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Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has just returned to Austria after an extended visit to the United States, where she was invited to speak by various anti-Islamization groups in different cities.
On April 21 Elisabeth spoke in Dallas, Texas at an event sponsored by the Dallas chapter of ACT! For America. She was introduced at the event by Lt. Col. (ret.) Allen West. Below is the prepared text for her speech.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for inviting me to speak to ACT! for America here in Dallas, Texas. These are perilous times we are living in. Advocates for freedom on both sides of the Atlantic need to stand together!
For the past nine months Austria and the rest of Western Europe have undergone a profound transformation, one that will inevitably change the face of Europe permanently. I refer, of course, to the migration crisis, which began in earnest last summer, and is continuing as I speak to you. As the weather warms up and spring gives way to summer, we may expect the crisis to intensify even further. More than a million immigrants arrived in Austria and Germany via the Balkan route last year, and at least as many are expected to come this year probably significantly more.
These migrants are generally referred to by our political leaders and the media as refugees, but this is hardly the case. Not only are most of them from countries where there is no war to flee from, but they are also overwhelmingly young Muslim men, of fighting age. In other words, the current crisis is actually an instance of Islamic hijra, or migration into infidel lands to advance the cause of Islam. The hijra goes hand in hand with jihad once enough Muslim migrants have settled in the target country, violent jihad can begin.
It should be quite clear by now that the jihad phase has already begun in Western Europe. The most recent instances were the massacres in Paris and Brussels, which were acts of jihadcarried out by Muslims. Some of the terrorists were in fact refugees who had pretended to be Syrian and came in with the migrant wave.
And all of them were fighting jihad in the way of Allah, as instructed by the Koran.
I could take up my entire time slot tonight talking about the European migration crisis, and never do more than scratch the surface. However, Id like to discuss one aspect of the crisis that is very important: the manipulation by the mainstream media of the news about the migrants.
A single example from a beach in Turkey will help give you an idea of what is going on. The image that sparked Western interest in the crisis was the widely-publicized photograph of the dead toddler on the beach in Turkey. That photo is an example of media manipulation. Not about the fact of the babys death, but what was done with his little body once he was dead. There is now ample evidence that the body was moved and arranged in place so that the most heart-wrenching photo could be taken. Furthermore, the father of the child was not a poor helpless refugee trying to escape to freedom, but an accomplice of the people smugglers who piloted the boat, who irresponsibly brought his family with him.
For journalists working for Der Spiegel or Le Figaro or The Guardian or CNN, the media narrative is more important than the truth. And the media narrative was (and is) that poor innocent refugees are drowning because they are left to die by evil Europeans.
Those facts about the incident never made it into public consciousness. Not like the image of the pitiful corpse at the edge of the waves thats the kind of story that the Western media love to dish out, especially when it promotes the media narrative. Its also the kind of story that Western audiences love to lap up its what Gates of Vienna, the website Im associated with, calls Dead Baby Porn.
Dead Baby Porn tugs the heartstrings of well-meaning Westerners. It reinforces all their presuppositions about current events. It gives them a vicarious frisson about the poor, suffering child. And, in their response, it makes them feel morally superior when they join the clamor to open their countrys borders to the unfortunate refugees.
The media feed the public a steady stream of photos and videos that feature pitiful migrant women and children. We see them looking through the razor wire towards freedom, weeping, cooking their food over a campfire, and being pushed back by border guards. Yet these images are so misleading that they constitute disinformation.
The ugly fact is that the overwhelming majority of the refugees are healthy young men who either have no wives and children, or left them behind to seize the opportunity for hijra into Europe. They come from Afghanistan, Morocco, Eritrea, and Pakistan, but they acquire forged or stolen Syrian passports so that they become Syrian, and thus qualify for VIP status in the flood of refugees.
We are being deliberately manipulated. The Western public is being manipulated into supporting the migration of fighting-age Muslim men into Europe. They are being manipulated into joining the crowd of starry-eyed people holding up Welcome Refugees signs in European train stations. And they are being manipulated into paying for all of it through their donations to various NGOs whose mission is to aid the refugees.
Yet their donations do not cover the entire cost. Its a very expensive proposition to send refugees from Anatolia to the Greek islands, and then through Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria to Germany. Its not just the payment to the people-smugglers who take them across a few miles of the Aegean and dump them just off the beach on Lesbos, although that is expensive enough. From there they are carried by ferry to the mainland, housed, clothed, and fed. When they continue their journey, they ride on buses and trains almost the entire distance they walk only a few hundred yards to cross each border, getting out of a bus in one country and boarding another one in the next.
This is yet another way in which you, the Western public, are being manipulated by the media. All those photos and videos of endless columns of refugees walking along dusty roads carrying their children and pathetic belongings those are not representative of the migrants journey. A typical shot would show hundreds of young men sitting on buses with air conditioning and upholstered seats. But you dont see many of those, do you?
Someone is paying the costs of all this. Public donations cover only a small portion of the billions of dollars paid out to transport migrants. The governments of the countries involved pay some of the cost. And the European Union pays some of it. And there are multiple indications that George Soros and his Open Society Foundations are bankrolling a lot of the process, including the printing of maps and helpful instructions for the refugees in multiple languages.
Make what you will of all of this. No matter what their motives are, the internationalists who push for global governance and a borderless world are expending vast amounts of money to fool the European public and move millions of Muslim immigrants into Western Europe. Europe will become more diverse, whether it likes it or not.
And if, as a consequence, terror attacks have to kill hundreds or thousands of people, and women have to be gang-raped, why, those are just unfortunate side-effects.
You cant make an omelet without breaking eggs, you know. Especially white European eggs.
***************
The migrant crisis is just the beginning of what might be called the kinetic phase of the deconstruction of European nation-states. Last summers events were not a new crisis. They were simply a continuation of an ongoing long-term process.
The constant flow of migrants across the Mediterranean into Europe has been going on for at least a decade. It picked up speed after the Arab Spring began in 2011, and especially after Moammar Qaddafi was murdered. Then the flow of migrants accelerated greatly last summer because President Erdogan of Turkey stopped interfering with the boats of the people-smugglers.
And now the European Union has paid an enormous amount of protection money to Mr. Erdogan in return for his promise to do what he used to do for free stop the traffickers boats from crossing the Aegean to Greece.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the flow of migrants into Europe is an intentional process on the part of EU leaders. Many of them especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel are on record saying how important it is to invite all this diversity into Europe. The recent tsunami has obviously taken them by surprise, but it is exactly what they wanted just not this fast.
They didnt want the immigrants entering this quickly because the indigenous people of Europe might become alarmed by the influx and take action to throw their leaders out of office. This would not do. Those leaders want native Europeans to remain asleep so that the process of population replacement can be completed before they realize it.
No, it wasnt supposed to happen this way. But now the European people are waking up, and change is in the air. It may be too little, too late but awareness is finally dawning.
Population replacement is only one of the strategies employed by those who want to deconstruct the nation-states of Europe. In order to complete the process without a hitch, the native populace must be kept under control. Existing cultural institutions such as the Church and patriotic organizations must be discredited and weakened so that people are unable to form networks and organize against what is being done to them. Ideally, they would beunaware that such organizing is even possible. They must remain atomized, divided from one another, and under the full control of the state the EU superstate, that is.
As the situation has worsened for the last decade or so, the European Union and its member states have cracked down on free speech. Bringing in so many migrants has accelerated the Islamization of Europe, which tends to be unpopular. Increased crime, more rape and harassment of women, the insistence that schools must serve halal foods and male students receiving permission to refrain from shaking their female teachers hand these are all things that citizens dislike. But from the point of view of EU leaders, there is no going back the migration must proceed; its a necessary part of the plan. Therefore, people must not be allowed to discuss these things nor urge their leaders to make changes. Instead, the criticism of Islam and Islamization must be forbidden. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations call it defamation of religion, and it has now been criminalized all across Europe. The EU is for all practical purposes enforcing sharia law on its indigenous residents.
Ten years ago, when I first began this work, the number of political prosecutions for hate speech in Europe was very small the cases could be counted on the fingers of one hand. But that number has been increasing steadily ever since, and is now rising exponentially. There are now hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases every year in which people are prosecuted for racism, incitement, and discrimination simply for criticizing Islam or mass immigration. Unfortunately, many of those prosecuted are being convicted and fined. And, horribly enough, some are being sent to prison.
There are many, many cases of people being prosecuted for speaking the truth about Islam. Far too many for me to tell you about them all. Ill discuss my own case in a few minutes, but first Id like to say a few words about two friends of mine.
The first case is that of Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom the PVV the most popular political party in the Netherlands. If an election were held today, the PVV would win at least twice as many seats in parliament as any other party. After the current government falls, Geert may very well become the next prime minister.
Yet the government is prosecuting him for what he said about Moroccan immigrants. His first court appearance was last month, but the trial was postponed until next fall.
He is being charged with discrimination for asking his supporters at a rally whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. The charges against him were brought after thousands of complaints had been filed with the police on pre-printed forms that police themselves had handed out in Muslim neighborhoods, and that imams had distributed to their illiterate congregants, many of whom had no idea what they were signing.
In other words, Geert Wilders was set up. His outspoken opinions about Islam, immigration, and the EU are considered unacceptable by the Powers That Be, and he must be stopped at any cost and by any means. His trial is a travesty, a farrago of justice. To call it a kangaroo court would be an insult to the worlds marsupials. A more fitting term would be show trial, just like those ordered by Stalin in the 1930s against his political enemies.
This is not the first political trial that Geert Wilders has had to endure, nor is it the second. This is the third time that the Dutch state has prosecuted him for hate speech. The first ended in a mistrial due to prosecutorial misconduct. In the second he was acquitted. But the establishment will not be satisfied until it has convicted him and ended his political career, so it is putting him on trial again.
Another friend who is being persecuted by the state is Tommy Robinson, who was one of the founders of the English Defence League and was its leader for five years. Tommy has been brought to court by the British government numerous times. All of those prosecutions the hate speech charges and all the others were trumped-up affairs carried out for political purposes.
Tommys most recent conviction was for mortgage fraud, a minor crime for which no one else has done jail time. In fact, members of parliament have done exactly the same thing, but were never even charged. Tommy, on the other hand, was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
While Tommy was inside, he was locked up with hardened Muslim criminals who wanted to kill him. He was repeatedly attacked and beaten up, and ended up in the prison hospital more than once.
On one occasion he was locked in a cell with several Muslim prisoners. Tommy had learned beforehand that one of them was planning to throw a mixture of boiling water and sugar in his face. This nasty brew is called napalm by the criminals who use it, and it can cause horrible burns, much worse than those caused by simple boiling water. Tommy acted pre-emptively and beat up the man who intended to throw it on him.
It is this incident for which he was recently charged. Thanks to the efforts of a group of women who through crowd-funding raised more than enough money, Tommy was for the first time able to retain a top-notch lawyer. He was acquitted and is now a free man.
The real issue behind all these arrests is that Tommy speaks the truth about the danger to the British people posed by Islam. But he is no longer being prosecuted for hate speech offenses the state does not want the substance of what he says to aired in an open courtroom and discussed in the national media. Therefore other types of infractions must be found and other charges brought. The current case against him is simply the latest example of the repressive tactics being employed by the totalitarian British state.
So heres the plan: Lock up the most charismatic leader the British Counterjihad has. Put him in with his most dangerous enemies Muslim criminals who have promised to kill him. Make sure that the guards are absent or looking the other way when the trouble starts. Then, as far as the sharia-compliant British state is concerned, the problem has been solved.
The UK, like all the other enlightened governments of Western Europe, has abolished the death penalty. But theres more than one way to kill a political nuisance you dont have to march him up the steps to the gibbet, put the noose around his neck, and open the trapdoor under him.
What is happening to Tommy Robinson is capital punishment by alternative means.
***************
And now for my own case.
In early 2008 I began a series of seminars in Vienna, under the auspices of the FP the Austrian Freedom Party explaining to members and other interested parties what Islam, the Quran and the hadith really teach, along with basic tenets of Islamic law. In my presentations I discussed the consequences for democracy, freedom and human rights today.
For the next year and a half the interest in my seminars grew, and attendance increased. The success of my lectures drew the attention of Austrian leftists, who are determined to discredit and destroy the work of those who criticize the tenets of Islamic doctrine. To them we are racists, fascists, and Islamophobes. Unbeknownst to me, the left-wing magazine NEWS sent a reporter to one of my seminars to make a surreptitious recording of it.
As a result, in late November, 2009, a criminal complaint was filed against me for hate speech . From an Austrian left-wing point of view, my offense was compounded by the fact that my seminars were held under the auspices of the FP. Despite its popularity with Austrian voters, the FP is reviled as a xenophobic party by leftist media and politicians.
The complaint against me was not filed by the state, but rather by NEWS magazine, the publication whose reporter had infiltrated the seminar. For the next ten months the possibility of a formal charge was left hanging over my head, but I received no official word about what might happen to me. All I could do was retain legal counsel and wait.
In April 2010 I gave a deposition to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Prevention of Terrorism. After that there was nothing from the prosecutors office. Finally, on September 15, I learned that a formal charge would be filed against me. A few days later I received official notice from the court: my trial date would be November 23, 2010.
During my trial the issue of pedophilia came up, in light of Muhammads status as the perfect example for Muslims, as stated in Quran 33:21. I explained what the hadith collections are, and that they constitute an indispensable part of Islamic scripture. I emphasized that I had made up none of what I said, but simply quoted canonical Islamic scripture concerning Muhammads conduct, including his marriage to a little girl named Aisha.
The trial was then adjourned until the following January. At the second hearing, excerpts from the seminar recordings were played back, demonstrating that the original charge of incitement to hatred was unjustified.
The judge then discussed my statement that the conduct of Muhammad is exemplary for Muslims, and took particular issue with the statement What would this behavior be called today, if not pedophilia? which was a reference to the prophets marriage to a six-year-old girl.
Evidently aware that the charge of incitement to hatred was never going to fly, the judge, at her own discretion, eventually announced a new charge: Denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion. My defense was unprepared for this, and requested that the trial be adjourned.
When court reconvened in February, events moved swiftly to a close. The judge decided that the language used in my seminars did not incite hatred, but the utterances regarding Muhammad and pedophilia were punishable. In particular, the judge found that the use of pedophilia was factually incorrect, as this is a sexual preference solely or mainly directed towards children. The judge stated that this cannot apply to Muhammad, who was still married to Aisha when she attained the age of 18. Thus, I was found not guilty on the count of incitement to hatred, but guilty on the charge of denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion, to be punished with a 480 fine or 60 days in prison.
The charge on which I was convicted was ludicrous on the face of it. Not only did I never say that Muhammads actions constituted pedophilia, but Muhammads actions which were undisputed by the court included having sex with a nine-year-old girl. If I had said what I was accused of, it would have been nothing more than the simple truth, and unremarkable to any normal, sane person.
I appealed my conviction to a higher court. In December, 2011, the verdict was upheld. Later the case was considered by the Austrian Supreme Court, which upheld the verdict in December, 2013.
I have exhausted my options for justice in Austria, so the case was put before the European Court of Human Rights. It was accepted, and has been pending now for several years.
Whichever way the court decides, the verdict will have implications for citizens throughout Europe, and not just for Austrians. If my conviction is overturned, it will set an important precedent for the freedom to criticize religions and religiously-sanctioned conduct.
If, on the other hand, my conviction is upheld, the situation will be dire indeed. To quote the words of British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, spoken on August 3, 1914: The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.
***************
When taken together, the events Ive described tonight paint a picture of a Europe that is careening over the multicultural cliff. The traditional cultures and nations of Europe are being deliberately deconstructed so that a borderless society with no national identities can be constructed on top of the ruins.
And a borderless Europe is simply a precursor to a borderless global society. This future entity is commonly referred to as the New World Order or global governance, and it is intended to be an unaccountable worldwide system of management and control modeled on the United Nations. A totalitarian behemoth to paraphrase what George Orwell said: If you want a vision of the globalist future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
However, recent reactions to the European migration crisis indicate that events may not in fact be unfolding as planned. The response of most of the member states of the European Union has been to tighten up their borders and reinstitute border controls. Just last week Austria began fortifying its border crossing with Italy on the Brenner Pass, in anticipation of a new surge of 300,000 immigrants that is expected to arrive in Italy this year. Immigrants dont want to stay in Italy or Greece they want to move north to Austria, Germany, Britain, and Sweden, where the welfare benefits are the most generous. The Austrian government is well aware of the northward trajectory of the migrants, and is acting to forestall it, just as it did last winter when it closed the Balkan route.
The successive closure of European borders is widely seen as the death-knell of the Schengen Agreement, under which all but two EU countries (plus four non-EU countries) had been effectively borderless for internal travel purposes. When EU political leaders meet to discuss the crisis, it is often with the stated intention of saving Schengen. But Schengen is already dead they just dont realize it.
Paradoxically, even as they close their borders to more immigrants, European countries are cracking down harder on domestic dissent on the topic of immigration and Islam. In Germany and Britain people are being arrested for posting messages that criticize immigrants or Islam on social media. Police in Berlin recently raided ten residences after their occupants had voiced anti-migrant sentiments on Facebook. A man in Belgium spoke negatively about Muslims who celebrated the Brussels massacre, and was immediately visited at his home by three policemen, who requested that he refrain from such criticism in future.
If European countries are now determined to keep out future migrants, why are they cracking down on citizens who criticize immigration?
The short answer is: there are millions of immigrants already here. Hence they must be placated. If criticizing them makes them angry and causes them to take to the streets in violent demonstrations, then criticism of them must be outlawed.
I dont need to tell you that most of these millions of immigrants are Muslims. Thats why criticism of Islam must be vigorously suppressed. Notwithstanding the much-trumpeted status of Islam as a religion of peace, Muslims in Europe are notoriously prone to violence, and are always ready to take to the streets at a moments notice. They may begin with loud chanting and signs that say behead those who insult the prophet, but they more than likely will escalate rapidly to throwing rocks, assaulting the police, burning cars, vandalizing property, and other forms of general mayhem.
No, its better (and easier) to silence the critics of Islam, in the hope that mob violence may be postponed for a just little while longer.
Exceptions to the general repression may be found in EU member states of the former East Bloc. It seems that people who survived decades under communism are less susceptible to the tyranny of political correctness. An alliance known as the Visegrd Group was formed in Central Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain and is currently led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbn of Hungary, President Milo Zeman of the Czech Republic, and Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia. Not only do these countries allow dissent on the issue of Islam, their political leaders are among the foremost Islam-critics what they say into the microphones in their state broadcasting studios is the same thing that prompted the prosecution of Geert Wilders, Tommy Robinson, and myself.
Nowadays those former communist dictatorships host the freest speech in Europe.
And the Visegrd Group is also resisting the mandatory quotas of refugees that the European Union is trying to impose. Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland have all declined to take in any of Mrs. Merkels refugees. President Zeman and Prime Ministers Orbn and Fico have gone so far as to state that they specifically do not want any Muslimimmigrants that Islam is incompatible with a free democratic society.
In the most recent example of former East Bloc resistance, on Sunday April 10 Romanian citizens took to the streets to protest a mega-mosque planned for Bucharest. We fought the Ottomans for eight hundred years we dont want any mosques! such were the chants of the demonstrators on the streets of Bucharest.
The future of Europe may depend on these stalwart patriots behind what used to be the Iron Curtain. They are leading the way showing the cowardly political leaders of Western Europe how these things could and should be done.
***************
Ladies and Gentlemen,
You may be asking yourselves, Why should I care about whats happening in Europe? These things are thousands of miles and an ocean away from here let the Europeans sort it out for themselves.
There are two practical reasons why what happens in Europe should be of concern to Americans. The first is that an Islamic ascendancy in Europe poses a security threat to the United States. Not only does Western Europe offer a springboard for the Great Jihad to jump the Atlantic, but there are also stockpiles of nuclear weapons and other advanced armaments in Europe. There are already far too many Muslims in the ranks of the military in France and Britain. What will happen when the tipping point is finally reached, and the sleeper cells are activated?
The second reason is that your own government is attempting to replicate the European model right here in the United States. Under the so-called Refugee Resettlement Program, thousands of Syrian refugees are being settled all across America. This is being done quietly, whenever possible without consulting local authorities. The U.S. government has acknowledged that it is impossible to vet these migrants properly. Based on what has been happening in Europe, a significant number of those resettled here will be Islamic State terrorists using forged identity documents.
Do you know whether any of these Syrians are being resettled near you?
Does your congressional representative have any idea whats going on? Better ask him!
Europes present is Americas future. The massacres in Paris and Brussels are coming here as soon as enough jihad sleeper cells are in place. The first dark cloud of the coming storm appeared last December over San Bernardino, California. When it breaks fully, it will be fierce indeed.
Those who plan a borderless world are just as intent on overwhelming the United States with third-world immigrants as they are France, Germany, and Britain. Undermining national sovereignty is the name of the game, throughout the entire Western world.
Your migration wave includes more Latin Americans than Muslims, but thousands of Muslims are indeed arriving. And an undetermined number of Latin migrants who walk across your southern border are in fact Muslims from the Middle East, who have acquired forged papers and learned a little bit of Spanish so that they can pass for Mexicans when they arrive in Laredo or San Diego.
Yes, the Great Jihad will arrive here all too soon.
I urge you to exercise your fundamental constitutional rights while you still can. Speak up and speak out against what is happening at every opportunity. And thank God for your First Amendment! We dont have that in Europe, and I wish we did thanks to the Bill of Rights, prosecuting dissenters is much more difficult here in the USA.
And thank God for the Second Amendment! Most Europeans have no ready access to legal firearms. When the refugees assault them, invade their homes, and rape their women and children, they cannot defend themselves. The only thing they can do is to call the police and, as you all know, when seconds matter, the police are only minutes away.
So I implore you, as American citizens and patriots: Hang on to your hard-won rights! The Constitution is being taken away from you, bit by bit take action while you still can. You are fortunate to live in the United States, but large forces are arrayed against you. Your enemies many of whom are right here in America make no bones about what they intend. They want to eradicate American exceptionalism and make the USA just like Europe a subjugated state.
As for myself, I will continue to speak the truth, no matter what. I owe as much to my daughter, and her children and childrens children. No matter the final outcome, I want her to be able to say: My mother did everything she possibly could.
Europeans and Americans share a common heritage. We must hang together, or we will surely hang separately.
I urge you to stand with me!
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Forbes | Blocked By The President: Are Trump's Twitter Practices Violating Free Speech? Forbes President and prolific Tweeter Donald Trump has come under fire yet again for his social media use. However, this time it's not about the ridiculous things he's saying, but how he's preventing what others are saying about him. The thin-skinned ... Columbia University's free speech experts argue that when Trump blocks Twitter followers he violates the Constitution Free Speech Group Says Trump Violates the First Amendment by Blocking Critics on Twitter Free Speech Group Threatens to Sue Trump if he Doesn't Unblock Blocked Twitter Users |
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Blocked By The President: Are Trump's Twitter Practices Violating Free Speech? - Forbes
ST. PETERSBURG After offensive signs appeared in front of a home in the Historic Old Northeast neighborhood last weekend, residents wrestled with the line between free speech and hate speech. While they searched for answers, a difficult truth presented itself: Just because speech is hateful doesn't mean it's not protected by the First Amendment.
Saturday evening, signs went up on the pristine, green lawn of 303 27th Ave. N in St. Petersburg. "No fags," "No Jews," "No infidels," "No retards," they read.
While people gawked and took pictures, residents scrambled for a solution. Complaints were made with City Hall, but the city government had no power to get the signs taken down, said Ben Kirby, a spokesman for Mayor Rick Kriseman.
"The city's goal is to help protect citizens' ability to exercise their free speech," Kirby said. "The city does not regulate constitutionally protected speech on private property."
The only possible grounds for action were the number of signs in the yard, but the signs were taken down by Sunday evening. City code permits "free speech signs" on private property, but has restrictions on things like size and placement.
The First Amendment serves as a shield for all speech, said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, and the instinct to gag speech we disagree with is exactly why we need such protections.
"If we don't defend the free speech rights of the most unpopular among us, even for views that are antithetical to the very freedom the First Amendment stands for, then no one's liberty will be secure," Simon said.
There's a good reason to keep the government at arm's length when it comes to free speech, he said.
"History has taught us that government with the power to censor hateful speech is more apt to use this power to prosecute minorities than to protect them," Simon said.
The only speech the First Amendment doesn't protect is speech that threatens real harm. But some argue it restricts speech that could lead to physical damage but does nothing to protect against emotional damage, which can be equally traumatic.
Society should employ more scrutiny when deciding what deserves to be protected, said Thane Rosenbaum, a distinguished fellow at New York University and author of the upcoming book The High Cost of Free Speech: Rethinking the First Amendment.
"We've interpreted it so literally that almost every word that comes out of your mouth is protected," Rosenbaum said. "We need to ask questions like, 'Are you doing something because you want to introduce an idea or are you doing something because you want to cause fear?' "
When the signs appeared, several neighbors said they felt unsafe in their own neighborhood. But this isn't the first time an incident like this has happened in Pinellas County.
In 2005, a toilet appeared on the lawn of a house in Pinellas Park with a sign that said, "Koran flush 1 p.m."
The owner of the home said he was making a political statement. At the time, Pinellas Park was home to the largest mosque in the county. Much like last weekend, residents felt threatened and looked to city government for a solution, but found none.
PREVIOUS STORY: Offensive signs cause stir in St. Petersburg's Old Northeast neighborhood
Painful as it may be, confronting hateful speech lets people acknowledge values that conflict with theirs, said Lyrissa Lidsky, a law professor at the University of Florida. Lidsky, who is Jewish, took her children to an event at University of Florida Hillel, where the Westboro Baptist Church was protesting. She considered it to be a powerful lesson.
"It's a lesson in citizenry," Lidsky said. "Children learn early on that there are different values in the world, and it's affirming for them to see their families and communities reach out against hate."
The First Amendment is broad because it expects citizens to fight back against speech that makes them feel attacked, Lidsky said.
"The remedy for speech that we hate is counterspeech," Lidsky said.
After the signs had come down, something new appeared at 303 27th Ave. N. Early this week, lines of black spray paint laced across the house's white shutters, in the shape of the anarchy symbol and "Antifa," which refers to the antifascist movement.
Contact Taylor Telford at ttelford@tampabay.com or (513) 376-3196. Follow @taylormtelford.
Free speech means language on hate signs is protected 06/08/17 [Last modified: Thursday, June 8, 2017 12:53pm] Photo reprints | Article reprints
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Free speech means language on hate signs is protected | Tampa ... - Tampabay.com
YANGON Myanmar journalists sporting "Freedom of the Press" arm-bands gathered on Thursday to campaign against a law they say curbs free speech, at the start of a trial of two journalists who the army is suing for defamation over a satirical article.
The rally by more than 100 reporters in the rain outside a court in Yangon was the first significant show of opposition to the telecommunications law, introduced in 2013, that bans the use of the telecoms network to "extort, threaten, obstruct, defame, disturb, inappropriately influence or intimidate".
Despite pressure from human rights monitors and Western diplomats, the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which took power amid high hopes for democratic reform in 2016, after decades of hardline military rule, has retained the law.
The journalists said they were dismayed by the recent arrests of social media users whose posts were deemed distasteful, as well as of journalists critical of the military.
"At first, they were suing people over news articles and now they are suing even over a satirical article, showing how they are restricting the media," said A Hla Lay Thuzar one of the founders of the Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, which organized the rally.
She said that rather than staging a one-off protest, her group wants to launch a movement to raise public awareness of the issue and press the government to abolish the law.
The journalists on trial are the chief editor and a columnist of the Voice, one of Myanmar's largest dailies.
They were denied bail on the first day of their trial, meaning they may have to remain in custody.
"Obtaining bail is our right so we will keep fighting for it during next court dates until we get it," said Khing Maung Myint, who is representing the two journalists.
The telecommunications law was a main piece of legislation introduced by a semi-civilian administration of former generals which navigated Myanmar's transition from full military rule to the coming to power of Suu Kyi's government, from 2011 to 2016.
The protesting journalists said they would wear the arm-bands for the next 10 days to raise awareness about what they see as the threat to freedom of the press.
They are also planning to gather signatures for a petition to abolish the law, to be sent to Suu Kyi's office, the army chief and parliament.
(Reporting by Shoon Naing; Editing by Antoni Slodkowski, Robert Birsel)
RAQQA, Syria At Raqqa's eastern edge, a handful of Syrian fighters cross a river by foot and car, all the while relaying their coordinates to the U.S.-led coalition so they don't fall victim to friendly fire.
MELBOURNE Australian counter-terrorism police conducted pre-dawn raids in the southern city of Melbourne on Friday and were questioning three men they said were suspected of providing weapons used in a deadly siege this week claimed by the Islamic State group.
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Myanmar journalists campaign for free speech outside Myanmar trial - Reuters
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Images
Less than 48 hours after an egomaniacal, snooty, three-toed, sloth-looking wet diaper joked about being a house nigger on Fridays episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, white supremacists armed with bats, bricks and cans of Pepsi rioted in Portland, Ore., at what they deemed a free speech rally.
The day after the Portland Purge, city officials in Charlottesville, Va., announced that they had issued permits to two white supremacist organizations to hold rallies this summer. The hate group ACT for America has also teamed up with organizations around the country to sponsor an anti-Muslim March Against Sharia in 26 cities June 10.
Organizers announced Monday that the next stop on the much anticipated, sold-out White Supremacist
These incidents have all been explained as consequences of the constitutional protection of free speech. According to their organizers logic, being white in America affords them the ability to aggravate and incite people of color because, apparently, freedom of speech is a white privilege.
The term white privilege originated from a 1988 essay by Peggy McIntosh entitled, White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Womens Studies. The work was later condensed into a shorter essay, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (pdf).
In her writing, McIntosh listed the ways in which she was afforded white privilege, including not being pulled over by police because of her race, the ability to shop without being harassed or suspected of shoplifting, and enjoying the ability to live in whatever neighborhood she could afford. While all of these things ring true, they underscore an often overlooked fact about the central theme of her thesis:
These arent privileges; they are rights.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of privilege is:
A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
education is a right, not a privilege
The reason white America gets to enjoy these rights is not that they receive a Get out of hate card at birth; it is that the Constitution of the United States guarantees these rights to every American citizen. Walking freely through a store or driving safely down the street isnt supposed to be an entitlement born out of an unseen advantage, like having rich parents or being part of royalty. A privilege is the opposite of a right. The only reason people of color dont get to experience these things is racism, not white privilege.
The protesters in Portland were marching in support of Jeremy Christian, who allegedly stabbed two people and injured another aboard a commuter train. As The Oregonian reports, Christians social media content is thick with references to white nationalist organizations, Nazi insignias and violent rhetoric. Isnt the following Facebook post the definition of a terrorist threat or incitement to gang violence?
Why is this important? Its important because if Christian were black and openly flaunting his allegiance to criminal organizations and speaking of committing illegal acts, he would likely have been flagged by the Portland Police Bureaus gang database. According to The Oregonian, how you conduct yourself, your appearance and who you associate with are all determining factors that can land you in the gang database. Christian has a criminal history, publicly supports white supremacy and looks exactly like what youd expect to see if you snatched the hood off of a Klansman. So why wasnt Christian listed?
Well, even though Portland is the whitest metropolis in America, with a black population of less than 3 percent, the PPBs gang database is 64 percent black and only 8 percent white. Christian had the freedom to assemble with whomever he wanted to because of the First Amendment. Christian was free to say whatever pleased his heart because it is his right. But the reason the government didnt monitor Christians hateful speech, associations and actions that eventually exploded into a double murder is that Christian is white.
White supremacist groups like the ones coming to Charlottesville can waltz into city halls and get permits for hate rallies because the First Amendment guarantees them the right to peacefully assembleregardless of their beliefs. Despite the fact that their rallies are almost never peaceful and they loudly proclaim their desire to wipe out immigrants, non-Christians and people of color, they are still afforded the blank check to come together in whiteness and rail against the mythical white genocide.
Richard Spencer, who was (and I mention this only because it is his claim to fame. Also, I absolutely love white-on-white violence) famously punched in the face on live TV, was recently allowed to speak at Auburn University under the cover of the First Amendment.
Richard Spencer, the self-proclaimed white nationalist and leader of the alt-right (a phrase he
Media reports often refer to white supremacist fight clubs like the Proud Boys (who go to protests to punch 95-pound women in the face) and the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights (FOAKboys) as a fraternity. Oath Keepers parade around with guns and openly promise to disobey the government with lethal force but are never called a gang.
Remember when Black Lives Matter protesters were thugs and going about it the wrong way? Remember when they rioted in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore? Remember how they were such a nuisance during the die-ins after Eric Garners death?
Now every weekend, there are white women in pink pussy hats or some other aggrieved group staging a march. But when the scientists, white women, teachers, health care advocates or one of the other members of the Caucasian contingent protest using the same tactics they vilified BLM for, they say they are resisting. The melee in Portland this weekend was called a skirmish, but headlines described a recent Las Vegas Black Lives Matter protest this way:
To be fair, violence did break outwhen a Donald Trump supporter wearing a Make America Great Again shirt grabbed a female protester by the throat and slammed her to the ground.
Similarly, the Capuchin-monkey-looking late-night host we call Bill Maherwho looks as if he belongs on the shoulder of an organ grindercan throw the n-word around all willy-nilly because he knows he has the First Amendment in his back pocket. After he was kicked off of ABC for arguing that the 9/11 hijackers were not cowardly, he made himself a martyr for free speech. He backed up the white mans claim to free speech by bringing on Milo Yiannopoulos on his HBO show this season, painting the racist hero of the white supremacist movement as a victim of political incorrectness.
Remember the black people whose free speech Maher defended? Remember when he publicly advocated for Isaiah Washingtons free speech when he was kicked off Greys Anatomy? Did you see the episodes when he had Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan on Real Time to discuss political correct ... ? Oh, waitMaher didnt do any of that.
When you hear white supremacist asswipes like Richard Spencer, the Ku Klux Klan and Bill Maher conjure white tears when their freedom of speech has been infringed upon, remember that they dont care about the universal right of free speech; they care about their own free speech. (To be fair, Maher is not really a white supremacist asswipe; he really is a white, supremacist asswipe. He doesnt believe that white people are better than everyone. He just believes thathe is better than everyonethe comma placement makes all the difference.)
The hooded terrorists, the alt-right gangs and the one particular TV host who believes he can denigrate black people because he regularly inserts his penis into black vaginas dont want freedom of speech, because that would mean equality. They want the privilege to say whatever they want, but still be able to make Colin Kaepernick a pariah. They want to fight anti-fascists but condemn black-on-black violence. They want Milo Yiannopoulos to be able to spew his rhetoric while calling for boycotts when Beyoncs clothes remind them of Black Panthers.
They dont really give a damn about the right to free speech.
Theyd rather have the privilege.
See original here:
Nazi salutes high in the air, white supremacists rallying on the town green, colorful banners telling homosexuals they are going to hell this is what democracy looks like.
But the right to say and do those things no matter how offensive many Americans will find them is that First Amendment freedom of speech thing that demonstrators in Portland rallied for over the weekend.
Because as far as we know, the folks taking part in the Trump Freedom of Speech rally werent jailed by their government for anything they said.
They may have been ridiculed, harassed, marginalized, ostracized, asked to leave businesses, refused service, lost their jobs or positions of influence because of the things they said.
But they havent been jailed.
And thats the freedom the First Amendment guarantees. The right to speak out without being jailed though not the right to speak out without being criticized.
So its easy to see that we wield the greatest power punishing peer pressure to stop the growing tide of hatred in America. We have to speak out.
Heres an extreme example the white supremacist in the gym.
Richard Spencer, the Hail Trump alt-right movement leader who champions an American apartheid, complete with a whites-only state, was quietly working out in his Alexandria, Va., gym when he was confronted by another gym member.
I just want to say to you, Im sick of your crap, Georgetown University professor C. Christine Fair said to Spencer, as he was lifting weights.
As a woman, I find your statements to be particularly odious; moreover, I find your presence in this gym to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable, she went on.
Spencer wasnt wearing a swastika shirt or handing out white power fliers at the gym. He was just doing reps. It was the professor who went after him. And she was relentless, calling him a Nazi, then a cowardly Nazi after he refused to identify himself.
It got so uncomfortable, another gym member yelled at the professor for making a scene.
Guess who lost their gym membership?
And his world howled that this was a violation of his freedom of speech.
Most states ban most businesses from discriminating against clients based on the clients race, religion, sex or national origin, law professor Eugene Volokh wrote in The Washington Post last fall, right after the election, about a case where a New Mexico company said it would stop doing business with Trump supporters.
The Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from that kind of discrimination, while some states and cities also ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status and other attributes.
But political affiliation is rarely on the list, Volokh wrote. A few cities or counties do ban such discrimination. D.C. bans discrimination based on the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party.
Spencers freedom of speech wasnt violated. He can say whatever he wants without being jailed.
The constitution doesnt protect his right to belong to a private gym that finds his political and social views dangerous and odious.
But what if a coffee place didnt want to serve a Muslim, a hotel wouldnt rent a room to black family, a baker didnt want to bake a cake for a gay couple or a restaurant didnt want someone with a wheelchair eating in their dining room?
Too bad for the businesses in those cases. State and federal laws prohibit businesses from discriminating against protected classes.
Neo-Nazi is not a protected class at least not yet.
The ACLU is used to these sticky debates, and their attorneys have consistently stood their ground in protecting everyones right to say what they want, no matter how disgusting. It probably wasnt easy to defend the Ku Klux Klans right to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, a town filled with survivors of the Holocaust.
Im not defending hate speech, Im defending free speech, said Claire Guthrie Gastaaga, head of the Virginia ACLU, which has been hearing plenty about Spencer, who lives in Alexandria.
As soon as you accept that its OK to suppress speech, you say its OK to suppress your speech.
But what about the rallies that seem so hateful?
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, D, had the wrong idea when he tried to stop that freedom of speech rally over the weekend. It was scheduled before two men were killed on the light rail trying to protect a woman in hijab being attacked by vocal white supremacist Jeremy Christian.
Christian, 35, was arrested for the killing of Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, and for stabbing another man, Micah Fletcher. When he was brought into a Portland courtroom last week, Christian yelled: Get out if you dont like free speech.
Dude, your free speech was protected at all those rallies where you threw the Heil Hitler salute. Killing two men and stabbing a third is not speech.
The protesters in Portland had the right to spew all their hateful views. The feds recognized that and rejected the mayors request to shut down the rally because it could incite violence.
It was the counter-protestors who behaved violently.
Until they started throwing stuff, damaging property and messing with the police who were there to do their jobs, the counter-protesters had the right idea.
The right response to speech you dont like is more speech, Gastaaga said.
The real harm, she said, is the nice people who say nothing.
So do it. Speak, yell, shout.
Dont shut the other guys out.
Just be louder than them.
Petula Dvorak is a columnist for The Washington Posts local team who writes about homeless shelters, gun control, high heels, high school choirs, the politics of parenting, jails, abortion clinics, mayors, modern families, strip clubs and gas prices, among other things.
Link:
In Portland, the haters are entitled to free speech, but not to silence - Herald and News
In testimony on Capitol Hill this week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said the Department of Education will devolve power from the federal government to families, unleashing a new era of creativity in education.
But big changes may also be underway forthe departments stance on political correctness on college campuses in America, and the all-too-frequent trampling upon the free-speech rights of both students and professors, which has been going on for at least the past 25 years.
Adam Kissel, a free-speech advocate whos gone head-to-head with American universities over speech codes and denial of due-process rights and has almost always succeeded in getting them to back down has been appointed the agencys deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs.
Kissel now works for the Charles Koch Foundation, on grants to colleges and universities, but prior to this, he worked for FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where he was one of the strongest and most active defenders of free speech on American college campuses.
At FIRE, Kissel shot off letters to college administrators nationwide, usuallyon behalf of particular students and professors who had been accused of some minor infraction, often involving expressing an unpopular view, and were being railroaded out of a job or kicked out of school.
In 2008, he wrote a letter to the head of the University of Oklahoma, David Boren, a former governor and United States senator, about the university's new rule that university employees couldn't support or oppose political candidates, and couldn't use the university email system to forward any political commentary or political humor.
"If what the university intended to do was to prevent state-university employees from creating the appearance that the university endorses a particular political candidate, it has wildly overshot," wrote Kissel in his letter. "While it is true that colleges are required because of their tax-exempt status or status as government agencies not to, for example, endorse a candidate, it is simply absurd to argue that any partisan political speech in which employees or students engage using their email accounts can be banned."
"Indeed, by placing such a blanket restriction on political speech, the University of Oklahoma is in clear violation of its legal obligation to uphold the First Amendment on campus. As a public university, Oklahoma is legally bound by the United States Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech. Students and faculty at Oklahoma enjoy this right in full."
He ended the letter by requesting a response not later than "5:00 p.m. EDT on October 10, 2008."
The request for a response was therebecause FIRE doesn't just ask that universities abide by the Constitution: It holds them accountable by waging public-relations battles and taking universities to court when they persist in their violations of constitutional rights.
A Jewish professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, very nearly lost his job when two students, backed by the Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel groups, came after him for critical comments he made about Israel's assault on Gaza in 2009. He wrote in an article in Truthout in 2014 that it was a group of graduate students and Adam Kissel at FIRE who defended his right to free speech.
"On June 10, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education (FIRE), a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, had come to my defense in the name of First Amendment rights and academic freedom. One of their attorneys, Adam Kissel, wrote the chancellor warning him that if all charges against me were not dropped by 5 p.m. on June 24, his organization would launch a major media campaign and a lawsuit against the University of California. An hour or so before this deadline, the university chose to inform me of the decision, made six weeks earlier and kept secret, that the charges against me had already been dropped."
Kissel's writing, however, shows not just a rapid-fire response to free-speech violations on campuses, but a deep understanding of the level of thought control that has developed, and the ways in which students are pressured, under threat of expulsion and ruin, to comply.
"A female freshman arrives for her mandatory one-on-one session in her male RA's dorm room," Kissel wrote in a piece published on the FIRE website on October 30, 2008, entitled "Please Report to Your Resident Assistant to Discuss Your Sexual IdentityIt's Mandatory!"
"It is 8:00 p.m. Classes have been in session for about a week. The resident assistant hands her a questionnaire. He tells her it is 'a little questionnaire to help [you] and all the other residents relate to the curriculum.' He adds that they will 'go through every question together and discuss them.' He later reports that she 'looked a little uncomfortable.' When did you discover your sexual identity?" the questionnaire asks. 'That is none of your damn business,' she writes. 'When was a time you felt oppressed?' 'I am oppressed every day [because of my] feelings for the opera. Regularly [people] throw stones at me and jeer [at] me with cruel names. Unbearable adversity. But I will overcome, hear me, you rock-loving majority.'"
There is a story about the University of Delaware's dormitory diversity program, in which every single incoming freshman is forced to undergo Marxist-inspired questioning and thought-moderation.
The program, Kissel wrote, "crossed the line not just a little, but extensively and in many ways from education into unconscionably arrogant, invasive, and immoral thought reform. The moral and legal problems posed by the residence life education program were abundant and cut to the core of the most essential rights of a free people. What made the program so offensive was moral: its brazen disregard for autonomy, dignity, and individual conscience, and the sheer contempt it displayed for the university's students as well as the so-called dominant culture that made them so allegedly deficient."
As the new deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the Department of Education, Kissel will oversee a part of the agency that includes FLAS grants for foreign language study, Fulbright-Hays grants for study abroad, and numerous programs that serve black students, historically black colleges, Hispanic students, students who are veterans, and students with disabilities. It's unclear whether all of these programs will be continued, or whether some will be cut as the department reorganizes to accommodate the 13 percent cut in the president's budget. It's also unknown whether new initiatives will be started under Kissel to correct or prevent abuses on college campuses related to free speech and due process.
Kissel is slated to start hiswork at the department on Monday, June 19.
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Department of Education Taps Free-Speech Warrior to Oversee ... - LifeZette
Holding our peace
Re Thousands drawn to free speech rally and protests (June 5): Students learn in U.S. Government 101 that no matter how odious they may find another persons opinions, that persons speech is protected by our Constitution under the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.
Students must be prepared to become educated (not indoctrinated) to a particular point of view. If they disagree, they should engage their opponents in civil discourse rather than in violent confrontations. No, we dont have to respect those who voice opinions we find repugnant, but lets hold our peace while they present them. Then, when its our turn to voice our opinion, lets ask them to render the same courtesy to us we gave to them.
David Quintero, Monrovia
Feeling the heat
We are appreciative of Larry Wilsons column (June 7) on his day with Pasadena Fire Department training, called Fire Ops 101, at Station 33. Our department offers this opportunity so residents can see what their public safety professionals do in our jobs while protecting everyone in Pasadena.
Fire Ops 101 allows community leaders to step into the boots of local firefighters to feel the heat and to have a hands-on experience as a firefighter to get an up-close view of what its like to do our dangerous jobs.
We encourage everybody to take advantage of these and other events to interact with public safety employees and get, as Mr. Wilson aptly wrote, the chance to understand what it is to be put in harms way every day for your job.
Scott Austin, president, Pasadena Firefighters Local 809
Donations or bribes?
Though Gary Cliffords of Athens Services wrote in defense of his company (June 7), I believe what reporter Christopher Yee was referring to in his article on the state controllers audit of South El Monte, and what your editorial (June 1) is referring to, is the continued practice of Athens contributing to the campaign of candidates running for city council in cities where they have trash-hauling contracts.
This is not just a South El Monte issue but a problem for other cities as well.
Dont tell me a politician will not be influenced on contracts when money (bribes) is being put in their pockets.
Please take five minutes out of your time and google Athens Services and city trash-hauling contracts and see for yourselves!
Ken Mikkelson, West Covina
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Respect their freedom of speech, and they should respect yours: Letters - The Pasadena Star-News
I held my son Enochs little hand as he died, and went through a suffering that no words could express. A perpetually wounded heart that would not mend, a broken body for which there is no antidote, or a destroyed home that can never be the sameall left me asking many questions: Will I ever see my son again? Is there a theodicy that would qualify? Or is evil a sociological phenomenon? What are the philosophical suppositions that we have subliminally swallowed to even raise this question? How would the bloody cross of Jesus of Nazareth address this universal dilemma?
There are more books and articles on this topic than any other in theology. But because it is so personal, we need to be reminded of the simple truths about it. Let me share seven things that I have considered when thinking about this topic.
One of my friends told me that if this happened to his son, he would become an atheist. But how can that be? Evil is a deviation from the way things ought to be, right? But there can't be a deviation from the way things ought to be unless there is a way things ought to be. There can't be a way things ought to be unless there is a design plan that says, 'Here is how things ought to be.' And there can't be a design plan that says, 'Here is how things ought to be' unless there is a Designer who put forth that design plan in the first place.
So even in raising the objection of evil, my friend is presupposing some absolute standard and thus a designer who makes that standard. So he cannot even raise the problem of evil without first assuming an absolute standard that makes events evil. My friend is smuggling in God to deny God. It would be best if he clings to Him, for only in Him is comfort and ultimately something more than an answer.
I fought with God and, what a surprise, I lost. But in losing I really won.
Epicurus, Hume, and Dawkins claim that evil is not our fault but Gods. The Logical Problem of Evil is:
Augustine, Aquinas, Swinburne, and Planting argued that the Freewill Defense solves the logical problem of evil correctly. It is logically impossible to create free people who must choose good as much as it is impossible to create square circles or married bachelors. Evil is a necessary byproduct of the ability to love and choose.
God desires our love more than anything else from us, so He thus allows evil. See Joshua 24:14-15. God knew this the whole time. This was not Plan B. It was his plan all along. But choice itself did not help me with the death of Enoch. Because it was not a choice of man that he died. He died because he was sick. I rest on the sovereign plan of God and trust even when I cannot see His plan.
When Joes daughter Lulu complains that he brought darkness into her room, he did no such thing; he just took away the light. Evil is a lack of goodness as darkness is a lack of light. There can be an absolute good, but there cannot be an absolute evil.
Absolute Evil. Objective evil cannot exist if atheism is true. Pantheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, in general, claim evil is an illusion. However, rape, murder, war, child abuse, greed, human brutality, kidnapping, and slavery are objectively evilnot illusions. Consider, cosmologically, that the farther we move from the sun, the colder and darker it gets, thus theologically, the farther we move from God, the source of all goodness and truth, the colder and darker it gets spiritually as well.
So Lulu waits for the light and when the sun arrives in the morning, all darkness will flee, for in Him, the Son, is no darkness at all.
When Enoch died, it was very dark and cold. But in coming close to the source, the Son himself, I found the warmth of His peace, even though I did not know why, I trusted his hands, his pierced hands.
See 1 John 3:4 and James 4:7. Sin is the act of volitionally violating God's will by breaking His holy transcendent commandments. Crossing that divine boundary is sin. There are sins too numerous to mention, but two basic kinds: sin of omission (not doing what you should be doing) and sin of commission (doing what you ought not to be doing). But an evil event, like an earthquake, cancer, or a doctor accidently cutting a brainstem is evil, but not necessarily sinful. R.C. Sproul said it well: Evil is not good, but it is good that there is evil.
And God uses all kinds of evils to bring about good. What good can come from the death of my son? Two of them. Daniel and Ana. They are two precious children we adopted from the Republic of Moldovia, one of the poorest countries in Europe. Out of the ashes of Enochs pain came the joy of their laughter.
The Apostle Paul, Lincoln, Caesar, Gandhi, Churchill, and Luther suffered and overcame almost impossible odds. It is in the crucible of suffering that our character is formed. It is His instrument to mold His saints. No athlete hones or disciplines his or her body without pain. Consider this:
I walked a mile with Pleasure She chatted all the way, But left me none the wiser For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow And neer a word said she; But oh, the things I learned from her When Sorrow walked with me
Robert Browning Hamilton
I learned more about my own soul and about God in this period of time than any other time in my life.
If the man who died on that cross 2,000 years ago was not God, then the cross is not enough.
Professor Peter Kreeft said it well:
If that is not God there on the cross but only a good man, then God is not on the hook, on the cross, in our suffering. And if God is not on the hook, then God is not off the hook. How could he sit there in heaven and ignore our tears? There is, as we saw, one good reason for not believing in God: evil. And God himself has answered this objection not in words but in deeds and in tears. Jesus is the tears of God. (Making Sense out of Suffering, IVP, 1986)
People tell me they understand my pain, but even Jesus cannot unless He also experienced the pain of every human being, and only the divine can do that. He vicariously suffered in our place the wrath and justice of God. And rose from the dead to tell us one thing: I love you this much, and since I have overcome death, one day you will too!
Yes, the Church has its shares of sins and evils; these are not to be ignored or minimized and we need to own up to these. But the Church has done more to address evil and suffering in the world than any other organization in history.
So, then, is there at least one or two people in your life who need you to be Gods hands and feet and voice to them today?
I close with the beautiful words of the atheist, Ivan, from The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky:
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.
And in all that, I trust the One with divine pierced hands that one day I will walk on marble streets with Enoch and my other children, walking with our God, who in His one hand will wipe all tears from our eyes, and there will be no more death, suffering, crying, or pain. These things of the past are gone forever.
Then the one sitting on the throne said: I am making everything new. Write down what I have said. My words are true and can be trusted. Everything is finished! I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give water from the life-giving fountain to everyone who is thirsty. (Revelation 21:5-6)
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Seven Things Evil Is Not: What the Death of My Son Taught Me - ChristianityToday.com
When white atheist Islamophobe poster child Bill Maher referred to himself as a house nger in an interview with Senator Ben Sasse, he was not only demeaning black bodies but doing a familiar minstrel danceappropriating a term with deep cultural and historical symbolism in black speech. Maher has prided himself on the kind of f-you outlaw irreverence and establishment-bashing that only a cis-het white male with the reward of a multi-million dollar HBO contract can enjoy without censure. Supposedly docile and less black, HNs have been characterized as complicit with white massa; a distortion that erases the painful history of black female domestic slaves who were often subject to rape and other forms of ritualized violence in the so-called plantation Big House.
Mahers racist vitriol is not new to atheists and humanists of color who have long pushed back against the unapologetic Islamophobia, Eurocentrism and misogyny of him and his fellow alpha males Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. His identity as an atheist is relevant to this latest flap because hes long been a golden boy of the white New Atheist clique; slobbered over for the dudebro swagger with which hes skewered right wing and liberal sacred cows. This kind of stagecraft pimping black experience has become a hallmark of the dudebro white atheists. In 2013, white atheist You-Tuber Dusty chastised black Christians on being House Negroes and Uncle Toms because of their religious indoctrination and was called out by black atheists like myself and Foxy Jazzabelle. Prior to that, American Atheists trotted out the black enslaved body in a 2012 street billboard campaign to boost its activist cred with a lily white donor base that didnt give a damn about segregated African American communities.
Some are starting to learn. I recently received an outlier email from a white donor to the Black Skeptics Los Angeles First in the Family scholarship fund who acknowledged that his primary mission should be to let humanists and non-believers of color lead without white intervention. This was the recurring theme during a May forum featuring black, feminist, trans and indigenous activists across the religious spectrum at the Humanist Institute in Minneapolis. Ashton Woods, Diane Burkholder, Andrea Jenkins, Desiree Kane and Sincere Kirabo spoke out powerfully on the right to self-determination of people of color in radical, progressive and intersectional movement organizing, and the necessity of getting white folk hell bent on being allies to sit down, shut up and retreat.
This issue of white incursions into intentional, as well as institutionally segregated, spaces of color is magnified by the seismic shift occurring in urban communities of color pushed to the brink by gentrification. As black and brown neighborhoods are increasingly under siege from white homebuyers, developers and speculators, communities of color are in even greater peril. Housing and rental affordability has plummeted, and the unemployment rate for African American youth has continued to skyrocket (with the unemployment rate for black male youth ages 16-24 hovering around 20% as of July 2016, in comparison to approximately 9% for young white males). The malign neglect of neoliberal democratic policies is symbolized by the Obama administrations piecemeal attention to black youth employment under the anemically funded My Brothers Keeper Initiative, which shut out African American girlsbased on the erroneous premise that their status was better than that of black boys. Since his election, Trumps Orwellian misinformation about 59% black unemployment has only fueled the familiar narrative of pathological inner cities overrun with lazy, shiftless violent black men.
Taken in this context, Mahers minstrel-esque appropriation of the term House N is even more infuriating as it implies insider-outsider status within a power structure based on white supremacy. Outsider or outlaw status has been a card frequently played by white atheists fronting as though their non-believer status makes them an oppressed class bereft of race and class privilege. Now, as they bemoan the Trump administrations latest assaults on secular rights and womens rights, more of themas Diane and Desiree noted to the Humanist Institutes mostly white audiencehave become freshly galvanized as freedom fighters and allies when the liberation struggle of people of color was never on the menu before. Mahers use of the black body to front is yet another reminder of why atheist identity politics will always be a sham.
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Lawmakers should know how the laws they pass impact their constituents. Thats especially true when the law would reauthorize a vast Internet and telephone spying program that collects information about millions of law-abiding Americans.
But thats exactly what the Intelligence Community wants Congress to do when it considers reauthorizing a sweeping electronic surveillance authority under the expiring Section 702, as enacted by the FISA Amendments Act, before the end of the year.
Intelligence officials have been promising Congress they would provide lawmakers with an estimate of the number of American communications that are collected under Section 702. That estimate is a critical piece of information for lawmakers to have as they consider whether and how to reauthorize and reform the warrantless Internet surveillance of millions of innocent Americans in the coming months.
But during a hearing on Section 702 in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, despite previous assurances, said he wont be providing that estimate out of national security and, ironically, privacy concerns.
He told lawmakers it is infeasible to generate an exact, accurate, meaningful, and responsive methodology that can count how often a U.S. persons communications may be incidentally collected under Section 702. To do so would require diverting NSA analysts attention away from their current work to conduct additional significant research to determine whether the communications collected under Section 702 are American. I would be asking trained NSA analysts to conduct intense identity verification research on potential U.S. persons who are not targets of an investigation, he said. From a privacy and civil liberties perspective, I find this unpalatable.
From a privacy and civil liberties perspective, we find it unpalatable that the Intelligence Community would ask Congress to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program without first following through on the promisereiterated by Coats as recently as earlier this yearto provide some much needed information about how the program impacts Americans. To do so supposedly in the name of privacy concerns is even worse.
It should go without saying: if the Intelligence Community is truly worried about the privacy and civil liberties of ordinary Americans, officials will take the looming Section 702 sunset as an opportunity to give lawmakers the information they need to have an informed and meaningful debate about how government spying programs impact Americans privacy.
Privacy advocate Sen. Ron Wyden criticized DNI Coats for his backtracking, calling his reversal a very, very damaging position to stake out. He warned, Were going to battle it out in the course of this, because there are a lot of Americans that share our view that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive.
And that battle is already happening. With Congress debate over Section 702 reauthorization heating up, now is the time to tell your representatives in Congress to let this warrantless spying authority lapse.
Take Action
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NSA Reneges on Promise to Tell Congress How Many Innocent Americans it Spies On - EFF
June 8, 1967 was the worst day in the history of the National Security Agency. On that date, Israeli airplanes and torpedo boats mauled and nearly sank an American spy ship in international waters, killing or maiming most of its crew. This tragedy appears as a footnote to Israelis, an unpleasant sideshow of their victorious Six Day War, while official Washington preferred the embarrassing episode be forgotten. But NSA has never let the Liberty and her ill-fated crew disappear from memory altogether.
The USS Liberty was owned and operated by the U.S. Navy, which euphemistically referred to her as one of its Technical Research Ships, but she really worked for NSA. A converted World War Two freighter, the Liberty was barely a warship, possessing minimal armament for self-defense, and her mission was very hush-hush. She sailed the world collecting signals intelligence on behalf of her bosses at Fort Meade, Maryland. Her hull contained a large top-secret room where sailors of the Naval Security Group, NSAs Navy component, intercepted and translated foreign communications.
In the mid-1960s, the Liberty sailed from crisis to crisis, wherever NSA needed her on station to collect SIGINT, and the beginning of June 1967 found her off the coast of west Africa. However, the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Middle East required her dispatch to the eastern Mediterranean, where war was about to break out again between Israel and her Arab neighbors.
On the fateful morning of June 8, the Liberty was sailing almost 30 miles north of the Sinai Peninsula, a war zone. By this point, the Six Day Wars fourth day, Israel was well on its way to defeating the combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, an epic victory that changed the map of the Middle East. The Liberty was in position to monitor possible Soviet movements, since there was concern in Washington that Moscow might come to the aid of its humiliated Egyptian client. The Cold War was still very real and as a result most of the Naval Security Group linguists aboard were specialists in Russian and Arabicnot Hebrew.
A half-century on, considerable debate persists about what really happened to the Liberty on June 8, but the essential facts not in dispute are these. Throughout the morning, several Israeli warplanes individually approached the U.S. Navy vessel, in some cases circling above the Liberty, in an apparent reconnaissance effort. Just before 2 p.m., two Israeli Air Force Mirage fighter jets raked Libertys decks with cannon fire. They were soon joined by three Israeli Mystre attack jets which executed multiple attack runs on the American ship, offering cannon blasts, rocket fire, and even napalm. The jets made repeated low-level attacks on the nearly defenseless Liberty for about 20 minutes. By the time they ceased, Libertys radars and communications gear were destroyed, nine Americans were dead or dying, and dozens more were wounded.
Shortly before 2:30 p.m., three Israeli Navy torpedo boats approached the Liberty, which was burning and littered with maimed sailors. They soon made an attack run on the wounded vessel, launching several torpedoes, only one of which found its target. That hit, however, landed right in the NSA-run top-secret SIGINT facility, incinerating it and killing 25 Americans. The torpedo boats then approached to rake the foundering ship with cannon and machine gun fire, culling sailors trying to save their vessel and wounded shipmates.
After that, the Israelis backed off, leaving the Liberty to sink. That she did not go under, despite a torpedo hit that nearly broke her hull in two, leaving a hole almost 40 feet across, can be attributed to the heroism of her crew and the leadership of her skipper, Commander William McGonagle, who led damage control efforts despite his own serious wounds. For his remarkable courage under fire, McGonagle would receive the Medal of Honor, the nations highest valor decoration, while other Liberty sailors were awarded other high decorations, including two Navy Crosses (both posthumously) and 11 Silver Stars (three posthumously).
The U.S. Navys powerful Sixth Fleet, which had considerable presence in the Mediterranean, was slow to come to the Libertys aid, despite her repeated distress calls. The first warship to reach the crippled ship was a Soviet destroyer, which reached the scene before any American vessels did. The Liberty limped to Malta and was taken out of service, too badly damaged to be repaired. She was officially removed from the fleet in 1970 and scrapped three years later.
From the outset, Israel insisted the incident was all a mistake, a tragic case of the fog of war. Israeli defense officials insisted they had confused the Liberty with an Egyptian vessel half her size. In Washington, the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson was eager to accept Israels apology and offer to compensate the families of the dead. The White House didnt want a public fuss with an ally, much less one which had many friends and donors in Johnsons own Democratic Party. Neither was the navy eager to showcase its failure, above all Sixth Fleets fateful refusal to give the exposed Liberty a warship escort, as McGonagle had requested. Official Washington therefore did its best to pretend the whole regrettable incident had never transpired.
In a typical case, McGonagle received his Medal of Honor not from the president in a White House ceremony, as was the norm, but from the Navy secretary in a nondescript room at the Washington Navy Yard. Liberty survivors were sworn to secrecy, with threats of grave repercussions if they spoke to the media or the public about what transpired on June 8, 1967. Many grew resentful at their treatment, particularly after so many Liberty sailors had been killed or injured. In all, 34 men died and 171 were wounded, many of them maimed for life, 205 Purple Hearts in alla staggering percentage of the Libertys crew.
Time moved on and the Liberty issue became polemical as major facets of the case remained unresolved. Nobody in Washington who desired a political future wanted to discuss the events of June 8, 1967 so the issue faded from the newspapers. Some survivors sensed a cover-up. While their physical wounds eventually healed, for many of the men who served on the Liberty, their mental anguish never abated.
One survivor, Jim Ennes, who had been the Libertys Officer of the Day on that terrible day, became an activist and published a book in 1980 which was sharply critical of both Israel and the U.S. Navy, arguing that the Israeli attack had been intentionala fact which the American government had conspired to obscure.
A counterpoint came in 2002 with the publication of a book on the case by Jay Cristol, a Federal judge and Navy Reserve lawyer. Cristol argued that the attack on the Liberty was precisely the mistake Israel had always said it was. However, his book was more a detailed legal brief for the Israeli version of the case than a balanced effort to resolve unanswered questions.
The best book on the Liberty incident was published in 2009 and was authored by James Scott, an award-winning journalist and the son of a Liberty survivor. Years of meticulous research went into the book, and Scott uncovered ample new evidence which raises awkward questions for both Tel Aviv and Washington. In the end, Scott demonstrates that there was indeed a high-level cover-up about the events of June 8, 1967, and the public has never been told the full truth of the Liberty incident.
For its part, NSA has never believed the official version of what happened to its doomed spy ship. Lieutenant General Marshall Carter, the agencys director in 1967, from the outset was contemptuous of Israels claims of a mere accident. Oliver Kirby, who was NSAs deputy director for operations, i.e. its SIGINT boss, when the Liberty was attacked, decades later stated that NSA possessed intercepts which left no doubt that Israeli pilots who attacked the vessel knew it was American. In 2003, Kirby professed his absolute certainty that Israel knew the Liberty was a U.S. Navy ship, based on SIGINT intercepts he had seen. Several other top Intelligence Community officials over the years have said similar things. For his part, Richard Helms, who was the CIAs director at the time of the Liberty incident, stated in 2002 about the Israeli attack: It was no accident.
In 2007, NSA released a substantial trove of declassified materials on the Liberty incident, including reports, assessments, studies, and some SIGINT. None of those reports demonstrate that Israeli pilots and sailors knew the vessel they were attacking was American. Clearly the SIGINT Kirby referencedwhich many other IC insiders over the years claim to have seen, including people at the agency whom I knewhas not been released by NSA to date.
Therefore, the Liberty case will continue to linger with many basic questions about what happened on June 8, 1967and whyunanswered. Survivors are now old men, and with their passing such questions may become unanswerable. Not long before his death in 1999, retired Captain McGonagle broke his three decades of silence on the tragedy. Speaking at a memorial at Arlington Cemetery, where several of the Libertys dead are interred, McGonagle stated:
For many years, I had wanted to believe that the attack on the Liberty was pure error. It appears to me that it was not a pure case of mistaken identity. I think its about time that the state of Israel and the United States government provide the crew members of the Liberty and the rest of the American people the facts of what happened and why it came about that the Liberty was attacked.
Two decades have now passed since Captain McGonagle made his plea, wearing his navy dress whites with the Medal of Honor around his neck, and we are no closer to knowing the full truth of this troubling case.
NSA remembers the brave men of the USS Liberty and their sacrifice, even if the American public has long forgotten. The National Cryptologic Museum, which is adjacent to the agencys sprawling headquarters complex, possesses a display about the ship and its crew, including Captain McGonagles Medal of Honor, as well as the large U.S. flag which the Liberty flew during the attack, tattered by Israeli fire.
Nearby is a full-size replica of NSAs memorial wall the original is a few hundred yards away inside agency headquarters, inaccessible to the public which lists the names of 176 Americans who gave their lives on duty for NSA. The biggest group comes from the USS Liberty, 34 names in all 31 sailors, two Marines, and one NSA civilian. Above all their names is inscribed a memorable description of their work and their fate:
THEY SERVED IN SILENCE
John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, hes also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. Hes published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.
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The Air Force veteran accused of leaking classified NSA documents was terrified that the federal agents who arrested her over the weekend were going to make her disappear, according to her mother.
Her words to me was that she was scared she was going to be they were going to make her disappear, Billie Davis-Winner told NBC News on Tuesday.
I fear that theres anger from the top toward her and I fear that something bad is going to happen, the mom added. I hope that all of America is watching this so closely so that nothing happens.
Her daughter, Reality Winner, an NSA contractor, is charged with sending a top-secret report to news website The Intercept.
Still, Davis-Winner insisted her daughter wasnt a threat and said the mom still has every reason to be proud of that girl.
She would not jeopardize anybodys safety, Davis-Winner said. She would not, I can tell you that for certainty. She loves children. She loves animals Shes not a threat to anyone. Shes not a violent person.
Winners arrest was announced Monday after The Intercept published a story about how Russia infiltrated Americas voting infrastructure in a hacking scam that targeted government officials.
Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nations security and undermines public faith in government, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement. People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation.
The Texas-born Winner, 25, allegedly leaked the information in May. She was arrested Saturday.
Davis-Winner said she has difficulty believing that she actually did what theyre saying she did.
Winner served in the Air Force as a linguist from 2013 to 2016 and speaks Pashto, Farsi and Dari, her mom said.
[She] served her country with distinction and was commended by her commanding officer for her service in saving American lives and in taking out enemy combatants contributing to the mission on the war on terror, her stepfather, Gary Davis, told NBC News.
He added, To see her portrayed in the media as something other than a patriot that she is, is an insult to the service and an insult to every veteran whos served.
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NSA 'leaker' feared feds would 'make her disappear': mom - New York Post
Forbes | Tuned In To The First Amendment: Court Upholds Satellite Radio's Right To Choose Advertisers Forbes Business entities have endured increasingly strident criticism of their free speech rights in recent years. Thankfully, the US Supreme Court and most lower federal courts have declined to embrace critics' ideologically-driven perspective that the First ... |
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Hundreds of people commented on Bernard Weisberger's widely shared article on the dangers Donald Trump poses to press freedom.
Your Turn: Red Alert The First [...]
President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at the White House on Feb. 16, 2017. Trump berated the media repeatedly, calling CNN, The New York Times and other outlets "dishonest" and "very fake news" for reporting unfavorable stories about him. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
In a recent article for BillMoyers.com, Red Alert: The First Amendment Is in Danger, Bernard Weisberger wrote that Donald Trump is threatening freedom of speech in America with his frequent attacks on the press. In Trumps eyes, Weisberger writes, the most villainous persecutors are the mainstream fake news organizations that dare to oppose his actions and expose his lies. Weisberger reminds us that another US president, John Adams, despised criticism and, with the help of Congress, was able to crack down on the press. In the midst of a national emergency in 1798, Adams signed the Sedition Act, a direct violation of the Constitutions guarantee of freedom of speech. A number of journalists were prosecuted and locked up for speech critical of the government. Weisberger says it could happen again.
Hundreds of people wrote on Facebook page in response to the post; a sampling of these lightly edited comments can be seen below, including a response by Weisberger.
BY Bernard Weisberger | June 2, 2017
Excluding the media
Earlier this year at one of Sean Spicers off-camera briefings, The New York Times, CNN and other news sources were excluded. EXCLUDED from an administration-sponsored forum designed to facilitate getting news out! In my mind this is a clear violation of the First Amendment. John Connett
The covfefe heard around the world
Were already experiencing how Trump manipulates the press. For example, when a stupid typo (covfefe) can make the headlines on the first page for a week while shoving the Russian investigation to the back page or not mentioning it at all. Its only one of many examples of how Trump has succeeded Stay focused; we can walk and chew gum at the same time, so prove it and while investigating Trumps numerous missteps and misleads, stop making them the main story for days on end; always keep the Russian investigation on the front burner. Margi Underwood
What about Obama?
How quickly we forgot the Obama administrations war on whistleblowers. Good thing there wasnt any genuine trouble there. Michael Peck [Note: Peck made a number of related comments, which can be viewed in this thread.]
Mr. Peck, you are clutching at straws to make it seem that Obama was no better than Trump is now. Prosecuting those who broke a law against revealing state secrets is not the same as demanding a law that makes it a crime to criticize the president and thereby suppress all political opposition. Bernard Weisberger
One of many threats
The GOP is attacking our Constitution on every front rule of law, free and independent press, free and fair elections, First Amendment guarantee of free speech yet no one seems concerned that America is on the verge of becoming an autocracy! If you havent already, read Timothy Snyders On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century for a reality jolt. Jack Wall
Like Russia or Turkey
Everyone who cares had better contact their senators and representatives because criticism is driving Trump off the cliff. They have already cut off the White House press corps, refuse to answer questions and advocated locking up protestors. How does that make us different from Russia or Turkey or any other authoritarian state? Trump is a baby. He is not strong. He would go to any lengths to shut down the negative press. Beware. It is up to you to protect our Constitution. Trump has never read it. Sheila Karlson
Stifling speech makes us all losers
We have a voice and need to keep using it. Everyone loses when free speech is stifled. Trump and his administration have been trying to undermine and control the media from the beginning of his campaign. We have to continually pull ourselves out of the weeds and not be duped by all the noise. Stay focused and do your research. Dont forget hate begets hate so be careful to not let anger become a distraction. Rhonda Donaldson Combs
Theodore Roosevelt on criticizing the president
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. Theodore Roosevelt quote, shared by Simone Carbone
Enough with Big Data: Knock on Doors and Talk to Voters
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Your Turn: Red Alert The First Amendment Is in Danger - BillMoyers.com
The editorial "Standing tall for sneakiness" (June 4) accused me of distorting the First Amendment beyond anything the Founders ever imagined. Have you read it lately? It says, in part, that government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble. And yet the editorial appears to endorse new laws infringing on our right to privacy to join and support groups.
Perhaps you want to limit the right of elected officials, like Eric Greitens, to raise money for advocacy groups. If so, tread carefully. And certainly dont endorse new laws ensnaring groups independent of elected officials from forming and speaking out on public policy while ensuring their members keep their privacy.
In supporting privacy for these groups, the group I run does not stand alone. We stand with the Supreme Court. In NAACP v. Alabama, the court ruled that government cant force nonprofits to turn over their membership lists. The justices warned that such disclosure may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association as (other) forms of governmental action.
In Talley v. California, the high court said disclosure requirements would tend to restrict freedom to distribute information and thereby freedom of expression ... fear of reprisal might deter peaceful discussions of public matters of importance.
Such privacy rights related to speech also protect an independent media. Some elected officials want new laws to punish the press for publishing leaks or quoting anonymous sources. The media, including the Post-Dispatch, need to realize that the First Amendment gives it no more rights than citizens who form groups. Attacking citizen rights to free speech undermines the medias rights to the same.
David Keating Alexandria, Va.
President, Center for Competitive Politics
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First Amendment gives advocacy groups a right to privacy - STLtoday.com
If you're fed up with President Donald Trump's early morning tweetstorms, you may be compelled to unfollow him or maybe even block his account, and apparently that's the same way he feels about you.
A free speech advocacy group from Columbia University complained on Tuesday that Trump blocks the Twitter accounts of people he doesn't agree with. That blocking constitutes a violation of the First Amendment, the Knight First Amendment Instituteargued, because the government has designated Trump's Twitter account as a public forum.
"Though the architects of the Constitution surely didn't contemplate presidential Twitter accounts, they understood that the President must not be allowed to banish views from public discourse simply because he finds them objectionable," Knight Institute Executive Director Jameel Jaffer said in astatementon Tuesday. "Having opened this forum to all comers, the President can't exclude people from it merely because he dislikes what they're saying."
Twitter'sblocking featureis meant to be used as "an effective way to handle unwanted interactions from accounts you do not want to engage with," according to the company. A blocked account cannot view tweets, lists of followers, likesor lists of the user who blocked it.
The Knight Institute demanded that Trump unblock the accounts of people whom he blocked because of their views, but it did not threaten legal action. No word on if muting -- which just blocks someone's tweets from appearing on Trump's timeline -- would be acceptable.
Whether or not access to Trump's tweets is protected under the First Amendment, it's clear that the government itselfconsiders his personal tweets to be public recordsunder the Presidential Records Act, which means that they must be preserved. In other words, if Trump doesn't unblock you, you'll eventually be able to visit the National Archives to see his tweets, assuming you still care about his early morning rants by the time they're preserved. (Or you could justlook at his Twitter pagewhile not signed into your account.)
Tom is PCMag's San Francisco-based news reporter.
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Does Trump's Twitter Blocking Violate the First Amendment? - Entrepreneur
First Amendment
Posted Jun 08, 2017 07:00 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Shutterstock
A Wisconsin county is fighting a First Amendment lawsuit that challenges its attempt to regulate augmented reality games like Pokmon Go.
In a May 31 motion, Milwaukee County says there is no court precedent giving First Amendment protection to augmented reality games and the suit by app developer Candy Lab should be tossed.
Candy Lab is challenging a county ordinance that requires augmented reality game makers to get a permit before the games can be played in public parks.
Augmented reality technology superimposes computer-generated images on live smartphone video. Candy Lab uses the technology for its Texas Rope Em poker game. Players start with two random cards and must travel to designated locations to collect additional cards.
Candy Labs April 21 suit (PDF) says the Milwaukee County ordinance amounts to a prior restraint on its speech, is unconstitutionally vague, and restricts its speech on the basis of content. The Hollywood Reporter, the Associated Press, Courthouse News Service and the Register have stories.
Milwaukee County counters that Texas Rope Em isnt entitled to First Amendment protection because it doesnt convey any messages or ideas, the dismissal motion (PDF) says. The game has no plot, no storylines, no characters and no dialogue, the county argues.
Nor is there any federal court decision extending First Amendment protection to augmented reality games, the dismissal motion says.
Candy Labs complaint is full of ad hominem attacks on Milwaukee County and colorful allegations about all the ways in which the new ordinance violates its First Amendment rights, the dismissal motion says. But Candy Lab forgets one thing. There can be no First Amendment violation where there is no First Amendment right.
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National Constitution Center president and CEOJeffrey Rosen recently interviewedFloyd Abrams, the legendary First Amendment attorney of firmCahill Gordon who argued Citizens United and the Pentagon Papers case, among many, many others.
In the interview, Abrams discusses his new book, The Soul of the First Amendment, which explores how and why America protects free speech more often, more intensely, and more controversially than anywhere else in the world.
The program was part of Americas Town Hall, the Constitution Centers ongoing series of constitutional conversations and debates held in Philadelphia and across the country. Visit constitutioncenter.org/debate to learn more.
Todays show was engineered by David Stotzand edited byJason Gregory.It wasproduced by Nicandro Iannacci. The host of We the People is Jeffrey Rosen.
Continue todays conversation onFacebookandTwitterusing@ConstitutionCtr.
We want to know what you think of the podcast! Email us at[emailprotected].
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Despite our congressional charter, the National Constitution Center is aprivate nonprofit; we receive little government support, and we rely on the generosity of people around the country who are inspired by our nonpartisan mission of constitutional debate and education. Please consider becoming a member to support our work, including this podcast. Visitconstitutioncenter.orgto learn more.
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Podcast: The soul of the First Amendment - Constitution Daily (blog)