Entries Tagged 'free speech' ↓
July 14th, 2008 — free speech, satire
This is the headline of the summer:
And this is the line of the summer, from Pareene at Gawker, about the “tasteless and offensive” cartoon (or possible “anti-Obama propaganda”) that is making a fool of nearly*** everyone on cable “news” tonight:
This obvious and heavy-handed satire has enraged Democrats and liberal media critics because now they are pretty sure this nation of child-like imbeciles will believe it to be an un-retouched photograph from the FUTURE.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the FUTURE:
————
*** Everyone except Jesse Ventura, bless him, who just told Larry King (I’m paraphrasing) that we live in the era of free speech, and everyone remembers Larry Flynt took his case to the Supreme Court and won for his magazine’s satires of Jerry Falwell, and the First Amendment is there to protect offensive speech because inoffensive speech doesn’t need protecting.
Go, Jesse, go!
June 26th, 2008 — free speech, freedom
At the beginning of this month, I started noting some of the positive news stories about improvements in Iraq and the apparent decline of al Qaeda. A lot has been written in this vein since then.
Most interesting of all is this op-ed from Daniel Kimmage in today’s New York Times, in which we find out that AQ, seemingly so far ahead of the technology (and media-saviness) game in 2001, is now eating the dust of Web 2.0:
The genius of Al Qaeda was to combine real-world mayhem with virtual marketing. The group’s guerrilla media network supports a family of brands, from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (in Algeria and Morocco) to the Islamic State of Iraq, through a daily stream of online media products that would make any corporation jealous.
A recent report I wrote for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty details this flow. In July 2007, for example, Al Qaeda released more than 450 statements, books, articles, magazines, audio recordings, short videos of attacks and longer films. These products reach the world through a network of quasi-official online production and distribution entities, like Al Sahab, which releases statements by Osama bin Laden.
But the Qaeda media nexus, as advanced as it is, is old hat. If Web 1.0 was about creating the snazziest official Web resources and Web 2.0 is about letting users run wild with self-created content and interactivity, Al Qaeda and its affiliates are stuck in 1.0.
In 2008, Kimmage points out, you’re at a sizable disadvantage if you’re that far behind the technology curve [e.a.]:
[A] more interactive, empowered online community, particularly in the Arab-Islamic world, may prove to be Al Qaeda’s Achilles’ heel. Anonymity and accessibility, the hallmarks of Web 1.0, provided an ideal platform for Al Qaeda’s radical demagoguery. Social networking, the emerging hallmark of Web 2.0, can unite a fragmented silent majority and help it to find its voice in the face of thuggish opponents, whether they are repressive rulers or extremist Islamic movements.
Of course, the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East are threatened by the notion that online communities could become powerful enough to challenge their authority, so it’s not exactly clear skies ahead for these dissident voices:
[T]he authoritarian governments of the Middle East are doing their best to hobble Web 2.0. By blocking the Internet, they are leaving the field open to Al Qaeda and its recruiters. The American military’s statistics and jihadists’ own online postings show that among the most common countries of origin for foreign fighters in Iraq are Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. It’s no coincidence that Reporters Without Borders lists Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria as “Internet enemies,” and Libya and Yemen as countries where the Web is “under surveillance.”
Still [e.a.]:
There is a simple lesson here: unfettered access to a free Internet is not merely a goal to which we should aspire on principle, but also a very practical means of countering Al Qaeda. As users increasingly make themselves heard, the ensuing chaos will not be to everyone’s liking, but it may shake the online edifice of Al Qaeda’s totalitarian ideology.
I’m always saying that there’s nothing more important than freedom of expression. This is what I mean. It’s why we must stand behind people struggling for the freedom to express their thoughts, and thus challenge the status quo that oppresses them.
June 25th, 2008 — America, Dems, Enlightenment values, Obamamania, campaign '08, free speech, freedom, partisanship, tolerance, urge to purge, witch-hunting
There is a sickness afoot in the land when a popular non-political blogger makes note of a politician’s lowering of his own standards and his commenters attack him for speaking his mind.
Jeff Jarvis:
Whenever you want to show how soft big media are on Barack Obama, refer back to Howard Kurtz’ column on their coverage of the candidate’s hypocritical flip-flop on campaign financing. Chapter and verse.
Some comments [e.a.]:
Just drop it. It’s clear you were a Clinton supporter, but if you want a Democrat in the White House in 2009, the political reality is that attacking Obama is the same supporting McCain.
Jeff, would you consider some even handed-ness in your political posts ? It makes your position on press bias seem fairly hypocritical.
Jeff replies:
I am likely to be an Obama voter but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold him to high standards. I am not a member of his cult so I can disagree with him. It’s allowed out here. No, I won’t drop it.
Commenter:
Jeff, you’re entitled to “hold Obama to high standards,” just like the rest of us. And I realize, in a post like this, you’re trying to expose the inherent bias of the media, not bash Obama. But that’s what you’re indirectly doing.
I realize you’re trying to change the media, but please don’t (conciously or unconciously) swiftboat Obama in the process.
Commenter Steve:
So, if I support Senator Obama, I am a cultist?
Jeff responds:
No, Steve, but I’m being told I can’t criticize him and hold him to high standards. That’s a cultist talking.
Last word (not on Jeff’s blog but here on mine, where I’m the editor) goes to this commenter from Jeff’s blog:
Obama supporters panic whenever a story appears to question, criticize, or point out the hypocrisies of their candidate.
Indeed! and get a load of this attack, published at the HuffPo, on Jon Stewart for—gasp!—making fun of the Obama Messiah. Joseph Palermo builds his case by accusing Stewart of having been complicit in selling the war in Iraq to the American people:
Slamming the UN weapons inspectors as ineffectual twits dominated right-wing talk radio at the time and The Daily Show was in effect regurgitating the talking points of those who wanted to bring the country to war. Dissing the UN’s efforts on Comedy Central inadvertently helped make the case for war. It is kind of like when Dick Cheney pointed to the New York Times to buttress his warmongering saying: “Hey, even the liberals agree with us!”
Then Palermo goes on to warn Stewart to watch his mouth when he’s making fun of Obama:
When Jon Stewart seeks “balance” for his targets of satire he can end up reinforcing the false impressions that the Bush Republicans want people to have. It’s unfortunate because political humor is a powerful force that can sway some of those “low information” voters the pundits have been flogging lately.
So too was the case last night when Jon Stewart ran a bit about Barack Obama’s decision to eschew public financing. The Daily Show seized the issue as an opportunity to display “balance” and to poke fun at the Obama campaign. But not only did the bit fall flat it played right into the Republican line, which is full of half-truths and outright lies about Obama’s decision.
During the primaries, Keith Olbermann attacked Stewart just for mentioning Obama’s middle name.
Here’s what I think: this attempt by hyper-partisan ideological enforcers to shut down the debate among Democrats about Barack Obama will backfire. Badly.
Intimidating people who are on your own side (Jarvis and Stewart are both Democrats, from what I can tell) is never a good idea, especially here in America, where, as Jeff said, we don’t—and won’t—shut up.
Undoubtedly, those trying to shut down the debate are the product (or the masters) of our elite universities, where diversity is god but where diversity of opinion is unwelcome.
Those often kindly teachers, however, do have a sense of urgent mission. Even if we put them on truth-serum, the academics who dominate the humanities and social sciences on our campuses today would state that K-12 education essentially has been one long celebration of America and the West, as if our students were intimately familiar with the Federalist Papers and had never heard of slavery or empire. Having convinced themselves that the students whom they inherit have been immersed in American and Western traditions without critical perspective—they do believe that—contemporary academics see themselves as having merely four brief years in which to demystify students, and somehow to get them to look up from their Madison and Hamilton long enough to gaze upon the darker side of American and Western life. In their view, our K-12 students know all about Aristotle, John Milton and Adam Smith, have studied for twelve years how America created bounty and integrated score after score of millions of immigrants, but have never heard of the Great Depression or segregation.
Academics, in their own minds, face an almost insoluble problem of time. How, in only four years, can they disabuse students of the notion that the capital, risk, productivity and military sacrifice of others have contributed to human dignity and to the prospects of a decent society? How can they make them understand, with only four years to do so, that capitalism and individual- ism have created cultures that are cruel, inefficient, racist, sexist and homophobic, with oppressive caste systems, mental and behavioral? How, in such a brief period, can they enlighten “minorities,” including women (the majority of students), about the “internalization” of their oppression (today’s equivalent of false consciousness)? How, in only eight semesters, might they use the classroom, curriculum and university in loco parentis to create a radical leadership among what they see as the victim groups of our society, and to make the heirs of successful families uneasy in the moral right of their possessions and opportunities? Given those constraints, why in the world should they complicate their awesome task by hiring anyone who disagrees with them?
Disagreement is at the foundation of human existence, and American democracy is successful (among other reasons) because it takes this fundamental fact of human nature into account.
Plus: If Barack Obama cannot stomach, answer, and withstand criticisms from his own side, he is unlikely to be able to withstand criticism, or attacks, from his political opponents.
June 16th, 2008 — Enlightenment values, free speech, freedom
The editors of the Chicago Tribune aren’t saying that she did this, but what if Michelle Obama had been caught on tape taunting “whitey”? You got a problem with that, you overprivileged Caucasian?
Are there really white people out there so ignorant of history, so unaware of the nuances of language and so threatened by minority grievances that they take genuine umbrage at the term “whitey”?
More a taunt than a threat, the word has no ugly history and hints at no particular stereotypes. It may have been hurled in a menacing fashion in ugly personal confrontations from time to time, but it’s never been used to keep a people down, to put them in their place, to rank them as subhuman.
I hate the concept of “hate speech” for just this reason: one man’s hate speech is another’s righteous grievance. But riddle me this: who’s to judge?
Freedom of speech, for all—that’s the ticket.
April 18th, 2008 — blogging, free speech
A blogger gets fired from his day job at the WaPo for exercising his freedom of speech:
A Washington Post staffer who had been blogging at a sports-themed Web site apparently lost his job after editors came across some profane-laden postings that also identified him as a Post scribe.
Michael Tunison, who blogged under the name “Christmas Ape” at the “Kissing Suzy Kolber” site, wrote on Wednesday that he had been fired for “bringing discredit to the paper.”
Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. confirmed that Tunison no longer worked at the paper and had left his job on Wednesday, but would not specify if he resigned or was fired. “We don’t discuss personnel matters, but we have standards for people’s outside work,” Downie told E&P. “You need to clear it with your editors here before and it should not be a conflict of interest.”
Free speech isn’t free. Proceed at your own risk.
March 30th, 2008 — anti-totalitarianism, free speech
Just for the record, I wanted to preserve what’s on Google News at the moment in reaction to the Geert Wilders’s nasty provocation (but, I fear, a necessary inoculation) and challenge to Islamists to back off:
Dr M: United Muslim boycott is the way to ‘punish’ Holland
Malaysia Star, Malaysia - 1 hour ago
KUALA LUMPUR: Muslims can only effectively take action against the Dutch for releasing a film that puts Islam in a bad light if they unite and boycott Dutch …
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Fitna “could be a film by the Mujahideen”
EuropeNews, Denmark - 2 hours ago
Preeeeeee-cisely. The formerly UK-based jihadist hits the nail on the head: for all the rage from Muslims about how Fitna “links Islam with violence,” that … |
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Dutch Muslims show tolerance to Islam film
Washington Times, DC - 4 hours ago
By Leander Schaerlaeckens Associated Press Mohammed Rabbae, a prominent Dutch-Moroccan leader and chairman of the National Moroccan Council, urged Muslims … |
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News in brief
The Observer, UK - 4 hours ago
Liveleak.com, the British website that posted an anti-Koran film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders has removed the film after threats to its staff. … |
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Arabs Denounce Dutch Anti-Islam Film
The Associated Press - 5 hours ago
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Islamic and Arab leaders denounced a Dutch film Saturday that portrays Islam as a ticking time bomb aimed at the West, … |
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An insult to Islam and our intelligence
GulfNews, United Arab Emirates - 7 hours ago
The anti-Islam film by Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders has drawn widespread international criticism and has also been roundly criticised by the … |
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Egypt: Dutch anti Islam film repulsive
PRESS TV, Iran - 7 hours ago
Egypt says that the anti-Islam film of Dutch MP Geert Wilders was revolting and calls for legislation that would ban offenses against religion. … |
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Dutch businessmen warn Geert Wilders
PRESS TV, Iran - 7 hours ago
Dutch businessmen warn Geert Wilders if his anti Islamic movie provokes an economic embargo against Netherlands he may be sued in court. in an interview … |
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The flood gates have opened
Kuwait Times, Kuwait - 8 hours ago
By Ahmad Al-Khaled, Staff writer The anti-Islam film by right wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders hit the Internet on Thursday and the protests have already begun. … |
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Parliament denounces Dutch anti-Islamic film
Yemen News Agency, Yemen - 9 hours ago
SANA’A, March 29 (Saba)- The Parliament denounced in its session held on Saturday a film produced by the Dutch Parliament member Geert Wilders that abuses … |
For me, this is the frontline in the “war on terror”: preserving our right—certainly in our own countries, but it should be the right of people everywhere—to say what’s on our minds. Even if it’s offensive.
As Bill Clinton said in another context the other day:
‘I Don’t Give a Rip About All This Name-Calling….Let’s Just Saddle Up and Have an Argument’
February 27th, 2008 — democracy, free speech, journalism
[update: here's a nice piece, similar in feeling to mine, from Robert Poole at Reason]
Back when I was a snotty whippersnapper and I was contemptuous of anyone who didn’t think like me and my obviously morally superior cohort, I worked in the same down-at-the-heels prewar building on East 36th Street where the National Review had its offices.
When I read this tribute, I was reminded of just how culturally out-of-favor the NR was back then in the post-Vietnam era:
Before Rush Limbaugh; before conservative talk radio; before Fox News Channel; before the Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, the Heritage Foundation and even Ronald Reagan, there was Buckley and his magazine. He burst upon the scene in the early 1950s, articulating concepts and ideas that were largely dismissed in that era–and even more out of favor in the 1960s. Still, Mr. Buckley never wavered, and his brand of conservatism became part and parcel of the Reagan Revolution that followed.
I’m no Republican. Having grown up among Republicans, I had a lifetime’s worth of exposure. I don’t even visit the Corner unless I’m sent there by a link. I’m just not interested in what conservatives are saying. I’m interested in my own tribe, not theirs!
Nevertheless, I admire William F. Buckley for his style, his wit, his erudition, and his persistence and faith, with which he built a place where the loyal opposition could talk amongst themselves. My hat’s off.
February 15th, 2008 — free speech
Some two years after the incident that provoked me to start blogging, something different—something encouraging for those of us who believe in Enlightenment values—is happening:
Newspapers Republish Muhammad Cartoons
After the arrest this week of three men who wanted to kill a Danish cartoonist, about a dozen papers in Denmark have republished the infamous Muhammad cartoons. Some observers notice a sea-change in Denmark’s integration debate since the 2006 riots in the Muslim world
DPA
It was hard to read a newspaper in Denmark on Wednesday without seeing the cartoons.
Also: the Mohammed cartoons case in Canada has been dropped, too:
Calgary Muslim leader Syed Soharwardy says he is withdrawing his Alberta Human Rights Commission complaint against former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant.
Apparently, Soharwardy got a civics lesson:
“Over the two years that we have gone through the process, I understand that most Canadians see this as an issue of freedom of speech, that that principle is sacred and holy in our society,” said Mr. Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.
Two years ago, I hoped for an inoculation campaign:
On the matter of the Danish cartoons, it has been my opinion that the only thing that will work is inoculation. Fundamentalist Muslims living in Western societies need to get used to the idea that no matter how offensive and vulgar they may find our “culture”, they have to tolerate it, tune it out, or create their own alternative.
I haven’t changed my mind in the meantime.
January 14th, 2008 — extreme political correctness, free speech, liberal "thinking"
Following up on my post earlier today, here’s a story from TNR that provides evidence of the sick, treacly rot—the insane PC obsession with hurt feelings, as if it is words and not hurtful, harmful, obscene, illegal, immoral, and unconscionable actions that they should be worried about—that is eating away at progressives, Democrats, and what’s left of the left:
The latest maiming of the historical record and elementary historical logic has come over Martin Luther King, Jr., Lyndon B. Johnson–and the presidential primaries of 2008. The media echo chamber is now booming with charges that Senator Hillary Clinton has disparaged Dr. King, praised President Johnson in his stead, and thereby distorted the history of the civil rights movement. …
Now, Representative James E. Clyburn, the most prominent African-American elected official from South Carolina, has picked up the ever-changing story and implicitly accused Senator Clinton of denigrating Dr. King and the civil rights movement. “We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics,” Clyburn told The New York Times.
[e.a.]
Do we? Who is “we”? And Why?
What matters is the truth, not the tender feelings of the hypersensitive. And the truth is that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a massive hero to millions and millions and millions and millions of Americans, black and white.
He was strong, tough, honorable, noble, and unbending in the face of hideous real-life persecution. He shamed bigots throughout America and ennobled an entire nation. His accomplishments will not soon be matched by another human being.
Why do we have to be careful about talking about his era? Why?
January 14th, 2008 — free speech
Glenn Greenwald channels Voltaire:
People like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are some of the most pernicious commentators around. But equally pernicious, at least, are those who advocate laws that would proscribe and punish political expression, and those who exploit those laws to try use the power of the State to impose penalties on those expressing “offensive” or “insulting” or “wrong” political ideas. The mere existence of the “investigation,” interrogation, and proceeding itself is a grotesque affront to every basic liberty.
For those unable to think past the (well-deserved) animosity one has for the specific targets in question here, all one needs to do instead is imagine these proceedings directed at opinions and groups that one likes. If Muslim groups can trigger government investigations due to commentary they find offensive, so, too, can conservative Christian or right-wing Jewish groups, or conservative or neoconservative groups, or any other political faction seeking to restrict and punish speech it dislikes.
It’s not often that Greenwald and LGF’s Charles Johnson agree on something. Savor the moment.
More important: visit Ezra Levant’s blog and watch and read his attack on Canadians’ perversion of justice:
For a government bureaucrat to call any publisher or anyone else to an interrogation to be quizzed about his political or religious expression is a violation of 800 years of common law, a Universal Declaration of Rights, a Bill of Rights and a Charter of Rights. This commission is applying Saudi values, not Canadian values.
It is also deeply procedurally one-sided and unjust. The complainant – in this case, a radical Muslim imam, who was trained at an officially anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, and who has called for sharia law to govern Canada – doesn’t have to pay a penny; Alberta taxpayers pay for the prosecution of the complaint against me. The victims of the complaints, like the Western Standard, have to pay for their own lawyers from their own pockets. Even if we win, we lose – the process has become the punishment….
It is procedurally unfair. Unlike real courts, there is no way to apply for a dismissal of nuisance lawsuits. Common law rules of evidence don’t apply. Rules of court don’t apply. It is a system that is part Kafka, and part Stalin. Even this interrogation today – at which I appear under duress – saw the commission tell me who I could or could not bring with me as my counsel and advisors.
I have no faith in this farcical commission. But I do have faith in the justice and good sense of my fellow Albertans and Canadians. I believe that the better they understand this case, the more shocked they will be. I am here under your compulsion to answer the commission’s questions. But it is not I who am on trial: it is the freedom of all Canadians.
You may start your interrogation.
Stirring stuff.
