I don’t like Juan Cole one bit. I think he is arrogant, obnoxious, overtly partisan, and I believe his reflexes are honed to blame America and Israel for almost every possible world issue. If he has any idea who I am, he probably thinks I am as big a jerk.
You know what I like less than Juan Cole? Attempts to intimidate or silence him
I just checked my campus mail and found a letter in it from Colonel Yigal Carmon, late of Israeli military intelligence, now an official at the Middle East Media Research Organization, or MEMRI. He threatened me with a lawsuit over blog comments I made here at Informed Comment, reprinted at anti-war.com. This technique of the SLAPP or Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation had already been pioneered by polluting industries against environmental activists, and now the pro-Likud lobby in the US has apparently decided to try it out against people like me.
I urge all readers to send messages of protest to [email protected]. Please be polite, and simply urge MEMRI, which has a major Web presence, to withdraw the lawsuit threat and to respect the spirit of the free sharing of ideas that makes the internet possible.
Remember for a second the most honest (perhaps the only ones words ever spoken by Larry Flynt:
“We have to tolerate things that we don’t necessarily like, so we can be free. Free press is not just freedom for the thought you love, but freedom for the thought you hate.”