'Hate 2.0'

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, recently testified before Congress that there has been a "stark rise in the number of hate and terror sites and Web postings," a New York Times blog reports. Its annual report says the Center has identified about 8,000 such sites in the past year, up 30% over last year, the blog adds. Contributing to the problem is the rise of the social Web on which people post hateful videos, comments, etc. The Center "attributes a third of the 30% spike to blogs and discussion groups that support terrorism. The rest is the material of age-old hatreds: 40% anti-Semitic, 20% anti-black, 15% anti-immigrant and the rest a hodge-podge of anti-religious, anti-government sentiment." To counteract all this, the Wiesenthal Center is asking Web users to participate in a sort of Web neighborhood watch program by emailing links to hate sites, videos, and groups to ireport@wiesental.com.