German Bundestag Member Volker Beck is a great guy — a hard-driving idealist who works hard on environmental improvement, gay rights, and global human rights. Beck was detained and beaten up by Russian police when he tried to advocate for a gay rights parade in Moscow.
I look forward to seeing him when I attend the German Green Party Convention in Erfurt, Germany this year — and he happens to be a Facebook pal.
On Facebook recently, Volker Beck supports and is a major “recruiter” for a group organized to “Call Facebook to delete all Hate groups against Israel.” The profile reads:
Have a look at this group –
http://stjohns.facebook.com/grou…
Despite its Terms of use ( http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) , which clearly state that the site can’t be used to – “upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law;”, this group just keeps growing!
Please send this to as many people as possible, to join this cause – tell them to report this group by going to their page, and clicking on ‘Report Group’ on the bottom left of the page!
Thanks for your support!
I was not able to click through to the St. Johns site as it was an incomplete URL in the facebook profile.
But while I completely agree that hate groups against Israel should not be tolerated in public environments like Facebook, I think that all hate groups should not be tolerated.
That means against Muslims too.
Here, for instance, is a facebook page advocating that people watch this new, disgusting depiction of Muslims and Islam titled Obsession.
I have watched the film, and it reminds me of the worst kind of wholesale character assassination of a culture and people that used to be done in pre-Civil Rights days against African-Americans, in the 1950s and 1960s against gays, against Hispanics, Vietnamese and others. It ties visuals of the acts and beliefs of some of Islam’s worst outliers and then generalizes across an entire culture.
Obsession is gross bigotry — and someone behind that bigotry sent out more than 28 milliion of these CDs to homes across the United States in this election season. Why? To educate about Islam? Or to try and further ratchet up fear in the U.S. among voters and to promote bigotry against Muslims? I think the latter.
So to my friend Volker Beck — whose facebook effort to stand against Israel hate groups is admirable — I strongly encourage you to modify your efforts to include hate groups in general — and specifically hate groups against Muslims.
— Steve Clemons
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