Every time some prudish librarian or school board wants to ban books that they consider inappropriate for children, elites sniff at the rubes’ lack of sophistication and anti-intellectual bias. As you’ll recall, during the 2008 election it became a big campaign issue that as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin supposedly inquired about banning books. The allegation was made up, but the stench stuck to her in the media.
So how do you figure this from Breitbart?
Just one day after an Islamic activist attempted to cover over private property in spray paint (and a woman who got in her way), the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York has announced they will amend their rules to prohibit the types of advertisements that offended her.
The New York Times reports the MTA will prohibit any advertisements that it “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.” Those “viewpoint” ads that do not meet this criteria will be allowed, so long as a disclaimer is included saying the MTA does not endorse them. The MTA met on Thursday to discuss the rules, which were approved unanimously 8-0.
Self-proclaimed “proud-liberal Muslim” activist Mona Eltahawy served as the impetus of the ruling after she spray painted a pro-Israel advertisement placed in the New York City subway:
Let’s recap: A woman who dislikes a paid advertisement attempts to spray paint over it so that no one else can read it either, though it is not her property and it’s a crime to deface it. She’s arrested.
And how does the city react? By saying, in essence, “Mona, baby, we’re so sorry you were offended. You have the right not to be.”
At today’s public meeting of the MTA, audience members held signs in support of Eltahawy saying the subways “belong to the 99%.”
What a monstrous joke we’ve become, genuflecting to both political correctness and Islamofear.
There’s no need to ban books when you can burn down the entire library and get a big thumbs-up from the masses.
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I have long ago called NYC “the Caliphate On Hudson”.
Happily, that hole is an aberration in America.
Unhappily, it is all too influential in our culture.
Has nobody asked Mona Eltahawy whether she has read the Hamas Covenant?
The follow-up question is whether she thinks the signatories of that agreement are savages.
The Hamas Covenant of 1988, expurgated.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
The unexpurgated version.
http://middleeast.about.com/od/palestinepalestinians/a/me080106b.htm
Some of us do distinguish between Muslims and Islamists, but anybody who refuses to recognize the savage nature of the Hamas Covenant is not a civilized person.
In other news, the Jawa Report picks up on a story about a Muslim mother in Canada.
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/213737.php
That mother’s action qualifies as “savage.”
As that comic from the 70’s, Flip Wilson, would say, “The devil made [her] do it!”.
I wonder if the MTA would have made the same decision had it been a person spary-painting an image of Bloomberg or Obama, claiming it as a source of incitement to violence?
Insanity is on the rise. Using the standard being put in place in the transit system, I suppose posters for professional sports teams are now verbotten……after all, many a fight has broken over rivalries, no?
And pedophillic adverts for outrageously expensive togs…?
Well, we now have our license to censure those, too!
Only if people band together and start fights over their content. Otherwise they may be viewed as simply ‘artistic’.
The New York Times reports the MTA will prohibit any advertisements that it “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.”
However, that criterion contains an unwritten clause, which will be enforced just as rigorously as the above.
The clause exempts from those prohibitions any outrage, violence or breaches of the peace engaged in by members of the Dominant Majority, aka the white male US citizen, when reading such advertisements which trigger their direct action against the ads.
That would be merely vandalism, and much blather would erupt about the First Amendment, and tolerance and diversity. The ads would be reinforced, and the offender sentenced to sensitivity training.
freedom of speech for me, but not for thee
That’s the motto of the modern “progressive movement”.
The dem voting Jews of New York think they have bought an absolution. They are fools.
Yeah, and at this point…the only thing stopping the pogroms of the early 21st Century IS the 2nd Amendment…
Rich: You are right. It is depressing to see American Jews setting themselves up for the pogrom. It is depressing to see American Blacks sell themselves into slavery for cheap trinkets. Meantime the fascist Brownshirts at “Homeland Security” are stockpiling over a billion rounds of ammo.
Muslims have been destroying or banning reading materials which THEY and only THEY deem to be offensive to them thoughout Islam’s entire 1400 year history. As to the rights to others, Muslims have a stock answer, “What rights? The infidel, or the kafir, only has privileges to the extent that we Muslims deem permissible; but there is no such concept as infidel rights.”
This is the essence of Islamic supremacist dictates as ably explained time and again by he very excellent Robert Spencer at jihadwatch.org.
The subway ads reminds one of the famous quote attributed to Caliph Omar as he pondered the destruction of the Library of Alexandria by his Muslim troops when they invaded Egypt in 642AD. “If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them.”
This library, the finest and most extensive collection of learning in the then known world, was destroyed by burning. A Muslim pattern was set and has been followed. Caliph Omar would have smiled widely at Mona Eltahawy’s destruction.
There, summed in Omar’s few words, is why the Islamic world has never seen progress on its own. The progress that does appear in Muslim countries is first and foremost the result (principally) of Western and Indian thought and second is so extant in spite of the Quran, but not because of it.
So, there will be no more ads for Christian churches, pork chops, alcohol, sports events, women’s hair and beauty products, slim jeans and anything else that happens to offend muslims.
Why don’t they just go to an already Sharia practicing country rather than ruining our country?
More than a little bit over the top, Professor. This is not banning books or burning down libraries.
This is talking about potentially disruptive advertisements on a subway that averages 5 million rides each day. Malls, airports and amusement parks have rules to minimize disruptions and to try to make the traffic more efficient. This is no different.
Boy do you not have a clue about the concept of free speech. How much of a step do you think it would be to jump from banning a poster whose topic has a Muslim subject of any kind, to banning a similar book? After all, the book can incite violence, too. And a unseen YouTube video has proven that the mere existence is sufficient. It need not be ‘consumed’. Get it?
One must realise that it was not just an unseen Youtube video but an improved upon video that the arabs broadcast, just as the Danish cartoons were improved upon for greater impact ( the rioting and violence only came some 3 months after the cartoons were published).
Eons ago when sexual harassment was just becoming popular in the courts, we were advised about unseen pornography. Say some janitor had a topless calendar in their personal locker deep in the basement. It’s existence was sufficient to trigger a sexual harassment if all that poster did was be a reference to a comment. Once the Mohammedans eliminate all “offensive” posters they can see, they will want to eliminate all the offensive posters and protesters they can’t see, but that have heard about or imagine.
I eat pork.
This is talking about potentially disruptive advertisements
That probably sounds good to a leftist until some centrist citizen rises to the position of ruler, and bans the leftist’s public statements as being ‘potentially disruptive’. That certainly applied to the Occupy posters and slogans.
The First Amendment is worth defending, whether or not jim1 thinks so.
So are you in favor of laws that regulate how the Westboro Baptist Church can protest at servicepeople’s funerals?
Jim-
No-one ever said they cannot protest a military member’s funeral. They have been required to stay a certain distance & not impede traffic & not damage other graves.
Mona could have protested also but she chose to attack. I think if the Westboro peeps attacked the coffin or funeral goers there would be grave consequences =mostly their own .
However Westboros may be warped christians but they are not muslims.
Everything everybody else is saying, plus:
1. So the MTA has made up a new rule that enables them to do what they wanted to do all along. They only allowed the ad to be posted because a court decision said they could not deny the advertisers their right to free speech. Isn’t MTA’s self-determined, self-serving “official rule” in defiance of that court’s decision? Does making up this new rule mean the court’s decision is no longer in effect? Is it that easy to defy a judge’s instructions? Just put a little extra English on the spin of the rule, and you win after all? Does the MTA have legislative powers that can over-ride a court decision they don’t like? Surely this new rule should be debated in court. If I were the judge I think I would be a bit ticked at the defiance of a losing party that had side-stepped my previous legal ruling by dubious rule-writing of their own.
2. I haven’t seen anyone discuss one likely reason for the MTA’s determination to suppress this ad. An episode of sudden jihad syndrome that resulted in injuries or death would have legal implications for the MTA. The fear of lawsuits has brought many a business to its knees — that’s exactly why we have such oppressive and offensive airport screening policies now (not to mention moronic warning labels on home appliances). Do we want the MTA to institute similar screening and policing in the subways of New York to prevent every possibility an outbreak of sudden jihad syndrome? I completely disagree with their determination to suppress these ads, but I think I understand a little of their concerns, which may be more monetary than minatory.
so the MTA is fine with Shariah Law? Looks like it.
Glad I don’t like in NYC, bunch of shariah law nutjobs.
but hey, having a crucifix in urine is A-OK with NYC!
The central player in this drama is Pamela Gellar from Atlas Shrugs, who conceived the ads and took the issue to court on behalf of her American Freedom Defense Initiative. She disputes parts of the NY Times piece, and vows in any case to go back to court if it’s necessary.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/
so according the the MTA and this lunatic Mona whateverhernameis, she can suppress speech she doesn’t agree with, but if someone else wants that same right to speech, that’s not ok.
she doesn’t like the poster? fine. then go buy your own ad poster for the MTA, but instead, the MTA would rather just suppress the ad that Mona doesn’t like.
Apparently free speech of Mona gives her the right to suppress to free speech of others.
See how that works? free speech is only speech that the muslims are fine with.
while I am now an independent, I am a classical liberal, smaller govt, free speech, consitutional govt etc. what the MTA and Mona want is shariah law.
You have just described Islamic supremicism. “The world revolves around us because Mohammud and Allah told us, in the Quran, to subdue the entire world until everyone has recited the Shahada (‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of God’), becomes Muslim, and submits.” The word Islam translate as Submit.
Subduing the world means, to the Muslim, by any means necessary, explaining why the killing of anyone not Muslim is both essential and good. To the Muslim way of thinking, no one is ever innocent if they are not Muslim. Like many, many concepts which may use the same word in both Western culture and Islamic thinking, “innocence” means two entirely different things.
May I suggest that you add to your list of sites to be visited regularly Spencer’s jihadwatch.org. You will learn a great deal about Islam. And like W.Jacobson has done on the Warren deceptions, Spencer backs up everything he says with hard facts, including citations to core Islamic texts.
Just spotted this article and video which will help further explain my point. The ALARMING thing about this incident is that is happened just this past Summer in Michigan. Yes, right here in the US. As you get to know Islam and Muslim behavior you will notice the remarkable consistency of their ugly and aggressive behaviors, no matter where they are in the world and no matter when along Islam’s 1400 year timeline.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/cops-to-answer-in-court-for-stoning-of-christians/
Yes, you read that right, the STONING of Christians in 2012 America.
This is the same bunch of jerks that try to stir up trouble and publicity every year at this fest. They’re not much different than the Nazis marching in Skokie or the KKK marching. Yes, they have freedom of speech, but it’s not too bad if someone exercises his/her right for to punch one of them out at the cost of being arrested.
Likewise with Westboro Baptist Church. However, the most outrageous part of this story is that there were no such arrests. The Muslim stone throwers were left alone, and the Christians who were being stoned were warned they would be arrested for disturbing the peace for provoking the Muslims into stoning them.
Lessons are being learned. The Tea Party folks have long been unjustly accused of fostering violence. Let me tell you son, when we do decide to foster violence, you’ll f**king well know it.
Somewhere in Hell, the 9/11 killers laugh triumphantly.
” The New York Times reports the MTA will prohibit any advertisements that it “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.” ”
So the only recourse avaiable to those who cannot reply with an opposing ad is to resort to violence seems to be the logic.
Why not refuse any and all ads and stop the nonsense?
Ads for the vile hateful, religiously bigoted Book of Mormon are still running in the transit system.
Book of Mormon got the green light about the time that it became clear that Romney was the man to beat for the nomination.
I guess the Mormons have to get violent by the transit authority’s standard.
As Greg Gutfeld asked about this issue (and the Benghazi consulate cover-up and the mainstream media’s cover-up of the cover-up) …
“Where is Hollywood?”
I’ll tell you, Greg. Go straight about 100 miles down Hypocrite Lane and hang a left on Sanctimonious Street.
But be quiet! Because, filming will be in progress to address these latest outrages.
Hollywood and George Clooney are said to be working on “Good Night, and Good Luck, The Prequel.”
It’s a timely and dangerously brave look further into McCarthy. Clooney doesn’t care if he ends up on a blacklist because of this. The personal costs he’s sure to endure for probing this taboo subject so prematurely soon in its aftermath …
Today’s Hollywood … always on the cutting edge … like an upside-down butter knife.
Maybe I’m wrong but it seems to me that the language of this new rule is extremely similar to the reasoning that was truck down by a court in the case of these ads in the first place. It is clearly intended to judge speech and therefore directly infringes the first amendment. I don’t understand why they would even bother. The only explanation I can think of is sheer stupidity.
Making a political statement is the intent I believe. After all, we only need to look back a few months to statements about Chick-fil-A to see something similar. In those cases, the legality was just as evident and the mouths wisely backed down to some degree. In NYC, under Bloomberg, there are many examples of being boldly contrary to principles. If this gets challenged (surely it will, right?), I’ll bet the city and transit authority won’t fight it all the way. If they loose at the first level, they will probably concede. But they are willing to take that risk to prove to other progressives they are boldly taking a stand.
Freedom of speech is not absolute. It can be regulated. Look at the laws against protests at military funerals by the Westboro Baptist Church.
Did you intend to make a point or just show support for Westboro Baptist? Last time I checked Westboro was still free to spew whatever words suited them. They just have to keep a ‘reasonable’ distance. That is hardly a full abridgment of free speech.
Generally, Westboro Church has to stay 500 to 1000 feet away from funerals a reasonable time before, during and after the funeral. Mourners can’t hear them and can’t see the signs.
What the MTA did was better than that in terms of not abridging free speech. It still allows people to talk and presumably to hand out leaflets anywhere at any time to anyone on the subways. Just no posters of certain types.
jim1 – Why would a transit authority that empowers itself to decide which messages can be posted based on the predicted reaction from an ‘offended’ group also allow similar printed materials to be handed out or people to speak out loudly within the same area? It’s illogical. They would also predict the same reaction, would they not?
I suspect this gets challenged again, and the odds are the city looses again. Just as the arrest of the ‘film maker’ in CA was symbolic, so is the action of the MTA. They simply want to prove to other progressives they are asserting their authority in an acceptable manner given the outcome. Legality isn’t their primary concern, it appears.
The better analogy would be that Westboro was denied the equivalent of being able to shout in peoples faces or force literature upon them. They were allowed their freedoms at distance sufficient to give the ended group they wanted to offend the ability to ignore them. As a poster would allow someone to avert their eyes…..It’s the same reason why protesters are allowed at political gatherings but simply not allowed to be up on stage disrupting their adversary’s free speech.
Those who oppose the faith of Mohammed need to be as well versed in history as his followers. In the ancient world Alexandria had a magnificent library when generals of Khalif Omar “Al-Farooq” conquered Alexandria in 640 AD the library was orderd burned, and it was. Oma’s rational was if what is in the library agrees with the contents of the Qur’an, then it is redundant. And, if the contents of the library do not agree with the Qur’an, then such contents are heretic.
We can see in Afghanistan and in Africa in recent years where Muslims have destroyed recorded history.
I wonder that people keep conflating “the masses” with the newspapers? Surely that is a massive error in logic.