Twitter ordered to identify anti-Semitic tweeters in France

Twitter ordered to identify anti-Semitic tweeters in France

1/24/2013COMMENTS (0)

By Chine Labbé
PARIS, Jan 24 (Reuters) - A French court on Thursday ordered Twitter Inc to help identify the authors of anti-Semitic posts or face fines of 1,000 euros ($1,300) per day, as the social network firm comes under renewed pressure to combat racist and extremist messages.
The order, requested by a Jewish student union and rights groups, concerned anti-Semitic material but could open the floodgates to legal pursuit of Twitter users who post a wide range of messages deemed illegal or offensive.
"This is an excellent decision, which we hope will bring an end to the feeling of impunity that fuels the worst excesses," said Stephane Lilti, lawyer for the groups who sought the ruling.
The anti-Semitic messages started appearing last October, and have since been deleted.
The Paris court gave privately-held Twitter, whose general policy is that it does not control content posted on its network, 15 days to hand over data identifying people who have published messages judged anti-Semitic.
The court also ordered Twitter to set up a system in France that helps people draw attention to illegal content. Under French law, people found guilty of inciting racial hatred can be jailed for a year and fined.
Twitter's lawyer in France, Alexandra Neri, declined to comment.
Failure to comply would expose the firm, founded in 2006 and now boasting 140 million monthly active users worldwide, to daily fines of 1,000 euros if the groups who sought the order request it, which Lilti said they would not hesitate to do.
A rights group involved in the case was quick to point out that the injunction, while limited to a case of anti-Semitic traffic, set a precedent that could also have a wider impact.
"This marks a decisive step forward in the battle against racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic offences on the Internet," the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) said in a statement.
"Nobody can ignore French law, not even the giants of the American digital economy."
For a first time, Twitter deployed a new message-blocker in Germany last October to jam the posting of messages by a neo-Nazi group banned by police.
A tool Twitter calls "country withheld content" allows it to censor tweets considered illegal in a given country.
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http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2013/01_-_January/Twitter_ordered_to_identify_anti-Semitic_tweeters_in_France/

Catholic hospital chain beats malpractice suit by saying fetuses aren’t people

Editor's note: You can't have it both ways. Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com

 

Catholic hospital chain beats malpractice suit by saying fetuses aren’t people

By David Ferguson
Thursday, January 24, 2013 12:48 EST

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Topics: Catholic Health Initiatives

A chain of Catholic Hospitals has beaten a malpractice lawsuit by saying that fetuses are not equivalent to human lives. According to the Colorado Independent, in the death of a 31-year-old woman carrying twin fetuses, Catholic Health Initiatives’ attorneys argued that in cases of wrongful death, the term “person” only applies to individuals born alive, and not to those who die in utero.
Lori Stodghill was seven months pregnant with twin boys on the day she died. The Independent reported that on New Year’s Day 2006 in Cañon City, Colorado, Stodghill was admitted to the Emergency Room at St. Thomas More Hospital complaining of nausea, vomiting and shortness of breath. She lost consciousness as she was being wheeled into an exam room and ER staff were unable to resuscitate her.
It was later found that a main artery supplying blood to her lungs was clogged, which led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill never woke up, dying an hour after her admission to St. Thomas. Her twins died in her womb.

Frantic ER personnel had paged Stodghill’s doctor, obstetrician Pelham Staples, but the doctor never answered. A wrongful-death suit filed on the twins’ behalf by Stodghill’s husband, corrections officer Jeremy Stodghill, maintained that Staples should have made it to the hospital or ordered an emergency cesarian section by phone in order to save the 7-month-old fetuses.
Defending attorney Jason Langley argued in a brief he filed on behalf of the hospital chain that the court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.”
This would appear to fly straight in the face of the doctrinal teachings that purportedly govern the hospital chain’s policies. Catholic Health Initiatives is a non-profit conglomerate organization that owns roughly 170 health care facilities in 17 states, with national assets totaling around $15 billion.
Catholic hospitals purportedly base their ethical practices on the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church, which were authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. These guidelines state that, “Catholic health care ministry witnesses to the sanctity of life ‘from the moment of conception until death. The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn.”
Catholic Health Initiatives’ promotional literature states that its mission is to “nurture the healing ministry of the Church” and be guided by “fidelity to the Gospel.” The chain’s refusal to dispense contraceptives, perform abortions or to offer end-of-life services has placed it at odds in business deals attempting to acquire secularly governed hospitals in the past.
The Independent wrote, “In 2011, the Kentucky attorney general and governor nixed a plan in which Catholic Health sought to merge with and ultimately gain control of publicly funded hospitals in Louisville. The officials were reacting to citizen concerns that access to reproductive and end-of-life services would be curtailed. According to The Denver Post, similar fears slowed the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth’s plan over the last few years to buy out Exempla Lutheran Medical Center and Exempla Good Samaritan Medical Center in the Denver metro area.”

 

Nonetheless, when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, the firm was clear that only people who are “born alive” count as “people” as under the law. The argument has won favorable rulings from Fremont County District Court Judge David M. Thorson and now-retired Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Arthur Roy.
In September, Stodghill family attorneys appealed the case to the Colorado state Supreme Court, where it is expected to be heard in February or March.
Attempts to codify the belief that life begins at conception into law have been unsuccessful on multiple occasions in Colorado. So-called “fetal personhood” ballot measures have twice failed to win support from the public. The most recent attempt to put personhood on the ballot failed to garner enough signatures to be included on the 2012 ballot.
[image via Wikipedia Commons]

Raw Story (http://s.tt/1yTOs)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/24/catholic-hospital-chain-beats-malpractice-suit-by-saying-fetuses-arent-people/

For the Separation of Menorah and State

For the Separation of Menorah and State

Posted: 12/06/2012 10:34 am

 

Judaism , Christmas , Hanukkah , Judaism , Religion and Politics , First Amendment , Religion In America , Menorah , Separation Of Church And State , Story Of Hanukkah , Religion News

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Each holiday season, the constitutionality of the menorah and other religious holiday displays on government property engenders fierce debates -- in traditional courtrooms and in the court of public opinion.
In deciding whether a public display of a menorah outside a government building violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Allegheny v. ACLU (1989), stated that the menorah in the context of a holiday display depicting a star and crescent and Christmas tree has a secular message of cultural diversity and therefore is not an endorsement of any particular religion.
Although Hanukkah has a universal secular message of religious freedom, the menorah is an inherently religious symbol with religious significance. The menorah lighting was a rite in the ancient Temple. The menorah commemorates a supernatural event in which one days' worth of oil burned for eight days. The menorah is used in conjunction with prayers that invoke God. Prayers, miracles and temple rites are all inherently religious. No one recites blessings over a Christmas tree or a star and crescent, so why would the Supreme Court classify a menorah as secular?
In the decision, Justice Blackmun conceded that the menorah has religious meaning but nonetheless, "its display reveals no endorsement of religion because no other symbol could have been used to represent the secular aspects of the holiday of Hanukkah without mocking its celebration." While it's certainly true that Hanukkah is associated with the menorah, it is also strongly associated with the four-sided spinning top known as the dreidel.
The dreidel is a commonly recognized symbol of the holiday. It even has a song associated with its use: "Oh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay." According to tradition, the ancient Jews used the dreidel to play games when they heard the Greek-Hellenist approaching. This way they wouldn't be caught studying Torah, which was outlawed by the oppressive Greek king, Antiochus. Unlike the menorah, the dreidel was not used in the temple. There are no blessings recited over its use. It is not associated with anything supernatural or religious.
A public display of a dreidel should avoid perceived government endorsement of religion because of its secular origins and use. Dreidels are prominently displayed in many parts of the country. The Brooklyn Children's Museum, located in Crown Heights, has an enormous dreidel displayed with Hebrew letters, making it clear to any passerby that it is associated with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Why not display the dreidel as an alternative to the inherently religious symbol of the menorah?
Besides circumventing the First Amendment, the secularization of the menorah does a grave disservice to the Jewish tradition. Hasidic philosophy teaches that the Greek-Hellenists appreciated studying Judaism as a rational discipline, but specifically fought against the traditions that were supernatural and irrational in nature. Taking a symbol like the menorah, which represents that struggle of adhering to faith in the face of an oppressive Greek culture that believed everything should be secular and rational, and redefining it as having secular connotations contradicts what the menorah represents.
There is nothing wrong with public displays of the menorah. Expressing ones beliefs publicly is every citizen's right, but, in some contexts, a display of a menorah on government property is tantamount to the state endorsing a strictly religious symbol.
Hanukkah represents religious freedom of the individual, but an equal counterpart to that is preventing the government from endorsing and imposing religion, as this poses a threat to all faiths. When a display of a menorah is unconstitutional, spinning and displaying a public dreidel would help ensure the important division between church and state.
Original article was published in The Forward.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eliyahu-federman/separation-of-menorah-and-state_b_2249748.html