STALKING THE CENSOR V1.0

Originally published in two parts of a proposed five part essay on the Internet by Gabriel Thy, writing for the Scenewash Project in 1997, but is now undergoing a rewrite. Please bear with me.

AFTER FORTY YEARS OF STUMBLING around like a drunken beggar among the same strategies and tactics this American desert of cultural chaos has subjected its entire population to more or less under the guise of truth and consequences, I pause for breath. From a minority perspective (that is to say, of one man, one vote, and theoretically, one voice) I am compelled by conscience to admit in writing that while I comprehend this often ruthless subjection of the populations to old stratagems of censorship which seem more suggestive of an insane carte blanche rape of both the individual genius and the collective cause by some well-entrenched intellectual forces that work merely to gain and protect turf, I also must acknowledge that no idea can set men free when holstered by anti-individualistic political forces acting against populations differing in collective character and individual resolve than the straw men they create. A "one size fits all" binder is rarely a competent plea for morality or ethics, but it is a game played ineptly by both the Left and the Right in the battle between individual liberty and social control.

Understanding that a few paragraphs here will never contain the full length, breadth, and volume of this issue, I nevertheless am persuaded to attempt a working hypothesis in dealing with that peculiar language which WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, call the Freedom of Speech clause of the First Amendment to our Constitution, a document penned by the founding fathers which was immediately declared good and necessary in the struggle against the long grievous dynamic of official oppression previous ages had witnessed, and its sharpening effect upon the human spirit, peculiar language now under serious assault by diabolical forces emanating from various fronts pushing political correctness schemes in the name of freedom to match those who unabashedly tout totalitarian mechanisms to squash any and all human expression that does not regard the party line as sacrosanct.

I am neither trained in law or literature, religion or government, and have no special accommodations in any field save my blue collar, thank God. I am a working man working, working without bail, prestige, or grandiose financial compensation, working with my own feeble hands, working from my own knotted gut, and have little choice as a willing slave to the only mind I can bring to this argument rolling on past the damp eyes of disenchanted generations lost in the fraud, treachery, and deception of free speech as we have learned to practice it, than to argue from that simple perspective only the powerless can argue.

The strong in this country place great faith in their own ability to interpret the past, the present, and the future in terms of what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it. Despite all pretensions to the contrary the United States Supreme Court seems to operate as the highbrow puppetshow of these antagonistic political bands of strong movers and shakers, legitimizing or muddying each line drawn in the sand of an issue, a court consisting of mere flesh and blood, millions of musty words ratioed by changing tides of popular opinion impetuously tempered with an almost predictable jurisprudence as evidenced by the political cat and mouse games played with the court's occasional vacancies in the way of highly controversial party-line presidential appointments.

The First Amendment is the intimate friend of far left wingers and far right wingers alike. But of course they each find it within their own stormy projected biases the urgency to define both their own and their opponent's objectives, each accusing the other of evil, usually one of perpetuating evil via filth, the other of perpetuating evil via oppression.

Having recently sought insight in a 700-page hardcover called "Girls Lean Back Everywhere, The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius" beautifully researched and compiled by Edward de Grazia, an attorney practicing communications and First Amendment law here in Washington, DC, I am still nevertheless profanely distressed by the situation on both sides of this political equation. Mr. de Grazia comes with many prestigious credentials, was victoriously integral in the landmark Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs literary publishing cases, as well as the "I am Curious—Yellow" Swedish film breakthrough.

The title of his book is drawn from a quote a small magazine editor named Jane Heap made at the James Joyce/Ulysses judicial hearing concerning some text in question. Her publication, "The Little Review" was the first to publish excerpts from what she sensed was the first 20th century literary novel masterpiece, and as such immediately felt the strong arm of the public decency law bearers reach out in fierce rebuttal in an attempt to smack down her own artistic sensibilities.

The book thoroughly covers all of the major court battles from Zola in 1868 England to all the 20th century debates including Joyce, Lawrence, Nabakov, Miller, Burroughs, Karen Finley, 2 Live Crew, Playboy, Penthouse, and the Seven-Eleven Wars, and right on up through Mapplethorpe and Serrano in an exquisite commentary bulked up by full first hand accounts of the noted judiciary principals, and their hodge-podge of so-called principles. And yet I am still unsure how to approach this position paper.

While I believe in an artist's rights to exploit the tools of language and all media according to her own peculiar vision, I am also dead set against the public funding of this area of life. Zilch. Rock music and stand-up comedy get along without public grants. So can photographers, writers, and painters. If not prepared to give it all, or convince a private source for sustenance, then sorry charlie, tastes good, less filling. A paradigm shift of the ways in which we view both art and its marketplace may be required, but public funding is a sham and a scandal to both artlover and artloather. And while I believe that the artist should be as free to draw from real life as he sees fit, I am also certain that the media, specifically films, TV, and music have detrimentally contributed to the chaos of the past several generations with the sickening decline of the individual consciousness in regards to morals as they pertain to the rights and responsibilities of each human taking part in the great plan America once proclaimed to be, despite all the tax dollars thrown at so-called studies which deliver nothing but party line after party line of inconclusive evidence. Idealistic art is no better.

Jealousy and envy are perpetuated on a very large scale now due to the proliferation of a media which shows how others however mythically portrayed are living better off than they perceive themselves to be living. I would suggest that this everpresent barrage of images, advertisements, storylines, handsome bodies, has made us a very unhappy population, malcontented, bored, and yearning for something more, when in fact even the poorest among us live far better than most throughout the long rattling chains of history.

Understanding that I am adamantly against the right wing pontifications and falsifications with their feeble interpretations of Man, and God, and Law, the issue is not easily thumbnailed. Every thought I render butchers another one a few minutes later. For all the threading of the needle that the Supreme Court has managed through such definitive principles (protections on speech vs. what is not speech, universally obscene and utterly without redeeming social value vs. the community standards or the greatest good test, the unabridged rights of an adult vs.the protection of children), it has proven nothing but its own profound confusion and yet the fear of government reprisal remains as an omnipresent suffocating blanket on artists who have given up on the phoney Walt Disney approach to improving intellectual and political conditions eons ago. Cliches only soothe the uninspired. Every mythshattering inspiration is punished by the authorities of the hour. Wasn't Jesus the Nazarene a mythbreaker, poking fun at the puffed up morality of the religious establishment of his day? And look how he was paid for his efforts.

No, Jesus did not advocate unbridled degeneracy. Quite the contrary. But he held hypocrisy to tough standards. And he knew how to prick a stuffed shirt, and he did so with great strides and quiet enthusiasm. American novelist Norman Mailer is quoted by de Grazia:

Every gain of freedom carries its price. There's a wonderful moment when you go from oppression to freedom, there in the middle, when one's still oppressed but one's achieved the first freedoms. There's an extraordinary period that goes from there until the freedoms begin to outweigh the oppression. By the time you get over to complete freedom, you begin to look back almost nostalgically on the days of oppression, because in those days you were ready to become a martyr, you had a sense of importance, you could take yourself seriously, and you were fighting the good fight. Now, you get to the point where people don't even know what these freedoms are worth, are using them and abusing them. You've gotten older. You've gotten more conservative. You're not using your freedoms. And there's a comedy in that, in the long swing of the pendulum...

And a second excerpt I found fascinating, enigmatically similar while certainly not wholly congruent with my own beliefs on this topic came from none other than President Richard M. Nixon who had this to say after reading the controversial Lockhart National Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which he had commisioned:

The Commission contends that the proliferation of filthy books and plays has no lasting effect on a man's character. If that were true, it must be also true that great books, great paintings, and great plays have no ennobling effect on a man's conduct . . . The commission calls for the repeal of laws controlling smut for adults—while recommending continued restrictions on smut for children. In an open society this proposal is untenable. If the level of filth rises in the adult community, the young . . . cannot help but also be inundated. The warped and brutal portrayals of sex . . . could poison the wellsprings of American and Western culture and civilization...the pollution of our civilization with smut and filth is as serious a situation as the pollution of our once pure air and water . . . if an attitude of permissiveness were to be adopted regarding pornography, this would contribute to an atmosphere condoning anarchy in every other field.

Where does this inexplicable conundrum leave this discussion? As a law and order advocate how can I distinguish between what is allowable in a free society and what should be strictly and swiftly squashed or punished to the full extent a civil society has availed itself? I think for most civil libertarians, and I count myself intellectually among this group with a few notable reservations while refraining from membership or advocacy of any political party, public or private organization or sect, perhaps these distinctions are easier to make than for those who abide within religious and political cages vying for prestige and jobs, laboring for some ill-conceived hand-me-down god, or worse, such a restrictive a code of ethics hoisted in the name of freedom as to leave the modern psyche atrophied and floating off unattentive in a thoroughly pathetic and bewitched masquerade of what is known in this country as liberty and justice for all. We wish merely to embrace the unquestionable truth of reality and the unanswerable reality of truth. Freedom of expression is not about simple solutions. It is about the struggle to ask the most expressive questions.

Another angle of aproaching this nation's sticky and intricate questions of freedom and censorship might be useful. Let's consider recent moves to introduce into the American jurisprudence the concept of hate crimes. While the printed word on the heels of the William S. Burroughs/Naked Lunch decision has been effectively freed from judicial interference, a new spin by the liberal lobby with their eagerness to please legislators has cast another dark shadow upon the common sense and equal protection of the law wings of the American populations.

In an opposition article published in a small press magazine called "Gauntlet" (no.6), Barbara Beebe, a self-professed "bald-headed, butch, leather jacket-bearing dyke" takes to task this recent wave of anti-crime legislation. Ms. Beebe is also black, and has been a victim of gay-bashing, and so is no stranger to the unfathomable wiles of law enforcement. Noting that everything from cross-burning to verbal bigotry uttered during the commission of a real crime can be and already has entered into various court histories, she nevertheless recognizes a faulty premise when she is confronted by one.

While several higher courts have struck down some of these laws in certain jurisdictions as ordinances "violating free speech because it sought to ban certain viewpoints", the perspective Beebe, a freelance writer with a B.S. in Criminal Justice, brings to this issue is both clarifying and in this author's humble opinion, quite on target. By dubbing this recent wave of hate crime legislation a typical, liberal cover-up, she suspects misplaced motives and simply poor judgement by those who seek to assuage their own consciences or real ability to change the social and economic fabric of the oppressed, but by attempting to placate the masses with more laws in an already over-litigated society, the waters of true freedom only become murkier. She writes:

"Proponents of hate crime legislation assume that one can actually attest and lay claim to hatred or bias by words expressed during the commission of a crime. The fact of the matter is, all crimes are motivated (whether expressed or not) by a form of bias, prejudice or hatred. Dr. Patricia J. Williams is correct when she states that the "attempt to split bias from violence has been society's most enduring and fatal rationalization." What else could motivate crime? What is greed, but the bias toward those who have what you want? There is the well-known modus operandi of robbing the old. They are perceived (as a group) as being physically weak and not well-sighted. If some young punk robs an old lady, in the process calling her an old decrpit hag, is he guilty of a hate crime?

Is something wrong with simply charging him with robbery and calling him the creep he is? Rapists generally rape women they perceive as weak...we're already aware of the possible lurid profanities expressed during a rape. Does what rapists say matter as much as what they've done? Hate crime legislation attempts to punish the motivations and not the crime. The St. Paul, Minnesota case in point: a white kid burns a cross in the yard of the only black people in the neighborhood. What is he charged with? Not trespassing, vandalism, or destruction of property. The poor fool is charged with a hate crime. Fortunately the Supreme Court ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. However, to now charge that same fool with vandalism or trespassing reeks of double jeopardy."

This St. Paul, MN example of the complete absence of social insight in the courts is further exposed to ridicule by the ruling that people who commit "hate crimes" motivated by bigotry may be sentenced to extra punishment without violating their free-speech rights, rendering a foul logic that you can say what you want, but not while committing a crime! Ms. Beebe:

"As ethnic minorities, women, and gay groups scramble to support such legislation, they assumed that they were above reproach due to their status as the oppressed. However, hate crime legislation is being applied to Afrro-Americans, artists, and the poor with a fervor that is frightening. Nineteen-year-old Todd Mitchell, who is black, received a double sentence for inciting the beating of a 14-year-old white youth. The ordinance he was convicted under permits longer prison terms for crimes motivated by racial or other bias. So, what has our fellow learned? The next time you beat whitey, just beat him—don't say a damn thing to him! This is not a viable solution to racial antagonisms."

Thus, Beebe sums up her analysis of these bogus laws by declaring her desire for a judicial system that does not pander to some "high-faluting, legal mumbo-jumbo that requires people to call me a nigger dyke while they kick my ass before I can get some justice." Too often the police merely look the other way when minorities or any disfavored class of crime victim has been assaulted or had a well-legislated crime perpetrated against them. This undoubtedly needs to stop, bringing sense to the laws we already have, and removing the clutter from our system which only confuses the issue, which always remains, liberty and justice for all.

Can we use these arguments against hate crime legislation in the discussion against artistic censorship? I believe we can. Just as any man may be thinking to himself while standing on a crowded streetcorner, in an elevator, or strolling down a beach, that "Man what wouldn't I give to fuck the brains out of that good-looking woman over there?", he has committed nothing more than what is at worst a lamentable lust in his heart, and other than an unwelcomed, or depending on the very real physical and psychological features of both parties, the welcomed leer, nothing has transpired. His reaction to that beautiful woman may however work in such a fashion that he is prompted to meet and later marry this wonderful specimen of feminine grace. A verbal rendering of those same thoughts while to a greater degree opens both parties to any number of physical or psychological repercussions, one cannot expect to live in a vacuum created in our own likeness.

Invariably we encounter disagreeable notions perpetrated by the natures of things and the natures of people. The sheer variety of these notions precludes anything but a generalized mechanism for maintaining civic and personal freedoms and responsibilities. Mere legislation, particularly ill conceived legislation does not automatically create serendipity in a hostile environment preserved alone by magistrates and billy clubs without the consent of the governed. Into today's rapidly changing cultural environment, fragmented and aggregate powerful new subcultures are emerging, and it is inevitable that clashes of faith where new sensibilities show themselves laden with conflict should inflict themselves upon the whole.

But aside from the recent pendulum swing of the hate crime movement, and one glaring exception which I shall discuss later, the First Amendment ultilities of free artistic, political, and personal freedom of expression, go unchallenged and its debate has almost been completely removed from the whittling and hairsplitting of censorship judges and lawyers. Almost, as witnessed by the piercing of the envelope on cable television and the recent spate of ideology skirmishes concerning risk-free transmission of information over the Internet, but not so fast!

The Conservatives refuse to rollover and accept the erosion and ultimate loss of what they consider their eminent domain, that is to say, the constitutional power of the government to take private property for government use. In this case I refer to things of the mind. National defense is a ruthless job. Somebody's got to do it. The conservatives are not only willing, but demand to step up to the plate in this matter. As any schoolchild will tell you, war is hell. Bad things happen in war. Even the good guys do bad things. And yet very little is made by these conservatives concerning atrosities, real or imagined, great or small, by these same exact well-positioned conservatives right down to their name, rank, and serial number, of mind, body, and spirit perpetrated in the unimpeachable war for capitalism, or the frigging' holy war in the name of strategic land, mining rights, and oil reserves.

Only when that free man, that soldier and those he has fought to protect is living on home soil enjoying his so-called freedoms of mind, body, and spirit, do the conservatives step in to control the vulgar tongues and impulses, purported unnatural and lascivious inner urges, rapacious and murderous options a soldier is trained, daypassed, and for survival ordered to swiftly accomplish, all with highest skill and toughest discipline on the planet marking him for distinction and honor. Is there any wonder we are a confused and nearly hapless society when it comes to knowing ourselves and our special birthrights as free citizens of a free nation?

The fact that the Conservatives act in one direction calls the liberals to the front lines to act in an opposite and equal reaction. The First Amendment suffers when one side seeks nothing but to uphold a basketful of Pollyanna fairy tale criteria as the watermark of what art is supposed to be, and the other side thrives merely by mocking all restraint and traditional standards armed only with flimsy transparent concoctions nearly always presented as art theory while stroking themselves as great liberators of the soul. Am I advocating a watered-down compromise of artistic integrity? No I am not. Integrity must exist before it can be compromised. Two paramount questions come to mind which I must answer with a full dose of integrity in order to resolve this issue within the framework of my own artistic yearnings. By what criteria do I suggest art be judged, and how would I define obscenity as the measure by which a work of art should be rejected?

THE QUESTION OF MUSLIM EXPULSION

Treason seems to be a forgotten crime these days, a mere remnant leftover from bygone years of high espionage when enemies were declared by name, rather than coddled when masquerading as our allies. While pink teary-eyed leftists whine about Guantanamo Bay war camp protocols, resolutely dismissing the culture of death plotted against the US, Canada, Chetznya, SW China, Serbia, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and a host of soft European targets as mere residuals of our own ugly existence, others more robust in our outlook on reality search for more strident and historically compelling solutions to the problems the Camp of Islam is causing.

An eloquent solution just as punishing, but perhaps more apropos for our times than the one the current administration has advanced, leaving many of us chafing with regret, is the idea of an immigration freeze and annulment, an idea not at all new but historically grounded, an idea that actually seems fitting for the times as the creeping totalitarianism of democracy seems to some far worse than the blatant totalitarianism of the political bullies on the darling Left, in addition to the call from Muslims to incite terror and violence against us with the aim of abolishing our own constitutional form of government and replacing it with the theological totalitarianism of strict Islamic law, known as sharia.

Of course this solution is not without its pitfalls. At first glance, native tribes would be calling for the expulsion of whites, but that call simply distorts the nature of the current situation. What about those tribes? What about the crimes committed by those tribes against each other before the European arrived? And let's recall plainly that conquering Spain was a European power, not a native American tribe. and that its land grab was and is no more or less sanctified than the English, French, Portuguese or Dutch (and now Mexican or Islamic).

No, this issue must be addressed in terms of the current war, the current enemy, the current problem of an unidentified number of Muslims who refuse to integrate into the American way of life as an opportunity to escape the troubles in their own homelands, who refuse to become Americans, but only see themselves as slaves of Allah's massive war machine. An ungodly number of these immigrants are people who love death more than they love life, and are hell-bent on sharing that love with us. They are not fleeing jihad, they are exporting jihad. And our leadership simply imports it into our neighborhoods, believing that if we treat these immigrants nicely, they will respond in kind. Unfortunately, the anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly contradicts this delusion. Here is one:

I have had Somali co-workers and as fellow students at community college, and have been a fellow patient with them at the county hospital and they, save for a few individuals, do hate us, and they constantly threaten lawsuits (how is that for integration) and generally avoid being friendly with non-Muslims.

For some examples, I include the following—my brother went to a heavily Somalian high-school (Minneapolis Roosevelt) and the school decided to make two Somalians, homecoming king and queen, disqualifying the other people on the slate, even though two non-Somalis had won. At the homecoming dance, in broad public the homecoming king punched the queen in the face at the dance. At the same highschool the Somalis harrassed Ethiopians, called the American blacks pig-eaters, sons of slaves and infidels, and openly expressed virulent racist hatred towards whites, including teachers.

In a fight the night before September 11, several Somalians attacked African American members of the football team and ended up stabbing a football coach who attempted to break up the fight. At Washburn highschool here in Minneapolis in the last couple of years there has been serious violence between Somali and African American or black gangs. At one of my jobs, they are openly rude to non-Muslims and a Somali woman I worked with was being stalked by these guys, who would come to threaten her at work. She was scared, and she finally quit the job.

There, where two Bosnians also work, two cousins, and one was friendly, and his cousin yelled at him for making friends with the Americans, and would just coldly glare at people who were friendly with them. He would never shake hands. I could go on about my Egyptian Muslim friend in high school, who eventually turned on his American friends over Islam, and got religious after being a pot-smoking boozer. His friendship quickly turned to hatred.

At community college, MCTC, the Somalis' clearly took over parts of the school. And felt no need to behave, and in class, were rude to both students and faculty. And then there are those "domestic violence" episodes in which a Somali or Ethiopian Muslim kills a woman from their community. My point is Muslim and Somali immigrants are not nice people and the US imported a real bunch of winners. Muslim immigration is bad, bad news. And the authorities here, have a hear no evil, see no evil policy. It is going to get worse.

In response to the call for expelling thousands if not millions of unrepentant Muslims—First Amendment flaunting saboteurs and stealth jihadists all—from these United States of America, a concerned citizen named Susan has eloquently written:

Don't you think that "expelling" our sworn enemies would be preferable to locking them up in isolated compounds to prevent them from fully practicing their religion by engaging in violent jihad? Apparently you consider the idea of "expulsion" akin to "illegal" wiretapping and intercepting communications between domestic and overseas terrorists; abhorrent violations of the Constitutional rights of islamic terrorists who happen to be American citizens. And of course we all know that if the federal government is permitted to trample all over the constitutional rights of treasonous, terrorist muslims, martial law and tyranny are imminent. No problem; we don't mind getting blown to bits so muslims can perfidiously exploit the First Amendment, which guarantees rights that are anathematized by islam.

Nothing like islam has ever threatened America before; the closest comparison might be Japanese Americans during WWII. The threat posed by islam and muslims is unique, unprecedented, and grossly understated. But don't despair; we both know that the expulsion of jihadist Muslims is a very remote, albeit tantalizing, prospect. It is quite obvious that the mendacious, malevolent, perfidious imams and apologist, pseudo-scholars of Islam have our government's ear and the American people are being fed to the wolves so Muslims can feel good about themselves, not that they have ever had any low self-esteem issues. Problem is, they don't just want to feel good about themselves; instead they intend to dictate how non-Muslims will perceive islam and if that ploy fails, they will manipulate and exploit the same First Amendment that allows them to practice their vile religion to dictate what we can say about it. And you're worried about Big Brother taking away your rights?

Not only would I applaud the expulsion of every muslim with questionable loyalty to America or with overt jihadist ambitions, nothing would thrill me more than to see bulldozers razing mosques across America as their sullen, evil Wahabbi imams were being escorted to airports with one-way tickets to the dysfunctional kingdom of sadistic savages, aka Saudi Arabia. This scenario is one of my favorite daydreams but I have no illusions that a rational and salutary approach to our deadly dilemma will ever occur, at least not until they succeed in annihilating millions of us. In the interim, the stealth jihad marches on and scores a new victory every day.

I loathe islam with all my heart and soul, and I could never trust a Muslim but I wish Muslims no harm; I just wish they would go away. They are not worth the anxiety, fear, and unrelenting threat they pose by virtue of their malevolent, insidious religion. Who needs it?

—Susan P

Postscript (from Max Publius): The Navajo Reservation in Arizona has about 200,000 residents and is half the size of England, which has 50 million. That's quite a disparate land distribution. Yet England, under a pact with dhimmi traitors like Blair and the Islamist-loving United Nations, accepts hundreds of thousands of Islamonazis each year. Other immigrants just invade illegally. Number of immigrants taken in by the Navajo? None, unless you show you have Navajo ancestry. Ditto for most non-Western countries.

Can you imagine a group invading the Navajo Reservation, demanding welfare, calling Navajo "kaffir" with a bullhorn, attacking Navajo religious figures and buildings, raping and stealing from Navajo, and calling themselves "Navajo" while disparaging everything about the Navajo, and on and on.

That is exactly what is happening in little England. Just replace the above with English.

And now Lebanon falls. The government has capitulated to Hezbollah. The tumbling of a house of cards has begun. Were the only victims in Lebanon other Muslims, one might not mind, as the Camp of Islam grows in ferocity, it doesn't matter whose bodies pile high from the carnage. But Lebanon has been somewhat of a haven for Christians in the Middle East as they are driven from their ancestral homes in surrounding dar al-Islam, and that makeshift haven is now threatened. And none of the ruling elites in the Western world has given a thought to providing a permanent place of refuge in the Middle East itself to the more than a million Christians who have left, or will have to leave, Iraq.

They could do this, for example, by relocating many of them to Lebanon, and forcing the Shi'a out, by popular demand, so that they go to Iraq, among other Shi'ite Arabs. Or they could move them to the "West Bank," and force out the Muslim Arabs who represent a permanent threat to Israel. They can't be allowed into Western countries, having been raised on a steady diet of hysteria and hate, but they could be given space in Iraq, replacing those lost Assyrians and Chaldeans.

Those Assyrians and Chaldeans, if they wish to remain in the Middle East, should find their natural homes in Lebanon, or the "West Bank" within permanent Israeli protection, or possibly in Syria. But Syria could only be a haven for them if one assumes that the Alawites will begin to see the light and stop doing Iranian bidding in order to prove that they are bona fide Shi'ite Muslims, and continue to keep their own local Muslims in check—which is the only protection the Syrian Christians now possess.

But who in the Western world now thinks of saving the Christians through such intelligent, and in another day, obvious population transfer?

It isn't done. We prefer to stay pure, by never mentioning such things. Thus, we allow millions of people to be booted out, with nowhere to go, because we simply can't begin to think in realistic terms about such transfers, which were the norm, not the exception, throughout human history—including the history of the last century.

LIBEL TERRORISM PROTECTION ACT

This is most excellent news! And everyone else should encourage their own congressional representatives and senators to support similar legislation on a national level, and jurisdictional law in their own state legislatures to help guard this latest front in financial jihad by the Saudis' propaganda machine and other mercantilistic Islamic forces.

Now, if only we could get legislation in similar terms to spotlight the glaring differences to help avail accountability issues with respect to certain other civil and market practices of our trading partners...

Long live this Republic of the United States of America!

NEW YORK GOVERNOR DAVID PATERSON yesterday signed the "Libel Terrorism Protection Act" (S.6687/A.9652), which on March 31 passed the state's Assembly and Senate unanimously.

Also known as Rachel's Law, the bill sponsored by Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) and Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean G. Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) will protect American journalists and authors from foreign lawsuits that infringe on First Amendment rights. The bill also received unprecedented support from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

"New Yorkers must be able to speak out on issues of public concern without living in fear that they will be sued outside the United States, under legal standards inconsistent with our First Amendment rights," said Governor Paterson. "This legislation will help ensure of the freedoms enjoyed by New York authors."

Reflecting the New York legislation's importance, U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on April 16 introduced a similar bill, the Freedom of Speech Protection Act (H.R. 5814), in the House of Representatives.

In Ehrenfeld v. Mahfouz, New York State's highest court held that it was unable to protect Dr. Ehrenfeld from a British lawsuit filed by Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz. Britain's High Court ordered her to pay over $225,000 in damages and legal fees to Bin Mahfouz, apologize and destroy copies of her books.

Instead, November 2006, Dr. Ehrenfeld sought a U.S. federal court order to protect her constitutional rights. But a New York Court of Appeals ruling with national implications sent legal shockwaves throughout American newsrooms.

The New York court potentially undermined U.S. journalists' ability to expose terrorism's financial and logistical support networks, when it ruled that the court lacks jurisdiction to protect Americans—on U.S. soil—from foreign defamation judgments that contradict the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Rachel's Law declares overseas defamation judgments unenforceable in New York State unless the foreign defamation law provides, in substance and application, the same free speech protections guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The law gives New York residents and publishers the opportunity to have their day in court.

[...]

"This law will give New York's journalists, authors and press the protection and tools they need to continue to fearlessly expose the truth about terrorism and its enablers, and to maintain New York's place as the free speech capitol of the world," Lancman stated.

"The truth is a critically-important component in the War on Terror," said Senator Skelos. "This important new law will protect American authors and journalists who expose terrorist networks and their financiers."

Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said: "Terrorism and terrorist financing are matters of vital interest to all New Yorkers, in no small part because New York City remains a target of significance for international terrorists. New York authors must have the freedom to investigate, write and publish on terrorism and other matters of public importance, subject only to limitations that are consistent with the U.S. Constitution. This legislation will help to ensure such freedom."

Today, Governor Paterson declared the intention of New York State, the publishing capital of America, to safeguard the First Amendment and its courageous writers.

Rachel's Law marks an important step in Dr. Ehrenfeld's efforts to stop Arab billionaires like Khalid bin Mahfouz from attempting to silence U.S. writers who expose Saudi terrorist funding and global radical Muslim organizations, including al Qaeda and Hamas.

TRACKING THE FIRST AMENDMENT

In light of a recent "libel tourist" piece of legislation passing one house of the state legislature in New York, I wanted to respond to a common supposition many Americans have with regard to the "American experiment" called democracy. To paraphrase the tribal wit of the fictional Forrest Gump, democracy is as democracy does. And given this critical time in our nation's history when economical, cultural, and military strains are weakening our resolve to fight the good fight in some many areas of life, I will start with these three sentences.

No foreign law trumps American law.

No foreign restraint of freedom of speech can over-rule the First Amendment.

Period.

In theory, this is true, but American law is often subverted by the assailing forces of political expedience. If we postulate that the Saudis own a big enough chunk of American assets or debt to force capitulation to terms antithetical to the spirit and letter of American jurisprudence, this is not much different than the Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn property rights law in favor of commercial interests. So surely, we all recognize the ingenuity of certain fee-tweaked minds laboring in the business of hairsplitting to "reinterpret" our most cherished legal language under the banner of protecting the "public" good to make what "once was" now a "relic of the past".

As a staunch culture nationalist first, and a peace-loving kitsch-sharing globalist second, we should indeed keep a watchful eye out for this type of treasonous behavior in our leadership, and even those in the street, our neighbors, our friends, our families, and fight if must be to keep our constitutional freedoms, especially those which strengthen us and protect us from those enemies who would threaten not just these liberties, but our lives and our destiny as a free decent people. Upon reflection of other pressing matters such as lax immigration enforcement of policy, faulty trade agreements acrruing massive deficits, foreign takeovers of critical ports and other security-related operations, we can easily see that something is rotten in Denmark, and it isn't Denmark, but it is the enemy within, both foreign and domestic, who would continue to chip away at common sense and responsible liberty, and threaten all we with proven philosophies hold dear.