Obscene LA Times Op-Ed: "Innocence Of Muslims Doesn't Meet Free-Speech Test"
Sarah Chayes writes in the LA Times that the "Innocence of Muslims" trailer doesn't meet the free-speech test; that it's like yelling fire in a crowded theater:
In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. "The most stringent protection," he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."...The current standard for restricting speech -- or punishing it after it has in fact caused violence -- was laid out in the 1969 case Brandenburg vs. Ohio. Under the narrower guidelines, only speech that has the intent and the likelihood of inciting imminent violence or lawbreaking can be limited.
But, what's the standard here? There are all sorts of films all over YouTube and in the media in general that are offensive to Jews, Christians, and others.
Did you see Christians riot and murder over Serrano's "Piss Christ"?
It's Islam that's the problem, not free speech.
(Of course, Sarah Chayes worked in government -- from her bio: "Sarah Chayes, former special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment and a contributing writer to Opinion."
The LA Times wouldn't publish my op-ed on the TSA [they instead sat on it for two separate weeks] -- but clearly, the anti-civil-liberties stuff is very attractive to them.)
"only speech that has the intent and the likelihood of inciting imminent violence or lawbreaking can be limited."
So the whole Travon Martin media debacle.
Joe J at September 20, 2012 7:37 AM
Props to Amy Alkon.
When I saw this I was appalled... But we can only sustain a limited number of blinding angers in each day of the calendar, and I was busy. So it's great that someone's paying attention to this atrocity.
Chayes is a coward and a buffoon.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 7:39 AM
I just had this same debate two nights ago with a friend of mine, who is an attorney! She was actually arguing that free speech ends when it is intended to offend a group of people.
Eric at September 20, 2012 8:19 AM
This appears to be the same standard that would require women to wear a burka. Does Chayes do so or is she shamelessly taunting vulnerable men with her loose tresses?
Astra at September 20, 2012 8:27 AM
> I just had this same debate two nights ago with
> a friend of mine, who is an attorney!
E.— Do not attempt sexual intercourse with this woman.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 8:58 AM
Crid: Sarah Chayes is a coward and a buffoon
Wiki: She has lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan since 2002. Having learned to speak the Pashto language, she has helped rebuild homes, set up a dairy cooperative. In May 2005, she established the Arghand Cooperative, a venture that encourages local Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits, and herbs instead of opium poppies.
She may be very wrong, I think so, but it's also entirely clear she is not a coward.
The question is, should American Free Speech be curtailed because it incites people that live outside of America. She sees the violence it has caused first hand. We see the curtailment of rights for Americans.
I disagree with her, intensely, but I'm not going to call her either a coward or a buffoon.
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/19/161439562/held-dear-in-u-s-free-speech-perplexing-abroad
jerry at September 20, 2012 9:18 AM
Chayes is clearly advocating for a terrorist's veto - anything, even a silly cartoon or YouTube video, that is likely to incite Muslim maniacs to murderous violence must be denied First Amendment protection. But if those Muslim maniacs know this, then it's absolutely certain to incite them to more murder & mayhem to get what they want from the American government. So her very own op-ed fails her likelihood of inciting imminent violence test!
Martin at September 20, 2012 9:19 AM
http://www.more.com/reinvention-money/second-acts/shape-shifter-reinvention-afghanistan?page=3
Risky Business
Kandahar is a tough place. It was in this small city of mud-baked houses and pomegranate trees that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda planned the September 11 attacks. For a while following the Taliban’s fall in late 2001, Afghanistan’s former capital held promise. Today the Taliban dominates once again. Kidnappings and suicide bombings are a daily threat. Yet in Kandahar, where women still wrap themselves in the obscuring burka, Chayes dashes around doing the things that men do there: conducting business, bumping heads with the notorious governor Gul Agha Shirzai, and driving around town with her AK-47 stashed under the seat.
"She’s outrageously friendly to everybody and plugged in to every element of society," says journalist Sebastian Junger, a childhood friend who frequently reports from that region. "The bad guys absolutely know who Sarah is. Clearly something is protecting her, or something would have already happened. It’s like she’s got some weird diplomatic immunity. I just don’t know how long that will last."
Dual Citizen
Chayes first went to Afghanistan in late 2001 to cover the war for NPR, and found herself enchanted by the country’s rugged beauty — particularly in Kandahar, a city, as she would later write, that "shimmered with a breathless hope."
"I decided that it wasn’t enough to be talking about it," Chayes says. "I wanted to be in it." So in 2002, at the invitation of President Hamid Karzai’s brother, Qayum (whom she’d gotten to know through her work), Chayes left NPR to run Afghans for Civil Society, a community-empowerment organization. She has since launched a radio station, started a dairy cooperative, and helped rebuild a village. Her book, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan Under the Taliban, which detailed her first years in Kandahar, was published in 2006. Arghand now employs 11 Afghans, and its natural skincare products are sold in upscale boutiques in the United States, Canada, and the Virgin Islands. Volunteers, including a group of high school students in Wellesley, Massachusetts, help distribute the goods.
jerry at September 20, 2012 9:22 AM
> She may be very wrong, I think so, but it's also
> entirely clear she is not a coward.
No, she's a coward. If a woman of such achievement is blind to the integrity of Western culture that gave her such opportunity, than her international enthusiasms are entirely careerist and mundane.
> She sees the violence it has caused first hand.
It didn't cause dick.
Those violent people aren't machines. They can and should be held accountable for their behavior. They're not some sort of feckless "wogs" whose lives can never be improved. They're going to have learn this. I'd rather they learn in this generation than the next. Bring it / Showtime / Let's Do This.
She's a coward. Yella'. Chicken.
And you should consider what happens to your immortal soul when you regard NPR as a source of analysis.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 9:29 AM
Item: Justice Department official refuses to rule out criminalization of blasphemy against Islam
http://minx.cc/?post=332942
Martin at September 20, 2012 9:35 AM
I've been thinking about this, because other women with diplomatic aspirations have been making the same noises. How could they be so naive? How?
They want it both ways. They want to move through the world defended by the best masculine muscle in Western culture, but still pretend their girly daydreams of adorable primitives can be sustained. They cannot.
If Foggy-Bottomed women want to whine that our diplomats and other international functionaries are being put in danger, then they people should be recalled. If you're afraid, come home... Your little careerist ass will have to get a job lecturing at some smallshit college in Pennsylvania.
I'm willing to bet that there are thousands of Americans who will work overseas with the understanding that [A] the job entails unavoidable risks and [B] the Constitutional blessings that have made America work so well are non-negotiable.
I believe Americans are not particular darling in fate's delivery of this success. I believe the First Amendment will similarly reward any culture that embraces it... Especially if the culture has courage, which seems to be dwindling here.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 9:44 AM
She can be a coward and a baffon and still be all those other things, Jerry...
What people seem to forget is that 1st Amendment free speech is a bulwark against GOVERNMENT control...
Listen my children to the text:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Anything you say can be misconstrued, WHOSE PROBLEM IS THAT?
Anything you say can be objected to, WHOSE PROBLEM IS THAT?
If you say something not liked and they get violent, WHOSE PROBLEM IS THAT?
OK, here we have the issue. It's the REACTION to the speech.
if I say "have a nice day..." and somebody beats the hell out of me, it doesn't matter what my speech was, what they did was against the law.
If you are, yourself, physically, in a foreign country, you are subject to it's laws about religious speech. When you are physically in the US, you are subject to ours.
The vid doesn't violate our laws, Just because someone gets their panties in a bunch over it's content IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY.
If they get violent, the problem is the violence and not what caused it, when it doesn't violate any law here.
OH, AND? The vid's been on youtube for MONTHS, and they only had a problem on Sept. 11.
Huh, imagine that.
Couple that with a consulate that is no different from your own house, and security that isn't allowed to have bullets in it's guns...
and the bad guys see a weak and dying horse.
No-one in the mid east see this vid as anything other than a convenient pretext to follow Alinsky's rules about forcing your enemy to abide by his own impossible rules.
The ROE over there is mostly plain stupid, and it's state that wrote it.
SwissArmyD at September 20, 2012 9:49 AM
Crid- too late!!!!
Eric at September 20, 2012 9:50 AM
Dood, if she got off, you are so fucked.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 9:58 AM
"She can be a coward and a baffon and still be all those other things, Jerry..."
People that leave a nice cush reporter job in Paris to start up an organization in Kandahar to provide people with ways to make money other than selling opium and have to drive with AK-47s and in fact are women in an Islamic society, no, those people are not in fact cowards.
Here is an argument made on NPR that describes how curtailing this speech might actually be legal in our framework of laws, according to the constitution, using no new interpretations of our constitution, and using existing cases: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/19/161439562/held-dear-in-u-s-free-speech-perplexing-abroad
If that upsets you, it certainly upsets me, you may actually be more upset with how we have interpreted free speech laws here!
jerry at September 20, 2012 10:14 AM
"Shut Up and Be Scanned."
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/17/opinion/la-ed-security-20101117
Chris Bray at September 20, 2012 10:19 AM
That's what the lefty intelligentsia is all about. The buck never stops, we can paper over anything and everything with another layer of words, and no one ever has to be strong or courageous.
You know what I like about NPR?
Nothing.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 10:20 AM
Jerry reminds me of Flip Wilson's Geraldine.
Dave B at September 20, 2012 10:29 AM
to put a finer point on it, Jerry, intellectual coward. It doesn't matter if she lives with street urchins in Kandahar... she could still be an intellectual coward...
What she does elsewise doesn't change that.
As for the NPR piece, explain to me how the THREAT of violence abrogates freedom of speech? The world is NOT more interconnected PHYSICALLY, it is electronic connection. That makes it different.
And it may well be that we stand alone in this, while no-one else accepts it. So what? It wouldn't be the first time.
Shouting FIRE is a call to action in saving your own life, based on a falsehood if there is no fire.
Calling someone an ignorant slut which makes someone else angry on their behalf, is CERTAINLY NOT the same thing.
SwissArmyD at September 20, 2012 10:53 AM
It is not equivalent to shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, where a fire would be a life or death situation.
We can't curtail free speech here on the off chance it might offend someone on the other side of earth.
Frankly, even if we did have Free Speech Panels, the movie may have even passed. It was so goofy and ludicrously bad I certainly wouldn't have foreseen the reaction to it.
NicoleK at September 20, 2012 10:56 AM
Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre induces a panic response. Yelling Muhammed sucks in a crowded Mosque of Islamic terrorists induces premeditated murder.
Patrick at September 20, 2012 11:05 AM
With props for our obviously agreement, I think Swiss is wrong about "Intellectual cowardice."
I can't tell the difference between intellectual cowardice and regular old cowardice. I don't think there is any difference.
We shouldn't use fancy words for a simple thing just because it will offend people less... or offend them more, for that matter.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 11:51 AM
No, it was in a palace near Kandahar that the Taliban and al Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks. While the peasants who live in the mud-baked houses and desperately seek shade under pomegranate trees went about the daily business of trying to survive in the 14th century hellhole the Taliban had made of Afghanistan, the Taliban and its guests lived in comfort, enjoying electricity, artificially cooled air, clean water, and Western movies.
Conan the Grammarian at September 20, 2012 12:03 PM
"What they said was that he was living a simple life and preaching Islam, but in reality he was living like this."
"He was supposed to be a religious man."
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Faithful-shocked-to-see-Taliban-leader-s-palace-2840738.php
Conan the Grammarian at September 20, 2012 12:11 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/09/20/obscene_la_time.html#comment-3335420">comment from Conan the GrammarianWhat far too few Muslims (if really any at all) realize is that turning the world Muslim will turn the world backward in horrible ways -- and not just in terms of the rights that will be taken from people (and the slaughter that will happen).
Amy Alkon at September 20, 2012 12:12 PM
Pat Condell just posted a new video: A">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCXHPKhRCVg&feature=colike">A word to rioting Muslims.
What I like about it is the part about "We just don't care."
They have every right to be offended, but they have no right to riot, rape, murder, loot and burn because they are offended.
They can go fuck off and die.
Jim P. at September 20, 2012 12:22 PM
Geraldine? "The Devil Made Me Do It? Huh?
@swissarmyd
"As for the NPR piece, explain to me how the THREAT of violence abrogates freedom of speech?"
The point of the NPR piece is that IN THE UNITED STATES, TODAY, courts have already determined that "the THREAT of violence abrogates freedom of speech". That's one reason why at political conventions and other places there are "free speech zones". I don't like this, but that is the current system.
"The world is NOT more interconnected PHYSICALLY, it is electronic connection. That makes it different."
Chayes point, and Feldman's point, and Breyer's point, and I guess as someone that has worked to implement and love TCP/IP for mumblety-decades that that may not be so anymore.
When you have HD YouTube broadcasting a speech to stadium JumboTrons around the world, will you be happy when the person speaking on that Jumbo Tron is Obama? Pat Robertson? al-Awlaki?
Chayes and Feldman say that legal scholars are saying that with no change to any law or any interpretation of the Constitution, that forbidding that speech is already legal in the US.
Chayes would seem to think that's a reasonable position, Feldman, I'm not so sure.
I think it's interesting and important issue to think about.
What is the real difference between some asshole inciting violence across the street from you, and some asshole inciting violence in real time on YouTube?
jerry at September 20, 2012 12:25 PM
Balls, that's the difference.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 1:21 PM
Speech that is intended to offend is precisely the kind that needs protection. The founders didn't have Shakespeare's sonnets in mind when they penned the first amendment.
Sosij at September 20, 2012 1:22 PM
Need more free speech outrage?
Chinese representatives visit Oregon to demand the removal of a mural they don't like:
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/19/161343395/why-does-china-want-a-mural-in-oregon-destroyed
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at September 20, 2012 1:34 PM
the difference is PHYSICALITY, Jerry. boya inciting violence on the street is inciting Real Life, Real World violence, and it is likely that someone will defend themselves...
while youtube and jumbotrons are ideas.
should we ban the koran or any religious text because it incites violence? By suggesting an idea?
Until the violence becomes physical, it is a thought.
Are you comfortable with making thought a crime?
I didn't say this sort of thing may not happen in the US, but that it's wrong for it to.
youtubes, and jumbotrons and electronic communication can be walked away from, ignored and you can turn the channel... you dun have to be offended if you don't want to be.
SwissArmyD at September 20, 2012 2:46 PM
Besides, it doesn't incite. It merely mocks.
I said that like I've seen it, but I haven't. Does it actually call for acts of violence against Muslims?... More so than an old Warners cartoon calls for the death of woodpeckers, or anything else you might find on YouTube?
No, the only way you can call this incitement is if you describe Muslims as so rock-sinkingly stupid as to have no capacity for abstraction whatsover.
But even then, I wouldn't blame the movie maker.
Does anyone remember all those 'Kill the Police' music videos from rap stars in the 90's? I bet you could still find a few of them on YouTube if you looked.
Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at September 20, 2012 3:04 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/09/20/obscene_la_time.html#comment-3335572">comment from Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail]SwissArmyD makes a good point: The Quran actually COMMANDS violence of Muslims (against dirty kuffirs like us). It is required of Muslims under Islam. Many Muslims may not know this or agree with it, but it is how it is.
Amy Alkon at September 20, 2012 4:02 PM
Woodpeckers, road-runners, whatever. Why the fuck should Islam have veto power over videos?
> It is required of Muslims under Islam.
This will be maybe the seventh time I've linked to this clip in Amy's comments. But I love it very much, partly because I was there when he said it.
Remember this: Religious texts are unimprovable. No matter how nice or brilliant or modern the religious believer, he is not allowed to change things to make them better.
If you ever meet a moderate Muslim who says the religion is not about these extreme positions, tell him you want the offending passages to be stricken. Set your jaw, look him in the eye, and don't listen to excuses. It's his responsibility to make these hazards go away, not yours. (Though we trust that should it become necessary, you'll do your part.)
(Same for the Christians, too.)
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at September 20, 2012 6:32 PM
"No, she's a coward. If a woman of such achievement is blind to the integrity of Western culture that gave her such opportunity, than her international enthusiasms are entirely careerist and mundane."
Crid, it's worse than that. She's gone native. She views their culture as superior to ours. So superior that our criticism of it is like ants criticizing Hoover Dam. In her opinion, we should just shut up.
Cousin Dave at September 20, 2012 8:21 PM
"Religious texts are unimprovable."
Not unless you're using Legos!
http://www.thebricktestament.com/home.html
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at September 20, 2012 9:12 PM
Jim P: "They have every right to be offended, but they have no right to riot, rape, murder, loot and burn because they are offended."
That's true. But I don't think they do those things because they're offended. I think they do them because they are a depraved people and they want to. Their perverse religion just gives them what they think is an excuse.
In any case, it isn't criticism of Islam that incites violence and murder, it's the teachings of Islam itself that call for violence and murder against its critics. So, if the blame for the violence doesn't rest entirely on the individuals who commit it, then it is the expression of Islam that should rightly and justly be condemned and suppressed.
Face it. Muslims are not content to live in peace with the non-Muslim people around them. Unless we dominate and oppress them, they will dominate and oppress us.
Ken R at September 21, 2012 3:39 AM
By using this argument, Muslims are as likely to respond violently and murderously to criticism as people are to trample each other getting out of a theater on fire.
I'm not sure that is an unreasonable comparison.
However, there is a difference between accidental trampling and pre-meditated murder.
Cat at September 21, 2012 8:28 AM
The way I think of this Sarah Chayes reporter is like this:
Come on we all know women like this. Highly educated women that say/act/do stupid shit, like converting to Islam because it's a "beautiful religion".
You know, it's especially white, educated women coming from $$$$. Come on now right?
Looking up her bio it confirms all my suspicions. She studied history and the medieval period of Islam (which is when all that shit was invented by Muslims).
No seriously I dont care if she has lived in Afghanistan. I want her to live as a normal Afghan girl would, without the cushy reporter job/ Harvard education and married with 50 kids.
(BTW my brother fights in foreign wars all the time, and um......I dont turn for his opinion on free speech)
Purplepen at September 21, 2012 4:53 PM
She was actually arguing that free speech ends when it is intended to offend a group of people.
I love it when people do this, I spend the rest of the evening interputing them everytime they offer an opinion telling them I find such an idea (no matter what said idea might be) offensive and therefore they should not be allowed to say it anymore. Unless of course they dont mind my killing them for offending me.
Sadly they never seem to grasp the irony
lujlp at September 22, 2012 7:01 AM
Leave a comment