Danish government betrays free speech values

Mark Steyn relays the sad state of affairs in Europe, as the current government of Denmark is making it a crime to burn Korans, and it looks like only appeasing Islam is the concern here:

Many years ago, my compatriot Ezra Levant observed that one day the Danish Mohammed cartoons would come to be seen as a more consequential event than 9/11. Not in the overall death toll, obviously - although the corpse count of the Motoons continues to rise (Charlie Hebdo et al) - but in its lessons for a free society's enemies. 9/11 led to two decades of ineffectual warmongering in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the goatherds with fertilizer soon had the measure of that. But the cartoons and the west's reaction to them told the world that we would not defend core liberties such as freedom of speech: You don't need to blow up our skyscrapers; we're happy to surrender to subtler pressures.

And here we are eighteen years later, with the Danish Government proposing to criminalize the burning of the Koran and make it an offense punishable by fines and/or imprisonment.

[...] As Marie said, the walls of Christiansborg are "thick and massive". However, I woke up on the morning of the event to find that both the US State Department and the British Foreign Office had issued travel advisories warning their nationals to steer clear of both Copenhagen in general and Christiansborg Palace in particular.

Indeed. You don't want to be caught in the shootout at a free-speech event, do you? I doubt either the US Congress or the British Parliament would have agreed (under any circumstances) to permit a conference to be held under a giant portrait of Mohammed [top right] at the heart of the Capitol or the Palace of Westminster. Katrine, Marie and a small but determined group fought hard against the remorseless, suffocating urge to appease. And to be sitting in the heart of the Danish establishment with the Big Mo scowling above me was itself a modestly encouraging sign.

But it was on a day without many others. As Katrine alludes to above, Jyllands-Posten marked the tenth anniversary by re-publishing a perfect facsmile of the newspaper page as it had appeared in 2005 - except with white space where the cartoons had been.

"So sad," said Katrine. "Violence works."

That day, I was protected, as I have been on all post-cartoon visits to Copenhagen, by men from the PET - the Danish Security and Intelligence Service. Marie had booked a post-conference dinner at a fashionable restaurant, but they figured out why we needed security and declined to honor our booking.

So by the tenth anniversary it was not just that once publishable cartoons are now unpublishable, but that figures even tangentially associated with them can't get a table in a restaurant.

We wound up in a pub called the Mouse and Elephant in what Douglas characterized as feeling like "a party at the end of the world". Indeed. Post-Christian Europe is a mouse that decided to get into bed with the elephant of Islam; eventually, the elephant will roll over - and crush the mouse.

Surely it's telling if the USA Congress - not to mention the UK's Palace of Westminster - would refuse to have anything to do with the Mohammed cartoons, and that doubt includes the Republicans. If they're not willing to organize free speech panels involving the Mohammed cartoons, in example, they're no better than the European counterparts who pathetically refuse to defend freedom either.

But this definitely makes clear the sad trajectory much of the globe is headed on. All because nobody had the courage to do what it takes to move the Religion of Peace out of any sane country, or do anything else to put an end to it altogether. As for a post-Christian Europe, I find it disgusting in the extreme that Jewish advocates did nothing to encourage people to try out Judaism instead, and make it attractive as a good, if not perfect, alternative. By that, I mean that, while the Reform sect obviously isn't a good influence even by past standards, those who're Orthodox shouldn't use the Haredi approach as an influence either; the standard Orthodox approach is good enough. And those Judaists who refused to make any courageous effort to improve foreign countries by promoting Judaism as a worthy religion for foreigners to convert to should be utterly ashamed of themselves for failing the masses.

Update: Giulio Meotti has more on this sad development.

Shrier sets the record straight about Haaretz's lies

Abigail Shrier addressed what one of the worst leftist newspapers in Israel, Haaretz, is saying about her, and also Steimatzky and Tzomet Sefarim's refusal to carry her book, or not within the Tel Aviv perimeter:

Conservative author Abigail Shrier exposed what she called "leftist media lies" in a Twitter thread about the narrative surrounding the release of her book, "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters," in Israel this week.

Shrier linked to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that downplayed the support she experienced in the country as the top two book chains refusing to sell her book, "Irreversible Damage," in its stores after succumbing to activist pressure.

The author took to Twitter to correct the record and even after trans activists successfully pushed the country's largest book stores from carrying the book, hundreds of Israeli's registered and paid to attend her talk in Tel Aviv.

Read more at the article. It should be noted that a number of years ago, Steimatsky also refused to sell books about Charlie Hebdo's satirical illustrations that put them in the crosshairs of Islamofascism. So, this is no shock they'd throw her under the bus, but it's still monumentally offensive they continue to demonstrate they're an utter farce when it comes to extremists. I think the bookstore chain will have to be boycotted, since this is a very serious matter.

Update: here's more about the issue.

Transsexual activists get Abigail Shrier event canceled at Tel Aviv location

Whether or not influence of transsexual propaganda is as severe here as it is in the USA, there's still serious problems with them, and now, it's led to brave Abigail Shrier, the author of Permanent Damage, having an event canceled at a Tel Aviv center, even if another venue was arranged:

When journalist and author Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, positing that transgenderism in teen girls is a social contagion, was released in 2020, Amazon would not allow her to advertise it, and employees of the book-selling giant petitioned for it not to be sold at all. It was twice removed from Target’s shelves, and even a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union called for “stopping the circulation of this book.”

With the book’s recent release in Hebrew by Sella Meir, a publisher that specializes in bringing heterodox and conservative voices to light, the debate over whether Shrier’s ideas should even be available in the public square has reached Tel Aviv’s public square: Kikar Atarim, to be precise.

Sella Meir and the Tel Aviv International Salon (TAIS) planned a book launch for Shrier for her to advise parents on what to do if their teen daughters say they are transgender. The event was planned to take place at the glass-windowed strip club-turned-event space overlooking the beach, run by the organization Social Space, for next Sunday, until the publishing house’s owner. Rotem Sella, and TAIS founder Jay Shultz were told it was canceled.

Cancellation of the book's launch in Israel

“We do not host such events,” a woman named Omer wrote. Sella said she called the event “homophobic” in a phone call.

The Social Space, which repurposes unused buildings for social projects, did not respond to numerous emails or calls from The Jerusalem Post. But it told Haaretz it would not have signed with Sella Meir in the first place had it known about the book’s content, adding that it “will not allow for any incitement.”

Sella and Shultz plan to hold the event, which has more than 150 registered attendees, on the same date at the nearby Carlton Hotel’s beach lounge.

Now let's hope the hotel stands firm on this, and that the authorities will keep it safe if needed. But this Social Space movement is clearly a disgrace if they're following a far-left belief system, and shouldn't be buying up any properties if this is how they're going to go about their business. The building where this was supposed to take place may have once housed the Pussycat Club, which was a strip bar. To think, that it was closed down for this?

Controversy surrounding the cancellation

“Nothing is more important than vibrant civil discourse and debate,” Shultz said. “Bad things happen in darkness, and sunlight is the best medicine. More speech, more insight, more conversation and more dialogue is always the only solution for tensions in society. This is the nonpartisan honest broker mission of the Tel Aviv International Salon.”

Sella said Irreversible Damage is a “book full of compassion meant to defend teens… It does not criticize lifestyles, and the attempts to prevent the conversation about it comes from ignorance and incitement. We will not give in to bullying and narrow-mindedness.”

Meanwhile, Sella Meir has begun marketing it as “the book and event that they are trying to censor.”

Steimatzky, Israel’s largest bookseller, initially declined to carry the book but said on Tuesday night that it would order copies. Tzomet Sfarim, Israel’s second-largest bookstore chain, has a small number of copies of the book around the country, but not in Tel Aviv or its liberal suburbs. The two chains hold 80% of the book market in Israel.

The Jerusalem Post was able to order a copy from a Tzomet Sfarim store in Tel Aviv upon inquiry.

“What [the booksellers] are saying is that the Israel public cannot decide for itself what to read,” Shrier said Tuesday.

“These are the same activist forces we’re seeing in America, which is a very intolerant minority that says we can’t get a message out about girls’ health,” she said. “A bunch of adults, mostly biological men, decide what we’re allowed to talk about when it comes to the health of teenage girls… It’s a very intolerant group of people that push the censorship.”

It's also disgraceful if Steimatzky and Tzomet Sefarim initially balked at selling the book, because that compounds how politicized these 2 are as a result. As for lifestyles, let's be clear. That's a form of ideology, and there's nothing inherent wrong with taking issue with that any more than Islamofascism.

Shrier said she has had many Israeli parents contact her to say they are seeing girls in their daughters’ classes decide they’re transgender.

“We’re talking about a peer contagion that has caused harm to thousands of American girls, and the peer contagion is now in Israel,” she said. “Unless parents are aware of the risks, they have no way to protect their families.”

The transgender experience in Israel

In contrast to Shrier’s experience of opposition to the book in the US, one of the leading figures in the battle to ban and banish Shrier in Israel is a “trans-non-binary” 16-year-old named Reut from Petah Tikva, who asked that her last name not be shared. She, together with other transgender youth, run a WhatsApp group with more than 200 members that is called “Anti-transphobic demonstration,” which the Post was able to view.

The effort is grassroots and not part of an organization, Reut said, though when asked if adults are involved, she said to contact Ma’avarim, an NGO that provides support for transgender Israelis.

After the Social Space canceled Shrier’s event, Reut wrote: “Following inquiries to the place… it canceled the event (which is totally a victory as far as we’re concerned)!”

Reut told the group she would send an update of the protest location when she knows where the book launch will be held.

In between classes on Tuesday, the trans activist said she and her fellow teens from different cities in Israel had commented against the book on the social media accounts for the venue and Sella Meir, and they plan to put similar pressure on any stores that carry it.

“This is a dangerous book,” Reut said. “It’s meant for parents, and one of the most important things for trans youth is to be accepted by their families.”

Without support from families, she said, “the percentage of suicides rises very sharply.”

Reut also said the book mischaracterized what she called “gender-affirming care.”

Regarding whether Shrier should be free to share her research, just as Reut and her fellow activists are free to protest her, she said: “Freedom of expression is very important, but there has to be some kind of limit.”

“To try to convince parents of trans children not to accept their children and directly harm them is something that, in my opinion, cannot be accepted in our society,” she said.

Now, what are the chances this is actually a male, and an adult man in focus here? One who's practically parroting all the same talking points of USA leftards at that. Whoever it is should be ashamed, and Shrier and company should file a lawsuit for any damages sustained. The alleged teenager sounds obnoxious, and that's one of the biggest problems with these ideologues.

Shrier detailed the argument that she makes in her book, which is that over a 100-year diagnostic history, gender dysphoria was practically never diagnosed in teen girls. Rather, it occurred in boys aged two to four who felt profound psychological discomfort with their biological sex, and most outgrew it, she said.

“When you see it, as we see in US and England and across the West, where teenage girls suddenly say they’re transgender with their friends – that is not classic gender dysphoria,” Shrier said. “That’s something else. That’s part of the social contagion.”

When an adolescent girl tells her parents she is trans, she said, the parents should treat her like the age that she is, like a girl “who doesn’t really know very much about herself or what she’s going to want long term, because that’s the truth… There’s nothing more normal than a young girl feeling really uncomfortable in her body at the onset of puberty.”

On this note, it's exactly why the direction many religious people - certainly Haredis - took with women in the past century, insisting they dress modestly and not sing, was very stupid, ill-advised, and amounted to body shaming before the left took up that whole idea. If we take that as an example, is it any wonder girls could have a bad time during puberty? That's why what the Haredis in particular have wrought must cease. Religious people could do a favor by telling their daughters it's fully acceptable to become supermodels and beauty queens, and even to work as singers. And lest we forget, girls should be told to be proud of their bodies, and not embarrassed by them.

The “irreversible damage” to which Shrier refers to in the book is from hormone treatments or surgical interventions that could lead to infertility, as well as other medical side effects, such as lower bone density, that have come to light in recent years.

“In many cases, they are infertile,” she said. “Their bodies are forever changed, and they are not leading the lives that they would have hoped and their families would have hoped for them.

“If there’s a chance of arresting this in Israel and saying to your daughter, ‘Listen, we love you, but I’m not going to pretend you’re a boy’… that’s a really good place to start.”

Shrier said the way Israel handles this book “will determine the fate of a lot of girls between the ages of eight and 20, their quality of life and whether they can be healthy and whether they’ll be permanent medical patients.”

Asked where she thought the line should be drawn for freedom to disseminate controversial ideas, she said: “Whatever the line is, it shouldn’t be drawn [to prevent] giving information to parents on the very real risks of gender medicine.”

Shrier cited several European countries, including the UK, Sweden, France and Finland, which are reconsidering their policies and curtailing gender-related treatments for minors.

And if they can reconsider, that's why here too, all must be done to put a stop to these extremists who're serving as a 5th column to take attention away from Islamofascism. On which note, you can be sure these LGBT activists here have no issue with Islam, in contrast to Judaism.

Here's more on this at the Jewish Press.

European publishers self-censor and capitulate on Islam

Giulio Meotti's written about the terrible state of modern censorship on the issues of Islam, much worse than it was when Salman Rushdie wrote the Satanic Verses:

When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1989, Viking Penguin, the British and American publisher of the novel, was subjected to daily threats from Islamists. As Daniel Pipes wrote, the London office resembled "a battlefield", with police on guard, metal detectors and an escort for visitors. At the New York office, trained dogs sniffed mail packages and the offices were called a "sensitive place."

Many bookstores were attacked and many others refused to sell the book. Viking spent three million dollars on security measures, but it never faltered. Today, Western publishers all self-censor. And London capitulates to intimidation.

A popular children's book from the Biff, Chip, and Kipper series has just been retired following complaints that its portrayal of the Muslim people was racist, the Telegraph said. Oxford University Press is the publisher of The Blue Eye, in which young characters are transported to a foreign land with the help of a magic key. Children gather at a busy street market, which appears to be somewhere in the Middle East, where men are wearing white turbans and a woman is dressed in a niqab. The publisher said: "The book has been completely withdrawn from print and we have destroyed our remaining stock of the book, although a small number of copies may still remain in the supply chain. Some older titles may still be available in bookstores or as second-hand copies."

"And it doesn't matter, as the Times recalls, that" millions of children were trained in England on the books of Biff, Chip and Kipper". Turbans and niqabs are not appropriate, says the BBC.

Islam is treated in white gloves in so-called multiculturalism.

[...] Today the ancient fear of Islam has been welded to the new Woke hegemony. “Wokism has just begun” Pascal Bruckner writes this week in Le Figaro. “It is introduced as a product imported from the United States, especially on campuses (synthesis of asylums and re-education camps) with all the seduction of novelty and chic. It is a passing fad that is turning into a leftist ideology and is destined to consolidate itself for many years in the media, at school and in business. It will disappear only when public opinion gets tired of the nonsense or professed abominations of gender, identity, race. It will take a whole generation”.

Sadly, it makes sense that wokism's come from leftist USA institutions, and now, it's resulted over the years in a tragedy where only so many challenging issues are shunned by publishers and even film studios and such because it doesn't meet their modern standards of political correctness. It's one of the leading reasons why modern literature and entertainment is in such a dire, bankrupt state. That aside, any publisher who doesn't have the courage any more than the resources to deal with all these issues has no business working in book publishing. The query now is, will conservatives be willing to show the courage to work on what leftist outfits aren't?

Google Gives Reason for Blocking MassResistance

Thanks to a Google Alert for the terms “Fox News” and “Josh Miller”, a Fox News reporter who interviewed me four months ago (see this BMW post for details), I came across a post published yesterday on Craigslist in Boston that caught my attention. Posted by someone associated with the Massachusetts-based MassResistance blog, it makes a pretty clear case against the censorship power of Google. The entirety of the post appears unedited here.

BLOG TALK RADIO SILENCES "NO COMPROMISE WHEN IT COMES TO BEING RIGHT"

October 13, 2008

Read this and weep. Full information from Tracy of No Compromise When It Comes to Being Right:

Dear Listeners,

I scheduled a show with Attorney Phil Berg who has filed a lawsuit against Barack Obama for not being a US Citizen therefore he is an illegal alien.

My show was terminated at the beginning of the show. Why? The BTR assistant Director of Customer Relations, Shannon Dingee-Kramer stated that my show was, "racially or ethnically offensive, defamatory, unreasonably violent, threatening, intimidating or harassing; 2. contains falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage BlogTalkRadio or any other person;

In other words, those who claim to be for free speech are afraid of it when they see it. It might offend someone and that's far more important to protect than the American Principle of exercising the flow of speech in the arena of public ideas.

So I am officially off the air until further notice thanks to the Obamunists and Islamists who support him!

I want to thank all of you for your faithfulness to my growing show.

Kindest regards,

Tracy

Additional information HERE.

2008: The Year of Silencing the Voices - as I've been squawking about since the first of the year.

RELIAPUNDIT ADDS: UNBEFREAKINLIEVABLE!

OBAMA'S THUGOCRACY IS ALREADY IN FULL SWING - AND HE HASN'T EVEN BEEN SWORN IN!

Comcast's blocking: first the Internet — now public debate

Cable provider Comcast was recently caught throttling consumer file-sharing using an approach that some have called a "denial-of-service" attack. In other words, Comcast specifically squelched legal, online video sharing. Technology experts, including those involved in the creation of the Internet (no, not you, Al Gore) strongly oppose Comcast's tactics.

When the Beltway Insiders Club known as the FCC reluctantly got involved, it held a public hearing. But rather than allow public debate, Comcast paid uninterested observers to fill the room. The general public, which had arrived 90 minutes ahead of time, was unable to attend the meeting.

Put simply, Comcast's paid seat-warmers had blocked the public, just as they blocked the public's use of BitTorrent and other applications.

Watch the video, then go to Save the Internet and make your voice heard.

Army Censorship Update

The fire storm that erupted over the Army's rules about e-mails and blogging has lead to new rules.

...the Army has issued a clarification that assures:

In no way will every blog post/update a Soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor and Operations Security (OPSEC) officer. After receiving guidance and awareness training from the appointed OPSEC officer, that Soldier blogger is entrusted to practice OPSEC when posting in a public forum.

The statement establishes three conditions for unsupervised blogging:

1. The blog’s topic is not military-related (i.e., Sgt. Doe publishes a blog about his favorite basketball team).
2. The Soldier doesn’t represent or act on behalf of the Army in any way.
3. The Soldier doesn’t use government equipment when on his or her personal blog.

Plus we have some Senators getting into the act.

...Senators Norm Coleman, Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint wrote to Defense Sec. Robert Gates expressing concern over the new rules.

Their point is that mil blogs are an aid to the war effort and should not be over regulated.

Seems like very sound advice.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Update: Military Blogs in the War Zone by Black Five.

Military Censorship

The Army is effectively shutting down Army blogs. This is stupid. Sgt Mom says something like: "What did you expect? It is all about Power and Control." (see how easy it is to get a link from me? LOL)

We need more information from the Army, not less. So what do they do? Put a big kink in the hose.

I think this has gone beyond stupid and is now firmly into insane territory.

My guess is that this is a move to cover for the inarticulate Commander in Chief. If he can't adequately express himself no one can. Especially, he doesn't want to be upstaged by some 2nd Lt or a private even. However, that is strictly a guess.

Here is what I think should be done:

It seems to me that the way to handle this is blog teams. Each member of the team is assigned to censor all the others with a person responsible in each team. Self regulation.

Then you have a blog central to pass info and answer questions and handle opsec regulation.

I miss Armorgeddon.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values