Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Consistently wrong since 2002

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

The revolution will be supervised.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

White supremacy is terrorism.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

People are complicated. Love is not.

Second rate reporter says what?

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

You are here: Home / Politics / Religion / Who Said It?

Who Said It?

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Here’s a quick quiz for you. Which nutjob wrote the following about the murders in Paris:

Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Within liberal democracies, freedom of expression has curtailments, such as laws against incitement and hatred.

Those who work at this newspaper have a long and disgusting record of going way beyond the mere lampooning of public figures, and this is especially true of their depictions of religious figures. For example, they have shown nuns masturbating and popes wearing condoms. They have also shown Muhammad in pornographic poses.

Stephane Charbonnier, the paper’s publisher, was killed today in the slaughter. It is too bad that he didn’t understand the role he played in his tragic death. In 2012, when asked why he insults Muslims, he said, “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.” Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive. Muhammad isn’t sacred to me, either, but it would never occur to me to deliberately insult Muslims by trashing him.

Anti-Catholic artists in this country have provoked me to hold many demonstrations, but never have I counseled violence. This, however, does not empty the issue. Madison was right when he said, “Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.”

Actually, that’s a trick question, because the first two paragraphs are from radical London cleric Anjem Choudary while the last three paragraphs were written by homegrown lunatic Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.

There’s a reason we call some of these people the American Taliban.

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  4. 4.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Anti-Catholic artists in this country have provoked me to hold many demonstrations, but never have I counseled violence.

    Donohue is lying. I’m going to try to find the quotes from the Schaivo case. But he has definitely espoused violence in the past. The past for wingnuts may not exist, just like science and female sexuality, but it matters to us.

  5. 5.

    Big ole hound

    Hmm. Free speech up for debate again? Consequences for insulting a diety which result in incitement and hatred. Sounds like FOX News at it’s finest or any Sunday talk show.

  7. 7.

    Howard Beale IV

    @ruemara: Ah-yep.

    Note that The Catholic League symbol consists of a sword, so for all practical purposes The Catholic League is a militant organization.

    Or I can be really twisted and say that their symbol is an upside-down cross, which means they’re a Satanic cult, which actually is probably more accurate.

  12. 12.

    Corner Stone

    Here’s a quick quiz for you. Which nutjob wrote the following about the murders in Paris:

    A half dozen or so BJ commenters?

  15. 15.

    MikeInSewickley

    JC,

    Spread this far and wide. This puts the whole “It’s only Islam” mantra on trial by showing how it most often isn’t the religion, it’s the nutjobs who practice it for their convoluted uses.

    Perfect piece.

  16. 16.

    Belafon

    @Howard Beale IV: The upside down cross is not a sign of a Satanic cult, not matter what the movies convince you of. Peter was crucified and chose to be hung upside down. The symbol commonly used for Satanic cults is the old symbol for Suphur.

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    Anjem Choudary’s take on freedom of expression and how it has no place in Islam is an interesting one. Needless to say, I think he’s full of crap. If he were right, Muslims’ opinions on everything would have been predetermined, and we’d agree with each other 100% of the time, which we obviously don’t.

  18. 18.

    shelley

    The Catholic League symbol

    The whole ‘Catholic League’ is pretty much just Bill Donohue and a website.

  19. 19.

    trollhattan

    Assholes are forever. I think my doctor said that.

    O/T It’s always mentally disturbed young males who do this. Except when it isn’t.

    Sacramento County Sheriff’s detectives have arrested a woman suspected in the theft and torture of dogs in Carmichael. Kayla Lynn Wright, 23, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of grand theft of an animal and felony animal torture.

    On Dec. 26, a dead dog was found in a garbage can on Cardinal Court, near Kenneth and Garfield avenues. The dog, wrapped in a table cloth, had a stereo speaker cord, with a speaker still attached, around its neck. At the time, it was not clear if the dog was killed, accidentally strangled itself or died of natural causes, according to sheriff’s officials.

    That same day, about 7 p.m., in the same general vicinity, deputies responded to a report from a man on Braninburg Court who said his two dogs went missing from his front yard. One of them returned with a cord around its neck and blue painter’s tape around its jaws, according to Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Sgt. Lisa Bowman. The other dog was later found down the street, hiding under a parked car.

    Detectives were able to use security video in the neighborhood to tie the theft of the two dogs to a woman later identified as Wright, according to a sheriff’s department press release. Further investigation allegedly established that Wright was also responsible for death of the dog in the garbage can.

    We already had the couple who drowned the dog in the river tied to a bowling ball, now this. I’ve got nuttin’.

  20. 20.

    SRW1

    Bill Donnohue has every right to call Stephane Charbonnier and his colleagues douchebags, though his timing certainly stinks.

    Bill Donnohue has every right to protest his heart out against whatever he may see as blashemic criticism of whichever religious believes.

    Bill Donnohue is a f*cking a**hole for insinuating that Stephane Charbonnier and his colleagues are responsible for their murderous executions.

  21. 21.

    Mandalay

    Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

    Within liberal democracies, freedom of expression has curtailments, such as laws against incitement and hatred.

    What am I missing? I didn’t see anything to mock, or be offended by, in those two paragraphs you quoted from Anjem Choudary. Is the idea that criticism of Islam should come with responsibilities what bugs you?

    Actually it’s quite an achievement on your part to find inoffensive quotes from Choudary since he is certainly an extremist, and usually generates plenty of wacko rhetoric. And since he has spent his entire life in England he hardly qualifies for the American Taliban.

  22. 22.

    trollhattan

    Also O/T: welcome to the nation’s most expensive senate race.

    California Sen. Barbara Boxer’s announcement today not to seek a fifth term has unleashed a long-expected wave of speculation about who will challenge for the seat. Democrats have a supremely deep bench of possible successors, along with some dark horses. The 2016 race also will be a test for whether Republicans can regain a Senate seat in the Golden State, which has eluded them since 1992.

  26. 26.

    CrustyDem

    I find the comparison between the two writers culturally insensitive and unfair. One comes from a theocentric background where questioning his faith is a crime of heresy and punishable by death, whose religion has practiced a belief that non-believers should converted or killed, who wishes to replace the current government with a theocracy, and that his way is the only way; The other is, of course, a muslim.

  27. 27.

    Mandalay

    @SRW1:

    Bill Donnohue is a f*cking a**hole for insinuating that Stephane Charbonnier and his colleagues are responsible for their murderous executions.

    He is gloating because they had been ruthless in also mocking Catholicism in the past.

    Donnohue’s “we-are-all-Muslims-now” schtick is as transparent as it is shameless.

  29. 29.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mandalay: I think the fine cleric should realize that many in the west mock Mohammed out of ignorance, or because the actions of some of his followers are not well thought of. You know, like those guys who shot up Charlie Hebdo the other day.

    He commits the same error that Donohue makes…of protesting too much, and therefore encouraging those who are trolling them.

  32. 32.

    Mandalay

    @trollhattan:

    California Sen. Barbara Boxer’s announcement today not to seek a fifth term

    Bummer. For all her lesser faults (e.g. marijuana), she was head and shoulders above almost every other politician on the Iraq war. She is one of the few very who need not squirm when asked about her position.

  33. 33.

    Elizabelle

    Whenever I hear anything about Bill Donohue, it makes me triply glad we’ve got Pope Francis.

    Donohue is a bully, deploying religion as his weapon.

  34. 34.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    A half dozen or so BJ commenters?

    @Corner Stone: This. And I’m really disappointed in some folks who’d I previously considered to be rational people.

  35. 35.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    @Belafon: So much win in that story:

    But it’s the explanation that caught the couple off-guard. Wehner told News 8 that the clerk said the photo couldn’t be released because the weapon would promote a “gang culture.”

    “To automatically to be lumped into that category of a gang… that hits a little close to home for us, because that isn’t our intent at all,” Strobl said.

    Translation for the slow: We can’t be lumped into the category of a gang, we’re WHITE!

  37. 37.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: White people do not form gangs.

    They form armed mutual protection associations. Who believe in 2nd Amendment remedies, particularly for people who breath while black.

  38. 38.

    smintheus

    Decades ago I was at a highway rest stop in Italy that sold touristy knick knacks, including china figurines of nuns in habits that had a moveable trap door between her legs. I don’t think left-wing Paris magazines have a monopoly on obscene portrayals of Church officials.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    OT: per this NYTimes story, even murdering Islamist extremists have some standards:

    Sigolène Vinson, a freelance journalist who had come in that morning to take part in the meeting, said that when the shooting started, she thought she would be killed.

    Ms. Vinson said in an interview that she dropped to the floor and crawled down the hall to hide behind a partition, but one of the gunmen spotted her and grabbed her by the arm, pointing his gun at her head. Instead of pulling the trigger, though, he told her she would not be killed because she was a woman.

    “Don’t be afraid, calm down, I won’t kill you,” the gunman told her in a steady voice, with a calm look in his eyes, she recalled. “You are a woman. But think about what you’re doing. It’s not right.”

    Then he turned to his partner, who was still shooting, and shouted, “We don’t shoot women! We don’t shoot women! We don’t shoot women!”

    Interestingly, the woman whom they forced to let them into the building and then spared was Coco, the cartoonist who drew a famous cartoon of the prophet, naked with a star coming out of his ass.

    And one woman was killed at Charlie Hebdo, a psychoanalyst who wrote a biweekly relationship advice column. She was Elsa Cayat.

  40. 40.

    trollhattan

    @Mandalay:
    Love Boxer as much as I love Nancy SMASH but this is the least surprising surprise in California politics. Will be an interesting horse race and one on which I’m not placing any bets as of now. Should it be Harris v. Rice I think my head will explode with irony overload.

  41. 41.

    CarolDuhart2

    Given that Feinstein is in her 80’s, the question may well be if Feinstein also decides to not run, and creates a double opening.

    I’m not worried about California electing a Republican Senator in a Presidential year. I am worried that the Republicans may find someone with very deep pockets that forces a very expensive race. Donors there tend to give to the Democratic Presidential Candidate because California’s locked in.

  42. 42.

    trollhattan

    @CarolDuhart2:
    Pretty much this. Last November’s turnout was historically low, one result being a significant drop in the number of signatures required to get a ballot proposition approved–watch for floods of them in ’14 and ’16. I’d give DiFi a 1 in 10 chance of running again.

    ETA, because there will be a governors race, unlike last time, there will be much greater off-year ballot interest than last year. Many Dems will need to decide which office to go for, which could create its own vulnerabilities.

  45. 45.

    trollhattan

    @CarolDuhart2:
    Hmm, true enough. Don’t know the California rules, but presume the governor appoints the successor–is there also automatically a special election for the balance of the term?

  46. 46.

    CarolDuhart2

    Would Rice run? The Republicans could consider this as a way to divide the minority vote and create that very expensive race fueled with outside money. Fiorina is a 2-time loser and considered a RINO by California Republicans (another reason Republicans in California aren’t competitive). Nobody else could run statewide, Arnold is too scandalous and old to run for another office. Rice may be it if she accepts an offer.

  48. 48.

    Another Holocene Human

    @MattF:

    Well, Donohue did note that murder is, generally, a no-no. What more do you want?

    Ah, no. Donohue as an orthodox Catholic would be the first to correct you that all kinds of killings are completely licit under Catholic doctrine.

    Matter of fact, Jesus never even said stonings were a no-no, just implied you’d better be more holy than the stonee. Well, the RCC can work with that, just have the executioners do an Act of Contrition right before the Auto da Fe and you’re golden!

  49. 49.

    Origuy

    Just to clear things up, here’s the timeline for California:
    2016 Boxer’s seat up for election
    2018 Governor up for election; Feinstein’s seat up for election

    Remember that the primary for statewide elections will be a “top two past the post”, so many Democrats could split the vote, or two popular Democrats could beat out a third-running Republican.

    If Feinstein were to retire early, the governor would appoint someone to fill the post until the next regular statewide election, not necessarily the balance of the term.

  50. 50.

    samiam

    “American Taliban”….Lol….wr0ng way Cole still trying to sell Kos’s failed book with the catch phrase that never did stick.

    Same with that Florida congressman Kos darling who lost his seat after trying to smear his Repub opponent with that label. I think he called him “Taliban Dan”. Is there nothing that Cole/Kos touches that does not result in losing elections, talking points, and public conversations, and just basically being wr0ng?

  51. 51.

    feebog

    @CarolDuhart2:

    The Republicans could consider this as a way to divide the minority vote and create that very expensive race fueled with outside money.

    Doubt that Rice would have much impact on the AA vote in a race against Harris. She would draw less than 10% IMO. There are going to be Dems tripping over each other for the nomination, should be interesting.

  52. 52.

    beltane

    @Another Holocene Human: I believe the Church did have reservations about the shedding of blood, which is why they preferred to immolate their victims instead. Executions which were bloodier in their methods were usually turned over to the secular authorities for implementation. Blasphemy was a crime in most Western countries until fairly recently.

  53. 53.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Villago Delenda Est: A lot of people in the West mock Muhammed out of animalistic, sadistic urges unleashed by the magic known as tribalism. The receiving end of these “sticks and stones” attacks are very well attuned to the perceived threat on their persons and livelihood. They may be ridiculing Islam but the motive is to intimidate Muslims and immigrants. Tribalism is a cheap and immoral way to feel better about yourself and have solidarity with your similarly stupid neighbors.

    Liberals and academics don’t react in horror to this kind of baiting because they have no sense of humor, are race traitors, or out of any great love of [name the religion] except for the one or two scholars of religion who always end up speaking out. They react in horror because they know this kind of verbal ugly is one short trolley stop before some truly horrific interethnic violence and I think we all know which party is going to be doing most of the perpetrating.

    (And if you don’t get my drift, time to bone up on lynching in the United States, especially 1872-1964. Or, hm, Julius Streicher and the Holocaust. Very well documented example. Or more close to home, the 2010 Summer of Hate instigated by Fox News and the “random” acts of terror on Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, etc.)

  54. 54.

    CarolDuhart2

    @feebog: When have the Republicans been realistic about the odds? I’m thinking more in terms of forcing a very expensive election against a newcomer because of scads of outside money, keeping California resources in California instead of funding the Democratic Presidential nominee.

    Also if Rice decides to run, it clears the field on the Republican side

  56. 56.

    beltane

    @Another Holocene Human: If we really want to make a point about the importance of free speech, perhaps each of us should post something we personally find disturbing, something that is directed at our own personal tribe. Posting cartoons mocking Mohammed, Thor, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn’t really mean much unless you are a follower of one of these entities.

  57. 57.

    Another Holocene Human

    @beltane: Really? From my reading, granted I’m no expert, torture was no big deal, especially if done to lower classes, well into the Modern period, and the Church had their own legal system and courts and like any landlord were engaging in torture as well. They came up with so many … interesting devices. At the end of the High Middle Ages the Church lost control of a lot of lands, and that happened again during the Protestant Reformation, but at what point did they change their ways? Torture was still no biggie into the 18th century at least in Central Europe.

    Also, the reason for burning the victim was twofold. First, they deny the “Christian” burial which is supposed to be whole body so the deceased can rise again when Jesus returns, at least this is the charming folk belief although in Northern Europe due to shortage of cemetery space the monks may have been disposing of bodies a little more expeditiously. Secondly, Jesus tells Peter that whatever he binds on Earth is bound in Heaven and whatever he looses on Earth is loose in Heaven. Therefore, Peter is the vicar of Christ and can pass judgment on Earth for God and for all time. So a bishop, on behalf of the Pope-Peter-can condemn a heretic to Hell. Once this has been done, they burn the condemned. This is why when they tried Wycliff posthumously, ending in a conviction, they exhumed his body and burned it as well. This is why they burned Joan of Arc. Today we often understand her execution as political. While it had political overtones, remember that she did hear voices. The Inquisition confronted mystics like Joan and would determine whether the voices were heavenly or demonic. This could hinge on the orthodoxy of the claims and the visions being conveyed by the accused. (Teresa of Avila was also investigated, but cleared.) Which isn’t to say that there wasn’t political motivation in the outcome. But that’s why she burned.

    Ecclesiastical courts AFAIAA didn’t turn over anybody to secular courts unless they had to. Right up until Italian unification and to this day in the Vatican City, the Church asserts the right to operate their own law courts and execute their own laws for persons under their jurisdiction. At one point they were the lords of most of central Italy.

  58. 58.

    Another Holocene Human

    @samiam: You’re a barrel of laughs. Psycho Dave coined the term American Taliban. It was the name of a pamphlet he self-published and distributed in the mid 1990s. It was directed at hate preachers like Falwell and Robertson, and had a lot of material about Rushdooney and Dispensationalism, as well as the theocracy talk during Pat Robertson’s abortive presidential campaign in I believe 1988.

    And the term has never gone out of style since.

    Wow, his website is still up, no need to go to Internet Archive:

    http://www.weirdcrap.com/

    Read it and weep!

  61. 61.

    Another Holocene Human

    America’s Taliban: In Its Own Words is still in print!

    “All the spokesmen for the Christian right really need is a bit of rope and they will hang themselves with cackling pride, praising jesus even as the noose tightens—no help from the secular left necessary. At least, that’s what David W. Irish was thinking when he compiled and categorized hundreds of damning quotes uttered by some of America’s most tyrranical Christian fundamentalists in America’s Taliban. Barely annotated with Irish’s editorial [comments] the pamphlet exposes zealots like Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan for the bogus bigots they are, using their own words as the most compelling evidence to condemn them. Irish’s idea might seem ordinary or obvious, but his strained method feels fresh and is altogether convincing. As smart and analytical as Irish might be, he is wise to step back from the tempting but gratuitous sermonizing in which other writers indulge and let the fundamentalists simply speak for themselves, as they often do best. After all, some rhetoric, like ‘Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society,’ (from Rush Limbaugh’s 1994 The Way Things Ought to Be) doesn’t require any further explanation.”
    —Altar Magazine, Summer 2003

  62. 62.

    Paul in KY

    @Another Holocene Human: No. Jesus said basically ‘let he among you who is without sin cast the 1st stone’.. That pretty much excludes anybody older than 3 from casting stones (which Jesus knew).

  64. 64.

    beltane

    @Another Holocene Human: Burning was the preferred method of execution by the ecclesiastical courts. Crimes against the state usually involved beheading for aristocrats, and various forms of mutilation for everyone else. The concept of a separation between church and state was murky so in some cases it was not easy to discern between treason and heresy (this is what made the Tudor era so interesting). However, persecution of heretics really needed the cooperation of local authorities to be effective. This is why the Inquisition in Spain itself was more brutal than in the Spanish territories of Southern Italy, which also had a large Jewish population. In the latter region, the civil authorities dragged their feet and were not as enthusiastic as their Iberian counterparts.

  65. 65.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Paul in KY: That’s why the Catholic Church introduced the sacrament of penance, so you could be cleansed of all your sin. Repeat as frequently as necessary.

    What did you think last rites was about?

  67. 67.

    Another Holocene Human

    @John Cole +0: Not only that, he took his kids to Disney World after he won.

    Given Florida politics of course that isn’t as facetious as it sounds. He was supporting a local jerb cremator.

  68. 68.

    Another Holocene Human

    @beltane: I thought the deal was that aristocrats were beheaded because commoners were hanged, and the worst crime of all was to be common.

    I’m sure they were mutilating away but an awful lot of folk got hanged, also, too.

    That is, until the invention of the prison colony. Georgia or death. Australia or death. Has a nice ring to it.

  69. 69.

    Paul in KY

    @Another Holocene Human: I was only commenting on your comment: ‘Jesus never even said stonings were a no-no, just implied you’d better be more holy than the stonee’.

    IMO, Jesus was obliquely saying that the capital punishment of stoning was wrong in all practical applications.

  71. 71.

    beltane

    @Another Holocene Human: Commoners were hanged for normal crimes like theft and murder. Treason involved hanging plus mutilation, not only to punish the guilty but to set an example to the little people watching the spectacle. Dick Cheney would have been a happy, happy man back then.

  73. 73.

    beltane

    OT, but the manhunt in France is beginning to seem like a redux of the Boston Marathon bombing aftermath, with the two brothers now being reported to have robbed a gas station. I truly hope they are caught alive so more can be learned.

  77. 77.

    Paul in KY

    @beltane: I was reading a book about the Wars of the Roses & during the reign of Richard III, they executed a dude for treason & he made some kind of quip when they slit him open & started burning his entrails. Something like ‘Now I’m really in trouble’.

    Guy Fawkes was a quick thinker there.

  78. 78.

    Mandalay

    Nigel Farage, the right wing leader of Britain’s UK Independence Party, was saying this within 12 hours of the Paris murders:

    “There is a very strong argument that says that what happened in Paris is a result – and we’ve seen it in London too – is a result I’m afraid of now having a fifth column living within these countries.
    “We’ve got people living in these countries, holding our passports, who hate us.
    “Luckily their numbers are very, very small but it does make one question the whole really gross attempt at encouraged division within society that we have had in the past few decades in the name of multiculturalism.”

    I had to google the term “fifth column“. It’s not good:

    A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group—such as a nation or a besieged city—from within. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize openly to assist an external attack.

    The far right parties in Europe must be jerking themselves senseless right now.

  79. 79.

    beltane

    @Mandalay: Andrew Sullivan notoriously labeled critics of the Iraq War as being fifth columnists. It’s a well known wingnut fapping term.

  80. 80.

    Bill

    How Can They Hate Us For That Which Does Not Exist?

    We live in a free and liberal society where the proper response to another incident of violence committed by Islamic radicals is to blame Muslims and Arabs for hating our freedoms and bomb individuals hundreds of miles away in retaliation.

    We live in a free and liberal society where the proper response to another incident of violence committed by domestic radicals is to blame politically moderate elected officials for being honest about institutionalized racism and gun violence.

    We live in a free and liberal society where the proper response to a few dozen Islamic fundamentalists killing 3,000 people in one morning is a decades-long war against largely unaffiliated Islamic governments and people that kills hundreds of thousands and injures and displaces millions of Arabic and Islamic people.
    We live in a free and liberal society where the proper response to thousands of state agents extrajudicially killing a minimum of 3,000 unarmed American people of color per decade while unjustly incarcerating millions more through a systematic war of oppression explicitly designed to disenfranchise and disempower minorities and political undesirables, is nothing. Nothing except for beating and arresting those who dare speak in favor of retaliation or serious reformation.

    We live in a free and liberal society primed for mass domestic race riots and domestic terrorism and we are doing nothing to address this besides suppressing dissent and hey, look over there! More crazy Muslims shot people! Bomb ISIS! More drone strikes! Expand the War on Terror!

    We live in a free and liberal society that, as part of a larger campaign of bombings and assassinations in the 1960s and 1970s, trained and financed Orlando Bosch and others to bomb a Cuban civilian airliner and kill dozens of civilians. We live in a free and liberal society that in 1992 pardoned Bosch, helped resettle him in Miami, and prevented his associate from being extradited for trial because Venezuela could not provide a satisfactory guarantee that he would not be tortured.

    We live in a free and liberal society that routinely “renders” suspects to dictatorships far worse than Venezuela for torture at the hands of foreign agents. We live in a free and liberal society that within ten years of Bosch’s unconditional pardon embarked on a global war against terrorism wherein we engaged in wars of aggression on false pretenses and killed hundreds of thousands of non-combatants. We live in a free and liberal society that bombs media outlets and kills unsympathetic journalists in Iraq and Palestine and Cuba and Nicaragua and Philadelphia and Birmingham and elsewhere in the name of nationalism, tradition, stability and realpolitik efficiency.

    We live in a free and liberal society that disappears thousands of prisoners of war and political prisoners into a worldwide network of secret gulags where they are tortured and worse. We live in a free and liberal society where none of the leaders who order or encourage this torture will ever be prosecuted. We live in a free and liberal society where the bureaucrats responsible for the torture won’t even be punished for surveilling and intimidating the elected officials tasked with overseeing said bureaucrats.

    We live in a free and liberal society that has, in the last month, arrested, jailed, and charged with making terroristic threats at minimum dozens of young men who have, in effect, done nothing other than post hip hop lyrics and paraphrased Malcom X quotes on Facebook. That is, engaged in public speech using language which has, since at least Brandenberg v. Ohio, been explicitly protected by the First Amendment.

    While even leftist American political commentators engage in a pointless pants-pissing match over whether we should assess Islamic fundamentalists murdering journalists as more or less important than Adam Lanza murdering schoolchildren because he is a raving lunatic or Anders Breivik murdering schoolchildren because he is a raving fanatic, the United States of America is busy turning popular and formerly protected political sentiment into terroristic thoughtcrime.

    We are to fear the supposedly chilling effect that these latest attacks will have on journalistic and editorial critiques of radical Islam. We are to ignore, as our media and NGOs largely are, that the Department of Justice is assisting local police and prosecutors in portraying vague violent sentiments and online political speech as illegal threats. Formerly protected speech against the state and state agents is being redefined as terrorism if state agents report that said speech made them anxious or uncomfortable. That is truly horrifying and represents a far more chilling threat to speech and the stated values of our Constitutional Republic than does a thousand stateless religious radicals bombing television stations and press offices.

    The war raging isn’t one of Western Secular Freedom v Islamic Theocratic Tyranny, but rather one of the Neoliberal Globalization and Technocratic Totalitarianism of the Elite v. Everyone Else. I can understand how spending decades immersed in attitudes of American Exceptionalism, arguments for Western Colonization, and agitation against the external ‘others’ can make people not see the the forest for the brilliantly lit trees of faux “liberty” and “freedom.” But I urge us all to start squinting and try to look past the glare.

  84. 84.

    drkrick

    @Bitter Scribe:

    Wait, what? This Donahue is sticking up for Muslim assassins?

    Of course he is. Pat Buchanan endorsed the fatwa against Salman Rushdie when it was issued. These folks understand medieval-style theocrats.

  85. 85.

    Debbie(aussie)

    @Bill: Beautiful.
    Please ask Jones or Anne to have it front paged. After all the tong and froing (hmm) of the threads over the past 24 hours, it is a thing of beauty.

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