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.”
Kathy K
Freedom of speech does not cover libel/slander.
BigMediaBlog.com / Lonewacko
Whether it’s libel/slander is highly questionable.
The more important story is whether their report influenced the election, and whether the Bush-supporting blogosphere helped.
Terry
I’m certainly no lawyer, but the Professor clearly lied in at least two instances in his original piece; whether this comstitutes “libel/slander” is not clear to me. What is abundantly clear over recent years is that the Professor is a dependable anti-Semite.
BigMediaBlog.com / Lonewacko
The letter has five paragraphs. The first four more or less follow the rule that the cure for speech you disagree with is more speech. The fifth paragraph does not. The third “lie” appears to be sufficiently explained by Cole: he didn’t say they were affiliated with Likud, only that they essentially supported the same position. You don’t need to be a GOP operative to support the GOP.
Perhaps they should sue. Cole could then be supported by his university and most everyone else and he could probably find grounds to counter-sue.