, “The Internet…lacks a superego that filters out the monster from the depths.” This means that there is no editorial control, and anyone can present himself or herself as the expert, or the authoritative face of a religion. In this case, because of the social and psychological factors described above, Islam is presented as a pure and moral religion under continuous assault from the corrupt, immoral West, especially embodied by Israel and the United States. This narrative is illustrated online by references and visuals from areas of conflict, all carefully edited to fit into various aspects of the narrative (Islam as victim, Islam victorious, etc.).

This trend was summarized by an Arab Human Rights website that wrote, “Starting from a few years ago, observers have noticed a growing religious trend in Arabic web pages: The majority of Arabic language web pages are either about Islam, as interpreted by those responsible for the websites, or are calling for the spread of Islam.… The majority of Islamic web pages all call for the adoption of the extremist Sunni interpretation that has spread widely in the Arab Gulf area and extended to reach other Arab states, non-Arab Islamic states like Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Muslims living in Europe and North America…. In spite of the fact that many of these Islamic web pages preach religious hatred against non-Muslims and even against other Islamic groups, they have managed to slip past the bans and the filters put in place by Arab states. Many Arab governments practice selective censorship; that they permit the continued existence of these Islamic sites is less a result of a respect for the freedom of expression than it is a reflection of their satisfaction with the content of these websites.”

In many ways the Internet favors the religious extremist. It allows anyone to set himself or herself up as an authority figure, to the extent that reports last year indicate that some lesser-known Muslim leaders had overtaken Osama bin Laden as the leading figure in the jihadist movement. They did this by using the chat rooms and online forums to establish their authority, and while some might react by saying that anything that cuts into the influence of bin Laden is good, the reality is that this means that even the removal of bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri would have no impact in threatening the movement. And, since one of the effects of this online communication is that the more radical posters are the ones to stand out, and so the discourse is often ratcheted up, with the result being an even more militant or radicalized leadership and followers.

The growing sophistication of the Islamists is also apparent in the production values of their sites. Whether it is in the use of different media, such as videos and games, or different languages, the Islamist outreach is much more attractive and accessible. Part of this can be attributed to Arabic sites and organizations that have recognized the need to reach a large audience, but part of it is also the result of Western Muslim extremists, some of whom are converts, who have taken the familiarity they have acquired by living in the electronic society as well as taken advantage of the rights granted to them by those societies, to create and post Islamist and jihadist websites. By literally speaking the language of their targets, they represent a significant growing factor in online Islamist extremism.

To illustrate the trends described above, we have put together a short PowerPoint demonstration. Without going into deep detail in these written remarks, I would like to offer some brief descriptions of the material that will be shown. The presentation begins with a look at how 9/11 is viewed in some eyes online, including those who applauded it as well as some conspiracies sites. The presence of the conspiracy site is significant, since so much of what passes as fact online is actually based on some form of conspiracy. These are often built around the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which allege Jewish control of the world, or around presenting the United States government as being engaged in various conspiracies or cover-ups, or ultimately having the entire Western world engaged in a vast, multi-layered conspiracy against the Islamic world.

Next is a series of sites of media portals which show some of the varied methods that the Islamists use to get their message out, including some based on United States servers. These are followed by some looks at charts and other manuals on how to use violence, along with a novel interpretation of jihad that calls for an “electronic jihad.”

There are jihad discussion groups and some Islamist sites aimed at Latin America (a new target), as well as some links to extremist right-wing groups like Neo-Nazi, etc. It is worth pointing out that some observers have noted the attempts online to bring Islamist and right-wing extremist groups together, which are often visible in cyberspace.

Next are a series of games that show some of the different themes used by all sorts of extremists, and how they target youth by tapping into fears and issues that the extremists attempt to manipulate. Finally, I end with a look at how the United States is still specifically threatened.

Conclusions

The Internet has become as real a battlefield as exists anyplace. It provides a haven and an opportunity for Islamist extremists to recruit, educate, communicate and bond in a secure, protected environment. As a result, in many ways it is the prime factor in the radicalization of many of recruits to the jihadi ideology. This factor calls for increased attention and efforts to counter the growing influence of the Internet in these areas. Some steps that might aid in this effort include:

1) We must be aware of the empowering effect of the Internet on extremists.

2) We must have researchers and responders who have both the technical and linguistic skills to keep us informed, and to be able to respond to what is online.

3) We must make users aware of the misinformation and techniques used by extremists.

4) We must have increased cooperation internationally, and among the political, law enforcement, NGO, academic, and all other interested sectors.

5) There must be the political will to legally act when necessary.

6) We must be prepared to invest in positive sites that can present alternative narratives that might counteract the Islamists material (i.e., the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s new AskMusa.com site that presents Jews and Judaism in four major Islamic languages directly to the Muslim public).


In many ways we have ceded the Internet to our enemies, and the result has been extremely harmful. However, even in a globalized world, there is no reason to believe that this condition is permanent. But we need to focus our efforts better, and to invest more resources in this struggle. As the famous Holocaust survivor, and namesake of our Center, Simon Wiesenthal wrote in 1989, “The combination of hatred and technology is the greatest threat facing mankind.” How we face that threat might well define the world we will live in the near future.

The New Crime of Thinking

by Gary D. Barnett

It looks like the term “thought police” just might take on a whole new and real meaning. This depends on what happens in the U.S. Senate after receiving House bill H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. This act (now S-1959 – Senate version) is now being considered by Senate committees and, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, will become law. Common sense would indicate that something this vague and dangerous would not make it out of committee, but considering that the House passed it on October 23 with 404 ayes, 6 nays, and 22 present/not voting, I’m not holding my breath. Of course, Ron Paul was one of the 6 nay votes, but that is to be expected.

The most disturbing aspects of this bill, and there are many, are the definitions noted in Section 899a. The three offenses defined in this document that will warrant prosecution are:

“Violent Radicalization: The term ‘violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.”

“Homegrown Terrorism: The term ‘homegrown terrorism’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

“Ideologically based violence: The term ‘ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.”

Besides the fact that this Act would greatly expand an already monstrous bureaucracy (Homeland Security Act of 2002), it is on its very face a threat to all ideological thinking not approved by the state. Any citizen at any given time could be considered a terrorism suspect and accused or prosecuted for “bad” thoughts. Since the very act of thinking could now be considered a crime, how would the populace react to this new paradigm? Would political debate among the citizenry become more subdued? Would watch groups, whether police or private, arise to monitor individual and group conversations? Would speaking out and writing against the government become a dangerous activity?

The language contained in this proposed legislation is not only vague, it is also broad, sweeping, and unclear. The tenebrous and obscure nature of the above definitions is obviously not an accident. The broader the net, the more who are caught; the more who are caught, the more who live in fear of being caught. Ambiguity and fear are mighty deterrents, and ambiguity and fear foster obedience. In this case, unconditional obedience to the mighty state and its many dictates.

In the definition of “violent radicalization,” it is a crime to adopt or promote an extremist belief system to facilitate ideologically based violence. Neither “extremist” nor type of political, religious, or social change is defined. And what about “ideologically” based violence? Is it violence to simply advocate radical change that might lead someone else to initiate violence? Who decides what beliefs are okay and what beliefs are not? The state, of course, is the final decider. The door is left open for interpretation, but for interpretation by government only.

“Homegrown terrorism,” although similarly defined, is notable in that it concentrates strictly on U.S.-born, U.S.-raised, or U.S.-based individuals and groups operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States. The Bush administration has had its problems in the courts at times concerning American citizens and their rights, sometimes setting it and its agenda back. This bill could help alleviate those problems. In addition, to intimidate or coerce the U.S. government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives, is forbidden and considered criminal. Let me repeat; to intimidate the government to further political or social objectives is forbidden. If this is allowed to stand, what does it do to demonstration, protest, petition, and the right to assemble?

Remember, this proposed act is attached to the Homeland Security Act of 2002. This is what gives it the teeth so that the enforcers can pursue and detain those considered guilty of holding or promoting an “extremist” belief system or wishing to advance political, religious, or social change. I use the word “enforcers” because this bill allows for the federal authorities, including intelligence and law enforcement, to use any state or local law-enforcement agencies. In addition, the commission may contract to enable enforcement. Also, “The Commission may request directly from any executive department, bureau, agency, board, commission, office, independent establishment, or instrumentality of the Government, information, suggestions, estimates, and statistics for the purposes of this Section.” (Section 899C.) What little privacy still exists will not exist for long with the passage of this bill.

One of the tenets of any totalitarian society is that the citizenry must acquiesce to government control. The state itself is supreme and sovereign, not the people. This has been true throughout history whether it was during Hitler’s, Stalin’s, Mao’s or any other of a number of brutal dictatorial rulers’ reigns. Dissent was stifled, whether it was ideological or physical, and accused parties faced humiliation, incarceration, or death for their unwillingness to conform. Is that where we’re headed?

The newest weapon we have at our disposal in our fight against tyranny is our advanced communication systems, especially the Internet. Reaching untold numbers of persons, something not possible only a few years ago, is now possible because of the Internet. With the mainstream media kowtowing to politicians and government, the Internet has become the major tool for those promoting liberty and truth. It has allowed many brilliant freedom lovers to reach and change minds. Even this has not escaped the watchful eye of Big Brother in this bill. In Section 899B Congress finds the following:

“The internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”

This bill, if passed into law, will do nothing less than muffle, if not destroy, our ability to speak out against government. Considering the combination of the USA PATRIOT Act, The Homeland Security Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the now-enhanced executive power, adding this single piece of legislation fills the only loophole left. With the passage of this abominable act, all U.S. citizens are at risk, not just those few radical persons and foreigners spoken about by government, but all of us. This very article could be considered as ideologically based violence, subjecting me to punishment by government. This could be the final piece of the puzzle.

This new proposed legislation will help an already tyrannical government in its effort to become supreme.

February 2, 2008

Gary D. Barnett [send him mail] is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Missoula, Montana.

[Pentagon views First Amendment as the enemy]

The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".

The 2003 Pentagon document entitled the Information Operation Roadmap was released to the public after a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2006. A detailed explanation of the major thrust of this document and the significance of information operations or information warfare was described by me here.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...xt=va&aid=7980

Typing TERROR in a Crowded Chat

By Christina L. Madden

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week that Al Qaeda has improved its operations and that America is increasingly vulnerable to Internet attacks by terrorists and other militant groups.

In an experimental move, Al Qaeda recently solicited questions from the general public for an online interview with second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. Questions such as "How is the morale of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan these days?" and "What is your opinion of Tablighi Jamaat?" were passed along to al-Zawahiri, who for reasons of personal safety or lack of connectivity could not participate live. According to Al Qaeda's media arm, he will respond as soon as possible.

Al Qaeda's official website was shut down in 2002, but the organization remains active on a number of other sites. In 2004, 22-year-old Younes Tsouli teamed with Al Qaeda's leaders to promote the organization's extremist videos and propaganda. Before he was caught, Tsouli posted videos of kidnappings and murders of hostages in Iraq on multiple websites, sometimes unbeknownst to the website creators themselves.

John Anticev and Linda Walsh, special agents of the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force, estimate that anywhere between 5,000 to 10,000 radical websites exist worldwide. "Whereas the radicalization process was taking place in various mosques 20 years ago, a tremendous amount is now being attempted online," said Anticev in an interview with Policy Innovations. Chat rooms, videos, and other online forums help extremist organizations to spread ideas, raise funds, plan attacks, and recruit new members without geographic limit.

The ability of individuals to "self-radicalize" in the comfort of their own homes has prompted concern that a younger, tech-savvy generation of extremists is emerging in a fragmented and unpredictable manner. Last November, a 15-year-old Canadian national accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and of conspiring with Al Qaeda became the first minor eligible to be tried for war crimes.

The attention young people dedicate to communicating via virtual identities is often criticized as detrimental to the development of social skills and genuine culture, and some people believe the Internet contributes to social fragmentation and identity loss. But as the cases of young radical Islamists demonstrate, the Internet can also intensify a sense of identity.

Legal scholar Cass Sunstein calls this phenomenon group polarization. He observed in several studies that groups of like-minded individuals make people more confident and extreme in their views. While the Internet provides a platform for an unlimited range of ideas, it also facilitates group polarization. Whether going online for information on radical Islam or animal rights, Internet users tend to seek out information that reinforces, rather than challenges, their beliefs. Sunstein cites a survey of 1,400 political blogs that found that more than 90 percent of their hyperlinks pointed to websites of similar ideologies.

Outrage often breeds extremism, but false information can do the job just as well. According to Frank J. Cilluffo, Director of the George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute, terrorist groups like Al Qaeda have used the Internet to propagate a "clash of civilizations" myth, dating back to the Crusades, in order to draw in new recruits.

White supremacists and neo-Nazis are also using online tools to promote radical ideas. An Internet video of two men being brutally killed by Russian ultranationalists was a heated discussion topic on Russian-language blogs last year. Similar videos have been appearing online "with alarming regularity," according to Radio Free Europe, and racially motivated crimes have been on the rise in Russia in recent years.

Yet, a new set of laws designed to censor such online footage in Russia was sharply contested.

When cyber dissidents in China or Burma use the Internet to organize environmental movements or oppose political oppression, they are often lauded by the international community for managing to stay one step ahead of their governments. But the reaction is different when freedoms of expression and association combine with new technologies to provoke hate crimes and terrorist attacks.

What then is the solution? Paradoxically, it might be more Internet use.

Three of the world's leading state sponsors of terror—Iran, Syria, and Libya—are among the least connected to the World Wide Web. Just over 10 percent of Iran's population has access to the Internet, according to the OpenNet Initiative. The figure stands at roughly 6 percent in Syria, and a mere 3.6 percent in Libya. All three countries operate under regimes that strictly censor online content, political matters in particular.

Fearing an exposed flank on the cyber frontier, the State Department launched a Digital Outreach Team last year to counter ideological support for terrorism on Arabic-language blogs. The team of government bloggers monitors and participates in online conversations as U.S. Government representatives, using their real names. The team intervenes when they notice U.S. policies being maligned, and their responses are supervised by a senior officer and discussed before being published.

Some security experts think open source intelligence, where officials gather information from sources like radical websites and use it to better understand the roots of terrorism, is critical in developing an effective response. Yet, attempting to shut down radical websites may simply make the information more difficult for counterterrorism specialists to find, if extremists switch to more covert methods of communication.

Like many tools of globalization, the power of the Internet can cut both ways.

In 2006, Walsh and Anticev's squad squelched a plot to destroy a Hudson River retaining wall in downtown Manhattan. The suspects, located overseas and inspired by a story on 60 Minutes about the wall's vulnerability, used the Internet to research the use of explosives, to gather maps of lower Manhattan and the subway system, and to organize individuals for the attack. The FBI monitored the chat rooms in which the plan was unveiled, and used its international network of law enforcement and other agencies to identify the people behind the screen names.

The anonymity of the Internet is said to result in an increased tolerance of violence. By maximizing the benefits of the Internet, a more open and connected global society may be better able to minimize such threats.

http://www.policyinnovations.org/ide...gs/data/000029

Loss of Civil Liberties Since 9/11
Freedom of Speech

Project: Loss of Civil Liberties Since 9/11
Open-Content project managed by Paul, blackmax

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September 26, 2001: White House Press Secretary Warns Americans to ‘Watch What They Say’
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Bill Maher.Bill Maher. [Source: HBO publicity photo]White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer warns, “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” [Associated Press, 9/26/2001] Fleischer was responding to comments made by Bill Maher, the host of the discussion/comedy show Politically Incorrect. Maher said the hijackers were not cowards but that it was cowardly for the US to launch cruise missiles on targets thousands of miles away. [New York Times, 9/28/2001] Many advertisers and affiliate stations pull their support of the show in response. [Washington Post, 9/29/2001] ABC cancels Maher’s show at the end of its season because of the controversy. [Toronto Star, 6/26/2002] Several journalists are fired around the same time for criticizing Bush. Fleischer’s comments and the general chill on free speech are widely criticized by major newspapers (for instance, [New York Times, 9/29/2001; Washington Post, 9/29/2001; Dallas Morning News, 10/4/2001] ).

Entity Tags: Bill Maher, Ari Fleischer

Category Tags: Freedom of Speech
November 11, 2004: Ex-Judge Says Gonzales Undermined the Law
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Referring to the recent appointment of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general (see November 10, 2004), retired chief judge of the Army Court of Appeals, Brig. Gen. James Cullen, says “When you encounter a person who is willing to twist the law…, even though for perhaps good reasons, you have to say you’re really undermining the law itself.” [Village Voice, 11/29/2004]

Entity Tags: Alberto R. Gonzales, James Cullen

Timeline Tags: Torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere

Category Tags: Freedom of Speech, Privacy, Impositions on Rights and Freedoms
July 13, 2005: ’Connecticut Four’ Sues Justice Department Over NSL
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George Christian.George Christian. [Source: PBS]Librarian and data manager George Christian is served with a so-called “National Security Letter” (NSL) from the FBI demanding that his firm turn over private information on its patrons because of an apparent terrorist threat e-mailed from one of his libraries (see February 2005). Christian is the executive director of Library Connection, Inc., which manages catalog information, patron records, and circulation information for 27 libraries in and around Hartford, Connecticut, as well as providing telecommunications services to many of its member libraries. Christian is given the NSL, as well as a gag order preventing them from ever mentioning their receipt of the letter, or any details surrounding it. Christian is notified of the letter five days before actually receiving it; he spends those days frantically learning more about NSLs and the laws surrounding them (see October 25, 2005). He learns that a district court in New York had found the entire NSL statute unconstitutional because of what Christian calls “prima facie violations of the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments.” By the time they receive the letter, he has decided to oppose it. The letter, delivered by two FBI agents, orders Christian and Library Connection to turn over information about a specific IP address registered to the firm. One of the agents warns Christian that the gag order prohibits anyone in the firm from telling anyone that the FBI is attempting to secure information from its library business records. Christian, who will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the NSL in April 2007 (see April 11, 2007), says neither he nor his colleagues could “fathom any ‘exigent’ nature for the FBI request.” The letter was dated May 19, nearly two months before its delivery, was not addressed to Christian, and requested information from the use of the IP address five months earlier, February 15. Christian later says that while he and his colleagues want to assist the FBI in any way they can, and have no desire to “impede the investigation of a perilous situation that endanger[s] my country or my fellow citizens,” because of the date of the letter and the IP usage, they conclude that the FBI has not been in any rush to get the information. Christian tells the FBI agents that he believes the use of NSLs is unconstitutional and that he will consult his attorney. Library Connection’s attorney says that the only way to contest compliance with an NSL is to take the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, to court. Christian is understandably reluctant to involve his firm in such a court challenge without authorization, and takes the case to the Executive Committee of the firm’s board of directors. The three members, Barbara Bailey, Peter Chase, and Janet Nocek (who will soon be dubbed the “Connecticut Four” by the media), after conferring with the attorney and reviewing the New York court’s decision against NSLs, decide to go forward with the complaint. They secure representation from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Together, they decide to ask for relief from the NSL, to seek a broader ruling that the use of NSLs is unconstitutional, and to have the gag order lifted so they can publicly discuss the incident as “part of the national debate over renewal of the Patriot Act” (see March 9, 2006). Christian will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee, “We… felt we were defending our democracy by insisting that the checks and balances established in the Constitution be observed. We had no court order, and there was no evidence that an independent judge had examined the FBI’s evidence and found there to be probable cause justifying their request for information.… [W]e did not want to aid terrorists or criminals.… But we did not feel we would be helping the country or making anyone safer by throwing out the Constitution either.” Because of the way the computer system is set up, to give the FBI the information about the specific IP address and usage it required, Christian would have to give the FBI information about everyone using every computer in the particular library on the day in question. He later says, “[S]ince there was no way of determining who was using the computers in the library five months after the fact, we felt that [the FBI wanted] information we had on all the patrons of that library. That seemed like a rather sweeping request. Some would call it a fishing expedition.” The case goes to trial in August 2005 (see August 2005-May 2006). [Senate Judiciary Committee, 4/11/2007] It is later learned that the original e-mailed threat is a hoax. [USA Today, 7/6/2006]

Entity Tags: Peter Chase, National Security Letters, Senate Judiciary Committee, Library Connection, Inc., Barbara Bailey, George Christian, American Civil Liberties Union, Janet Nocek, Alberto R. Gonzales, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Connecticut Four

Category Tags: Court Verdicts, Patriot Act, Freedom of Speech, Privacy, Impositions on Rights and Freedoms, Government Acting in Secret, Government Classification, National Security Letters, NSA Wiretapping
August 2005-May 2006: ’Connecticut Four’ Case Goes to Trial; FBI Withdraws After Patriot Act Reauthorized
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The Connecticut Four, from left to right: Janet Nocek, Peter Chase, George Christian, and Barbara Bailey.The Connecticut Four, from left to right: Janet Nocek, Peter Chase, George Christian, and Barbara Bailey. [Source: Robert Deutsch/ USA Today]A case filed against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales by four plaintiffs from Connecticut’s Library Connection, Inc.—George Christian, Barbara Bailey, Peter Chase, and Janet Nocek—goes to trial in federal district court (see July 13, 2005). The trial is filed as Doe v. Gonzales because the government has filed a gag order against the plaintiffs forbidding them from identifying themselves or discussing the case publicly. The case involves a demand for information from the FBI for information concerning library usage by patrons of a Connecticut library; the four plaintiffs, on behalf of their data management firm Library Connection, have refused. The case revolves around the use of a National Security Letter (NSL) by the FBI; the plaintiffs, with support from the American Civil Liberties Union, want the NSL voided, the gag order lifted, and such use of NSLs found unconstitutional. Christian and his three colleagues are not allowed to attend the hearings in person because of the possibility that they might be identified as the plaintiffs; they are forced to watch the proceedings on a closed-circuit broadcast from a locked room in the Hartford courthouse. When the judge in the proceeding asks to review the government’s evidence for keeping the gag rule in place, Justice Department lawyers insist on submitting secret evidence directly to the judge, without providing that evidence to the plaintiff’s lawyers. The judge is not pleased, and rules, as did her predecessor in New York, that a perpetual gag order amounts to prior restraint, and thereby is unconstitutional. She adds that her review of the secret evidence gives no national security rationale for keeping the plaintiffs gagged. The Justice Department immediately appeals the ruling, and the plaintiffs stay silent and gagged. While the four plaintiffs remain silent about the NSL and the court case, the Justice Department’s primary lawyer, Kevin O’Conner, does not: O’Conner has frequently debated one of the plaintiffs, Chase, about the Patriot Act, and though Chase is now required to remain silent, O’Conner continues to make frequent public appearances touting the Patriot Act. Christian later says, in 2007 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee (see April 11, 2007), that the continuing gag order causes the four “John Does” considerable professional and personal distress, especially after the national media begins reporting the story. The media eventually learns, through the careless redaction of information by government lawyers, of Chase’s identity as one of the four plaintiffs, and reveals that Library Connection is the firm involved in the lawsuit. Christian’s name comes to light shortly thereafter. The attorneys warn Christian and the others that even though their identities and their firm have been revealed, they still cannot comment at all on the case. Christian, for one, wants to testify before Congress in regards to the upcoming reauthorization of the Patriot Act (see March 9, 2006), but cannot. The four plaintiffs quickly become known in the media as the “Connecticut John Does” or the “Connecticut Four.”
Appeals Court - In November 2005, a New York court of appeals hears the case. Christian and his colleagues are allowed to be present at the case this time, but are required to conceal their identities by entering and leaving the court building separately, are not allowed to sit together, and are not allowed to confer with, or even make eye contact with, each other or their attorneys. The Justice Department lawyers argue that even revealing themselves as recipients of a NSL would violate national security, an argument refuted by submission of the raft of news articles identifying Christian, Chase, and Library Connection. The government argues that those news reports don’t matter because no one in Connecticut reads the primary newspaper carrying the story, the New York Times, and that surveys prove that most people don’t believe what they read in the news anyway. The Justice Department also tries to get the news articles to be kept under seal in court papers. Christian characterizes the entire proceeding as “absurd.” The court refuses to admit the plaintiff’s claim that 48 states, including Connecticut, have laws protecting the privacy of library patrons, but does admit into evidence the claims by Gonzales that there is no statutory justification for claims of privacy. In an attempt to get the gag order lifted before the Patriot Act reauthorization, the plaintiff’s attorneys make an emergency appeal directly to the Supreme Court, but are rebuffed. [Senate Judiciary Committee, 4/11/2007] In June 2006, Nocek tells a reporter, “Imagine the government came to you with an order demanding that you compromise your professional and personal principles. Imagine then being permanently gagged from speaking to your friends, your family or your colleagues about this wrenching experience.… Under the Patriot Act, the FBI demanded Internet and library records without showing any evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing to a court of law. We were barred from speaking to anyone about the matter and we were even taking a risk by consulting with lawyers.” [Interview: George Christian, 6/2/2006]
Gag Order Lifted, Case Dropped - Weeks after President Bush signs into law the Patriot Act reauthorization (see March 9, 2006), the FBI voluntarily lifts the gag order without waiting for a court order. The agency then tries to get the original ruling against the gag order vacated, an attempt that the appeals court refuses. The appellate judges are clearly disturbed by the breadth of the NSL gag provisions; one appellate judge writes, “A ban on speech and a shroud of secrecy in perpetuity are antithetical to democratic concepts and do not fit comfortably with the fundamental rights guaranteed American citizens… Unending secrecy of actions taken by government officials may also serve as a cover for possible official misconduct and/or incompetence.” The appeals court refers the case back to district court, allowing the original opinion to stand. Weeks later, the FBI withdraws its NSL, saying that it no longer needs the information it originally requested. Christian later testifies, “In doing so, they removed the Patriot Act from the danger of court review.” Christian later says that he believes the entire procedure was managed as an attempt to prevent the case from becoming public knowledge before Congress could vote on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. [Senate Judiciary Committee, 4/11/2007]

Entity Tags: Peter Chase, Senate Judiciary Committee, National Security Letters, US Department of Justice, Library Connection, Inc., George Christian, George W. Bush, American Civil Liberties Union, Barbara Bailey, Connecticut Four, Alberto R. Gonzales, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kevin O’Conner

Category Tags: Court Verdicts, Freedom of Speech, Privacy, Impositions on Rights and Freedoms, Government Acting in Secret, Government Classification, National Security Letters, Other Surveillance
August 17, 2006: Judge Finds NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Program Unconstitutional
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Federal district court judge Anna Diggs Taylor rules that the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program (see Early 2002) is unconstitutional and orders it ended. She amends her ruling to allow the program to continue while the Justice Department appeals her decision. The decision is a result of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil liberties groups. Taylor rules that the NSA program violates US citizens’ rights to privacy and free speech, the Constitutional separation of powers among the three branches of government, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (see 1978). Taylor writes, “It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all ‘inherent powers’ must derive from that Constitution.” [Verdict in ACLU et al v. NSA et al, 8/17/2006 pdf file; Washington Post, 8/18/2006] The program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III,” Taylor writes, and adds, “[T]he president of the United States…has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders.” [CNN, 8/17/2006]
Judge Lets One Portion Stand - Taylor rejects one part of the lawsuit that seeks information about the NSA’s data mining program (see October 2001), accepting the government’s argument that to allow that portion of the case to proceed would reveal state secrets. Other lawsuits challenging the program are still pending. Some legal scholars regard Taylor’s decision as poorly reasoned: national security law specialist Bobby Chesney says, “Regardless of what your position is on the merits of the issue, there’s no question that it’s a poorly reasoned decision. The opinion kind of reads like an outline of possible grounds to strike down the program, without analysis to fill it in.” The White House and its Republican supporters quickly attack Taylor, who was appointed to the bench by then-president Jimmy Carter, as a “liberal judge” who is trying to advance the agenda of Congressional Democrats and “weaken national security.” For instance, Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) says that halting the program “would hamper our ability to foil terrorist plots.” [Washington Post, 8/18/2006]
Democrats, Civil Libertarians Celebrate Ruling - But Democrats defend the ruling. For instance, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) says the ruling provides a much-needed check on the unfettered power of the Bush White House. “[N]o one is above the law,” says Kerry. [Washington Post, 8/18/2006] Lawyers for some of the other cases against the NSA and the Bush administration laud the decision as giving them vital legal backing for their own court proceedings. “We now have a ruling on the books that upholds what we’ve been saying all along: that this wiretapping program violates the Constitution,” says Kevin Bankston, who represents the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in its class-action case against AT&T for its role in the NSA’s surveillance program (see January 31, 2006). [Washington Post, 8/18/2006] Legal expert and liberal commentator Glenn Greenwald writes that Taylor’s ruling “does not, of course, prohibit eavesdropping on terrorists; it merely prohibits illegal eavesdropping in violation of FISA. Thus, even under the court’s order, the Bush administration is free to continue to do all the eavesdropping on terrorists it wants to do. It just has to cease doing so using its own secretive parameters, and instead do so with the oversight of the FISA court—just as all administrations have done since 1978, just as the law requires, and just as it did very recently when using surveillance with regard to the UK terror plot. Eavesdropping on terrorists can continue in full force. But it must comply with the law.” Greenwald writes, “[T]he political significance of this decision cannot be denied. The first federal court ever to rule on the administration’s NSA program has ruled that it violates the constitutional rights of Americans in several respects, and that it violates criminal law. And in so holding, the court eloquently and powerfully rejected the Bush administration’s claims of unchecked executive power in the area of national security.” [Salon, 8/17/2006]

Entity Tags: Peter Hoekstra, Kevin Bankston, Mike DeWine, US Department of Justice, John Kerry, National Security Agency, Glenn Greenwald, James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr., Anna Diggs Taylor, AT&T, American Civil Liberties Union, Alberto R. Gonzales, George W. Bush, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Bobby Chesney

Category Tags: Court Verdicts, Expansion of Presidential Power, Freedom of Speech, Privacy, Impositions on Rights and Freedoms, Government Acting in Secret, Government Classification, NSA Wiretapping
January 17, 2007: Gonzales Says Right of Habeas Corpus not Protected by Constitution
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Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stuns Senate Judiciary Committee questioners when he says that the fundamental right of habeas corpus, the right for an accused person to go to court and challenge his or her imprisonment, is not protected by the Constitution. Gonzales, in response to questions by Arlen Specter (R-PA), says: “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas.… There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There’s a prohibition against taking it away.” Specter is incredulous, asking how the Constitution could bar the suspension of a right that didn’t exist—a right, he notes, that was first recognized in medieval England as protection against the king’s power to send subjects to royal dungeons. Gonzales does say that habeas corpus is “one of our most cherished rights,” and admits that Congress has protected that right. But Gonzales refuses to acknowledge that the Constitution itself protects the right. If the Constitution does not, then Congress would be able to limit or nullify habeas corpus rights if it so chooses. Congress has not passed such an all-encompassing law yet, but it has passed a law, the Military Commissions Act, that strips the courts of any authority to hear habeas corpus suits filed by “enemy combatants.”
Experts Fear Government Encroachment on Civil Liberties - But constitutional experts on both the left and the right say that Gonzales’s position implies a far broader power. Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor who has frequently criticized the Bush administration, says: “This is the key protection that people have if they’re held in violation of the law. If there’s no habeas corpus, and if the government wants to pick you or me off the street and hold us indefinitely, how do we get our release?” Former Reagan Justice Department official Douglas Kmiec agrees. If Gonzales’s view prevails, Kmiec says, “one of the basic protections of human liberty against the powers of the state would be embarrassingly absent from our constitutional system.” A Justice Department spokesman says that Gonzales is only noting the absence of a specific constitutional guarantee for habeas corpus, and acknowledges that the Supreme Court has declared “the Constitution protects [habeas corpus] as it existed at common law” in England. These rights, the spokesman says, do not apply to foreigners held as enemy combatants. [San Francisco Chronicle, 1/24/2007]
Habeas Protected in Constitution - The right of habeas corpus is clear in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” [Think Progress, 1/19/2007]
Expansion of Presidential Powers - Former Reagan Justice Department attorney Bruce Fein says that Gonzales’s stance on habeas corpus is an underpinning of the Bush administration’s attempt to advocate the “unitary executive” theory of presidential power. Gonzales’s statements contain a message: “Congress doesn’t have to let [judges] decide national security matters. It’s part of an attempt to create the idea that during conflicts, the three branches of government collapse into one, and it is the president.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 1/24/2007]

Entity Tags: Senate Judiciary Committee, Military Commissions Act, George W. Bush, Patrick Joseph Leahy, Erwin Chemerinsky, Central Intelligence Agency, Alberto R. Gonzales, Arlen Specter, Douglas Kmiec, Bush administration, Bruce Fein

Category Tags: Expansion of Presidential Power, Freedom of Speech, Privacy, Impositions on Rights and Freedoms
September 6, 2007: ’Improper Paste’ Justifies Police Dispersal of Antiwar Press Conference?
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A peaceful antiwar press conference and demonstration in Lafayette Square near the White House is broken up by a phalanx of mounted police officers, who charge the podium, forcibly disperse the participants, and arrest three people on unspecified charges. “The police suppressed the press conference,” says Brian Becker, national organizer for the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) antiwar coalition organization. “In the middle of the speeches, they grabbed the podium…. Then, mounted police charged the media present to disperse them.” The crowd, of some twenty journalists and four or five protesters, “scatter in terror,” according to a journalist at the scene. Three people are arrested: Tina Richards, whose son served two tours of duty in Iraq; Adam Kokesh, a leader of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW); and ANSWER organizer lawyer Ian Thompson. The small press conference was designed to help prepare for a much larger antiwar demonstration scheduled for September 15. The conference and demonstration may have been broken up over an issue of paste. In August, Washington, DC authorities threatened ANSWER with a $10,000 fine if it didn’t remove posters it had put up throughout the city announcing the September 15 march. The reason: ANSWER used an adhesive that doesn’t meet city regulations. Becker later says that the organizers are actually demonstrating to journalists that the paste they use conforms to city regulations when the police charge. Becker says, “At our demonstration today we were showing the media that the paste we use conforms to the rules. One of our activists was making a speech when the police barged in and grabbed the podium. At that point, Tina Richards started to put up a poster, so they arrested her and two others.” Becker calls the police dispersal a “strategy of suppression” against antiwar demonstrators. ANSWER’s protest is scheduled to coincide with the release of a much-anticipated report on Iraq by US military commander General David Petraeus. [Agence France-Presse, 9/6/2007]

Entity Tags: Tina Richards, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, Adam Kokesh, Brian Becker, David Petraeus, Ian Thompson, Iraq Veterans Against the War

Category Tags: Freedom of Speech, Media Freedoms, Impositions on Rights and Freedoms

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=civilliberties&civilliberties_privacy=civilliberties_freedom_of_speech

[PCR on 'Protect America Act']

More Lies From the Jews

by Paul Craig Roberts

President George W. Bush and his director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, are telling the American people that an unaccountable executive branch is necessary for their protection. Without the Protect America Act, Bush and McConnell claim, the executive branch will not be able to spy on terrorists, and we will all be blown up. Terrorists can only be stopped, Bush says, if Bush has the right to spy on everyone without any oversight by courts.

The fight over the Protect America Act has everything to do with our safety, only not in the way that Bush and McConnell assert.

Bush says the Democrats have put "our country more in danger of an attack" by letting the Protect America Act lapse. This claim is nonsense. The 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives the executive branch all the power it needs to spy on terrorists.

The choice between FISA and the Protect America Act has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, at least not from foreign terrorists. Bush and his Jews object to FISA, because the law requires Bush to obtain warrants from a FISA court. Warrants mean that Bush is accountable. Bush and his Jews argue that accountability is an infringement on the power of the president.

To escape accountability, the Jewish Party came up with the Protect America Act. This act eliminates Bush’s accountability to judges and gives the telecom companies immunity from the felonies they committed by acquiescing in Bush’s illegal spying.

Bush began violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in October 2001 when he spied on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court.

Bush pressured telecom companies to break the law in order to enable his illegal spying. In court documents, Joseph P. Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications International, states that his firm was approached more than six months before the September 11, 2001, attacks and asked to participate in a spying operation that Qwest believed to be illegal. When Qwest refused, the Bush administration withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nacchio himself was subsequently indicted for insider trading, sending the message to all telecom companies to cooperate with the Bush regime or else.

Bush has not been held accountable for the felonies he committed and for leading telecom companies into a life of crime.

As the lawmakers who gave us FISA understood, spying on people without warrants lets a political party collect dirt on its adversaries with which to blackmail them. As Bush illegally spied a long time before word of it got out, blackmail might be the reason the Democrats have ignored their congressional election mandate and have not put a stop to Bush’s illegal wars and unconstitutional police state measures.

Perhaps the Democrats have finally caught on that they cannot function as a political party as long as they continue to permit Bush to spy on them. For one reason or another, they have let the Orwellian-named Protect America Act expire.

With the Protect America Act, Bush and his Jews are trying to establish the independence of the executive branch from statutory law and the Constitution. The FISA law means that the president is accountable to federal judges for warrants. Bush and the Jewish Republicans are striving to make the president independent of all accountability. The Jews insist that the leader knows best and can tolerate no interference from the law, the judiciary, the Congress, or the Constitution, and certainly not from the American people who, the Jews tell us, won’t be safe unless Bush is very powerful.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison saw it differently. The American people cannot be safe unless the president is accountable and under many restraints.

Pray that the Democrats have caught on that they cannot give the executive branch unaccountable powers to spy and still have grounds on which to refuse the executive branch unaccountable powers elsewhere.

Republicans have used the "war on terror" to create an unaccountable executive. To prevent the presidency from becoming a dictatorial office, it is crucial that Congress cease acquiescing in Bush’s grab for powers. As the Founding Fathers warned us, the terrorists we have to fear are the ones in power in Washington.

The al Qaeda terrorists, with whom Bush has been frightening us, have no power to destroy our liberties. Compared to the loss of liberty, a terrorist attack is nothing.

Meanwhile, Bush, the beneficiary of two stolen elections, has urged Zimbabwe to hold a fair election. America gets away with its hypocrisy because no one in our government has enough shame to blush.

States Skirmish Over 'Anti-Hate' Laws
By Harmony Grant
2-27-8

Next month, former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and Foundation for Moral Law attorneys will continue to challenge Pennsylvania's state hate law. In 2004, eleven Christians were shocked to find themselves in jail as hate criminals (http://christiannewswire.com/news/684985759.html).

They were arrested for peacefully protesting a gay pride parade. Christians across America were justly horrified. Bill O'Reilly and others featured the story of persecution in "the land of the free." The Pennsylvania Commonwealth dismissed criminal charges against the Christians. The proactive Christians then sued the governor and legislative leaders, arguing that the hate laws were not passed in a Constitutional way in 2002. They won.

Today the Commonwealth is appealing to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, trying to keep special legal protection for privileged groups, including homosexuals. For decades, states and nations have been complicating their legal systems with such "anti-hate" statutes. These laws stiffen punishment for crimes motivated by "bias" or "hate." They lead to speech restrictions and end up criminalizing legitimate criticism, especially from Christians and conservatives. For example, in Canada and now in the California public school system, it becomes illegal to express our "fundamentalist" bias against anal, same-sex intercourse or to negatively point out that homosexuals have higher AIDS rates. (See, How the Bible Became 'Hate Speech' in California (http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/howbiblebecamehate.htm)) Bias crime laws are used to silence all criticism-legitimate, thoughtful, or venomous, it doesn't matter-of protected social groups.

Christians don't have such protection. While the Philadelphia Commonwealth is trying to save homosexuals' special privileges, another group of Pennsylvanians-Catholics-aren't feeling the love. A Catholic church was recently vandalized. Thugs defaced a statue of Mary and the church's front doors with words, "God is dead" and "[Obscenity] Jesus." They planted a fake pipe bomb so convincing a bomb squad was called in.

But if they're caught, they won't be prosecuted for a hate crime-just "institutional vandalism." Philly columnist J. D. Mullane wrote about this crime (http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/219-02212008-1491322.html), which he notes was hardly motivated by love. But that's the unequal treatment that results from hate crime laws. We argue that no one should benefit from the increased punishments and complex investigations of hate crime laws. No crime should carry a heavier sentence based on why it's committed. But it's worth pointing out that as various groups are added to hate crime statutes, conservative Christians are not among them.

While advocates battle in Pennsylvania, <>the fight over hate laws also continues in Georgia (http://www.sovo.com/2008/2-8/news/localnews/8111.cfm). Georgia is one of five states without a hate crimes law. This means it is one of five remaining states with a simple, equal-to-all legal system that punishes a murder or beating as a murder or beating, no more or less. Georgia's state laws promise to punish your assailant whether you wear a drag queen's stilettos or a pastor's oxfords. Their wise Majority Whip recently advocated a bill calling hate laws repugnant, as a dike against militant homosexual advocates who want a hate law. His bill said that "encouraging police to treat victims differently depending on whether they fit into a special status created by statute causes victims of similar crimes to be treated disparately, a concept repugnant to the Georgia and United States constitutions." He's so right. But his bill was defeated. Things are in a kind of stalemate. Last year, a Georgian bill to define hate crimes never made it to the Senate floor. But that bill was reintroduced and stands a chance of passage this year.

Meanwhile, hate crime laws are also debated in other states. In Massachusetts, pending legislation will add transgender people to hate crimes protected status. Maryland (http://www.wmdt.com/topstory/displaystory.asp?id=8004) lawmakers seek to include the homeless under hate crime statutes. A local news source explains (http://www.wtop.com/?nid=712&sid=1349021), "Under the bill, someone who commits crimes --including defacing private property or murder-- because someone is homeless, could be charged separately for committing a hate crime (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030600942.html)."Maine already did that last year. A federal bill, now pending, wants to do the same.

I'm repeating myself for the fifteenth time-but hate laws are no good because they create special categories of victims; they criminalize bias, thoughts and beliefs not actions; they complicate law enforcement; they end up criminalizing speech; and they confuse the process of law enforcement which should be equal for all people, for all crimes, at all times.

But there's not a lot of critical thought in the Maryland halls of justice (http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=71577), apparently. Their Senate passed the bill by a whopping vote of 44-4.

One of the four senators with brains (David Brinkley, who deserves to be named) said: "Someone murders someone, they murder someone, there shouldn't be a separate category for it. If they beat someone up, assault and battery is assault and battery. And if the rules are too lenient for some, then let's change them up for all."

Apparently this sunlit logic can't penetrate the dense clouds of identity politics and victim lobbies, led mostly by Jewish groups such as the freedom-hating Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. If that 44-4 majority support of hate crime laws is even halfway mirrored at the federal level, we stand little chance of defeating a national hate crime law. Especially under a liberal President.

This story says the homeless bill (http://www.wtop.com/?nid=712&sid=1349021) only succeeded because of advocates for the homeless who championed it. This is what happens with hate crime laws: They pass because they have ardent minority defenders, and the silent majority doesn't know enough to care. If Americans truly understood hate crime laws, these laws wouldn't stand a chance. But evil laws can pass when small groups lobby hard and no one else really speaks up. When the majority realizes its doom, it's too late. Just look at the neighbors.

Canadians are slowly waking up to the reality of hate speech laws, as conservative commentators face jail time for criticizing Islam. Canadian National Post blogger Jonathan Kay openly admits that Jews created these speech codes, which are now being used to punish even mainstream figures like Mark Steyn.
"Ironically (http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/02/23/158480.aspx)," he says, "the censorship regime that well-meaning Jewish intellectuals helped put in place to fight anti-Semitism a generation ago is now being applied to prosecute the pundits blowing the whistle on the one truly genuine threat that Jews are facing worldwide: militant Islam."

This quotation matters not because it's wholly true (Were Jewish intellectuals really well-meaning? Is militant Islam really the greatest threat, not Jews' anti-Semitism-generating evil leaders?). It matters because this pundit casually assigns blame for increasingly unpopular laws to Jews-and that's been taboo for a couple decades.

Maybe the tides can shift. Maybe more Americans can learn that hate crime laws pose the single greatest threat to our domestic freedoms, and this threat isn't going away.

For that to happen, more people need to talk truth about hate crime laws-what they are, why they're wrong, and also who's writing them. The ADL is a strong force. Far too many Christian leaders are afraid to criticize hate laws because they will be smeared as "anti-Semites," especially if they point out the ADL as architects. But that's just simple reality. This fight is here to stay. Americans need to keep fighting. The people who want to take away freedom aren't taking a nap.

~~~~~~~~~~

Harmony Grant writes and edits for National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog group.

Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they have saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians:

http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp>http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp


Learn how ADL took away free speech in Canada and wants to steal it now in the U.S. Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's Hate Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com. Purchase this gripping documentary to show at church. Order online at http://www.truthtellers.org/ for $24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address below.

TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this subject. Call (503) 631-3808.

NATIONAL PRAYER NETWORK, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas, OR 97015

http://www.truthtellers.org/

HOW THE BIBLE BECAME 'HATE SPEECH' IN CALIFORNIA

By Rev. Ted Pike
30 Oct 07


Recently, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law S.B. 777, outlawing Biblical criticism of homosexuality in CA public schools (See, California 'Mom,' 'Dad' ban garners international scorn). California 's Christians face the alternatives of withdrawing their children to private education or watching them progressively corrupted by an educational system that demonizes their religious bias against sodomy.

This ban on the Bible is not a recent capricious edict from Sacramento liberals or the Republican "Terminator" Governor Schwarzenegger. It's the result of massive social engineering throughout the past half century but begun in earnest in 1985 by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. ADL is architect of "anti-bias" educational programs worldwide. Here's how this Jewish activist group helped make it criminal to criticize sodomy in California --and intends to do so everywhere.

Re-Defining Hate

America was founded on tolerance--as a place where people of widely diverse races, religions, and creeds could follow their convictions free from persecution. But America 's founders hardly believed that vice should be tolerated or that it's wrong to be prejudiced against it! Early American social ethics (as taught in homes, schools and churches) said the opposite: Families, social groups and even government should encourage "bias" against all forms of vice. These include robbery, graft, prostitution, etc. and that vice so unnatural that for thousands of years it was virtually unmentionable--sodomy.

Yet, in the early 1980s, Jewish-dominated media determined to create as much damage as possible from the sixties' sexual revolution (which they promoted). I vividly remember how, more than ever before, they encouraged not just the drug culture, abortion and fornication but especially "gay rights." In fact, sodomy is being pushed down the throats of Christian America until it will soon become criminal not to be a homosexual but a Christian! (See, Judaism and Homosexuality: A Marriage Made in Hell and Jews Confirm Big Media Is Jewish)

In league with the Jewish media, ADL's social re-engineering of America and the world has been largely accomplished through its massive "World of Difference" educational program. In 1985, ADL began an educational thrust that encompassed all levels of public education, government, corporations, and social organizations. ADL relentlessly taught millions that we are entitled to no bias against race, religion, or “sexual orientation.” All bias, ADL teaches, is very bad. No one is entitled to claim that he, his religion, or sexual orientation is right and others wrong. "When we convince ourselves that our way is the "right way," we are more likely to strike out at those who are different. In fact, intolerance of differences is at the roots of most violence." (http://www.adl.org/guide/default.asp)

ADL teaches that, for practical purposes, bias and "hate" are the same. Biblical bias expressed against homosexuality constitutes "harassment" and “verbal violence,” the precursor of hate-motivated violence (hate crimes).

First Step: Make Bias Socially Taboo

Wanting to eventually criminalize bias against homosexuality, ADL first had to make it a violation of social norms. Since 1985, "more than 375,000 elementary and secondary school teachers, responsible for nearly 12 million students," have participated in ADL's "World of Difference" program. These included anti-bias programs beginning as early as age 3-5. Lesson formats such as "I Belong to Many Groups" foster global--not religious or national--loyalties in young people.

ADL sensitivity training programs in corporate America taught business owners to defer to homosexuals as almost a protected species in regard to hiring or firing. After decades of conditioning, American business has been prepared for ADL's workplace bias crime laws on the federal and state level. (This includes ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, now before Congress.)

ADL also teaches law enforcement at all levels how to recognize and report bias crimes. It conditioned US Justice Department officials, FBI, and all police departments to believe that verbal “intimidation” of homosexuals is virtually a hate crime and that “gay bashing” may well be traceable to evangelical pulpits.

The Fruits of ADL's Labors

In the 1980s, ADL led countless young people away from Christians' "homophobic" bias against homosexuality. They are now the teachers, police officers, jurists, and administrators who guide America 's public policy. As exists in Canada and now in California , this policy increasingly empowers legislative provision for stiff protection of homosexuals as beleaguered victims of Christian intolerance.

For 23 years, ADL has cultivated, watered and fertilized the moral and cultural soil of America toward acceptance of homosexuality. This contradicts moral standards that prevailed for at least the last 5,000 years.

So it was no surprise when the first openly lesbian member of California 's state assembly, Sheila Koehl, submitted a bill banning criticism of homosexuality in the public school systems. Gov. Schwarzenegger then enshrined on the legislative level a program of moral transformation begun more than 20 years earlier by ADL.

Yet ADL remains unexposed, unidentified, and uncriticized by Christian evangelicals and their leaders. Why the silence? ADL is 100% Jewish. The majority of evangelicals believe that God will "curse" the nation or person who criticizes Jews. (Gen. 12:3) Their leaders, who are becoming more aware of ADL origins of hate laws and organized anti-Christianity, fear they will be cursed by a mass exodus of support if they criticize God's chosen people.

Yet, if the church remains silent concerning those who invented and foment “anti-bias” laws, there is little to ultimately restrain passage of a virtual epidemic of hate laws identical to S.B. 777. Like poisonous mushrooms sprouting in profusion after extended rain, such laws will crop up in state and federal capitals and dominate the moral and political landscape, not only in America but throughout the world.

Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.

Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they have saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians: http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp.

http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/howbiblebecamehate.htm

The growth has been explosive, with our database growing from 1 (Stormfront) at the time of the bombing of the Alfred Murrah building on April 19, 1995, to over 7,000 today.
Holy shit - they bombed the Alfred Murrah building to get Stormfluff?:rolleyes: One would think those guys would be slightly more hard-core if that were really the case ...:p

'Asian hate' writer suspended

By Heath Urie, Daily Camera

February 27, 2008


http://media.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/content/img/photos/2008/02/28/022808cu_t220.jpg
Max Karson, who wrote the controversial column, listens to the rally proceedings.

http://media.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/content/img/photos/2008/02/28/436134962_t220.jpg
CU students hold hands while singing We Shall Overcome during Wednesday's protest rally.

http://media.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/content/img/photos/2008/02/28/436134958_t220.jpg
Torey Gannon, left, and Victor Hsu listen to speeches condemning an opinion column.

BOULDER — The author of an opinion column that garnered national attention for saying Asians "hate us all" and should be hated back was suspended from CU's Campus Press newspaper staff Wednesday.

"Max Karson's duties with the Campus Press have been suspended pending a restructuring of the opinions section," according to a statement posted on the student paper's Web site Wednesday.

Karson ignited a firestorm last week when his piece titled "If it's war the Asians want ... It's war they'll get," infuriated some students and past members of the Campus Press staff who said the piece was inflammatory and a failed attempt at satire.

The statement goes on to say that the publication's editors are in the process of organizing an "open, public forum to address diversity sensitivity in our news coverage" and are rewriting their ethics policy.

The announcement came the same day university officials said they're close to announcing major changes in the way the paper is operated and overseen.

Faculty members within the CU School of Journalism and Mass Communication met behind closed doors for more than two hours Wednesday to discuss how to best change the management structure of the Campus Press, a class that operates within the school, so that offensive content doesn't get published.

The Campus Press already has agreed to establish a Student Diversity Advisory Board, invite student organizations to meet face-to-face with the editors, adopt an "opinions policy," schedule a series of diversity-awareness workshops for the entire staff and host a series of workshops for opinion writing and editing.

More than a dozen student members of the Campus Press sat outside the faculty meeting room Wednesday waiting to hear what decisions were made about the fate of the publication, but no announcement was made when the group emerged.

Paul Voakes, dean of the journalism school, did release a statement from the faculty group that served equally as an apology.

"This (column) is the antithesis of what we're trying to teach in our school," Voakes said. "The faculty and I take responsibility for the offense that the Campus Press obviously has caused."

He called Karson's column an "editorial mistake" that should have been caught.

Meanwhile, Karson's column continued to spark anger Wednesday.

Boulder City Manager Frank Bruno released a statement saying, "Discrimination is not what Boulder is about."

Also, about 150 students gathered on the University Memorial Center south plaza for a rally and demonstration against the Campus Press.

Chris Choe, a 21-year-old senior and member of the Korean American Students at Boulder group who led the rally, said he hopes the university's administration fundamentally changes how content is reviewed before it's published by the class.

"I want to see responsibility," Choe said. "I want to see that this isn't being marginalized."

Later, the group migrated to a large auditorium on the campus for a forum among Campus Press representatives, CU officials and student leaders.

Federal mediators brought in by student organizers from the U.S. Department of Justice moderated the public meeting, in which students continued to call for changes at the online student paper and in which Campus Press editors offered apologies for any pain that Karson's column caused.

"The mistake that I made when I published the article was thinking that my reactions spoke for everyone," Editor-in-Chief Cassie Hewlings, who sat somberly through the meeting, told the crowd. "I am so incredibly sorry. I didn't want to hurt anyone.

"I've learned more this past week than I have my whole 22 years of life."

EARLIER STORY

Student leaders at the University of Colorado on Wednesday demanded the resignations of the online student newspaper editor and a faculty adviser for publishing a column that has created a furor among Asian Americans and other minority students.

A diverse audience of nearly 200 people attended a rally outside University Memorial Center before meeting with CU-Boulder Chancellor Bud Peterson.

The students carried signs that read "Stop the Hate" and "Responsible Journalism Now."

Several rejected the idea that the Feb. 18 column - written by student Max Karson - was meant as a satire and instead called it hate speech. It was titled "If it's war the Asians want . . . It's war they'll get."

The students also were upset about a column published a day earlier titled "No hablo Ingles," or "I don't speak English."

"The editors at the Campus Press should rename that opinion section as 'racist viewpoints,' said David Chiu, a CU senior. "Once again, the reputation at CU has been tarnished. The publication of these articles embodies institutional racism."

He called for the resignation of Cassie Hewlings, Campus Press editor-in-chief, and faculty adviser Amy Herdy.

Both Hewlings and Herdy apologized directly to the audience after they were prompted by the student government's diversity director.

"I am sorry, it was no one's intent to be hurtful," said Herdy, who noted that the paper also had published an apology.

When someone asked Hewlings what she was apologizing for, she replied, "I am so incredibly sorry. I didn't want to hurt anybody. . . . It was a mistake for me not to see how more people would take this. I've learned more in this last week than I have in my entire 22 years of life."

After the meeting, Hewlings said she did not intend to resign.

Charles Gilford III, one of the three leaders of the CU student government, said he respects freedom of speech but that it was no excuse for publishing the column.

"You have no right to isolate and marginalize certain people," he said. "You have no right to attack a member of our family, and that's what's happened."

Gilford suggested that campus officials evaluate the column in light of federal anti-discrimination laws.

Peterson listened and took notes during the meeting.

At the end of the 90-minute session, he said he would direct students and staff to examine if anyone's civil rights had been violated. He noted that he has directed the journalism department's chairman to re-evaluate the structure and supervision of the Campus Press. He also vowed to re-examine some measures that the campus promised to take two years ago after another student leader received a racially charged death threat.

--John Ensslin, The Rocky

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/feb/27/asian-hate-column-sparks-demonstration/

[Under jewish dictatorship, the U.S. bans non-criminals for saying things jews don't want Americans to hear.]

Sydney - A Swiss-born Muslim scholar who is banned from visiting the United States will be the keynote speaker at a government-funded conference in Australia next week. Government spokesman Laurie Fergusen on Saturday defended the decision to fete Oxford University's Professor Tariq Ramadan, describing the row over his visit as "a storm in a teacup."

The US government has accused Ramadan of providing material support for terrorism.

Amir Ali, who served on the previous government's advisory panel on integrating Muslim Australians, berated Brisbane's Griffith University for hosting a speaker he said tailored his talks to different audiences, alternately soothing and then inciting.

"It seems that these people speak in different languages to different audiences and they don't convey the same message," Ali said.

The Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council said Ramadan was "skilled at projecting moderation to Western audiences while engaging in apologetics for various forms of Islamist extremism."

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/189193,controversial-muslim-scholar-feted-in-australia.html


Scholar banned by US to speak here

Richard Kerbaj | March 01, 2008

CONTROVERSIAL Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, who was refused entry into the US over alleged links to terror networks, is due to deliver a lecture on Islam at a conference sponsored by the Queensland Government on Monday.

Professor Ramadan - whose grandfather Hassan al-Banna founded one of the world's most radical Islamist movements, the Muslim Brotherhood, in 1928 - will be introduced by federal Labor Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs Laurie Ferguson at the Griffith University event, which has drawn $50,000 worth of sponsorship from the Bligh Government.

Muslim and Jewish leaders yesterday expressed concern about Professor Ramadan's second visit to Australia from Europe since 2004, with a former Howard government adviser on Islam, Ameer Ali, urging national security authorities to keep him under close surveillance.

But Mr Ferguson dismissed the US Government's decision to block Professor Ramadan's entry into the country in 2004 - where he was due to take up a lecturing post at Notre Dame University in Indiana - as an "over the top" measure.

Dr Ali said it was a common problem among Arabic scholars such as Professor Ramadan to alter their messages for different audiences.

"It appears that these people speak in different languages to different audiences and they don't convey the same message," he said.

"If he's allowed to go and mix with the local community, then they (authorities) have to monitor what he is saying."

Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein also attacked the Swiss-born Professor Ramadan, who lives in Europe, for pandering to Islamic extremists.

"Tariq Ramadan is a problematic figure skilled at projecting moderation to Western audiences, while engaging in apologetics for various forms of Islamist extremism, including terrorist attacks and conspiracy theories about 9/11," he said.

However, Mr Ferguson defended the right of Professor Ramadan, an Oxford University professor of Islamic studies who was named one of the 21st century's great innovators by Time magazine, to speak at the conference in Brisbane.

"You have people with fairly minimal criminal records who aren't allowed in the US," he told The Weekend Australian yesterday.

"I think in some areas America's criteria is a bit over the top ... but there's probably areas where America has got it right and Australia has got it wrong."

Asked if he thought Australia had got it wrong in this instance, he said: "No, I don't."

The US Government found Professor Ramadan donated $940 to two humanitarian foundations in France and Switzerland, which gave money to Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. The academic, who lectured in the US during the Clinton administration and has advised the British Labour Government and Scotland Yard, defended his donations in The Washington Post in 2006.

"My donations were made between December 1998 and July 2002, and the United States did not blacklist the charities until 2003," he wrote. "How should I reasonably have known of their activities before the US Government itself knew?"

Professor Ramadan was refused entry into France in 1995 after he was accused of having links to an Algerian Islamist, but the ban was lifted the following year. He was also banned by Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Egypt "after he suggested a moratorium on Sharia law, in particular corporal punishment, stonings and beheadings", according to the Guardian newspaper.

He has been accused of playing down terrorist campaigns, including the September 11 attacks and the 2005 London bombings, as "interventions". Security sources have told The Weekend Australian Professor Ramadan will remain under close surveillance.

His visit comes a year after Canadian-born Muslim cleric Bilal Philips was refused entry into Australia to headline a Melbourne conference on Islam after the US Government named him an "un-indicted co-conspirator" in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in New York, which killed six and injured 1000.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23300077-31477,00.html

[Marianne Kearney-Brown]

Quaker teacher fired for changing loyalty oath

Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer

California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job because she inserted the word "nonviolently" in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form.

Marianne Kearney-Brown, a Quaker and graduate student who began teaching remedial math to undergrads Jan. 7, lost her $700-a-month part-time job after refusing to sign an 87-word Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution that the state requires of elected officials and public employees.

"I don't think it was fair at all," said Kearney-Brown. "All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don't care if I meant it, and it didn't seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn't matter. Nothing."

A veteran public school math teacher who specializes in helping struggling students, Kearney-Brown, 50, had signed the oath before - but had modified it each time.

She signed the oath 15 years ago, when she taught eighth-grade math in Sonoma. And she signed it again when she began a 12-year stint in Vallejo high schools.

Each time, when asked to "swear (or affirm)" that she would "support and defend" the U.S. and state Constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Kearney-Brown inserted revisions: She wrote "nonviolently" in front of the word "support," crossed out "swear," and circled "affirm." All were to conform with her Quaker beliefs, she said.

The school districts always accepted her modifications, Kearney-Brown said.

But Cal State East Bay wouldn't, and she was fired on Thursday.

Modifying the oath "is very clearly not permissible," the university's attorney, Eunice Chan, said, citing various laws. "It's an unfortunate situation. If she'd just signed the oath, the campus would have been more than willing to continue her employment."

Modifying oaths is open to different legal interpretations. Without commenting on the specific situation, a spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Brown said that "as a general matter, oaths may be modified to conform with individual values." For example, court oaths may be modified so that atheists don't have to refer to a deity, said spokesman Gareth Lacy.

Kearney-Brown said she could not sign an oath that, to her, suggested she was agreeing to take up arms in defense of the country.

"I honor the Constitution, and I support the Constitution," she said. "But I want it on record that I defend it nonviolently."

The trouble began Jan. 17, a little more than a week after she started teaching at the Hayward campus. Filling out her paperwork, she drew an asterisk on the oath next to the word "defend." She wrote: "As long as it doesn't require violence."

The secretary showed the amended oath to a supervisor, who said it was unacceptable, Kearney-Brown recalled.

Shortly after receiving her first paycheck, Kearney-Brown was told to come back and sign the oath.

This time, Kearney-Brown inserted "nonviolently," crossed out "swear," and circled "affirm."

That's when the university sought legal advice.

"Based on the advice of counsel, we cannot permit attachments or addenda that are incompatible and inconsistent with the oath," the campus' human resources manager, JoAnne Hill, wrote to Kearney-Brown.

She cited a 1968 case called Smith vs. County Engineer of San Diego. In that suit, a state appellate court ruled that a man being considered for public employment could not amend the oath to declare: his "supreme allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ Whom Almighty God has appointed ruler of Nations, and expressing my dissent from the failure of the Constitution to recognize Christ and to acknowledge the Divine institution of civil government."

The court called it "a gratuitous injection of the applicant's religious beliefs into the governmental process."

But Hill said Kearney-Brown could sign the oath and add a separate note to her personal file that expressed her views.

Kearney-Brown declined. "To me it just wasn't the same. I take the oath seriously, and if I'm going to sign it, I'm going to do it nonviolently."

Then came the warning.

"Please understand that this issue needs to be resolved no later than Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, or you will not be allowed to continue to work for the university," Hill wrote.

The deadline was then extended to Wednesday and she was fired on Thursday.

"I was kind of stunned," said Kearney-Brown, who is pursuing her master's degree in math to earn the credentials to do exactly the job she is being fired from.

"I was born to do this," she said. "I teach developmental math, the lowest level. The kids who are conditionally accepted to the university. Give me the kids who hate math - that's what I want."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/02/29/BAQPVAUVO.DTL

[In which the ADL describes part of its online spy network, and the way the information it collects, legally and illegally, is used to deny the use of the First Amendment to anyone it targets as an enemy and labels a hater. Although the ADL has been convicted of multiple felonies related to its activities, it continues to be allowed to "train" FBI agents and local police to abrogate the rights of anyone the ADL targets under one of its hate categorizations.]

Letters to the Editor
Jewish Week February 25, 2008

To the Editor:
It is wrong to characterize "old-guard" Jewish groups as slow in recognizing new mutations of anti-Semitism on the Internet, or as being behind the curve when it comes to the proliferation of offensive material on YouTube, Facebook and other social-networking sites ("Anti-Semitism 2.0 Going Largely Unchallenged," Feb. 22).

The reality is that this issue has long been at the forefront of ADL's agenda in working to expose and counter hate. Our cutting edge Center on Extremism devotes a cadre of full-time researchers and analysts to monitoring blogs, social-networking sites,;[n] ews and information sites, and anti-Semitic and racist Web sites. We've exposed sites by and for white supremacists, educated law enforcement about terrorist use of steganography (secret communications woven into the fabric of innocuous Web sites) and cryptography, and intercepted real-time discussions among our nation's most virulent bigots. Our efforts in monitoring hate sites have had significant results, including convictions.

Just as there has been no one antidote to anti-Semitism over the centuries, there is no one method for stopping its proliferation on the Web. That is why ADL is engaged in a multi-pronged approach. We devote substantial resources to train law enforcement on extremists' use of the Internet; work with major Internet service providers to remove anti-Semitic and racist material; and create curricula for educators to help combat cyberbullying. Our expertise is relied upon not just in this country, but globally, and we are the United States' representative on the International Network Against Cyberhate.
For 95 years ADL has been vigilant in the fight against anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred and bigotry. We are proud to be the "old guard" and even prouder to be "on guard" with state-of-the-art research, analysis and response to each disturbing new trend in cyberspace.

Sincerely,

The Anti-Defamation League
http://www.adl.org/media_watch/newspapers/20080225-Jewish+Week.htm

http://vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=738147&postcount=13

The law vs. online hate speech
Anonymous bullies must be held accountable.
By Andrew Keen

March 11, 2008

The cartoon isn't as amusing as it once was. "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog," one Web-surfing canine barked to another in that 1993 classic from the New Yorker. Back then, of course, at the innocent dawn of the Internet Age, the idea that we might all be anonymous on the Web promised infinite intellectual freedom. Unfortunately, however, that promise hasn't been realized. Today, too many anonymous Internet users are posting hateful content about their neighbors, classmates, and co-workers.

This isn't illegal, of course, because online speech – anonymous or otherwise – is protected by the First Amendment and by the Supreme Court's much-cited 1995 McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission ruling protecting anonymous speech. But is today's law adequately protecting us? What happens, for example, when anonymous Internet critics go beyond rude and irremediably blacken the reputations of innocent citizens or cause them harm? Should there be legal consequences?

The most notorious case is the cyber-bullying of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old girl from a St. Louis suburb. In 2006, Megan, a troubled, overweight adolescent, became embroiled in an intense, six-week online friendship with "Josh Evans" on MySpace. After "Josh" turned against Megan and posted a comment that, "The world would be better place without you," the girl hanged herself. Later, when it became known that the fictitious Josh Evans was Lori Drew, a neighbor and mother of a girl with whom Megan had argued, there were calls for criminal prosecution. But the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department didn't charge Ms. Drew.

Fortunately, Megan's suicide is making officials get more serious about holding anonymous Internet users accountable. Online free speech fundamentalists, no doubt, would cite the McIntyre ruling in any defense. Yet that was a ruling focusing on anonymous "political speech"; Justice John Paul Stevens's opinion for the court cited the example of the Federalist Papers, originally published under pseudonyms, as proof that anonymity represents a "shield from the tyranny of the majority" and is, therefore, vital to a free society. But such a defense doesn't work for cases like the Meier suicide, in which the anonymous speech was anything but political.

The Web 2.0 revolution in self-published content is making the already tangled legal debate around anonymity even harder to unravel. Take the case of a couple of female Yale Law School students whose reputations have been sullied on an online bulletin board called AutoAdmit. The plaintiffs had to drop Anthony Ciolli, the law student in charge of AutoAdmit, from the suit. This is because the law treats websites differently from traditional publishers in terms of their liability for libelous content.

In Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, Congress granted websites and Internet service providers immunity from liability for content posted by third parties. So a paper-and-ink newspaper can be sued for publishing a libelous letter from a reader, but, under Section 230, Web bulletin boards such as AutoAdmit have no legal responsibility for the published content of their users. Thus the students are now pursuing the identities of their defamers independently of AutoAdmit – a near impossible task.

Such cases indicate that the Supreme Court soon might need to rethink the civic value of anonymous speech in the Digital Age. Today, when cowardly anonymity is souring Internet discourse, it really is hard to understand how anonymous speech is vital to a free society.

That New Yorker cartoon remains true: On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. But it is the responsibility of all of us – parents, citizens, and lawmakers – to ensure that contemporary Web users don't behave like antisocial canines. And one way to achieve this is by introducing more legislation to punish anonymous sadists whose online lies are intended to wreck the reputations and mental health of innocent Americans.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0311/p09s02-coop.html

Kentucky Lawmaker Wants to Make Anonymous Internet Posting Illegal

Mar 05, 2008

By Kellie Wilson

Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal.

The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.

Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

Representative Couch says he filed the bill in hopes of cutting down on online bullying. He says that has especially been a problem in his Eastern Kentucky district.

Action News 36 asked people what they thought about the bill.

Some said they felt it was a violation of First Amendment rights. Others say it is a good tool toward eliminating online harassment.

Represntative Couch says enforcing this bill if it became law would be a challenge.
http://www.wtvq.com/content/midatlantic/tvq/video.apx.-content-articles-TVQ-2008-03-05-0011.html

[Republicunts are free to stomp Arab flags. Does this go for Star-of-Evil flags too? Itz free speech when you criticize Muslims, hate speech when you criticize jews. Ever notice that?]

S.F. State GOP group wins free-speech case

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

March 8, 2008

(03-07) 14:46 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- To the relief of a campus Republican group, the 417,000 students at California State University's 23 institutions no longer face the possibility of discipline for failing to be civil to one another.

The change was part of a settlement approved by a federal magistrate in Oakland this week in a lawsuit by the San Francisco State College Republicans, whose members were subjected to a disciplinary hearing after some of them stomped on two flags bearing the name of Allah during an anti-terrorism rally in October 2006.

The flags represented the militant organizations Hamas and Hezbollah and had "Allah" written on them in Arabic. A student later complained that the College Republicans had engaged in "actions of incivility" and had tried to incite violence and create a hostile environment.

A panel of students, faculty and staff held a hearing in March 2007 and found no violations of university policy. But the College Republicans and two of their leaders filed suit four months later, challenging the speech and conduct codes that led to the disciplinary proceedings.

One line in the policy manual that applies to all 23 campuses says students are expected to be civil to one another. University officials said the manual didn't set disciplinary standards or authorize punishment for incivility, but U.S. Magistrate Wayne Brazil said the Republican group at San Francisco State had been investigated for precisely that reason.

"The First Amendment permits disrespectful and totally emotional discourse," Brazil said at a hearing in November, when he announced an injunction prohibiting the university from enforcing the civility standard in any disciplinary proceeding.

This week's settlement includes a systemwide ban on punishment for incivility, along with revisions in the standards for student conduct at San Francisco State.

One change narrows the definition of sexual harassment to apply only to "severe, pervasive and objectively offensive" actions that cause harm. The previous definition covered "unwelcome conduct which emphasizes another person's sexuality."

Also eliminated was a provision authorizing discipline for any behavior that is "inconsistent with S.F. State goals, principles and policies."

In addition, the university agreed to pay $100 each to the College Republicans and two of its leaders, and $41,500 in fees to their lawyers.

The settlement is one of a series of victories won by conservative legal groups against college speech codes.

Most of the codes were adopted in the 1980s and 1990s, and prohibit what the schools described as hate speech - expressions that are abusive or demeaning to various racial, ethnic, sexual or religious groups. Opponents, who have often included the American Civil Liberties Union as well as religious conservatives, say the codes amount to censorship and an attempt to stifle debate.

The San Francisco case is "a great victory for free speech," said David Hacker of the Alliance Defense Fund, a lawyer for the College Republicans.

State university students, Hacker said, "are now more free to speak on issues that matter to them."

Although the civility standard may seem innocuous, he said, "speech codes like this are consistently enforced against Christian and conservative students across the country merely for expressing their beliefs."

Christine Helwick, the university system's general counsel, said the settlement should clear up confusion in the disciplinary code.

"Our code has always indicated, and still does, that we expect students to behave civilly toward one another," Helwick said. "In order to proceed with a disciplinary action, there has to be a specific act of incivility," such as harassment or other expressly forbidden conduct, she said.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/08/BA8DVF7UT.DTL

ACLU Seeks to Deny Free Speech to Christians says Dr. Gary Cass

Contact: Sandy Cass, 866-508-2232; Sharaya Cass, sharaya@christianadc.org; both with the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission

MEDIA ADVISORY, March 14 /Standard Newswire/ -- "It's very troubling for the government to dictate what kind of prayers Christians can or cannot offer in the public forum," says Dr. Gary Cass. "Jesus taught His disciples to pray to the Father in His name. To require Christians to not pray in the name of Jesus Christ is asking them to pray contrary to their faith. By what authority does the Government deny Christians their First Amendment right to pray according to the dictates of their conscience?"

Reverend Hashmel Turner, a member of the Fredericksburg, Virginia city council, was threatened with lawsuits by from many secular anti-Christian groups, including the ACLU, for his Christian prayers during a council meeting. Turner was apart of a rotation of all the council members who would take turns praying at the council meetings. His case is currently making it's way to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on March 19, and would allow Christians the right to pray "in Jesus' name" in the public forum. This case will have a tremendous impact on city councils and state legislatures throughout the United States.

"Just because somebody objects to praying in Jesus' name does not mean that should Christians must deny their faith to accommodate another person's opposing beliefs. This is discrimination," said Dr. Cass. "Over 80% of American's self-identify as Christians, but Hindu's [sic], Muslim's [sic] and Jew's [sic] have all prayed in the public forum and no one has restricted the content of their prayers and the ACLU has not threatened them.

"The majority of Christians are subjected to non-Christian prayers, why are Christians told what they can or cannot pray? This is simply anti-Christian bigotry and an attempt to deny free speech for Christians," said Cass.

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission is a non-profit organization devoted to protecting the rights of Christians to confidently live their faith. Dr. Gary Cass has degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary. He previously served as Executive Director of the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries founded by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy.

http://www.earnedmedia.org/cass0314.htm

My letter to these nitwits:

Two lessons here:

1) Learn fucking English, you idiots:

"Over 80% of American's self-identify as Christians, but Hindu's, Muslim's and Jew's have all prayed in the public forum and no one has restricted the content of their prayers and the ACLU has not threatened them.

Hindu’s? Muslim’s? Jew’s?

Are you retarded?

Rhetorical question. I know the answer.

2) Quit being cowards.

The ACLU is not goddam secularists, it’s a bunch of goddam jews.

You know that.

SAY IT.


Alex Linder
Vnnforum.com

[Jew correctly notes that free speech is dead in AmeriKwan universities. He doesn't mention that it was killed by jews.]

FIRE founder discusses speech

by David Pepose

March 14, 2008

Harvey Silverglate, founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, spoke to an audience of over 60 about the decline of the freedom of speech on campuses Wednesday. FIRE, a civil liberties non-profit group, was a vocal defender of Prof. Donald Hindley (POL), who was reprimanded by Provost Marty Krauss in November for alleged discriminatory remarks and ordered to attend anti-discrimination training.

“Free speech—the right to parody and free speech and vigorous debate—have died in American higher education,” began Silverglate. “Universities, especially liberal arts universities, are among the least free places in our society…it used to be the opposite. How and why did this happen?”

[Simple answer to that. Radical jews took over American universities in the sixties. They used Aryan free speech to take power. Once they had acquired it, they had no further use for it. Free speech could only be used, today, to fight the jewish Establishment. That will not be allowed, so far as the jews can prevent it. Solid Marcusian doctrine, itz.]

Silverglate discussed free speech controversies at several campuses nationwide, attributing them to an increase of administrators over the past three decades. Quoting Louis Brandeis, Silverglate said, “it is the function of speech to free us from the bond of irrational fears.” Still, he said, “when you make a mistake, as Prof. Donald Hindley and the students behind the Gravity publication have found, when you actually test these principles, they do not exist in practice, they exist in theory.”

The first portion of Silverglate’s speech dealt with parody, which he said “has taken more of a beating on campus than political debate.” He began discussing a case at Tufts in 1989 where a student was put on probation and sentenced to 50 hours of community service after selling t-shirts saying “Why Beer is Better than Women at Tufts.”

“I don’t think you need a PhD to understand…that it was satirical,” said Silverglate. “It was sophomoric, but what can you say? He was a sophomore. [And] it was 100 percent protected by the Constitution.”

Following this, Tufts established “speech zones” where allegedly offensive views could be aired. When these measures resulted in controversy, Tufts repealed the speech zones and created “a series of codes which they claimed were to prevent harassment.”

“The transformation of Tufts is one of the great P.R. wonders of the age,” Silverglate added. “You could tell The New York Times and the Boston Globe…we have full academic freedom here, we just ban harassment. if you read the codes, you find out what they really cover.”

Silverglate then described other on-campus freedom of speech debates. In each of the cases mentioned, Silverglate said, “as soon as there’s publicity the university backs down…if they’re afraid to say to the outside world what they’re saying on campus you know they think they’re wrong.”

Concerning last year’s controversial “Blackjerry” ad in Gravity Magazine, Silverglate saying it was clearly a parody. [B]“The students in charge apologized, capitulated to mandatory diversity training. It’s the one thing that’s worse—more dangerous—than censorship,” he said.

Discussing the Student Union’s consideration of dechartering the magazine last semester, Silverglate said, “I don’t have a problem with lone students [condemning] another student’s speech. But having a student group that can censor a campus newspaper, that’s just wrong.”

“It certainly is a black mark on this campus,” he added. “I assume Justice Brandeis flipped in his grave…It was 100 percent protected by the Constitution. Not 99, not 99.5—100 percent protected speech.”

Regarding the Hindley case, Silverglate said he had little to discuss. “We know that Prof. Hindley used the word wetback, we know that it is germane to the subject matter,” he said. “Of course, Professor Hindley never had a hearing, so it could never be determined the context of what was said.” Still, he added, “the witch hunt never should have started.”

He also congratulated students for their involvement in the Hindley case: “You don’t have life tenure, but somehow you have more guts.”

Silverglate then opened the floor to questions. When Jordan Rothman ‘09 asked if he felt campus pressure on conservative students constituted a freedom of speech violation, Silverglate responded, “My problem is when administrators put their thumbs on the scales [with] arbitrary rules and threats of punishment.” Otherwise, he said, “free speech is not convenient. We don’t want to say something hurtful, but free speech is hurtful…tell me an alternative. The Provost? No.”

Dan Ortner ’10, meanwhile, asked about the role of power and its effects on administrator-student interactions. Silverglate clarified that “if a professor lowers a student’s grade because he doesn’t agree with the student’s views – as opposed to the student not making those views clear – he is violating his professional responsibility…if a professor says something that disturbs a student, that’s protected speech.”

Responding to Faculty Senate Chair Marc Brettler (NEJS) he added, “I think a teacher could be fired if he repeatedly showed disrespected for students by referring to them by epithets…personal, direct name-calling is unprofessional.”

Silverglate praised the Committee of Faculty Rights and Responsibilities, who challenged the Provost with several dissenting opinions in November and December: “That committee is a rarity on American campuses…[they] did a good thing and spoke truth to power, and power collapsed under the truth.”

Brandeis Democrats President David Emer ‘09 asked one of the only dissenting questions of the evening, opposing Silverglate’s use of racial epithets in his speech. “Even though you and Prof. Hindley had the right to use those epithets, you didn’t have to. I ask you to apologize for using these epithets,” said Emer. “I feel the first use of the N-word was necessary, but the other three were gratuitous…just because you can use these words, don’t make it right, and I think that’s what the other half of the [argument] is thinking.” As several students murmured both for and against Emer’s proposal, Silverglate did not apologize, responding, “words are words, weapons are weapons – they are two very different species. One can kill you, the other cannot.”

Answering a question by Noah Klinger ‘08, Silverglate responded, “the Provost shut down the proceedings when they weren’t going the way she wanted. It should be reopened…I hope the spotlight stays on it until the Provost resigns in shame or reopens the case.” He concluded, “I think they intrude into the inner sanctity of someone’s mind and soul…I don’t think it’s the role of the university for telling students how to feel.”

http://thehoot.net/articles/2565

Letter: Control of the Internet is a matter of free speech, he says
Gerald “Tom” Schramski, Ellsworth,
Published Thursday, March 13, 2008

TO THE EDITOR:

At the present time, about the only means of mass communications that is still open to all and free to all is the Internet.

As you probably know, about six companies own about 90 percent of all the TV, radio and print media. As a result, the “news” we get is what those companies want us to get. There is no such thing as investigative reporting any more (when is the last time you saw a picture of a wounded GI or a flag-draped coffin?). We hear and see what they want us to hear and see.

On the other hand, the Internet is free to anyone to say and show as they want. That is free speech.

Right now, some of the major cable companies and service providers are spending billions of dollars to get Congress to give them control of the internet. If this happens, then our last vestige of free speech is gone and so is our last hope to inform the public.

If you think this is not a serious issue, check it out on the net. There are plenty of sites to get info from.

If you get a chance, write to your senators and congressmen about this issue.

This is not a matter of free capitalism, but rather free speech.

Gerald “Tom” Schramski

Ellsworth

[Keith Sampson]

Public Reading—A Hate Crime
Posted by Richard Spencer on March 14, 2008

After spending so much time in grad school, and witnessing the Duke Lacrosse hoax first hand, I thought that I had built up a general immunity to academic PC—“there they go again” was my usual response to the latest advance in sensitivity training.

But even a hardened veteran like myself was a little taken aback when my friend Michael Brendan Dougherty sent me this report on Keith Sampson, a janitor at Indiana-Purdue who was convicted of “racial harassment” for—publicly reading a book!

The book in question wasn’t exactly the latest by David Duke, it was instead an academic tome lauding Notre Dame for resisting the Klu Klux Klan. One would think a janitor would be commended by the administration for being an autodidact. It seems the Affirmative Action Office would prefer that he instead study the latest from Mark Anthony Neal, the obese “radical intellectual” comfortably ensconced in the Duke English department.

Here’s the letter from the AA Office in full:

”The Affirmative Action Office has completed its investigation of Ms. Nakea Vincent’s allegation that you racially harassed her by repeatedly reading the book, Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan by Todd Tucker in the presence of Black employees. In conducting this investigation, we interviewed you, Nakea Vincent, and other employees with information relevant to the mailer.

Upon review of this matter, we conclude that your conduct constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers who repeatedly requested that you refrain from reading the book which has such an inflammatory and offensive topic in their presence. You contend that you weren’t aware of the offensive nature of the topic and were reading the book about the KKK to better understand discrimination. However you used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black co-workers. Furthermore, employing the legal “reasonable person standard,” a majority of adults are aware of and understand how repugnant the KKK is to African Americans, their reactions to the Klan, and the reasonableness of the request that you not read the book in their presence.

During your meeting with Marguerite Watkins, Assistant Affirmative Action Officer you were instructed to stop reading the book in the immediate presence of your coworkers and when reading the book to sit apart from the immediate proximity of these co-workers. Please be advised, any future substantiated conduct of a similar nature could result in serious disciplinary action.

Racial harassment is very serious and can result in serious consequences for all involved. Please be advised that racial harassment and retaliation against any individual for having participated in the investigation of a complaint of this nature is a violation of University policy and will not be tolerated.

This concludes this matter with the Affirmative Action Office. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.”

In one of my articles for TAC I traced the trickling down of academic PC from the tenured professorate to the middling intellects of the university bureaucracy. Now it seems the university employees have joined in the fun—taking part in the accusations, denouncements, and public floggings—as a good way of bashing those they don’t like and getting “empowered” by the Affirmative Action Office.

http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/how_dare_you_read_that_in_front_of_me/

Cops kill free speech at 'gay' event

Christians file suit over orders to remove shirt, stop talking about Bible

Posted: August 22, 2008

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed suit against the City of Elmira, N.Y., after police threatened to arrest three Christians if they did not remove a shirt and stop sharing biblical messages during a "gay" pride event at a public park.

John Barnes wore a shirt with the message "Liberated from sin by the blood of Jesus" to the Southern Tier Pride 2008 at Wisner Park – a June 14 event promoted as a celebration of homosexual, bisexual and transgender lifestyles.

According to the complaint filed in a U.S. district court, Elmira police Capt. Michael Marrone ordered Barnes to remove his shirt to prevent a "negative atmosphere" at the event and arouse discomfort in other attendees.

Barnes obeyed the officer and took off his shirt so he could remain at the park without facing arrest.

Another Christian, Julian Raven, carried a Christian newsletter to the event called the Elmira Protestor. Marrone threatened to arrest Raven if he distributed the letter, saying it contained obscene or illegal material, according to the complaint. Raven complied with the order.

Capt. James Wandell and Sgt. Sharon Moyer threatened a third Christian, James DeFerio, with arrest for holding a sign on a public sidewalk adjacent to the park. The sign read: "Thousands of ex-homosexuals have experienced the life-changing love of Jesus Christ" and listed websites for more information about ministry to ex-"gays."

DeFario complied with their demands. However, according to the complaint, officers then told him he was not allowed to talk to anyone at the event about the Bible. Police ordered DeFario to leave the event where Elmira Mayor John Tonello was scheduled to speak about democracy, telling him to cross the street.

Elmira Mayor John Tonello spoke about democracy at the 'gay' pride event.

"Christians shouldn't be discriminated against for expressing their beliefs," ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster said in a statement. "Police cannot threaten to arrest Christians at a city park for sharing their viewpoint at an event open to the general public. Respecting their free speech rights is not optional."

The men are claiming officers violated their constitutional rights to free speech, free exercise of religion and equal protection under the law. They are requesting a permanent injunction prohibiting police from "arresting them, forcibly removing them, or otherwise restricting their speech in traditional public fora due to the content and viewpoint of such speech, or because of their religious beliefs."

Oster said police harassed the men primarily because of their Christian beliefs.

"Exercising your First Amendment rights is not a crime," Oster said. "Threatening to arrest Christians simply because they have opposing views and choose to exercise their free speech rights at a public place is unconstitutional."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73042

Lawyer for censored Christians: Beware of 'hate crimes'

Gains victory in PrideFest case, but warns of impact of federal law

June 16, 2009

By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

A lawyer who gained a federal court victory for Christians who want to share their faith and beliefs at a PrideFest that celebrates the homosexual lifestyle in St. Louis says believers need to be active now – writing their members of Congress to express their concern over the proposed "hate crimes" legislation.

That legislation as adopted in the U.S. House conceivably could allow the prosecution of Christian pastors who preach the biblical condemnation of homosexuality and later are accused of contributing any "incentive" to any crime against a homosexual.

A report in the Washington Blade homosexual publication cited an unnamed source saying that the issue would be subject to a vote soon – as early as tomorrow – triggering a series of alerts among Christian activists.

"(The) hate bill amendment will be passed unless the Senate is immediately flooded with protest calls! Call your senators as well as all members of the U.S. Senate," pleaded Rev. Ted Pike of Truthtellers.

The plan already is being targeted by a letter campaign assembled by Janet Porter, a WND columnist and head of the Faith2Action Christian ministry. In it, constituents can send 100 overnight letters via Fed Ex to all 100 U.S. senators in protest of "The Pedophile Protection Act" for only $10.95

"Christian groups shouldn't be prohibited from expressing their beliefs at public locations," said attorney Rick Nelson, who is allied with the Alliance Defense Fund.

He said of the recent decision involving the St. Louis case, "We are pleased with the court's decision to lift an unconstitutional ban on expression in these areas ... allowing members of Apple of His eye to peacefully exercise their First Amendment right to free speech at the PrideFest event."

But he said while the specifics of the federal "hate crimes" plan aren't final until – and if – it becomes law, the threat remains significant.

"Right now it's like 'Let's silence and move the Christians away from these events,'" he told WND. "The next step is, 'Well, your speech, whatever it may be, is not palatable, we're going to do the same thing to you.'"

The federal proposal was approved 249-175 in the U.S. House and now is pending in the Senate committee as S. 909. It is dubbed the "Pedophile Protection Act" by opponents who cited the efforts of U.S. House, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, to add an amendment, "The term sexual orientation as used in this act or any amendments to this act does not include pedophilia."

Majority Democrats in the House refused to accept the amendment.

The specific issue of censoring Christians at homosexual festivals around the country has been ongoing for several years – dating back at least as far as the case of the Philadelphia 11, where Christians were arrested and held in jail for trying to talk about their faith at a homosexual event.

In Florida, several cities holding festivals set up fenced areas as "free speech zones" for Christians, keeping them away from the event itself.

In Nelson's most recent case, a victory for the Christians, a federal judge issued an order that permanently prohibits the city of St. Louis from banning a Christian ministry from distributing literature and speaking about Christianity at the city's "PrideFest."

It was in June 2006 when members of Apple of His Eye were threatened with arrest by St. Louis officials for handing out Christian literature and speaking about their faith at Tower Grove Park during the homosexual festival.

Nelson sued in 2008 and obtained a preliminary injunction that prevented prosecution of the Christians then. The newest order from U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey made that order permanent.

"Defendants (city officials) are enjoined from re-enacting any total ban on the distribution of any advertisement, circular or handbill in or adjoining any public park, place or square," the judge ordered.

Send 100 overnight letters to all 100 U.S. senators in protest of "The Pedophile Protection Act" for only $10.95

He also ordered the city to instruct its police in the proper handling of such disputes.

"Defendant, its officers agents, employees, representatives and all persons acting in concert, or participating with them, are hereby ordered to meet with the PrideFest organizers prior to the [2009] event for the purpose of informing the organizers of the terms of this Order, and to instruct said organizers that Plaintiffs' distribution of religious literature and/or expression of religious beliefs in said Park, in and of themselves, do not constitute a basis for law enforcement authorities to take actions that would restrict Plaintiffs' activities," the judge said.

In his decision granting the preliminary injunction, the judge found, "While there may be attendees at PrideFest 2008 who may also object to Plaintiffs' distribution of religious literature or expression of religious views, their 'injury,' namely, the suffering of viewpoints with which they may disagree, is outweighed by the restriction of Plaintiffs' First Amendment right to express those views in a public forum."

Nelson told WND that the ruling in the St. Louis case is not a precedent, because local rules and regulations vary widely regarding such disputes.

But the ADF said the order will protect efforts by members of the Christian ministry to distribute literature at future events and situations in St. Louis.

Nelson confirmed he and other attorneys who fight such battles are "tracking" the Washington legislation closely.

"Everyone should be very cognizant," he said. "People should be writing their senators with great emphasis upon making sure they understand that this is yet another example of curtailing speech … really based on nothing more than people's dislike of the message."

WND had reported several months earlier on a dispute in Elmira, N.Y., that developed when police threatened to arrest three Christians if they did not remove a shirt and stop sharing biblical messages during a "gay" pride event at a public park.

John Barnes wore a shirt with the message "Liberated from sin by the blood of Jesus" to the Southern Tier Pride 2008 at Wisner Park – a June 14, 2008, event promoted as a celebration of homosexual, bisexual and transgender lifestyles.

According to the complaint filed in a U.S. district court, Elmira police Capt. Michael Marrone ordered Barnes to remove his shirt to prevent a "negative atmosphere" at the event and arouse discomfort in other attendees.

Barnes obeyed the officer and took off his shirt so he could remain at the park without facing arrest.

Another Christian, Julian Raven, carried a Christian newsletter to the event called the Elmira Protestor. Marrone threatened to arrest Raven if he distributed the letter, saying it contained obscene or illegal material, according to the complaint. Raven complied with the order.

Capt. James Wandell and Sgt. Sharon Moyer threatened a third Christian, James DeFerio, with arrest for holding a sign on a public sidewalk adjacent to the park. The sign read: "Thousands of ex-homosexuals have experienced the life-changing love of Jesus Christ" and listed websites for more information about ministry to ex-"gays."

WND has reported before on the federal "hate crimes" plan, too.

Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, a former judge, explained how the rejection by the House of King's amendment would be read should a pedophile claim protection under the federal plan that protects those with alternative sexual lifestyle choices.

"Having reviewed cases as an appellate judge, I know that when the legislature has the chance to include a definition and refuses, then what we look at is the plain meaning of those words," explained Gohmert. "The plain meaning of sexual orientation is anything to which someone is orientated. That could include exhibitionism, it could include necrophilia (sexual arousal/activity with a corpse) ... it could include urophilia (sexual arousal associated with urine), voyeurism. You see someone spying on you changing clothes and you hit them, they've committed a misdemeanor, you've committed a federal felony under this bill. It is so wrong."

In fact, one supporter of the "hate crimes," Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., confirmed that very worry, saying: "This bill addresses our resolve to end violence based on prejudice and to guarantee that all Americans regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability or all of these 'philias' and fetishes and 'ism's' that were put forward need not live in fear because of who they are."

So far, several senators have expressed doubt about the proposal. Sen. James Inhofe said, "I am opposed to any sort of violent offense and believe that a crime motivated by prejudice or hate is particularly reprehensible. However, I think that the provisions in H.R. 1913 and S.909 are unnecessary and constitutionally questionable."

He expressed alarm that Democrats working for a "hate crimes" plan voted against an amendment that stated, "No prosecution under this act may be based in whole or in part on religious beliefs quoted from the Bible, the Tanakh, or the Quran."

"Many are concerned that should this legislation pass, it will have a 'chilling effect' on speech based on religious beliefs," he said.

Other opposition has come from Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla.; Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

Sources working with senators opposing the legislation say the Fed Ex letter-writing campaign has shaken up the dynamics of the debate.

"This bill was supposed to sail through the Senate, but it suddenly has become much more controversial as a result of all these letters," one source said.

Gohmert and King said the only chance to defeat the legislation was for a massive outpouring of opposition from the American people.

"If you guys don't raise enough stink there's no chance of stopping it," Gohmert said on a radio program with Porter. "It's entirely in the hands of your listeners and people across the country. If you guys put up a strong enough fight, that will give backbone enough to the 41 or 42 in the Senate to say we don't want to have our names on that."

An analysis by Shawn D. Akers, policy analyst with Liberty Counsel said the proposal, formally known as H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act bill in the House and S. 909 in the Senate, would create new federal penalties against those whose "victims" were chosen based on an "actual or perceived ... sexual orientation, gender identity."

Gohmert warned Porter during her radio program interview that even her introduction of him, and references to the different sexual orientations, could be restricted if the plan becomes law.

"You can't talk like that once this becomes law," he said.

He said the foundational problem with the bill is that it is based on lies: It assumes there's an epidemic of crimes in the United States – especially actions that cross state lines – that is targeting those alternative sexual lifestyles.

"When you base a law on lies, you're going to have a bad law," he said. "This 'Pedophilia Protection Act,' a 'hate crimes' bill, is based on the representation that there's a epidemic of crimes based on bias and prejudice. It turns out there are fewer crimes now than there were 10 years ago."

He said he fought in committee and in the House to correct some of the failings, including his repeated requests for definitions in the bill for terms such as "sexual orientation."

Obama, supported strongly during his campaign by homosexual advocates, appears ready to respond to their desires.

"I urge members on both sides of the aisle to act on this important civil rights issue by passing this legislation to protect all of our citizens from violent acts of intolerance," he said.

But Gohmert pointed out that if an exhibitionist flashes a woman, and she responds by slapping him with her purse, he has probably committed a misdemeanor while she has committed a federal felony hate crime.

"That's how ludicrous this situation is," Gohmert said.

[many more WND articles on 'hate crimes' and free speech thru link]
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=101290

Lawyer for censored Christians: Beware of 'hate crimes'

Gains victory in PrideFest case, but warns of impact of federal law

June 16, 2009

By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

A lawyer who gained a federal court victory for Christians who want to share their faith and beliefs at a PrideFest that celebrates the homosexual lifestyle in St. Louis says believers need to be active now – writing their members of Congress to express their concern over the proposed "hate crimes" legislation.

That legislation as adopted in the U.S. House conceivably could allow the prosecution of Christian pastors who preach the biblical condemnation of homosexuality and later are accused of contributing any "incentive" to any crime against a homosexual.

A report in the Washington Blade homosexual publication cited an unnamed source saying that the issue would be subject to a vote soon – as early as tomorrow – triggering a series of alerts among Christian activists.

"(The) hate bill amendment will be passed unless the Senate is immediately flooded with protest calls! Call your senators as well as all members of the U.S. Senate," pleaded Rev. Ted Pike of Truthtellers.

The plan already is being targeted by a letter campaign assembled by Janet Porter, a WND columnist and head of the Faith2Action Christian ministry. In it, constituents can send 100 overnight letters via Fed Ex to all 100 U.S. senators in protest of "The Pedophile Protection Act" for only $10.95

"Christian groups shouldn't be prohibited from expressing their beliefs at public locations," said attorney Rick Nelson, who is allied with the Alliance Defense Fund.

He said of the recent decision involving the St. Louis case, "We are pleased with the court's decision to lift an unconstitutional ban on expression in these areas ... allowing members of Apple of His eye to peacefully exercise their First Amendment right to free speech at the PrideFest event."

But he said while the specifics of the federal "hate crimes" plan aren't final until – and if – it becomes law, the threat remains significant.

"Right now it's like 'Let's silence and move the Christians away from these events,'" he told WND. "The next step is, 'Well, your speech, whatever it may be, is not palatable, we're going to do the same thing to you.'"

The federal proposal was approved 249-175 in the U.S. House and now is pending in the Senate committee as S. 909. It is dubbed the "Pedophile Protection Act" by opponents who cited the efforts of U.S. House, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, to add an amendment, "The term sexual orientation as used in this act or any amendments to this act does not include pedophilia."

Majority Democrats in the House refused to accept the amendment.

The specific issue of censoring Christians at homosexual festivals around the country has been ongoing for several years – dating back at least as far as the case of the Philadelphia 11, where Christians were arrested and held in jail for trying to talk about their faith at a homosexual event.

In Florida, several cities holding festivals set up fenced areas as "free speech zones" for Christians, keeping them away from the event itself.

In Nelson's most recent case, a victory for the Christians, a federal judge issued an order that permanently prohibits the city of St. Louis from banning a Christian ministry from distributing literature and speaking about Christianity at the city's "PrideFest."

It was in June 2006 when members of Apple of His Eye were threatened with arrest by St. Louis officials for handing out Christian literature and speaking about their faith at Tower Grove Park during the homosexual festival.

Nelson sued in 2008 and obtained a preliminary injunction that prevented prosecution of the Christians then. The newest order from U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey made that order permanent.

"Defendants (city officials) are enjoined from re-enacting any total ban on the distribution of any advertisement, circular or handbill in or adjoining any public park, place or square," the judge ordered.

Send 100 overnight letters to all 100 U.S. senators in protest of "The Pedophile Protection Act" for only $10.95

He also ordered the city to instruct its police in the proper handling of such disputes.

"Defendant, its officers agents, employees, representatives and all persons acting in concert, or participating with them, are hereby ordered to meet with the PrideFest organizers prior to the [2009] event for the purpose of informing the organizers of the terms of this Order, and to instruct said organizers that Plaintiffs' distribution of religious literature and/or expression of religious beliefs in said Park, in and of themselves, do not constitute a basis for law enforcement authorities to take actions that would restrict Plaintiffs' activities," the judge said.

In his decision granting the preliminary injunction, the judge found, "While there may be attendees at PrideFest 2008 who may also object to Plaintiffs' distribution of religious literature or expression of religious views, their 'injury,' namely, the suffering of viewpoints with which they may disagree, is outweighed by the restriction of Plaintiffs' First Amendment right to express those views in a public forum."

Nelson told WND that the ruling in the St. Louis case is not a precedent, because local rules and regulations vary widely regarding such disputes.

But the ADF said the order will protect efforts by members of the Christian ministry to distribute literature at future events and situations in St. Louis.

Nelson confirmed he and other attorneys who fight such battles are "tracking" the Washington legislation closely.

"Everyone should be very cognizant," he said. "People should be writing their senators with great emphasis upon making sure they understand that this is yet another example of curtailing speech … really based on nothing more than people's dislike of the message."

WND had reported several months earlier on a dispute in Elmira, N.Y., that developed when police threatened to arrest three Christians if they did not remove a shirt and stop sharing biblical messages during a "gay" pride event at a public park.

John Barnes wore a shirt with the message "Liberated from sin by the blood of Jesus" to the Southern Tier Pride 2008 at Wisner Park – a June 14, 2008, event promoted as a celebration of homosexual, bisexual and transgender lifestyles.

According to the complaint filed in a U.S. district court, Elmira police Capt. Michael Marrone ordered Barnes to remove his shirt to prevent a "negative atmosphere" at the event and arouse discomfort in other attendees.

Barnes obeyed the officer and took off his shirt so he could remain at the park without facing arrest.

Another Christian, Julian Raven, carried a Christian newsletter to the event called the Elmira Protestor. Marrone threatened to arrest Raven if he distributed the letter, saying it contained obscene or illegal material, according to the complaint. Raven complied with the order.

Capt. James Wandell and Sgt. Sharon Moyer threatened a third Christian, James DeFerio, with arrest for holding a sign on a public sidewalk adjacent to the park. The sign read: "Thousands of ex-homosexuals have experienced the life-changing love of Jesus Christ" and listed websites for more information about ministry to ex-"gays."

WND has reported before on the federal "hate crimes" plan, too.

Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, a former judge, explained how the rejection by the House of King's amendment would be read should a pedophile claim protection under the federal plan that protects those with alternative sexual lifestyle choices.

"Having reviewed cases as an appellate judge, I know that when the legislature has the chance to include a definition and refuses, then what we look at is the plain meaning of those words," explained Gohmert. "The plain meaning of sexual orientation is anything to which someone is orientated. That could include exhibitionism, it could include necrophilia (sexual arousal/activity with a corpse) ... it could include urophilia (sexual arousal associated with urine), voyeurism. You see someone spying on you changing clothes and you hit them, they've committed a misdemeanor, you've committed a federal felony under this bill. It is so wrong."

In fact, one supporter of the "hate crimes," Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., confirmed that very worry, saying: "This bill addresses our resolve to end violence based on prejudice and to guarantee that all Americans regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability or all of these 'philias' and fetishes and 'ism's' that were put forward need not live in fear because of who they are."

So far, several senators have expressed doubt about the proposal. Sen. James Inhofe said, "I am opposed to any sort of violent offense and believe that a crime motivated by prejudice or hate is particularly reprehensible. However, I think that the provisions in H.R. 1913 and S.909 are unnecessary and constitutionally questionable."

He expressed alarm that Democrats working for a "hate crimes" plan voted against an amendment that stated, "No prosecution under this act may be based in whole or in part on religious beliefs quoted from the Bible, the Tanakh, or the Quran."

"Many are concerned that should this legislation pass, it will have a 'chilling effect' on speech based on religious beliefs," he said.

Other opposition has come from Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla.; Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

Sources working with senators opposing the legislation say the Fed Ex letter-writing campaign has shaken up the dynamics of the debate.

"This bill was supposed to sail through the Senate, but it suddenly has become much more controversial as a result of all these letters," one source said.

Gohmert and King said the only chance to defeat the legislation was for a massive outpouring of opposition from the American people.

"If you guys don't raise enough stink there's no chance of stopping it," Gohmert said on a radio program with Porter. "It's entirely in the hands of your listeners and people across the country. If you guys put up a strong enough fight, that will give backbone enough to the 41 or 42 in the Senate to say we don't want to have our names on that."

An analysis by Shawn D. Akers, policy analyst with Liberty Counsel said the proposal, formally known as H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act bill in the House and S. 909 in the Senate, would create new federal penalties against those whose "victims" were chosen based on an "actual or perceived ... sexual orientation, gender identity."

Gohmert warned Porter during her radio program interview that even her introduction of him, and references to the different sexual orientations, could be restricted if the plan becomes law.

"You can't talk like that once this becomes law," he said.

He said the foundational problem with the bill is that it is based on lies: It assumes there's an epidemic of crimes in the United States – especially actions that cross state lines – that is targeting those alternative sexual lifestyles.

"When you base a law on lies, you're going to have a bad law," he said. "This 'Pedophilia Protection Act,' a 'hate crimes' bill, is based on the representation that there's a epidemic of crimes based on bias and prejudice. It turns out there are fewer crimes now than there were 10 years ago."

He said he fought in committee and in the House to correct some of the failings, including his repeated requests for definitions in the bill for terms such as "sexual orientation."

Obama, supported strongly during his campaign by homosexual advocates, appears ready to respond to their desires.

"I urge members on both sides of the aisle to act on this important civil rights issue by passing this legislation to protect all of our citizens from violent acts of intolerance," he said.

But Gohmert pointed out that if an exhibitionist flashes a woman, and she responds by slapping him with her purse, he has probably committed a misdemeanor while she has committed a federal felony hate crime.

"That's how ludicrous this situation is," Gohmert said.

[many more WND articles on 'hate crimes' and free speech thru link]
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=101290

[Nigger Holder pushes for censorship.]

Attorney general urges new hate crimes law

Holder says nation must stop ‘violence masquerading as political activism’

June 16, 2009

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that recent killings show the need for a tougher U.S. hate crimes law to stop "violence masquerading as political activism."

"Over the last several weeks, we have witnessed brazen acts of violence, committed in places that many would have considered unthinkable," Holder told the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.

He cited separate attacks over a two-week period that killed a young soldier, an abortion provider and a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

Federal agents and prosecutors are already involved in the local investigations of each attack.

The violence, he said, "reminds us of the potential threat posed by violent extremists and the tragedy that ensues when reasoned discourse is replaced by armed confrontation."

In order to stop that violence, he said, Congress should past an updated version of hate crimes legislation, in order to more effectively prosecute those who commit violent attacks based on gender, disability, or sexual orientation.

The growing number of hate crimes against Hispanics also shows the need for tougher laws, Holder said.

"We will not tolerate murder, or the threat of violence, masquerading as political activism," Holder said. "So let me be clear, the Justice Department will use every tool at its disposal to protect the rights ensured under our Constitution."

Earlier, a leading civil rights coalition says there has been an increase in white supremacist activity since the election of the first African-American president.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund reported Tuesday that the economic downturn and fear of immigrants also contributed to the increase.

The report comes a week after a white supremacist killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

The coalition reported the U.S. now averages a hate crime nearly every hour of every day. A special concern is the rising number of hate crimes committed against Hispanics and gays.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31392054/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

In order to stop that violence, he said, Congress should past an updated version of hate crimes legislation, in order to more effectively prosecute those who commit violent attacks based on gender, disability, or sexual orientation.

How does "more effectively prosecute those who commit violent attacks" stop attacks?

Government does not want to stop crime, it creates it. A legislator's job is to write laws and pass them. This is why our government is tyrannical.

Military Censors LRC
Posted by Lew Rockwell on August 22, 2009 08:18 AM

Writes an army sergeant:

Lewrockwell.com has been blocked on the network that is available to me in Iraq. When I finished reading Gary North I clicked on the home link at the top of the page and got the obnoxious “Access Denied” warning that appears when trying to go to a non-approved web site.

Lewrockwell.com’s presence in my life for the next few months, while serving the remainder of my sentence in Iraq, will be sorely missed. Though it was fun while it lasted, I will now have to find another intellectual resource for debunking my co-worker’s fallacious arguments, and to keep my sanity.

How hate-crime law works
Posted: October 29, 2009

The newly signed "Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act" merely federalizes the unequal distribution of justice that has existed at the local level for years.

As such laws work, if your group lacks political and media influence, you can expect to be convicted of crimes you did not commit and receive longer sentences for those you did.

Consider the case of the bill's namesake, Matthew Shepard. As the media told and retold the story, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, two "homophobic" desperados, killed the helpless gay Wyoming University student in a fit of "gay panic."

Although Hollywood would turn out at least three TV movies about the "crucifixion" of Shepard, two of which premiered in the week before Easter 2002, the homophobic story line did not match the Wyoming reality.

Best evidence now suggests that McKinney, the actual killer, had previously expressed no homophobic sentiments.

One good reason why is that he was an active bisexual himself. Apparently, he and Shepard, who had a known drug problem, had done meth together a number of times.

On the night in question, McKinney went on a meth-fueled rampage. He pistol-whipped the vulnerable Shepard for drug money, drove into town to rob Shepard's apartment and then pistol whipped a stranger who got in his way, fracturing his skull in the process.

Matthew Shepard died just four weeks before the 1998 mid-term elections. For the next four weeks, much to their own surprise, the killers were presented to America as poster children for the religious right and one more reason not to vote Republican.

Of course, McKinney and Henderson were not products of Christian culture, but of its antithesis: a crude, soulless, fatherless, sexually libertine, drug-addled, pop culture.

Henderson was born to a teenage alcoholic mother and grew up without a father. McKinney's parents were divorced. Both were beaten by the "boyfriends" who inhabited their mothers' lives.

"Speechless: Silencing the Christians," by Don Wildmon, lays out determined strategy of coalition of liberal secularists, homosexual activists and Fortune 500 companies

On the night in question, McKinney pistol-whipped Henderson when he tried to intervene in the beating of Shepard.

Had Shepard not emerged as gay poster child, Henderson would likely have served a few years for manslaughter or as accessory to murder.

Instead, he had to plead to two consecutive life sentences to avoid the death penalty, a sentence to which the anti-death penalty crowd raised no known objection.

"It's really hard for me to talk to Russ," says McKinney. "To see him in this situation, knowing that I'm the one who put him here."

On the injustice scale, however, Henderson's fate does not begin to measure up to that of former sailor Steven Nary.

Nary was tried for second-degree murder in San Francisco the same week Henderson was being tried in Laramie, Wyo.

The timing of the trial might have been coincidental, but it is unlikely. Nary had killed a gay man, and San Francisco's political class is always eager to un-ruffle gay feathers.

Worse, the man Nary killed was the activist publisher of the leading Hispanic newspaper in the Bay area. San Francisco's political class did not want to ruffle those feathers either.

Nary's undoing began on a Saturday evening in March 1996. That fateful night the 18-year-old apprentice airman left the Alameda Naval Air Station and headed to the Palladium, a co-ed dance club for young people.

Nary tried dancing but was unsteady from a few too many beers, so he sat down by himself and watched. An older Hispanic gentleman sidled over to Nary.

Juan Pifarre, a 53-year old Argentina native, had started the evening at a friend's house in the Castro district where he had done a few too many lines of cocaine.

He then drove to that most of unlikely of places for a middle-aged gay man, the Palladium.

After Pifarre and Nary got to talking, Nary mentioned that he had to leave to catch the last BART back to the ship. Pifarre offered him a ride.

"He seemed like a nice person," Nary testified at his trail, "trusting person, and I'd get back to the base sooner."

On the drive, Pifarre told him that Nary he had had too much coke and wasn't sure that he could make it across the bridge and back.

Pifarre told Nary his wife was out of town. He suggested that Nary "could stay at his house. He could call some girls."

Pifarre, in fact, did have a wife, the result of a sham marriage to keep him from being deported. Pifarre also had two priors for sexual offenses, a reputation as a belligerent drun, and a history of violence with his sexual prey.

Nary's memory on what happened chez Pifarre has always been imperfect. He wrote to me from prison about Pifarre's attempt to rape him.

"I felt stuck. I could not speak. I could not move, and I could not do anything. He just kept trying and trying over and over. In fact it brings me to tears as I write this because I have avoided this image for so long."

Nary had no idea he was describing the precise reaction of a person who had been slipped a date-rape drug, then all the rage among sexual predators in the gay community.

"Please, stop," the lanky, 18-year-old sailor begged as he struggled through a paralyzing stupor. Pifarre would not.

Finally, in desperation, Nary grabbed a glass mug by Pifarre's bedside and smacked the chunky, coked-up Pifarre in the head with it. Pifarre fought back.

When Nary finally subdued Pifarre, he grabbed his clothes and fled back through the deserted streets to his ship.

Back at the ship, Nary told the chaplain and then turned himself in. After rotting three years in a San Francisco jail, he got his kangaroo moment in court.

When Nary testified that he had been "disgusted" by what Pifarre was doing, namely raping him, the prosecutor hung him on a homophobia charge.

After 13 years in prison and an exceptional record, the 32 year-old Nary was just denied parole for another five years.

I am sure he will be excited to hear that justice San Francisco style can now be enjoyed by everyone across the [expletive-deleted] plain.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=114302

ADL APPLAUDS ITSELF FOR HATE BILL VICTORY
By Rev. Ted Pike

After President Obama signed the federal hate crimes bill, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith— the world’s premier Jewish supremacist group—gave itself most of the credit.

“For 12 long years we have worked hard with coalition partners to build the case in Washington that this law was not just necessary, but vital to ensure that all victims of hate crimes would be covered…”

“ADL has long spearheaded advocacy efforts for improved local, state and federal responses to hate violence. From the development of the ADL Model Hate Crime Law nearly 30 years ago, to the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990 signed by President George W. Bush [sic] to President Bill Clinton’s November 1997 White House Conference on Hate Crime where the HCPA [Hate Crimes Prevention Act] was first introduced, the League has worked to ensure that local and federal law enforcement officials have important tools to combat violent, bias-motivated crimes. Over time, ADL helped to build a broad coalition of religious, civil rights, education and law enforcement groups in support of the HCPA.”

“Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have enacted hate crimes statutes based on or similar to the ADL model.” (ADL Hails Long Overdue Enactment of Hate Crime Law, October 28, 2009.)

ADL has said it will now launch a massive campaign to educate lawyers as hate crimes prosecutors.

History of Malice

ADL is the “civil liberties” arm of a Jewish religious, educational and fraternal organization, B’nai B’rith International. Through passage of its Hate Crimes Statistics Act in 1990, ADL empowered synagogue to mix with state by authorizing itself to teach the US Justice Department, FBI and all local police about hate crimes. For nearly 20 years this adjunct of a Jewish religious organization has instructed law enforcement in all aspects of its twisted hate crime ideology. These include dubious procedures for reporting to the FBI thousands of “hate crimes.” More than 95 percent of such incidents of fisticuffs, name calling, and “intimidation” have never seen a courtroom yet are listed as hate crimes in the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report. They are ADL's evidence of an “epidemic of hate” in America, compelling federal jurisdiction.

In 2004, ADL also convinced Congress to establish its Office of Global Anti-Semitism in the US State Department. As the world monitor of alleged hate crimes, ADL now speaks for the US government, providing annual reports detailing its allegations of anti-Semitic threats and trends. In its 2005 report, this office in the State Department described as an “anti-Semitic incident” the statement of a Polish priest that the Jews were responsible for Christ’s death. In 2006, it boldly labeled as a “classic anti-Semite” any Christian who asserted the New Testament charge of Jewish complicity in the crucifixion. It also said anti-Semitism meant strong criticism of Israel, its leaders or military, and cartoons portraying such leaders in Nazi terms.

This week’s signing of ADL’s federal hate bill is only the legal beginning of its national and international hate crimes agenda. The first Senate hearing for ADL’s workplace hate crimes law, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, S. 1584, is scheduled for this Thursday in the Senate Health, Education and Welfare Committee. (See, ENDA Moves Forward in Senate) ADL powerfully promotes other anti-family initiatives such as ending the policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, and a galaxy of homosexual rights initiatives in state legislatures. Since 1985, ADL’s massive “World of Difference” and “No Place for Hate” programs, among others, have transformed American attitudes toward acceptance of homosexuality.

Stepping Stone to World Government

Passage of ADL’s federal hate bill is only a stepping stone. Its ultimate dream is international hate law enforcement. Already, ADL Europe and B’nai B’rith International have persuaded most western industrialized nations to establish ADL-orchestrated hate crimes bureaucracies. Fifty-six nations of Europe are now united in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), dedicated to end anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia (fear of foreigners) in Europe.

A large part of ADL’s international efforts consist of developing, through its International Network Against Cyber-Hate (INACH), effective ways to ban criticism of Jews, Israel, homosexuals, Muslims, etc., on the internet. Although Islam is the Zionist/ADL foe in the Middle East, ADL considers Islam-protecting hate laws a powerful tool to break down their common enemy: Christianity.

Toward this end, ADL inspired the US government to recently propose that the United Nations condemn any nation without a federal hate crimes law. Obama’s joint proposal with Egypt, full of ADL ideology and rhetoric, is a thinly veiled attempt to include America under a Christian-persecuting, Muslim-protecting international hate crimes enforcement tribunal. A world court residing in Jerusalem was prophesied by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion in a January 16, 1962 Look magazine article. ADL, headed by devoutly Orthodox Jew Abraham H. Foxman, represents a relentless attempt by a cabal of anti-Christian Jews to bring about international persecution of the followers of Christ.

Christian Oblivion

Yet the Christian world remains oblivious to what Orthodox rabbi Daniel Lapin described as ADL’s (secular Judaism’s) “relentless attack on evangelical Christianity.” Last spring in its MIAC report, ADL, along with its sister Jewish attack group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, issued directives to the Missouri state police to regard Christians/conservatives as potential terrorists. Yet evangelical leaders, dreading ADL’s potential to smear them as anti-Semitic still will not criticize ADL or publicly acknowledge its existence.

As a result, Christian and conservative activists never attack the eye of this world-revolutionary octopus. Instead, they chop at its tentacles. Such activism is largely futile; ADL only regenerates and multiplies tentacles faster than they are destroyed.

Evangelical Christianity is thus caught in a bizarre, love-fear relationship with organized liberal world Jewry. Evangelicals lose, both coming and going. For nearly a century, Christian fundamentalist leaders have drilled into their tens of millions of followers that they must be absolutely loyal to Zionism and never criticize the very Jewish supremacists who now propel the world toward global governance and international hate crimes enforcement, i.e. persecution of Christians. Loyal followers have been conditioned to believe that any criticism of Jews is worthy of God's curse. Thus, if these leaders were now to expose this 100% Jewish organization, their millions of evangelical constituents would undoubtedly accept at face value ADL’s accusation of anti-Semitism and abandon these Christian organizations to economic disaster.

Christian/conservative leaders are thus enmeshed in a vicious, morally debilitating, and freedom-destroying trap of their own making. Forced to give tribute of outward support to Zionism yet privately terrorized of ADL’s power to destroy, they have become slaves of ADL. By their silence, they pave its road to tyranny and hasten its ascent to world dominion.

Christ said that when His Church is "trodden under foot of men," as it is today by Obama and ADL, this has occurred for a simple reason: "The salt has lost its saltiness."

Salt is the determination to fear and obey God alone. It is also the simple integrity of seeking, accepting, and acting upon the whole truth.

ADL campaigns to train hate prosecutors

Wednesday, 11 November 2009 14:03 Rev. Ted Pike

For the past ten years, the Anti-Defamation League has introduced its federal hate crime bill into Congress five times – and lost. ADL claims to have the purest intentions—concern that federal power is needed if a state does not have a hate crimes law or is unwilling or unable to punish a hate crime. ADL insisted passage of a federal hate crimes law would change little: the vast majority of prosecutions of hate crimes will be initiated by states.

But in its exultant press announcement yesterday, ADL reveals the real reason it has never given up its struggle to make its hate bill the law of the land: ADL wants an army of “anti-hate” prosecutors who can go after those ADL considers guilty of bias-motivated crimes. After giving itself credit as chief architect of hate crimes laws on the state and federal level, ADL says:

The end of the legislative path for the hate crimes bill also marks the beginning of the next campaign – training prosecutors and law enforcement officials about the new law. ADL stands ready to help lead that continuing effort.

ADL is clearly beginning a second phase – to train lawyers and law enforcement nationwide on prosecuting hate criminals. In ADL-speak, “haters” are those who oppose homosexuality, allege Jews dominate media, government, finance, or are guilty of “strong” criticism of Israel or its leaders.

ADL is already the primary source for hate crimes education for the US Justice Department, FBI and all local law enforcement. In 1990, through passage of its Hate Crimes Statistics Act, ADL granted itself such empowerment. But ADL wants much more.

Entirely staffed by Jews, ADL is headed by a devoutly religious Orthodox Jew, Abe Foxman (See, ADL’s Foxman: Man of Faith?). Like its sister Jewish attack group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, ADL has a focused religious objective: to revive ancient Jewish persecution of Christians, begun 2,000 years ago and recorded in the New Testament. The true intent of ADL’s federal and 45 state hate laws is to empower the legal, systematic, and ruthless persecution of Talmudic Judaism’s greatest rival, Christianity. To this end, ADL now calls for a national “campaign” to train an army of federal and local hate crimes prosecutors.

Already, ADL and SPLC–through their Missouri Police MIA Directive as well as warnings from ADL sycophant Janet Nepalitano and her Department of Homeland Security–stereotype Christian and conservatives as unstable bigots and potential terrorist threats. ADL’s Office of Global Anti-Semitism in the US State Department says anyone who believes the New Testament claim that Jewish leaders masterminded the crucifixion is a “classic anti-Semite.” (See, U.S. State Department Says New Testament is ‘Anti-Semitic’?)

ADL’s new campaign to train an army of prosecutors to enforce the federal hate crimes law will usher in progressive arrest of Christian “haters.” These could well be destined to occupy FEMA prison camps in the years ahead. Ultimately, many could be delivered up, as Christ prophesied, to be tried, convicted and imprisoned in the courts and synagogues of Jewry (Matthew 10:17). Their “crimes against the Jewish people” would include criticism of matters Jewish (anti-Semitism) and questioning the accuracy of the sacred 6 million figure of Holocaust victims (Holocaust denial). However, most will likely be indicted under Jewish Noahide laws for heresy – the “idolatry” of affirming the deity of Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity. (See, Coming Jewish ‘Utopia’ Ruled by Noahide Laws)

The Book of Revelation prophesies that the garments of the Great Harlot (Israel and international Jewish control) will be soaked with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (Revelation 17:6). (See, Israel: On the Way to Empire in the Mideast)

Jewish world dominion will fulfill Biblical prophesy but also a number of predictions by modern Jewish leaders:

“The Jews energetically reject the idea of fusion with the other nationalities and cling firmly to their historical hope of world empire…” (Max Mandelstam, World Zionist Congress, July 1898.)

“Jerusalem is not the capitol of Israel and world Jewry: it aspires to become the spiritual center of the world…” (David Ben-Gurion, Jewish Chronicle, London, Dec. 16, 1949)

“In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly United Nations) will build a Shrine of the Prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah…” (David Ben-Burion, Look Magazine, Jan. 16, 1962)

“The Jewish people cannot ever be destroyed, but rather they and their G-d of History will emerge in days to come triumphant over the evils and the foolishness of all other nations. Zion will and must emerge as the mount to which all other peoples turn.” (Rabbi Meir Kahane, Jewish Press, Brooklyn, New York, Nov. 9, 1973.)

Will Christian America silently allow President Obama to sign ADL’s hate bill as early as this week, accelerating arrival of the Zionist New World order? Incredibly, all major Christian and conservative organizations remain oblivious to the tactic of pressuring Obama to keep his promise to veto a wasteful defense authorization bill–one that includes $100 billion funding for extra F-35 jet engines. Only the National Prayer Network proclaims that we can still defeat the hate bill through presidential veto.

ADL now considers passage of the hate bill a virtual reality. It’s not.

The Senate has yet to give final approval, which will probably take place early this week. Pres. Obama still has to sign the defense bill with the hate bill attached. Obama doesn’t like this defense authorization bill. I believe he’s burned that Congress has defied him. It forces him to approve what he has steadfastly vowed he would not approve –thousands of F-35 engines he says squander taxpayers’ money.

It is up to Christian America NOW to exert greater pressure on Obama than is now being applied by ADL. We must demand he stays true to his promise and vetoes the defense bill. If he vetoes it, the hate bill will be dead in this session of Congress. ADL will have to cancel their second “campaign” to create a federally-authorized army of prosecutors against Christians.

Take action NOW! Don’t be distracted by more controversy about healthcare. Pressure Obama to keep his word.

Email these two messages to the President immediately:

Mr. President, I will vote out Democrats at midterms if you sign the freedom-destroying federal hate crimes bill.

Mr. President, I expect you to keep your promise to veto any military authorization bill that wastes $100 billion of taxpayers’ money on unnecessary F-35 jet engines.

Send these two messages in separate emails. You may cut and paste them in at www.whitehouse.gov/contact .
This week may decide if America still has hope, or will begin descent into impending slavery. The hate bill could be on Obama’s desk by Tuesday.

Your emails should be there first thing Monday morning.

Endnote:

Modern or “rabbinic” Judaism continues unaltered the teaching of the ancient Pharisees who killed Christ. In my 345-page book Israel: Our Duty…Our Dilemma (available at www.truthtellers.org), I thoroughly document that deep within the teachings of the Pharisees, as contained in their Talmud and Kabbalah, is the oft-repeated assertion that Christianity and its belief in “three Gods” is idolatry; if the world were put right, Christians, as heretics and idolaters, should be killed. After the apostle Paul was converted, he realized that a new “age of grace” made obsolete any duty to kill “heretics,” but before that, as Saul of Tarsus, he, in all good conscience as an Orthodox Jew, killed and hailed into prison as many Christians as possible.

For Talmudic Judaism, no new age of grace ended the ancient duty to cleanse the land of idolaters. Instead, Talmudic, kabbalistic literature, (the highest religious and ethical guide to Orthodox Jews) teaches that when the messiah (Antichrist) comes, he and the righteous of Israel will follow the precedent of Joshua and the Hebrews entering Canaan and annihilate all “idol-worshippers” – Christians– from the earth.

If you don’t think Jewish supremacists today are capable of such horror, just remember what Jewish supremacists unleashed in 1917. Conquering Russia, they set in motion the eventual slaughter of more than 100 million Gentiles, many of whom were Christians (See, Jewish Activists Created Communism).

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|13-11-2009 00:51:57 Martin Timothy - Where's the ADL on torture
http://www.dockersunion.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1153#post1153

This situation is totally absurd.. everyone on Earth has heard Jews sob stories about pogroms and persecution, and listened to them castigate everyone else for not doing more to prevent the Nazi menace, that supposedly sent Jews to the gas chamber in WW2!

Now it has come to light that the Nazis were indeed the Zionazi, an extreme sect of the Ashkenazi, who are themselves non Jews whose ancestors converted to Judah in about 740 AD, who have since ursurped the mores and traditions of the Jewish faith and installed themselves as "Pharisees."

They were pulling Hitler's and Josef Stalin's strings, and it was they who instigated the Holodomor in the Ukraine, and the depredations of Trotsky and Lenin before that, that took the lives of millions of politically active Russians who had responded to the same Jewish political propaganda, and joined the Communist Party.

As well as the Holocaust in Nazi occupied Europe was their doing.. take a look at the massive rallies and torchlight festivals that brought the Nazis to power, how was a political party made up of shell shocked war veterans led by a street artist, ever going to afford the uniforms, the flags, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of the Nazi rise to power!

The same Ashkenazi mindset now controls US President Barak Obama, and Gordon Brown in the UK.. what the hell is going on when news reports casually discuss torture of "suspected terrorists," the terrorists are the Jews who have infiltrated the political, social and media dissemination apparatus world wide.

What happened to the ethic that the Jews said failed to protect them from the Nazis, where are the voices now ..whatever anyone thinks, or wants to believe, or hides from, the facts are that the Jews did 911.. not Osama bin Laden, not Al Qaida.. J-e-w-s.

The same Jew propagandists have never got through tellin' everybody about the Nazi torture chambers, and the simpering face of poor Anne Frank is all over the place ..never mind there was no Anne Frank, and if there was, the Pharisees would have gassed her along with the rest of the non Pharisee Jews of Amsterdam.

The concept that John Yoo and his clones, can just go on torturing innocent people to death on the grounds that they are "suspected terrorists" has got to be curtailed.. and if anyone is waitin' for "them" to get it done, he will be waitin' forever because "them" is Jews.

You have to stand against them Americans.. and don't ever think Ron Schmaul is gonna save you no more cynical politician exists, if he was ever going to stand up for America he would have opened his yapper and decried the Jew calumny of 911 by now.

911 is where the Jews are most vulnerable, since there is a mountain of evidence on the i'net that both proves the official story a lie, and proves they did it.. which means they are, along with the Americans in the US political and MSM establishment, capital traitors that have to be brought to justice, else it is exitus America!

http://www.rebelnews.org/opinion/hate/94727-adl-campaigns-to-train-hate-prosecutors

The Military Defends Our Freedom
Posted by Lew Rockwell on December 29, 2009 08:27 PM

Writes a soldier:

Concerning your article, I know from personal experience that the government is doing everything in its power to prevent the spread of the Light of Liberty via LRC. The Army here has blocked any and all access to lewrockwell.com as well as Campaign for Liberty and The Daily Bell, just to name three sites that expose the US Fascist State for what it is.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/45805.html

Tyranny in Housing / Housing Ads

http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=1255229#post1255229

Read somewhere: jewess Kagan, now on Supreme Court, wrote a paper in which she advocated classifying 'hate speech' as pornography and banning it. If I have that correct.

Read somewhere: jewess Kagan, now on Supreme Court, wrote a paper in which she advocated classifying 'hate speech' as pornography and banning it. If I have that correct.

Something like that. Here is an article that I posted two weeks ago:

http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=1369663&postcount=2

Elena Kagan on Pornography and Hate Speech
(http://www.ohioverticals.com/blogs/akron_law_cafe/2010/05/elena-kagan-on-pornography-and-hate-speech/)
by PROFESSOR WILL HUHN on MAY 12, 2010
in CONSTITUTIONAL LAW,ELENA KAGAN,FREEDOM OF SPEECH,SCOTUS,WILSON HUHN

In 1993 Kagan authored an article Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V., 60 University of Chicago Law Review 873 (1993), in which she cautioned Americans not to disparage the principle of viewpoint neutrality. It is a moderate, well-reasoned piece that anticipates later developments in First Amendment law.

Kagan wrote this article at a time when many governmental entities were seeking to outlaw hate speech and pornography. The City of St. Paul, Minnesota, enacted a law that made it a crime to display certain symbols that were "likely to arouse anger, alarm, or resentment on the basis of race, religion, or gender." The City of Indianapolis adopted an ordinance making it a crime to depict women as "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women, whether in pictures or in words." The Supreme Court struck down both of these laws. In R.A.V. v. St. Paul (1992) the Court struck down the St. Paul ordinance on the ground that it was a "viewpoint-based" law – that is, it is a law that punishes people for expressing a particular point of view. In 1985, in the case of American Booksellers v. Hudnut, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Indianapolis ordinance on the same ground. Writing for the court, Judge Easterbrook said, "the Indianapolis ordinance … is not neutral with respect to viewpoint." The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the Circuit Court's decision in Hudnut in 1986.

Kagan defends the decisions in both R.A.V. and Hudnut. She states:

[T]he principle of viewpoint neutrality, which now stands as the primary barrier to certain modes of regulating pornography and hate speech, has at its core much good sense and reason. Although here I can do no more than touch on the issue, my view is that efforts to regulate pornography and hate speech not only will fail, but also should fail to the extent that they trivialize or subvert this principle.

In the final portion of her article Kagan suggests three ways that laws against hate speech or pornography could be enforced. She states that the government could:

1. Prohibit conduct (not speech) that is motivated by hatred (such as physical assaults) or sexual degredation of women (such as prostitution and pimping). This approach was used in the case of Wisconsin v. Mitchell (1993), in which the Court affirmed the conviction of an individual who had led a gang's racial attack upon another person;

2. Enhance existing content-based laws. She states: "One potential course is to enact legislation, or use existing legislation, prohibiting carefully defined kinds of harassment, threats, or intimidation, including but not limited to those based on race and sex." This approach was later adopted by the Supreme Court in the case of Virginia v. Black (2003), in which the Court upheld a law making it illegal to burn a cross with the intent of intimidating someone;

3. Expand the definition of obscenity so that it regulates the depiction of sexual violence rather than simply "prurient" depictions of sex. The Supreme Court has not yet considered this possibility.

Kagan describes her article as an "essay" and that is correct. It is an opinion piece, not a scholarly treatment of this issue. It is clearly written, moderate in tone, and balanced in its reasoning. There is absence of posturing or characterization. Near the end her reasoning becomes a bit murky, but that is in part due the fact that the Court's decisions in R.A.V. and Hudnut offered so little guidance in this area of the First Amendment. Kagan's article makes a valuable contribution to the discussion over the regulation of hate speech and pornography.

Throughout the article Kagan's principal theme is a message – a message addressed particularly to liberals – not to tear down the prohibition on viewpoint-based laws, which "has come to serve as the very keystone of First Amendment jurisprudence."

[yeah, what we need is more govt involvement in medical care. cuz they know best. they have you best interests at heart. that's why they start wars, grow colonies of niggers, leave the border open. so why would you doubt their advice on what to eat?]

State Threatens to Shut Down Nutrition Blogger
Nutrition board says he needs a license to advocate dietary approaches
By Sara Burrows
Apr. 23rd, 2012

CHARLOTTE — The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is threatening to send a blogger to jail for recounting publicly his battle against diabetes and encouraging others to follow his lifestyle.

Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”

Steve Cooksey has learned that the definition, at least in the eyes of the state board, is expansive.

When he was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.

But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey’s blog — Diabetes-Warrior.net — violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to “practicing nutrition,” the board’s director says, and in North Carolina that’s something you need a license to do.

Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.

The board’s director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can’t encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist.

The seminar

Jan. 12, Cooksey attended a nutrition seminar at a church in Charlotte. The speaker was the director of diabetes services for a local hospital.

“She was giving all the wrong information, just like everyone always does — carbs are OK to eat, we must eat carbs to live, promoting low-fat, etc.,” Cooksey said. “So I spoke up.”

After the meeting he handed out a couple of business cards pointing people to his website.

Three days later, he got a call from the director of the nutrition board.

“Basically, she told me I could not give out nutritional advice without a license,” Cooksey said.

He said she also told him that his website was being investigated and gave him some suggestions about how to bring it into compliance.

If he does not go along, the board could file an injunction and “essentially shut the website down,” Cooksey said.

The law

Charla Burill, the board’s director, told Carolina Journal she could not discuss the details of Cooksey’s case because his website is still under investigation, but agreed to talk about the law in the hypothetical.

It’s not necessarily against the law to give your sister or your friend nutritional advice, she said. And it’s not necessarily against the law to use a blog to tell people what they should eat.

Where it crosses the line, Burill said, is when a blogger “advertises himself as an expert” and “takes information from someone such that he’s performing some sort of assessment and then giving it back with some sort of plan or diet.”

Cooksey posted a link (6.3 MB PDF download) to the board’s review of his website. The document shows several Web pages the board took issue with, including a question-and-answer page, which the director had marked in red ink noting the places he was “assessing and counseling” readers of his blog.

“If people are writing you with diabetic specific questions and you are responding, you are no longer just providing information — you are counseling,” she wrote. “You need a license to provide this service."

The board also found fault with a page titled “My Meal Plan,” where Cooksey details what he eats daily.

In red, Burril writes, “It is acceptable to provide just this information [his meal plan], but when you start recommending it directly to people you speak to or who write you, you are now providing diabetic counseling, which requires a license.”

The board also directed Cooksey to remove a link offering one-on-one support, a personal-training type of service he offered for a small fee.

Cooksey posts the following disclaimer at the bottom of every page on his website:

“I am not a doctor, dietitian, nor nutritionist … in fact I have no medical training of any kind.”

In fact, he brags about his lack of formal training throughout his blog.

“It’s so simple,” he told CJ. “I cut carbs, I reduced my drugs and insulin until I didn’t need them at all. If I can figure that out, why in the hell can’t all these other people [in the medical field]?”

Burill said the disclaimer may not protect a nutrition blogger from the law.

“If I’ve given you reason to not worry that I don’t have a license because I have all these other reasons I’m an expert, you could still harm the public,” she said. “At least you’re not trying to mislead the public, but you’re trying to get the public to trust you.”

It’s a fine line between what’s legal and what’s not when it comes to talking about nutrition.

“Anyone can talk about anything they want,” Burill said. “That’s a First Amendment right, so to speak.”

For example, a person could write a blog advocating vegetarianism, she said.

“Now if you advertised that you’d taken classes in nutrition, you’ve worked at [the federal government’s Food and Nutrition Service] for three years, and you say ‘I believe everyone should be a vegetarian, and I’m here to help you if you want to change your diet’ [that could be crossing the line],” Burill said.

“A vegetarian diet would be a little bit harder [to prosecute] because a vegetarian is not really like a medical diet.”

Burill said if Cooksey refuses to come into compliance with the law, the board could file for an injunction.

Free speech

Declan McCullagh, a CBSNews.com correspondent who writes about online free speech, says the board probably is violating Cooksey’s First Amendment rights.

“The First Amendment says state and federal governments ‘shall make no law’ abridging freedom of speech,” McCullagh said. “It doesn't say ‘except for what annoys the North Carolina Board of Dietetics and Nutrition.’”

McCullagh pointed to a sentence in Cooksey’s blog the board didn’t approve of: “I do suggest that your friend eat as I do and exercise the best they can.”

“If that language appeared in a book or a magazine article, do you think the board would complain?” McCullagh asked. “How about if someone said that to a friend over dinner at a restaurant? Of course not. But because it's on the Web, they seem to think that the First Amendment no longer applies.”

McCullagh said the board may be on more solid ground in its complaint about the telephone support packages Cooksey offers. “But … if customers are paying $97 or $149 or $197 a month to have someone listen, that sounds a lot like life coaching, which doesn't require a license.”

“In general, I think that as long as someone is very clear that they're not a licensed dietician, state officials can probably find better uses of their time,” he said.

Cooksey said the board both has violated his freedom of speech and done a disservice to the people of North Carolina. He said all he’s trying to do with his blog is provide an alternative to the nutritional advice pushed by mainstream sources on what they say people should be eating.

Cooksey said he’s seeking legal assistance in case the state decides to take further action against him.

Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=8992

[yeah, what we need is more govt involvement in medical care. cuz they know best. they have you best interests at heart. that's why they start wars, grow colonies of niggers, leave the border open. so why would you doubt their advice on what to eat?]

State Threatens to Shut Down Nutrition Blogger
Nutrition board says he needs a license to advocate dietary approaches
By Sara Burrows
Apr. 23rd, 2012

CHARLOTTE — The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is threatening to send a blogger to jail for recounting publicly his battle against diabetes and encouraging others to follow his lifestyle.

Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”

Steve Cooksey has learned that the definition, at least in the eyes of the state board, is expansive.

When he was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.

But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey’s blog — Diabetes-Warrior.net — violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to “practicing nutrition,” the board’s director says, and in North Carolina that’s something you need a license to do.

Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.

The board’s director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can’t encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist.

The seminar

Jan. 12, Cooksey attended a nutrition seminar at a church in Charlotte. The speaker was the director of diabetes services for a local hospital.

“She was giving all the wrong information, just like everyone always does — carbs are OK to eat, we must eat carbs to live, promoting low-fat, etc.,” Cooksey said. “So I spoke up.”

After the meeting he handed out a couple of business cards pointing people to his website.

Three days later, he got a call from the director of the nutrition board.

“Basically, she told me I could not give out nutritional advice without a license,” Cooksey said.

He said she also told him that his website was being investigated and gave him some suggestions about how to bring it into compliance.

If he does not go along, the board could file an injunction and “essentially shut the website down,” Cooksey said.

The law

Charla Burill, the board’s director, told Carolina Journal she could not discuss the details of Cooksey’s case because his website is still under investigation, but agreed to talk about the law in the hypothetical.

It’s not necessarily against the law to give your sister or your friend nutritional advice, she said. And it’s not necessarily against the law to use a blog to tell people what they should eat.

Where it crosses the line, Burill said, is when a blogger “advertises himself as an expert” and “takes information from someone such that he’s performing some sort of assessment and then giving it back with some sort of plan or diet.”

Cooksey posted a link (6.3 MB PDF download) to the board’s review of his website. The document shows several Web pages the board took issue with, including a question-and-answer page, which the director had marked in red ink noting the places he was “assessing and counseling” readers of his blog.

“If people are writing you with diabetic specific questions and you are responding, you are no longer just providing information — you are counseling,” she wrote. “You need a license to provide this service."

The board also found fault with a page titled “My Meal Plan,” where Cooksey details what he eats daily.

In red, Burril writes, “It is acceptable to provide just this information [his meal plan], but when you start recommending it directly to people you speak to or who write you, you are now providing diabetic counseling, which requires a license.”

The board also directed Cooksey to remove a link offering one-on-one support, a personal-training type of service he offered for a small fee.

Cooksey posts the following disclaimer at the bottom of every page on his website:

“I am not a doctor, dietitian, nor nutritionist … in fact I have no medical training of any kind.”

In fact, he brags about his lack of formal training throughout his blog.

“It’s so simple,” he told CJ. “I cut carbs, I reduced my drugs and insulin until I didn’t need them at all. If I can figure that out, why in the hell can’t all these other people [in the medical field]?”

Burill said the disclaimer may not protect a nutrition blogger from the law.

“If I’ve given you reason to not worry that I don’t have a license because I have all these other reasons I’m an expert, you could still harm the public,” she said. “At least you’re not trying to mislead the public, but you’re trying to get the public to trust you.”

It’s a fine line between what’s legal and what’s not when it comes to talking about nutrition.

“Anyone can talk about anything they want,” Burill said. “That’s a First Amendment right, so to speak.”

For example, a person could write a blog advocating vegetarianism, she said.

“Now if you advertised that you’d taken classes in nutrition, you’ve worked at [the federal government’s Food and Nutrition Service] for three years, and you say ‘I believe everyone should be a vegetarian, and I’m here to help you if you want to change your diet’ [that could be crossing the line],” Burill said.

“A vegetarian diet would be a little bit harder [to prosecute] because a vegetarian is not really like a medical diet.”

Burill said if Cooksey refuses to come into compliance with the law, the board could file for an injunction.

Free speech

Declan McCullagh, a CBSNews.com correspondent who writes about online free speech, says the board probably is violating Cooksey’s First Amendment rights.

“The First Amendment says state and federal governments ‘shall make no law’ abridging freedom of speech,” McCullagh said. “It doesn't say ‘except for what annoys the North Carolina Board of Dietetics and Nutrition.’”

McCullagh pointed to a sentence in Cooksey’s blog the board didn’t approve of: “I do suggest that your friend eat as I do and exercise the best they can.”

“If that language appeared in a book or a magazine article, do you think the board would complain?” McCullagh asked. “How about if someone said that to a friend over dinner at a restaurant? Of course not. But because it's on the Web, they seem to think that the First Amendment no longer applies.”

McCullagh said the board may be on more solid ground in its complaint about the telephone support packages Cooksey offers. “But … if customers are paying $97 or $149 or $197 a month to have someone listen, that sounds a lot like life coaching, which doesn't require a license.”

“In general, I think that as long as someone is very clear that they're not a licensed dietician, state officials can probably find better uses of their time,” he said.

Cooksey said the board both has violated his freedom of speech and done a disservice to the people of North Carolina. He said all he’s trying to do with his blog is provide an alternative to the nutritional advice pushed by mainstream sources on what they say people should be eating.

Cooksey said he’s seeking legal assistance in case the state decides to take further action against him.

Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=8992

Unintended consequence of Mr. Burke's not trusting the individual to rely on his private stock of reasoning. What alternative, Herr Burke? Oh, experts, huh. Say hello to the story above - your reasoning leads in direct path to its doorstep.

The worship of experts, the bowing before authority. These are good for catholics. For humans? Eh...not so much.

HATE LAWS WORLDWIDE: WINS AND LOSSES FOR FREEDOM

By Rev. Ted Pike, National Prayer Network
December 3, 2012

http://truthtellers.org/alerts/HateLawsWorldwideUpdate.html

From my first warnings about Christian-persecuting hate crimes laws in 1989, I have always told of their creator: the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. Christian conservative leaders claimed this simple fact-stating was “anti-Semitic.” They preferred to blame homosexual activists. This year ADL took credit more clearly than ever. "Our legal experts pioneered hate crime laws
and work to implement them nationwide."

Hate crimes laws are unique in the history of jurisprudence because they guarantee extra punishment for bias-motivated crimes against certain minorities in a population (homosexuals, Jews, Muslims, blacks, Latinos, etc.). Such protection is not extended to whites, Christians or males. The texts of all hate crime laws worldwide promise equal protection to everyone but do not grant it. Thus, hate laws are blatantly unconstitutional in the democracies which enforce them.

How successful has ADL been in persuading the nations to adopt hate laws? Stupendously. Since Canada’s federal hate law (Sec. 319) was passed in 1971 and Britain’s Sec. 5 of the Public Order Act in 1986, more than 60 western and eastern European nations have adopted federal hate crimes legislation, all closely modeled after the pattern supplied by ADL.

This brief article summarizes the present status of hate laws in Canada, Britain and the United States. There are some glimmers of hope against the stony backdrop of hate laws’ enshrinement in most western nations.

Canada

In 2009 the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal astonishingly declared Sec. 13 of Canada’s hate law (forbidding “hate speech” on the internet) to be unconstitutional. It was repealed by Parliament’s House of Commons in June of this year. Although Senate approval is still pending, the next great push by Canadian civil liberties groups (such as Paul Fromm’s heroic “Canadian Association for Free Expression”) is repeal of the original hate law, Sec. 319.

Meanwhile, the most horrendous legal flagellation of offenders continues, such as mathematics professor Terry Tremaine, letter writer Brad Love, and others.

Lovers of freedom everywhere rejoiced with recent acquittal from all hate crimes charges of Canadian pastor Stephen Boissoin. In 2002 Boissoin wrote a letter to the editor criticizing the “homosexual machine” and “militant homosexual agenda.” A homosexual activist claimed his feelings were hurt and blamed Boissoin’s letter for inciting an attack on a homosexual teacher in Red Deer, Alberta. The Alberta Hate Crime Tribunal found Boissoin guilty of inciting hate and fined him $7000, to be paid to the complaining homosexual. In addition to other punishments, he was gagged from publicly commenting on homosexuality for three years. His 10-year ordeal ended when two Alberta higher courts exonerated him completely.

Britain

In Britain “harassment” (causing someone “alarm or distress” or feeling insulted) is a statutory offense. Britain’s hate law, Sec. 5 of its Public Order Act, says,

A person is guilty of an offense if he (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior, or disorderly behavior, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive, or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm, or distress thereby.

Popular British actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) leads popular efforts to repeal Sec. 5a. Increasing numbers of writers, comedians, political commentators, social critics and performers cannot pursue their occupations freely without fear of arrest for “insulting” someone. Evangelical Christians are especially under fire.

Sec. 5 charges are increasingly being leveled by police against conservative Christians who object to either the homosexual lifestyle or the government’s plans to institute “gay marriage.”

Adrian Smith is a Christian who recently tweeted, “If the State wants to offer civil marriages to the same sex then that is up to the State; but the State shouldn’t impose its rules on places of faith and conscience.” Although his position is held by about 80 percent of the British population, Mr. Smith was arrested and charged under Sec. 5. His employer docked his pay 40 percent!

Lifesitenews.com says, "The campaign to reform Section 5 is drawing a surprisingly broad array of supporters. . . The campaign also claims 60 supporters in the Commons and the House of Lords including UKIP leader Nigel Farage.”

After 26 years of folly and persecution of free speech, a movement in Britain very similar to that of Canada could deal a painful blow to ADL/B’nai B’rith and a resounding victory for freedom.

United States

The good news in the U.S. is that, with Republicans in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, ADL is unable to push forward new hate laws. Their HR 975 anti-bullying bill, which would make criticism of homosexual youth in U.S. education a federal offense, has languished in committee since conservatives regained power.

The bad news is that the federal hate crimes law, passed just before Republicans came to power, is now being vigorously enforced. Sixteen cases have been tried and fifteen won by the U.S. Justice Department. A recent Kentucky case misfired for the government when three out of four alleged anti-gay hate criminals were found to be bisexual themselves.

By far the most shocking threat to freedom was this summer’s conviction of 16 Amish zealots, found guilty of the federal hate crime of forcibly cutting the hair and beards of theological rivals. Hate laws have never been enforced by governments when bias-motivated acts are between members of the same minority group. After this unprecedented judgment, Christian defendants await sentencing from 17 years to life in prison for going a step further than shunning and forcibly cutting the revered beards of their Christian antagonists. This case is especially ominous because it represents government prosecution of a fairly large group of Christians, almost the number of a small church. Anti-Christian Jewish ADL relishes the possibility of wide-scale arrests of Christians, even denominations of Christians who are judged by the government to be “haters,” “anti-Semitic,” “domestic terrorists,”“seditionists” in the war on terror. The day before conviction ADL’s Abe Foxman rejoiced in testimony before a Senate committee that enforcement of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act was going forward splendidly.

ADL and the Jewish Southern Poverty Law Center yearn for someone from the right wing in America to commit a bona fide hate crime against a person or persons of a federally protected group. In his testimony, Foxman named Wade Page, Sikh temple shooter and member of a white power rock band, as proof the government should consider the anti-Zionist and anti-Islamic right as primary sources of potential hate-motivated violence. Yet ADL and SPLC remain deeply frustrated that their “perfect shooter,” an unstable person with extensive contacts and association with established right-wing groups and media, has not yet materialized.

Meanwhile, no matter how blatant, bona fide hate crimes by members of protected groups are not prosecuted as such. The Fort Hood shooter (army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan who killed 13 and wounded 29 from clear anti-American bias) was, as a Muslim, exempted from federal hate crimes prosecution. So was possibly gay activist Floyd Corkins who attacked Family Research Council offices last summer, shooting a guard in the arm and yelling disagreement with FRC’s social policies. Many other glaring examples of preferential treatment toward members of federally protected groups who commit hate crimes can be found online.

Federal and state hate laws prosecute carefully selected cases that will build legal precedent against whites, Christians, males, and members of the political right, cases authorities are almost certain to win. Each, like a brick, helps build prison walls of legal precedent against the Christian right.

Christian Conservatives avoid Jewish Hate Law Issue

Meanwhile, the religious right, largely weary of the hate law issue and its failed attempts to stem passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, is content that Republicans, for the moment, withstand new ADL hate bills. But, with enforcement of the federal hate law now moving forward rapidly, the time is past when the religious right can do nothing. It is vital that the numerous legal think-tanks and advocacy groups on the right begin concerted, wide-scale efforts to persuade Congress to declare the federal hate law unconstitutional. This should be extremely simple, logically speaking, since the hate law blatantly deprives most Americans of equal protection, one of America’s most fundamental values.

It is ironic and pathetic that now, with Canada having suffered under a cruel and vindictive hate law for 42 years and Britain for 26 years, significant efforts are not being made to revoke the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The ADL/Justice Department cabal is setting up the same tyranny for America; but the Christian conservative right, from fear of the Jews who are in the middle of the hate law issue, are afraid to approach it aggressively. The only exception to such massive silence is an occasional article in Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily holding up ADL as an expert on hate crimes/anti-Semitism definitions and encouraging evangelicals to use ADL as a trusted authority! Amazingly, the religious right only becomes increasingly obsessed with what it believes is now the number one threat to freedom: radical Islam.

In protecting ADL from criticism, the religious right believes it will avoid God’s curse on those who criticize His chosen people. Actually, by protecting ADL, the right has effectively made possible passage of 45 U.S. state hate laws, the federal hate law, and many so-called “anti-bullying” hate laws, not to mention proliferation of ADL’s hate laws worldwide, an enormous curse to America and the world.
Listen to Rev. Ted Pike and Jeff Rense discuss this article and the threat to freedom posed by the federal hate crimes law:

Host:
Jeff Rense
2 Dec 12
Topic: Ted Pike Gives an Update on Hate Laws Worldwide
Listen Download (39min, 9MB)

Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.

TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this topic. Call (503) 631-3808.

National Prayer Network, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas, OR 97015

http://lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts387.html

The US Supreme Court refused to review this most blatant case of wrongful conviction. By so doing, the US Supreme Court established that the court, like the US House of Representatives, the US Senate, and the executive branch, is not only a servant of the police state but also a servant of Israel and supports the destruction of the Palestinians by designating aid to Palestine as an act of terrorism.

What this means for you is that your involvement in legal transactions or associations can be declared ex post facto by secret witnesses to be criminal involvements. The criminality of your past behavior can now be established, according to Downs and Manley, by “anonymous experts,” mouthpieces for the government prosecutors who cannot “be confronted or cross-examined within the meaning of the 6th Amendment.”

Downs and Manley write: “The implications are enormous. The government can now criminalize political, religious and social ideology and speech. Donating to peace groups, participating in protests, attending church, mosque or synagogue, entertaining friends, and posting material on the Internet, for example, could later be found to be illegal because of ‘associations,’ manufactured by anonymous experts, which in some way allegedly support designated terrorist organizations one has never heard of.”

The authors could have added that if the government wants to get you, all it has to do is to declare that someone or some organization somewhere in your past was connected in a vague undefined way with terrorism. The government’s assertion suffices. No proof is needed. The brainwashed jury will not protect you.

Be prepared in the next year or two for all criticism of “our freedom and democracy” government to be shut down. In Amerika, truth is about to be exterminated.

jews veto/whine about SNL skit making fun of slavish devotion to israel in Hagel hearings
http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=1507997#post1507997

jews veto/whine about SNL skit making fun of slavish devotion to israel in Hagel hearings
http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=1507997#post1507997OMG! you mean that was satire?
I thought I was watching the real Senate hearings. My mistake.:o

I will say in my defense that good satirical comedy should contain an element of exaggeration in order to be successful. No wonder Lorne Michaels chose to cut it.:p