Europe Under Seige

What we believe. [Link]

We in the West believe that blasphemy is a right and not a crime. And we in the West believe that Jews (and everyone else, for that matter) should be allowed to remain alive and have museums. (I would note, for those who believe that recent anti-Semitic attacks in Europe were caused by specific actions of the Israeli government, that a) anti-Semites cause anti-Semitism, not Israel; and, b) the Brussels attack occurred in May, well before the summer war in Gaza.)

The Charlie Hebdo massacre seems to be the most direct attack on Western ideals by jihadists yet. I’ve seen arguments advancing the idea that 9/11 represents the purest expression of Islamist rage at a specific Western idea— capitalism, in that case—but satire and the right to blaspheme are directly responsible for modernity. In the words of Simon Schama, “Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.”

The French president, Francois Hollande, said earlier today that, “No barbaric act will ever extinguish freedom of the press.” This statement is, as Claire Berlinski has pointed out, self-falsifying. This barbaric act, she notes, literally extinguished the press. The most recent iteration of the Islamist terror campaign in Europe has focused on Jews and cartoonists, but it will not end with Jews and cartoonists, unless it is comprehensively defeated.

The correct response

More speech, not less. [Link]

From Ross Douthat: 

If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more. Again, liberalism doesn’t depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and it’s okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, that’s when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed.In this sense, many of the Western voices criticizing the editors of Hebdo have had things exactly backward: Whether it’s theObama White House or Time Magazine in the past or the Financial Times and (God help us) the Catholic League today, they’ve criticized the paper for provoking violence by being needlessly offensive and “inflammatory” (Jay Carney’s phrase), when the reality is that it’s precisely the violence that justifies the inflammatory content.

Read the whole thing. Surprisingly, there are a number of readers who comment that this is the first time they’ve ever agreed with Douthat.

And in a bit of a disconnect, it’s ironic how Douthat’s piece is in the NYT but the paper has seemingly opted not to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoon.

A stand for speech

Free speech must not be silenced. [Link]

Self-censoring out of fear means self-imposition of shari’a (Islamic law).

Self-censoring out of “respect” (actually just a euphemism for fear) means you are submitting to the terrorists’ worldview.

The way to overcome them in this instance is to overwhelm them with disrespect and mockery.

They can silence one magazine, but they can’t silence the entire Internet.

Every blogger, of every political stripe, be it left, right, and everywhere in between, needs to realize that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are the two keystones of your ideology, whatever it may be. You need to make a stand. You need to make these terrorists lose the ideological battle.

And the way to do that is to republish the Mohammed cartoons yourselves. Today. Right now.

Fill the world with images of Mohammed so that the terrorists realize they can never expunge them all.

But where to get the pictures? Easy.

The Mohammed Image Archive, which I have hosted at zombietime since the day of the original “Mohammed cartoon crisis” back in May of 2006, has not only a full collection of the original cartoons, but more importantly the largest collection of Mohammed imagery ever assembled in the history of the world.

Angry Mob Silences A University Panel In The Name Of Free Speech

When did shouting down someone you disagreed with become an expression of free speech? [Link] 

A mob of angry protesters hijacked a panel discussion at Portland State University, loudly chanting, “We will not be silenced in the face of your violence,” over and over again until organizers had no choice but to cancel the event.
The panel, intended to discuss police brutality, drew the ire of the mob by including Kristian Williams, an anarchist author who has clashed with feminists by suggesting that sexual assault allegations should be studiously investigated, rather than automatically assumed to be true.
That statement was deemed to be hate speech by the mob, who accused him of “survivor-shaming” victims of sexual assault, according to Campus Reform.“You will be held accountable for all the people who feel unsafe by the words that you choose and say, and the way you cast doubt on people who have survived traumatic issues,” said one protester.
The mob loudly repeated the phrase, “We will not be silenced in the face of your violence,” which had the intended effect of silencing the panelists.
Protesters said that they would only allow the panel discussion to continue if Williams left. When the panel refused these demands, the angry shouting continued.
“Fuck Kristian Williams and fuck you trying to silence us,” hissed one of the protesters, who was part of a movement specifically designed to silence the panelists. He was cheered for his remarks.

What makes some men do this?

When does this stop being the standard for online disagreement with women? [Link]

“I think this woman is wrong about something on the Internet. Clearly my best course of action is to threaten her with rape.”

That’s crazy talk, right? So why does it happen all the time?

Honest question, dudes.

That women are harassed online is not news. That women in comics and the broader fandom cultures are harassed online is not news. That these women are routinely transmitted anonymous messages describing graphic sexual violence perpetrated upon them for transgressions as grave as not liking a thing… that is actually news to me, and it’s probably news to a lot of you guys reading this.

But it’s not news to a lot of women I know, and to women whose work you’ve read here and around the Web. I know it’s not news to them because of the way they write about it. They describe the latest rape threat as plainly as a man like you or I might complain about a late train. It’s just a another lousy thing that happens. You know, life in the big city.

“I will find you. I will hurt you. I will physically violate you… for being wrong about Spider-Man.”

Can you imagine, gentlemen, receiving that threat from a potentially dangerous man whose identity you have no hope of discovering but who knows your name, what city you live in, what you look like and where you work?

Now imagine receiving messages like that from men so frequently that you’re no longer bothered by it.

Now understand how f*cked up it is that you’re no longer bothered by it; that you’re no longer bothered by men’s anonymous threats of brutal sexual violence, because they’ve become just as common as a train not arriving on time.

If you’re like me, you’re now beginning to understand the depressingly huge scope of this problem.

The Internet is a boon to humanity. It is also terrible. That is its special nature. Every cogent thought put forth has a dark, mindless twin — sometimes these twins are legion — ready to feed on a person’s idea and process it into the toxic waste found at the bottom of virtually any website you care to visit. We call them trolls, and anyone reading this site or others like it knows that popular art and its surrounding fandom attract a particularly nasty strain of them.

I’m not just talking about the trolls. I’m not just talking about the mischief makers, the haters, the contrarians or the pedants. What I’m also talking about is something much worse and heretofore all but invisible to me and many other men like me. I’m talking about this:

Women in comics are the deviation, the invading body, the cancer. We are the cure, the norm, the natural order. All you are is a pair of halfway decent tits, a c*nt and a loud mouth. But see, it doesn’t matter how loud you get. It doesn’t matter how many of your lezbo tumblr and twitter fangirl friends agree with you and reinforce your views. You can be all “I’m not going to be silent about misogyny so f*ck you!” all you want. In the end all you are is a pathetic little girl trying to effect change and failing to make a dent. You might as well try to drain the ocean of fish. That’s the kind of battle you face with people like me. We won’t quit. We won’t stop attacking. We won’t give up. Ever.

I’ve encountered such sentiments before, but it’s only recently that I’ve learned how common they are.

Those remarks were sent to Janelle Asselin, a ComicsAlliance contributor, professional comic book editor, and academic researcher. She posted them on her Facebook page, to which she’s restricted public access for obvious reasons. I’ve republished the message here with her permission.

Ironically, the missive was transmitted anonymously via an online survey Janelle created to gather data on the prevalence of sexual harassment in the American comic book industry.

The man who wrote those words doubtlessly discovered Janelle’s survey by way of the misogynistic response to an article she wrote for another website critiquing the appeal of a superhero comic book cover. In her characteristically straightforward fashion, Janelle justified her opinion — that the cover was bad and spoke to a systemic badness with respect to marketing and audience — with reason and persuasive creative insight honed over years of professional experience. She pointed out, among other things, that the anatomy and costume of a teenage girl on the cover seemed off from both a biological and marketing perspective and suggested this might have a part to play in narrowing the book’s potential readership.

Janelle’s points deserved to be considered given her background not just as a professional editor and researcher who backs up her ideas with experience and logic, but also because she’s a woman. Agree or disagree with her conclusions; the fact remains that in 2014 it’s still relatively rare for women’s views on such topics to be represented in the comics media, and Janelle’s thoughtful and honest piece adds to the comics discourse.

Part of discourse is of course good faith disagreement, and that avenue is always open to anyone who wishes to take issue with the published opinions of anyone of any gender.

Missing the point

Keith Alexander Supports Law To Gag Press So He Can Get His Preferred Online Surveillance Bill Passed. [Link]

He's flat out admitting -- as many have noted -- that his pet cybersecurity bills are dead right now because of all of the Snowden leaks, showing just how abusive the NSA has been. And his answer to that is not to fix the NSA, but to pass bills to stifle the free press from reporting on NSA efforts, which he then thinks will allow the government to pass legislation like CISPA. 

As the report in the Guardian notes, no one seems to have any idea what this "media leaks legislation" is going to entail, as nothing has yet been proposed, and there haven't even been any real rumors of anything until now. However, with James Clapper recently referring to reporters asaccomplices, and Rep. Mike Rogers making the out-of-left-field argument that reporters who are covering Snowden are thieves who traffic in stolen government property, you can connect a few dots and guess at what's coming down the pike. 

Alexander's own comments seem to similarly suggest that reporters "have no standing" to report on these issues, because they're not insiders, using the Miranda detention as a launching pad:

“Recently, what came out with the justices in the United Kingdom … they looked at what happened on Miranda and other things, and they said it’s interesting: journalists have no standing when it comes to national security issues. They don’t know how to weigh the fact of what they’re giving out and saying, is it in the nation’s interest to divulge this,”

Still, a bill to stifle investigative reporting is going to face stiff opposition, and even bringing up such a concept suggests that Alexander still has no clue what current public perception is like concerning the NSA's surveillance activities. Just the fact that he's suggesting a bill to silence a free press, and he specifically admits he wants to do so in order to get his troubling surveillance bill approved, shows the depths of Alexander's thinking on these issues. A free press? Not important. More power for the NSA to spy on everyone? That's the priority.

Tar and feathers are too good for him.

Our problems are too much legislative oversight, that pesky first amendment and that the President doesn't have enough power.

When I hear stuff like this, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

First up, the Wall street Journal. [Link]

It's no surprise that the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal would be apologists for the surveillance state, but even they have reached new depths in discussing the recommendations to President Obama from his NSA review panel/task force. As we had already pointed out, the actual recommended changes appear to be entirely cosmetic, and yet the WSJ seems to think that the NSA should have free rein to spy on anyone and everything. It's as if the WSJ editorial board has never heard of the 4th Amendment, and has simply no clue how much damage the NSA has done to the US economy. You would think, given the WSJ's reputation as being pro-big business, that it would concern them that businesses appear to be losing a ton of money overseas as people don't want to do business with American companies any more over the NSA revelations. 

Next, NSA officials annoyed by that pesky First Amendment. [Link]

But, perhaps the most tone deaf of all, was the statement from one NSA official suggesting that it's time to reform the First Amendment, because he's not at all happy about how reporters have covered the NSA recently. As Drezner notes, he's not sure if it's a joke or not, but it really doesn't matter. That seems like something you should not joke about if you're an NSA person, given everything that's going on.

The NSA's attitude toward the press is, well, disturbing. There were repeated complaints about the ways in which recent reportage of the NSA was warped or lacking context. To be fair, this kind of griping is a staple of officials across the entire federal government. Some of the NSA folks went further, however. One official accused some media outlets of "intentionally misleading the American people," which is a pretty serious accusation. This official also hoped that the Obama administration would crack down on these reporters, saying, "I have some reforms for the First Amendment."

It seems that the public might have some reforms for the intelligence community as well. And those would actually be constitutional, unlike what that particular NSA officials had in mind for free speech and the press. There's even more in the Drezner piece that is well worth reading, including the how the NSA was unable to properly manage his own personal information which he had to send them in order to get his pass to come for a visit...

And finally, the worst Op-ed of the year explaining why the President should get more power. [Link]

It might strike you as counterintuitive to imagine that a president with a drone fleet, a “kill list,” dragnet databases of Americans' personal information and increasingly arbitrary authority over health care's one-sixth of the U.S. economy has too little power—but that's how you know you're in the presence of an original thinker.

Luckily, there's “a way out”: “Make the executive branch more powerful.” What that would mean for entitlements and tax reform isn't at all clear, but Brooks follows that prescription with this spit-take-inducing sentence: “This is a good moment to advocate greater executive branch power because we've just seen a monumental example of executive branch incompetence: the botched Obamacare rollout.” We suffer from “reform stagnation,” Brooks laments. It's too hard to push through “immigration reform, tax reform, entitlement reform and gun legislation” via the archaic "Schoolhouse Rock!" method outlined in Article I of the Constitution.

College Republicans Dubbed Security Threat, Refused Entrance to Obama’s Campus Speech

Their mere presence is offensive to him. [Link]

DISCRIMINATION: College Republicans Dubbed Security Threat, Refused Entrance to Obama’s Campus Speech. “Ten College Republicans were dubbed a security threat and refused admittance to President Barack Obama’s speech at the University of Central Missouri on Wednesday. Despite the fact that the students had tickets to the event, security personnel turned them away at the door to the recreation center where Obama gave a speech on economic policy, telling the group it wasn’t about their politics but the president’s safety.”

This is consistent with the Administration’s general strategy of treating political opponents like enemies of the state.

UPDATE: What should people do? (1) Sue. (2) Demand that colleges not host Obama for speeches in the future. If he’s not safe around the College Republicans, he shouldn’t be on campus at all. If they do have him on campus, protest noisily outside — and file lawsuits trying to injoin his appearance. On public university campuses, barring people based on political affiliation — which is what’s going on here — is a first amendment violation. (3) Make a stink to the university’s big donors.

It's projection. Progressives on college campuses frequently shout down anyone they disagree with (They are big fans of free speech). Conservatives rarely do this.

Why atheists can speak in the West

Something to think about the next time someone tries to say radical Christianity is equivalent to radical Islam. [Link]

Recently Bill Maher ripped into CSU San Bernadino professorBrian Levin for making the ridiculous equivalence between Christian extremism and Islamic extremism. The problem, which Maher pinpoints, is that Islamic extremism is not that extreme. By this, I mean that Islamic extremism (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood) has much greater broad based support than Christian extremism (e.g., Christian Reconstruction). The difference here is that you’ve heard of the Muslim Brotherhood, while far fewer have heard of Christian Reconstructionists. That’s because the former have democratic support in a populous Muslim country as the ruling party.

The standard liberal cant is to change the subject, and point to the past history of Christianity, or engage in unrepresentative comparisons. Since I know more history and religion than most of my interlocutors, I have little patience for this. Sophistry loses its power when the tactics are often so nakedly amateurish. And this is not simply abstraction. Let’s look at what’s been happening in Bangladesh, the country in which I was born, BANGLADESH’S ISLAMISTS CALL FOR DEATH OF ‘ATHEIST BLOGGERS’:

On April 6, hundreds of thousands of men and boys spread out across the sweltering capital Dhaka to call for, among other things, the hanging of atheists. The mass mobilization of Islamists was spurred by a handful of “atheist” bloggers who are supposedly so offensive to Islam that they should face the hangman’s noose.

“There is no place in this country for atheists,” was one of the friendlier refrains that a supporter of the organizers, Hefazet Islami, a Sunni Muslim outfit from the country’s second largest city, Chittagong, told me.

The Islamist marchers listed 84 bloggers who they demand be arrested or hanged, In February an atheist blogger named Rajib was stabbed to death a month after blogger Asif Mohiuddin was nearly killed for his beliefs.

First, Bangladesh is a moderate Muslim country. The ruling party is secular. It is not an Islamic state. Rather, in an old fashioned 1970s socialist manner it is officially the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. But in deference to the religiously conservative nature of the populace there is still some mixing of church & state, as we would understand it in the West. But Bangladesh, unlike Pakistan, has not opted for a monotone Islamic identity. The national anthem was written by a Hindu.

The end of free speech in England?

The beginning of a very slippery slope. Both sides are debating which color boot to stamp on the face of speech. [Link]

Today in London, Parliament is the in throes of a closed-door horse-trading exercise over "Leveson" -- that is, the Leveson Inquiry in to the bad behavior of the British press, whose tabloids got caught illegally spying on people (from MPs and Lords down to grieving parents of murdered children), bribing cops high and low, and otherwise engaging in shenanigans that were pretty awful. Strangely, although all of these things were already illegal (but were not vigorously investigated by cops and politicos who were beholden to the press for lucrative "columns," gifts, and favourable coverage), the English political establishment has decided that the real problem is that the press isn't regulated enough.

The Tories want the press regulated without a specific law -- they favour an obscure instrument called a Royal Charter. Labour and the LibDems want a press-regulating law. All of the coverage of this issue today is about the difference between these two options. What neither of them are talking about is Schedule 4, which establishes that the new rules will cover "a website containing news-related material (whether or not related to a newspaper or magazine)" where publication "takes place in the United Kingdom" and relates to "news or information about public affairs" or "opinion about matters relating to the news or current affairs."

In a nutshell, then: if you press a button labelled "publish" or "submit" or "tweet" while in the UK, these rules as written will treat you as a newspaper proprietor, and make you vulnerable to an arbitration procedure where the complainer pays nothing, but you have to pay to defend yourself, and that will potentially have the power to fine you, force you to censor your posts, and force you to print "corrections" and "apologies" in a manner that the regulator will get to specify.

As Alec Muffett writes, "anyone who says 'Yes, but this is all about 'smoke filled rooms' and controlling Murdoch, they’d never do it to bloggers' has no memory of any previous overreach of powers by the state, police or other regulators."