Category Archives: The West

Muslim Fit Over 'Fitna'

Europe, Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, The West

The excerpt is from my new WND column, “Muslim Fit Over ‘Fitna’“:

“Those who’ve been following the latest installment in the saga know that [Geert] Wilders released a film: ‘Fitna.’ ‘Fitna’ is unremarkable: it’s your basic primer to Islam.

The Koran commands the faithful to kill the kafir. Wilders excerpts these Koranic commandments, and shows Muslim believers articulating and acting on them.

Wilders could have easily been neutralized had Muslims across the West, and their puppy-dog proxies, allowed the screening of “Fitna,” and adopted a Western, live-and-let-live stance toward this tradition of benign protest. …”

Read the complete column, “Muslim Fit Over ‘Fitna.‘”

Updated: Farewell Freedom Of Speech

Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, Justice, Natural Law, The West

Writes the Brussels Journal:

“The Dutch judicial authorities are going to prosecute Geert Wilders, one of the 150 members of the Dutch Parliament, for making the movie Fitna. In this short documentary, which explains what happens if a number of verses of the Koran are taken seriously, Mr Wilders compares the Muslims’ holy book to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He claims the Koran calls for violence against Jews and other non-Muslims. Fitna can be seen here.”

Hate speech laws are inimical to a free society. All speech, truthful and untruthful, ought to be free in a free society. The verbiage of liars and holocaust deniers too.

American jurisprudence allows the regulation of speech only under very limited circumstances. If speech poses a “Clear and Present Danger,” it can be censored. While the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t protect words that are likely to cause violence, the required threshold is extremely high. As it should be.

In this context, my preferred course of action against imams, for example, who publicly preach and incite violence against Americans on American soil is deportation, not censorship. The Netherlands ought to make sure that their courageous son, Wilders, is free to live in his homeland without fear. Instead, the Dutch state has joined the enemies of civilization in terrorizing a true hero.

Too few libertarians have been vocal about this defining issue of our time.

In case you think we in the US are protected by the Constitution, think again. Obama, as I pointed out in “Uncivil Agenda,” intends to expand hate crimes statutes and prosecutions.

Update (Jan. 26): Myron: why must “the man,” Wilders, be tried at all, by jurors or by a justice? He is innocent in the natural law; what he has done–speak his mind–is naturally licit.

‘A’ For Al Jazeera

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Media, Middle East, South-Africa, The West, War

I’ve said it before: The Al Jazeera news network practices better journalism than its American cable counterparts. Al Jazeera is as partisan as the local cable cretins, however, it does know news–the art of reporting.

Writes Eric Calderwood, for the Boston Globe:

[I]n a larger sense, Al-Jazeera’s graphic response to CNN-style “bloodless war journalism” is a stinging rebuke to the way we now see and talk about war in the United States. It suggests that bloodless coverage of war is the privilege of a country far from conflict. Al-Jazeera’s brand of news – you could call it “blood journalism” – takes war for what it is: a brutal loss of human life. The images they show put you in visceral contact with the violence of war in a way statistics never could.

For an American, to watch Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza is to realize that you’ve become alienated not just from war, but even from the representation of war as a real thing. As Americans, we’re used to hearing the sound of heavy artillery, machine guns, and bombs in action films and video games. Yet here on the news, they seem strangely out of place. You could argue that Al-Jazeera uses images of civilian violence to foment public outrage against Israel. This might well be true. At the same time, these images acknowledge human suffering and civilian death and stand strongly against them – and in doing so, foment outrage against war itself.

The complete essay is well-worth reading.

Worth watching is Al Jazeera’s “Saving Soweto”, a superb report detailing the heroic work of Christian and Jewish medical men in ministering to the multitudes. What would South Africa do without such people?! (Scroll down to “DESPERATELY SEEKING BOLLYWOOD’S BRANGELINA”)

'A' For Al Jazeera

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Media, Middle East, South-Africa, The West, War

I’ve said it before: The Al Jazeera news network practices better journalism than its American cable counterparts. Al Jazeera is as partisan as the local cable cretins, however, it does know news–the art of reporting.

Writes Eric Calderwood, for the Boston Globe:

[I]n a larger sense, Al-Jazeera’s graphic response to CNN-style “bloodless war journalism” is a stinging rebuke to the way we now see and talk about war in the United States. It suggests that bloodless coverage of war is the privilege of a country far from conflict. Al-Jazeera’s brand of news – you could call it “blood journalism” – takes war for what it is: a brutal loss of human life. The images they show put you in visceral contact with the violence of war in a way statistics never could.

For an American, to watch Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza is to realize that you’ve become alienated not just from war, but even from the representation of war as a real thing. As Americans, we’re used to hearing the sound of heavy artillery, machine guns, and bombs in action films and video games. Yet here on the news, they seem strangely out of place. You could argue that Al-Jazeera uses images of civilian violence to foment public outrage against Israel. This might well be true. At the same time, these images acknowledge human suffering and civilian death and stand strongly against them – and in doing so, foment outrage against war itself.

The complete essay is well-worth reading.

Worth watching is Al Jazeera’s “Saving Soweto”, a superb report detailing the heroic work of Christian and Jewish medical men in ministering to the multitudes. What would South Africa do without such people?! (Scroll down to “DESPERATELY SEEKING BOLLYWOOD’S BRANGELINA”)