The freedom to be unpopular
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A German court today sentenced infamous Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel to five years in prison for holding a particularly unpopular opinion.  The irony of jailing people for their beliefs in the name of fighting the neo-Nazi movement seems to be lost on most of the western world, including Canada, which jailed Zundel for two years in a maximum security facility before deporting him to Germany.  Many organizations, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, applaud the decision, but sadly lacking is a sense of outrage over the blow that this decision strikes against free speech.  Whatever happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"?
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Let someone else make the tough decisions.
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Comment is free: Catherine Bennett:  Without the prejudice she has experienced, Hodge would be more important now. Prime minister, for example.
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If you&#39;re sick of smooching the boss&#39;s derriere, start puckering and consider yourself lucky. At least you&#39;re not forced to get up close and personal with the infested hind ends of people you don&#39;t know.
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Comment is free: Simon Jenkins: Anti-newspaper diatribes bewail falling standards. That's rubbish, and the glory days they hark back to were dreadful
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I see that Cory Doctorow has made another panicked grab at relevancy once again! His most recent InformationWeek article, How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community, is his latest exercise in self-deception where he tries convincing himself that he knows something about the hip, happenin' thang we call the Innanet.        That Cory has little useful knowledge of keeping hostile jerks from taking over online communities is proven most aptly and amusingly by the way he chose to keep hostile jerks from taking over his weblog BoingBoing: he destroyed its community by shutting off its comments system.
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Academic freedom has never completely protected professors who make unpopular statements. One was fired in 1960 for suggesting that premarital sex among students could be a good thing. Three decades later, a department chair was demoted for saying a Jewish conspiracy denigrated blacks in the movies.
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Analysis Fragmentation and US indifference
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First a caveat. You don't have to agree with me, this is my opinion, and my blog, and that's what blogs are for, they're places where, if you happen to have an opinion, you can put it. This is the mode of a blogger with comments. Defensive. Yuck!!  If you say in your comment that I'm dishonest, I will delete your comment. That's the only tool I have to work with until my new friends at Disqus give me the feature Wordpress has that allows you to queue up every post in moderation when blog comments get flamey. This technique tells the honesty-attackers in no uncertain terms that they should take their attacks somewhere else.  So if your comment got deleted it's because something in your comment required a response from me (or someone else) that says basically "I am honest." I just save us all the trouble. No need to defend myself if the attack is gone.  You may think I am dishonest, you can even say so (but be careful to be sure you're right, and have the courage to put your name on it, only cowards make personal attacks anonymously) and do it in your space not mine. Here, I want comments with ideas and information. It's okay to disagree with me, the people who say that all they did was disagree are wrong. I never delete a comment just for being disagreeable. I delete them if they challenge my honesty. I really don't like that, I think the people who do it are creepy.  Okay, good. Glad to get that out of the way.
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By Randy Myers, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.  Jun. 10--In the no-holds-barred blogosphere, every voice can be raised.  But not everyone cares to listen.
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Comment is free: John Harris: When the Mail trains its guns on the super-rich, you can see how widely resentment has spread.
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Target to the blogosphere: youâre irrelevant.
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Those of us not raised with the comforts of religion must make do with denial. It&#39;s not a great trade. The overwhelming probability that all of us, our successes and failures notwithstanding, will wind up
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I confess. I&#39;m one of those people scorned by political wonks and talk-radio types alike. In a world where everyone is so certain of their position, so sure that their candidate can cure what ails us, I&#39;m the one on the fence.
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You don't have to leave your political convictions behind when you invest.
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Take advantage of fear, even when it's your own.
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If everyone loves a winner, does that mean everyone hates a loser? Not necessarily.