Sure, many of the talking heads and most visible journalists are blatant Obama sycophants. But, why is the refusal to investigate Obama and his administration so pervasive?
Are there really no young and eager investigative journalists who want to make a name for themselves – and to hell with ideology?
‘I was on the brunt end of the Obama-generated censorship while employed at CNN as an investigative correspondent.
On at least a weekly basis, and to my constant frustration, my superiors and CNN’s lawyers were quick to remind me that we need to be extra careful because “President Obama has gone after more journalists and whistleblowers than any president in history”. The leash around my neck began to tighten.
Whether I was allowed to embark on future stories or even interview sensitive sources for potential investigations, eventually became an ‘Obama subpoena risk assessment’ and potential court cost calculation, rather than a pure evaluation of the report’s contribution to public good or our journalistic duty to cover the story.
Some of my most crucial investigations were killed before they started because they were too high a risk of an Obama subpoena.
One boss told me quote “we know how the FBI feels about your source, if we have information the FBI will want we become a target”.’
I don’t know just how reliable this blogger is, but her read-worthy post includes many links to reputable sites with material confirming her observations.
Last Saturday, there was a ‘multi-faith’ protest against the blasphemous movie, ‘Innocence of the Muslims’.
In so many parts of the worlds, these protests have been extremely violent and, well, deadly. And not just from the primary rioting: in many places of the world, Muslims who were not deemed to be sufficiently ardent in protesting have faced violence. In one famous example, a man who declined to close his shop in order to join the riots in Pakistan has been charged with ‘blasphemy’ and is facing life in jail or a death sentence. In another example, journalists whom the rioters suspected of not giving their riots sufficient coverage (or casting them in positive enough light – depending on which sources you read) were violently attacked and barely escaped with their lives.
So, I am very happy to report that the Toronto protests were all peaceful.
Well, peaceful in the sense that the people protesting did not riot – and that is a good thing. That some of the protesters called for violence – and even the death of the moviemakers – that is less good.
Here are some videos of both the protest and the coverage thereof by Sun Media:
Ezra Levant with Raheel Raza:
If you’d like to check it out – Muslims Facing Tomorrow website is here.
Michael Coren’s (who made it to the protest personally) coverage is here:
BTW – I oppose the laws that forbid the denial of the holocaust. Not because I don’t thing it happened – my mother, as a small child, guided by her mother – actually sneaked food to Jewish concentration camp inmates when they were on a work detail in her neighbourhood. My grandmother saw, with her own eyes, a prisoner, dive onto a compost heap to eat some potato peels – and how, for this, he was beaten to death by his guard…using a beam with a nail in it… Yes, I know it happened and I have heard 1st person testimony of just how nightmarish it was. That, of course, is not the point: even if they are vicious lies, people must be free to say them, and say them publicly. To me, freedom of speech is absolute.
BlazingaCatFur – who was also there – asks some very basic questions:
SDAMatt2a, who also attended the event in order to report on it, captured the protester’s assertion that ‘Islam condones racism’. In case you think this is a linguistic error, please, do consider that the Koran itself considers the supremacy of Arabs over other races (and the Qureshi tribe is given supremacy over other Arabs) and that under Sharia – even today, it is not just illegal for any non-Muslim men to marry a Muslim woman, it is also illegal for non-white Muslim men to marry white Muslim women, it is illegal for non-Arab Muslim men to marry Arab Muslim women and it is illegal for non-Qureshi Muslim men to marry Qureshi Muslim women. That is recognized by ALL the ‘schools’ of Sharia and women whose wali (legal guardian) who agrees on their behalf to a marriage contract (as women cannot agree on their own – that power is reserved for their guardian alone) to a man in contradiction of this race-based rule have the right to sue for divorce on the grounds of having been married ‘below their racial status’. All schools of Islamic jurisprudence recognize this and side with the race-based ‘status’. I personally think this is wrong – but I do not have any influence over Sharia…
‘Reddit – the front page of the internet’ has a new section: DrawMohammed!!!
Check it out – and subscribe!
UPDATE: This subredit has now been marked ‘private’….and even though I have contributed more than one post to it myself, I no longer can get in myself. Sorry.
Free speech is paramount to the continuation of our society.
Finally, even our elites are beginning to realize this, even if they are not willing to express it openly – yet.
Even a few in the media are begginning to acknowledge this, even though most are still confused about what ‘incitement to riot’ is.
Aside:
Just for the record, saying “Your Mama wears army boots!” is an insult, not incitement to riot, violence or murder. Saying “Kill those who say My Mama wears army boots!” is incitement to murder.
Even if you replace ‘your Mama’ with ‘Your Prophet’ and ‘wears army boots’ with ‘rapes little girls’.
And offering money to anyone who kills ‘Steve X’, because ‘Steve X’ said or wrote or drew or filmed something, is conspiracy to murder…and a criminal act.
I’m only explaining this because so many policymakers in the USA and UK and media members everywhere seem to have trouble understanding this simple distinction.
What is more, they announced ahead of time that they were going to do so.
The response of the French government: send riot police to guard the magazine from rioters, because, as they quite correctly said, free speech must be protected. And, they beefed up the security at their Embassies, in case there was a backlash there.
I’m sorry, but that is just as wrong as banning the cartoons themselves!
Peaceful protests are a necessary expression of the freedom of speech and no government may ban them, on any grounds.
EVER!
Sure, if the protests turn violent, the police are obligated to arrest those who break the law and riot. That goes without saying. But banning a protest just because it might – even if it is very likely that it might – turn violent is a violation of the very principles that were upheld by protecting the publication of the cartoons!
You cant’d punish pre-crime and you cannot limit someone’s rights because of what they might do.
Well, obviously, you can – the French just did it.
What I mean is that it is wrong to do so…
Freedom of speech is for everyone.
It is especially important that we protect the freedom of speech of those who say things we don’t like.
Sure, the protests were likely to turn violent. Pretending otherwise would be naive.
But the power of the government does not extend to limiting the freedoms of their citizens to commit crimes – only to arrest them and punish them in accordance with the laws after they break the law!
Yes, there is a problem in many places with protests turning violent: but that is because in the past, the police have been negligent in apprehending and punishing those who break the laws during protests. That is a problem which needs to be acknowledged and dealt with.
But past negligence in enforcing the laws sufficiently does not give any goverment the right to abrogate the rights of its citizens – especially a core right, like freedom of speech.
Many people think that it is a reasonable limitation on the freedom of free speech to prohibit someone from yelling ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded theatre – provided, that is, that there is no fire.
That little caveat – provided that there is no fire – is often forgotten by those who wold consider this to be a reasonable limitation of free speech. This, indeed, is not surprising – failure to recognize real warnings of danger and simply treating unpopular statements equally, whether they are true or not, is symptomatic of the individuals who most loudly profess that this limitation on the freedom of speech is somehow ‘reasonable’.
According to these people, giving a warning of a real ad present peril (like, say, a fire in a crowded theatre) is worse than letting everyone sit complacently until they burn to death.
I must admit, there was a time when I was persuaded that if there indeed were no fire, then shouting a warning of it ought not happen. OK, I still think that it ought not happen – but not because there are laws against it.
To explain my change of mind, I have to digress a little bit to some examples on utilitarian morality from philosophy. Not that I am particularly versed in philosophy – my ideas are mostly self-reasoned, but a little education has made me widen the scope of my reasoning.
There is that classical moral dilema question: if you see an uncontrollable train going down some tracks where it will hit six people, but there is a lever you can pull that will divert that train onto another set of tracks, where it will only kill one person, should you pull the lever?
Most ‘utilitarians’ will say that yes, you should, because one death is less tragic than 6 deaths.
I don’t think this is anywhere near as clear cut.
If the train stays on its original track, you (presuming the uncontrollable-ness of the train is not your fault to start off with) are not responsible for the deaths of those 6 people.
If, however, you do pull the lever, you will be the direct cause of the death of that 1 person.
People are not cogs, interchangeable for each other. We are individuals. And, if you pull that lever, you will indeed be guilty of causing the death of that individual. What is more, since you have had time to consider it, that constitutes premeditation. You would therefore be commiting murder.
This means that the question itself is improperly formulated.
Rather, it ought to ask if you could pull that lever and save the 6 people – but in the process murder 1 person, with all the legal consequences this carries, should you still pull that lever?
Because that is the real question: is saving the lives of 6 people worth murdering someone – and, perhaps, spending the rest of your life in prison as a result! After all, real actions have real consequences…
Similarly, the person who shouts ‘FIRE!” in a crowded theatre has not actually killed anyone.
It is the people who act before checking whether their actions are based on fact or not, and those who put their lives above others by trampling them to death to save themselves, who are guilty of, well, the trampling. Not the person who – rightly or wrongly – shouts ‘Fire!’
It is always the tramplers who are the ones guilty of the trampling.
But, because there are many of them, and our moral compass has for too long been corrupted by the profoundly immoral Judeo-Christian doctrine of ‘scapegoating’, of ‘vicarious redemption’, that we are willing to put the blame of the many ‘tramplers’ onto the one who may not, indeed, have done any ‘trampling’ at all!
It is precisely this predisposition we have of shifting the blame for the actions of the individuals who actually carry them out onto a scapegoat who is said to have ’caused’ their bad or immoral behaviour that is going to be the downfall of our society!
It is precisely this scapegoating which is at the heart of political correctness and the erosion of the freedoms which we ought to be able to exercise unfettered.
How have we improved our lot if we have liberated ourselves from Christian religious dogmas, if we permit its worst shackles to still imprison our morality, albeit under the new name of ‘political correctnes’?
So, now, I agree with Christopher Hitchens on this point:
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 