Free Speech Under Attack...in Canada, Brazil, Great Britain

Free Speech Under Foreign Assault
Robert Spencer - Oct 09, 2009 Front Page Magazine

Does the United States Constitution protect the freedom of speech of American citizens, or does it not? In this era of globalization, the answer is becoming increasingly muddled. Thursday, an American citizen, Paul Williams, went on trial in Canada. He is charged with violating Canadian libel laws in charges he made in his book The Dunces of Doomsday about a jihad terror cell at McMaster University in Ontario.

Likewise in Brazil, an American business writer, Joseph Sharkey, is on trial for what he wrote about Brazilian air-traffic controllers after he survived an airplane crash in Brazil.Williams and Sharkey both live in the United States, which guarantees that its citizens’ freedom of speech not be infringed. Should Canadian and Brazilian libel laws apply to them? Williams has already had to pay enormous amounts of money for his defense, and Sharkey is likely to be found guilty and given a $500,000 fine. McMaster University wants a cool two million dollars from Williams.

Shouldn’t the United States government protect American citizens from such bullying by foreign powers?

If nothing is done, the problem is certain to get worse - for Williams and Sharkey are not the first American victims of the tactic that has come to be known as "libel tourism."

The late Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz sued Rachel Ehrenfeld, founder and director of the American Center for Democracy, several years ago. Bin Mahfouz was upset about Ehrenfeld’s book, Funding Evil, in which she wrote that he was involved in funding Hamas and al Qaeda – a charge for which there was abundant evidence from Western intelligence agencies.

Nevertheless, taking advantage of British libel laws that place the burden of proof on the defendant, rather than the plaintiff, bin Mahfouz sued not in the United States, where Ehrenfeld lives and published her book, but in Britain, where neither he nor Ehrenfeld lived and where his entire case depended upon a handful of copies sold in that country mostly through special orders from Amazon.com, and the appearance of one chapter of the book on the Internet, where could have been read by British readers. A British court awarded bin Mahfouz $250,000, and Ehrenfeld had to devote the bulk of her time for years to fighting this judgment.

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of eight books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, is available now from Regnery Publishing.

Heritage Morning Bell

Obama Admits He’s “Not Familiar” With House Bill
With the public’s trust in his handling of health care tanking (50%-44% of Americans disapprove), the White House has launched a new phase of its strategy designed to pass Obamacare: all Obama, all the time. As part of that effort, Obama hosted a conference call with leftist bloggers urging them to pressure Congress to pass his health plan as soon as possible.

During the call, a blogger from Maine said he kept running into an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” President Obama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.” (quote begins at 17:10)

This is a truly disturbing admission by the President especially considering that later in the call, Obama promises yet again: “If you have health insurance, and you like it, and you have a doctor that you like, then you can keep it. Period.” How can Obama keep making this promise if he is not familiar with the health legislation that is being written in Congress? Details matter.

We are familiar with the passage IBD sites, and as we wrote last week, the House bill does not outright outlaw private individual health insurance, but it does effectively regulate it out of existence. The House bill does allow private insurance to be sold, but only “Exchange-participating health benefits plans.” In order to qualify as an “Exchange-participating health benefits plan,” all health insurance plans must conform to a slew of new regulations, including community rating and guaranteed issue. These will all send the cost of private individual health insurance skyrocketing. Furthermore, all these new regulations would not apply just to individual insurance plans, but to all insurance plans. So the House bill will also drive up the cost of your existing employer coverage as well. Until, of course, it becomes so expensive that your company makes the perfectly economical decision to dump you into the government plan.

President Obama may not care to study how many people will lose their current health insurance if his plan becomes law, but like most Americans, we do. That is why we partnered with the Lewin Group to study how many Americans would be forced into the government “option” under the House health plan. Here is what we found:

1. Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the new public plan and as a consequence about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private coverage.

2. About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

3. Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage could go up by as much as $460 per privately insured person, as a result of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public plan modeled on Medicare.

It is truly frightening that the President of the United States is pressuring Congress in an all out media blitz to pass legislation that he flatly admits he has not read and is not familiar with. President Obama owes it to the Americans people to stop making promises about what his health plan will and will not do until he has read it, and can properly defend it in public, to his own supporters.

Healthcare Protests A Huge Success

Just spoke with with my bud cclezel who was at the Webb office today. His estimate was 200 stouthearted folks against socialized healthcare and one citizen promoting cap and trade.
(I admire anyone who takes the time to express an opinion, I just wish they would think things through.)

Pictures will be forthcoming. News crews were on scene. The Richmond PD were as professional and supportive as could be expected. Thank You Richmond PD.

BRAVO ZULU's to everyone.

BTW: If I really wanted socialized medicine, I'd move to Canada.

Great Americans

Great Americans is perhaps one of the most promising tradtional values video websites to come along in a good while. This type of site has been desperately needed since 11 September 2001.

My brothers over at EaglesUp actually have a similar site, called protrooptube.com, but there seems to be a problem and Grey Wolf has other, more pressing tasks to attend to. Seriously.
I need him for the protroopevents website. He is the wizard. He is legend.

While LiveLeak and the now merged Ogrish were good sources for battle videos and videos of a rather gruesome nature, we needed an outlet for the good stuff.

(although I watched a video from a gunship at night of an incident in Iraq, that was hilarious. I will not describe it in detail, but I want you to think carport, convertible, two very atheletic consenting adults, (NOT military), who, to phrase it delicately, "danced like no one was watching".)
No less than 4 helicopters were involved in the surviellance, and the chatter between the pilots had me in hysterics.

Back to GA. Lets get rolling on getting videos uploaded of ordinary people doing extraordinary things for the extraordinary people who protect us and come to our aid when needed.

But give us some funny stuff too.

CJ has some good stuff up at A Soldiers Perspective.

Blackfive and Tankerbabe, and JP and Troy and CJ, and JD Johannes are doing some great stuff with video.

Show the world what you're doing. Tell the world about your heros. Get involved.