James Wolcott hates Reality TV.

Michael Wolff says that books are evil.

Andrew Sullivan blames the neocons.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am in a Freedom-of-Expression dilema. When you learn that your insurance agent supports the rape of females, in particular 13-yr old females, should you allow him to carry on profiting from your existing policies or request an agent change? Even tho’ he’s been professional in his insr agt services?

http://wherebearsroamfree.blogspot.com/2009/11/agenda-of-notorapers-exposed-followed.html

See comments there.

I posed this question to some of my friends, and here is the conversation. I have decided to pose it publically here, in response to the last suggestion.

Person 1

Person 2

Supporting the rape of others is not freedom of expression. I say you dump him!

Mathialee:

Person 3:

I began reading the feel-good email from my boss about things to be thankful for; went through the obvious things like the wife, the husband, the teenager, the mess to clean after a party, all the while thinking “yeah OK, I guess I could be thankful for those.” And then I came across this line:

I am thankful for all the complaining I hear about government because it means we have freedom of speech.

Obviously whoever dreamt up the things to be thankful for, is not living in the new “democratic, non-racial” South Africa.

You see here in South Africa the new government gave us freedom of speech, but then claimed for themselves the freedom to steal, lie, cheat, embezzle, and squander our tax money on expensive cars, luxury houses, houses for pals, houses that are falling down, designer clothes, expensive gifts, over-seas trips, hotel accommodation, parties, jobs-for pals, dictator-style VIP protection motorcades, investigative committees, committees to investigate investigative committees, incompetent administrators, incompetent ministers, incompetent mayors, exorbitant severance packages for incompetent CEO’s, cover-ups, covering up the cover-ups, drunken judges, dumb-ass youth organizations, even dumber youth leaders, shoot-to-kill police officers, lazy-bastard traffic officers, party-political in-fighting, a shameful education system, an in-disciplined defence force…..shit, the list goes on.

Sure… I’m thankful…

I just started contributing to a blog called Caffeinated Thoughts. I invite you to check it out and read my most recent post. Just click on the title below.

“A Case Against Apathy.”

For stimulating musings on news, politics, culture, life and theology it is worth the read.

I welcome your comments both here and on their blog!

Thanks,

JP

LegalEase McGill – CKUT 90.3 Montreal – Womyn’s Voices and Freedoms
http://www.archive.org/details/LegaleaseMcgill-Ckut90.3Montreal-WomynsVoicesAndFreedoms

Welcome to Legal Ease – a monthly Montreal-based, produced and broadcast radio show concerning “The Law”. The collective is composed of law students from McGill University.

In our first half, we discuss Buffy Sainte-Marie and her legacy. The CIA black-listed 1960s Cree singer has been a strong voice on women’s equality, native issues, and peace for half a century. Her recent concert as part of POP Montreal offered an opportunity to reflect on her legacy and play a few songs.

In our second half, LegalEase looks at the recent controversy at McGill. After organizing an event entitled “Echoes of the Holocaust” comparing abortion to genocide, Choose Life McGill, a SSMU club, was subject to criticisms and protests by other McGill students. The university administration organized a follow-up townhall on controversial events at McGill. LegalEase contrasts reproductive rights and freedom of speech, while considering some relevant legal issues.

A notoriously scandalous book—deeply relevant to our own times—in a splendid new translation by Tim Parks and with a splendid cover:

From the Introduction (by the translator, Tim Parks):

This sense of coercion, of there being simply no alternative to brutal and murderous behaviour, is central to Machiavelli’s at once pessimistic yet strangely gung-ho vision. It involves the admission that there is a profound mismatch between the qualities that we actually appreciate in a person—generosity, loyalty, compassion, modesty—and the qualities that bring political success:  calculation and ruthlessness. As Machiavelli sees it, this mismatch occurs because people in general are greedy, short-sighted and impressionable and must be treated accordingly if a leader is to survive. “I know everyone will agree,” he concedes, “that it would be most laudable if a prince possessed all the qualities deemed to be good among those I have enumerated, but, because of conditions in the world, princes cannot possess those qualities.”

Since the modern English reader of Machiavelli has largely been brought up on a rationalist, utilitarian philosophy which ties itself in knots to demonstrate that, given the right kind of government, self-interest, collective interest and Christian values can all be reconciled, it is something of a relief to come across a writer who wastes no time with such utopian nonsense. Yet though Machiavelli never actually welcomes the world’s awfulness and certainly never rejoices in cruelty, our own upbringing prompts us to feel that he should at least have seemed to be a little shocked by it all.

Seeming is an important issue in The Prince. Given that moral qualities are no longer to be taken as guides for correct behaviour, what then is their importance? They become no more than attractions. It is attractive when a man is compassionate, generous, and modest. It is attractive when a man keeps his word and shows loyalty to friends. We are in the realm of aesthetics, not moral imperatives. And what is attractive, of course, can be manipulated as a tool of persuasion. So even if a Prince is actually better off without certain moral qualities, he should appear to have them, because people will be impressed. In particular, he should appear to be devout in his religious beliefs. “The common people are always impressed by appearances and results,” Machiavelli tells us. But he leaves us in no doubt that if you have to choose between the two, what matters is the result.

From an interview with Parks:

Q: How is a book about grabbing power in 16th century Italy relevant today?

A: Machiavelli isolates the problem of collective psychology and individual psychology — the psychology of leadership, loyalty, the best way to arrive at situations where people will do what you want, be faithful, and how you can be their leader.

Since those are the issues he begins to isolate as crucial to success, any leader can learn from what he’s saying.

Any ordinary person who’s dealing with leaders can learn. It’s one of the great handbooks of all time, not necessarily for how to become a monomaniac, but what it means to negotiate relations of leaderships and serving leaders.

Q: So it’s useful as long as you don’t follow the bits on reducing states to rubble to hang on to them…

A: When you look at that comment there and you look at Iraq, what he’s saying is that if you really don’t want to destroy absolutely everybody opposed to you, then you’re not going to be able to hold a country in the long run. So you’re going to have to think of different solutions to do that.

One of the most interesting things — he says when you go into a country, the people you’ve got to be most beware of are the people who helped you get in. Whereas the people who served the person you’re replacing are the people who are most likely to serve you once you’ve got rid of that person.

It’s such a comment that everybody says now that if they’d gone into Iraq and recruited the old army and kept them, they might have avoided an awful lot of trouble.

From another interview:

What about the Silone question [recently-released Fascist-era documents suggest Italian novelist Ignazio Silone, a well-known leftist, may have collaborated with the rightist regime as a youth].

I don’t know where I stand, though I’ll take a position when I have read the [material]. The Silone debate reminds me of how polarized culture was in post-war Italy. Writers like [Cesare] Pavese were presented as great because they were left wing. They were a little less read when that intensity fell away. Pavese is great because he’s a great writer.

Actually his relations with the left were very curious and strange. He was in a complex moral situation where he felt obliged to say or believe one thing while at the same time covering his back with somebody else. This could happen anywhere. We’re seeing it now coming out of Germany. In Italy it’s very difficult not to toe the line. The climate and the peer pressure to toe the line is what makes Italy slightly corrupt.

What do you mean?

Almost everybody feels that their own personal fate depends on the good will of somebody or some organization immediately above them. And no one in Italy believes there is an impartial court to whom one can appeal in the case of conflict. No one believes in the ultimate impartiality of some fixed institution. Such an institution may not truly exist anywhere, but here it is felt not to exist at all.

There’s so much room for thought here that I suspect I’ll be writing some more about this.

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

• Eugene Cho blogs; warning: some disturbing images.

News

• The first state dinner: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
  
• Google refuses to take down a racist image of Michelle Obama from its search results. I find it interesting that we (in the US) often defend freedom of speech even when it rolls into abuse/misuse of this freedom.
• On Deadly Viper: An open letter from Sojourners to Zondervan.

Green

• Climate policies improve health.

Miscellaneous

• Cathay Pacific has toilet problems.

Here’s one I made earlier

Tomorrow we will showing up outside Trafigura’s offices to video ourselves reading out the information they have been trying so hard to suppress – and then uploading the footage to Youtube shortly afterwards.

If you can’t make the protest, you can still help to drive the point home, by reading out the ‘banned text’ in your own Youtube video at home or work.

The more of us do this, the more clearly we can send out the message that the internet can’t be gagged, and that efforts to do so are doomed to backfire.

Please be as original and creative as you like, but if you need a starting point here’s the basic text that we’ll be using:

I am [name] and I’m using my freedom under the 1688 Bill of Rights to read the following quote from Parliament, in defiance of Trafigura:

“The recent example of the release of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast leading to the deaths of a number of people and the hospitalisation of thousands underlines the risks involved in the movement and management of waste.”

The next step is then to upload the video to Youtube (or Vimeo or Yfrog), with the word “Trafigura” somewhere in the description text, and tell as many people as possible. If you’re on Twitter, please do spread the word by Tweeting the link to your vid with the #Trafigura hashtag.

We’ll be embedding and linking to every video we find, and eventually editing them all together as part of a top-secret new web 2.0 project, so please do let us know via this page once your work is published!

Here’s Alex defying #Trafigura!

Here’s Jimbo Gunn defying #Trafigura to the tune of “Ode to Joy”

Here’s Joel Sams defying #Trafigura with gravitas!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCf8T6U0Qvw]

Here’s Derek defying #Trafigura

Here’s a robot space alien defying #Trafigura

Here are Sly and Reggie defying #Trafigura

Apparently it’s quite hard to get a job these days. Hadn’t you heard? It seems people have been crunching figures, making claims and failing to add everything up nicely.

It’s the “frivolous” industries that are suffering too. You know, the ones that keep Lily Allen in business, designers selling couture and freedom of speech widely available in print. This is not exactly the most opportune time to be aiming for a career in journalism.

Print media is suffering. Media Week ran its final hard-copy edition last week, and Editor Steve Barrett told a room of trainee magazine journalists the news industry has to modify business models to get back to being financially viable. Charging for online content needs to be taken seriously if journalists are going to be appreciated - paid even – for what they do. 

With The Times about to start charging for access to its website, it seems Rupert Murdoch was right afterall. But what does that mean for those of us with fancy ideals and byline dreams? The scaremongering: “fewer opportunities”, “job cuts”, “despair” - we should all being crying ink, especially as learning shorthand is still recommended.  Deep joy.

But there is hope yet so say Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technical correspondent and Joanna Geary, The Times’s web development editor. And thank goodness because if Cardiff is charging me £6000 for a postgraduate diploma to train me up to a job-worthy standard and I don’t get a job… my bank balance and I will be utterly devastated.

Social media and self-distribution = the new entry point.

Geary’s career really took after she set up a blogging community and began engaging with other social media enthusiasts on Twitter. Cellan-Jones tweets informatively and incessantly on his specialism, technology, as well as his career in general, engaging directly with his audience.  To get ahead you have to be proactive/investigative, have your own niche/beat and engage/talk to people.

In many ways the new online world of journalism is just reformatting the idealised one of old.

Except journalists are selling themselves as brands – bylines don’t work so well on their own anymore - hence the deluge of writers plugging their blogs on Twitter and Facebook. You’re probably reading this because I tricked you into clicking on an innocent looking tiny url on my profile. Apologies for stealing you away, but I do hope you’re finding it worth your while.

To be honest it’s all pretty terrifying. However, Nick Brett Deputy Managing Director and Group Editorial Director, BBC Magazines, said during a lecture at Cardiff University a few weeks ago, that he was actually jealous of those just starting out. We still have opportunities, they just aren’t as static as if we were entering journalism three decades ago.

But if you’re not  up for change, get out now. I think I’m going to keep on trying my luck.

“Not only is journalistic ‘objectivity’
impossible, the attempt to achieve
it is morally abhorrent.”

Newspeak in the 21st Century, p.239.

This deserves some attention and discussion, it’s tempting to just go “Yep,”, but if I sleep on it, I might be more considered in my response. The rest of the book drifts off into a …weird and existential Buddhism, it loses me at that point.

I just needed to put this in as a place-holder. I’m into the last chapter and will come back to this post later.

The first part of the review is posted here.

You might not know it, but I’m a regular on Sean Hannity’s radio show. Don’t believe me? I don’t really care. The point is, this is personal in a way. Hannity is honest, devoted, and loves his country. He doesn’t lie; and if he ever makes a mistake (HA) what does he do? He corrects it. He a man of good character. So, why does the BHussein Admin want to silence him? Because he’s great at exposing them for what they are. Scum.

Cass Sunstein: Censor Hannity, right-wing rumors
Cites websites for ‘absurd’ reports of Obama’s ties to Ayers
Article: World Net Daily

Websites should be obliged to remove “false rumors” while libel laws should be altered to make it easier to sue for spreading such “rumors,” argued Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar.

In his recently released book, “On Rumors,” Sunstein specifically cited as a primary example of “absurd” and “hateful” remarks, reports by “right-wing websites” alleging an association between President Obama and Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers.

First of all, Cass… Can I ask what a “false rumor” is? No, really. Is that like… True Truths? Also; check this: First Amendment of the United Stated Constitution. Don’t feel like it? Here, let me educate you: FREEDOM OF SPEECH. OOOOOHHHH SNAP. Whatcha gonna do sissy boy? Also; It’s NOOOOOOO secret that BHussein is butt buddies with Bill Ayers. Why try to cover it now? It’s been common knowledge for almost three years on a national scale now, so what’s your fucking problem? Also, how is it hateful to state something that is completely true? Sorry, carry on:

He also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for “attacking” Obama regarding the president’s “alleged associations.”

Ayers became a name in last year’s presidential campaign when it was disclosed the radical worked closely with Obama for years. Obama also was said to have launched his political career at a 1995 fundraiser in Ayers’ apartment.

As WND reported, Obama and Ayers sat together on the board of a Chicago nonprofit, the Woods Fund. Ayers also was a founder of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama was appointed as its first chairman in 1995.

Ayers reportedly was involved in hiring Obama for the CAC – a job the future president later touted as qualifying him to run for public office.

WND columnist Jack Cashill has produced a series of persuasive arguments that it was Ayers who ghostwrote Obama’s award-winning autobiography “Dreams from My Father.”

However, such reports were characterized by Sunstein as “absurd” charges for which corrective measures can be taken.

Sunstein’s book – reviewed by WND – was released in September, after he was already installed as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

“In the era of the Internet, it has become easy to spread false or misleading rumors about almost anyone,” Sunstein writes.

“Some right-wing websites liked to make absurd and hateful remarks about the alleged relationship between Barack Obama and the former radical Bill Ayers; one of the websites’ goals was undoubtedly to attract more viewers,” he writes.

Oh? So you don’t like it when “right-wing” websites make hateful remarks about BHussein and his relationship with Bill Ayers? Well how’s THIS one, CASSIEPOO? Barack Hussein Obama admires Bill Ayers because HE is a homegrown unrepentant terrorist who carried out acts of terrorism AGAINST the government. BHussein Obama LOVES and admires terrorists; although Ayers isn’t BHussein’s favourite “flavour” of terrorist. It’s no secret that BHussein favours the radical Islamist and Muslim terrorists; but he’ll take what he can get. Don’t like it? Suck a fat one, queerboy. I hear BHussein likes to get blowjobs if you give him a line of coke. THAT’S RIGHT, I SAID IT.

Sunstein continues: “On the Internet as well as on talk radio, altruistic propagators are easy to find; they play an especially large role in the political domain. When Sean Hannity, the television talk show host, attacked Barack Obama because of his alleged associations, one of his goals might have been to promote values and causes that he cherishes.”

Sunstein presents multiple new measures he argues can be used to stop the spread of “rumors.”

He contends “freedom usually works, but in some contexts, it is an incomplete corrective.”

Wrong you fuckface sack of shitballs. FREEDOM ALWAYS WORKS.

Sunstein proposes the imposition of a “chilling effect” on “damaging rumors” – or the use of strong “corrective” measures to deter future rumormongers.

For websites, Sunstein suggests a “right to notice and take down” in which “those who run websites would be obliged to take down falsehoods upon notice.”

WROOOOOOOOOOOONG. You want to have ME delete ANYTHING from my site; you’ll have to do it over my dead body. And based on the rising Obama Body count; I don’t think he’d have a problem with it. Besides, how “damaging” were these rumors statements? BHussein got his foot in the door. He’s living in the White House. No, he’s not acting like a PRESIDENT, but he’s living in the White House. So, damaging? PLZ ‘SPLAIN.

Sunstein also argues for the “right to demand a retraction after a clear demonstration that a statement is both false and damaging.” But he does not explain which agency would determine whether any statement is false and damaging.

Sunstein further pushes for “deterrence” through making libel lawsuits easier to bring.

Bring your goddamned lawsuits. You don’t own me. You can’t control me. I’m not scared of ANY of you. Not even close. Most of us patriots will continue to spread the truth; because the mainstream media has failed us. They turned their backs on their duties and they decided to follow along mindlessly slobbing any Obama knob they can. That’s right.

Sunstein drafted ‘New Deal Fairness Doctrine’

Sunstein’s proposals outlined in his book “On Rumors” were not the first of his writings to recommend regulating talk radio or the news media.

WND previously reported Sunstein drew up a “First Amendment New Deal” – a new “Fairness Doctrine” that would include the establishment of a panel of “nonpartisan experts” to ensure “diversity of view” on the airwaves.

Then it has to be enforced across the board. I want MSNBC and CNN… Larry King, Chris Matthews, KEITH OLBERMANN, Katie Couric to get off their high horses and treat OUR side with some goddamned respect. Did Sarah Palin get the same respect? No. Were her children needlessly attacked? Absolutely. Was President Bush given any respect from these doucheass low-rating shitstains? Nope. Why? To brighten the tarnished image that IS Barack Hussein Obama. Also, you have no right to change ANYTHING about the United Stated Constitution in order to make Barack Hussein look like a savory character. That’s not how it works. It’s up to HIM and HIM ALONE to make his image. Not you. Not me. Not the media.

Sunstein compared the need for the government to regulate broadcasting to the moral obligation of the U.S. to impose new rules that outlawed segregation.

Sunstein’s radical proposal, set forth in his 1993 book “The Partial Constitution,” received no news media attention and scant scrutiny until the WND report.

In the book, Sunstein outwardly favors and promotes the “Fairness Doctrine,” the abolished FCC policy that required holders of broadcast licenses to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner the government deemed “equitable and balanced.”

Sunstein introduces what he terms his “First Amendment New Deal” to regulate broadcasting in the U.S.

His proposal, which focuses largely on television, includes a government requirement that “purely commercial stations provide financial subsidies to public television or to commercial stations that agree to provide less profitable but high-quality programming.”

Sunstein wrote it is “worthwhile to consider more dramatic approaches as well.”

He proposes “compulsory public-affairs programming, right of reply, content review by nonpartisan experts or guidelines to encourage attention to public issues and diversity of view.”

The Obama czar argues his regulation proposals for broadcasting are actually presented within the spirit of the Constitution.

“It seems quite possible that a law that contained regulatory remedies would promote rather than undermine the ‘freedom of speech,’” he writes.

Sunstein compares the need for the government to regulate broadcasting to the moral obligation of the government stepping in to end segregation.

Writes Sunstein: “The idea that government should be neutral among all forms of speech seems right in the abstract, but as frequently applied it is no more plausible than the idea that it should be neutral between the associational interests of blacks and those of whites under conditions of segregation.“

Sunstein contends the landmark case that brought about the Fairness Doctrine, Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, “stresses not the autonomy of broadcasters (made possible only by current ownership rights), but instead the need to promote democratic self-government by ensuring that people are presented with a broad range of views about public issues.“

He continues: “In a market system, this goal may be compromised. It is hardly clear that ‘the freedom of speech’ is promoted by a regime in which people are permitted to speak only if other people are willing to pay enough to allow them to be heard.“

In his book, Sunstein slams the U.S. courts’ unwillingness to “require something like a Fairness Doctrine” to be a result of “the judiciary’s lack of democratic pedigree, lack of fact-finding powers and limited remedial authority.”

He clarifies he is not arguing the government should be free to regulate broadcasting however it chooses.

“Regulation designed to eliminate a particular viewpoint would of course be out of bounds. All viewpoint discrimination would be banned,” Sunstein writes.

But, he says, “at the very least, regulative ‘fairness doctrines’ would raise no real doubts” constitutionally.

Fuck you, Cass Sunstein. You’re a fucking faggot. That’s fucking right. Am I offending you? DRY YOUR GODDAMNED VAGINA AND GET THE FUCK OVER IT.

Here’s a follow-up to my post back in October about an inexplicably U.S.-backed resolution circulating in the United Nations which would ban speech that could “defame” religion, i.e., Islam.  According to a WPO poll, the majority of 20 questioned countries oppose blasphemy laws, believing in freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  Guess which countries are in that minority?:

Of the seven nations where most people agree with that criticism of religion should be prohibited five have overwhelmingly Muslim populations — Egypt (71%), Pakistan (62%), Iraq (57%), Indonesia (49%), and the Palestinian territories (51%). Another two — India (59%) and Nigeria (54%)– have historically been plagued by sectarian violence.

As always, I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

Here’s the graph:

-Mister Person

Die Geschwister Scholl werden durch die z.Z eingesetzte Marionetten Regierung als absolute Widerstands kämpfer gegen das NS-System dargestellt. Den Wiederstand gegen Faschismus und Unterdrückung lehnen wir nicht ab nur stellt sich die Frage ob die Geschwister Scholl mit der BRD tatsächlich zufrieden gewesen wären ?  Hier Auszüge aus ihren Briefen/Flugblättern, die passen auch ziemlich gut in unsere Zeit :

Oder so:

Die Flugblätter sprechen eine mehr als klare Sprache und sollten jeden Nationalisten , Patrioten und jedem Deutschen in Erinnerung gerufen werden. Nicht als NS-Widerständler sondern eher als Vorbilder…. im Kampf gegen ein scheiss System!

Freie Nationale und Soziale Strukturen – Jetzt !

By Christopher Hitchens  Posted Monday, Nov. 23, 2009, at 1:37 PM ET  (Hitchens is usually very good: on this he is excellent!)

It’s both amusing and educational to observe a consensus when it suddenly starts to give way at all points without yielding an inch. A couple of weeks ago, the consoling view was that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a man more to be pitied than feared, a full-blown officer in the U.S. armed forces who was too shaken up by the stories of returned veterans to be able to function properly, and a physician too stressed-out to bear in mind that there was such a thing as a Hippocratic oath. Why, even the FBI had interpreted his e-mails to Anwar al-Awlaki as quite “consistent with research being conducted by Maj. Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center.”

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan

That latter finding does not stack up very well with the disclosure that the major was imploring Awlaki’s spiritual advice some time before the online imam issued a finding of his own to the effect that bullets discharged at American soldiers were fired in a holy cause. The Washington Post and ABC News, which drew well ahead of the consensus in their reporting, also unearthed e-mails from Hasan to the Yemen-based preacher, asking when jihad tactics might be justified, what were the circumstances that would license the killing of innocent bystanders, and expressing the hope that the e-mailer and his respondent might one day be united in paradise. Since Awlaki was only in Yemen in the first place because he’d found the United States an inconvenient domicile (after having had direct contact with three of the 19 air pirates and mass murderers of Sept. 11, 2001, or “9/11 hijackers” as they are now euphemistically termed), we can apparently congratulate ourselves on paying for an FBI that lacks the nasty and suspicious mind that spoils so much police work in “the community.”

Very well, then; the case for Maj. Hasan the overburdened caseworker seems to have evaporated. Robert Wright, among others, is big enough to admit as much. Wright, now emerging as the leading liberal apologist for the faith-based (see his intriguing new book The Evolution of God), now proposes an alternative theory of Maj. Hasan’s eagerness to commit mass murder. “The Fort Hood shooting,” says Wright, “is an example of Islamist terrorism being spread partly by the war on terrorism—or, actually, by two wars on terrorism, in Iraq and Afghanistan.” I know that contributors to the New York Times op-ed page are not necessarily responsible for the headlines that appear over their work, but the title of this one—”Who Created Major Hasan?”—really does demand an answer, and the only one to be located anywhere in the ensuing text is “We did.”

Everything in me revolts at this conclusion, which is echoed and underlined in another paragraph of the article.  Why, six months ago, did “a 24-year-old-American named Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad—Carlos Bledsoe before his teenage conversion to Islam—fatally shoot a soldier outside a recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark.?  ABC News reported, “It was not known what path Muhammad … had followed to radicalization.”   Well, here’s a clue: After being arrested he started babbling to the police about the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.  ” Wright describes this clue-based deduction of his as an illustration of the way that “an isolated incident can put you on a slippery slope.” Though I can’t find much beauty in his prose there, I want to agree with him.

For a start, did Hasan or Muhammad ever say what “killing” of which “Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan” they had in mind?   There isn’t a day goes by without the brutal slaughter of Muslims in both countries by al-Qaida or the Taliban.   And that’s not just because most (though not all) civilians in both countries happen to be of the Islamic faith.  The terrorists do not pause before deliberately blowing up the mosques and religious processions of those whose Muslim beliefs they deem insufficiently devout.  Most of those now being tortured and raped and executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran are Muslim.  All the women being scarred with acid and threatened with murder for the crime of going to school in Pakistan are Muslim.  Many of those killed in London, Madrid, and New York were Muslim, and almost all the victims callously destroyed in similar atrocities in Istanbul, Cairo, Casablanca, and Algiers in the recent past were Muslim, too.  It takes a true intellectual to survey this appalling picture and to say, as Wright does, that we invite attacks on our off-duty soldiers because “the hawkish war-on-terrorism strategy—a global anti-jihad that creates nonstop imagery of Americans killing Muslims—is so dubious.”  Dubious?  The only thing dubious here is his command of language.  When did the U.S. Army ever do what the jihadists do every day: deliberately murder Muslim civilians and brag on video about the fact?   For shame.   The slippery slope—actually the slimy slope—is the one down which Wright is skidding.

It is he, who I am taking as representative of a larger mentality here, who uses equally inert lingo to suggest that Maj. Hasan was “pushed over the edge by his perception of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”   That’s a nice and shady use of the word “perception.”   Might it not be equally true to say that Hasan was all-too-easily pulled over the edge, having already signaled his devout eagerness for the dive, by a cleric who makes a living by justifying murder of Muslims and non-Muslims alike?

In many recent reports of this controversy one has seen reporters from respectable papers referring not just to generic, uniform “Muslims” but even to the places where they live as “Muslim lands.”   If you would object to seeing the absurd term “Christendom” in your newspaper as a description of Europe, let alone to reading about “Jewish land” on the West Bank, then please have the fortitude to complain next time violent theocracy is smuggled into the discourse under the increasingly feeble disguise of multicultural masochism.

by SamHenry

Since 9/11 we have been drawn into closer contact with the Muslim world by negative forces not the forces of study or discovery.  Militant Islamists have been leading; we have been following. They have instilled fear and confusion and disbelief.  These are their weapons to immobilize.

The militant Islamists don’t want us to spring into action in the sense of organizing nationally to repel them. They prefer to lure our military off shore by very successful means and  into wars like Viet Nam – wars they have carefully studied.  In short, they know us and our ways; we do not know them and theirs. Our oversight has worked to their advantage.

It took actually having boots on the ground in Afghanistan in the heart of the Taliban before we would learn that the culture of the West and that of the East that is non-Islamic cannot co-exist with followers of the Koran.  The book of the Prophet does not allow co-existence with the “infidel.”[Qur'an - English translation from the CRCC Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement]

Some of the first widely distributed videos we saw from Afghanistan were of the Taliban destroying historic colossal Buddhas there.  Our government wanted us to identify strongly with these images – to realize that this could happen to any civilization and its artifacts in the way of militant Islamists:

Other cultures destroy the artifacts of their enemies or of those that conflict with their belief systems.  But no other religious/political practice urges its followers to do this on a universal scale – to move toward global domination. Here is the key to what is going on and here is the key to why Europe has been effectively lost to Islam and why America will be if steps are not taken to make an organized reaction to the threat of Islamic domination:

People living in a democracy are sleepwalking.  They are sure there are laws in place to protect them after centuries of fighting for equality.  They don’t have to fight these battles anymore. This is the modern age. That whole Hitler thing is long in the past.  No one would be mad enough to consider that they or their religion or politics could conquer the globe.  And prove successful in America?  Never!

Reports from the Woodrow Wilson Center state that American Muslims are different – that they come from many countries and that they have adapted well in their communities. [Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars]  But they can be used by the radicals – certainly radicals internationally have had a long history of hiding among them.  Look what has happened in Europe:

The above video was produced by the Christian Broadcast Network and is of course their view.

Here is a CNN assessment of the situation in Britain:

Here are some Americans who have converted to Islam.  This is part of the Muslim plan:

Militant Islamists who want to take us back centuries into the past, are quick to master the intricacies of modern technology to spread their propaganda.  They are very adept at using YouTube and other video sites.  Here is an example of their work:

And now this writer as have so many others who have reported on the progress of Global Islam, has fallen into the Islamic trap:  In order to report, I havehad to provide examples of Islamic propaganda – exactly that action for which they could wish!

We are living in the fear they have propagated for us and that they enforce.  May we continue to report the progress of the Global Islamic Movement and to help wake up those who either do not know the nature of it or who think it is not real.  We need to adopt their zeal and commitment.  Those are the most powerful weapons.

________________________________________

VotingFemale Speaks! – Support for ObamaCare sinks to 38% Nationwide

HotAir – University of Minnesota demanding political allegiance for educators?

BigGovernment – Closing Arguments: No clear benefit to holding 9/11 trial in New York

lisaintx – Bend over folks! Congress knows best! How about that kiss?

Jeff Wiesenfeld, trustee of the City University of New York, has written a letter to the New York Post concerning an alleged terrorist’s appearing as a speaker at Queens College (h/t Sharad Karkhanis).  The Post reports that the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) invited “an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing”  to speak.   James Girdusky, vice president of Queens’s College Republicans, has called for an end to funding of the MSA.  Queens College argues that this is a free speech issue.  Trustee Wiesenfeld writes that while free speech must be protected, the CUNY community ought to speak out.

I wrote an email to President James Muyskens:

I am writing a blog for the National Association of Scholars concerning Trustee Wiesenfeld’s recent letter to the New York Post concerning the spat between the QC Republican Club and the MSA. The article writes that Queens has taken the position that this is a free speech issue.

First, if this is a free speech issue, do you apply free speech standards to “words that wound” other groups as well as Jews? Second, if a student applies for funding of a campus Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazi club, would you fund that as you fund the MSA, which has stimulated anti-Semitic feeling similar to what might be feared from a KKK-type group? Third, do you see a distinction between allowing the members of the MSA to speak and providing them with funding and campus support such as student center meeting rooms?

What would you do if you found yourself face-to-face with injustice? 

An Iranian student named Mahmoud Vahidnia recently gave a new meaning to the phrase “speaking truth to power”.  During a question-and-answer forum at his school, Sharif Technical University, Vahidnia was given the opportunity to ask a question of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

That courageous student used the opportunity to criticize the most powerful man in his country to his face—a country that recently sentenced some individuals involved in the post-election protests to death, and is well known for jailing and torturing political opponents and critics (including students).

As the AP reports (h/t Candace DeRussy at Phi Beta Cons):

The session began with a speech in which Khamenei told the students the “biggest crime” was to question the results of the June 12 presidential election that returned hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. Khamenei himself declared Ahmadinejad the victor despite opposition claims of widespread fraud.

After the speech, Vahidnia raised his hand, then for 20 minutes he criticized the Iranian leader over the fierce crackdown on postelection protests, in which the opposition says 69 people were killed and thousands were arrested.

In brief excerpts broadcast on state TV, the thin, bespectacled Vahidnia was shown standing behind a podium, gesturing at times for emphasis.

“I don’t know why in this country it’s not allowed to make any kind of criticism of you,” said the student, wearing a long-sleeved blue polo shirt and appearing calm.

“In the past three to five years that I have been reading newspapers, I have seen no criticism of you, not even by the Assembly of Experts, whose duty is to criticize and supervise the performance of the leader,” he said, referring to the clerical body that chooses the country’s supreme leader.

This young student has become an unlikely hero overnight in Iran.  Khamenei has the power to do virtually anything he likes to Vahidnia in retribution for his criticism, but faced with the rare opportunity to speak directly to this man, Vahidnia chose to use it to speak out for liberty, despite the potentially catastrophic costs.  What bravery.

We are extraordinarily blessed to live in a country where we do not have to fear imprisonment for questioning our leaders.  But we are not immune to injustice, and too often, we find that many students are afraid to stand up to abuses of power.   Unfortunately, most universities will not change their ways when someone simply asks nicely.  Instead, it often takes a lawsuit — in some cases, it takes multiple lawsuits – to get public universities to comply with the Constitution.  And even when there is no censorship by the government, there are many students who self-censor out of fear, and take their rights for granted.  (David French previously wrote about this problem here). 

Without students brave enough to stand up for their constitutional rights, we are powerless to do anything to defend against the increasing curtailment of freedom on many university campuses.  And without students brave enough to exercise their constitutional rights, the First Amendment will become meaningless on campus.

Vahidnia stood before the supreme leader and spoke up for freedom, despite the fact that it could cost him his life.  In this country, we may not fear death as a punishment for standing up to the authorities—but we stand to lose that freedom if it is not jealously guarded.

Ausschnitt aus der Sendung bei Sean Hannity auf FoxNews vom 29. September 2009, in der James A. Traficant über seine kritischen Äußerungen zur Israel-Lobby befragt wird, nachdem er dies in einem Interview mit Greta van Susteren auf FoxNews geäußert hatte. Obgleich er von Hannity massiv bedrängt wird, bleibt Traficant bei seiner Meinung: “Die Israel-Lobby kontrolliert den US-Kongreß”.

James A. Traficant war 17 Jahre lang US-Kongreßabgeordneter der Demokraten aus Ohio und war vor allem deswegen berühmt worden, weil er John Demjanjuk quasi im Alleingang aus der Todeszelle in Jerusalem Mitte der 90er Jahre befreien konnte. Wegen angeblicher finanzieller Betrügereien war er zu acht Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt worden. Im August 2009 war er aus dem Gefängnis entlassen worden und hatte gleich in seinem ersten Interview mit Greta von Susteren von FoxNews der US-amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit mitgeteilt, daß er weiter mit aller Macht für die Interessen der US-Amerikaner eintreten werden, auch gegen die mächtigen Interessen der Israel-Lobby.

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Sehr geehrte (r) Hxxxxx, Sxxxxx*,

am 2009-10-19 18:29:43 haben Sie sich in die Unterstützerliste unter www.meideu.de eingetragen. Ich möchte die Gelegenheit nutzen, mich noch einmal für Ihre Unterstützung zu bedanken. Die Forderung nach einer bundesweiten Enquetekommission, die zunächst den Ist-Zustand und die Ursachen für mangelnde Integrationsbereitschaft vorbehaltlos erforscht und dem Bundesgesetzgeber Handlungsempfehlung unterbreitet, ist sicher nicht das Allheilmittel, aber ein wichter Schritt in die richtige Richtung. Die wachsenden Probleme auf dem Gebiet der Zuwanderung und Integration machen deutlich, dass dringend etwas getan werden muss. Die Instrumente der Vergangenheit waren und sind nicht geeignet, eine Zuwanderung in erster Linie zum Wohle der Allgemeinheit zu organisieren. Integration scheitert nicht selten an der mangelnden Bereitschaft vieler Immigranten und ihrer Nachkommen. Niemand kann ernsthaft in Frage stellen, dass wir Integration nicht durch Aussitzen und Schönreden erreichen werden.

Nun hat das Büro des Petitionsausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages die Zulassung als öffentliche Petition zunächst abgeleht. Für diese Ablehung, die auf die Entscheidung eines einzelnen Mitarbeiters zurück geht, hat das Büro keine nachvollziehbare Begründung geliefert. Deshalb werde ich mich mit dieser Antwort nicht zufrieden geben. Ich sende Ihnen anliegend das labidare Ablehungsschreiben sowie meine schriftliche Antwort darauf. Diese können Sie auch auf http://meideu.de/petition-eingereicht nachlesen.

Ich werde Ihnen umgehend die Reaktion des Petitionsausschusses zukommen lassen und diese auch auf der Website veröffentlichen.

Weiterhin werde ich in Kürze alle Fraktionen des Deutschen Bundestages anschreiben und um eine Stellungnahme bitten. Denn tatsächlich besteht die Möglichkeit, dass Mitglieder des Deutschen Bundestag sich dem Anliegen der Petition annehmen, ohne dass diese zuvor auf dem offiziellen Portal des Deutschen Bundestages zur Mitzeichnung online gestellt wurde. Unabhängig davon dürfte es spannend sein, zu erfahren, wie sich die einzelnen Fraktionen positionieren.

Sie sehen also, es bleibt nach wie vor wichtig, für dieses Anliegen zu werben. Ich werde mich deshalb weiter um Mitzeichner bemühen und danke jeden, der bei Freunden und Verwandten um weitere Unterstützung wirbt. Auch für die Verlinkung auf eigenen Internetseiten bin ich weiterhin sehr dankbar.

Mit besten Grüßen

René Stadtkewitz

Und sowas kriegt man nach dem einreichen der tausendfach unterschriebenen Petiotion von Bundestag zurück? Meinungsfreiheit und Volksinteressen gibts woll doch nicht , Faschismus kennt viele Formen! :

Also available as ยุให้แยง ตะแคงให้รั่วหรือไง

For some time PPT has been concerned that the political strategy adopted by the Democrat Party and the government that it leads has been increasingly repressive. A party that has come to government by the combined actions of the military and royalists is inevitably underpinned by the forces that have backed authoritarian regimes for several decades.

We have pointed to the government’s use of lese majeste and computer crimes laws to limit freedom of expression in the media and more broadly. These laws have also been used to intimidate and lock up opponents of the royalist regime. PPT has repeatedly pointed out that the Democrat Party-led government has used the Internal Security Act to limit the right to legal protest.

Several times we have pointed out that the government has glaring double standards, selectively applying laws when it acts against perceived opponents while supporting allies.

PPT has also been concerned about the language that has been used in recent days to attack opponents, in particular noting the increased tendency to label political opponents as traitors. We have observed that the government and its allies, most especially rightists and the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), have been using ultra-nationalist discourses to attack opponents and to ramp up anger and xenophobia against “traitors” who do not support “Nation, Religion and Monarchy.”

PPT has pointed out that these calls have, in previous years, resulted in violence, and we pointed to events in the 1973-76 period, which ended with a massacre of students at Thammasat University, led by extreme rightists imbued with royalist, anti-communist and nationalist propaganda that revolved around concocted and exaggerated “stories” sometimes peddled by the mainstream media (on 1976, go here for a PDF).

PPT is therefore disturbed to see similar trends developing in 2009. In an earlier post, we discussed the alleged car bomb threat to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. We pointed out that back on 15 July 2006, when there were reports of an assassination plot against Thaksin Shinawatra, a spokesperson for the Democrat Party was dismissive. And in August 2006, when the government claimed a  failed car bomb assassination attempt against Thaksin, with arrests made and a bomb displayed, there was widespread skepticism, including from the Bangkok Post and other mainstream media. Academics urged the government to resist using the “plot” as a pretense for repression.

We asked: where is that skepticism now? Where are the academic protectors of human rights?

By the way, it is reported that the “Chiang Mai Provincial Court Monday rejected police’s request for an arrest warrant against a local red-shirt on ground that police’s evidence is too weak.”

Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Taugsuban has added to the choking feeling of deja vu that is enveloping Thailand. In the Bangkok Post (23 September 2009: “Govt: Aliens banned from protests”) he is reported to have stated that the “government believes the red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Democracy (UDD) is planning to use foreign workers to swell the numbers at its planned anti-government rallies…”.

The government has set about warning “employers that foreign labourers would not be allowed to take part in the series of protests planned to begin on Nov 29 …”. Suthep warned that the “government will take legal action if they fail to comply, because only Thai people have the right to voice their political opinions…”. PPT emphasizes this last point because we do not believe that we have seen this point stated previously. All of those foreign commentators in Thai newspapers had better be on guard from now on.

More seriously, this statement by Suthep is reprehensible for two other reasons. First, it targets migrant workers, arguably the most marginalized and exploited group in Thailand, and does so in a way that could engender hatred against them. Second, as a correspondent to Bangkok Pundit notes, this move has scary resonances with 1976 massacre, when it was rumored that the Thammasat students had been infiltrated by Vietnamese communists.

As the Democrat Party and the government moves once again to invoke the Internal Security Act, PPT is coming to the conclusion that the government is provoking conflict. We are yet to be convinced that this is a deliberate strategy. It may be that the government is simply piling up repression and provocation and is unaware of the cumulative impact. More seriously, it could also be that the strategy is, as PAD speakers urged, a strategy aimed at “traitors” that means finally and “quickly finish[ing] them off for the sake of our beloved King and ancestors, so that Thais stop quarrelling with one another because of these scoundrels.”

A Patriotic Nurse would like to take this time to wish everyone a most Blessed Thanksgiving and wish that everyone would take the time to reflect upon the real meaning of the holiday. We have so much that we should be thankful for and yet we take so many of these things for granted.
I am thankful that I have my family around me, good friends to lift me up and offer support. I am thankful that in turn I am able to return that friendship and be there to lift up a friend that is ill, fallen on difficult times, or just to be able to wrap my arms around them for sometimes there are no words that can be uttered. I am most Thankful to live in a country where I can worship freely, where I have the freedom to speak my mind. Please take time to remember the true meaning of Thanksgiving as you gather with family and enjoy the bounty. Remember the homeless, the hungry, the down-trodden. Remember our troops off in a foreign land fighting that we may continue to enjoy these freedoms. Remember to Thank God for without him, none of this would be possible………………………………………