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Los Angeles Times Op-Ed: 'Innocence of Muslims' doesn't meet free-speech test
Los Angeles Times ^ | 09/18/2012 | Sarah Chayes

Posted on 09/18/2012 6:37:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

U.S. 1st Amendment rights distinguish between speech that is simply offensive and speech deliberately tailored to put lives and property at immediate risk.

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."

Holmes' test — that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a "clear and present danger" of harm — has since been tightened. But even under the more restrictive current standard, "Innocence of Muslims," the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines.

According to initial media investigations, the clip whose most egregious lines were apparently dubbed in after it was shot, was first posted to YouTube in July by someone with the user name "Sam Bacile." The Associated Press reported tracing a cellphone number given as Bacile's to the address of a Californian of Egyptian Coptic origin named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Nakoula has identified himself as coordinating logistics on the production but denies being Bacile.

According to the Wall Street Journal, when the video failed to attract much attention, another Coptic Christian, known for his anti-Islamic activism, sent a link to reporters in the U.S., Egypt and elsewhere on Sept. 6. His email message promoted a Sept. 11 event by anti-Islamic pastor Terry Jones and included a link to the trailer.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Front Page News; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 911ii; christopherstevens; enemedia; firstamendment; freespeech; islam; latimes; muslims; ruling; schenck; wagthevideo
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To: All

I will not submit to dhimmi opinion or law.

Personally, I have zero inclination to burn a Quran. But if a law is ever passed that denies me the right....I will do it repeatedly in defiance of that unjust speech law.


61 posted on 09/18/2012 7:32:45 AM PDT by rbmillerjr (Conservative Economic and National Security Commentary: econus.blogspot.com)
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To: SeekAndFind

Sorry lesbo, I don’t live on your campus! Take your “free-speech zones” back to Berkley.


62 posted on 09/18/2012 7:34:07 AM PDT by The Toll
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To: DoughtyOne; All

U.S. 1st Amendment rights distinguish between speech that is simply offensive and speech deliberately tailored to put lives and property at immediate risk.
You don’t really need to read beyond this point. The premise is so flawed it isn’t even in the same universe as reality.

Whatever this guy’s goals were, his efforts WERE NOT tailored to put lives and property at immediate risk.

They were tailored to spread what this guy thought was truth regarding Islam.

///
my question is... WHY does liberal controlled Google,
REFUSE to pull the video?
they certainly have pulled MANY less offensive videos...
-
i certainly agree, that we must not give ONE INCH,
on defending our Freedom of Speech!
but, i disagree, about the producer of the video.
is there ANY evidence, that this criminal ON PROBATION,
this government snitch, cares about the truth or Islam?
THERE ISN’T EVEN A MOVIE. it’s a hoax!
there is only 2 clips.
AND,
the clumsy dubbing, shows a lazy attempt to “insult muslims”.
instead of a REAL movie showing how evil Mohammad was.
many Freepers, could have done better, in 1 week.
-
this guy, shows no evidence of being being brave like Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, Bostom, or many others.
the guy is a criminal fraud. turned government snitch.
on probation!
seriously?
...if Obama wanted to put pressure on this guy,
to pull the video, he’d fold like tissue paper.
...if Obama REALLY wanted the video pulled,
LIBERAL CONTROLLED GOOGLE,
would pull it in a heartbeat.
( they certainly could, within their terms of service. )
-
so, WHY isn’t the video being pulled?
because, it’s a “reichstag fire”.
( remember all the fake doctors, and fake Republicans, etc.,
that the Liberals have tried to pass off on stage?
a pattern...)
-
there are MANY better videos, and more insulting to Islam.
(like Korans stuffed with bacon and burned.)
-
but they need a video, that WON’T be pulled.
-
this allows them, to publish articles like this,
and eventually make Islam “protected”.
(and can be used for cover, to release the Blind Sheikh, etc. as a “gesture of good will”.)
-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2932600/posts
The Blind Sheikh May be Released to Egypt

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2932565/posts
Obama’s DOJ Can’t Say Criticizing Religion Will Remain Legal (Video at Link)
NRO ^ | September 17, 2012 5:48 P.M.
Posted on Monday, September 17, 2012 9:05:16 PM by Perdogg

The exchange below, between Representative Trent Franks and Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, occurred in late July, but is particularly relevant today. Representatvie Franks tries to extract an assurance from Perez that the Obama administration will not push a proposal to criminalize speech “against any religion.” He has a tough time doing so.
///
especially read comments #18 and #20.


63 posted on 09/18/2012 7:38:10 AM PDT by Elendur (It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. - Thomas Jefferson)
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To: NoobRep

“This hideous thing looks like it’s from the planet Plutarius.”

No no no it is from Uranus.


64 posted on 09/18/2012 7:39:27 AM PDT by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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To: Elendur

When Pastor Jones, was going to burn the Koran,
even General Petreus called him.
...yet, even this article here,
does not call for the video to be removed from youtube.
-
why? why are there not screams to revoke his probation,
etc., unless he pulls the video?
why aren’t the liberals putting pressure on GOOGLE to pull it?


65 posted on 09/18/2012 7:44:04 AM PDT by Elendur (It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. - Thomas Jefferson)
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To: NRA1995

October 2003

Sarah Chayes records a radio spot in Kandahar.

Sarah Chayes, a former NPR reporter turned aid worker featured in “A House for Haji Baba,” describes herself as “tenacious-a kind word for pig-headed.” FRONTLINE/World series editor Stephen Talbot interviewed her by email about her struggle to rebuild, the dangers of her work and the rigors of daily life in a country that “looks like the moon with goats on it.”

I don’t think it’s immediately dangerous for me in Kandahar: I’m well known around town, and I’m known to enjoy powerful backing. I am connected with the Karzais [the president’s family], and I’m seen, if not as “an American,” at least as connected with the Americans in some way. What’s important to understand about this culture is that security is not based so much on protection — on how many guards I might have — as on the certainty of retaliation should anyone try something. For the moment, I enjoy that kind of deterrence.

This is not an indigenous, spontaneous uprising. All of these attacks originate in Pakistan; top Taliban leaders live and organize their activities openly in the Pakistani city of Quetta; the border is for all intents and purposes open. The problem of terrorism in Afghanistan is intimately linked to the regional strategy of Pakistan. The U.S. military fights Taliban members when they can be found in concentrated groups inside Afghanistan. But once they cross the border, they are beyond reach. The U.S. government, by not holding Pakistan accountable for its open support of the Taliban, is in fact contributing to the problem.

Abdullah, the engineer (hydraulics, not construction) is an extraordinary person, and one of my closest friends on Earth. Apart from being the truest friend you can imagine — protective, tirelessly thoughtful and helpful — and a wicked tease, a great mime and dangerously short-fused, he is one of the few people around here who has a moral compass. He was in university when the communists started pulling students out of class and shooting them. He was jailed twice, then drafted for some elite military unit — of which no member survived — and escaped training camp in the middle of the night with two friends. He fled to Pakistan while his younger brother fought the Russians; worked for Ahmad Shah Masoud in Peshawar

Yes, he thinks I’m in over my head. He’s been telling me to go home from the day I got here. But I think he respects me for not leaving. And for not stealing or lying, even if I’m as blind and clumsy around here as a child, in his view. And I believe he respects me for speaking out in public — that is, for opening a space for the truth.

Women are invisible here, Taliban defeat or no Taliban defeat. I’d say 80 percent to 90 percent of the women in Kandahar are still not allowed to leave their homes. So, while I visited women in Akokolacha almost every day I was out there, Brian Knappenberger, the filmmaker, never even saw one of them. It would have been even more unthinkable for him to film them.

We also have a “women’s law group,” in which six women — two school principals, a teacher, an educated housewife and two illiterate housewives — get together each week and discuss first the draft Afghan constitution, and now the 1976 civil code, article by article. It’s an absolutely extraordinary group. Our conversations have been wide-ranging and intimate — sometimes outrageous. We brought the group to Kabul to present their report on the constitution to President Karzai, the United Nations and the constitutional commission. That was a pretty revolutionary trip for all of them.

Afghans don’t expect to see much of any money any more. But they do say that as long as the United States or other foreigners are controlling disbursements, maybe 20 cents on the dollar might get to the people. If Afghan officials control disbursements, most Kandaharis tell me, no one will see a penny.

The problem with international assistance is not only one of quantity, it is also one of how aid is delivered: through what channels (warlord or other), according to what kind of master plan (if any) and to what kind of projects.

The problems I have seen have been an overemphasis on very small projects that won’t be much of a loss if they fail, but that by the same token don’t make much of a difference to the people. Big projects, like the hydroelectric dam, are deemed too large to tackle right away — but then the whole economy of two provinces is crippled, with serious political repercussions. Just the other day, a man stopped in the street opposite our car and began to harangue us about electricity. “If you don’t help us,” he shouted, “we don’t want you here.”

Much of the big money that is finally being allocated gets slurped up by the huge “Beltway bandits” — U.S. contracting companies that get millions of U.S. aid money, then hire international NGOs and Afghan companies to do the real work on the ground. And those who do that work usually regard it as a profit-making venture. It’s as though many see the suffering of the Afghan people as an economic opportunity.

Please also note that the $1.2 billion is largely going for the costs of U.S. military presence and only secondarily to the training of the Afghan national police and army. There’s not much for big economic reconstruction jobs.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/afghanistan/chayes.html


66 posted on 09/18/2012 7:45:58 AM PDT by kcvl
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To: The Toll

THE PERFECT ACTIVIST in what she calls “THE PERFECT PLACE”

American activist Sarah Chayes finds her calling in Afghan hot spot.
Click on this to see ^ her amazing history as “The Perfect Activist”
i.e. someone who is really a JOURNACTIVIST. This type invariably
falls in love with the distressed country that she has covered in the course of her
work as a war-reporter, and puts her feet where her mouth is,
moves there, and then, creates a TRADE COMMUNE to get the war-torn
country put right. Mother Teresa almost made it. SARAH CHAYES DID!

By Declan Walsh, Boson Globe Correspondent | May 9, 2006

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — In a city where women are rarely seen, never
mind heard, Sarah Chayes talks tough politics with rough men, drives her
own car, and keeps a gun under her bed.

‘’It’s a Kalashnikov. I’ve never had to use it except for a little
target practice,” she says.

The macho image has helped the impassioned campaigner — a
self-described idealist from an accomplished Cambridge family steeped in
academia and government service — to carve out a role for herself in
the troubled landscape of southern Afghanistan.

Her latest
venture involves encouraging farmers to grow roses instead of opium
poppy.

Yet lately her enthusiasm has dissolved into disillusionment with the
US-supported new order, which she describes as discredited, corrupt, and
infected with drug money.

Last June, he and 19 others were killed when a bomb ripped through a
Kandahar mosque during a prayer service. Although government officials
blamed the explosion on a suicide bomber, Chayes conducted her own
investigation and concluded her friend was assassinated by a device
planted at the behest of agents working for neighboring Pakistan, which
many Afghans believe is continuing a decades-old policy of meddling in
their affairs — an allegation Pakistani officials strenuously deny.

The killing is the opening scene of her book ‘’Punishment of Virtue,” to
be published in August 2006 by Penguin Press. She describes the book as a mix
of history and contemporary reporting and as ‘’an ant’s view of how
things developed after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.”

Activism runs in Chayes’s blood. Her father, Abram Chayes, was a legal
adviser in the Kennedy administration and a distinguished law professor
at Harvard. He died in 2000. Her mother, Antonia, served as
undersecretary of the Air Force during the Carter administration and
currently teaches at Tufts University.

After graduating from Harvard and spending two years in the Peace Corps
in Morocco, she returned to Harvard to study for a graduate degree in
Islamic history, but she struggled in academia, and became a researcher
for Christian Science Monitor Broadcasting in Boston.

She reported for National Public Radio from 1997 until June 2001 from
her base in Paris, and then agreed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to
take on a three-month assignment for NPR covering the war in
Afghanistan.

http://www.masterjules.net/perfectactivist.htm

http://www.masterjules.net/perfectactivist.htm


67 posted on 09/18/2012 7:56:29 AM PDT by kcvl
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To: The Toll

68 posted on 09/18/2012 7:58:28 AM PDT by kcvl
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To: SeekAndFind
The point is to emphasize that U.S. law makes a distinction between speech that is simply offensive and speech that is deliberately tailored to put lives and property at immediate risk. Especially in the heightened volatility of today's Middle East, such provocation is certainly irresponsible

Funny. Hey LA LA Times. Do the words Abu Ghraib mean anything to you? Freaking, lying hypocrits.


69 posted on 09/18/2012 7:59:32 AM PDT by VeniVidiVici (Congrats to Ted Kennedy! He's been sober for two years now!!)
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To: Elendur

I don’t disagree with your premise here.

They’ll probably try to equate it with racism, and forbid it.


70 posted on 09/18/2012 8:01:28 AM PDT by DoughtyOne (Imagine how bad these global protests would be, if Obama hadn't won us so many new friends.)
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To: SeekAndFind
This is the same LAT that backed Zappa and Biafra to the hilt no matter what their target (usually Christianity, quelle surprise).
71 posted on 09/18/2012 8:02:05 AM PDT by StAnDeliver (2008 + IN, NC, FL, VA, OH, NE1, IA = 272EV)
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To: DoughtyOne
U.S. 1st Amendment rights distinguish between speech that is simply offensive and speech deliberately tailored to put lives and property at immediate risk.

Well actually that's a correct reading of Brandenburg v. Ohio. But La Times misinterprets what it means

However, the "clear and present danger" criterion of the Schenck decision was replaced in 1969 by Brandenburg v. Ohio,[27] and the test refined to determining whether the speech would provoke an "imminent lawless action".

...

For two decades after the Dennis decision, free speech issues related to advocacy of violence were decided using balancing tests such as the one initially articulated in Dennis.[30] In 1969, the court established stronger protections for speech in the landmark case Brandenburg v. Ohio which held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action".[31][32] Brandenburg is now the standard applied by the Court to free speech issues related to advocacy of violence.[33](wiki)

It's the test J S MILL used in On Liberty (1857)
An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.

If there's no excited mob already assembled, and you don[t assemble one, it's free speech, and the recipients are obliged to behave like gentlemen.

72 posted on 09/18/2012 8:06:59 AM PDT by Oztrich Boy (Monarchy is the one system of government where power is exercised for the good of all - Aristotle)
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To: Oztrich Boy

LA Times doesn’t meet it either


73 posted on 09/18/2012 8:07:47 AM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Pursue Happiness)
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To: SeekAndFind
Sarah Chayes, an advisor to the US military in Afghanistan.

Now we know what part of the problem is!!!

Chayes: I think in general, and this goes for US foreign policy at large, if you look at the Arab spring for example or you look at Kandahar, our tendency at first is to default for stability because you know, reaching out to the population is complex, it’s dynamic, it’s volatile. Decision making in a more democratic system frankly is messier than it is when you’ve got a strongman, be he Mubarak or be he Ahmed Wali Karzai. But it’s my personal view that long term stability is actually better served by solutions that may look a little bit messier in the short run because they offer an opportunity for people to make their grievances known, to have them addressed, and to vent some of their frustrations, honestly. And frankly, if there aren’t channels for doing that in a nonviolent way people have a tendency to get violent.

Press Here

74 posted on 09/18/2012 8:07:54 AM PDT by kcvl
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To: Freedom of Speech Wins

Your screen name is no longer applicable.


75 posted on 09/18/2012 8:08:50 AM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Pursue Happiness)
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To: Uncle Miltie

I bet she thought federally funded kiddie nudes by Maplethorpe were fine though


76 posted on 09/18/2012 8:10:14 AM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Pursue Happiness)
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To: SeekAndFind

Are we afraid to maintain our First Amendment rights? I don’t like the drift this country is going in.


77 posted on 09/18/2012 8:11:32 AM PDT by popdonnelly (The first priority is get Obama out of the White House.)
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To: SeekAndFind
I won't give those bastards a click . . . someone correct me if my guessing that they're opining we give up 1A to the muzz shiteheads is incorrect ?
TIA


             

                                                   birds / feather

             


78 posted on 09/18/2012 8:12:57 AM PDT by tomkat
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To: SeekAndFind

I’ll borrow and parahrase an idea someone else (can’t recall who) posted yesterday.

If this were a true “test” it’d be

“I shout fire in a theater in California and am responsible if people in Egypt burn their own theaters to the ground in response”

Ludicrous.


79 posted on 09/18/2012 8:13:44 AM PDT by Personal Responsibility (In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act - 1984)
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To: TigerClaws

Or does the First Amendment depend entirely on non violent listeners?


This is the crux of that argument. Their argument says that the writers and producers of Book of Mormon would be liable if Christians responded to it by burning down churches in Gdansk, Poland or Rome, Italy.

How stupid does that sound????


80 posted on 09/18/2012 8:16:17 AM PDT by Personal Responsibility (In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act - 1984)
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