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The Free World Bars Free Speech
By Jonathan Turley
Sunday, April 12, 2009; B03
For years, the Western world has listened aghast to stories out of Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations of citizens being imprisoned or executed for questioning or offending Islam. Even the most seemingly minor infractions elicit draconian punishments. Late last year, two Afghan journalists were sentenced to prison for blasphemy because they translated the Koran into a Farsi dialect that Afghans can read. In Jordan, a poet was arrested for incorporating Koranic verses into his work. And last week, an Egyptian court banned a magazine for running a similar poem.
But now an equally troubling trend is developing in the West. Ever since 2006, when Muslims worldwide rioted over newspaper cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad, Western countries, too, have been prosecuting more individuals for criticizing religion. The "Free World," it appears, may be losing faith in free speech.
Among the new blasphemers is legendary French actress Brigitte Bardot, who was convicted last June of "inciting religious hatred" for a letter she wrote in 2006 to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, saying that Muslims were ruining France. It was her fourth criminal citation for expressing intolerant views of Muslims and homosexuals. Other Western countries, including Canada and Britain, are also cracking down on religious critics.
Emblematic of the assault is the effort to pass an international ban on religious defamation supported by United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann. Brockmann is a suspended Roman Catholic priest who served as Nicaragua's foreign minister in the 1980s under the Sandinista regime, the socialist government that had a penchant for crushing civil liberties before it was tossed out of power in 1990. Since then, Brockmann has literally embraced such free-speech-loving figures as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he wrapped in a bear hug at the U.N. last year.
The U.N. resolution, which has been introduced for the past couple of years, is backed by countries such as Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive nations when it comes to the free exercise of religion. Blasphemers there are frequently executed. Most recently, the government arrested author Hamoud Bin Saleh simply for writing about his conversion to Christianity.....
Free speech is under assault. The latest wave is the PC police which is an arm of the liberals. If you spout the liberal line you got free speech. If you speak as a conservative you are condemned and attacked.
Americans concerned about the possible erosion of their civil liberties, including their first amendment right to freedom of speech, should get "in league with the Devil" (conservative columnist Joseph Farah) and join "the ACLU ... who hatried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped [9-11] happen." (Rev. Jerry Falwell)
The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
These rights include:
Your First Amendment rights - freedom of speech, association and assembly; freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.
Your right to equal protection under the law - protection against unlawful discrimination.
Your right to due process - fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.
Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.
American Civil Liberties Union : About Us
The ACLU is an organization of goons who play games of semantics, literalize out of context, use legislating judges to circumvent the law in order to force the tyranny of the minority onto the majority.
No advertising on the board, please.
Americans concerned about the possible erosion of their civil liberties, including their first amendment right to freedom of speech, should get "in league with the Devil" (conservative columnist Joseph Farah) and join "the ACLU ... who hatried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped [9-11] happen." (Rev. Jerry Falwell)
The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
These rights include:
Your First Amendment rights - freedom of speech, association and assembly; freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.
Your right to equal protection under the law - protection against unlawful discrimination.
Your right to due process - fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.
Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.
American Civil Liberties Union : About Us
The ACLU is an organization of goons who play games of semantics, literalize out of context, use legislating judges to circumvent the law in order to force the tyranny of the minority onto the majority.
No advertising on the board, please.
The ACLU takes an absolutist view of civil liberties, which is why people who often disagree with the organization's stances are sometimes accused of not actually believing in our most fundamental American rights.
Free speech is under assault. The latest wave is the PC police which is an arm of the liberals. If you spout the liberal line you got free speech. If you speak as a conservative you are condemned and attacked.
it goes both ways.....
Free speech is under assault. The latest wave is the PC police which is an arm of the liberals. If you spout the liberal line you got free speech. If you speak as a conservative you are condemned and attacked.
it goes both ways.....
Harry,
Could you give us a recent and prominent example of it, one from the liberal camp and one from the conservative camp?
Why?......what is this High School now?....i gotta go up to the black board and give 2 examples from each side?..... your the one who made the statement....if you need me to point out instances were a conservative condemned and attacked someone speaking as a liberal,then you dont get out much...i will agree with you on whom the PC police are....
Why?......what is this High School now?....i gotta go up to the black board and give 2 examples from each side?..... your the one who made the statement....if you need me to point out instances were a conservative condemned and attacked someone speaking as a liberal,then you dont get out much...i will agree with you on whom the PC police are....
It's a cheap shot to say something like "they all do it" ....When that is the argument I'd like to hear an example, not a link or anything like that but the first prominent example that comes to mind. Otherwise the one may be conspicuously rarer than the other rendering the statement a distortion of the facts. It's the same thing that inclines many of us to agree with an argument we don't otherwise really agree with.
Canada is probably one of the worst offenders, with their quake quasi-courts, that are nothing resembling 'courts' as much as 'religious toleration goon squads'. While they cannot, so far, execute anyone, they have no problem closing magazines, fining individuals and silencing them by edict. How long will 'free speech' last here, in the US? Not long:
The Free World Bars Free Speech
The Free World Bars Free Speech
By Jonathan Turley
Sunday, April 12, 2009; B03
For years, the Western world has listened aghast to stories out of Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations of citizens being imprisoned or executed for questioning or offending Islam. Even the most seemingly minor infractions elicit draconian punishments. Late last year, two Afghan journalists were sentenced to prison for blasphemy because they translated the Koran into a Farsi dialect that Afghans can read. In Jordan, a poet was arrested for incorporating Koranic verses into his work. And last week, an Egyptian court banned a magazine for running a similar poem.
But now an equally troubling trend is developing in the West. Ever since 2006, when Muslims worldwide rioted over newspaper cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad, Western countries, too, have been prosecuting more individuals for criticizing religion. The "Free World," it appears, may be losing faith in free speech.
Among the new blasphemers is legendary French actress Brigitte Bardot, who was convicted last June of "inciting religious hatred" for a letter she wrote in 2006 to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, saying that Muslims were ruining France. It was her fourth criminal citation for expressing intolerant views of Muslims and homosexuals. Other Western countries, including Canada and Britain, are also cracking down on religious critics.
Emblematic of the assault is the effort to pass an international ban on religious defamation supported by United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann. Brockmann is a suspended Roman Catholic priest who served as Nicaragua's foreign minister in the 1980s under the Sandinista regime, the socialist government that had a penchant for crushing civil liberties before it was tossed out of power in 1990. Since then, Brockmann has literally embraced such free-speech-loving figures as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he wrapped in a bear hug at the U.N. last year.
The U.N. resolution, which has been introduced for the past couple of years, is backed by countries such as Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive nations when it comes to the free exercise of religion. Blasphemers there are frequently executed. Most recently, the government arrested author Hamoud Bin Saleh simply for writing about his conversion to Christianity.....
