The trouble with fighting for human
freedom, is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels.
For it
is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed,
and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at
all.
--H. L. Mencken
Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press;
or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
-- The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes
cowards of men. --Emma May Wilcox
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must
begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
--Benjamin Franklin
in Canada, truth and accuracy is no defense against charges
of “hate speech.” -Robert Spencer
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and
oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of
day."
--Thomas Jefferson
“If liberty means anything at all, it
means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. George Orwell
“Speak up for those who cannot speak
for themselves…” Proverbs 31:8-9
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and
silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington
In Holland Geert Wilders the leader of the Dutch
Freedom Party, who compares the Muslim holy book to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf,
sparked government panic after saying on January 24, 2008 that he'd
release he would release an anti-Islam film he created the next day. Dutch
police prepared for a weekend of riots and Mr Wilders was told by the
authorities that he would have to leave country. What's the point of riling
up Muslims in Holland to the point that they riot and destroy property and
perhaps kill people? Why create widespread panic with a film? Why put the
Dutch police and the Dutch people through this? He did
release the film.
This film is not Geert Wilders giving a speech about his opinions, it is
clips of Muslim preachers preaching hatred, terrorist acts by Muslims and
the Koranic commands that lead to them. If you do a search for Fitna
on the web you would expect it to be the first web page you find but it is
not. One finds either web sites that criticize it or web sites from
which the movie was removed. Youtube is one of the few web sites that
still post the film. If one views
that film on youtube
it becomes clear how important the warning of the film is to those of us who
are infidels. Instead the European Parliament banned Mr. Wilders book
twice both in Strasbourg and in Brussels. It should also be important to Muslims and encourage
them to reform their religion. Instead they threaten Geert Wilders and
the people who should listen prosecute Mr. Wilders.
A Dutch court
ruled that Mr. Wilders
should be prosecuted for inciting
racial hatred with anti-Islamic statements that include calling the Koran a
"fascist book." Mr. Wilders,
in a speech in California to the David Horowitz Freedom Center said:
As you may know, I will be prosecuted in the
Netherlands, because of my short documentary Fitna and my view
concerning what some call ‘a religion of peace’. On top of that, also
France and Jordan are considering to prosecute me for my view on Islam
and the United Kingdom government did not allow me to enter their
country. And the President of Indonesia declared that I will never be
allowed to enter Indonesia as long as I live....
The second thing everyone needs to know about Islam
is the importance of the prophet Muhammad. His behavior is an example to
all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Well let me tell you the truth
about this so called prophet anyway. Muhammad was a warlord, a
conqueror, a pedophile and a mass murderer. Islamic tradition tells us
how he married and consumed the young girl Aisha long before she was ten
years of age and how he fought in battles, how he murdered his enemies,
how he slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. For millions of
Muslims the Koran and the life of Muhammad are not ancient history but
an inspiration. And if you criticize either the Koran or the Prophet or
Islam as such, you better be prepared to face the consequences. You will
receive death threats from all over the world and will be taken to court
all over the world. Your national flag will be burned and your embassies
might be set on fire, your country could face economical boycotts and
the political leaders of your own home country will not support you but
appease Muslims and Muslim governments, join them in their political
correct outrage and label you as a radical or xenophobe. When criticism
becomes unpleasant freedom of speech has to take another lane...
"The court considers this so insulting for
Muslims that it is in the public interest to prosecute Wilders," a summary
of the Dutch court's decision said. Is it in the public interest to
prosecute Mr. Wilders or to heed his warning? Should Mr. Wilders be
locked up or should the Imams who preach hatred be locked up? Should
someone who tells the truth be locked up even if knowledge of that truth
leads people to become hostile to another group of people?
Sometimes hostility is good and essential for the survival of good when the
object of hostility is bad. This is discussed further on the web page
The Danger and Value of Anger. Not speaking
the truth about a threat makes that threat much more dangerous because then
you can't defend yourself against it. Nonie Darwish in an article
titled "Prosecuted
For Stating Truths" wrote:
European governments today are forbidding their
citizens from expressing fear of those Muslim scriptures which demand
Sharia law, Islamic Jihad or the killing of non-Muslims, calling their
concern "hate speech." The protection of Islamic ideology has become
more important than the safety and security of their own citizens. \
During Wilder's trial prosecutors said that Wilders will
not be allowed to defend himself from charges of inciting hatred by arguing
that what he said was true. According to this logic if someone witnesses a
murder and reports it they are inciting hatred toward the murderer and so
have violated the law even though they spoke the truth. This twisted logic
is apparently not exclusive to Holland. A commenter on the
article wrote
"Here in Australia under the racial vilification laws
truth is not accepted as a defense."
Winston Churchill and William Gladstone are two former Prime Ministers who
shared Mr. Wilder's opinion of Islam. Today their statements could
land them in jail for hate speech. Prior to World War II Winston
Churchill and others tried to warn the British public about the looming
dangers of war with Germany. The British press did not cooperate in
fact it kept quiet about German atrocities
because of the belief that such information might inflame the British to
arm against Germany and to go to war. If Britain had armed
itself and stood up for its allies there might have been no war and German
military leaders might have overthrown Hitler.
Islamic silencing of free speech
in Europe has a longer history than most people think.
Andrew Bostom wrote that:
Beaumarchais’ Marriage of Figaro, written at the
close of the 18th century, included this freedom of speech monologue
in Act V, Scene 3,
I cobble together a verse comedy about the
customs of the harem, assuming that, as a ish writer, I can
say what I like about Mohammed without drawing hostile fire.
Next thing, some envoy from God knows where turns up and
complains that in my play I have offended the Ottoman empire,
Persia, a large slice of the Indian peninsula, the whole of
Egypt, and the kingdoms of Barca [Ethiopia], Tripoli, Tunisia,
Algeria, and Morocco. And so my play sinks without trace, all to
placate a bunch of Muslim princes, not one of whom, as far as I
know, can read but who beat the living daylights out of us and
say we are “Christian dogs.” Since they can't stop a man
thinking, they take it out on his hide instead.
Sadly, today, over two centuries later, Dutch
Parliamentarian Geert Wilders’ free speech rights are under attack in an effort to appease the same irredentist Muslim
attitudes—attitudes which are devoid of self-criticism, and
violently opposed to any criticism of Islam by non-Muslim
“infidels.”
In July 2008 a Jordanian court summoned twelve European
citizens to answer criminal charges of blasphemy and inciting hatred. One of
those 12 was Geert Wilders for creating the film.
Stephen Brown wrote:
The subpoenas will be sent to the twelve Europeans
through their embassies in Jordan. If they do not appear within 15 days,
the Messenger of Allah group says it will seek international arrest
warrants through Interpol.
Europe’s appeasement is also evident in the second
part of Messenger For Allah group’s anti-blasphemy campaign. This part
calls for a commercial boycott of all Danish and Dutch products in
Jordan and of anything associated with the two countries, such as
airlines and shipping companies. ..
Dutch and Danish companies were instructed they could get their products
off the boycott list if they, essentially, betrayed their nations’
values and their countrymen. The affected companies, according to The
Jordan Times, were told to denounce the Dutch film and the Danish
cartoons in the media both in Jordan and in at least one publication in
their own country, support the Jordanian legal action taken against
Wilders and the Danish newspaper people as well as the creation of an
international anti-blasphemy law.
Several companies have already complied. When informed of the
stipulation that requires a denunciation be published in a Dutch
newspaper, a spokesman for a Dutch food company that exports to Jordan
said his company “…would print it if needed.”..
Only last week, Dutch and Danish companies
were told to put the boycott posters up in their own countries if they
did not want their products blacklisted.
The overall goal of the Messenger of Allah group’s legal and commercial
campaign against the two European states, it says, is the enactment of
“a universal law that prohibits the defamation of any prophet or
religion”, especially of the Prophet Mohammad. Islamic countries are
already pushing for such a law at the United Nations.
“The boycott is a means but not an end,” said Zakaria Sheikh, a
spokesperson for Messenger of Allah Unite Us. “We are not aiming at
collective punishment, but when the Danish and Dutch people put pressure
on their governments to support the creation of an international law, we
are achieving our goal.”
Well, there you have it. The Muslim organization wants Denmark and
Holland not just to muzzle themselves but to help it muzzle the rest of
the world as well.
There are efforts in the Western world to ban
hate speech against Muslims and to punish those who criticize Islam that are
so extreme that attempts are made to even ban words.
Deborah Weiss
wrote in 2008 that:
During the past year, several federal agencies –
including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the
National Counter Terrorism Center – have declared a war on words.
Specifically, these agencies have issued memoranda discouraging their
employees from naming the enemy in the War on Terror. The prohibition
included words such as “jihad,” “Islamist,” “Islamofascism,” and
“caliphate,” among others.
Perhaps the reason for this war against speech
is the desire to keep the oil flowing and to reduce Muslim anger so they
won't carry out terrorist attacks. Perhaps another reason is the
desire to end hate. Does banning speech against Muslims help end hate?
Will fewer people hate Muslims if they hear less criticism of Muslims. Will
fewer Muslims hate the non-Muslims if there is less criticism from
non-Muslims?
Hal Lindsay lost his job
with TBN because he pointed out that there are
109 verses in the Koran promoting violence toward the infidel and that when Muhammad was in Medina
and had an army behind him he promoted violence. He said the more knowledgable and devout Muslims become the more violent they become. He
argued that moderate Muslims were not practicing real Islam.
A video of an
interview with him can be seen here. What he said about the Koran is true.
There are 109 verses promoting violence toward the infidel. I've listed
some of them
here. Hal Lindsay's conclusion that the more Muslims believe this the
more violent they will become is a reasonable one. When he spoke about
this this was seen as provoking hatred of Muslims and his supervisor
demanded to review all his scripts so she could censor them.
Lets assume that everyone who spoke the truth about
the contents of the Koran to the ignorant infidel was muzzled. People
would then not understand the roots of Islamic hostility. They'd be
more likely to blame the Jews since the Muslims blame the Jews. The
belief that the Jew is evil also comes from the Koran but people wouldn't
know this because it would be forbidden for anyone to say so. People
would conclude that the excuses the Muslims give for hating the Jews must be
the real reason for Muslim violence. If Muslims committed terrorist
acts against them they'd think it was the Jews fault. People would
become hostile to the Jews. Anti-Jewish sentiment is growing in Europe
on a massive scale. What if a terrorist act was committed by a Muslim
and those who reported on it left out that it was a Muslim who did it.
Then people again would blame the wrong people for the terrorist attack.
Hatred would be created but it would be created toward non-Muslims and the
victims of Muslim wrath. The Muslims would be able to act with
impunity because no one would be willing to recognize that they were
responsible and the increased number of terrorist attacks would increase the
hate. To the extent that people realize that Muslims are behind the
attacks it will increase hostility to Muslims and to the extend that they
don't it will increase the hostility to non-Muslims. This example
shows how attempting to muzzle hate speech can actually increase hate
speech.
If the assumption underlying muzzling hate speech,
that hate speech is wrong is correct than anyone who says anything bad about
anyone else is committing a crime. If a criminal held up a bank and raped the
female employees and then killed them, according to this logic no one has the
right to say that he did because that would create hatred toward the criminal.
According to this logic if someone reports the criminal to the police that person should be arrested for
creating hatred in the police. The result would be that innocent people
would be in jail and the criminal would go on to rob more banks, and rape and
kill more women. Islam teaches jihad toward the infidel. It
teaches it is OK to rape infidel women captured in war. The result of
stopping speech critical of Islam is similar to what would happen if those
criticizing the criminal were silenced, it would enable devout
fundamentalist Muslims to rape infidel women unimpeded.
These raping sprees are happening in
Western countries.
Earlier I mentioned how Geert Wilders is being silenced. He
created a powerful movie called Fitna
which juxtaposes horrific scenes of killings and destruction at the hands of
the Islamic terrorists with verses from the Koran and excerpts of incendiary
speeches by Islamic leaders that are used to justify such acts of terrorism.
There is nothing that is not factual in the film. The speeches are
real, the quotes from the Koran are real and the terrorist acts are real.
Nevertheless,
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the film saying that it traffics
in what he calls “hate speech” and “incitement to violence.” Nowhere
in that film is their hate speech or incitement to violence. In fact
the film is exposing hate speech and incitement and that hate speech and
incitement is not condemned by the U.N..
Youtube banned videos from Palestinian Media
Watch that show Muslim hate speech on the grounds that they were hate
speech. Here banning hate speech was used as an excuse to prevent
people from becoming aware of Islamic hate speech.
Alarmingly
t< class="Apple-style-" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0,
0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal;
font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px;
text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing:
0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect:
none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; ">he UN
Human Rights Council passed unanimously a resolution proposed by<
class="Apple-converted-space"> Egypt< class="Apple-converted-space"> and<
class="Apple-converted-space"> Pakistan< class="Apple-converted-space"> that
calls for the policing of individuals and media reports for negative
statements about Islam.
Holland is slowly becoming Islamicized and radicalized. Holland is
slowly losing its freedoms, the right of free speech among them. It is
becoming a country where people are afraid to speak their minds because of
the Muslims. Perhaps the only chance the Dutch have is a crisis which forces
them to take firm action. Perhaps only when Muslims riot in the streets and
burn Dutch homes and blow up Dutch people will the Dutch become aware of the
threat that is in their midst. Perhaps that is the only chance that
Holland expel the growing extremist population that is slowly strangling it. Geert Wilders may be one of Holland's last remaining hopes to remain free.
Geert Wilders had been invited to
Britain in February for a special private screening of "Fitna" for
Parliament. However he was banned from coming to England. A
Nashville, Tenn., hotel the Loews Vanderbilt hotel was going to host a
meeting in which a video presentation by Geert Wilders was going to be shown
but cancelled
the meeting after Islamic threats.
The decision to ban Geert Wilders from
coming to England was reversed. Here is a youtube video in which Mr.
Wilders talks about it.
The attack against free speech on
campus
can be seen in the reaction of Temple administrators and students before and
after Geert Wilder spoke at Temple. After Mr. Wilder's speech a
student wrote a column to the Temple University Press that “It’s
not that Temple students didn’t want Wilders to exercise his right to ‘tell
people what they do not want to hear,’ but they didn’t want to hear hateful
rhetoric…” Anyone who didn't want to hear Mr. Wilders simply could
have not shown up at his talk so that statement is absurd. Temple
students tried to silence Mr. Wilders.
What if
speech is used to incite violence. Should neo-Nazis be allowed to incite
their followers? Should people like Khalid Muhammed a man who organized the
"million youth march" and who spouted hatred against whites and the Jews be
silenced? What about Arabic radio stations that preach hatred of the Jews?
Shouldn't they be silenced? When the Shah of Iran was in power
Ayatollah Khomeini distributed tapes inciting religious Moslems to overthrow
him. The Shah was overthrown, the Ayatollah became the leader of Iran and
the result has been a anti-western religious dictatorship. Should the
Ayatollah's tapes have been confiscated? Although there was not much
freedom of speech in Iran under the Shah there is even less now as a result
of the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Iran. Wouldn't the confiscation of
tapes been worth protecting the freedoms, however limited of Iranians under
the Shah? The state of Palestine is ostensibly being created to give more
freedom and self determination to Palestinians yet the Palestinians
Authority is also
attacking the right to free speech of its opponents. At the same time
it is producing TV shows
inciting Arab children to hate Israel. Shouldn't this be
stopped? Would it be better if only the "good" speech was allowed?
Would it be better if only speech that would preach brotherhood and harmony
be allowed? Would it be better if only speech that was constructive
was allowed?
The danger of anti-incitement laws is that they can be
used to silence legitimate opposition to bad policies. Perhaps a better way
to handle hate speech is with speeches encouraging tolerance. If the
inciters attempt to silence those who preach tolerance through violence than
they should be arrested and silenced themselves but only the individuals who
do so and not the group they belong to. Laws against incitement have been passed in Britain, Sweden, Israel and in Canada and I give
examples of negative consequences of this below. These negative
consequences have happened because any criticism of another person or group
can be construed as incitement. Anyone who advocates a policy that in
anyway inconveniences another group no matter how necessary that policy, can
be accused of incitement. When incitement becomes illegal, people can
punish and lock up those whose political opinions they don't like. Another
problem with incitement laws is that in practice they are applied
selectively. You rarely see radical Muslim or left wing inciters in Europe
being locked up for incitement. The
only case I am aware of in which a British Muslim faced jail for
incitement was that of Umran Javed < style="font-size: 14pt">who
was found guilty of soliciting murder when he called for the death of
Americans and Danes during a
demonstration in London in 2006 against
cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Nonie
Darwish pointed out an example of selective hate speech legislating in the
British Parliament. She wrote that when
< class="content1" id="backCon19">a Conservative MP
raised the possibility that a hate speech law being considered by the
British parliament, if passed, could outlaw the reading of passages of the
Qur’an that called for harsh treatment against Christians and Jews…The
delegation suggested that it may be preferable to ‘totally exempt’ Islamic
texts from the bill."
Lars Hedegaard, made remarks about the
dysfunctions and abuse within Islamic family culture and
was put on trial. Under Denmark's law 266b dealing with
alleged hate speech, defendants are not allowed to prove
the truth of their comments and all that is needed for
conviction is whether any one person feels offended. In
his final words in the Court of Frederiksberg on January
24, 2011 he
spoke about the selective use of hate speech laws.
As jurisprudence shows, not only in Denmark but in all
European countries with similar insult articles in their
penal code, these insult articles open the gates to
inequality before the law. There are insulted who enjoy the
tender graces of the public prosecutor, and there are the
less favoured who must endure insults directed at them.
Hedegaard was acquitted on a
technicality, namely that the judge in the Court of Frederiksberg resolved
that his supposedly offensive comments on the violations against little
Muslim girls were not intended for public dissemination. The problem
with this is that if someone wanted to speak out against publically in
Denmark against violations against little Muslim girls one would go to jail.
Later on Hedegaard
was found guilty. Mr. Hedegaard made a
statement in which he said:
My crime is to have called attention to the
horrific conditions of Muslim women and for my audacity the court has
now enabled my detractors to label me a racist.
Muslims can say whatever they want with impunity. Just a few weeks ago
Denmark opened its gates to the hate-spewing preacher Bilal Philips,
known for his advocacy of wife-beating and the killing of homosexuals.
He was provided a platform in Copenhagen and nobody thought of dragging
him into court.
In England two Christian preachers
attempted to convert Muslims to Christianity by passing out Bible tracts in
a Muslim neighborhood. < class="content1" id="backCon13">
(A
Muslim Hate Crime is in Your Future, 6/6/08)
They were stopped by doing so with the excuse that doing so was a hate
crime. < class="content1" id="backCon12">
This is in the context of many attacks on
vicars or churches by Muslims who are clearly intent on turning east London
into a no-go area for Christians."
On one occasion, youths shouted:
< class="content1" id="backCon12">
"This should not be a church,
this should be a mosque, you should not be here."
< class="content1" id="backCon12">
Said Ramanoop,
< class="content1" id="backCon12">
"I just walked away from it --
you are too frightened to challenge them. We have church windows smashed
two to three times a month. The youths are anti-Christian."
The Christians who try and convert
these Muslims from their violent ways are accused of committing a hate
crime.
He said the adoption of hate crimes legislation has led to
widespread suppression of speech deemed politically incorrect. The Pacific
Justice Institute noted that in California, hate crimes laws are commonly
invoked as a basis for further laws pushing acceptance of homosexuality in
public schools and the workplace. The group also warned that use of "hate
speech" terminology is also now being employed by minority religious groups
in America to encourage suppression of free speech, as a prominent Hindu
group called on Congress and major Internet service providers to shut down
websites critical of Hinduism, including websites of Christian mission
organizations.
Michelle Malkin wrote an article about
attempts to silence opponents of illegal immigration with accusations of
hate speech.
She wrote:
the National Hiic Media Coalition, ... filed a
petition in January demanding that the FCC collect data, seek public
comment and “explore options” for combating “hate speech” from staunch
critics of illegal immigration.
Open-borders groups have sought to marginalize, criminalize and demonize
those of us who have raised our voices for years about lax immigration
enforcement — and to impose an Orwellian Fairness Doctrine-style policy
on illegal alien amnesty opponents. During the presidential campaign,
the National Council of La Raza launched a “We Can Stop the Hate”
project to redefine tough policy criticism from the right as “hate.” La
Raza President Janet Murguia called for TV networks to keep immigration
enforcement proponents off the airwaves and argued that hate speech
should not be tolerated, “even if such censorship were a violation of
First Amendment rights,” according to Broadcasting and Cable News.
As a result one side can propagandize and brainwash freely
while silencing the opposition with anti-incitement laws. Caroline
Glick wrote how the hate speech of Israel Apartheid Week goes unchecked
while attempts of pro-Israel supporters to respond are restricted by speech
codes. She wrote:
When Israel Apartheid Week was launched the next
year, many local Jewish student and community activists in the US and
Canada demanded that university authorities ban the clearly bigoted
event from their campuses. To their chagrin, university presidents and
administrators would do no such thing. Claiming that doing so would
restrict academic freedom, the propaganda war against the Jewish state
went forward and grew. And, in its wake, the freedom of pro-Israel
students on college campuses throughout the West has become increasingly
constricted and threatened.
Both through formal speech codes barring criticism of anti-Israel
propaganda and violence, and through academic and physical intimidation
of pro-Israel students by an increasingly vocal and aggressive coalition
of pro-Palestinian professors, Muslim and leftist students, Israel's
supporters on university campuses find themselves under assault. Today,
seven years after the Durban Conference, Israel Apartheid Week has
become a mainstay on the academic calendar, nearly as taken for granted
as Homecoming Week and mid-terms.
Bruce Thornton mentioned the selective
enforcement of hate speech in an
article in Frontpage Magazine. He wrote:< class="content1" id="backCon20">
But sometime around the Sixties, all this began to
change. Certain groups were now to be protected from hurt feelings, even
if it was the truth doing the hurting. “Hate speech” laws soon protected
ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals, and any “oppressed”
victim-of-color from anything that might make them feel bad or wound
their self-esteem...
Of course, there is no consistency in this tender
regard for hurt feelings. White males, Christians, observant Jews,
Israelis, poor Southern whites, and Republicans are still fair game for
vicious verbal assaults. Pornography, vulgar music videos, television
shows, and juvenile bad art likewise are not restricted just because
they might offend somebody. Indeed, just complaining about the vulgarity
of popular culture or so-called “art” earns one denunciation as a
puritanical philistine whose protests create the ever-dreaded “chilling
effect” that in fact is downright tropical compared to the effects of
speech codes and internal censorship caused by political correctness.
This inconsistent curtailment of free speech serves
an ideological function: to control and limit the speech of those who do
not share the progressive dogma that sees America’s sins and crimes as
historically unique evils responsible for all the world’s ills. This
anti-American ideology explains why those who will denigrate and vilify
with gusto their own civilization will censor the truth to protect
those, like the jihadists, whose own values scorn all the
goods––freedom, tolerance, equality––that these two-bit Western Hamlets
proclaim to respect. Free speech, then, is under multiple assaults: from
the progressive ideologues who despise the liberal democracy and
free-market economy that have made America the dominant world power; and
from the therapeutic sentimentalists who believe nothing, not even the
truth, is more important than protecting the feelings of America’s
alleged victims.
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> An example of how incitement laws can
be abused occurred in Sweden where Ake Green, a pastor belonging to the
Pentecostal movement was sentenced , to a month in prison, under a law against
incitement, after he was found guilty of having offended homosexuals in a sermon
(wnd.com 7/8/04). This is even though he ended his sermon with the
statement:
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"What
these people who live under the slavery
of sexual immorality need, is an abundance of grace. We cannot condemn these
people. Jesus never belittled anyone. He offered them grace."
< style="font-size:13.5pt">The
pastor's conviction prompted just one international political reaction.
Vladimir Palko, the Interior Minister of Slovakia,
Banning Patriotism,
frontpagemagazine.com 4/25/2006)
“If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book
talks about me, I’d be arrested for hate speech,” Pat Condell, a British
stand-up comedian, said in a
youtube video.
Mr. Condell, though a comedian by profession, is not joking. He knows how
two years ago a British television crew which went undercover in British
mosques and taped sermons inciting to violence against non-Muslims, was
itself charged by the police and Crown Prosecution Service for “stirring
up racial hatred” against Muslims, while the preachers were left
undisturbed. According to the police and the public prosecutor the words of
the preachers had been “taken out of context,” while the “context” of the
makers of the television program was filled in by their accusers: their aim
was said to be to stir up anti-Muslim feelings among the public...
One of the famous victims of hate crime legislation in
Europe is Brigitte Bardot. Last June the former sex symbol, once considered
to be the very icon of France, was given a two-month suspended prison
sentence and fined €15,000 by a court in Paris. Mrs. Bardot was convicted
for “instigation of hatred” towards the Muslim community because in December
2006 she had sent a letter to Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Interior Minister of
France, to demand that Muslims anaesthesize animals before slaughtering
them. In the letter she said, referring to Muslims, that she was “fed up
with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us,
destroying our country and imposing its habits.” Harboring and expressing
such sentiments is a crime in France....
Last week Susanne Winter, an elected member of the
Austrian Parliament, was convicted by a court in Graz to a suspended jail
sentence of three months and a fine of €24,000 for “inciting racial hatred
and degradation of religious symbols and religious agitation.” At a meeting
of the Austrian Freedom Party FPÖ in January 2008, Mrs. Winter had said that
the prophet Muhammad was “a child molester” since he married a six-year-old
girl, and that he was “a warlord” who had written the Koran during
“epileptic fits.” She had also said that Islam is “a totalitarian system of
domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of
the Mediterranean” and warned for “a Muslim immigration tsunami,” stating
that “in 20 or 30 years, half the population of Austria will be Muslim” if
the present immigration policies continue.
Following these remarks, Muslim extremists threatened to kill Mrs. Winter,
who was subsequently placed under police protection. This did not persuade
the judge, Christoph Lichtenberg, to be more lenient. He told Mrs. Winter:
“You have only one goal: to gain votes by a despicable method, by appealing
to xenophobic feelings.” Judge Lichtenberg said a severe punishment was
asked for in order to prevent Mrs. Winter from voicing similar opinions
during her next election campaign...
Unlike Susanne Winter, Alfred Hrdlicka, an Austrian
“artist,” who last year depicted Jesus and his apostles engaging in
homosexual acts of sodomy during the Last Supper, has not been indicted, let
alone sentenced. Depicting Jesus sodomizing his apostles is not considered
to be a “degradation of religious symbols” in Austria, but referring to the
historic fact that Muhammad married a six-year old girl is.
David Solway
wrote that: Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, the daughter of an Austrian diplomat
who spent her formative years in Iran is currently being prosecuted for
“prejudicial incitement” against Islam by the Austrian government.
She said that people “are being systematically silenced.”
The issue that caused the most uproar in
the Austrian
press — and which figured prominently in the charge on which Elisabeth was
eventually convicted — concerned the prophet Muhammad’s “thing for little girls:
• Q: You are accused of making the following statements, among others: “Muslims
rape children because of their religion”, or “Muhammad enjoyed contact with
children.” Why the polemics?
• A: This is a clever strategy. You and all the others who are now crying wolf
are locked in a choice of words. As a result you are able to maneuver yourselves
away from the main point. It is a fact that Muhammad married a six-year-old at
the age of 56. To this day men in Islamic countries view this as legitimizing
marriage to a minor, thereby causing rape and life-long trauma. This is the
problem we need to address, and not how circumscribe this bitter reality.
Similarly,
Austrian retiree “Helmut G” was recently
arraigned and fined for merrily yodelling during a Muslim prayer session at
a neighboring house, since his yodeling sounded like the call of the muezzin and
disturbed the congregants. Singing must also be silenced.
Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff gave a speech to
the English Defense League on February 5th, 2011 in Luton, England.
She
said:
My “crime,” ladies and gentlemen, was to tell the truth
about Islam. To quote the Koran and the hadith. To cite the official texts
of Sharia. To explain that Islam tells men to beat their wives, and that
Sharia requires the amputation of limbs for theft.
In my seminars I explained that Islamic law sanctions the mutilation of the
genitals of little girls. It demands that anyone who leaves Islam be killed.
In short, my “crime” was to educate my fellow Austrians about what Islam
really means, as prescribed by Islam itself.
Telling the plain truth about Islam in its own words insults Muslims. How
bizarre is that?..
If we do not reclaim our basic rights — including the
most important right of all, the right to speak freely — our civilization
will be destroyed. All of our great institutions, including democracy and
the rule of law, are made possible by the fundamental human rights that we
all used to take for granted.
These rights are now being deliberately destroyed. The legal case against me
is evidence of that fact, and so are the cases against Tommy Robinson,
Guramit Singh, Geert Wilders, Lars Hedegaard, and all the other brave people
who have spoken out against Islam and then been prosecuted for it.
Pennsylvania
State University has canceled an art exhibition about Arab terrorism and the
destruction of Jewish historical and religious sites, claiming it does not
"promote cultural diversity."
The ten-piece exhibit, by student Josh Stulman, was the result of years of
preparation. It was called "Portraits of Terror" and focused on
images of Palestinian terrorism, hate-propaganda cartoons printed in PA newspapers
and photos of Jewish holy sites destroyed by Muslims.
Just three days
before the exhibition was to take place, Stulman received an email from the
School of Visual Arts saying that his exhibit on images of terrorism "did
not promote cultural diversity" or "opportunities for democratic dialogue"
and the display would be canceled, according to the PSU Collegian newspaper.
The accusation that the exhibit does not
promote cultural diversity is a way of saying that people who see it might
get hostile to Muslims. The statement that it does not promote
opportunities for democratic dialogue is absurd as such an exhibit would
certainly promote dialogue.
Advertisements that complain about
incitement are blocked if they are
against Muslim
incitement or expose Islamic violence. American Jewish Committee
director David Harris
revealed how a New York Times owned radio
station, WQXR
refused an AJC commercial that said:
"Recently, The New York Times reported that in Saudi Arabia,
10th graders are warned of 'the dangers of having Christian and Jewish
friends,' and in Pakistan, a million children attending religious schools
are taught to "distrust and even hate the United States."
WQXR also
blocked a commercial trying to get help for the civilians being bombarded with
Palestinian Arab rockets in Sderot with the excuse that the ad didn't balance it
with discussion of Israeli military actions.
Harris said that
in the month before the Bloomberg radio news station rejected an AJC segment
citing hate literature in children's textbooks in the Palestinian Authority
(PA), Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. So it's not just WQXR.
Those who try
and speak the truth about the Muslims find themselves accused of incitement if
they do. If they simply try and talk about Muslim incitement they are not
allowed even to pay for a forum to do so at least no by WQXR and the Bloomberg
station and one suspects by a lot of other radio stations who are afraid of
jeopardizing the flow of Arab funds and who are afraid of antagonizing Muslims.
Incitement laws
threaten free speech in England. According to (Banned in the. U.K.,
frontpagemag.com 10/26/05):
The British libel laws are so destructive that they affect writers and
publications who never set foot in Britain and never published there. They are
used effectively by Saudi billionaires who can afford the steep legal fees to
silence successfully writers and publishers around the world who attempt to
expose how the Saudis have funded and continue to fund the spread of Wahhabism,
Islamist radicalism, and indoctrination that leads to global terrorism.
In Britain an arrest warrant
was issued for blogger Lionheart for telling the world about Islamists in his
neighborhood (American Thinker, 6/9/2008).
Stephen Brown wrote that:
< style="font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic">On
Thursday, February 12, 2009 visiting Dutch politician Geert Wilders was
humiliatingly bundled back on to a plane to his native Holland shortly after
arriving in London. Wilders had been invited to show his controversial,
17-minute documentary film,
Fitna,
in Britain’s House of Lords but was warned in a letter from the British Home
Office he would be denied entry to the country. As reasons for his being
declared persona non grata, Wilders was told in the letter he would
“threaten community harmony and therefore public security.”
< style="font-size: 14pt">A Lebanese journalist
named Ibrahim Moussawi, who has acted as a spokesperson for Hezbollah and worked
for their Al-Manar television station, is now being given permission to visit
the United Kingdom – this despite the fact that, in 2002, he was quoted in The
New Yorker decrying Jews as “a lesion on the forehead of history.”
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"> < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">A short film
about how Saudis silence their critics and attempted to silence Rachel Ehrenfeld
the author of Funding Evil can be seen on
youtube. Rachel
Ehrenfeld couldn't even attend a meeting she organized in the U.K. on "How
to Combat Terror Financing" because if she went she would have been in
jeopardy because of British libel laws.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-weight:normal">Sheikh Mahfouz sued her for her 2003 book "Funding
Evil: How Terrorism is Financed — and How to Stop It." Rather than
contesting the case in Britain, Ms. Ehrenfeld she went to an American court. In
June, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in her favor,
finding that if an American writer is sued for libel in a foreign court, that
person can appeal to an American court to request that a British decision not
be enforceable here.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Ehrenfeld told Jamie
Glazov in a
Frontpage Magazine interview
(11/28/07) that:
< style="font-size: 14pt; font-style:italic">Bin Mahfouz single handedly
stopped all American newspapers and publishers, not to mention individual
reporters, from covering him specifically, and most Saudi terror financiers,
in general. Apparently, through him, the Saudis have successfully imposed a
wholesale chilling effect on U.S. instigative reporting on Saudi terror
financing...We are at war with enormously wealthy and determined enemies. We
should prevent their use of their tremendous wealth to deprive American
writers of their constitutional rights to expose actions that threaten our
safety and freedoms. One of the most important foundations of American
Democracy is freedom of the press. Bin Mahfouz's libel suits are an
important part of an enormous campaign to severely curtail press and media
willingness and ability to freely investigate and report the great financial
powers diligently working to destroy our nation and indeed the entire
Western civilization.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-weight:normal">
Few people have supported Dr. Ehrenfeld. She told Jamie Glazov that:
Apparently, Saudi influence on the media, politics and business interests
is so pervasive that only the most courageous and honorable, professionals,
colleagues and friends have stood by me. Others keep a silent distance--and
some even try to harm me.
< id="backCon1">
< style="font-size: 14pt"> Fear and perhaps bribes or a
combination of both appears to be affecting how judges rule in cases brought by
Islamic plaintiffs.
< style="font-size: 14pt"> That may explain why
Ehrenfeld lost her appeal. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that it
does not have jurisdiction to protect Americans - on U.S. soil - from a foreign
defamation verdict. Of course it does. This is the kind of ruling
one would expect if the judge is scared or was bribed.
< style="font-size: 14pt"> England which is full of Muslim
preachers who preach hate and who allows in members of Islamic terrorist
organizations sends letters to Israeli officials telling them they are not
welcome.
Moshe Feiglin received such a letter from British Home Secretary Jacqui
Smith.
< style="font-size: 14pt"> Ironically, one of the four
examples of Feiglin’s “unacceptable” statements cited in Smith’s letter was
actually taken from the writings Claude Scudamore Jarvis, the British Governor
of the Sinai during the Mandate period. In an interview with Israel National
Radio’s Yishai Fleisher on Monday, Feiglin joked that he was being banned from
Britain for quoting a British official. Here is the letter Feiglin wrote
in response to this.
< style="font-size: 14pt">25 Adar I, 5768
March 3, '08
To the British Government
Home Office
Border and Immigration Agency
Dear Sirs,
Two months ago, I received a letter from your office in which you stated
that I am not welcome in your country. As I was under the impression that
the letter was a practical joke, I attempted to clarify its authenticity
before I replied. Now that I have ascertained that the letter is indeed
authentic, I wish to give you my reply:
I did not request entry into Britain and I have no immediate plans to do so.
It would be proper to investigate the reasons for this strange initiative
against a political figure in Israel . This initiative represents yet
another example of European interference in Israel 's internal affairs.
Being that infamous terrorists such as Ibrahim Moussaui of the Hizbollah are
actually most welcome in Britain , while I -- who have never harmed anyone -
am not, I conclude that your policy is to encourage and support terror.
As is clarified in your letter, the grounds for your decision is material
that I had written years ago citing the necessity to fight Arab terrorists
and my analysis of the culture from which terror grows. Among other facts,
you quote my article in which I wrote that "The Arab is not the son of the
desert, but rather, its father."
For your information, that quote was taken directly from the book "The
Desert Yesterday and Today" written by none other than British High
Commissioner of Sinai, Sir Claude Jarvis in 1938.
Considering the moral depths to which your nation has sunk, I find your
letter most complimentary. It is a great honor for me to join the
illustrious list of former prime ministers of Israel , Menachem Begin and
Yitzchak Shamir, who also received similar letters from your offices.
< class="Apple-style-" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0">
Appeasement of radical Muslims and their leftist allies is nothing new to
the British. < class="Apple-converted-space"> The<
class="Apple-converted-space"> United
Kingdom, a country that values its freedom
of speech so much that it< class="Apple-converted-space"> consistently
lets Islamists protest chanting the vilest of expressions, has a long
history of silencing Jews. < class="Apple-converted-space"> Whereas
Islamists in< class="Apple-converted-space"> Britain< class="Apple-converted-space"> are
free to chant “May Allah and Osama Bin Laden bomb you!”, “Nuke, Nuke<
class="Apple-converted-space"> UK< class="Apple-converted-space"> and<
class="Apple-converted-space"> USA,
Blair and Bush you will pay!”, and “Europe< class="Apple-converted-space"> is
the cancer, Islam is the answer!”, Israeli officials are frequently denied
visitors’ visas, threatened with arrest upon entry and worse.
< class="Apple-style-" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0">
The letter to Feiglin was far from the first time that British authorities
acted out against Israelis to mollify their homegrown Islamists. Former
Israeli Prime Ministers, Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir, have also
received similar letters. < class="Apple-converted-space"> Last
December, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter cancelled a trip to<
class="Apple-converted-space"> Britain< class="Apple-converted-space"> over
fears he would be arrested for “war crimes”. < class="Apple-converted-space"> Transport
Minister and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, former IDF chief of staff
Moshe Ya’alon, and Major General Doron Almog have all encountered similar
problems. < class="Apple-converted-space"> Almog had already
arrived in< class="Apple-converted-space"> London< class="Apple-converted-space"> to
do fundraising for a handicapped services organization, when the Israeli
military attaché phoned him to tell him not to get off of the plane. < class="Apple-converted-space"> Metropolitan
Police counter-terrorism officers were waiting in the airport to arrest him,
so Almog stayed on the plane for two hours until it finally headed back to<
class="Apple-converted-space"> Israel.
< style="font-size: 14pt"> Joe Kaufman wrote an article
titled
Terrorizing Free Speech about a lawsuit filed against him because he wrote
an article< class="backcontent" id="backCon5">
titled
Fanatic Muslim Family Day.
In an appeal for financial help mailed out by the David Horowitz Freedom Center
in February 2008, Kaufman wrote how a restraining order was issued against him
and that:
A hearing for the case was held on October 29th. We
arrived at 8:30 a.m. The court had difficulty finding a judge to hear
the case. The original judge the case was assigned to had recused
herself.
Why did the
original judge recuse herself? Fear? Kaufman wrote:
At 1:30 p.m., a judge was found... While
witnesses on the other side admitted under oath to not having any threats
aimed at them at any time from either myself or my fellow protestors, the
judge ruled that an extension to the restraining order was necessary.
I want to make it entirely clear to you and anyone who might read this: I
have NEVER threatened any of these groups in any way, shape or form. I
didn't even know the majority of the plaintiffs existed prior to the
protest.
The judge
who wasn't afraid to take the case made a ruling that the Muslims wanted.
Kaufman wrote:
Every day for the last six years, I have been working to
expose and shut down groups in America connected to terrorism overseas.
I have had many successes in this regard, but now I feel my work - work that
is of importance to our nation - is in jeopardy.
I used to believe that our freedoms as American citizens were
protected. Unfortunately, I have discovered, during this process, that
some judges want to limit our Constitutional rights.
Cambridge University Press has agreed to destroy all unsold copies of a 2006
book by two American authors, "Alms for Jihad," following a libel action brought
against it in England by Sheikh Mahfouz Phyllis Chesler wrote an article in frontpagemagazine (The Legal Jihad is Already
Underway 8/14/07) about how people are being censored into silence.
British libel laws have not
been used to stopHawza Ilmiyya, a Shi‘i institution in London from
teaching that non-believers are filth. In fact despite revelations about
the school are not even going to stop the British taxpayer from help fund it (Do Conservatives
Openly Threaten Sitting Judges? FrontpageMagazine April 15, 2005 wrote:
<When they
can’t win a debate (can they ever?), leftists deploy what the late
novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called "the argument from intimidation."
Instead of trying to refute the other side, they label their opponents'
position evil, attribute sinister motives to its adherents, and charge that
its proponents are encouraging violence.
Thus, the Left
stridently maintains that proponents of immigration reform are inciting
violence against illegal aliens. Opponents of racial quotas are "creating a
climate of contempt" where hate crimes are more common. Right-to-lifers are
to blame for attacks on abortionists. The majority of the American people
who are unwilling to allow a runaway judiciary to impose same-sex marriage
on the nation were responsible for the death of Matthew Shepard and every
other act of violence against gays (including those committed by other
homosexuals).
In 1995,
William Jefferson Clinton (never one to shy away from an absurdity)
suggested that the Oklahoma City bombing was in part the product of
conservative talk show hosts complaining about high taxes and excessive
regulation -- thereby promoting disdain for Washington.
Clare Lopez, a Sr. Fellow at the
Center for Security Policy and Vice President of the Intelligence Summit wrote
an article in Family Security Matters with the title "Criticism
of Islam Could Soon be a Crime in Amrica". Clare wrote:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to host OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Washington,
DC in mid-December 2011 to discuss how the United States can implement
the OIC agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam. Cloaked in the
sanctimonious language of "Resolution
16/18," that was adopted by the UN Human Rights
Council in April 2011, the WDC three-day experts meeting is billed as a
working session to discuss legal mechanisms to combat religious
discrimination (but the only religion the Human Rights Council has ever
mentioned in any previous resolution is Islam).
On December 15, 2011 SIOA and the
Traditional Values Coalition were
monitoring the collusion of Obama's State department and the
OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation). Andrea Lafferty the president
of the Traditional Values coalition , was detained by the State department
as a "threat" for coveringthe secret event.
Lafferty was circled by several members of Secretary Clinton’s
staff before being approached by a member of the security detail, demanding
Lafferty follow him. When asked why she was being removed from the
reception hall, the security detail announced that a
phone call had identified Lafferty as
a “security threat” to Secretary Clinton.
Political correctness would have us believe that the Koran
is a book of peace, and that anyone who says otherwise is “bigoted,” “hateful,”
and “Islamophobic.” But is it, really? What the Koran really says can easily be
verified. If the Koran really curses Jews and Christians (9:30) and calls for
warfare against them in order to bring about their subjugation (9:29), it is not
“Islamophobic” to forewarn Infidels by pointing this out. It is simply a fact.
And it should go without saying that it is not a fact that should move any
reader of my book to hate anyone. The fact that the Koran counsels warfare
against unbelievers should move readers to act in defense of freedom of speech,
freedom of conscience, and the legal equality of all people, before it is too
late.
The
large increase in Islamic populations in Europe has resulted in an attack on
free speech in many countries in addition to Sweden.
Denmark’s article 266b of
its penal code allows for the incrimination of outspoken citizens like MP Jesper Langballe for vigorously protesting Muslim honor killings and family
rapes. As journalist Lars Hedegaard comments, “Under Danish jurisprudence it
is immaterial whether a statement is true or untrue. All that is needed for
a conviction is that somebody feels offended.” (Hedegaard as well is facing
criminal prosecution for his remarks on honor killings.)
On January 24, 2011, the distinguished Lars Hedegaard,
the President of the
Danish Free Press Society and the International Free Press Society, will
stand trial for telling the truth about Islamic gender apartheid. According
to Ahmed Mohamud, the Vice President of The Danish Free Press Society, and
Katrine Winkel Holm, Chief Editor of Sappho, the
Society’s magazine, both Lars Hedegaard and Jesper Langballe, a member of
the Danish Parliament, are
accused of committing “hate speech.” Langballe exposed honor
killings among Muslims; on December 3, 2010, he was convicted for
doing so. As I noted in my piece at
NewsReal Blog, Lars Hedegaard dared to discuss the great number of
family rapes in areas dominated by Muslim culture.
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> One example of this is the suspension of Robert Kilroy-Silk a
well known TV presenter (Israel
National News 1/11/04). An article of his appeared in the Sunday
Express on 1/4/2004. titled, "We Owe Arabs Nothing." The
article stated,
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Apart from oil - which was discovered, is
produced and is paid for by the west - what do they contribute? Can you
think of anything? Anything really useful? Anything really valuable?
Something we really need, could not do without? No, nor can I. What do they
think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more
than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty
streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for being suicide
bombers, limb amputators, women repressors?"< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Pan-Arab media outlets, the Muslim Council of Britain, and other Muslim groups
reacted with outrage to Kilroy-Silk's article, and BBC hurried to take
Kilroy-Silk's morning TV talk show off the air pending an investigation of his
comments.
It has even been reported that Kilroy-Silk is facing a police
investigation over the issue. The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE)
has referred the article to the police to consider whether it might constitute
an offense under the Public Order Act. CRE Chairman Trevor Phillips said,
"Given the extreme and violent terms in which Mr. Kilroy-Silk has
expressed himself, there is a danger that this might incite some individuals to
act against someone who they think is an Arab."
Azzam al-Tamimi, of the Muslim Council of Britain, even said,
"There are suspicions that Kilroy's article is part of an intensive
campaign that started with the statements made by Ariel Sharon, the prime
minister of the Zionist entity, in which he accused Muslims in the West of
being behind growing anti-Semitism."
It should be noted, of course, that it was the European Union that
recently prepared a report on anti-Semitism indicating that Moslem and
pro-Palestinian elements are involved in most of the incidents. See "A Survivor
of Palestinian Tyranny, frontpagemag.com 10/13/04 ).
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Colin Rose 53 years old, prison officer with 21 years'
of impeccable service was fired for making a joke on (11/15/03) about Osama Bin
Laden because it could antagonize the large number of Muslims in the British
prison and because it was considered racist to express hostility to Bin Laden.
(Daily
Telegraph 2/12/2003) Writer Robert Locke recently warned that “free
speech may become illegal in England.” He focused specifically on the case of
Nick Griffin, “chairman of a small opposition party called the British National
Party.”
According to Ilana Mercer:
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">
Griffin is apparently facing trial for saying, “at a private
political meeting,” that “Islam is an evil and wicked faith. Unfortunately
for him,” Locke reported, “government thought police were watching, and
recorded him on video tape…
The Student Union of the School of
Oriental and African Studies of the University of London passed a motion
saying that peace requires the elimination of Zionism and racial
discrimination in all its forms, and condemning any form of Zionism on
campus. This motion was used for a long time to prevent the creation of an
Israel Society, even though Israeli and other students wanted one, on the
grounds that it would by definition be a racist society and racism is not
permitted on campus. Gavin Gross in an interview with Frontpage Magazine (UK
Student Warned to Stop Protesting Jew-Hatred 6/27/05) gave an example of
the selective suppression of pro-Israel speech by the SOAS:
< style="FONT-SIZE: 13.5pt; COLOR: black">the Students Union voted to
ban the Jewish Society from allowing Roey Gilad, political counsellor of the
Israeli Embassy in London
< style="COLOR: black">, to speak on campus in February 2005 in a talk
entitled "New Opportunities for Middle East Peace", arguing that they did
not want to offer a platform to "racists", i.e. Israeli officials...
[I]n February 2005, a film called "Jerusalem, the Promise of Heaven" was
shown in the Students Union lounge, which showed pictures of bearded
Orthodox Jews praying in synagogue and at Jerusalem's Western Wall, while
the voice-over branded Jewish prayer rituals "satanic" and stated that Jews
had no ethics or morals. A copy of this same film was found in the
suitcase of Saajid Badat, a terrorist convicted in the, along with his plans
to blow up an airliner, and appeared in a picture in The Times newspaper
following his arrest.
The control of Muslims over non-Muslim
behavior in England has grown to the point where(The
Sun Online, 5/24/2006):
< style="font-size: 14pt; color: black">Workers in the benefits department
at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all
pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a
tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.
Even China a country that oppresses
the Falun Gong and Christians kowtows to the Muslims. The following is an
excerpt of an item that appeared in the Wall Street Journal (Gordon
Fairclough and Geoffrey A Fowler,
Pigs Get the Ax In China TV Ads in Nod to Muslims 1/25/07) about the
subject.
< style="font-size: 14pt">SHANGHAI -- Next month, China will ring in the
Year of the Pig. Nestlé SA planned to celebrate with TV ads featuring a
smiling cartoon pig. "Happy new pig year," the ads said.
< style="font-size: 14pt">This week, China Central Television, the national
state-run TV network, banned Nestlé's ad -- and all images and spoken
references to the animal in commercials, including those tied to the Lunar
New Year, China's biggest holiday.
< style="font-size: 14pt">The intent: to avoid offending Muslims, who
consider pigs unclean. "China is a multiethnic country," the network's ad
department said in a notice sent to ad agencies late Tuesday. "To show
respect to Islam, and upon guidance from higher levels of the government,
CCTV will keep any 'pig' images off the TV screen."
Bat Ye'or in her book,
Eurabia (p88), wrote about how the influence of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference (OIC) silenced pro-Israel voices in Europe. She
wrote:
Intellectuals, writers, and clergymen who dared to defend Israel were
silenced and dismissed from their posts. Their manuscripts and
articles were refused by editors and publishers, frightened by the OIC's
threats and Palestinian terrorism. In private conversations and
correspondence with the author int eh 1980s, the eminent French sociologist
and Protestant theologian Jacques Ellul complained that his articles were
refused by many newspapers and even Protestant publications because of his
pro-Israeli position. William Nicholls, Professor Emeritus of
Religious Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, suffered a
boycott for the same reason. Such cases were not
exceptional, as demonstrated by the present author's private exchanges with
numerous authors and clergymen.
Phyllis Chesler wrote:
Expose the permanent Intifada against Western Civilization and against the
Jews and you will be sued and driven into exile, as Oriana Fallaci has been,
or sued and prevented from traveling to certain countries, as Rachel
Ehrenfeld has been. You will be sued and silenced in all those places where
you were once published, even lionized. Dare to say that the torturer and
genocidal tyrant, Saddam Hussein, is on trial today only because of America
and Iraq’s sacrifice and their bold vision of democracy and you will be
called a reactionary, a liar, a fool, and the worse epithet of all: a
conservative.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"> < style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Fear silences those who speak out against
Islam.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
Amina and Sarah Said were two beautiful
young women murdered by their father in Dallas Texas because they were not
Islamic enough.
Phyllis Chesler wrote:
The blogs and the local Texas
media (the Dallas Morning News) were all over this. Hot Air, Atlas Shrugs,
Jihad Watch, were too. The only national coverage of this story was
contained in the Washington Times. Why did the national and
international media so far shy clear of this story? ..Were they afraid of
being accused of “Islamophobia” if they reported the truth? Did they not
want to use the word “Arab” or “Muslim” lest they be attacked as “racists”?
< id="intelliTXT0">Dr. Phyllis
Chesler, author of several books, including "The Death
of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's
Freedom," said cancelling the book is not an isolated
case.
"[M]ost academic and
mainstream publishers won’t even consider books that
might offend Islamists or Muslims," she said. "The West
has, so far, given in and censored its writers and
artists in order to avoid being sued or bombed.
Rifqa Bary is a girl who
fled her Muslim parents after they threatened her because she became a
Christian. She fled to the home of < class="lingo_region">
Rev. Blake Lorenz, pastor of the Orlando, Fla.-based Global
Revolution Church who she had met through Facebook. Islam commands
that all Muslims who change to another religion must be killed.
Rifqa Bary’s civil rights are being violated. She
is being
held prisoner: no phone, no internet, no public school. Why? What is
her crime? She is being held under house arrest in accord with Sharia
law, which stipulates that female apostates are to be imprisoned until
they recant. Ohio is effectively practicing Sharia law.
Due in large part to Pamela
Geller's efforts Rifqa's parents were unable to force her to come back to
them.
Omar Tarazi, the lawyer for the parents of Rifqa Bary, as of August 2011, is
suing Pamela for ten million dollars for libel, for her writings about the
case at her blog AtlasShrugs.com.
Iran
outlawed
satellite dishes in the
mid-1990s, saying it wanted to curb what it called Western efforts to
corrupt its population through the spread of immoral programs.
The ban was largely ignored under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
predecessor Mohammad Khatami who tried to increase social freedoms after he
was elected in 1997.
But hard-liners pressed for renewed restrictions after Ahmadinejad took
office in 2005 and Iranian police launched a new crackdown on satellite
dishes in 2011. In 2011 Iran banned programs showing how to cook western
dishes. Robert Spencer joked "What would be in a Great Satan Burger?"
Free speech on behalf of Israel is
under attack outside of Israel and free speech against territorial
appeasement of the Arabs is under attack in Israel. The columnist Jonathan
Rosenblum, wrote an article called,
Welcome to 'democratic' Israel, where speaking your mind can land you in
Jail. In the article he argues that the way to reduce violence is not
to silence people but rather to allow freedom of speech. An article by Steve
Plaut about the subject,
The Assault on Israeli Democracy, was published in the
Outpost newsletter of
Americans For A Safe Israel. I have posted many of Dr. Plaut's
essays as well as those of others about the
frightening attack of free speech in Israel on the
Assault on Freedom of Speech in Israel, web
page.
Lets play devils advocate and ask whether it is so bad that
the speech of the Israeli right is under attack. The left advocates
land concessions for peace. Certainly peace is more important than
land. Shouldn't those who might persuade the public otherwise be
silenced? Isn't suppression of speech worth the peace that might
descend on a region that has suffered war over thousands of years?
It seems obvious that the policies advocated by the
Israeli left are what is best for the region until one considers the
arguments of the opposition. One of the arguments is that land given
away for peace has become a base from which terrorist attacks are launched
at Israel. Another argument of the opposition is that the
increased strategic advantage the land gives the Arabs makes peace less
likely. These arguments would never be heard if the opposition was
silenced.
Incitement laws can be used by the regime in power to ensure
that only they can incite. For example Gush Shalom, (Bloc of Peace),
posted an image on its web site (Oct-Nov 2000) of a militant Barak standing
on the bleeding bullet-ridden body of a Palestinian child. One
irony of this is at the time Barak was doing everything he could to avoid
the death of Palestinian children and was constantly surrendering to Arab
demands in the hope of ending bloodshed. It would be far more accurate
to have a picture of a militant Arafat standing on the bleeding
bullet-ridden body of a Palestinian child. Yet anyone who drew such a
picture in Israel is likely to be arrested for incitement.
A barber from Qalqilya
named Walid Husayin called Islam a "blind faith
that grows and takes over people's minds where there is
irrationality and ignorance."
If that wasn't enough, he is also
suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he
sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his
followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in
verses that spoof the Muslim holy book, the Quran. At
its peak, Husayin's Arabic-language blog had more than
70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.
Diaa Hadid wrote:
He
now faces a potential life prison
sentence on heresy charges for
"insulting the divine essence."
Many in this
conservative Muslim town say that
isn't enough, and suggested he
should be killed for renouncing
Islam. Even family members say he
should remain behind bars for life.
"He should be
burned to death," said Abdul-Latif
Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya
resident. The execution should take
place in public "to be an example to
others," he added.
Another country where free speech is also silenced
under the excuse of silencing incitement is Canada .
Mark Harding, was convicted in 1998 on federal hate-crimes charges
stemming from a June 1997 incident in which he distributed pamphlets outside
a public high school, Weston Collegiate Institute in Toronto.
In one of his pamphlets, Harding listed atrocities committed by Muslims
in foreign lands to back his assertion that Canadians should be wary of
local Muslims.
The pamphlet said: "The Muslims who commit these crimes are no different
than the Muslim believers living here in Toronto. Their beliefs are based on
the Quran. They sound peaceful, but underneath their false sheep's clothing
are raging wolves seeking whom they may devour. And Toronto is definitely on
their hit list." In response to Mark's noble efforts to warn about the
dangers of Islam he was convicted of promoting hatred against Muslims.
After losing an appeal to Canada's
Supreme Court on Oct. 17, Mark Harding must resume his sentence of two years
probation and 340 hours of community service under the direction of Mohammad
Ashraf, general secretary of the
Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ont.
The cleric made it clear, Harding recalled in an interview with
WorldNetDaily (October 31, 2002), that during the sessions nothing negative
could be said about Islam or its prophet, Muhammad.
"He said he was my supervisor, and if I didn't follow what he said, he would
send me back to jail," recounted Harding.
Zachariah Anani, a
former Muslim terrorist who converted to Christianity and who now speaks
against Islam is under criminal investigation < style="font-size:
14pt">and facing possible indictment and deportation for speaking out
against radical Islam in Canada. Anani said Islamic doctrine teaches
the “ambushing, seizing and slaying” of non-believers, especially Jews and
Christians. He said Islam is a religion that worships a god “who strikes
with terror.” Anani said he isn’t worried about being charged, because
he only drew on facts from the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book.
< style="font-size: 14pt">“What I said was fact,” he
said Friday. “I wasn’t talking about my own interpretation. I picked facts
derived from statements of the book.”
< style="font-size: 14pt">Anani has plenty to worry
about. Being truthful does not protect you against incitement charges. His
bio which I excerpt below is on the
3 terrorists web site. After he converted to Christianity:
< style="font-size: 14pt; color: blue">he was harassed and persecuted. He
moved to the city's Christian sector, but the persecution continued. Even
his father hired assassins to kill him.
< style="font-size: 14pt; color: blue">Finally church leaders convinced him
to leave Lebanon because his presence endangered others. In 1996 Anani
entered Canada as a refugee. It took another three difficult years before
his wife and three children could join him. After Anani debated with a
Muslim scholar in the United States, his family was attacked in Lebanon. Two
of his children required surgery.< style="font-size: 14pt; color: blue">
Zak has been attacked numerous times for his faith as a Christian,
even in Canada.
When in Lebanon, he was nearly beheaded and was only saved when an
army patrol came by and the Islamist gang dispersed leaving Zak with a huge
wound on his neck. Zak nearly bled to death and was actually technically
dead for 7 minutes, before being revived.
In Canada, where he now lives, his house and car have been burnt,
his family attacked physically and Zak himself has been attacked.
Speaking out in a free country is sometimes not as safe as it should be.
There is a great deal of
incitement in the Koran against the non-believer but you'll never see
Canada attempt to silence Islam. So incitement laws will stop people
speaking out against the danger of Islam but will not stop Islam preaching
hatred of the infidel.
Celebrated author Mark Steyn
has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges
linked to his book “America Alone." According to the New York Post (Canada's
Thought Police 12/16/07):
The book, a No. 1 bestseller in
Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist
imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding
apace proves his point.
Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by
The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications
on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine
Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school
students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress,
demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and
contempt" for Muslims.
The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the
notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized,
Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in
effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.
Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the
Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These
bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate
speech."
Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very
antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the
press.
Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two
separate human-rights bodies for the “crime" of expressing an opinion is
a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about...
Robert Spencer pointed
out that Steyn was just stating facts and that the statements that he made
that the Muslims found objectionable coming from him
had already been made by other Muslims.
The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC),
which initiated the complaint against Steyn, has previously tried
unsuccessfully to sue publications it disagrees with, including Canada's
National Post. The not-for-profit organization's president, Mohamed
Elmasry, once labeled every adult Jew in Israel a legitimate target for
terrorists and is in the habit of accusing his opponents of
anti-Islamism -- a charge that is now apparently an actionable claim in
Canada. In 2006, after Elmasry publicly accused a spokesman for the
Muslim Canadian Congress of being anti-Islamic, the spokesman reportedly
resigned amidst fears for his personal safety.
< class="content1">T< class="content1" id="backCon6">he
Canadian Human Rights Commission is persecuting Steyn.
The complaint filed against Steyn points out he gave
a good review to a novel by Ferrigno called Prayers For the Assassin,
supposedly a "known Islamophobic book." In doing so, it is alleged,
Steyn violated the complainants' "sense of dignity and self-worth."
Prayers For the Assassin < class="content1" id="backCon7">
is a darkly satiric and suspenseful actioner about a future
in which most of America is governed as an Islamic republic after a
terrorist nuclear attack and a brutal civil war.
< style="font-size: 14pt">< id="backCon">Two weeks ago, the National
Post and I were served with a notice of libel by the Canadian branch of the
Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR. The Post and I are not
alone. Over the past year, CAIR's Canadian and U.S. branches have served
similar libel notices on half a dozen other individuals and organizations in
the United States and Canada. Each case has its own particular facts, yet
they are linked by a common theme: That we defendants have accused CAIR (in
the words of the notice served on me) of being "an unscrupulous, Islamist,
extremist sympathetic group in Canada supporting terrorism."
Mullah Krekar a Kurdish Mujahedeed who faces the death
penalty in Kurdistan told a Norwegian newspaper that:
"We're the ones who will change you . . . Just
look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims
is expanding like mosquitoes. Every western woman in the EU is
producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same
countries is producing 3.5 children." (italics added)
< class="content1">Steyn quoted Krekar
in Canada's McLean's Magazine and both are now getting sued for quoting
Krekar mosquito comments. You can't say what a Muslim said if it offends
other Muslims in Canada. (O Stalinoid Canada, American Thinker, 6/9/2008)
Ezra Levant was
persecuted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for printing the Danish
cartoons about Muhammad. You can hear him defending himself below.
Most Canadians don't realize that
these Commissions and tribunals aren't "real" courts. They operate
outside the criminal justice system in an Orwellian world of their own.
To the CHRCs, traditional rules of evidence don't apply. Truth is no
defense. Commissioners can confiscate a defendant's computer without a
warrant. Defendants can be forced to apologize to their accusers, even
though the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that even convicted
murderers cannot be obliged to apologize to their victim's family; that,
the Court ruled, would be, "cruel and unusual punishment."
Incredibly, the CHRCs boast a Stalinist 100 percent conviction rate: no
one has ever been found "not guilty." Columnist David Warren's chilling
description of CHRC tribunals is impossible to improve upon:
"They are kangaroo courts, in which the defendant's right to due process
is withdrawn. They reach judgments on the basis of no fixed law.
Moreover, 'the process is the punishment' in these star chambers -- for
simply by agreeing to hear a case, they tie up the defendant in
bureaucracy and paperwork, and bleed him for the cost of lawyers, while
the person who brings the complaint, however frivolous, stands to lose
nothing. (...)
"That's why you go to an HRC: because your case is not good enough to
stand up in a legitimate court of law. And because you don't want to
invest your own time and money, but would rather the taxpayer provide
officers to do the paperwork, and pick up the tab. Instead, you want a
slam-dunk way in which you can victimize someone you don't like, by
playing the victim yourself, without any financial or legal
consequences, except to him. 'Human rights' commissions were designed to
provide just this service, for the use of persons who are both
litigious, and lazy."
< style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt"> < style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt"> The
Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed a complaint about allegedly
Islamophobic articles that appeared in Maclean’s magazine—these included
reprinted excerpts from Mark Steyn’s book America Alone—because it lacked
jurisdiction over printed material. Below is an excerpt from the
statement by the OHRC, as reprinted in the National Post
April 10, 2008
< style="LETTER-SPACING: -0.2pt">
While freedom of expression must be recognized as a cornerstone of a
functioning democracy, the Commission has serious concerns about the
content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been
published by Maclean’s magazine and other media outlets. This type of
media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and
promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab and South Asian
Canadians. The Commission recognizes and understands the serious harm
that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society
as a whole. And, while we all recognize and promote the inherent value
of freedom of expression, it should also be possible to challenge any
institution that contributes to the dissemination of destructive,
xenophobic opinions.
< style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt">There
are several problems with this statement. First of all no one is
arguing that it should not be possible to challenge other opinions, the
argument here is that the CHRC has no right to silence and punish people
with opinions it doesn't like. The second problem is that the opinions
that the CHRC considers destructive and xenophobic may not be, in fact one
could argue that warning of the dangers of extremist Islam is a very
constructive opinion that rather than being xenophobic shows love and
concern for potential victims of Islamic xenophobia and may help prevent the
spread of Islamic xenophobia through Canada..
< style="FONT-SIZE: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt">
Syed Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, argues that
freedom of religion implies the ability to be governed by one's religious
laws. From this he concludes that, in the spirit of "tolerance," Canada must
allow Muslims to discipline people who abandon the faith (worldnetdaily
8/6/2008). What kind of discipline would this be? All major
schools of Islamic jurisprudence stipulate that a sane adult male must be
put to death for abandoning Islam, though varying interpretations persist on
whether females should be killed or merely imprisoned. No human rights
commission is trying Syed Muntaz Ali.
< style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt">
A priest is being investigated as a potential criminal under a federal
"hate crimes" law for quoting from the Bible, and he's being targeted
using a Canadian provision under which no defendant ever has been
acquitted, according to a new report.
Pete Vere, a canon lawyer and Catholic journalist, has reported on the
prosecution of Father Alphonse de Valk, a pro-life activist known across
Canada, by the Canadian Human Rights Commission – "a quasi-judicial
investigative body with the power of the Canadian government behind it"
– at CatholicExchange.com.
"What was Father de Valk's alleged 'hate act'?" Vere wrote.
"Father defended the [Catholic] Church's teaching on marriage during
Canada's same-sex 'marriage' debate, quoting extensively from the Bible,
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul II's
encyclicals. Each of these documents contains official Catholic
teaching. And like millions of other people throughout the world and the
ages – many of whom are non-Catholics and non-Christians — Father
believes that marriage is an exclusive union between a man and a woman,"
he wrote...
< style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt">
Besides the complaints against the priest and Steyn, other cases already
have substantiated the Canadian precedent that Christian beliefs can be
evidence for convictions.
In 2005, a Knights of Columbus council was fined more than $1,000 for
refusing to allow its facility to be used for a lesbian "wedding," and
before that printer Scott Brockie was fined $5,000 for declining to
print homosexual-themed stationery. Also, in Saskatechewan, Hugh Owens
was fined thousands of dollars for quoting Bible verses in a newspaper
and London, Ontario, mayor Diane Haskett was fined $10,000 for refusing
to proclaim a homosexual pride day, Vere enumerated.
Bishop Fred Henry has described the situation as "a new form of
censorhip and thought control." Those are the same words leading
Christians in the United States have used to describe the most recent
"hate crimes" plan before the U.S. Congress, which specifically targeted
for elimination criticism of alternative sexual lifestyles.
Vere also warned that in the Steyn case, the bottom line is that a
Canadian human rights tribunal now is "attempting to prosecute a case
against an American resident, based upon what an American citizen
allegedly posted to a mainstream American Catholic website. What passes
for mainstream Catholic discussion in America is now the basis for a
hate complaint in Canada."
But the United States is not immune to such work, either, he noted,
citing the New Mexico photographer fined $6,600 for refusing to meet the
demands of a lesbian to take pictures at a "wedding."
Also, California has set in state law a ban on introducing anything but
"positive" information about alternative sexual lifestyles, including
homosexuality, in its public school.
Pastor Stephen Boissoin in a letter to
the Editor warning about homosexual indoctrination
wrote:
Our children are being victimized by repugnant and
premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually
recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, children as young
as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and
physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the
public school system… Your teenagers are being instructed on how to
perform so-called safe same gender oral and anal sex … Come on people,
wake up!"
University of Calgary professor
Darren Lund filed the complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission .
An administrative law judge later ordered the $5,000 payment and written
apology from Boissoin along with instructions not to express his beliefs
further. The decision was overturned but the defense lawyer for Boissoin
said that the damage to religious liberties from the case was immediate and
dramatic.
Free speech is under
attack in Australia. Recently Victoria passed new race and religion hate
laws. Daniel Nalliah and Daniel Scot of
Catch the Fire Ministries were tried under these laws and found guilty of
inciting hatred against Muslims even though transcripts of the seminar in
Melbourne show that Daniel Scot, was quoting verses from the Quran to make his
points (wnd.com
12/18/04). There sentence was overturned by a different judge but the
financial and emotional cost was very high and they still have to pay off
$150,000 in legal fees. The laws that were used against them have led to
many absurd situations in Australia. A report in the Daily Mail
12/16/2008 tells how
A prison’s new chapel will not
contain a crucifix to avoid offending Muslim inmates, it emerged today.
Bosses at HMP Lewes have been told the traditional Christian symbol,
featuring Jesus nailed to a cross, must not be used in the Grade-II listed
Victorian jail’s ‘multi-faith space’.
The room - part of a £1million new block - has been split in two, with one
half featuring heated foot baths so Muslim worshippers can wash their feet
before prayer.
But the other side, dedicated to Christian prayer, contains just a simple
wooden cross and portable alter - both of which can be removed if necessary.
According the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), the traditional Christian
crucifix was erased from the chapel’s blueprints after discussion with a
Muslim imam.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">In one
pathetic example of cowardice < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;color:black;font-weight:normal">Scholastic Australia pulled the plug on
a children’s thriller called the Army of the Pure after booksellers and
librarians said they would not stock the book because the "baddie"
was a Muslim terrorist.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> According to The
Australian 11/25/2006,< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;color:black;font-weight:normal">This decision is at
odds with the recent publication of Richard Flanagan's bestselling The Unknown
Terrorist and Andrew McGahan's Underground in which terrorists are portrayed as
victims driven to extreme acts by the failings of the West. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;color:black;font-weight:normal">The Unknown Terrorist
is dedicated to David Hicks and describes Jesus Christ as "history's first
... suicide bomber". < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;color:black;font-weight:normal">In McGahan's
Underground, Muslims are executed en masse or herded into ghettos in an
Australia rendered unrecognisable by the war on terror. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;color:black;font-weight:normal">Scholastic's general
manager, publishing, Andrew Berkhut, said the company had canvassed "a
broad range of booksellers and library suppliers", who expressed concern
that the book featured a Muslim terrorist. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;color:black;font-weight:normal">"They all said they
would not stock it," he said, "and the reality is if the gatekeepers
won't support it, it can't be published." < style="font-size:13.5pt">
Howard Rotberg is an author whose book was banned by
Canada's largest book retailer because of made up allegations. He told
Frontpage Magazine that
"< class="content1" id="backCon11">I
found myself in trouble for something that I was alleged to have said a
lecture, at a book promotion lecture at a branch of Canada's largest book
retailer. ..
< class="content1">I have learned that the groups that
I always thought would protect authors in Canada, such as PenCanada, the
Writers Union, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Freedom to Read,
and others, only want to protect authors whose views fit their ideologies. I
am sad to say this, but it is true. Most fancy themselves as some kind of
"progressives" but their ideas on what constitutes a progressive are really
suspect. If a writer is pro-American or pro-Israeli, he or she is outside
their area of interest. Very few of these organizations would even answer my
emails. They wanted nothing to do with me, because I think they have
convinced themselves that the biggest threat to tolerance in Canada is
Islamophobia, and that any criticism of any branch of Islam, to these naifs,
is equivalent to criticizing all Muslims everywhere.
I have learned that many of those in the NGOs, the public sector unions (who
now dominate the Canadian labour movement), the schools and universities and
even many traditional Canadian churches (the ones that are in decline) all
want to fancy themselves "progressives", and rather than pay from their
pockets for social justice at home, the easier way to be progressives is to
criticize Israel. And how much easier is it to criticize some country or
group of people who won't threaten to chop your heads off for that
criticism. No matter what is done by the Palestinians or on behalf of the
Palestinians, I will be seen as a bad and intolerant guy by these
progressives for "hurting the feelings" of some Muslim somewhere.
Accordingly, I have been shunned by the very organizations and individuals
who claim to be furthering the right of freedom of expression and other
fundamental freedoms. So, for those of us who love our freedoms in Canada,
our first priority should be to expose those who claim to be progressive and
pacifist, but who ally themselves with Islamo-fascists who abuse their own
people and train their children to hate and to kill Jews, in Israel, and now
worldwide.
A key statement in the above paragraphs by Mr. Rotberg is:
how much easier is it to criticize some country or group
of people who won't threaten to chop your heads off for that criticism.
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> < style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt">While cowards in the non-Islamic world silence free
speech, heroes in the Muslim world speak out.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Abdelkareem
Suleiman had the courage criticize Muslims on his web log while living in
Egypt.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> While blogging about Muslim
attacks on Christians that took place in Alexandria in October 2005, Suleiman
wrote:
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> "The Muslims have taken the mask off to
show their true hateful face, and they have shown the world that they are at
the top of their brutality, inhumanity, and thievery.”
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">He also had the courage to
write that:
"Some may think that the actions of the Muslims does not represent
Islam and has no relationship with the teachings of Islam that was brought by
Mohammed fourteen centuries ago, but the truth is that their action is not
different from the Islamic teachings in its original form."
"professors and sheikhs at Al-Azhar (university) who stand against
anyone who thinks freely" would "end up in the dustbin of
history".
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Abdelkareem Suleiman was sentenced to Jail.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> His web log is www.sandmonkey.org.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> A petition seeking his freedom is online
for those who wish to sign it.
< style="font-size: 14pt"> Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh's crime
was to have passed around a piece taken from a website questioning why Muslim
women cannot have multiple husbands in the same way as their menfolk can legally
take four wives.
Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, 23, who works for "The New World", a newspaper in
Afghanistan's northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was prosecuted for downloading an
article, apparently gleaned from an Iranian website, and distributing it to his
friends. The article questioned why Muslim women cannot have multiple
husbands in the same way as their menfolk can legally take four wives. For
this Mr. Kaambakhsh was
sentenced to death.
According to the Telegraph
< style="font-size: 14pt">The overthrow of the Taliban in 2001
brought a new era of media freedom in Afghanistan. Dozens of newspapers and
television stations have sprung up across the country. In practice, however,
the authorities are deeply suspicious of journalists and all media outlets
face pressure and harassment. Laws protecting the good name of Islam can
often be invoked to stifle press criticism.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Why not attack free speech when we know that
the speech is wrong? John Stuart Mill wrote an answer to that question in
chapter 2 of "On Liberty" an excerpt of which I quote below:
< style="font-size:13.5pt; color:black">.<
style="font-size:13.5pt; color:black">...The peculiar evil of silencing the
expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as
well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still
more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of
the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is
almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of
truth, produced by its collision with error...We have now recognized the
necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other
well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of
opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate.< style="font-size:13.5pt; color:black">
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we
can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very
commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing
opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the
collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of
being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole
truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly
contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a
prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.
And not only this, but fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be
in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the
character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession,
inefficacious for good, but encumbering the ground, and preventing the growth
of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> < style="font-size:13.5pt">
Suppression of free speech allows a government to oppress a people without them
even knowing they are oppressed. Instead they will blame whoever their
government wants them to blame and will fight whoever their government wants
them to fight. For example Iraq blamed Kuwait for it's economic troubles.
Iraq with all it's oil could have been a paradise if it hadn't been exploited by
the ruling government of Saddam Hussein. His suppression of free speech
enabled him to manipulate Iraqis into invading Kuwait.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> < style="font-size:13.5pt">What if a speaker comes who himself silences free speech.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> That was the case when < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to
speak at Columbia on September 24, 2007.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
A former hostage of Iran, Barry Rosen, wrote
in the New York Post that:< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">Ahmadinejad is a reprehensible leader who violates free speech in his
own country and cracks down on those Iranians who attempt to open up his
repressive regime. < Arial Unicode>< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">He uses speech to spread
age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes in the Middle East, denying the existence of
Israel, and denies that the Holocaust ever happened…< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
It's only when Ahmadinejad permits his own people to march and speak freely,
that I believe Columbia President Lee Bollinger would be justified in giving the
Iranian president an open forum.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt">Columbia invited Ahmadinejad
but < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> retracted a speaking invitation to the
president of the Minuteman Project, a citizens' group that seeks to secure
America's borders from illegal immigrants.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
Columbia also bans ROTC from its campus.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> This is selective use of the right of free speech.
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> Cheol-Hwan Kang spent 10 years
in a North Korean prison camp, where he and his family were sent when he was 9.
He defected to South Korea in 1992. He wrote (Beyond Nuclear Blackmail, The
Washington Post 7/13/03):
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Without
warning, appeal or reason, any North Korean can be sent to a slave labor camp
for such "crimes" as reading a foreign newspaper, listening to a
foreign broadcast, complaining about the food situation or refusing an
arbitrary request from an official. Some 200,000 North Koreans are held in
these camps, in horrifying conditions of torture, harsh labor, hunger and
summary execution. In the past three decades, several hundred thousand North
Koreans have died in the camps... What the North Korean government fears
most is that its people will awake from their isolation and ignorance. That is
why it imprisons those who listen to foreign broadcasts. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> < style="font-size:13.5pt">North Korea tests their chemical weapons on such
prisoners. North Korea has become a nuclear threat to its neighbors.
Free speech could potentially undermine the North Korean regime and end
that threat.
< style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt"> Police officers told
Jamie Murray, the owner of the Salt & Light Coffee House on Layton Road,
in Blackpool, England, that displaying "offensive"
or "insulting" words was a violation of Section 5 of the Public Order Act. The
officers warned Murray that if he didn't stop, he could be prosecuted.
Murray had a DVD player connected to a television hanging on the wall that was
playing the "Watchword Bible," which portrays the complete New Testament on 12
DVDs. Murray tells what happened here.
The End of Freedom of Speech in Eurabia
Elizabeth Sabaditsch Wolf said spoke about the EU directive
“Framework decision on combating racism and xenophobia,” at a seminar in Austria
and was convicted for denigration of a legally recognized religion. She
told what happened in an
interview with Frontpage Magazine.
I told the audience about a conversation I had with my sister
and how she believed that one should find a different word for Mohammed’s
actions with Aisha. I said, “How does one name what he did if not call it
pedophilia?” And this sentence got me convicted, for I am allowed by law to say
that Mohammed had sex with a young girl, but I may not qualify this behavior as
this is deemed “excessive” and thus denigrating.
Elizabeth explained that the directive states that:
“Each Member State shall take the measures necessary…
to ensure that the following intentional conduct is punishable.” Such
“intentional conduct” includes “conduct which is a pretext for directing
acts against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by
reference to race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin.”
Based on what has recently happened to Geert Wilders? and me — and earlier
to Gregorius Nekschot, Jussi Halla-aho, and numerous others — we can all
guess who will be punished under this provision of the Framework Decision:
those who criticize Islam.
Jamie, these are the methods of a totalitarian state. They are more
successful than those of the Nazis and the Fascists and the Communists
because they are accomplished quietly and peacefully, with no need for
concentration camps or gulags or mass graves or the shot in the back of the
neck in the middle of the night. They are surgical strikes executed via our
legal systems, and they are quite effective. Between the summary punishment
carried out against Theo Van Gogh and the Framework Decision applied though
our courts, there is no room left for us to maneuver.
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> Muslims
attempt to silence their critics with charges of racism and incitement.
Miss Fallaci wrote a book that is critical of Islam called the Rage and the
Pride. At a speech before the American Enterprise Institute (10/23/02?)
she said that critics have attempted to ban the book or have her arrested in
France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. The 72-year-old author described these
efforts as "intellectual terrorism." In her prime, Miss Fallaci
was famed as a belligerent journalist and argumentative interviewer, who had
unprecedented access to the world's most reclusive and wary leaders. A
partisan in the Italian resistance in World War II and a lifelong leftist, she
once became so disgusted while interviewing Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
that she ripped off her head scarf and threw it in his face. The act of
defiance was considered an unpardonable sin in the ayatollah's
Iran. A lawsuit brought by the Movement Against
Racism and for Friendship Between People, a Muslim human rights group, is
demanding that the book be banned in France. In a ruling that may affect
her case, a French court acquitted best-selling French author Michel
Houellebecq of charges of racial insult and inciting racial hatred for calling
Islam the "dumbest religion."
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Muhammad was "a merciless warlord, a
looter, a mass-murderer of Jews and a polygamist." He also called the
Koran "a book of incredible violence."< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
Redeker also compared Islam unfavorably with Christianity and
Judaism and criticized the hostile reaction to a recent speech by Pope Benedict
XVI that seemed to link Islam and violence.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
Redeker wrote:
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> "Jesus is a master of love; Muhammad is
a master of hatred.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Whereas Judaism and
Christianity are religions whose rites forsake violence and remove its
legitimacy, Islam is a religion that, in its very sacred text, as much as in
some of its everyday rites, exalts violence and hatred. Hatred and violence
dwell in the very book that educates any Muslim, the Koran."
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Immediately
afterward, Redeker began to receive death threats by telephone, e-mail and in
the Internet forum. The forum published photos of him, what it said was his
home address, directions to his home and his cellphone number.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">He said that his
wife and their children had also been threatened with death. Asked to describe
the sort of threats he had received, Redeker said: "You will never feel
secure on this earth. One billion, 300,000 Muslims are ready to kill you."
Among the threats was one by a contributor to Al Hesbah, an Internet forum that
is said to be a conduit for messages from Al Qaeda and other jihad
organizations.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"It is
impossible that this day pass without the lions of France punishing him,"
the Hesbollah contributor wrote. The contributor called on Muslims in France to
follow the lead of Muhammad Bouyeri, who murdered the Dutch filmmaker Theo van
Gogh after he made a film denouncing the plight of abused Muslim women.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"May God
send some lion to cut his head," the contributor said of Redeker, who was
described as a "pig."
Robert Spencer wrote
an article showing that the accusations made by Redeker are justified.
Caroline Glick wrote about the fate of
Redeker and others in an article titled
Our World: After the Muses Fall Silent (Jerusalem Post 11/20/2006).
She wrote:
< style="font-size: 14pt">In France today,
high school teacher Robert Redeker has been living in hiding for two months.
On September 19 Redeker published an op-ed in Le Figaro in which he decried
Islamist intimidation of freedom of thought and expression in the West as
manifested by the attacks against Pope Benedict XVI and against Christians
in general which followed the pontiff's remarks on jihad earlier that month.
< style="font-size: 14pt">Redeker wrote,
"As in the Cold War, where violence and intimidation were the methods used
by an ideology hell bent on hegemony, so today Islam tries to put its leaden
mantel all over the world. Benedict XVI's cruel experience is testimony to
this. Nowadays, as in those times, the West has to be called the 'Free
World' in comparison to the Muslim world; likewise, the enemies of the 'Free
World,' the zealous bureaucrats of the Koran's vision, who swarm in the very
center of the 'Free World,' should be called by their true name."
< style="font-size: 14pt">In reaction to
Redeker's column, Egypt banned Le Figaro and Redeker received numerous death
threats. His address and maps to his home were published on al-Qaida-linked
Web sites and he was forced to leave his job, and flee for his life. While
Redeker e-mailed a colleague that French police have set free the man they
know was behind the threats to his life, Redeker recently described his
plight to a friend in the following fashion, "There is no safe place for me,
I have to beg, two evenings here, two evenings there... I am under the
constant protection of the police. I must cancel all scheduled conferences."
< style="font-size: 14pt">For its part, Le
Figaro's editor appeared on Al-Jazeera to apologize for publishing Redeker's
article.
< style="font-size: 14pt">This weekend
British author Douglas Murray discussed the intellectual terror in the
Netherlands. Murray, who recently published Neoconservativism: Why We Need
It, spoke at a conference in Palm Beach, Florida sponsored by the David
Horowitz Freedom Center. He noted that the two strongest voices in Holland
warning against Islamic subversion of Dutch culture and society - Pim Fortyn
and Theo Van Gogh - were murdered.
< style="font-size: 14pt">The third most
prominent voice calling for the Dutch to take measures to defend themselves,
former member of parliament Ayan Hirsi Ali, lives in Washington, DC today.
< style="font-size: 14pt">Her former
colleague in the Dutch parliament, Geert Wilders, has been living under
military protection, without a home, for years. In the current elections,
Wilders has been unable to campaign because his whereabouts can never be
announced. His supporters were reluctant to run for office on his
candidates' slate for fear of being similarly threatened with murder. Last
month, two of his campaign workers were beaten while putting up campaign
posters in Amsterdam.
< style="font-size: 14pt">In 2000, Bart Jan
Spruyt, a leading conservative intellectual in Holland established a
neoconservative think tank called the Edmund Burke Institute. One of the
goals of his institute is to convince the Dutch to defend themselves against
the growing Islamist threat. In the period that followed, Spruyt was
approached by security services and told that he should hire a bodyguard for
personal protection. Although he couldn't afford the cost of a bodyguard,
the police eventually provided him with protection after showing up at his
office hours after Van Gogh was butchered by a jihadist in the streets of
Amsterdam in November 2004.
Bridgit Bardot has been sued repeatedly
for her criticism of Islam in France. Jacob Laksin in an article
titled
The War on Bridgit Bardot wrote:
In the 1960s, Brigitte Bardot was France’s national
icon, a pouty-lipped poster girl for the glories of her home country. So
it is sign of how radically times have changed that yesterday’s
silver-screen darling is today’s enemy of the people.
Bardot’s “crimes,” such as they are, are straightforward: She has
committed the sin of speaking frankly and unapologetically about her
country’s hostile Muslim immigrant population and – what is evidently
worse – questioning the compatibility of some Muslim religious practices
with Western society...
as France struggles to control a large (Muslims
make up nearly ten percent of the country) and increasingly radicalized
Muslim population critics of Islamism are finding themselves more
actively persecuted by national authorities than the Islamists
themselves.
Oriana Fallaci wrote a< style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">
book “The
Force of Reason” and was sued by Adel Smith the president of the Italian
Muslim Union and will be put on trial. (< style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">AGI
5/25/05) This book was written partly in response to threats she received in
response to her book the Rage and the Pride.
< style="font-size: 11pt">
France has enacted
rudeness-speech laws, making it a crime to commit “psychological
violence” within a relationship.
Saudis sued the Wall Street Journal to attempt to silence
the newspaper's criticism of Saudi Arabia. Trevor Asserson, who
specializes in defamation in the London law office of Morgan Lewis & Bockius
said that:
“Some Saudis appear to be using the U.K. as a back door to silence their
critics and repress free speech by threatening litigation, persuading
publishers to back down rather [than] face years of expensive
litigation—even if what they’re publishing might in fact be true.”
Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of
Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It was
threatened with a libel lawsuitbySaudi billionaire Khalid
bin Mahfouz. Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote: (The Saudi Buck Stops Here,
frontpagemag.com 3/3/05), that Khalid bin Mahfouz, who is named in all the
9/11 lawsuits, has threatened twenty-nine authors and publishers with libel
suits in U.K. courts. None apparently have gone to trial. Instead, the
defendants settled at an early stage because they could not, or would not,
endure a lengthy and costly lawsuit; they have capitulated, apologized,
retracted, and paid fines.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
Robert Spencer wrote frontpage magazine
that, the fine was not £30,000, as Mr. Pipes wrote, but more than £87,000 and,
with interest, has since more than doubled, to over $180,000. She wrote:
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt">More importantly, I neither paid a fine nor apologized, and do not
intend to do either.
I did not even acknowledge the British court or its jurisdiction, since I wrote
and published the book in the U.S.
I commend Mr. Pipes for choosing bin Mahfouz’ lawsuit against me as an example,
since bin Mahfouz has sued more than 30 other writers and publishers, including
many U.S. citizens and publications, all of whom apologized and paid fines…
Finally, in his conciseness, Mr. Pipes neglected to mention that I have sued
bin Mahfouz in U.S. Federal Court to protect my First Amendment rights. Winning
this case could discourage further Islamists lawsuits against the press.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
In October 2007, I had a lawsuit and a
restraining order brought against me by seven Dallas-area Islamic
organizations, who objected to an article that I had written for FrontPage.
Not one of the groups was mentioned in the article. It was concerning
information I had personally discovered linking the Islamic Circle of North
America (ICNA) to the financing of terrorism abroad. My allegations
regarding this were and are backed up by irrefutable proof...
my legal bills, as of today, have totaled nearly $90
thousand. This, while the case hasn’t even gone to trial yet.
< style="font-size:11.0pt"> < style="font-size:11.0pt"> < style="font-size: 14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt">Islamists clearly hope, as Douglas Farah notes, that lawsuits will cause researchers
and analysts to "get tired of the cost and the hassle and simply shut up.
< style="font-size: 14pt">Ahmed Mansour was expelled from Egypt's Al-Azhar
university because of his moderate beliefs about Islam. He came to the
United States and one day visited a local mosque.
Martin Solomon wrote about what happened next.
< style="font-size: 14pt">In late 2003, after visiting the local
Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ahmed Mansour
and his wife emerged in what can only be described as a state of shock.
Mansour’s wife had attended a religious lesson and Mansour himself browsed
the literature on display. According to the affidavit of Dennis Hale (PDF),
Episcopal Lay Minister, Boston College Professor and founder of Citizens for
Peace and Tolerance, Mansour informed him that “both the religious lesson
and the Arabic newsletters inside the mosque were full of hateful references
against the West and Jews.” In particular, he noted that the mosque was
touting a fund-raising endorsement for their new mosque project featuring
infamous Wahabbi cleric and pitch-man for the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheik
Yousef Al-Qaradawi.
Shocked to see that the poison he thought he had left behind, the poison he
thought was an ocean away but was following him to America, Mansour spoke
out about what he had seen.
As thanks for stepping forward, Mansour has found himself a defendant in a
wide-ranging defamation lawsuit, a lawsuit that has involved television and
print media outlets, activist organizations, and individuals — anyone, it
seemed, who had dared speak or repeat anything less than complimentary about
the Islamic Society of Boston.
Anti-CAIR
does not have that kind of money but CAIR and other Arab propaganda
organizations are well funded.
He said the last straw came "when she decided she wanted to move forward
with media interviews despite the fact that her message was dividing us
rather than bringing us back together."
Apparently the Miss California
contract controls the rights of contestants to speak their minds especially
when it comes to homosexuality.
Two veteran street preachers in
Houston had to go to trial for spreading the biblical message about
homosexuality on a street corner. They had a sign that said:
Technically, they were ticketed for having
signs thicker than one-quarter inch (they say they were 3/16ths and that
they'd been approved beforehand), and for having a sign not made out of wood
(their shofar is a ram's horn style).
Jeff Jacoby wrote about how the Islamic
Society of Boston is suing those who are concerned about the radicalism of
its members. He wrote (A Radioactive Mosque 1/1/06):
for
more than two years, questions have been raised about just how committed
the Islamic Society really is to moderation and interfaith understanding.
Beginning with reports in the Boston Herald, news outlets,
citizen groups, political officials, and private citizens have been
pointing out disturbing signs of extremist "radioactivity" around the
Islamic Society and its leadership. To mention only a few:
+
The society's original founder,
Abdurahman Alamoudi,
is now serving a 23-year prison term for his role in a terrorist
assassination plot. The Treasury Department identified him as a fund-raiser
for Al Qaeda, and he has publicly proclaimed his support for two notorious
terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah.
+Yusef al-Qaradawi,
who for several years was listed as a trustee in Islamic Society of Boston tax
filings and on the ISB website -- the ISB now claims that was due to an
"administrative oversight" -- is a radical Islamist cleric who has endorsed
suicide bombings and the killing of Americans in Iraq. In 2002, he was invited
to address an Islamic Society fund-raiser, but had to do so by video from Qatar
-- he has been barred since 1999 from entering the United States.
+
Another Islamic Society trustee, Walid Fitaihi, is the author of writings
that denounce Jews as "murderers of the prophets" who "brought the worst
corruption to the earth" and should be punished for their "oppression,
murder, and rape of the worshipers of Allah." After
Fitaihi's words were reported in the Boston press, the Islamic Society
was urged to unequivocally repudiate them. It took
seven months before it
finally did so.
+
When Ahmed Mansour, an Egyptian-born Muslim scholar, examined the Islamic
Society's
library
in 2003, he found books and videotapes promoting hostility toward the United
States and insulting other religions. Among the publications on hand were
several of those listed in the Freedom House report.
Individually, none of these points
proves that there is anything amiss with the Islamic Society of Boston.
Taken together, they give rise to obvious questions and concerns. Surely the
Islamic Society, which emphasizes its commitment to
moderation, tolerance, sincerity, and dialogue, should be at pains to
answer those questions and allay those concerns. Instead it accuses its
critics of defamation, and has sued many of them for -- of all things --
conspiring to deprive Boston-area Muslims of their religious freedom
Two Jewish students received death threats after putting up
pro-Israel posters in Belgium (www.haaretzdaily.com 12/27/02)
The posters conveyed messages such as
< style="FONT-SIZE: 13.5pt; font-style:italic"> "Which
was the first state in the Middle East which gave Arab women the right
to vote,"
and
< style="FONT-SIZE: 13.5pt; font-style:italic">"Terror
attacks against civilians are an abomination."
The next morning, the two students received phone calls
from an anonymous caller who had a Middle Eastern accent, and threatened to
attack them.
"We know who you are and where you live,"
the caller
threatened, in the call to Nicole.
"We also know that you have a
brother, as well as the license number of your car and the place where
you park it. If the flyer
isn't removed by the evening, we'll burn the car, and harm you and your
family."
Benjamin, 22, received a similar phone call.
Soon after the two students received cellphone messages which cited
their addresses and their cars' license plate numbers. These messages
conveyed a new threat: the students were warned that "
< style="FONT-SIZE: 13.5pt; font-style:italic">we will
burn the union of Jewish students in Belgium building [UEJB]"
Speaking out against
Islam is risky. After the late Dutch sociologist-turned-politician Pim
Fortuyn sounded the alarm about the danger that Europe’s Islamization posed
to democracy, elite journalists labeled him a threat. A New York Times
headline described him as marching the dutch to the right. Dutch newspapers
Het Parool and De Volkskrant compared him with Mussolini; Trouw likened him
to Hitler. He was murdered by a man who said his views were dangerous.
Theo van Gogh was also murdered. He was the coauthor of the film "Submission" with Somali-born Ayaan
Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament who had renounced the Islamic
faith of her birth.(
My Way News 11/2/04) Their film told the fictional story of a Muslim
woman forced into a violent marriage, raped by a relative and brutally
punished for adultery. This film enraged the Muslims of the Netherlands and
led to his murder even though it is based on similar stories that have
occurred in real life. The
murderer of Van Gogh explained that the killing was justified by Islamic law
that "instructs me to chop off the heads of anyone who insults Allah or the
prophet." What this means is that anyone who speaks the truth about
Islam must have his head chopped off according to Islamic law. After the
murder the daily, De Telegraaf, "Afraid of being called racist, we
have been so tolerant with regard to these religious fascists that they have
been allowed to merrily undermine the roots of our freedom."
24 hours after the silencing of Van Gogh Geert
Wilders, a democratically elected representative of the Dutch people in
parliament received a note in his mailbox addressed to him as "ugly dog".
It told him he would soon be beheaded.
< style="FONT-SIZE: 13.5pt; font-style:italic">"Do not
think you are safe, because we will catch you and cut your ugly head
off."
Wilders, who had been planning to form a party to tackle "the Islamic
problem" now also has 24-hour police protection. According to frontpagemag.com (Dutch
Death 11/9/04)
Outside parliament, a Dutch TV chat show host has also been given
protection. And the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen has also now been
put on the hit list, as has the deputy mayor, fellow Muslim Ahmed Aboutaleb.
The following is an excerpt of
a
speech given by Geert Wilders on February 7th, 2011 at the resumption of
his trial.
The lights are going out all over
Europe. All over the continent where our culture flourished and where
man created freedom, prosperity and civilization. Everywhere the
foundation of the West is under attack.
All over Europe the elites are acting as the protectors of an ideology
that has been bent on destroying us since the fourteenth century...
The lights are going out all over Europe. Anyone who thinks or speaks
individually is at risk. Freedom loving citizens who criticize islam, or
even merely suggest that there is a relationship between islam and crime
or honour killing, must suffer and are threatened or criminalized. Those
who speak the truth are in danger.
The lights are going out allover Europe. Everywhere the Orwellian
thought police are at work, on the lookout for thought crimes
everywhere, casting the populace back within the confines where it is
allowed to think.
I am obliged to speak. For the
Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam
is chiefly an ideology. An ideology of hatred, of destruction, of
conquest. It is my strong conviction that Islam is a threat to Western
values, to freedom of speech, to the equality of men and women, of
heterosexuals and homosexuals, of believers and unbelievers.
All over the world we can see how freedom is fleeing from Islam. Day by
day we see our freedoms dwindle.
Islam is opposed to freedom. Renowned scholars of Islam from all parts
of the world agree on this...
Freedom and truth. I pay the price
every day. Day and night I have to be protected against people who want
to kill me. I am not complaining about it; it has been my own decision
to speak. However, those who threaten me and other critics of Islam are
not being tried here today. I am being tried. And about that I do
complain...
Mister President, members of the Court, you must now decide whether
freedom still has a home in the Netherlands. Franz Kafka said:
“one sees the sun slowly set, yet one is surprised when it suddenly
becomes dark.”
Mister President, members of the
Court, do not let the lights go out in the Netherlands.
Acquit me: Put an end to this Kafkaesque situation.
Acquit me. Political freedom requires that citizens and their elected
representatives are allowed to voice opinions that are held in society.
Acquit me, for if I am convicted, you convict the freedom of opinion and
expression of millions of Dutchmen.
Mr. Wilders was acquitted. A
column by him about his ordeal was published in the
Wall Street Journal. In his column he wrote:
Though I am obviously relieved by
yesterday's decision, my thoughts go to people such as Danish journalist
Lars Hedegaard, Austrian human rights activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff
and others who have recently been convicted for criticizing Islam. They
have not been as fortunate. In far too many Western countries, it is
still impossible to have a debate about the nature of Islam.
Fear of Muslims combined with multiculturalist
ideology leads non-Muslim westerners to silence criticism of Islam and to
defend it.The Dutch police also silence free speech in Holland. The
day after the murder of Van Gogh, Chris Ripke created a mural which depicted
an angel and the words, "Thou shalt not kill". According to the Dutch
Death article:
Ripke's studio is next to a mosque and an imam lost no time in racing off to
the police to complain that the mural was "racist". Not only did
the dhimmi Rotterdam police destroy Ripke's mural, but they arrested
television journalists filming it and erased their tape.
In January 2005, a high
school in Ijsselstein, Holland, ordered two students to remove patches of
the Dutch flag from their backpacks because the administration feared they
would provoke Moroccan students. Bans on the Dutch flag were already in
place at other Dutch schools (Banning
Patriotism, frontpagemagazine.com 4/25/2006) .
Perhaps no Western media
outlet has exhibited this habit of moral inversion more regularly
than the BBC. In 2006, to take a typical example, Manchester’s top
imam told psychotherapist John Casson that he supported the death
penalty for homosexuality. Casson expressed shock—and the BBC, in a
dispatch headlined < class="smallcap">imam accused of “gay
death” slur, spun the controversy as an effort by Casson to
discredit Islam. The BBC concluded its story with comments from an
Islamic Human Rights Commission spokesman, who equated Muslim
attitudes toward homosexuality with those of “other orthodox
religions, such as Catholicism” and complained that focusing on the
issue was “part of demonizing Muslims.”
In June 2005, the BBC
aired the documentary Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, which sought
to portray concerns about Islamic radicalism as overblown. This
“stunning whitewash of radical Islam,” as Little Green Footballs
blogger Charles Johnson put it, “helped keep the British public fast
asleep, a few weeks before the bombs went off in London subways and
buses” in July 2005. In December 2007, it emerged that five of the
documentary’s subjects, served up on the show as examples of
innocuous Muslims-next-door, had been charged in those terrorist
attacks...
The New York Times also
whitewashes Islam. Bruce Bawer wrote:
< class="content1" id="backCon10">
Witness Andrea Elliott’s affectionate three-part profile of a
Brooklyn imam, which appeared in the New York Times in March 2006.
Elliott and the Times sought to portray Reda Shata as a heroic bridge
builder between two cultures, leaving readers with the comforting belief
that the growth of Islam in America was not only harmless but positive,
even beautiful. Though it emerged in passing that Shata didn’t speak
English, refused to shake women’s hands, wanted to forbid music, and
supported Hamas and suicide bombing, Elliott did her best to downplay
such unpleasant details; instead, she focused on sympathetic personal
particulars. “Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his
grandmother’s voice”; “Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago. . . .
‘She entered my heart,‘ said the imam.” Elliott’s saccharine piece won a
Pulitzer Prize. When Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes pointed out that
Shata was obviously an Islamist, a writer for the Columbia Journalism
Review dismissed Pipes as “right-wing” and insisted that Shata was “very
moderate.”
< style="font-size:13.5pt">My book, "The Trouble with
Islam," has put me on the receiving end of anger, hatred and vitriol. That's
because I'm asking questions that we Muslims can no longer hide from. Why, for
example, are we squandering the talents of half of God's creation, women? What's
with the stubborn streak of anti-Semitism in Islam today? Above all, how can
even moderate Muslims view the Koran literally when it, like every holy text,
abounds in contradictions and ambiguity? The trouble with Islam today is that
literalism is going mainstream. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
Muslims who take offense at these points often wind up reinforcing them in
their responses to me. I regularly get death threats through my Web site. Some
of my would-be assassins emphasize the virtues of martyrdom, wanting to hurl me
into the "flames of hell" in exchange for 72 virgins. Others simply
want to know what plane I'm next boarding, so they can hijack it. Somehow, I
don't feel the urge to share my schedule.
A few threats have been up-close and personal. At an airport in North
America, a Muslim man approached my traveling companion to say, "You're
luckier than your friend." When she asked him to explain, he turned his
hand into the shape of a gun and pulled the trigger. "She will find out
later what that means," he intoned.
But, for all of the threats, there's good news: I'm hearing more support,
affection and even love from fellow Muslims than I thought possible. Two groups
in particular -- young Muslims and Muslim women -- have flooded my Web site
with letters of relief and thanks. They are relieved that somebody is saying
out loud words they have only whispered, and grateful that they're being given
the permission to think for themselves.
Resolution 16/18 criminalizes
defamation of islam, i.e. telling the truth about Islam. The International
Islamic News agency reported on Aug 1 2011
that:
< style="background: yellow">The
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had announced the intention of the
U.S. State Department to organize a coordination meeting during her
participation in the meeting which she co-chaired with the OIC Secretary
General, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Istanbul on 15 July 2011. The
meeting issued a joint statement emphasizing the dire need for the
implementation of resolution 16/18.
There is pressure in the United States not to say certain
things. What these things are was discussed by Victor Hanson in the New
York Post titled
What Not to Talk About in America.
Talk radio is predominantly conservative while much of the
other media is predominantly left wing. The left is trying to muzzle
conservative talk radio with rules mandating “diversity” in media ownership and
by broadcasting what is “in the public interest.” Diversity and public interest
are code for liberalism and liberal views. For more on this see the
following
about the Stealth Fairness Doctrine. Michelle Malkin mentions the fairness
doctrine in her article
The Hate
Speech Inquisition about the attempts to silence the speech of conservatives
by the left after a mentally deranged individual, Jared Loughner shot Arizona
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">The
password protected Arabic Web site, at the address www.barsomyat.com,
features pictures and information about Christians who have been particularly
active in debating Muslims on PalTalk.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">One
page from barsomyat.com features a group of photographs of a Syrian Christian,
"Joseph," who now lives in Canada. Barsomyat.com's users have posted
personal information about Joseph, including his brother's parole status, and
make clear that they are actively trying to track down his current address.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Subscribers
also post explicit warnings to Joseph. One comment states, "Know, oh
Christian, that you are not far from us and you are under our watchful
eyes!" Another user remarks, "Laugh, oh Christian, and soon you will
see a big hit."< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Ahmed
Paul, an Egyptian Christian and a theology student in America, said he believes
Joseph was targeted because he frequently engaged in debates with Muslims on
PalTalk. The Internet chat service attracts up to 3 million users a month, and
subjects range from movies to music to religion to adult topics - and some
Arabic-speaking users of PalTalk have reported that contentious debates between
Christians and Muslims are common in certain chat rooms... [M]any barsomyat.com
users expressed jubilation at the deaths.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">One
user posted a photograph of Hossam Armanious and wrote, "This is a picture
of the filthy dog, curser of Muhammad, and a photo of his filthy wife, curser
of Muhammad. They got what they deserved for their actions in America."..< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Barsomyat.com
features not only photographs of the targeted Christians, but also attempts to
track down their addresses. A post about a Christian man whose computer was
apparently hacked to obtain his photograph includes the man's PalTalk name, his
real name, and the city where he resides in Lebanon.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Another
barsomyat.com entry outlines the relations (both blood and marital) between
four Christians who are apparently PalTalk users, posts photographs of them,
and then states, "We have postponed publishing this information because
there is a lot more to be revealed when the time is right."< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:11.0pt">
< style="font-size: 14pt">According to Maria Sliwa (Ignoring Muslim Murder
on U.S. Soil, frontpagemag.com 3/4/05)
A former Muslim from Egypt, who wouldn't give his name for this article for
fear of retribution, says he fled to America in 1992, after he was severely
beaten for converting to Christianity. He says he was threatened in 2001 when he
began discussing his faith with Muslims on PalTalk, a New York City-based
internet chat service. Though Saleh admits that his debates were often too
fervent on the net, he was shocked to find photos of himself and family members,
along with all of his contact information, on a radical Islamic website called
Gegadeath.com. Below Saleh's picture was a statement of warning. After he
appeared on Gegadeath, Saleh says he received numerous death threats on the
phone and quickly moved to another state.
Last month Ahmed Mohamed, 36, a former Muslim in Colorado, who converted to
Christianity, discovered that his photo and contact information were posted on
another radical Islamic website, Barsomyat.com, along with accusations that he'd
been debating Muslims on PalTalk. He says that since his information was posted,
he has received numerous threats on the phone, in person and in letters he has
received in the mail.
On March 6, Ahmed Mohamed, a convert to the Coptic Christian Church, who uses
the moniker "Ahmed_love_Jesus" on PalTalk received the following threat: (wnd.com
3/12/05)
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Know this,
Ahmed_love_Jesus, we tracked you and being in America will not help you. Your
blood is lawful and we will kill you soon.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
If you were with me I would have killed you.
I will know where you are and kill you someday.
Ahmed_Love_Jesus, by the life of your mother's [obscenity deleted], your blood
is lawful. We know where you are in America and we will slaughter you like the
lamb that you worship.
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> < style="font-size:13.5pt">The address of Jeremy Reynalds was posted on the
Houston-based site Al Ansar by Muslims as well as a posting which offered
prayers to Allah that Reynalds' "fatty neck" would be delivered to
them, a reference to Islamists' common method of decapitation. (CAIR's War on National Review,
frontpagemag.com 3/30/05).
Graham explained that when a significant minority of a group conducts
terrorism and the general population of that group does not denounce it, it
is safe to conclude that the group promotes it.
He drew an analogy between Islam and the Boy Scouts.
"If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 scout troops, and 10 of them
practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist
organization," he said. "If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops,
that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror
repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that
justified and defended murder – and the scoutmasters in charge simply said
'Could be' – the Boy Scouts would have driven out of America long ago."
When he was in danger of being fired he
wrote an article called The Tragedy of Islam which can be viewed by clicking
here.
After he was fired he said:
"It appears that ABC Radio has caved to an organization that condemns talk
radio hosts like me, but has never condemned Hamas, Hezbollah, and one that
wouldn't specifically condemn al-Qaida for three months after 9-11," he
said. "As a fan of talk radio, I find it absolutely outrageous that pressure
from a special interest group like CAIR can result in the abandonment of
free speech and open discourse on a talk radio show. As a conservative talk
host whose job is to have an open, honest conversation each day with my
listeners, I believe caving to this pressure is a disaster."
< class="backcontent"> Fear of
Muslim wrath may be the reason ABC fired Michael Graham. It is also the
reason that the Marriott hotel chain turned down a "terrorism" symposium.
< style="COLOR: black"> After researching the matter, the
< style="COLOR: blue; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">
< style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">
Marriott’s corporate office< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="COLOR: black">
supported the local decision and issued the following statement; “Due to the
high density of Muslim Students on campus, we’re afraid of the potential for
violent protests, injured employees and damage to the facility”.
Concurrently, another Marriott Hotel in the Washington area hosted CAIR’s
annual conference. Participating as a panelist at their gala, was an alleged
coconspirator of the 1993 WTC bombing. (Sleeping
with the Enemy at the Marriott) 12/3/05.
Just this week, the
American Library Association cancelled a panel, "Perspectives on
Islam: Beyond the Stereotyping," at the behest of the Council on
American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and CAIR sympathizers who objected
to the participation of Islamic scholar and author Robert Spencer.
Spencer has studied
Islamic doctrine for close to 30 years and quotes directly from
traditional Islamic sources in his efforts to shed light on the
myriad facets of the global jihad. He has led seminars on Islam and
jihad for the United States Central Command, the FBI, the Joint
Terrorism Task Force, the U.S. intelligence community and other
government organizations. Spencer is the author of eight books on
Islam and the jihad and has appeared on CNN, BBC, FoxNews, PBS,
MSNBC and other networks.
CAIR, which presents
itself as a benign civil rights organization for American Muslims,
is an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful prosecution of
Muslim charity founders who illegally funneled millions of dollars
to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. CAIR officials are known to
have terrorist ties and the organization has actively fought to
repeal the Patriot Act
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Chauncey Bailey of the Oakland Post was
working on a story about a bakery owned by the Bey family that was under
investigation by police in connection with assaults, a kidnapping, two
homicides, and a case of torture.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> A
handyman working for the Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland shot Chauncey Bailey
and killed him. According to Lloyd Billingsley
< style="font-size:13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt">
(frontpagemag 8/8/07),
the Bey family established what amounted to a miniature Taliban state.
They would shoot guns in the air and terrify the residents. Chris Thompson
wrote that
< class="backcontent" id="backCon8">"white and
black leaders alike have embraced Bey as a pillar of the African-American
community. Whether due to cowardice, ignorance, or Machiavellian realpolitik,
government officials and media outlets have chosen inaction and silence – a
choice with terrible ramifications for some Oakland residents."
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< class="backcontent"> Claire Lopez wrote in the Middle East
Times (5/1/08) that:
< class="backcontent"> the White House announced that
government employees both at home and abroad must employ euphemisms such as
"violent extremists" or "South Asian youths" instead of "Muslim jihadis"
T< style="font-size:13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt" id="backCon40">he
Christian Action Network wrote a fund raising letter
< style="font-size:13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt" id="backCon41">
pointed out that some schools have provided a 'prayer room' for Muslims and one
textbook that told seventh grade
< style="POSITION: relative; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman', Georgia, Serif;
COLOR: blue !important; FONT-SIZE: 17px; FONT-WEIGHT: 400" class="kLink">
students they 'will become Muslim.'
criticized a decision in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
California that affirmed the right of public schools to ask students to dress up
as Muslims, wear the Islamic crescent moon and star, chant "Praise be to Allah,"
learn the five pillars of Islamic belief and cite Muslim prayers.
The letter also cited examples of public schools removing pork from
their menus, installing footbaths in tax-funded universities and an attempt in
San Diego to separate boys from girls according to Islamic doctrine.
State officials in Maine alleged that the letter contained "an inflammatory
anti-Muslim message" and used the governor's name without his permission and
canceled the group's registration, imposed a $4,000 fine and said it no longer
could send out letters.
During an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America
this morning, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer addressed
the recent controversy over a Florida pastor’s plan to hold
a Quran-burning rally on the anniversary of the September 11
terrorist attacks, saying he wasn’t convinced the First
Amendment would protect such an action if the case were
brought to the court in the future.
“Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout ‘fire’ in a
crowded theater,” Breyer told George Stephanopoulos during
the GMA interview, referring to Supreme Court Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr., who wrote the opinion in a 1919 Supreme
Court decision that addressed Freedom of Speech.
< class="backcontent"> This means that if Muslims are violent in
response to someone's a speech it's unconstitutional to make the speech.
< id="backCon2">< class="backcontent"> Bangladeshi writer Taslima
Nasreen, had a fatwa issued against her in 1993 after the publication of
her novel Lajja (Shame), which depicted the persecution of Bangladesh's Hindu
minority. The Hindustan Times recently reported that Nasreen "had to leave the
country overnight to save her life and his been on [the] run since then."< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> According to Bat Ye'or in
her book Eurabia, fear of Islamic terror is silencing those who would otherwise
support Israel. The voices of the large influx of anti-Israeli immigrants
are heard. As a result the population of Europe is being brainwashed
into hating Israel. The same fear that silences supporters of Israel
silences critics of Islam so that as Europeans are losing their freedoms their media
teaches them to blame Israel and the United States instead of the growing
Islamic threat in their midst.
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> Blasphemy laws are a way
to silence legitimate criticism of a religion. Critics of the blasphemy
law in Pakistan call it a tool in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists in their
effort to make the entire country Muslim. (WorldNetDaily reported
(6/2/07) how < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Masih,
a Christian from Chungi Amar Sadu in Lahore, was charged Sept. 10, 2005, with
blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad, a charge that carries the death
penalty.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Masih was outspoken against
incidents of rape committed against Christian girls, and is a Christian
himself. It is believed these were the reasons he was accused of blasphemy.
< style="font-size: 14pt">
Siagh Krimo is an
Algerian Christian who made the mistake of sharing his Christian beliefs with a
neighbor. He was sentenced to 5 years for blasphemy.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> A fatwa was issued against
Salman Rushdie for writing the Satanic verses. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross in
an article (The Jyllands-Posten
cultural editor Flemming Rose decided, courageously, to publish
critical caricatures of Mohammad in response to the worsening climate of fear
overcoming European artists and writers who censured themselves due to the
threat of violent Muslim reprisals. Violent protests in which Danish embassies
were destroyed soon followed as did a boycott on Danish Goods by Islamic
countries. < lang="EN-AU" style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black; mso-ansi-language:EN-AU">The Pakistani Jamaaat-e-Islami party offered a large
reward to anyone who killed any of the cartoonists. According to worldnetdaily 2/24/06) < class="articlesstorytext">< style="font-size:13.5pt">In Londonistan deranged
protesters carried posters reading: EXTERMINATE THOSE WHO MOCK
ISLAM and BE PREPARED FOR THE REAL HOLOCAUST (Cartoonish Dhimmitude
in America, Frontpage Magazine 2/8/2006)
Following the tumultuous events of this past week, Rose
remained entirely unbowed: “Apologizing would imply that if you intimidate us
enough we will follow your demands…This is blackmail. You cannot edit this
newspaper [Jyllands-Posten] according to mafia rules.”
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">He fully accepted his decision to uphold free speech
which might conceivably cost his life and the lives of the cartoonists whom he
commissioned (and
in fact are now hiding for their very lives): “I do not regret it…It is a
bit like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt at a disco.”
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">The distressing reaction to this cartoon jihad by
most United States political and media elites has been one of craven, and
ill-informed dhimmitude. Pious pronouncements condemning the cartoons and their
publication have been issued across the political spectrum, from the State Department,
to the Washington
Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, to conservative blogger Hugh
Hewitt. Mainstream television and print news media have declared,
uniformly, that they will not display the cartoons. Will these self-righteous
institutions and individuals remain unmoved even by appeals from those intrepid
secular Muslims, such as Ibn Warraq, who have embraced our uniquely Western
heritage, and are struggling to defend it? In Der
Spiegel, on Friday February 3, Warraq elucidated what is at stake:
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten
raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we
in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset,
or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of
expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives? A
democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to
argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in
the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic,
fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without
this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights,
individuality; originality and truth.
< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Freedom of expression is our western heritage and we
must defend it or it will die from totalitarian attacks. It is also much needed
in the Islamic world. By defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic
world a valuable lesson, we are helping them by submitting their cherished
traditions to Enlightenment values.
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> Caroline Glick wrote about how
the West Caved in (Strong Leadership For Peace, Jerusalem Post 3/3/2006):
< style="font-size:13.5pt">In Britain the media
refused to publish the pictures of Muhammad - out of sensitivity for Muslim
feelings, of course. The newspaper editor who published the pictures in France
was fired. In Norway, the editor who published the pictures was forced to
publicly apologize to Norway's Muslim leaders in a humiliating public ceremony.
Franco Frattini, the EU's Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security said
it would be useful for the press to "self-regulate" in attempting to
find answers to question of "How are we to reconcile freedom of expression
and respect for each individual's deepest convictions?"
< style="font-size:13.5pt">And so, the European
reaction to the Muslim rampages has involved slouching towards the surrender of
their freedom of speech. Not only has Europe's appeasement of radical Islam not
protected its liberal values, it has undermined the democratic freedoms that
form the foundations of European culture. From a security perspective, the
consequence of the silencing of pubic debate on the challenge of radical Islam
is that Europeans are now effectively barred from conducting a public
discussion about the chief threat to their political traditions and physical
survival.
< class="backcontent">< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt">On Thursday, April 12, a gang of Somali thugs on a
downtown Oslo street attacked Kadra, a Somali woman who now lives in Norway,
and beat her senseless, breaking several of her ribs. They were enraged at her
for her recent statement that the Qur’an’s views of women needed reevaluation.
They also might have been angry because of her role in revealing the widespread
support among imams in Norway for female genital mutilation; Kadra exposed
their support for this horrific procedure using a hidden camera in a 2000
documentary for Norwegian television….
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">The
following Tuesday, two men in Mississauga, Ontario, attacked journalist Jawaad
Faizi, who writes for the Pakistan Post, a newspaper based in Mississauga. The
attackers told Faizi to stop “writing against Islam,” and particularly to stop
criticizing an Islamic organization, Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran, and its leader, a
Muslim cleric named Allama Tahir-Ul-Qadri.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Vladimir
Putin has been curtailing Russian freedoms.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
< class="articlesstorytext1">< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Anna Politkovskaya< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"> was a Russian journalist
who regularly reported on
< style="color:darkgreen">Vladimir Putin's
undermining of press and other freedoms in Russia. She is one of many who have
been killed.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The
Washington Times (11/27/06) reported that:
< lang="EN" style="font-size:13.5pt;mso-ansi-language: EN">Alexander Litvinenko, the one-time KGB agent who has lived in London with
his family for several years, died Thursday from poisoning by the radioactive
element polonium 210. He had been investigating the death of Mrs.
Politkovskaya. In a dramatic statement dictated from his hospital bed and read
outside the hospital shortly after his death, he accused the "barbaric and
ruthless" Mr. Putin of ordering his poisoning.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> < style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Paul Joyal
an expert on the Soviet Union told “Dateline”after the Litvinenko murder that:
"A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against
the Kremlin: 'If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find
you, and we will silence you -- in the most horrible way possible.' frontpagemag.com 10/23/2006). < style="mso-spacerun: yes">
Nathan Thornburgh wrote an article for Time Magazine
about Russia. He wrote:
In a meeting at the Kremlin before I began
my trip, Putin's spokesman didn't even try to
deny that national news was slanted in the
government's favor. But he said the regional
media were thriving and independent. Study them,
he said, and "you will understand that this is
the freest country in the world."
I met journalists throughout my travels
and found the Kremlin's assessment disingenuous
at best. "In America, you are free to criticize
Bush," a television talk-show host told me in
his kitchen in Novgorod. "Me too. I am also free
to criticize Bush." He laughed. Then, not
smiling, he said, "I'm actually scared to be
talking to you. TIME magazine is far away. But
if I express my opinions, I'll have to face the
authorities — not Putin, but someone here on a
local or provincial level. I'll lose my job."
...
< style="font-size: 14pt"> Another article in the
same issue of Time Magazine was written by Adi Ignatius. He wrote:
< style="font-size: 14pt">Dmitri Muratov also knows the
difficulties of life in the Putin era. A soft spoken, heavyset man whose
neatly trimmed beard is turning gray, Muratov is the editor in chief of
Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper, published twice a week, with a reputation
for pursuing tough investigative pieces. In the past seven years, three of
his journalists have been murdered; all were looking into corruption and
wrongdoing. After the third murder, Muratov decided to close the 14-year-old
paper to avoid putting any other journalist at risk. But his staff talked
him out of it. The paper is perpetually harassed by officials around the
country, but, Muratov notes with a weary smile, "we're still alive."
The last of Muratov's journalists to die, Anna Politkovskaya, was shot in
the elevator of her apartment building last year on Oct. 7. Alexander
Litvinenko, a former FSB officer turned government critic living in London,
accused Putin of sanctioning the killing. Within weeks, Litvinenko himself
was dead too, killed by radiation poisoning from a mysterious dose of
polonium 210. (Britain wants to charge a former KGB officer, Andre Lugovoy,
who has just been elected to Russia's parliament, with the killing. He
denies it, and Russian law prevents the extradition of Russian citizens.)
< class="content1" id="backCon15">< style="COLOR: black">The
murder of anti-government journalist,
Magomed Yevloyev< style="COLOR: black">, in Ingushetia by police on
Sunday is just the latest indication that the Putin regime doesn't flinch to
eliminate dissent in all of its forms.
Magomed Yevloyev, a Web-site
publisher from Ingushetia, was abducted from a
commercial airliner by the police. The cops shot him
and dumped his body.
Two days later, TV reporter
Abdulla Alishayev was shot and killed in the nearby
"republic" of Daghestan. Russian government sources
blame "Wahhabis."
Plus, a reporter and editor,
Milosla Bitokov, from the Karbardino-Balkar
"republic," was beaten so badly he had to be
hospitalized. But, given all the journalists Putin
has murdered since he came to power, a few broken
bones or a fractured skull hardly count.
Saturday’s brutal beating of crusading journalist Oleg
Kashin appears to be the latest example of the
resurgent Russian police state flexing its muscles to stamp
out dissent; especially when it comes to journalists who
refuse to follow the party line.
A horrific video shows Kashin being repeatedly beaten by
two men who appear to be wielding pipes or some other blunt
instruments. Kashin, a journalist for Kommersant,
a Russian political and business newspaper, suffered
multiple injuries and is currently in an induced coma as
doctors try to save his life. Most significantly, the
journalist who has written so much to anger and embarrass
the government had all of his fingers broken. As messages
go, it does not get much clearer that. None of Kashin’s
possessions were stolen by his assailants, which further
validates suspicions of governmental orchestration.
< style="font-weight: 700; font-size: 14pt">
China uses mental wards to silence those who complain. In
one case, Xu Lindong, a poor village farmer, filed
complaints about the local government having to do with his land. The
government’s response was to draw up an order to commit him to a mental hospital
— and then to forge his brother’s name on the signature line. In an interview,
he said he had endured 54 electric-shock treatments, was repeatedly roped to his
bed and was routinely injected with drugs powerful enough to make him swoon.
According to the New York Times 11/12/2010
A decade ago, Human
Rights Watch accused China of locking up dissidents and
members of the Falun Gong spiritual group in a cluster
of Chinese mental hospitals run by the Public Security
Bureau. The World Psychiatric Association requested
access to the hospitals, but China refused, and the
controversy died down.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;color:black"><
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Shouting
"We Want Freedom!" and waving Venezuelan flags, demonstrators
warned that President Hugo Chavez's plan to replace Radio Caracas Television
with a public-service station is part of a broad effort to silence criticism.
The banner that snaked through the streets read "Freedom of Expression,
SOS" in 10 different languages on May 21, 2007.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< lang="ES" style="font-size: 14pt; color: black">There is also an
increasing demand for a change in history textbooks to downplay our
seven-century struggle against Arab occupation. The coat of arms of one of
Spain’s regions has been changed to erase a Moor head that has been in it
for centuries. There is mounting pressure for similar changes of potentially
offensive popular celebrations that commemorate famous battles between
Christians and Muslims during the 711-1492 period.
Salman Rushdie wrote a book the Satanic verses which
is banned in India. He was invited to speak at a literature festival
in Jaipur, India but was warned by intelligence agencies that assassins had
been dispatched from Mumbai to kill him so he didn't come. Four
writers at the festival read from the book aloud not realizing that reading
it was against the law. They
fled.
Taslima Nasreen is a woman from Bengal who had to flee to India because
of outrage over a novel she wrote called Lajja (shame) in which a Hindu
family is persecuted by Muslims and which contains a graphic description of
the rape of a Hindu woman by a Muslim man. Nasrin suffered a number of
physical and other attacks. In October 1993, an Islamic fundamentalist group
called the Council of Islamic Soldiers offered a bounty for her death. A
hundred thousand demonstrators called her "an apostate appointed by imperial
forces to vilify Islam" and a "militant faction threatened to set loose
thousands of poisonous snakes in the capital unless she was executed."
According to Wikipedia:
On August 9, 2007, Nasrin was in Hyderabad to present the Telugu
translation of one of her novels, Shodh, when she was attacked by a mob
of violent intruders, led by legislators from the All India
Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, a Muslim political party. A week later, on
August 17, Muslim leaders in Kolkata revived an old fatwa against her,
urging her to leave the country and offering an unlimited amount of
money to anybody who would kill her.[21] On November 21, Kolkata
witnessed a violent protest against Nasrin by Muslims. A protest
organized by the militant islamist "All India Minority Forum" caused
chaos in the city and forced the army's deployment to restore order.[22]
After the riots, Nasrin was forced to move from Kolkata, her "adopted
city,"[23] to Jaipur, and to New Delhi the following day
Hours before the formal launch of the seventh part of Ms. Nasreen’s
autobiography, “Nirbasan” (Exile), the Kolkata book fair organizers, the
Publishers and Booksellers Guild, cancelled the event, bowing to threats
from Muslim community leaders.
Their alleged crime? Republishing an article that stated:
"I don't respect the idea that we should follow a 'prophet' who at
the age of 53 had sex with a 9-year old girl and ordered the murder of
whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him,"
A 24-year-old journalist has been sentenced to 138 years in
< id="IL_AD1" class="IL_AD">prison for
< id="IL_AD5" class="IL_AD">publishing news accounts on
terrorist < id="IL_AD2" class="IL_AD">activity, reports
an < id="IL_AD3" class="IL_AD">international
freedom-of-the-press organization.
According to < id="IL_AD6" class="IL_AD">Reporters
< id="IL_AD4" class="IL_AD">Without Borders, Emin Demir,
former editor of Turkey's daily newspaper Azadiya Welat, was charged
with "propaganda" under Turkish law for reporting on the Kurdistan
Workers' Party, a separatist organization listed by several nations,
including the U.S., as a terrorist organization.
But Demir's lawyer, Servet Osen, insists Demir's articles were
merely news reporting, not propaganda.
Azadiya Welat is Turkey's only Kurdish-language newspaper, but
reporting on those within the ethnic minority who wish to form their
own state has drawn the ire of the Turkish government.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least nine Azadyia
Welat journalists are currently in prison on "propaganda" charges,
including two other former editors, Vedat Kursun, serving a 166-year
sentence, and Ozan Kilinc, serving for 21 years.
A 24-year-old journalist has been sentenced to 138 years in
< id="IL_AD7" class="IL_AD">prison for
< id="IL_AD8" class="IL_AD">publishing news accounts on
terrorist < id="IL_AD9" class="IL_AD">activity, reports
an < id="IL_AD10" class="IL_AD">international
freedom-of-the-press organization.
According to < id="IL_AD11" class="IL_AD">Reporters
< id="IL_AD12" class="IL_AD">Without Borders, Emin Demir,
former editor of Turkey's daily newspaper Azadiya Welat, was charged
with "propaganda" under Turkish law for reporting on the Kurdistan
Workers' Party, a separatist organization listed by several nations,
including the U.S., as a terrorist organization.
But Demir's lawyer, Servet Osen, insists Demir's articles were
merely news reporting, not propaganda.
Azadiya Welat is Turkey's only Kurdish-language newspaper, but
reporting on those within the ethnic minority who wish to form their
own state has drawn the ire of the Turkish government.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least nine Azadyia
Welat journalists are currently in prison on "propaganda" charges,
including two other former editors, Vedat Kursun, serving a 166-year
sentence, and Ozan Kilinc, serving for 21 years.
A 24-year-old journalist has been sentenced to 138 years in
< id="IL_AD13" class="IL_AD">prison for
< id="IL_AD14" class="IL_AD">publishing news accounts on
terrorist < id="IL_AD15" class="IL_AD">activity, reports
an < id="IL_AD16" class="IL_AD">international
freedom-of-the-press organization.
According to < id="IL_AD17" class="IL_AD">Reporters
< id="IL_AD18" class="IL_AD">Without Borders, Emin Demir,
former editor of Turkey's daily newspaper Azadiya Welat, was charged
with "propaganda" under Turkish law for reporting on the Kurdistan
Workers' Party, a separatist organization listed by several nations,
including the U.S., as a terrorist organization.
But Demir's lawyer, Servet Osen, insists Demir's articles were
merely news reporting, not propaganda.
Azadiya Welat is Turkey's only Kurdish-language newspaper, but
reporting on those within the ethnic minority who wish to form their
own state has drawn the ire of the Turkish government.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least nine Azadyia
Welat journalists are currently in prison on "propaganda" charges,
including two other former editors, Vedat Kursun, serving a 166-year
sentence, and Ozan Kilinc, serving for 21 years.
A 24-year-old journalist has been sentenced to 138 years in
< id="IL_AD19" class="IL_AD">prison for
< id="IL_AD20" class="IL_AD">publishing news accounts on
terrorist < id="IL_AD21" class="IL_AD">activity, reports
an < id="IL_AD22" class="IL_AD">international
freedom-of-the-press organization.
According to < id="IL_AD23" class="IL_AD">Reporters
< id="IL_AD24" class="IL_AD">Without Borders, Emin Demir,
former editor of Turkey's daily newspaper Azadiya Welat, was charged
with "propaganda" under Turkish law for reporting on the Kurdistan
Workers' Party, a separatist organization listed by several nations,
including the U.S., as a terrorist organization.
But Demir's lawyer, Servet Osen, insists Demir's articles were
merely news reporting, not propaganda.
Azadiya Welat is Turkey's only Kurdish-language newspaper, but
reporting on those within the ethnic minority who wish to form their
own state has drawn the ire of the Turkish government.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least nine Azadyia
Welat journalists are currently in prison on "propaganda" charges,
including two other former editors, Vedat Kursun, serving a 166-year
sentence, and Ozan Kilinc, serving for 21 years.
A 24-year-old journalist has been sentenced to 138 years in
< id="IL_AD25" class="IL_AD">prison for
< id="IL_AD26" class="IL_AD">publishing news accounts on
terrorist < id="IL_AD27" class="IL_AD">activity, reports
an < id="IL_AD28" class="IL_AD">international
freedom-of-the-press organization.
According to < id="IL_AD29" class="IL_AD">Reporters
< id="IL_AD30" class="IL_AD">Without Borders, Emin Demir,
former editor of Turkey's daily newspaper Azadiya Welat, was charged
with "propaganda" under Turkish law for reporting on the Kurdistan
Workers' Party, a separatist organization listed by several nations,
including the U.S., as a terrorist organization.
But Demir's lawyer, Servet Osen, insists Demir's articles were
merely news reporting, not propaganda.
Azadiya Welat is Turkey's only Kurdish-language newspaper, but
reporting on those within the ethnic minority who wish to form their
own state has drawn the ire of the Turkish government.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least nine Azadyia
Welat journalists are currently in prison on "propaganda" charges,
including two other former editors, Vedat Kursun, serving a 166-year
sentence, and Ozan Kilinc, serving for 21 years.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least nine journalists from
the Kurdish newspaper
< style="font-size:13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt" id="backCon42">
Azadyia Welat
are currently in prison on "propaganda" charges, including two other former
editors, Vedat Kursun, serving a 166-year sentence, and Ozan Kilinc, serving
for 21 years. Emin Demir shown below
was sentenced in Jan 2011 to 138 years in prison for her reporting.
Michael Rubin gave an excellent talk about how Erdogan has destroyed
freedom of the press in Turkey which can be viewed below.
NBC has
reportedly banned best-selling author Ann Coulter for life after
abruptly canceling an appearance on the "Today" show to promote her new
book, "Guilty:
Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America." The "Today" show
source told Drudge the network is "just not interested in anyone so highly
critical of President-elect Obama, right now.
"Most Americans are normal, lovely, decent people, and they hear
these wails of a liberal claiming to be 'offended, offended,' and their
reaction is to go and provide comfort to the afflicted," Coulter
explained to WND. "I want them to start noticing these are crocodile
tears. … These people pretend to be victims in order to advance, attack,
and oppress others."
< style="font-size:13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt" id="backCon18"> A "Today"
show insider, according to Drudge, said the book's theme prompted NBC executives
to cancel Coulter, who had been invited months ago.
The internet is creating a free flow of ideas all over
the world. Rael Isaac in an article titled Obama's Coercive Utopia
wrote:
What has changed is that establishment media no longer have the
stranglehold on news they once did. Those who were dedicated to getting
out information in the 1970s, whether it was on funding of terror
support groups through church offerings or the false claims against
nuclear energy or the activities of the radical institutes, were forced
in many cases to create their own small scale media outlets –
circulating reports, starting newsletters. As long as there was only a
paper trail, it was much easier for the utopians to claim quotes were
“out of context.” With the rise of alternative media, evasions no longer
work. A few minutes of watching Rev. Wright or Van Jones ranting on
YouTube and it’s all over. It’s precisely because he is afraid of the
power of alternative media that Obama appointed Mark Lloyd as
“diversity” Commiczar. Lloyd, an avowed admirer of Chávez and his
treatment of the media (which was to shut down stations that criticized
him), is perhaps the most dangerous appointment of all, for he has a
cornucopia of proposals to constrain alternative media. These range from
a prohibitive tax on stations broadcasting the likes of Rush Limbaugh
(the money used to fund “alternative viewpoints”) to setting up local
committees of activists to control what is broadcast to revoking the
license of a station that didn’t abide by the new rules.
Free speech is a threat to repressive regimes
such as China which
are cracking down on the free flow of ideas on the internet.
According to an article in the Observer (Microsoft in Human Rights Row,
2/1/2004):
China is the world's most aggressive censor of the internet. Websites are
banned for using words such as 'Taiwan', 'Tibet', 'democracy', 'dissident'
and 'human rights'. Amnesty has recorded dozens of cases of political
opponents jailed for circulating material offensive to the Chinese
government
< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> China is thought to have 30,000 online
police monitoring blogs, chatrooms and news portals. The propaganda department
is thought to employ even more people, a small but increasing number of whom
are paid to anonymously post pro-government comments online. Sophisticated
filters have been developed to block or limit access to "unhealthy
information", which includes human rights websites, such as Amnesty,
foreign news outlets, such as the BBC, as well as pornography. Of the 64
internet dissidents in prison worldwide, 54 are from China. (Backlash as
Google Shores Up Great Firewall of China 1/25/2006)
< style="font-size:13.5pt">A survey by the Committee to Protect
Journalists calls China's efforts to control its media "unique in the
world's history. According to the survey authors (U.S. Says
China Boosts Internet Monitoring, Excite News, 2/15/06)
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"Never
have so many lines of communication in the hands of so many people been met
with such obsessive resistance from a central authority."
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Words or phrases that can trigger pages to be blocked
or removed from search results:< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Tiananmen Square massacre < style="font-size:13.5pt">
The killing of hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians by the People's
Liberation Army in 1989
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Dalai Lama < style="font-size:13.5pt">
The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, who is denounced as a splittist by the
government in Beijing
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Taiwanese independence < style="font-size:13.5pt">
The nightmare of the Communist party, which has vowed to use force to prevent
a breakaway
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Falun Gong < style="font-size:13.5pt">
A banned spiritual movement, thousands of whose members have been imprisoned
and in many cases tortured
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Dongzhou
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
The village where paramilitary police shot and killed at least three
protesters last month
China has blocked access to Google News and YouTube in
an apparent attempt to stop the spread of video footage
related the rioting going on in several cities in Tibet,
including the capital Lhasa. Demonstrations in the city
started on March 10, a day commemorating the anniversary
of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule after which the
spiritual leader of the country, the
Dalai Lama, fled to India...
Foreign media have been banned from
Tibet, according to a CNN
video, which says the station has not
been able to send a team to report the news.
China's own press is run by the state.
China is blocking out the press because it doesn't want
their own people or the world to know the horrors of what they plan to
do to what's left of the people of Tibet.
Carolynne Wheeler wrote before the 20th
anniversary of the Tiananman Square massacre of Democratic
dissidents by China's government that:
China's censorship of Web sites deemed harmful to its
government and security is known as The Great Firewall; this week it
blocked access to Twitter, Bing.com, the photo-sharing Web site
Flickr and, briefly, Hotmail. Other sites, including YouTube and
blog providers like Blogspot and Wordpress, are routinely barred.
Nevertheless, after Google's
announcement a steady stream of Chinese Internet users appeared at
the Google headquarters in Beijing to lay flowers on the company's
colorful logo arrayed on the front lawn.
< style="font-family: Book Antiqua"> There is
convincing evidence that Google censors anti-Islamic web sites.
< style="font-family: Book Antiqua">
< style="FONT-SIZE: 13.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Book Antiqua'"> Chinese
dissident
Zhao Jing's blog was removed from Microsoft's MSN Spaces on Dec. 31
2005 to comply with Chinese laws. This is especially outrageous because
Zhao Jing's blog is believed to be hosted in the United States (Microsoft
blocks Chinese dissident's blog, WorldnetDaily 1/5/2006).
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> Yahoo even helped the Chinese
hunt down Shi Tao, a reporter for a Chinese newspaper, Contemporary Business
News who they have imprisoned for 10 years. According to the LA Times (Just Following
Orders in China, 9/14/05)
< style="font-size:13.5pt">His
crime consisted of e-mailing to a New York-based website information about a
secret directive his newspaper had received from the state propaganda
department telling it how to cover the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen
Square massacre. The security services were able to track him down thanks to
information helpfully provided by Yahoo's Hong Kong affiliate, whose e-mail
service Shi used...
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Yahoo,
Google, MSN and other Web search engines have agreed to block searches in China
involving words such as "Tibetan independence" or "human
rights." Bloggers can't post messages involving "democracy" or
other "dangerous" concepts. Rupert Murdoch's Star TV has agreed not
to carry BBC news or other information that the Chinese government might not
like. Cisco has sold Beijing thousands of routers programmed to monitor
Internet usage and flag for the secret police any "subversive"
sentiments.
There is a theory that greater access to information technology will further
freedom in China. The reality is that the communist oligarchy is adroitly using
the Internet to increase its level of control with the help of its American
business partners.
< class="backcontent">< style="font-size:13.5pt"> < style="font-size:13.5pt"> Reporters Without Borders found a second case in
which Yahoo turned over heroic dissidents to the Chinese. It said it had
discovered that Yahoo customer and cyberdissident Li Zhi had been given his
eight-year prison sentence in December 2003 based on electronic records
provided by Yahoo. “How many more cases are we going to find?” it asked. (Another
Cyberdissident Imprisoned Because of Data Provided by Yahoo 2/8/2006)
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Yu Ling
filed a lawsuit against Yahoo because < lang="EN" style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN">Wang
Xiaoning, her partner of 27 years, has been sitting in a Chinese prison since
September 2002. He is serving a 10-year sentence for using the Internet to
advocate democracy.
< style="font-size: 14pt">Yahoo! China pasted a "most wanted"
poster across its homepage today in aid of the police's witch-hunt for 24
Tibetans accused of taking part in the recent riots. MSN China made the same
move, although it didn't go as far as publishing the list on its homepage.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> There is self censorship in the United
States by companies that do business in China.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
< lang="EN" style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-ansi-language:EN">Google censors criticism of
China by WorldnetDaily, Taiwan has been virtually
wiped off the face of Google Earth maps in another form of appeasement to
Chinese tyranny< style="font-size:13.5pt">.< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">
< style="mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt">Microsoft,
< style="mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt">Yahoo
have made similar accommodations for their Web sites in China. (Murdoch’s
Dealings in China: It’s Business, and It’s Personal By JOSEPH KAHN 6/26/07)< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< id="backCon0">
< class="backcontent">< style="font-size:13.5pt">
Matt Pottinger, a former correspondant for the Wall Street Journal in China
said that (said
that:
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;font-family:Palatino">“In Cuba and in China, journalists are often
jailed after summary trials and held in miserable conditions far from their
families. But the cruelty and injustice of imprisonment is compounded where
there is zero due process and journalists slip into oblivion. In Eritrea, the
worst abuser in this regard, there is no check on authority and it is unclear
whether some jailed journalists are even alive."< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
According to an article from Worldnetdaily, (Worldnetdaily (5/23/06),
Google rejects ads that do not fit its liberal world view or do not promote the
candidates it prefers for office.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> One
example of this was rejection by Google of an ad that criticized the far
left MoveOn.org.
Youtube, which is now owned by
Google, banned the a video
titled The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam.
Robert Spencer
wrote that:
“Google quickly pulled the video of my talk [about radical Islam] at
Dartmouth,” writes Spencer, “although it did not meet any of their criteria
for deletion of offensive material.” Yet at the same time, search for al-Khattab’s
video “trying to raise money for a jihadist who has been convicted of
incitement to murder -- and you'll have no problem viewing that one at
YouTube.”
"He (Obama) served alongside former Weathermen leader William Ayers from 1994 to
2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had
been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project, and also
from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation. Obama
served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to
2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to
1991. Ayers was the founder and director of the Challenge."
Within two minutes that Wikipedia entry was deleted and the user banned from
posting on the website for three days, purportedly for adding "Point of View
junk edits," even though the addition was well-established fact.
Wikipedia's censorship of free speech has impact according to
Alexa.com, Wikipedia is the seventh most trafficked website on the Internet.
< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">Worldnetdaily has been censored from American and marine and navy
personnel. (frontpagemag.com
(CAIR's War from Within 3/9/04) tells how CAIR, the Council on American Islamic
Relations punished Captain Edwina McCall for speaking out in defense of
American policy in Iraq. According to the article Captain Edwina McCall,
a nurse who was due for a highest commendation medal for her service, argued
with people opposing the U.S. intervention in Iraq and supporting militant
Islamic goals on an internet discussion board. On December 4, 2003,
Ibrahim Hooper, the director of the Council on American Islamic Relations
(CAIR) faxed a letter to the office of Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, writing, “It is my unfortunate duty to bring to your attention
bigoted anti-Muslim comments sent to our office by an officer in the U.S.
military.” ... He closed the fax by writing: “I respectfully request that
the extremist and Islamophobic views of this officer be investigated and
appropriate action be taken. ”
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Captain McCall was escorted to headquarters at
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to be informed that she could be facing three
charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The Army then
denied Captain McCall “all access to government-owned computers, to include
official business.” This affected her ability to make daily submission reports
to the Pentagon, a key component to her job.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt">If DeWitt had to jump through all the hoops, over all
the obstacles, and experience the frustration of all the delays of getting a
permit, no permit was required for the counter-demonstrators, who assembled
across from the park, on the steps of Old City Hall, simply by showing up.
The official explanation was that since the counter-demonstrators were not using
the park, they could demonstrate without a permit. But Berkeley’s own
regulations for “street events” (Section 13.444.040-020 Definition D) pointedly
say otherwise, especially since the counter-demonstrators were in effect
obstructing the sidewalk in front of Old City Hall.< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt">
The left in the United States attempts to stifle criticism of
illegal immigration in the United States.
< style="font-size:13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt" id="backCon43">
Rich Truzpek wrote:
Jamie Pizzi, a freshman at Rollins College in Florida,
penned an op-ed for the college’s student newspaper The Sandspur
on March 17 in which she discussed aspects of the continuing national debate
over illegal immigration. She focused on the issue of “anchor babies” –
children born to illegal immigrants residing in the United States and who
are, under the 14th Amendment, automatically granted full
citizenship. Like many Americans, Ms. Pizzi believes that children born to
people who entered the nation illegally and/or who continue to live here
illegally should not be granted the same rights and privileges that legal
immigrants obtain only after negotiating a mountain of paperwork and waiting
for a very long time.
< style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt" id="backCon1">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< id="backCon0">
Jamie was accused by members of the faculty of Hate
Speech and her opinion was compared with Nazi propaganda. Tom Tancredo is
a congressman who took a stand against illegal immigration. Kevin DeAnna in an article titled
Free Speech in the Crossfire wrote:
Congressman Tom Tancredo was recently attacked when he tried to give
a speech to the student group Youth for Western Civilization at the
University of North Carolina. Before the speech even began, leftists began
screaming and shrieking. Tancredo was physically blocked by protesters who
spread a banner in front of him. Finally, a window was broken by
rock-throwing radicals, as protestors warned conservative UNC students that
“we know where you sleep.”
While many websites noted that this was an egregious assault on freedom of
speech, it has become routine on college campuses. Don Feder’s speech at the
University of Massachusetts was stopped last month by a self-described
“Coalition Against Hate” that screamed and interrupted continuously
throughout the event. Leftists stormed the stage at the University of
Columbia to prevent a speech by Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist in 2006. Pat
Buchanan was assaulted by a protester who yelled “stop fascism!” and threw
salad dressing at him (while screaming like a coward for the police
immediately afterward). Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, Daniel Pipes, Karl Rove,
and many others have all been either shouted down or even physically
assaulted.
It is interesting that you don't see this type of assault on
leftist speech only on conservative speech. That suggests that
conservatives are more concerned about freedom of speech than leftists are.
Nonie Darwish gave a speech at UC Berkeley as part of
Islamo-Facism Awareness week. She wrote about
the attempts to silence her (10/24/07).
The atmosphere required extensive security -- which made me feel that
without it I would have been physically hurt at UC Berkeley. The first
statement from the Al-Jazeera representative to me was: “You are the most
hated woman in the Arab world.” The hatred was also felt from the far
leftist American audience...
There were screams from the audience: "Fascist," then "racist" then "Osama
Bin Laden is a CIA agent." The noise was getting louder and I could not
speak any more. I felt that even in America I am being silenced. My response
was: “Who will speak for women who are stoned and for Muslims terrorized in
radical Muslim countries? It is sad that I left oppressive Sharia Muslim
culture, where I had no freedom of speech, only to find myself silenced in
America, by groups who claim they are for free speech.”
The sad thing about this whole event was the feeling that radical Muslims
and their far Left supporters would rather never criticize Islamic culture
than stand up against the culture that flogs, stones, beheads and amputates
limbs. Not offending a religion has become more important to the far Left
(unless it is Christianity or Judaism) than human rights of Muslims and
victims of terror. Honor killing and female genital mutilation can be
tolerated -- but noone better dare utter the word "Islamo-fascism."
American universities are becoming tyrannical when it comes to Conservative
values and to Arab Americans who dare to speak out against the culture of
jihad. It does not matter how many people in my early life in Egypt suffered
from honor killing, female genital mutilation and oppression of women, I
must shut up on American campuses.
Nonie's invitations to speak at Princeton and Columbia
were rescinded in November 2009 due to pressure from Muslim groups.
Ahmadinejad however was allowed to speak at Columbia despite non-Islamic
opposition. Fifteen minutes before Nonie Darwish was scheduled to speak at
Boston University a
fire was set
in a nearby bathroom.
Dr. Alan Kors and Dr. Harvey Silverglate wrote a book about the attack on the right to free speech
in American Universities by the Politically Correct
establishment called
The
Shadow University. Academicbias.com has posted an online video about
the subject called Brainwashing 101 which can be viewed by clicking
here. Robert Shipley
wrote in the New York Post that schools pressure students during orientation to
walk through tunnel of oppressions in which they are
told that they are oppressors. Jason Mattera
compiled some of the abuses of free speech in 2008 in an article that can be
seen by clicking
here. I quote his first or 10 examples in the paragraph below.
< class="content1" id="backCon17">The free speech “zone.”
A student at Yuba College in California was sent an
ultimatum by the school’s president: discontinue handing out gospel
booklets or face disciplinary action and possibly expulsion. That’s
right—gospel booklets. Ryan Dozier, the 20-year-old student, had the
audacity to distribute Christian literature without a school permit, which
restricts free speech to an hour each Tuesday and Thursday. Yuba College
even directs students to where on campus they are allowed to exhibit free
speech. In this case, it’s the school theater. Campus police threatened to
arrest Ryan if he didn’t comply with the “free speech zone,” oblivious to
the fact that students don’t need permission to exercise the First
Amendment’s free speech and religious clauses.
Students who have
spoken their minds have been harassed to the point where at least one took her
own life. (Academic With-Hunt
(frontpagemag.com 4/27/05) about the witch-hunt against Professor Bean.
On April 11, 2005, Jonathan Bean professor of history at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale (SIUC) received the college's "Oustanding Teacher
Award." Then one day he made the terrible mistake of assigning an
optional reading for his history class, a 2001 Frontpage Magazine report titled
frontpage magazine wrote that:
Last fall, Pace student Michael Abdurakhmanov tried to hold a
screening
that can be viewed on
youtube). Hoping to show that Islam is home to moderates as well as
extremists, and that it is important to distinguish between the two camps, he
unexpectedly found himself beset by opposition. Muslim students angrily
rejected the idea. University administrators took an even
wrote about his
experience writing about the extremists and the moderates:
In recent weeks
in this space, I have chronicled the saga of an effort to answer that question.
It took the form of a 52-minute documentary I helped produce for the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting's "America at a Crossroads"
series. The film, entitled "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim
Center," features compelling stories of anti-Islamist Muslims who have had
the courage to stand up to co-religionists who are using faith to accomplish
political ends…< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The Public Broadcasting
Service (PBS) and its Washington flagship station, WETA, refused to air this
film.
< style="mso-spacerun: yes; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"> < style="mso-spacerun: yes; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">
< style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">The rejection
of this film shows the disturbing power of radical Muslims. <
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> <
style="color:navy">Professor Aminah McCloud---a Nation of Islam associate and American Muslim
Council board member---was one of a five-member committee that “veted” (read,
“vetoed”) the documentary.
According
to producer Gaffney, the younger Eaton has “<
style="color:navy">acknowledged< style="mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt">” his father's influence---if so, a serious
conflict of interest. Maybe Eaton le fils worries that the film could indirectly
implicate his father, a.k.a. frontpagemag.com
1/15/04) wrote:
In my own classes I see a
real timidity and hesitation about interpreting a text in the fear that the
evidence which emerges may be politically incorrect. These kids have been beaten
into shape through the K-12 system and know better than to say anything
untoward—or even to think it. The University, far from opening their minds and
encouraging critical thinking, normally simply repeats the orthodoxies.
< style="mso-spacerun: yes; font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt"> < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt">It's funny. We had a great response from the audiences who saw
the short films "Brainwashing 101" and "Brainwashing
201." Both films won awards at film festivals, and we got a great
reception from the students who got a chance to see them. Even a number of
professors were supportive.
But school administrators were another story. It is in their best interests to
limit the flow of information leaving campus to glossy admissions
brochures and warm-and-fuzzy alumni newsletters designed to encourage
graduates to open their wallets. Anything beyond that is a problem for
them, especially a film that exposes the dirty little secrets of higher
education.
In producing "Indoctrinate U", we had the police called on us about
a half-dozen times. And when we were screening the short
film "Brainwashing 101" at
BucknellUniversity--my alma mater--the head
of security was brought in to threaten me with arrest in front of
an audience assembled to watch my film.
I never thought my own alma mater would try to shut down the career of one
of its own alumni. It was pretty eye-opening.
< Arial Unicode Times New>
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
David Horowitz organized a Islamo Facism Awareness Week after which
leftists papered the campus of George Washington University with a flyer
headlined "Hate Muslims? So Do We" which was supposed to be a publication of the HorowitzFreedomCenter and the GWU students organizing the event. It said
(purportedly in our voice) "Your typical Muslim has: laser eyes, venom at the
mouth,…peg-leg for smuggling children and heroin."
David
Horowitz wrote:
Despite the obvious hoax, the campus left reacted with
sanctimonious outrage and were backed by the university president, who
condemned those behind the flyer in the harshest terms hinting they would be
expelled when caught. The story was picked up by the Washington Post and
other media. By Wednesday, however the authors, who had previously hidden in
cowardly anonymity, admitted they had had published the forgery to discredit
us. When the president of GW realized the perpetrators were leftists he
backed off entirely, letting the culprits crow and leaving the conservative
students who had been defamed without a campus defender.
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"> David Horowitz wrote about the attempts to prevent Islamo-Facism week and to
silence those who would speak out against Islamo-Fascism with words such as
racist, homophobe etc.. ( frontPage Magazine
Vocabulary of War 10/19/07).
To be a successful in Middle Eastern Studies departments in the United States
you have to be anti-Israel (Frontpagemagazine
(3/11/05) about the silencing of Professor Klocek.
On September
15, 2004, Klocek was strolling through the student activities fair
at DePaul’s downtown campus when he noticed a flyer showing Israeli tanks
destroying Palestinian homes. “It was very one-sided,” he explained, “and
I wanted them to think about the bigger reality.”
He
put on his professor hat and tried to do what teachers do: he tried to get them
to think. And that’s what has lead to his downfall.
Approaching
the Students for Justice in Palestine
booth, Klocek engaged the students... Klocek either earlier or later in
the conversation said something to the effect of that while not all Muslims are
terrorists, all the terrorists currently operating in the world today are
Muslims.
He also said
that:
there
is no Palestinian ethnicity and that the term really only became prominent in
media coverage in the last 20 to 25 years. There has been in various
forms a region—though not a country, and certainly not an ethnically homogenous
state—known as “Palestine” going back to the Ottoman period, but “Palestinian”
is more of a regional identification than an ethnic one. And while older
than two decades, its usage only became common in the 20th century.
Eight
days later, some of the students involved met with the dean and cried
racism. They asked for his head. They got it.
Professor Klocek was
suspended without pay. Joel Mobray wrote:
With
no current income and facing the possibility of losing the health insurance he
desperately needs for a serious kidney condition, he has decided to go public
with his fight. Klocek considers his case a matter of academic freedom;
the school insists it’s a health issue. The Muslim students who had the
20-30 minute run-in with him that precipitated his suspension charge racism.
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
An interesting aspect to this is that both statements the professor made have
been made by Arabs. In fact when he said that all terrorists operating
today are Muslims he was quoting the head of the al-Arabiya satellite
television network. The statement about the Palestinian identity has been
made by Zuheir Mohsein, a former member of the Supreme Council of the PLO in an
interview with the Dutch Daily Trouw on March 31, 1977. Zuheir Mohsein
said:
There are no
differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all
part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully
underline our Palestinian identity, because it is in the interest of the Arabs
to encourage a separate Palestinian identity in contrast to Zionism. Yes, the
existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical
reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to
continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity.
For more
such quotes see the primer on the web
site of Americans For A Safe Israel. Klocek showed up at a press
conference bound and gagged to protest the violation of his rights.
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">DePaul university contends that Klocek's case "is not a case of
academic freedom, but a situation of inappropriate behavior outside the
classroom by a university employee< style="font-size:14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt">. Yet
one of their Professor's, Holocaust denier, Norman Finklestein is extremely
anti-Israel DePaul university has no problem with him. (Academic Witch
Hunt at Depaul Unversity 3/22/05)
To remedy the reputation DePaul University has of being
against free speech, President Rev. Dennis Holtschneider created a Free Speech
and Expression Task Force and charged it with creating a policy for free speech
that would hopefully rebuff any claims that DePaul isn’t a friend of the free
marketplace of ideas. < class="backcontent" style="COLOR: #631614">
Nicholas G. Hahn III < class="backcontent">was appointed to the
task force as the only conservative. After assisting to create guidelines he was
lectured by the University Diversity Council. He wrote in
< class="backcontent" style="COLOR: #631614">
Frontpage Magazine that< class="backcontent">:< class="backcontent">
< class="backcontent">I was told that skin
color mattered more than ideas in a discussion concerning free speech, and
that ideas which offended persons of color “silenced” them and thus
curtailed their free speech. I was told that the word “truth” is “offensive”
and would “alienate” members of the DePaul community. The idea that human
dignity is “God-given” was too “excluding.” Those who are excluded or
“marginalized” should be given a “third option” to express their feelings
because they may feel uncomfortable “speaking in a public forum or not
satisfied with walking away.”
A university, in other words, should make everyone feel as comfortable as
possible, perhaps a return to the Haight-Ashbury experience these professors
miss dearly––no disagreement, no argument, no reasoning, no thinking, no
responsibility. Their concept of “free speech” is meant to “protect those
without power.” This model of free speech, of course, is not free at all. It
is an ideological weapon which is regularly used to further the diversity
agenda. A model of “free speech” which involves controlling speech in order
to correct perceived injustices of the past is Orwellian to say the least.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
After telling this story to
Frontpage Magazine Mr. Hahn was removed from the Free Speech and Expression
Task Force on the grounds that members of the Free Speech task force would be
afraid to speak if what they said might be published. Mr. Hahn wrote:
It was apparently inappropriate for me to hold
these individuals accountable for their ideas.
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
The November issue of New Voices reported that on Sept 18, 02, The University of
California at Berkeley’s student newspaper The Daily Californian ran a political
cartoon by award-winning cartoonist Darrin Bell dealing with the terrorist
attacks on New York and Washington. The cartoon depicted two bearded
men in robes and turbans standing beside a book marked “flight manual.”
They appear to have just materialized in hell, and one excitedly proclaims, “We
made it to paradise! Now we will meet Allah, and be fed grapes, and be
serviced by 70 virgin women, and…”
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">That same day over 120
protesters, who deemed the cartoon offensive to Muslims, occupied the paper’s
offices. They demanded representation on the paper’s editorial board and
refused to leave unless the paper agreed to print an apology. The paper
refused to apologize, noting in a statement that the cartoon "falls within the
realm of fair comment." Protesters had to be arrested and removed by
campus police. The next day, hackers posted a false apology on the paper’s
Web site.
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
Three student government
senators, citing Bell’s cartoon, introduced a bill urging the student government
to make the rental rates it charges the newspaper for office space contingent
upon whether the publication takes actions to “rectify its complete
insensitivity to the needs of the campus.” The student senate later
dropped the bill’s rent provision, but passed a measure condemning the paper for
running the cartoon and calling for sensitivity training for its staff.
At Northwestern, the student
Objectivist Club held a bake sale for a few hours before being told to shut down
"or face the police," according to a report posted on the club's website. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
The Northwestern student
government put the group "under investigation, which is chilling. ... They were
on trial for having this," Mr. Halvorssen said. The group was found guilty of
financial misconduct for not having an approved cash box for a bake sale that
netted a total profit of 39 cents. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
The Objectivist Club was
also found guilty of "ineffectual leadership," for not specifically stating that
the bake sale was a political protest, and the student government placed
sanctions on the group. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
< class="backcontent">< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt">Ruth Malhotra, a student at
Georgia Tech and chairman of the college Republicans has received rape and
death threats.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> One reason was she filed
suit < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt">against Georgia Tech for unconstitutional policies used to censor
activities such as those she and the College Republicans had undertaken. The
chief target of her lawyer, David French, was a speech code that prevented
"intolerant" activities, which Malhotra’s experience showed was
enforced selectively against conservative students.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Peter Collier Making College
Comfortable For the Left (frontpagemag.com 3/31/04), in which he argues that
if he can't make left wingers uncomfortable they shouldn't be allowed to make
him uncomfortable either and lists what they have said and done at his
University that made him very uncomfortable.
< class="backcontent" id="backCon4">The faculty
union of the City University of New York known as the
Professional Staff Congress (PSC)
has a penchant for aiding and abetting terrorists and supporting political
causes with the member’s dues. Now determined to forever silence all
criticism, one of the prominent union big wigs has just filed a $2 million
lawsuit to shut down the one remaining gadfly, Dr. Sharad Karkhanis
Professor Emeritus from Kingsborough Community College who has been
tirelessly exposing the malfeasance of the PSC and the incompetence of its
leaders in his influential internet newsletter The Patriot Returns.
< class="backcontent">TPR has carefully documented
the PSC leadership’s pursuit of revolution instead of their jobs,
elaborating on their campaigns to devote more time and resources to future
global crusades. This includes such activities as mobilizing the membership
to protest the Republican Party at the Republican National Convention in New
York. Additionally, the PSC has passed a resolution sympathizing with Hugo
Chavez, sponsored a conference called Educators to Stop the War, calling for
teachers to develop an anti-war curriculum. The PSC leadership has organized
and funded New York City Labor Against the War and Labor for Palestine,
donated $5000 to support the legal defense of Lori Berenson, in prison for
helping Peruvian Marxist terrorists, and donated thousands to the defense of
Sami Al-Arian convicted of conspiracy to aid terrorist group Palestinian
Islamic Jihad. According to TPR, the PSC even hosts an “International
Committee” replete with a foreign policy spokesperson, who has issued public
statements against economic and military aid to Israel and a statement
condemning the war in Afghanistan, “joining in solidarity with the victims
of U.S. military power,” namely the Taliban.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
More recently,
approximately 1000 copies of the Berkeley? paper were stolen from their racks
following its publication of a paid advertisement by the libertarian Ayn Rand
Institute entitled “End States Who Sponsor Terrorism.” (The ad also ran
in the The New York Times and Washington Post.) The papers were replaced
with fliers that condemned the ad and Bell’s cartoon.
< style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt" id="backCon1">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
The Jewish Week (7/25/03) wrote the following about the University of
California at Berkeley.
For Rachel Simon, the University of California at Berkeley, the epicenter of
vehement anti-Israel agitation, is a campus that makes apathy difficult for
Jewish students. "There's a hurtful, hateful thing going on," said the junior English major.
"People who are in favor of the Palestinian movement are really organizing.
They're creating 'checkpoints' on campus, they call people who consider
themselves Zionists racists. They'll shout things like 'you killed my sister.' "It's very uncomfortable being a Jewish student in Berkeley."
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
The Arabs and their supporters are creating an atmosphere of intimidation on
campuses which frightens those who would speak out in support of Israel or who
just want to commemorate victims of anti-Jewish violence. In (2002) the Jewish
students of Boston University, held their annual commemoration of the victims of
the Holocaust but the pro-Palestinian agitators did not allow them to do so in
peace. They organized anti-Jewish demonstrations related to "Al Nakba" (The
catastrophe of the birth of the modern state of Israel) and disrupted the Jewish
students' ceremony. A friend of mine said that she believes these anti-Jewish
demonstrations went on for an entire week and says they created an atmosphere of
intimidation of Jewish students. A Jewish student there said she felt terrified
by the hostile anti-Jewish environment on campus. Even Jews demonstrating for peace with the Arabs are targetted. The following is
what happened at a Jewish demonstration for peace at San Francisco State
University in May 2002, according to Laurie Zoloth, the director of Jewish
Studies on campus.
Yesterday's
Peace In The Middle East Rally was completely organized by the Hillel students,
mostly 18 and 19 years old. They spoke about their lives at SFSU and of
their support for Israel, and they sang of peace. They wore new Hillel
t-shirts that said "peace" in English, Hebrew and Arabic. A
Russian immigrant, in his new English, spoke of loving his new country, a haven
from anti-Semitism. A sophomore spoke about being here only one year, and
about the support and community she found at the Hillel House. Both spoke of
how hard it was to live as a Jew on this campus how isolating, how
terrifying. A surfer guy, spoke of his love of Jesus, and his support for
Israel, and a young freshman earnestly asked for a moment of silence, and all
the Jews stood still, listening as the shouted hate of the counter
demonstrators filled the air with abuse.
As soon as the community supporters left, the 50 students who
remained praying in a minyan for the traditional afternoon prayers,
or chatting, or cleaning up after the rally, talking -- were surrounded by a
large, angry crowd of Palestinians and their supporters. But they were
not calling for peace. They screamed at us to "go back to Russia"
and they screamed that they would kill us all, and other terrible things.
They surrounded the praying students, and the elderly women who are our elder
college participants, who survived the Shoah, who helped shape the Bay Area
peace movement, only to watch as the Hillel students were shoved against the
wall of the plaza by a threatening crowd...
As the counter demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming at the Jews
to "Get out or we will kill you" and "Hitler did not finish the
job," I turned to the police and to every administrator I could find and
asked them to remove the counter demonstrators from the Plaza, to maintain the
separation of 100 feet that we had been promised. The police told me that they
had been told not to arrest anyone, and that if they did, "it would start
a riot." I told them that it already was a riot. Finally,
Fred Astren, the Northern California Hillel Director and I went up directly to
speak with Dean Saffold, who was watching from her post a flight above us. She
told us she would call in the SF police. But the police could do nothing
more than surround the Jewish students and community members who were now
trapped into a corner of the plaza, grouped under the flags of Israel, while an
angry, out of control mob, literally chanting for our deaths, surrounded us...
There was no safe way out of the Plaza. We had march back to the
Hillel House under armed SF police guard, and we had to have a police guard
remain outside Hillel. I was very proud of the students, who did not
flinch and who did not, even one time, resort to violence or anger in
retaliation. Several community members who were swept up in the situation
simply could not believe what they saw. One young student told me,
"I have read about anti-Semitism in books, but this is the first time I
have seen real anti-Semites, people who just hate me without knowing me, just
because I am a Jew."
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> < style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Two years later in Nov. 2. 2004 a mob of Arab students at San Francisco State
University attacked a group of College Republicans on the San Francisco State
University campus during a "Turnout the Vote" event in front of the
campus student union building. (Jihad at San
Francisco State 11/8/04)
300
Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and radical leftist students surrounding the
club’s table being held back by 13 San Francisco State police
officers. The police officers were forced to surround the CR’s table both in
front and in back in order to protect the conservative students’ safety.< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
According to the article:
The General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) at S.F.State was staging this noisy
demonstration on Wednesday as a follow-up to their Monday afternoon attack on
the conservative students by calling for the complete removal of the Republican
Club from the SFSU campus. Flyers were even distributed all over campus that
bore inscriptions such as “Don’t Let the College Republicans Commit Racism and
Bigotry Against Arab Women.”< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">
Lee
Kaplan wrote that the president of the college Republicans wrote:
“We don’t even deal with the Israel/Palestinian dispute that much in our
discussions and materials, We don’t even have any Jewish members as
far as I know, although we do promote a conservative political agenda.” Wray
also told me how a female member of the College Republicans received a threat
during the demonstration. “Watch what happens when the police aren’t around,
b---h!” he said someone menaced...Another member of the SFSU College Republicans
who was present at the demonstrations also told me he has received death threats
since the incident and wished to remain anonymous out of fear.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">< style="font-size:13.5pt">
The head of the College Republicans at the University of California at Irvine
fears for her life because of death threats from Muslims following a decision
by the College Republicans to host a panel discussion about Islamic extremism
in which one of the sponsors of the event planned to unveil the cartoons of
Muhammad. (The Global Intifada, frontpagemag.com 3/10/05)
< style="font-size:14.0pt">The New Anti-Semitism< style="font-size:14.0pt"> was a book I had to write. My people--western
intellectuals and academics, progressives--the "good" people--had
betrayed both the Jews and the truth. One could no longer reason with them. It was
as if they had been brainwashed. I am a psychologist. I do not say this lightly.
< style="font-size:14.0pt">My book came out in the summer of 2003. Few feminists,
few liberals, and no leftists congratulated me on my truth-telling. On the
contrary, many stopped talking to me. The places that have reviewed nearly
every one of my eleven other books (often front page and positive reviews) did
not review it. I was not interviewed in the usual places. Reporters who wanted
to interview me were stopped at higher levels. In the fall of 2003, I
interested one such reporter in doing a story about the anti-Israel bias on
North American campuses. She too was stopped at higher levels.
< style="font-size:14.0pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt">In my opinion, American campuses have bred a new and
diabolical McCarthyism. Academics now have the right to teach brazen lies, and
they expect to be protected in the name of "free speech." Worse, when
an academic tries to teach the truth--the truth-- about Israel, or about
America, or about Jews, they will be ostracized, bullied, demonized, and
accused (by the new McCarthyites) of leading a McCarthyite witch-hunt against
left wing freedom of expression. This, in my view, is really the censorship of
any view that does not conform to a left-wing and anti-American view.
One way Muslims silence free speech is with
money.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Worldnetdaily reported in
October (10/25/06) that the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at the
University of Georgetown ( got $20 million dollars from < style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin
Talal.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Prior to this donation, in order to keep
Muslim money flowing in, probably.
< style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.5pt" id="backCon1">
Eunice and Owen Johns, a couple that had provided foster care in
the United Kingdom applied to resume their work, and suddenly became the target
of government rejection because they expressed their Christian beliefs regarding
homosexuality. According to
Worldnetdaily
Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal
Centre, said the family was "humiliated and sidelined and told by a government
body … that their mainstream Christian views might 'infect' children. They have
also effectively been told by British judges that their views may harm
children." .E. Dyer, on the Hot Air Green Room blog, said the judges'
interpretation of the law "is idiotic on its face. … The next obvious step is
ruling that parents must endorse homosexuality to their own children."
In all too many instances, the attempt by Christians
to seek justice in the courts is a barren experience; almost as if a special
animosity is reserved for adherents of this faith. In recent years, I have
argued cases that I would have thought of as unthinkable back in 1997. In
the British Airways Cross case, our national flag carrier permitted the
wearing of the hijab, the Sikh turban and the Siska Hindu ponytail, but
banned the wearing of a small Cross around the neck, the size of a sixpence.
The court held that there was no discrimination against Christians because a
Muslim would have received the same treatment and been similarly dismissed
for wearing a Cross. Astonishingly, the Appeal Court in the case required
evidence to back the claim that the Cross was a symbol that Christians wore
as part of their faith. Further, the courts have made the evidential
requirement for this so complex it is likely never to be satisfied.
In another case, an employee was disciplined for expressing an unacceptable
view; namely his support for marriage in a private conversation with a
fellow employee as this discriminated against people living together. In
another, a nurse made the serious violation of asking a patient if she
wanted prayer. Churches have had noise abatement notices served on them for
singing hymns too loudly on a Sunday morning. I could go on about the
countless other cases where no permissible accommodation of conscience is
permitted for Christian marriage, registrars or bed and breakfast owners.
As the laws drive out the Christian faith from public life on absurd
applications of anti-discrimination laws, the Lord Chief Justice and the
Archbishop of Canterbury have supported the introduction of parts of Sharia
law.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Christian evangelical groups leaders
were told to leave the campus and not list Georgetown University as a site for
operations in the future.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Intervarsity
Christian Fellowship and other Christian evangelical groups was banned (article
in frontpagemag.com (3/4/04)
< style="font-size:13.5pt">The irony of liberals’ opposition to free
speech and expression hasn’t escaped Tammy Bruce, a lesbian and former
chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women.
In her outstanding book, The New Thought Police, Bruce writes, “The Left
implements speech and mind control because they know they cannot truly
persuade on the issues; silencing the opposition becomes their only
recourse.” < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> One group that they managed to silence is
Repent America, a Philadelphia based Christian Ministry that evangelized at the
Gay Games.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> According to Worldnetdaily,
7/22/2006
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">Police had warned the evangelists they would be arrested if caught
distributing literature outside of certain designated "free-speech
zones."
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
Why is a zone
free for one point of view and not the other?< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
One possible answer is the police don’t want trouble and they think that
the Gays will violently attack the Christians.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
In a just and free society anyone who used violence would be arrested
not the people who speak what they believe to be the truth.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The following is a paraphrased excerpt from
an article that appeared in (Cops Use Handcuffs to Choke Free Speech
7/4/07) about an incident in which an 18-wheeler tried to run over John Holman,
one of his fellow pro-life advocates. Holman jumped out of the way to avoid the
truck and was arrested for criminal trespass after he landed on a strip of
property the clinic claims to own, according to McTernan. They submitted a
video of the incident to authorities, and the charges were later dropped.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Pro-life advocate, Ed Snell, was charged
with disorderly conduct after attempting to hand tracts to pregnant women who
were entering the clinic. The charges were later dropped.< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> "Ed was injured during the
arrest," McTernan said. "They ratcheted the cuffs on him real tight.
He took pictures after the arrest and you could see the marks and swelling
where they had cuffed him. He told them they were tight and they refused to do
anything."< style="mso-spacerun: yes"> "The behavior of
the York city police and the DA office is frightening," McTernan told WND.
"In all of my travels, and talking to police as a chaplain, I have never
seen such disrespect for the law and such patronizing. They're pursuing
criminal prosecution on someone they know is innocent – in [Ferguson's] case,
because her beliefs are pro-life."
Two teenagers who had been given city
permission to write their messages protesting Democratic presidential nominee
Senator Barack Obama's support for abortion on public sidewalks during the
Democratic National Convention were shoved to the sidewalk cuffed and arrested
for doing that. One of them was lifted off the grounds with her arms which
were handcuffed behind her (wnd
8/29/2008). One wonders if the police were Obama supporters.
< style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
Bob Unruh reported in Worldnetdaily 9/12/07:
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"> <
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> a student responded to the
annual pro-homosexual 'Day of Silence,' which was being heavily promoted on his
high school campus, by wearing a T-shirt which expressed his religious
viewpoint that homosexuality was 'shameful.'
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; font-style:italic">"Instead of allowing a differing viewpoint, school officials
pulled aside Harper, demanding that he change his expression or face
suspension. An assistant principal even suggested to Harper that he needed to
leave his faith in the car while at school, in order not to offend homosexual
students," according to McReynolds.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; font-style:italic">"Such a result clearly undermines basic Constitutional
protections," including free expression and religion, he noted.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; font-style:italic">"Incredibly, the federal courts in California upheld the school's
actions. In one of the most sweeping, speech-restricting opinions in recent
memory, Judge Reinhard of the Ninth Circuit baldly asserted that Harper's First
Amendment rights – undeniably strong under Tinker and other Supreme Court
precedents – were trumped by the need to protect homosexual students from an
opposing viewpoint. …"
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; font-style:italic">"Not surprisingly, Judge Reinhardt's decision cited California's
''hate violence' educational statute, Cal. Educ. Code §§ 201, 220, et seq. as
justification for stifling a politically incorrect viewpoint – even though
there were no allegations of violence against Harper.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> < style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Faith2Action,
has launched a series of ads StopHateCrimesNow.com.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">One, Arlene
Elshinnawy, 75, and grandmother of three, was holding a sign: "Truth is
hate to those who hate the truth," before she was hauled off by police
officers. ((wnd.com 4/26/07).
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">"H.R.
1592 is a discriminatory measure that criminalizes thoughts, feelings, and
beliefs [and] has the potential of interfering with religious liberty and
freedom of speech," according to a white paper
submitted by Glen Lavy, of the Alliance Defense
Fund.< style="mso-spacerun: yes">
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">"As James
Jacobs and Kimberly Potter observed in Hate Crimes, Criminal Law, and Identity
Politics, 'It would appear that the only additional purpose [for enhancing
punishment of bias crimes] is to provide extra punishment based on the
offender's politically incorrect opinions and viewpoints,'" said Lavy.
< style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">The proposal
has been endorsed by majority Democrats on the committee, and already has 137
sponsors in the full House, making it possible it could be voted on in a matter
of days or weeks.
< style="font-size: 14pt"> Laws have been passed in England that
pressure people to promote homosexuality. According to the
Daily Mail 10/24/07
Vincent and Pauline Matherick will this week have their
latest foster son taken away because they have refused to sign new sexual
equality regulations. To do so, they claim, would force them to
promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith... Earlier
this year, Somerset County Council's social services department asked them
to sign a contract to implement Labour's new Sexual Orientation Regulations,
part of the Equality Act 2006, which make discrimination on the grounds of
sexuality illegal.
Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required
to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them
that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages.
They could also be required to take teenagers to gay association meetings...
The Mathericks' case comes at a time when there is a
chronic shortage of foster parents, who work on a voluntary basis.
An extra 8,000 are needed to plug the gaps in the service.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
Professor David
Deming an associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of
Oklahoma wrote an article in Frontpagemag.com
1/30/2004) West Side story is a great movie that attempts to show the
folly and tragic consequences of racism. Silencing that is silencing the
message of West Side Story. Yet the school approved a show called
"The Vagina Monologues" that stereotyped men and Christians in
a negative way since that is in line of the message they wish to indoctrinate
students with. There was no concern that the material of the show might
be inappropriate to minors even though in it a woman seduces a younger girl.
An article in
the Washington Times ("Tolerant Death Threats From the Academic Left"
1/5/04) tells the story of Tim Bueler, the founder of Rancho Cotate High
School's Conservative Club, who said he had received threats from other
students after writing an article for the club newsletter calling for a
crackdown on illegal immigration.
In
a telephone interview, Tim said he's been threatened at least three times by
Hiic students who call him "white boy" and "racist."
One boy said he was going to "find someone" to beat up Tim.
In
two of those instances, Tim said two faculty members stood by and did nothing
to help him. Most recently, Tim said, he was confronted by a dozen Hiic
boys, who blocked him from walking down the hallway.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"They said, 'You're a racist,' and I said,
'Are you guys going to let me through?'" Tim said. "So I ducked into a classroom
and told the teacher what was happening, and said, 'Can you help me?' And she
said, 'No. Get out of here.'"< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Earlier, he said he was eating lunch in a
classroom when about seven Hiic students surrounded him. Worried for Tim's
safety, his father, Dennis Bueler, said he asked for help from a teacher who was
also in the room.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"The teacher told him, 'When you say things
like that, you've got to expect that things like this are going to happen. Why
don't you go out the back door?'" Mr. Bueler said in recounting the incident.< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Tim said teachers have also joined in the
name-calling. One called Tim a Nazi, while another described the club as "a
bunch of bigots." < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
Schools in California, Colorado, and Arizona have
< style="color:darkred">banned the display of American flags and patriotic
clothing. School administrators claim that the
bans were put into effect to ease tensions between Hiic and non-Hiic
students during the immigration protests of March 2006 (issued a statement calling Sinclair's plan an
"abuse of the public trust." During an appearance on
Fox News’s “Dayside with Linda Vester,” Clanton explained that plans were
underway to protest Sinclair stations and boycott their advertisers.
MoveOn.org founder Wes Boyd said, “If they do air a partisan film, we'll
challenge the FCC and the licenses of the local stations that broadcast the
film.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">The FCC has received a letter from 18
Democratic senators urging an investigation into Sinclair's decision, and the
Democratic National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election
Commission, arguing Sinclair's broadcast would be an illegal contribution to
President Bush's campaign. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">They filed no
such complaint about Michael Moore's anti-Bush film. According to
WorldnetDaily
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Sherwood called the effort to stop airing of
the film "out and out thuggery." < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Yesterday, Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton
issued a veiled threat to Sinclair on the Fox News program "Dayside with Linda
Vester." < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"I think they are going to regret doing this,
and they had better hope we don't win," Clanton said...< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"Kerry has nothing but thugs out there," he
said. "They can threaten, they can coerce, they can cajole -- Can you imagine 18
senators demanding censorship and getting away with it? If a single Republican
anywhere attempted to do that, the press would be apoplectic."
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> One
of the outrageous charges the Kerry campaign used to try and silence the voices
of the vets in Stolen Honor was that their documentary was an illegal campaign
contribution. If they had succeeded in convincing the courts to enforce
this charge than anyone who made a statement critical of a candidate could be
charged with making an illegal campaign contribution. Other tactics used
included (worldnetdaily 10/20/04, Wall Street Journal 10/23/04):
< style="font-size:13.5pt">1) The
Sinclair broadcasting group, who the Kerry campaign were afraid would air the
documentary were sent a letter from Alan Hevesi, the Democrat comptroller of
New York on behalf of a retirement fund that holds 256,600 shares of the
broadcast company, warning the controversy could damage the investment.
He wrote:
< style="font-size:13.5pt">"Some critics suggest that Sinclair
management is more interested in advancing its partisan political views than in
protecting shareholder value. They say Sinclair's partisan agenda also
risks alienating viewers, advertisers and regulators." < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">2) A Democratic
party donor, William S. Lerach, sent a letter to the news company calling the
broadcast plan "reckless," alleging insider trading by officers and
threatening a shareholder lawsuit. Media Matters, a liberal media
agitprop outfit, announced it was underwriting another shareholder suit and
demanded that Sinclair provide equal time to those with opposing views even
though the Kerry campaign had declined Sinclair's invitation to respond on air
and even though the federal "equal time" requirement vanished along
with the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s..
< style="font-size:13.5pt">An article in
the Wall Street Journal (Sinclair and Watergate 10/23/04) discussed the
dangerous precedent set by the threats of shareholder lawsuits made by
the Democrats to silence the veterans.
< style="font-size:13.5pt">What's astonishing here is that this
legal-political double team has gone on with barely a whimper of protest from
the rest of the media. In fact, it is being celebrated as a defeat for all of
those right-wing scoundrels who support President Bush. We understand that most
of the press corps is liberal and desperately wants Mr. Kerry to win. Editors
and producers may let that distort their coverage, but they usually aren't so
blinded by partisanship that they can't see their own self-interest. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">Now that this trial lawyer-government
precedent has been set, who's to stop it if it next turns, as eventually it
will, on the New York Times, or CBS? One of the most important protections that
a free press has is independent corporate ownership, but what if the Nixon
Administration had unleashed its lawyer friends and government pension funds on
the Times Company when it was publishing the Pentagon Papers, or the Washington
Post when it was digging into Watergate? If the standard now is that stirring
controversy is a fraud against shareholders because it may cost ad revenue, a
lot more media owners than Sinclair are going to become political targets. < style="font-size:13.5pt">
< style="font-size:13.5pt"> On October 19, 2004, a movie
theater in Jenkintown Pennsylvania, a suburban borough just north of
Philadelphia with a population of about 4500, was scheduled to show the
documentary Stolen Honor. This movie features the testimony of Vietnam
POW’s critical of John Kerry. < style="font-size:14.0pt">However,
after receiving threats of "civil disobedience" (i.e. destruction of property
and possible physical intimidation), the owner of the theater canceled the
showing. Eight days later, another presentation of "Stolen Honor" scheduled in
the Philadelphia suburb of Blue Bell, PA. after the owner of the conference
center received anonymous complaints.
< style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">Eight days
later, another presentation of "Stolen Honor" scheduled in the
Philadelphia suburb of Blue Bell, PA. was cancelled after the owner of
the conference center received anonymous complaints. (Suppressing
Speech in an Election Year, Frontpagemag.com 11/1/04)
Christopher Ruddy, editor of Newsmax.com wrote how Newsmax then stepped
up to the plate. (Ruddy Analysis, Why Bush Won,
Newsmax.com 11/4/04).
Though under incredible pressure from every angle, from everything the
Kerry campaign could throw at it, Sinclair did air a few minutes of the
43-minute documentary as part of a program. But the American public was
deprived of most of the information in the documentary.
At that point NewsMax stepped into the breach. We decided that the
public's right to know overrode the intimidation tactics of the P.C.
thought police.
In the end, NewsMax decided to air "Stolen Honor." Last weekend, we
aired the documentary several dozen times across the nation, including
10 showings on PAX-TV alone. PAX reaches almost 100 million American
homes. We estimate that more than 5 million Americans saw "Stolen
Honor."
"The Path to
9/11' was a five and a half hour, two-night mini-series that aired
on ABC on the fifth anniversary of the attacks which depicted the real
history that connects the first WTC attack in 1993 and 9/11. Just
days before it aired the film was severely edited by Disney after
personal demands from Bill Clinton and members of his administration and
several senators and congressmen. The film, which was intended to be
rebroadcast every 9/11, has never been shown again and even the DVD has
not been released. John Zeigler
< class="backcontent">directed a documentary called
< class="backcontent" id="backCon16"> Blocking
'The Path to 9/11’. (Visit the film's web site at
BlockingThePath.com.< class="backcontent"
id="backCon16">
< style="font-size:13.5pt">
< class="backcontent" id="backCon16" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">)
< class="backcontent" id="backCon16">He said:
< style="font-size:13.5pt">I
think that we should all learn a lot from this sad episode. Above
all else, we learned that when three forces that ought to be
unbeatable (free speech, the truth and the legacy of 9/11) go head
to head against blatant partisanship and news media/Hollywood bias,
that, unfortunately, the side of good gets run over by a Mack truck.
John Zeigler, a radio talk show host,
was fired for things he said on the air. He wrote a book called The
Death of Free Speech about his experiences and those of others who have
found themselves the target of self appointed "thought police".
Alain Hertoghe, a
reporter for the daily La Croix, wrote a book "La Guerre a Outrances"
about French reporting about the American war with Iraq and concluded
that French journalists were so biased that "readers can't understand
why the Americans won the war." According to the New York Post
(1/3/04)
So caught up were the reporters in the wave of opposition to the war
that "as soon as there were a couple of wounded or dead, they were
making comparisons to Vietnam and Stalingrad.
The French press
unaminously ignored his book except for one small journal that's given
out free on the Paris Metro. There was one other French paper that
did not ignore his book which was Hertoghe's own paper tha tfired him
claiming that he'd damaged the paper's reputation.
One consequence of
left wing intellectual tyranny is the increase in power of the extreme
right wing as people react to it. Roger Cohen in an article titled
"Hitler Apologist Wins German Honor, and a Storm Breaks Out" (New York
Times June 21, 2000) wrote that:
In Germany and France, a conservative reaction is evident against what
the French call "the angelic left," which is accused of imposing a
stifling political correctness on debate and of backing a multicultural
tide that will sweep away the European nation state.
In addition Mr. Cohen writes
that Mr. Haider has made a lot of headway in Austria precisely by
questioning the "intellectual tyranny" of the left.
Tammy Bruce, who has served in a leadership position at NOW, wrote a
book called
The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and
Free Minds. She decries NOW as a foot soldier in the war
against free speech. "Ironically," writes Ms. Bruce, "it is the
progressives who, while seemingly committed to freedom of expression,
attempt to exact severe social punishments on anyone who espouses an
idea or opinion that challenges their status quo. After writing an OpEd
defending free speech and criticizing the left Tammy Bruce no longer
exists as far as the mainstream media is concerned. Tammy said:
I've found out what it's like trying to get your message out when you
are on the wrong side of an issue.
Michael Meyers a black
columnist for the New York Post (7/15/02) wrote a column about how he
was ousted from the left wing New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).
He wrote:
The "why" is simple: I insisted on speaking my mind, which offended the
"free speech" mavens. So I got clobbered by insiders in a sneak
contested election that fraught with suppressed ballots and election
irregularities...
The final straw...I recorded my dissent to Lieberman's appointment as
Siegel's successor, and accused the liberals of racism for having passed
over a better suited, more articulate and smarter black woman candidate.
That charge of racism bristled, just like my earlier insinuation that
they weren't practicing what they preach to others with respect to
diversity -- since all of its officers are white.
The Obama administration is suppressing free speech in the United
States. The first step was labeling his opponents as extremists.
That resulted in a person with a bumper sticker that said Don't tread on
me being stopped by police.Another
result was that a tea party protester was investigated as a
terrorist by the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI after he sent
letters to his representatives criticizing the government for spending
money he says the U.S. does not have.
Just weeks
after a scandal erupted over a Department of Homeland Security
report that described as "right-wing extremists" those who oppose
abortion and support secure national borders, another report is
revealing that the Department of Defense is teaching that protesters
are "low-level terrorists."
There is widespread suppression of free speech in Muslim countries.
Jamal Kashoggi the editor of Riyadh's Al Watan newspaper was fired in
May 2003 because he denounced religious intolerance and extremism in his
newspaper.(New York Post 6/12/2003)
I have posted pages on this
web site with more information about Islam:
< style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Symbol">·< style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'">
Islam and Jihad
< style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Symbol">·< style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'">
Creation of Paranoia
< style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Symbol">·< style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'">
Creation of Delusion
