Sudan expels reporter investigating arms industry

from the Christian Science Monitor:  Sudan expels a Canadian contributor to the Monitor

The expulsion of a Canadian journalist from Sudan has brought new attention to Khartoum's uneasy relationship with the news media.

Sudan is a relatively free country – with a vibrant independent media, where other African countries have only state-owned newspapers – but it maintains firm control over local and foreign news organizations through censorship on issues deemed sensitive by the government. In the case of Heba Aly, a Canadian journalist with Egyptian nationality as well, Sudan says it expelled her because of immigration issues, not because of her reporting.

Yet Ms. Aly says it was her investigating of Sudan's arms manufacturing industry that prompted agents from Sudan's national security agency to call her in for a hastily convened meeting this past weekend at a restaurant in Sudan's capital.

It is sensitive issues like the military that have led Sudan to impose censorship rules on its independent newspapers, jail protesting reporters, and to arrest an opposition leader for suggesting that Mr. Bashir should face trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

"It is pretty paradoxical, because Sudan is a country that does well in press freedoms compared with other African countries," says Ambroise Pierre, Africa desk officer for Reporters Without Borders in Paris. "But the whole climate within the country is one of censorship and self-censorship, where there are many subjects that just cannot be investigated."

Although he admits that any government has the right to decide who enters its borders, and who has the right to work inside its territory, Mr. Pierre says that Sudan makes it very difficult for journalists to play by the rules, to get accreditation, and to obtain work authorization.

"For the last six months, Heba Aly has been fighting to get accredited as a journalist, and she never succeeded," he says. "It's pretty difficult when you are like Heba Aly, trying to do your best as an honest journalist, you are like a hostage of the administration. The government can control who can work, where people can work, and what they can write."

Aly, a freelance reporter who writes for several news organizations including the Monitor and Bloomberg News, says she had been told by a Sudanese official at the time of her arrival that, as an Egyptian passport holder, she could live in Sudan without a residence permit. She says that she maintained her status as a member of the press – with a press card from the Sudanese Ministry of Information – throughout the bulk of her stay in Sudan, but despite months of waiting, she never received a work permit or accreditation as a foreign correspondent residing in Sudan.

While she admits that she worked for her final month, January, without accreditation, she says it was only after she started pursuing a story about Sudan's arms-manufacturing industry that she received a call from National Security agents requesting a meeting. At the meeting, the agents told her that she must leave Sudan by Monday.

"I was never given any written expulsion order, despite my repeated requests," says Aly, who had been detained twice before during her year in Sudan. "I was simply harassed, and was counselled by someone in government that if I did not leave I would be arrested. I was followed, intimidated into leaving the country, and escorted by national security all the way onto the tarmac to board the airplane. The reason they gave me was that I was asking about arms. But they told me the line they would use publicly was that I didn't have my work papers."

Heba Aly works with the Puliter Center.  Her profile and links to some of her articles are available at their website here.  Her report for the radio program PRI's The World is available here.

Juan Cole's libels against Israel continue

Juan Cole, on his blog, the humorously misnamed Informed Comment, has baselessly claimed that Israel has suspended the right to free speech.  He writes here of what he calls "(d)raconian, almost martial-law repressive measures taken by the Israeli state to curb freedom of speech at this moment".  Would someone tell me exactly what free speech restrictions Israelis allegedly suffer under?   Israelis are free to debate, protest, publish opposing viewpoints and exercise all the freedoms any resident of a democracy should expect to have. They exercise these rights all the time, as anyone with any knowledge of the situation knows.  Why does Cole feel the need to invent this sort of charge?

And where is Cole's outrage over the lack of free speech under Hamas?  Does he believe that Gazans have been free to exercise free speech under Hamas, or does he simply not care about their rights?  Was he outraged when Hamas assassinated those who expressed support for Fatah?  Why did that merit not a single mention on "Informed Comment"?

Where was Cole's outrage over Hamas' summary expulsion of Amira Hass, a pro-Palestinian Israel journalist who had been reporting from Gaza (albeit under Hamas censorship and with 24-hour-a-day Hamas handlers overseeing her activities and restricting her access to interview Palestinians)?  (Read here and here.)  Hass had been in Gaza for only two weeks operating under truly draconian, martial-law restrictions before mildly critical articles (read an example here) led Hamas to kick her out.  Please note that Hamas was upset with Hass precisely because she reported on their violations against Palestinians' basic human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Cole would rather invent charges about Israel's violations of civil rights than report the real offenses committed by Hamas.  Cole apparently does not consider those offenses noteworthy.

The funny part is, after making his absurd charge concerning Israel's "draconian martial-law" crackdown, Cole goes on to site several examples of anti-war demonstrations in Israel, including demonstrations by Muslims and Druze.  Now that he has informed us of these exceptions to the alleged rule, can he site a single example of a Israeli demonstration that was prevented?  Can Cole cite a single Israeli anti-war column that was censored? He seems to have a much easier time finding examples of exceptions than evidence of the rule. 

Jordan: poet arrested for using Quran in poetry

He faces a three year sentence if convicted.



from The National (Abu Dhabi): Poet accused of being enemy of Islam

When Islam Samhan recited his poetry about love, loneliness and life in front of a crowd at a culture club four months ago, he was given a standing ovation.
But now, Samhan, 27, who is also a journalist, has been accused of apostasy, a crime that can carry the death sentence in the Islamic world.

Last week, Jordan’s grand mufti, Noah Alqdah Samas, the kingdom’s highest religious authority, called Samhan an enemy of religion for his poetry, some of which included lines comparing his loneliness to that of the prophet Yusuf in the Quran.

Now there are calls for the poet to be detained, his collection of poetry banned and the publishing house penalised. He is even receiving threatening phone calls to his private mobile number.

All this comes as something of a surprise to Samhan, whose book, In a Slim Shadow, published eight months ago, is a collection of his best work over the past decade. The ministry of culture even bought 50 copies.

He dismisses claims that he defamed or insulted the prophet or religion with his poems, but acknowledges that some of his verses may sound similar to the Quran because they were in Arabic.

“The Quran is in Arabic and I am influenced by my language and its rich terminology. Where I grew up, the Quran was sung and its music is still playing in my ears. I have read the Quran, and the Arabic language is that of the Quran.”

Defaming religion in Jordan, as in many Arab and Muslim countries, is a line that cannot be crossed. Although citing Quranic verses in poetry or literature is not forbidden, how they are used is what can cause problems.

In one poem, Samhan has his beloved address God, which his critics say personifies God. In another the woman is talking to God while lying beneath a see-through sheet. Samhan said he was referring to the gods of Greek mythology.

The state-run Press and Publication Department has transferred Samhan’s case to court to decide if his book violates the law.

“I have taken a look at the book, and I found in it what is in violation of the law. I have transferred a copy to the court,” Nabil Momani, the PDD general directorate, said. Mr Momani also said that Samhan had failed to register his work with the department, which would mean he was not authorised to publish it. Samhan insists he registered with the department.

Eight years ago, Musa Hawamdeh was charged with apostasy because of a poem he wrote titled Joseph, which Islamists said contradicted the story as it was told in the Quran. His book was banned.

Although he was later acquitted on all charges in both sharia and civil courts, he has been sentenced to three months in prison for violating the press and publication law. His lawyer is appealing the case.

Abdul Hameed Qudah, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood, said the lines of Samhan’s poetry were harmful to Islam.

“Any delay in taking measures against the writer would be a reason for discord,” he said in a statement posted on ammonnews.net, a popular Jordanian news website.

The controversy has also brought to the forefront issues of freedom of expression in a country where the king has repeatedly said the ceiling is the sky.

It also shows the religious establishment’s intolerance for poets and writers who use religion metaphorically in literature.

Defending a writer’s right to creativity, Saud Qubeilat, head of the Jordanian Writers Association, warned: “One shouldn’t judge poetry based on literal terms, otherwise many of the poets would be declared apostates.

“And if anyone has a say in literature, it should be a literary critic and not anyone from a different field who doesn’t know anything about old or contemporary literature.”
“These practices are only to silence the freedom of expression,” said Muwafaq Malkawi, editor of the culture section of Alghad newspaper.

“There shouldn’t be a low ceiling of freedoms as it will stifle the creativity of writers and poets.

Jewish Voice for Peace: for freedom of speech except when they're against it

I recently wrote about a move among anti-Israel activists in Seattle to put a referendum on November's ballot which would mandate that the city's pension funds divest stock in corporations doing business in Israel (read here). Divestment advocates have been using the endorsement of a group called "Jewish Voice for Peace" (or "JVP") to deceive Seattle voters into believing that progressive, pro-peace Jews consider divestment a legitimate tactic. In fact, there is no indication that this is true.

JVP is an extremely small group. They do not make their membership figures public, but there are some indications that actual membership in the group is in the range of 500 - 1,000. A recent petition drive by JVP collected 4,000 signatures, and a recent letter writing drive collected 1,400 signatures. Assuming that their mailing list is larger than their formal membership, and that their petitions are forwarded to others by those on their mailing list, 1,000 members would be a very generous estimate of their formal membership. Assuming that JVP's membership is 100% Jewish, the organization represents between 0.008% - 0.015% of American Jews. In spite of this, JVP's leaders and their political associates portray the group as having a wide constituency.

JVP has made a name for itself as a supporter of divestment from companies doing business in Israel. In doing so, they, on the one hand, associate with extreme anti-Israel groups like ANSWER (read the ADL's take on ANSWER here), and, on the other hand, market themselves to groups that actually have mainstream, moderate constituencies like the United Methodists. Depending on their target audience, they sometimes represent themselves as mainstream and moderate themselves, saying to those audiences that they advocate very limited divestment targeting only corporations providing direct material support to the so-called "occupation" of the West Bank, Gaza and "East Jerusalem", sometimes naming specific individual corporations. The truth, however, is that JVP has a history of calling for a complete boycott of Israel, including of Israeli artists wishing to perform in the United States.

In one instance, JVP supported the group called "Women in Black-Los Angeles" (or "WIB-LA") in demanding that the individual members of the Israel Philharmonic sign a sort of loyalty oath with respect to their views of the political situation in the Middle East if they wanted to avoid a boycott of a planned concert in Los Angeles. WIB-LA sent, and JVP's leaders co-signed, a very polite letter to the orchestra's musicians, referring to the musicians as "representatives of the State of Israel", and giving them an ultimatum to sign a letter of support for the views of WIB-LA and JVP and return it three months prior to the concert in February 2007. (The letter containing this demand bore the closing "Peace and blessings". Nice touch.)

When the musicians did not sign this loyalty oath, WIB-LA picketed outside the concert with signs reading "BOYCOTT ISRAEL".




(Read about the protest action supporting a complete boycott of Israel at Women in Black - Los Angeles. Read the letter demanding the musicians sign a loyalty oath here at the so-called "OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN".)

Now, JVP (via their blog, "Muzzlewatch") is protesting two institutions (Spertus Museum and the University of Michigan Press) banning intellectual content deemed to be biased against Israel and, in the case of one, overtly anti-Semitic (read JVP's views on this here, a press report here, and the views of Stand With Us here). JVP's reasoning? They believe in freedom of expression. Their action against the Israel Philharmonic has apparently been forgotten.

JVP did not mention their push to boycott Israeli creative artists on "Muzzlewatch", the hypocrisy of doing so being too apparent. Maybe they need to have an alternate blog for such actions. They could call it "Muzzle".

Cambridge Univ. Press Destroys Book on Terror Finance, But Copies Remain in Libraries

More on the incredibly wealthy, incredibly evil Sheikh Khalid bin Mafouz and his ongoing battle against free speech, especially when it concerns allegations that he finances terror groups (read here for background):

from the Library Journal: "ALA to Libraries: Keep Alms for Jihad, Pulped in the UK":

by Andrew Albanese & Jennifer Pinkowski (8/23/2007)

At the urging of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), a scholarly book pulped by its British publisher is maintaining a safe haven in U.S. libraries. Alms for Jihad was the target of a potential libel suit in England by Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, whose charitable activities have reportedly been linked to terrorist activities, as conveyed in the book. In response, publisher Cambridge University Press (CUP) pulped its unsold copies of the book, put it out of print, asked libraries to pull it, and agreed to pay damages. CUP also issued a stunning public apology on its web site in which it characterized the "serious and defamatory allegations" against Mahfouz in Alms for Jihad as "manifestly false."

In a statement released last week, the OIF recommended libraries resist Cambridge’s request. Libraries "are under no legal obligation to return or destroy the book," said OIF deputy director Deborah Caldwell-Stone. "Libraries are considered to hold title to the individual copy or copies. Given the intense interest in the book, and the desire of readers to learn about the controversy firsthand, we recommend that U.S. libraries keep the book available for their users."

As of mid-August, Alms for Jihad was not available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or Alibris. (About 1500 copies of the book were sold worldwide.) Libraries suddenly have an incredibly rare book in their stacks; a WorldCat search finds the book at nearly 300 libraries. Rather than discard the book, many libraries are safeguarding it, keeping it on hold, at the reserves desk. "I have recalled the copy of this title…in order to place it in our Rare Books collection, where it may be read by anyone but not borrowed," said Dona Straley, Middle East Studies librarian at Ohio State University's Ackerman Library. "Several of my colleagues at other institutions have reported their copies as missing."

That may be the case at University of North Carolina's Davis Library, whose catalog reveals that Alms for Jihad is "in search," meaning "someone has gone to the shelf to look for the book and not found it," said reference librarian Carol Tobin.

These sorts of measures may eventually be less necessary, because the authors hope to republish Alms for Jihad in the U.S. Co-author Robert O. Collins, a professor at University of California Santa Barbara, told LJ that he and co-author J. Millard Burr, a former state department employee, are currently negotiating with CUP for a rights reversion. The authors have had several offers from U.S. publishers.

"We stand by what we wrote and refused to be a party to the settlement," Collins said. "As soon as CUP received notice, they decided to settle as rapidly as possible despite our vigorous defense. CUP did not want to embark on a long and expensive suit which they could not win under English libel law." Indeed, libel laws in England are far more favorable to plaintiffs than those in the U.S.

Collins said he is confident Alms for Jihad will be republished in the U.S., where Mahfouz's charges would have little chance of succeeding in court. "In reality, the few passages referring to Mahfouz are trivial when compared to the enormous amount of information in the book that is in demand," Collins noted, adding that he has received calls from booksellers offering as much as $500 for copies.

Anti-SLAPP Laws Bear Fruit: Free Speech

If I'm not mistaken, the original SLAPP suits ("Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation") involved environmental and product liability issues. To silence critics, to prevent class action suits from taking shape, and to actually stifle regulatory and legislative action, those corporations described in legal lingo as "bad actors" filed nuisance suits designed to burden activists acting in the public interest with legal bills they were unable to pay, take up their time with preparations, depositions and trials, and to generally put the hurt on them. These corporations sought to hurt these activists, who were frequently individuals with no interest other than helping their community, for one reason only: to silence critics.

The following article details in brief how terror groups and their supporters utilize SLAPP suits to silence anti-terror activists and authors. Let me draw your attention to the bit about the SLAPP suit initiated by Khalid bin Mahfouz, the billionaire financier and former director of Bank of Credit and Commerce International accused of being one of the top Saudi Arabian source of funding to terrorist organizations. His suit against Rachel Ehrenfeld, like that of David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt, was a libel suit filed in the U.K. Unlike the Irving case, however, Ehrenfeld's book, Funding Evil has not been published in the U.K. That fact, and the increasing hostility of U.S. courts to SLAPP suits, may serve to create some new law to protect Americans from these terrorist SLAPP suits. That would provide some new hope for those wishing to express themselves freely about rich and powerful people doing very bad things.

It also gives us the opportunity to read about and disseminate the information the SLAPP suits seek to suppress. Rachel Ehrenfeld blogs at The Terror Finance blog. She has a post on this subject here. Khalid bin Mahfouz can be read about here and here and here (pdf) and here...


from the City Journal: "A SLAPP Against Freedom" by Judith Miller:

Attorneys have an effective new way to defeat Islamic groups’ libel suits.

Nothing gets a journalist’s attention like a subpoena. While authoritarian regimes silence critics by murdering or jailing them, journalists (and other critics) in the United States face gentler, but still effective, intimidation: libel lawsuits. Over the last few years, Islamists have tried silencing reporters, scholars, and citizens by suing them for defamation, often successfully. But recent legal cases in California, Massachusetts, and Minnesota suggest that the tactic may finally be backfiring, at least in the United States, if not in Britain, where libel laws overwhelmingly favor plaintiffs. The American lawsuits’ outcomes—poorly covered by the media—represent victories for the free expression and public participation that the First Amendment guarantees.

The latest victory came in August, when an Islamic charity, KinderUSA, and its board chairman, Laila Al-Marayati, dropped the libel suit they had filed in April in California state court against former Treasury Department official Matthew Levitt, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (which now employs him), and Yale University Press. In 2006, Yale published Levitt’s book on Hamas, which Washington says supports terrorism. Levitt never mentioned Al-Marayati in his book, but he did assert that KinderUSA, founded to raise money for Palestinian children, had ties to terrorist groups.

Al-Marayati and KinderUSA charged that Levitt had made “false and damaging” charges that caused “irreparable harm to its reputation,” and they sought at least $500,000 in damages, a public retraction, and a halt to the book’s distribution. But Levitt and his codefendants stood by his claims. In June, they filed a motion against the charity and its chairman, seeking to quash the libel suit and demanding that the plaintiffs pay all legal fees. They cited a California law that bans “SLAPP”—or “strategic litigation against public participation”—suits, which aim not at winning in court, but at intimidating into silence a group or a publication raising issues of public concern. “California enacted anti-SLAPP legislation to get rid of inappropriate lawsuits like this one,” they wrote in a 15-page brief.

Less than six weeks later, Al-Marayati and KinderUSA dropped the suit. Todd Gallinger, who represented the plaintiffs, insisted that the charity had sued not to intimidate or silence Levitt, but rather to force him to correct charges that it still considers libelous. “They were trying to suppress the charity’s legitimate activities,” he said. But KinderUSA underestimated the costs involved, he acknowledged, and the defendants’ anti-SLAPP motion was a factor in its decision to drop the suit.

“Anti-SLAPP laws are a very powerful tool,” agreed Roger Myers, an attorney who specializes in using the law to defend journalists in libel claims. “There has been a fairly dramatic decline in the number of libel cases being filed here in California.”

Levitt’s case isn’t unique. Last May, the Islamic Society of Boston dropped its suit against the Boston Herald, a local Fox news channel, journalist Steven Emerson, and 14 others. The Society had accused the defendants of libel and of infringing its civil rights by claiming that it had funded terrorist organizations, received money from Saudi Arabia, and bought land for a mosque below market value from the City of Boston.

Though Massachusetts’s anti-SLAPP law does not cover media firms, ten of the non-media defendants filed a motion to quash the Society’s suit. When a state judge rejected the motion, a legal discovery process got under way while the defendants appealed. Bank records and other documents revealed that, contrary to its claims, the Society had raised over $7 million from Saudi and other Middle Eastern sources and had funded two groups that the Bush administration has designated terrorist entities: the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Benevolence International Foundation. Records also showed that Society directors had deleted all e-mails about the Society’s land purchase. Finally, discovery revealed that the deputy director of the Boston city agency in charge of negotiating the land deal not only was a Society member whom it had paid to raise money in the Middle East, but also secretly advised the group about obtaining the land cheaply—a clear conflict of interest.

On May 29, soon after the state appellate court heard arguments on the anti-SLAPP appeal, the Society abandoned the suit. Though its lawyers did not respond to requests for comment and its website tried to put a good face on the surrender, Jeff Robbins, who represented several defendants in the complex lawsuit, expressed their belief that the Society had caved, fearing the prospect of paying what could have been millions of dollars in court and legal fees. “The anti-SLAPP motion clearly played a role,” said Robbins, who represented two clients for free because First Amendment issues were involved. Another factor, he said, was the Society’s fear that the court would order it to answer questions under oath and release information that it had tried to keep secret, such as the names of its donors. The case shows that while anti-SLAPP legislation makes it somewhat easier, cheaper, and faster for those accused of libel to fight back, “it doesn’t solve the problem entirely,” said Jeff Hermes, a lawyer for the Boston Herald. “Media companies are not covered by our state’s statute, and defendants in such cases still need to prepare a full defense.”

In Minnesota, a third lawsuit didn’t involve journalists or SLAPP statutes, but it did threaten citizens’ right to petition or warn the government on public safety issues. It also prompted Congress to protect people retroactively who report suspicious behavior. The defendants were anonymous citizens whose complaints about what they considered suspicious behavior by six Muslim imams on a flight in late 2006 led US Airways to remove the clerics from the plane. In a 2007 federal lawsuit claiming discrimination, the imams sued the airline, the Minneapolis airport, and several of the passengers who had complained.

But in August 2007, the “flying imams” dropped all claims against the passengers after Congress approved legislation to protect passengers from retaliatory lawsuits for reporting potentially terror-related activity. Under the measure, as in an anti-SLAPP law, if the plaintiffs cannot prove that a passenger lied in his complaint to the government, they can be held responsible for all court and legal fees. “The imams saw the handwriting on the wall,” said Representative Peter King, the New York Republican who promoted the bill. Gerry Nolting, a lawyer who represented a passenger, also without a fee, said that the imams might never have filed their suit if Minnesota had on its books an anti-SLAPP law like California’s.

However intimidating and expensive defamation lawsuits remain in the United States, the challenge is far greater in Britain, where journalists must prove that their allegations are true. Rachel Ehrenfeld, a New York–based terrorism researcher and the author of Funding Evil, is among more than 30 writers and publishers whom Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz sued for libel in England for accusing him of ties to terrorist groups, a charge he denies. But rather than give him the apology, retraction, and $225,000 in fees that a British court ordered, Ehrenfeld, whose book was never even published in England, fought back. In 2004, she countersued bin Mahfouz in New York, asking the federal court here to declare the judgment against her unenforceable in America and contrary to the First Amendment protections that Americans enjoy.

In June, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a lower court ruling, asked the state’s highest court to determine whether bin Mahfouz should be subject to New York jurisdiction. If it rules affirmatively, Ehrenfeld would be able to obtain considerable information about his finances in preparing for a trial. If he then failed to cooperate, he might have difficulty doing business in America.

Ehrenfeld’s effort comes none too soon, says Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, for bin Mahfouz no longer needs to sue to intimidate his critics. After he merely threatened Cambridge University Press with a libel suit this spring, the prestigious publisher agreed to apologize on its website, pay his legal costs and unspecified damages, and stop distributing Alms for Jihad, a book written by J. Millard Burr, a former State Department analyst and relief coordinator, and Robert O. Collins, a former University of California history professor, which outlines bin Mahfouz’s alleged financial support for terrorism. Cambridge also asked libraries to remove the book from their shelves. On its website, Cambridge states that it took such steps because “under English libel laws, we simply did not have a defensible case.” A court victory for Rachel Ehrenfeld, and more anti-SLAPP statutes—only some 20 states have enacted such laws—would help curb the pernicious “libel tourism” so inimical to the free flow of information on which an informed citizenry and effective counterterrorism depend.

What does Giuliani have in common with CAIR?

Both want to impose blasphemy laws in the name of stopping "hate crimes".

Back in 1999, Rudy Giuliani asserted that the Brooklyn Museum, in their "Sensation" exhibit, committed a "hate crime" by displaying Chris Ofili's painting "The Holy Virgin Mary" which featured elephant dung as a design element. In response, Giuliani filed suit against the museum and witheld legally mandated city funding from it. After U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon ruled against him in no uncertain terms, Giuliani was forced to settle his lawsuit against the museum, after getting several months of press concerning the issue, which was in fact his true motivation. By the way, Hilary Clinton opposed Giuliani on constitutional grounds. (More here.) Although he wasn't honest about his motives, Giuliani was attempting to punish blasphemy in the name of preventing a "hate crime" against the Catholic community of New York.

In the Pace University Koran desecration case, CAIR, Pace University and its Muslim student associations, are doing essentially the same thing. (In this case, a student was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief (vandalism), but the charges were then raised to felony level because they were defined as "hate crimes". He is subject, under these felony laws, to several years in prison if convicted.)

If desecrating a holy book or portraying saints in a way considered inappropriate were crimes, then that crime would be blasphemy, regardless of what other name is given. But blasphemy is not a crime in this country, and shouldn't be. That would run counter to the American system in which religion gets no special protection in the marketplace of ideas. The general public or a particular constituency may not approve of Koran desecration as a means of expression, but it is clearly protected speech. It is an act protected by another book -- the book the government is forbidden from desecrating by exceeding its authority and violating the rights of its citizens -- the Constitution. In this case, that would be the true desecration.

Check out what Eugene Volokh has to say: "The Perils of Hate Crime Laws". And read what Christopher Hitchens has to say about this and other instances where free speech (from the sublime, like Rushdie, to the ridiculous, like the Danish cartoons) is suppressed in the name of preventing "Islamophobia".

Let's leave blasphemy laws in the Middle Ages where they belong...

On Youtube... you can view a debate on this subject...

Los Angeles Police Attack May Day Demonstrators

Action by Police at Rally Troubles Los Angeles Chief - New York Times:

LOS ANGELES, May 3 — Chief William J. Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that the episode here in which police officers clashed with demonstrators and journalists on Tuesday at an immigration rally was the “worst incident of this type I have ever encountered in 37 years” in law enforcement.

Eight officers and at least 15 civilians were hurt, the police said, with people still calling the department on Thursday to report injuries. Mr. Bratton said 240 nonlethal projectiles were fired by the police into the crowd.

“Clearly, something went wrong here,” he said in a interview.

After a request by Mr. Bratton, the F.B.I. announced Thursday that it would open a civil rights inquiry into the incident, which has drawn outrage from immigrant and civic groups and journalists’ organizations and a rebuke from the City Council. On Wednesday Mr. Bratton announced two internal investigations by the Police Department.

News video images of the incident that erupted at a peaceful gathering in MacArthur Park, west of downtown, showed the police marching into the crowd, shoving and knocking down demonstrators and journalists with batons and firing rubber bullets at close range.

In television and press interviews throughout the day, Mr. Bratton said he was troubled by the police action he saw on the videos, and he sought to assure the city that he intended full disclosure of the facts.

Organizers of the May Day rally, whose theme was a call for broad changes to immigration laws, said they had held extensive negotiations with the police in preparing for the demonstration. They said the police did not follow the agreed-upon procedure in case of a disturbance.

“It completely broke down,” said Victor Narro of the National Lawyers Guild, who was the organizers’ liaison with the police.

WATCH THE VIDEO FROM THE LOCAL FOX AFFILIATE

from the Los Angeles Times:

here's Police Chief William Bratton on the LAPD's violent assault on innocent protestors, journalists and bystanders:

"Here you have a tent clearly [for the] news media," Bratton said. The anchor "wears a suit and tie and there is clearly cameras … and the knocking over of cameras in the tent -- that behavior is not under any circumstances justified."

He also said he was troubled by reports that police used force on women and children who had gone to the park to play.

"The idea that officers would be firing -- some of these devices send out five or six projectiles with one shot -- that is a concern," Bratton said.