Pat Condell: Human Rights Travesty

Hat tip to Mark Alexander of A New Dark Age Is Dawning:



Another video below the fold.




Pat Condell's no-nonsense commentaries are not broadcast on the mainstream media.

Can you imagine how the world would change if all the major news networks in the West would broadcast Pat Condell's political commentaries?

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How To Silence A Blogger

This essay from the Examiner should make your blood run cold, particularly if you value the First Amendment.


Brief excerpt below the fold:

Death threats and taxes: How one 'wealthy' blogger was silenced

Everyone has an opinion on taxes -- and usually it's a negative one. So a recent blog post by University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson shouldn't have come as much of a surprise. But the resulting firestorm prompted such a negative reaction that Henderson pulled the post and abandoned blogging altogether....

Read the rest HERE and more HERE. Excerpt from the latter link:

...[A]lmost as soon as he hit the send button, a firestorm erupted.. Henderson says he was inundated with e-mails that divided along the lines of “die yuppie scum” and “thank you for saying what we couldn’t say.” He says the vehement tone of the responses -- he called it “an electronic lynch mob” -- and fears for his family forced him to delete the post and quit blogging altogether....

What would force you bloggers to shut up?

In my view, the threat of losing one's job already prevents many from exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of speech. In these trying economic times, exercising caution is a wise step, I think.

Many of us bloggers and commenters already use pseudonyms – for various reasons, of course. In my case, I use a pseudonym so as to protect the safety of my students. I admit that, at my age, I'm no longer much concerned with my own personal safety. I will also admit that, from day one of blogging, I have had some concerns about litigation consequences.


My question to you: Is the use of pseudonyms a form of self-censorship that we bloggers should avoid?


Your comments to the above question and to the news item itself are welcome.

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BHO's Desire To Curb Free Speech

Video, with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, below the fold (hat tip to Brenda Bowers). Worth your time and consideration.



The video's transcript, if you prefer reading to watching, is HERE.

Read more about FCC "Diversity" Czar Mark Lloyd HERE.

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The Plans Of Cass Sunstein

(with thanks to my friend Mary for emailing me the link)

Based on his own words and statements of intent, Cass Sunstein, appointed to the shadowy post of White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, will likely have his eye on the Internet, particularly on us bloggers:

When it comes to the First Amendment, Team Obama believes in Global Chilling.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who has been appointed to a shadowy post that will grant him powers that are merely mind-boggling, explicitly supports using the courts to impose a "chilling effect" on speech that might hurt someone's feelings. He thinks that the bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them.

[...]

Sunstein questions the current libel standard - which requires proving "actual malice" against those who write about public figures, including celebrities. Mere "negligence" isn't libelous, but Sunstein wonders, "Is it so important to provide breathing space for damaging falsehoods about entertainers?" Celeb rags, get ready to hire more lawyers.

Sunstein also believes that - whether you're a blogger, The New York Times or a Web hosting service - you should be held responsible even for what your commenters say. Currently you're immune under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. "Reasonable people," he says, "might object that this is not the right rule," though he admits that imposing liability for commenters on service providers would be "a considerable burden."

[...]

"As we have seen," Sunstein writes, having shown us no such thing, "falsehoods can undermine democracy itself." What Sunstein means by that sentence is pretty clear: He doesn't like so-called false rumors about his longtime University of Chicago friend and colleague, Barack Obama.

He alludes on page 3 (and on page 13, and 14, and 45, and 54 - the book is only 87 pages) to the supposedly insidious lie that "Barack Obama pals around with terrorists." Since Sunstein intends to impose his Big Chill on such talk, I'd better get this in while I can. The "rumor," i.e., "fact," about the palsy-walsiness of Obama and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers (Ayers referred to Obama as a "family friend" in a memoir) did not "undermine democracy," i.e., prevent Obama's election. The facts got out, voters weighed them and ruled that they weren't disqualifying.

Sunstein calls for a "notice and take down" law that would require bloggers and service providers to "take down falsehoods upon notice," even those made by commenters - but without apparent penalty.

Consider how well this nudge would work. You blog about Obama-Ayers. You get a letter claiming that your facts are wrong so you should remove your post. You refuse. If, after a court proceeding proves simply that you are wrong (but not that you committed libel, which when a public figure is the target is almost impossible), you lose, the penalty is . . . you must take down your post.

Such suppression of First Amendment rights would be challenged in courts of law, of course. However, the article points out the following disturbing reality:

How long would it take for a court to sort out the truth? Sasha and Malia will be running for president by then. Nobody will care anymore. But it will give politicians the ability to tie up their online critics in court....

Please take time to read the entire article.

If Suntein's proposal become reality, America as the beacon of freedom is finished!

Take it from me, one caught up in a lawsuit regarding a car accident of some four years ago and with no settlement yet in sight, swift justice doesn't exist.

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Mark Steyn Wins Round One

From this source:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a Muslim group's complaint against Maclean's magazine.
--------
The Canadian Islamic Congress had argued the magazine published an article in October 2006 that would likely expose Muslims to hatred and contempt.

The article, entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam," by Mark Steyn claimed that Muslims are on the verge of dominating Europe and the West because of a demographic shift.

The article claims that their greater numbers will eventually allow Muslims to dominate Western countries. The article goes so far as to quote a European imam who allegedly said Muslims are reproducing like "mosquitoes."...

Read the rest.

Excerpt from the Maclean's article which led to the proceedings -- "The Future Belongs to Islam," published on October 20, 2006, and from Steyn's book America Alone:

Sept. 11, 2001, was not "the day everything changed," but the day that revealed how much had already changed. On Sept. 10, how many journalists had the Council of American-Islamic Relations or the Canadian Islamic Congress or the Muslim Council of Britain in their Rolodexes? If you'd said that whether something does or does not cause offence to Muslims would be the early 21st century's principal political dynamic in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, most folks would have thought you were crazy. Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.

This is about the seven-eighths below the surface -- the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world. The key factors are: demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and civilizational exhaustion.

Let's start with demography, because everything does....

Read the rest.

As Anonymous stated about Mark Steyn's victory, at a thread at Infidel Bloggers Alliance: "GREAT NEWS for Freedom of Speech for Infidels!!!"

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Freedom Of Speech Upheld For Geert Wilders

From this source, on April 7, 2008:

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A Dutch lawmaker who sparked protests across the Muslim world with a film criticizing the Quran is entitled to express his anti-Islamic views, a court ruled Monday, rejecting a request to muzzle him.

The court ruled that the views expressed by right-wing legislator Geert Wilders did not exceed the legal boundaries against inciting hatred or violence.

The Netherlands Islamic Federation withdrew its petition to ban Wilders' film "Fitna" after it appeared on the Internet March 27, the day before the case was heard in a heavily guarded courtroom. The movie, linking terror attacks by Muslim extremists with texts from Islam's holy book, triggered angry street protests in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, and calls in other countries to boycott Dutch goods.

But the federation still asked the Hague District Court to order Wilders to stop making statements "in writing, on film or spoken" that are deemed insulting to Muslims, and to apologize for statements he has made repeatedly in the past. Wilders has called the Quran a fascist book and compared it to Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

In a written judgment published Monday, the court said Wilders' right to free speech and role as a politician allow him to voice his criticisms of radical Islam and the Quran.

As a lawmaker, Wilders "must be able to — sometimes in sharp terms — express his opinions," the judgment said. "In this context, it cannot be said that (Wilders') statements — even though provocative — are an incitement to hate or violence against Muslims."...

Caroline Webb, in this article in the Middle East Times, has posed this list of questions which Fitna: The Movie raised in her mind:

1) Should Geert Wilders be living under a death threat for speaking up about the problem of death threats and actual murders being committed on a large-scale in the name of Islam?

2) Should Web hosting companies (and all other media companies) be threatened to the point that was done with Live Leak, and which caused Network Solutions to deny the film a space on its servers?

3) Should Muslim leaders be doing more to condemn the practice of death threats, suicide bombings everywhere in the world, murders on the streets of Europe such as that of Theo van Gogh?

4) Should Muslims in Europe be doing more to betray those who are betraying Islam and hand over to the police authorities rabid clerics and others who are fomenting hatred and zeal for inflicting more suffering on Western society – and who use the Koran to incite their audience?

In my view, those questions are the important subtext of Fitna: The Movie.

Caroline Webb goes on to say in her reflections on the film:

These are the questions that I want to see more discussion of and more action on. Even the photograph in the online article about "Fitna" in the Middle East Times, showing an effigy of Wilders being burnt, indicates the double standards at work. Who is speaking to the crowd working itself into a frenzy of hatred and violence, and is able to say to them that this behavior is exactly what "Fitna" is critiquing? Where is the leadership leading people away from their worst and weakest and most destructive side towards something better?

"Fitna" may be criticized for appearing to tar all Muslims with the same brush and that certainly does make it weak. I don't agree with that presentation, as it is grossly unfair. But I think its goal is to raise the question of internal self-regulation of extremism. It is holding up a mirror, composed of real footage from recent years, and asking hard questions about theology and morality in today's necessarily pluralistic world.

Instead of asking the hard questions, however, Western leaders and the mainstream media have done their best to ignore Fitna: The Movie, much in the manner of the government and the media in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a futuristic novel about a dystopia in which censorship became the norm because the people simply did not want to face reality, compose analytical thoughts, or find solutions; instead, they wanted to be happy in their ignorance.

It's easier, after all, in the Twenty-first Century not to think too much about the Islamic threat.

[END OF THIS POSTING]

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Video: O Dhimmi Canada

From Pat Condell, who states, at one point, "Free speech is not negotiable" (about six minutes in length and worth your time):




The YouTube link indicates these stats so far, for a video posted on January 19, 2008:

Views: 109,049

If you don't chuckle at Mr. Condell's dry humor, there's no hope for you. If you don't recognize his valid points, you are a hopeless dhimmi.

[Hat-tip to commenter Najistani, who left the link for the above video in a comment at Infidel Bloggers Alliance]

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