Tongue Tied.

It is astonishing the things one is just not allowed to say these days. Most of the customers in the Tavern speak their minds quite readily and consider their thoughts carefully before engaging their mouth and tongue. This is not so that they do not offend the customer on the next bar-stool but that they get things as close to correct as possible. 

But that does not mean 'Politically Correct'.

A politically incorrect elderly gentleman Knight and King can very easily get condemned and 'banned' these days for addressing a highly intelligent but fragile feminist with a friendly 'm'dear', as happened recently. (I will still welcome her in the Tavern though. The politically incorrect are the last practitioners of real tolerance - as long as she doesn't pee on the carpet.)

Plain decency and manners and friendliness used to be enough to guide discourse, along with Truth and clarity of course. It remains so in the Tavern. But elsewhere in the great Hilary's Village beyond the hedge, people must discern the changing rules on a daily basis.

I am grateful to J.J. Ray for bringing some examples today. 

http://snorphty.blogspot.com.au/

The vast incorrectness of "colored"

Someone should tell the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch has apologized after describing black people as 'colored' on US television, saying he is 'an idiot' and is 'devastated to have caused offense'.

"The game's afoot, Watson. In my mouth"

The 38-year-old Sherlock star was widely condemned after using the racial term during a debate on the lack of diversity on British screens on the PBS talk show Tavis Smiley last Wednesday.

But on Monday night, he issued an apology for his 'incorrect' and 'offensive' use of the phrase, saying: 'I'm devastated to have caused offense by using this outmoded terminology.

'I offer my sincere apologies. I make no excuse for my being an idiot and know the damage is done.' 

A term that was routine up until a few years ago is now the deepest depths of wickedness, apparently.  Where will it end?

Indeed, 'people of colour' determined the term themselves! Apparantly what is wanted and demanded one day is forbidden the next. 

Charlie Hebdo killers should NOT be called 'terrorists', claims BBC executive Tarik Kafala

Tarik is no doubt a Muslim

The Parisian extremists who murdered 17 people in a series of attacks including the Charlie Hebdo massacre should not be called 'terrorists', a senior BBC executive has said.

Tarik Kafala, who runs BBC Arabic, said the term 'terrorist' was too 'loaded' and 'value-laden' to describe Said and Cherif Kouachi and their accomplice Amedy Coulibaly.

BBC Exec. Of course.

The Kouachi brothers shot dead 12 at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and Coulibaly killed four at a Kosher deli after shooting dead a policewoman. 

All three were eventually shot dead by French special forces after the Islamists all burst out of their hideouts two weeks ago.

Mr Kafalam runs the BBC's largest non-English language TV, radio and online news services, which have a weekly audience of 36million people.

He told The Independent: 'We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that 'two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine'. That's enough.

Another attempt to cover up what poison Islam is

Named after SS Nazi war criminal: World's largest ship sparks outrage as it arrives in Europe

The arrival of the world's largest ship in Europe has provoked outrage after it was revealed it was named after a SS Nazi war criminal.

The Pieter Schelte, which is so big it can lift oil rigs out of the water, is docked in Rotterdam after being constructed at the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering shipyard in South Korea.

But as Holocaust Memorial Day nears, anger has erupted after it was revealed Pieter Schelte Heerema was a Dutch officer in the Waffen SS. 

The vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush told the Observer: 'Naming such a ship after an SS officer who was convicted of war crimes is an insult to the millions who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis.  'We urge the ship's owners to reconsider and rename the ship after someone more appropriate.'

Schelte was the father of Dutchman Edward Heerema, the owner of company Allseas, who commissioned the building of the ship. 

He was an officer in the Waffen SS during the Second World War, when he acted as a director for the Dutch East Company.

It is thought he was responsible for recruiting Dutch men to be put into forced labour in Nazi-occupied territories in Eastern Europe.

However, he is reported to have left the SS in 1944 as he lost sympathy with the Nazis and joined a resistance party, fleeing to Switzerland.

He was tried and sentenced to three years in prison for war crimes after the war but was released early and went to Venezuela  where he set up a engineering company.

It seems to me that the man is entitled to honor a father who  joined the resistance to the Nazis.  It seems that his father was in any case an office worker rather than an armed combatant

Criticizing Islam, Questioning Immigration Policy is Hate Speech according to Toronto Star & Canadian Press

The recent terror attacks in Paris have led to a barrage of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant comments on the Facebook pages of federal politicians and their parties in Canada — much of it plainly visible to the public.

'Managing' racist, sexist, homophobic and harassing material is just one of the new challenges facing parties who want to have an active social media presence, grounded in the concept of free speech and open dialogue.


A Jan. 7 post on Stephen Harper’s Facebook account, in which the prime minister said he was “horrified by the barbaric attacks in France,” received approximately 575 comments. Some six dozen — expressing support for blocking immigration from Islamic countries, closing Canada’s borders or just criticizing Islam — were still on the page more than two weeks later.

How shocking! Islam was criticized in light of the of the Charlie Hebdo Massacre! Because naturally it had nothing to do with Islam.

Oh the horror! People actually questioned the wisdom of allowing immigration from Islamic nations! Forgive my hatefulness but I wonder if that has anything to do with the daily litany of horror that Islam visits upon the world?

But the most awful horrid hateful thing was that some people actually discussed closing our borders! Next those citizens will want rights like free-speech!

Former Miss Turkey, 26, facing trial after being arrested for posting satirical poem that criticised the country's president

A former Miss Turkey is facing trial for posting a satirical poem on social media that criticised her country's president.

The arrest of Merve Buyuksarac, 26, follows a crackdown in the country on critical media in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris.

She didn't get the Big Picture, did she.

Although officially Turkey is secular, 99.8 per cent of the population are registered as Muslim and there has been heated debate over freedom of expression in the wake of the Paris massacres.

Now it appears the Turkish crackdown is extending not just to monitoring the media, but also to its readers.

Officials confirmed that the model had been taken before prosecutors and questioned over the social media posting that they said had insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Merve, an educated young professional who works as an industrial designer and writer, ended up in court in the Caglayan neighbourhood of the western city of Istanbul.

Looking nervous and flanked by armed police, she told prosecutors that she 'may have quoted a poem' from the weekly humour magazine Uykusuz.


The judge, however, ruled to release Buyuksarac unconditionally, pending a date for the trial set to take place later in the year. 


Fortunately I was only banned from Facebook by a fragile feminist from Hilary's Village who smelled a moment of power which went to a very large empty space in her head. I do not feel it necessary to apologise on TV, go to trial, defend thugs and murderers while being paid by the victims nor even protest ships in Rotterdam.

There are better things to do.

There is the Crypt floor to mop, for a start. I must get to it.


Pax.

For God's sake !