Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour has put a $100,000 bounty on the head of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who made the anti-Islamic film “The Innocence of Muslims.” The offer to pay anyone who kills the filmmaker is reminscent of the Fatwa placed on the head of Salman Rushdie for his book, The Satanic Verses. However, this is not just a government official but an official in the government of a U.S. ally calling for the murder of a U.S. citizen. Yet, Bilour insisted “I am a Muslim first, then a government representative.”
Category: Media
We have long discussed the serious rollback on free speech in the West as countries like France and England profess support for free speech and the free press while prosecuting or investigating people for anti-religious speech. That conflicted message was evident today after French magazine Charlie Hebdo ran cartoons featuring Mohammad in its coverage over the deadly protests following the release of an anti-Muslim film in the United States. Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the French Council of Muslim Faith, described the cartoons as a “new Islamophobic act” while French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (left) warned “[t]here must be freedom of speech, but I am absolutely opposed to any provocation.”
We have received a lot of requests for the briefing just filed in the Sister Wives case in Salt Lake City. As lead counsel, I am limited in what I can say about the case publicly. However, here is the final brief on the merits of the case, which is limited to 25 pages of argument under the local rules.
Continue reading “Brown Family Files Final Brief On Summary Judgment”
We have spent years following the absurd series of photo ops featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin from shooting tigers to fishing bare chested in the wild to leading wild cranes in migration to Asia to riding leather-clad through Moscow. The ridiculous claim that Putin found the ancient vases on his very first stint as a scuba diver proved too much for even the most gullible Russians. After aides admitted it was staged following international ridicule, Putin has now shrugged off all of the students as staged events.
Continue reading “Russian Circus: Putin Admits His Exploits Have Been Staged”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Our memories not only serve the purpose of learning to avoid danger from past experience, they serve as the glue that holds our sense of our fleeting lives together into a linear personal narrative. For all of us most memories are specific to our direct life experiences. There are some memories though transcending personal encounters and that directly affect us as well as society as a whole. The murder of John F. Kennedy is one such experience from my life that profoundly affected me and my generation, even though all I knew of the man was third hand at best. Closer in time but equally, if not more indelible is the image of the destruction wrought on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. I would guess that almost all Americans who were alive on that day know where they were and what they were doing. This past week we passed the eleventh anniversary of this horror and innumerable solemn observances occurred throughout the nation.
I can remember one phrase that began to be used over and over from that day onward and my rising anger at the implications of that phrase. “This Changes Everything”. I’ve not been able to determine what news-person or pundit first uttered those words, but afterwards the phrase reverberated incessantly. As that fateful day passed, what took shape in the meme those words created, was that the United States had undergone an experience that changed all the rules we had purportedly lived by in dealing with the world around us. In effect it was like saying “No more Mr. Nice Guy”. Whether or not our country ever lived by the ideals it purported to live by is another question entirely. My anger rose at the overuse of this meme because I’ve spent my life wanting my country to live by a higher standard in both national and international relations. I correctly saw this meme as an attempted usurpation of this tragedy towards turning our country away from our national ideals, such as they were. As the years passed since 9/11/2001, we have watched the erosion of these America Ideals. Two murderous wars have been waged. Hundreds of thousands have died, or been maimed. Our “national treasure” depleted, torture has become legalized and with the passage of the “Patriot Act” we have watched the demolition of our personal freedom. With this anniversary, two articles appeared nationally that call into question what was really behind 9/11 and also why there was a possibility of deterring it, which was ignored by the G.W. Bush Administration. I want to discuss both of these articles and then add my own thoughts on their real context. Continue reading ““This Changes Everything””
The Obama Administration has formally asked YouTube “to review” the anti-Muslim film “Innocence of Muslims.” In a perfectly incoherent position, White House press secretary Jay Carney stressed that the White House was not asking for it to be removed . . . only “reviewed.” I have been discussing this controversy on NPR and CNN. The latest White House move appears to be an effort to get YouTube to remove the video without taking responsibility for expressly asking for the removal. For civil libertarians, the announcement leaves an uneasy — and all-too-familiar — feeling with this Administration. The White House has repeated compromised on civil liberties in favor of political advantage in areas like torture, immunity, and surveillance policies.
Continue reading “White House Asks YouTube To Review “Innocence of Muslims” Film”
After facing press accounts depicting its product as “pink slime,” Beef Products Inc. has brought a defamation action in South Dakota against ABC News Inc.and ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer for damages from the coverage. Notably, the lawsuit also includes Gerald Zirnstein, a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist, as a defendant. It was Zirnstein who reportedly coined the catchy phrase “pink slime” for the beef product. The company is seeking $400 million in claimed actual and consequential damages, treble damages, punitive damages and attorney’s fees and costs.
Continue reading “Coming To A Court Near You: The Revenge of the Pink Slime”
Justin Hallman, 16, wanted to show how the United States is turning into a police state. He succeeded all too well in not only receiving an A+ in his American Government class but also allegedly a visit from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) confirming the very premise of his film posted on YouTube (below).
Our erstwhile ally in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is responding to the brutal murder of U.S. ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other embassy staff in Benghazi on Wednesday. Stevens was reportedly suffocated to death by the attacking mob which attacked the consulate because of a small film shown in the United States that was deemed as insulting to the Muhammad. Karzai then offered his own take on the murders by denouncing the “inhuman and abusive act” of the . . . filmmakers.
Continue reading “Karzai Denounces Filmmakers for the Murder of Americans in Libya”
The Washington Post has reported on a controversy at American University involving Professor Adrienne Pine who drew complaints from her students in her class “Sex, Gender & Culture” after she breastfed her baby in class. The university has criticized Pine but the controversy has produced a national debate on the propriety of a professor bringing a baby to class and breastfeeding in front of students as she lectures.
Below is my column today in USA Today on the closure of the final torture investigation by the Obama Administration. Notably, in light of the rift with civil libertarians and his move to the right on national security matters, Obama is not running on civil liberties in this election or claiming to be champion for such rights. Likewise, liberal newspapers and commentators have criticized the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party for rolling back on strong language in the prior 2008 platform to civil liberties in the Democratic platform. The downgrading of civil liberties by the Democratic Party leaves civil libertarians without even a pretense of a party or candidate championing the cause in this election. In a prior column one year ago, I complained that President Obama had not just killed certain civil liberties but killed the civil liberties movement in the United States. That appears reflected in the tepid response to these issues in the party platform. Of course, while party platforms can be dismissed as meaningless statements, the final closure of the last torture investigations without a single criminal charge promises to have a more lasting impact on the law and our record on civil liberties and human rights. Here is today’s column:
Continue reading “THE IMPROPRIETY OF TORTURE”
Lenoir City High School is teaching its students a chilling message about free speech and journalistic freedom. Earlier in the year, the school barred Krystal Myers, an honor student and editor of the school newspaper, from writing a provocative article on being an atheist at a Christian school entitled “No Rights: The Life of an Atheist”. It is the type of article that can generate some insightful discussion among high schools, but School Director Wayne Miller censored the entire article to protect the school from “disruption.” Now, the school has reportedly transferred journalism teacher Richard Yoakley for the offense of merely supporting atheist and gay students at the school. He quit in response to the pressure.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
The internal combustion engine was an idea that originated in the 18th Century. While various working prototypes were built the concept couldn’t really take off until in the late 1850’s the drilling and refining of petroleum began to blossom. This was a time of the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. In 1885 Karl Benz patented his version of the engine and began producing automobiles. World War I, fought with various forms of mechanized weapons exploded the need for petroleum to fuel them. Major nations began to understand the strategic value of petroleum and the wealth of the Oil Industry began to grow exponentially. By the mid 1920’s the three major oil producers were Saudi Arabia, the United States and the Soviet Union. The oil reserves in Saudi Arabia and in the rest of the Middle East were considered to be the deepest and most valuable. At this point the Middle East, long a backwater in the “Great Game” of nations became the focus of both the industrial nations and of the now dominant Oil Industry.
Much of the history of the Twentieth Century and still today is about the domination of the oil supply. However, as this has played out surrogate issues have been used to provide a mythology to justify intrusions into Middle East that make this economic imperialism palatable to the majority of people. We have watched as Saddam Hussein, a brutal dictator no doubt, was toppled for an act, 9/11, which he had nothing to do with. With our Iraq invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s were killed and injured as collateral damage. The cost in the deaths and maiming of our troops was in the tens of thousands. The freedom of the Iraqi people has been improbably lessened, from that of the brutal Hussein regime, which at least was secular and somewhat respectful of women’s rights? The end result though of this unwarranted war was the signing over of Iraqi Oil Rights and the explosion of military spending geared towards various supporters of the Bush regime.
As this is written the drumbeat in the Middle East goes on for intervention to change the regimes in both Iran and in Syria. With Iran it is the supposed threat from their nuclear development (weapons of mass destruction sound familiar) and with Syria it is the removal of a vile, oppressive regime. My own view, which I will elaborate on below, is that in both these instances the reality is quite different from the myth being put forth. I believe that we are being gulled by those who desire American world hegemony via use of our overwhelming military might. There are forces that see the United States morphing into Empire, just as Rome turned from a Republic to an imperial state. While Caesar crossing the Rubicon was represented as the seminal moment in roman transformation, the reality was just as now that the change was a long time coming. Here is my condensed version of how this all came to be and at the end I will provide links that underlie some of my reasoning. Continue reading “The Drum Beat Goes On”
Vladimir Putin continued his effort to create a cult of personality around his superhero exploits this week. If you recall, after his being featured as a race car driver, great white hunter, jet pilot, oceanologist, martial artist and Hell’s Angel, Putin was shown as a scuba diver. While only having dived three times, Putin was filmed at an ancient Greek Black sea site where he “discovered” two sixth century urns under the water — one of which was in pristine condition with nary a seaweed adhering to its surface. As many of us suggested, Putin’s worshipful staff later admitted it was staged — as Putin was fully aware. Now Putin has decided to morph into a giant white crane – flying a motorized hand glider to guide young Siberian cranes on their migration to Asia while dressed in a white costume. It turned out to be an incredibly symbolic moment. Like many voters protesting his authoritarian policies, all but one crane saw through him for what he was and refused to follow.
Continue reading “Losing His Flock: Putin Takes Highly Symbolic Flight Alone As Giant Crane”
On Huffington Post this week, John Cusack has published an interview with me on the record of the Obama Administration. For full disclosure, John and I grew up together in Chicago and our families have been very close since childhood. With John, I was part of the Piven Theater company with Anne and Joan Cusack (also with Aidan Quinn, Jeremy Piven, Bill Macey, and others involved with the company). John and I continue to discuss politics and philosophy – a regular past time over the holidays for decades over kitchen tables in Evanston and Chicago. In this interview, we shared some of our mutual sense of betrayal by President Obama of core civil liberties in the United States. I have previously written (See e.g., here and here and here) about the harm caused to civil liberties by Obama as well as the harm he has caused to the civil liberties movement. This is also a debate that we have had on this blog over the dilemma facing many civil libertarians voting in this election.
Continue reading “My Interview With John Cusack on Civil Liberties and Obama”