Winners at the Watcher’s Council *UPDATED*

Time flew, and I forgot to post the winner’s in the last vote over at the Watcher of Weasels. Let me start, for once, on the non-Council side, where the winning piece got the highest vote I’ve ever seen in my time on the Watcher’s council — and deservedly so. Andy Olmsted’s last post, which was placed on his own blog and at Obsidian Wings, was the hands-down, overwhelming winner. If you haven’t already read it, you have to. It’s funny, sad, inspiring, honest and deeply, deeply tragic, since the man who wrote it is gone forever. Second place, and it’s inevitably a distant second because of the pile-up of votes for Olmsted’s post, was Dr. Sanity’s Orchestrated Circuses and Clowns, which talks about the fact that the media circus in New Hampshire and Iowa obscures the fact that Americans are being called upon to chose a leader, with a leader’s temperament.

And now, back to the Council itself. Here, too, there was something of a blowout, with Wolf Howling garnering 5 points for a post on Britain’s Prosecution of the Blogger Lionheart for Criticism of Islam. Aside from being a good post, it’s also revealed that free speech often sees those of us who believe in moderate rationalism sharing the same platform as some pretty yucky people — including Lionheart. It turns out that Lionheart is a fairly hardcore member of Britain’s BNP, which is its ultra Right Wing party, somewhat akin to the KKK. Lionheart therefore speaks disparagingly, not only of Islam, but of everything that isn’t true blue white. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Lionheart ended up in a kerfuffle with Little Green Footballs, which completely denounces the British crackdown on free speech, but also takes issue with the White Supremacist material Lionheart espouses. All very confusing, but the critical point, and the one Wolf Howling appropriately emphasizes, is the totalitarian aspect of the British government’s attack on free speech.

The second place Council post was Soccer Dad’s marvelous Get a Clue, which guides the reader, step-by-step, through AP, AFP and Reuters coverage of the Palestinian people, just so you can see the level of dishonesty permeating this repeating, as well as the emotionalism that is meant to take the place of truth. (And for more on that, see the post immediately preceding this one.)

UPDATE:  I think Wolf Howling’s update, left in my comments section, is so informative, I’m moving a copy of it up here, into the post:

The relationship between Lionheart and the BNP is, I think, a bit more nuanced than you have stated.  In truth, I did not know Lionheart had any relationship with the BNP.  LGF readers subsuquently found a post by Lionheart wherein he discussed why he was going to vote for the BNP.  That vote was wholly predicated on the BNP’s opposition to radical Islam in the UK.  To be fair to Lionheart, he has not, to my knowledge, ever embraced the BNP’s racism.  Indeed, to the contrary, he maintains relationships with people of all nationalities and, indeed, his support of Israel has been noteworthy.  That comes out in the comments to the LGF post that you noted.

Unfortunately, the BNP is the only major political party in Britain to take a stand against radical Islam.  The Telegraph had an editorial the other day decrying how all three major political parties are courting the Muslim vote and refusing to address any of the ills brought on by multiculturalism and the growth of radicalism in the mosques.  While, from the safety of my chair in the U.S., I would never support them, I can understand Lionheart doing so from ground zero for radicalism in the UK.

At any rate, since I wrote the post about Lionheart, he went off the deep end.   I do support his right of free speech, but he is obviously lacking judgment.