December 16, 2007 — Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone.”
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.
If Maclean’s, Canada’s top-selling magazine, is found “guilty,” it could face financial or other penalties. And the affair could have a devastating impact on opinion journalism in Canada generally.
This cartoon is based on the poster for the movie The People vs. Larry Flynt.
According to a Fox News report, Richard Cotton, the general counsel for NBC/Universal, was one of two network officials who decided not to sell ad time to Freedom’s Watch, which describes itself as “a nonpartisan movement dedicated to preserving, protecting, and defending conservative principles and promoting a conservative agenda.”
Freedom’s Watch prepared a series of television ads thanking American troops stationed abroad for “their service and for spending time away from their family and friends this Holiday season.” The ads will run from December 6 until December 21, and while CNN and Fox are both airing the group’s commercials, NBC refused to sell airtime on their cable networks, MSNBC and CNBC.
According to the Fox report, NBC will not sell airtime unless Freedom’s Watch removes their website address from the commercial. The group’s website address, www.freedomswatch.org, appears at the end of the 30 second spot, under a banner that reads “thank you…”
While NBC’s rejection of a Freedom’s Watch ad from August was never explained, according to the group, Federal Elections Commission (FEC) records are sure to raise eyebrows.
According to FEC records, Cotton has been a generous donor to Democrat campaigns and liberal causes. Earlier this year, he donated $1,000 to the political action committee (PAC) of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and last year gave the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) $7,000.
Over the past decade, Cotton has contributed at least $45,000 to Congressional Democrats, including $2,000 each to Clinton and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).
My nominee for 2007 Person of the Year is a woman–a woman with a history of abuse, a woman who has never run for elective office, someone we all know, someone who makes her presence known on a daily basis in all our lives and, for my money, is better than any male alternative. That woman is Mother Earth. I think the environment is the compelling issue of our time.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether individuals have a right under the Second Amendment “to keep and bear arms.”
In a case that will probably be heard in March and decided before the end of June, the District of Columbia asked the high court to review an appeals court decision that struck down a Washington gun ban last year. The appeals court ruled the amendment does contain an individual right to bear arms, at least to protect one’s home.
A ruling in the Supreme Court case could affect gun laws and bans across the nation.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The dispute arises from the first four words of the Second Amendment, the full text of which reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” If the first two clauses were omitted, there would be no room for ambiguity. But part of the legal controversy has centered around what a “well regulated militia” means.
Judge Silberman’s opinion argued, with convincing historical evidence, that the “militia” the Framers had in mind was not the National Guard of the present, but referred to all able-bodied male citizens who might be called upon to defend their country. The notion that the average American urbanite might today go to his gun locker, grab his rifle and sidearm and rush, Minuteman-like, to his nation’s defense might seem quaint. But at stake is whether the “militia” of the Second Amendment is some small, discreet group of people acting under government control, or all of us.
The phrase “the right of the people” or some variation of it appears repeatedly in the Bill of Rights, and nowhere does it actually mean “the right of the government.” When the Bill of Rights was written and adopted, the rights that mattered politically were of one sort–an individual’s, or a minority’s, right to be free from interference from the state. Today, rights are most often thought of as an entitlement to receive something from the state, as opposed to a freedom from interference by the state. The Second Amendment is, in our view, clearly a right of the latter sort.
While the public is staying away in droves from “Rendition,” “Lions for Lambs” and “In the Valley of Elah,” audiences are really avoiding “Redacted,” De Palma’s picture about US soldiers who rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then kill her and her family. The message movie was produced by NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who insisted on deleting grisly images of Iraqi war casualties from the montage at the film’s end. Cuban offered to sell the film back to De Palma at cost, but the director was too smart to go for that deal. “Redacted” - which “could be the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” said critic Michael Medved -took in just $25,628 in its opening weekend in 15 theaters, which means roughly 3,000 people saw it in the entire country.
Just in time for Thanksgiving, the vile movie “Redacted” is opening in a few theaters this week. The film, financed by billionaire Mark Cuban and directed by far-left bomb thrower Brian DePalma, features drunken American soldiers in Iraq raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl and then slaughtering her family.
As stated in this space two months ago, a depiction like this will be displayed prominently on jihadi Web sites, and will be used as a recruiting tool by terrorists. No doubt.
Both DePalma and Cuban are unrepentant and apparently could not care less about putting U.S. troops in even more danger. Cuban opines that it is wrong to condemn the film without seeing it, but that’s incredible nonsense. No one denies the movie puts American soldiers in the worst light possible. As one reader emailed, “Saying you can’t condemn ‘Redacted’ without seeing it is like saying you can’t condemn crystal meth without taking it.”
So what’s to be done here? In a free society, Mark Cuban is entitled to make this despicable movie. Our military people have fought and died to give him that right. Isn’t that ironic? Cuban uses his freedom and his money, made in America, to put our troops at further risk. How does the guy live with himself?
This isn’t about the Iraq war or the war on terror. This is about fellow citizens. Even during the ultra-contentious Vietnam conflict, Hollywood didn’t make films that aided the enemy.
One of the most famous faces of communism is getting a makeover this week, with a new poster designed to teach students the whole story about Cuban revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
“The Victims of Che Guevera” poster, produced by the Young America’s Foundation, centers on a collage that uses tiny photos of those killed by Cuba’s communist regime to compose the face of the Marxist guerrilla, who has become a popular T-shirt icon.
“Che is one of the heroes that the left idolizes,” said Patrick X. Coyle, vice president of YAF. “But a lot of kids don’t know anything about him. We thought this would be a great way to highlight his atrocities…”
The Che poster was the brainchild of YAF President Ron Robinson and created by designer Jonathan Briggs.
“We worked with Umberto Fontova, author of ‘Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him,’ and he helped us acquire the images” of victims of Cuban communism, Mr. Coyle said…
A famous photo of Guevara by Alberto Korda was made into a poster that adorned the walls of many student radicals in the U.S. during the era in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Guevara was “an international terrorist and mass murderer,” the YAF poster declares.
It’s no accident, Mr. Coyle suggests, that Guevara T-shirts are worn by students on so many campuses today. “Colleges and universities are the last holdouts of Marxist ideas,” he said.
[Guevara] was a psychopath with a central role in Cuba’s 1961 mass executions in the “year of the wall.” Guevara signed at least 600 death warrants and executed children against firing squad walls; he was responsible for at least 2,000 deaths.
After that, the Argentine-born communist organized Cuba’s gulag. His violence was so over the top it scared even Castro, who eventually sent him away to fight mercenary wars in Africa.
“There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people.” –Alan Greenspan
….
Nobel Laureate economist and Red Planet hero Milton Friedman passed away one year ago this week at age 94. He was, as Thomas Sowell once said, “one of the very few intellectuals with both genius and common sense.”
The Dallas Federal Reserve has now released a 2005 interview done between Dallas Fed president and CEO Richard W. Fisher and Dr. Friedman. In this clip Dr. Friedman discusses the Federal Reserve’s past mistakes (causing the Great Depression) and Paul Volcker’s and Alan Greenspan’s roles in stabilizing inflation and price levels.
Highly recommended viewing.
The interview is in 4 parts. The rest can be viewed by going here.
Teachers at a primary school have been ordered to dress up as Muslims to promote multi-culturalism.
The West Midlands school is belatedly celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid and told its pupils and teachers to don traditional Muslim dress for the day.
All 257 pupils, most of whom are Christians, and 41 teachers - two of whom are Muslims - dressed up.
A morning assembly was held to mark the event and an afternoon party was strictly for women only, because Muslim husbands object to wives mixing with other men.
Sally Bloomer, head of Rufford primary school in Lye, West Midlands, told The Sun: “I have not heard of any complaints. It’s all part of a diversity project to promote multi-culturalism.”
But a relative of one of the staff reportedly said: “Who would put their job on the line? They have been told they have to embrace the day to show their diversity. But they are not all happy.”
Anti-Semitism is rife within Britain’s Muslim community. Islamic bookshops sell copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the notorious czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; as an undercover TV documentary revealed in January, imams routinely preach anti-Jewish sermons. Opinion polls show that nearly two-fifths of Britain’s Muslims believe that the Jewish community in Britain is a legitimate target “as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East”; that more than half believe that British Jews have “too much influence over the direction of UK foreign policy”; and that no fewer than 46 percent think that the Jewish community is “in league with Freemasons to control the media and politics.”
But anti-Semitism has also become respectable in mainstream British society. “Anti-Jewish themes and remarks are gaining acceptability in some quarters in public and private discourse in Britain and there is a danger that this trend will become more and more mainstream,” reported a Parliamentary inquiry last year. “It is this phenomenon that has contributed to an atmosphere where Jews have become more anxious and more vulnerable to abuse and attack than at any other time for a generation or longer.”
At the heart of this ugly development is a new variety of anti-Semitism, aimed primarily not at the Jewish religion, and not at a purported Jewish race, but at the Jewish state. Zionism is now a dirty word in Britain, and opposition to Israel has become a fig leaf for a resurgence of the oldest hatred.
