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The Israeli government approved a decision Sunday to shut down Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel that has been seen as a font of pro-terror propaganda since the Hamas attack of October 7.
The post Israel Shuts Down Al Jazeera, Viewed as Terror Propaganda Outlet appeared first on Breitbart.
WASHINGTON — Clarence B. Jones says he thought a prankster was on the line when he answered the telephone and heard the person on the other end say they were calling from the White House.
The post Oscar-Winner Michelle Yeoh Among Biden’s Presidential Medal of Freedom Honorees appeared first on Breitbart.
The gag order against former President Donald Trump is the "biggest assault" on the First Amendment in at least 50 years, Trump lawyer Jesse Binnall said.
The post Exclusive — Trump Lawyer Jesse Binnall: Gag Order ‘Biggest Assault on First Amendment’ in at Least 50 Years appeared first on Breitbart.
A Mexican Senator from the Morena Party drew widespread condemnation after he organized the ritualistic killing of a chicken as an "offering to a rain god." The incident took place in one of the courtyards of Mexico’s federal senate building.
The post VIDEO: Chicken Sacrificed As ‘Offering to Rain God’ at Mexico’s Senate appeared first on Breitbart.
A group of about a dozen activists physically shoved this reporter out of the "Palestine Solidarity Encampment" on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles, a public university, on Friday.
The post WATCH: Activists Assault Breitbart News Journalist at UCLA ‘Palestine Solidarity Encampment’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Just 0.6 per cent of hate crime reports made since the introduction of draconian speech codes in Scotland have been found to be legitimate.
The post Scotland: Less Than One Per Cent of Hate Speech Reports Deemed Legitimate appeared first on Breitbart.
The House Freedom Caucus said that the path toward securing the border goes through killing Speaker Mike Johnson's foreign aid package.
The post House Freedom Caucus Official Position: Kill Mike Johnson’s America Last Rule appeared first on Breitbart.
London's Metropolitan Police arrested an Iranian activist again on Wednesday for carrying a sign saying that Hamas are "terrorists".
The post WATCH: Police Arrest Iranian Activist for Carrying Sign Saying ‘Hamas Is Terrorist’ in London appeared first on Breitbart.
A California Christian club is fighting to put their cross back on display after city officials used eminent domain to remove it while citing complaints of it being "reminiscent of KKK cross-burnings" and offensive to "diverse communities."
The post California Christians Fight Back Against City Removing Cross appeared first on Breitbart.
Proposals for a new law in Scotland against "misogyny", which will cover biologically male transgenders, was critisised by J.K. Rowling.
The post J.K. Rowling Says Scottish Leader Humza Yousaf Has ‘Contempt for Women’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Brussels mayor who ordered police shut down a conservative conference exceeded his authority and a late-night court ruled it will go ahead.
The post Late Night ‘Emergency Ruling’: Conservatism Conference Can Go Ahead, Mayor Exceeded Authority by Sending Police to Shut Down Free Speech appeared first on Breitbart.
A French MEP, who was blocked from entering a conservative conference in Brussels, told Breitbart News that it is becoming "scary" in Europe.
The post Exclusive: French MEP Blocked by Police From Brussels Conference Says Europe Feels ‘Like Communist China’ appeared first on Breitbart.
The Scottish Conservatives will introduce a measure to repeal the draconian speech law imposed by the leftist SNP government of Humza Yousaf.
The post ‘Huge Mistake’ — Scottish Conservatives Push for Repeal of New Hate Speech Law appeared first on Breitbart.
Far-left Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf’s popularity has plummeted amid the introduction of new draconian speech restrictions.
The post Leftist Scottish Leader’s Popularity Collapses After Hate Speech Law Introduced appeared first on Breitbart.
First Minister Humza Yousaf is facing a political "apocalypse" as a survey found support for the SNP fell to its lowest level in a decade
The post Governing Scottish National Party Sees Support Fall to Lowest in a Decade amid Hate Speech Law Chaos appeared first on Breitbart.
Rep. Austin Scott, a Republican from Georgia who has criticized conservatives and is campaigning actively against the House Freedom Caucus chairman, is Speaker Mike Johnson’s choice for a newly vacant seat on the powerful Rules Committee.
Scott’s selection Wednesday infuriated conservatives on Capitol Hill. The Daily Signal spoke with several lawmakers and staffers whose reactions ranged from shock to disappointment that Johnson, R-La., would pick someone who is openly trying to unseat one of the House’s most prominent conservatives.
“This the wrong person for the wrong role at the wrong time,” a Republican member of Congress told The Daily Signal.
By picking Scott for the Rules Committee, one of the oldest and most powerful in the House of Representatives, Johnson revealed whom he trusts to determine floor activity and advance the speaker’s agenda.
“It’s hard to see Johnson’s move here as anything except needing an attack dog against conservatives,” said a former Republican staffer, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “You get the impression he’s going to use Austin Scott to help as a blockade on the Rules Committee and throughout the [Republican] conference. That’s the signal it sends.”
Johnson’s staff acknowledged The Daily Signal’s request for comment, but did not provide a response.
Scott, a close ally of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., sought the speaker’s job in October in an ill-fated run against Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
At the time of McCarthy’s ouster as speaker, Scott issued a statement calling the eight members who voted to remove McCarthy “nothing more than grifters who have handed control of the House to the Democratic Party in the name of their own glory and fundraising.”
Scott continued, “There is nothing principled about what they did, and Republican leadership will have to decide to either hold these members accountable or lose the faith of the rest of the conference.”
Months later, he took aim at one of the eight in particular: Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. Scott donated to Good’s primary challenger, John McGuire, in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. Last month, Scott was a featured guest at a McGuire fundraiser.
Despite Scott’s actions, Johnson handpicked him for a coveted seat on the powerful Rules Committee.
“Speaker Johnson keeps saying, ‘We’re on the same team, knock it off, please stop this.’ But he’s not actually doing anything to stop it,” a Republican staffer told The Daily Signal. “Now, Austin Scott, one of the guys who started this civil war on the primary campaign trail, is put on the Rules Committee. The speaker isn’t ending the war, he’s escalating it by rewarding people going after conservatives.”
And while Scott’s public actions have revealed his contempt for conservatives, lawmakers and staff said he is even more hostile to them in private settings.
“He’s got a short fuse and a hot temper,” another Republican member said of Scott. “Quite honestly, he doesn’t have the temperament to be a legislator.”
Scott’s communications director declined to make him available for an interview with The Daily Signal and instead pointed to his brief statement on X.
It is our sworn duty as members of Congress to govern, and I look forward to serving on the Rules Committee to help advance legislation that benefits the American people.
— Rep. Austin Scott (@AustinScottGA08) April 11, 2024
Known as the “speaker’s committee,” the Rules Committee includes nine Republicans and four Democrats. One of those seats became vacant this week when Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., won the gavel for the House Appropriations Committee.
Two members of the House Freedom Caucus—Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Chip Roy, R-Texas—currently serve on the Rules Committee with another conservative-leaning member, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. Their three votes, combined with four Democrats, are enough to sink the speaker’s plans.
After years of being shut out of the Rules Committee—and any semblance of negotiation over its membership—conservatives scored seats on the panel as part of a deal with McCarthy, resulting in his election to speaker in January 2023.
Unlike when McCarthy negotiated with members, Johnson instead moved swiftly without consulting conservatives about Scott’s selection.
“It is the speaker’s committee, and he can do whatever he wants with it. But in a one-seat majority, there should be a conversation,” a GOP staffer told The Daily Signal. “You talk to people about who’s interested, who might be a good fit, who might be a productive addition on the Rules Committee.”
A former Republican staffer described it as a curious move on Johnson’s part.
“You already have conservatives angry at you for a variety of reasons,” the former staffer said. “You have a one-seat majority. You have a pending motion to vacate [the speaker]. It’s not exactly the time to poke the bear.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., filed a motion to vacate March 22, but has not yet forced a vote. If it’s successful, Johnson would lose the speaker’s job, just as McCarthy did before him.
“Speaker Johnson lives in peril every day for his job depending on what he does,” a Republican member said. “It’s a dicey situation. It appears to me that there are other candidates who are interested in being speaker in the new term.”
Since joining Congress in 2011, Scott has focused his attention on serving the rural Georgia district he represents. He is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and the Agriculture Committee. He has a lifetime score of 77% on Heritage Action’s Scorecard.
Scott also has developed a reputation among conservatives on Capitol Hill, according to lawmakers and staff who spoke to The Daily Signal.
“Austin Scott is a hothead, a notorious hothead,” a Republican staffer said. “He frequently loses his temper inside conference meetings with other members. He’s threatened, berated, cursed out members.”
Scott’s decision to endorse Good’s primary opponent, therefore, didn’t necessarily come as a surprise. However, it did anger conservatives, particularly because Johnson has privately counseled GOP members not to engage in primaries between fellow Republicans. The speaker recently made another appeal at GOP lawmakers’ retreat last month in West Virginia.
“Austin Scott endorsed Bob Good’s primary challenger, attended a fundraiser with him,” a Republican staffer said. “Mike Johnson, repeatedly for several weeks, has lectured the conference about what he calls the hot war on the campaign trail with primaries against incumbent Republicans. The moderates started this by going after Bob Good.”
Good, who boasts a 99% lifetime score on Heritage Action’s Scorecard, joined the House in 2021 after knocking off an incumbent Republican. He took over as chairman of the House Freedom Caucus in January.
Scott is one of at least six House Republicans who are backing Good’s opponent. Others include House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Reps. Jen Kiggans, R-Va.; Ryan Zinke, R-Mont.; Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis.; and Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas.
“Conservatives were appealing to the speaker to end the civil war before it got out of hand,” a Republican member told The Daily Signal. “And when he refused to, we let everyone know that we’re not going to take all the casualties.”
That’s led some conservative members to make their own endorsements against moderate Republicans.
Good, for example, is backing GOP challenger Derrick Evans in West Virginia’s 1st District against incumbent Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., a leader of the moderate Republican Main Street Caucus. Its affiliated PAC, the Republican Main Street Partnership, is actively spending money against Good.
Notably, Johnson has withheld his own endorsement from Good, whose primary election is June 18. A spokesman for the speaker’s political operation did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
The post Speaker Johnson’s Choice for Key House Committee Sparks Backlash appeared first on The Daily Signal.
“The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” – JFK
Capitalism and free markets are the primary drivers of wealth creation while also protecting personal freedoms. Socialism and government intervention tend to erode personal freedoms and produce only temporary prosperity, addressing specific issues for certain groups while impoverishing others and overlooking the underlying causes of problems.
Biden’s American Rescue Plan was a good example of how ineffective socialism is at solving economic problems. By sending a $1,500 check to every poor person, he claimed, incorrectly, to have done more to reduce poverty than any other president.
Firstly, the American Rescue Plan drove up the US debt and pushed inflation to levels not seen in decades. Additionally, the $1,500 did not reduce poverty. The poverty threshold for a family of 3 is $25,820 per year. So, unless these families fell short by exactly $1,500, he did not bring them above the threshold that year. And unless he planned to send checks to all 37.9 million Americans living below the poverty line every year, forever, he has not eliminated poverty.
The only way for these people to rise out of poverty is to get a better job with a higher salary. So, the solution is free markets, not socialism.
The US ranks among the most capitalist countries in the world. In a capitalist society, the means of production are controlled by private businesses and private citizens, not the government. The economy runs according to the market, not central planning. Prices, wages, quantities, and types of production are determined by the market, with information transmitted from buyers to sellers millions of times per day.
In a capitalist society, a fast-food restaurant has the right to make a fish and peanut butter milkshake, but by refusing to buy that product, citizens signal that they do not want it, and the producer will either stop selling it or go out of business.
On average, the more government intervention there is in the economy, the lower the standard of living will be. As a hypothetical example, if the peanut butter and fish milkshake company had a government subsidy, it could remain in business, even though no one wants that product. The money the government spends supporting the unwanted fish and peanut butter milkshake company could have been spent on border security, which is one of the only purviews of government in capitalism.
In a true capitalist society, the government only has three responsibilities: maintaining courts and public security for protecting personal property rights, building infrastructure, and protecting the border. The further the government deviates from these limited mandates, the more money is wasted.
This report will compare four countries: the US, which has an economic freedom score calculated by Freedom House of 8.22, and the more socialist countries, Germany with an economic freedom score of 7.85, China with a score of 6.2, and Venezuela with a score of 3.34.
Standard of living can be quantified in the Quality of Life Index, which ranks countries based on the level of wealth, comfort, necessities, and material goods available to citizens. It also examines physical and mental health and wellness. Germany, with a score of 91.26, ranks slightly higher than the US at 89.11, but this is probably because of obesity and obesity-related illnesses, which decrease the health indicator in the US. But on some level, obesity is a positive sign of wealth. China, at 82.80, and Venezuela, at 71.66, rank worse off, with a lower standard of living.
While socialist countries offer free or heavily subsidized higher education, the United States boasts a diverse array of prestigious universities and colleges, many of which are privately funded. This competitive landscape fosters innovation and excellence in education, attracting students from around the world. The US has 3,100 universities, with 53 ranked in the top 100 globally. China has 2,495 universities, with 6 ranked in the top 100; Germany has 461 universities, with only 1 ranked in the top 100; and Venezuela has 73 universities, with 0 ranked in the top 100.
In terms of the average number of years of education citizens have, in Germany and the US, most adults have had 14 years of education, while in China, the average is 8 years, and in Venezuela, it’s 6.6 years.
For infrastructure, China is always touted as the leader in transportation because they have high-speed rail. However, the US has a much broader transportation infrastructure than any country in the world. The US has 148,553 kilometers of railroad, China has 10,767 kilometers (with a population four times the size of the US), Germany has 33,401 kilometers, and Venezuela has 682 kilometers.
Socialist countries usually have a government-owned national flagship airline, such as Air China or Conviasa in Venezuela. In the US, the airlines are private, and the US has more flights, with more Americans flying each year than citizens in any other country. Furthermore, Americans can afford to buy cars. Cars per capita in the US are 860 out of 1000, in Germany it’s 627 out of 1000, in China it’s 223 out of 1000, and in Venezuela it’s 149 out of 1000.
The US does not have a government sovereign wealth fund. Our outbound investment is private, and yet, the US is the largest source of outbound investment on the planet.
In socialist countries, citizens depend on the government to create jobs. The US, with a relatively free market for jobs, has a low unemployment rate of 3.6%, while in socialist China it is 5.1%, and in Venezuela, it is 7.5%. However, in China, youth unemployment had reached 21.3% last year before Beijing stopped reporting and then changed the definition of youth unemployment to make the number smaller. This is another example of the benefits of a free-market society. We have private institutions, NGOs, and associations that collect and publish data, so there is greater transparency.
The salaries between the US and socialist countries are vastly different. The average American earns about $75,269 per year, while the average German only earns $48,845. In China, it’s $12,598, and in Venezuela, it’s $3,910.
And the final kicker in a socialist country is income tax. In both China and Germany, the top income tax rate is 45%. In the US, it is 37%, and in Venezuela, it is 34%. So, Americans earn dramatically more than people in socialist countries and get to keep a larger percentage of their salary compared to most socialist countries.
Apart from failing to deliver in terms of economic well-being, socialism also falls short of its claim to offer greater freedom. Economic freedom, as already discussed, is higher in the U.S. In general, personal freedoms are also higher. According to the Human Freedom Index, which evaluates countries across the following criteria: Rule of law, Security and safety, Movement, Religion, Association, assembly, and civil society, Expression and information, public health, and a number of other factors, Germany ranked higher than the US at 18th. But this was largely because of the lack of social welfare in the US and because of the higher crime rate. The US ranked as the 23rd most free country in the world, China 152, and Venezuela 163.
As a result of capitalism, Americans earn more, keep more of their salary, and have greater freedom than in socialist countries. Let’s vote to keep it that way.
The post Capitalism, Not Socialism, Makes Us Richer and Freer appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Charles “Chuck” Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., look on as Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on the American Rescue Plan Friday, March 12, 2021, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
Police Scotland was overwhelmed by a flood of approximately 8,000 hate speech reports during the first week of the new speech restrictions.
The post Police Scotland ‘Can’t Cope’ With Flood of Hate Speech Reports as 8,000 Flood in During First Week of Draconian Law appeared first on Breitbart.
An atheist group is calling for action after South Carolina Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley said there's "something wrong" with nonbelievers,
The post Atheist Group Enraged After NCAA Coach’s Comments About Nonbelievers appeared first on Breitbart.
Brazilian “anti-fake news crusader” Alexandre de Moraes has opened an inquiry into Elon Musk and Twitter for defying censorship orders.
The post Brazil: ‘Fake News’ Crusader Judge Orders Investigation of Elon Musk for ‘Obstruction of Justice’ appeared first on Breitbart.
The globalist government in Poland is reportedly seeking to criminalise "incitement to hatred" against LGBT people with three years in prison.
The post Globalist Polish Government Pushes Scottish-Style Hate Speech Law with Three Years in Prison appeared first on Breitbart.
Background: In 2008, I was in Florida covering Rifqa Bary’s court hearings to return her to her devout family who promised to kill to her because the teen had left Islam and converted to Christianity.
I was waiting on my ride to the courthouse when I saw this ad on a bus:
Thus began the very first of my many bus ad campaigns. I responded with this ad and the greatest putsch against free speech commenced:
Check out my latest at The Thinker:
After Ten Years, Court Strikes Down Ruling Banning Ads Offering Help to Those Leaving Islam
It took nearly twelve years, but we did it. My organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has just won an important victory for the freedom of speech.
Back in 2009, the Detroit area’s SMART transit refused to run our AFDI ads offering help to people who were in fear for their lives for wanting to leave Islam or having left it. After an incredibly protracted court battle, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals just stood up for the First Amendment and completely reversed the judgment banning our ads. It’s a total victory for freedom: we won our free speech lawsuit in Detroit by a unanimous decision.
Our ad read: “Leaving Islam? Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Got Questions? Get Answers! RefugefromIslam.com.” That’s all it said. It offered a life-saver for those who were completely and utterly alone with no system of support or help.
Islamic law mandates death for those who leave Islam; even in the United States, those who leave the religion live in fear that a devout Muslim might decide to apply this penalty. So we were offering help. That is all. But as Eugene Volokh explains at The Volokh Conspiracy, “Michigan’s Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) rejected this ad under two of its speech restrictions. The first prohibits ‘political’ ads; the second prohibits ads that would hold up a group of people to ‘scorn or ridicule.'”
Our ad was not political and didn’t scorn or ridicule anyone. It’s ridiculous to say saving lives is a political act, and so of course we won the initial case. The first judge who ruled on this case, Judge Denise Page Hood, understood the law and so ruled in favor of our free speech rights. She understood the First Amendment. Therefore, although she was clearly not sympathetic to us, she had to rule for us.
But then SMART appealed. SMART adamantly refused to run outreach ads that might have helped Muslims living in dangerous households and appealed to the notoriously leftist Sixth Circuit. You might have thought the Muslim Brotherhood was running SMART. It was astounding. And consider the fact that Detroit was bankrupt around this same time. Sharia adherence was still more important to the broken city’s failed leaders than were the freedom of speech and fiscal responsibility.
And so SMART continued to refuse our ads and appealed in the notoriously leftist Sixth Circuit. The court called our religious ads political and created a new narrative out of whole cloth. Our ads were never actually rejected on political grounds. Individually and in her official capacity, Beth Gibbons, marketing program manager of SMART, said our ads were rejected because they were controversial — not because they were political. It was always understood that these were religious ads. Gibbons testified that she saw “nothing about [the advertisement] itself that was political[.] … I knew that [the fatwa advertisement] was of concern in that there is controversy on both sides of the issue on whether they should be posted.” That was the position of SMART. In fact, that was the agency’s official testimony.
We in turn appealed. In 2013, I was deposed and harassed for six hours by a small, profane blowhard attorney — all billable hours to fight an ad created to help Muslim girls escape honor violence. And the deposition was so hostile that you would think I had committed a heinous crime. Apparently, blasphemy in America is.
The case dragged on and on. But now, in American Freedom Defensive Initiative v. Suburban Mobility Auth. for Regional Transp. (6th Cir.), the court makes the correct ruling, noting that “the Free Speech Clause limits the government’s power to regulate speech on public property. The government has little leeway to restrict speech in ‘public forums.'” Accordingly, “SMART’s ban on ‘political’ ads is unreasonable for the same reason that a state’s ban on ‘political’ apparel at polling places is unreasonable: SMART offers no ‘sensible basis for distinguishing what may come in from what must stay out.’ Likewise, SMART’s ban on ads that engage in ‘scorn or ridicule’ is not viewpoint neutral for the same reason that a ban on trademarks that disparage people is not viewpoint neutral: For any group, ‘an applicant may [display] a positive or benign [ad] but not a derogatory one.'” Consequently, the court declared: “We thus reverse the district court’s decision rejecting the First Amendment challenge to these two restrictions.”
This is all common-sensical and clear even to those with no legal training or experience, but it has taken an incredibly long time to get here. The American Freedom Law Center, whose ace lawyers David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise fought long and hard to win this case, noted: “AFDI’s religious freedom advertisement was rejected even though SMART had no problem accepting and running an anti-religion ad sponsored by an atheist organization. That approved ad stated, ‘Don’t Believe in God? You are not alone.'” However, now “the Sixth Circuit ruled unanimously in favor of AFLC, finding that SMART’s rejection of the ad was unreasonable and [a] viewpoint based in violation of the First Amendment. This is a final ruling.”
Bottom line: Everyone has the same right to a free life. The Sixth Circuit agreed.
If you weren’t reading this, you would likely never know that it had happened at all. No media covered it. If we had lost, then you would have heard about it, because the media would have been popping open bottles of champagne and running huge pieces on how sharia restrictions on speech are altogether reasonable — as heads roll (literally).
Jessica Mokdad, an honor killing victim living in that area at the time, might have been saved. We know that the ads have helped Muslims — they told us. The ads save lives. Contribute here.
Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report, and author of the bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Another city bans free speech. Chilling. Read this.
Related:
Seattle Imposes Ad Ban to Annul Pamela Geller’s Free Speech Lawsuit Victory
Officials who oversee Seattle’s transit system moved to ban political, religious, and other ads from its facilities and public transportation vehicles soon after Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) prevailed in a freedom of speech lawsuit against the city, earning the right to run FBI’s Most Wanted terrorist posters, Breitbart News has learned.
By: Edwin Mora, Breitbart, April 16, 2019:
“People should realize that this is a struggle for the very foundation of any free society: the freedom of speech. If there is a group you can’t criticize, then that group can impose tyranny over you. If we lose this free speech battle, all our other freedoms are lost” Geller recently told Breitbart News via email.
She argued the advertisement ban sidestepped the September 2018 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling in AFDI’s favor, which allowed the group to advertise the Most Wanted terrorist list in Seattle.
However, the new restrictions, dubbed the “Geller ban” and instituted in December 2018 by the King County Department of Transportation’s Transit Division that oversees Seattle’s public transportation system, have ended up preventing AFDI from running the terrorist wanted ads, Geller pointed out, noting that her free speech lawsuit victory was bittersweet.
Before the appeal court’s ruling, judges had denied AFDI the right to place public service ads featuring images of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists on Seattle’s public transportation system, due to a perceived disparagement of Islam.
The city’s rejection prompted AFDI to sue the King County Metro system for its suppression of free speech.
“We won the right to run the FBI wanted terrorist poster that Seattle prevailed upon the FBI to withdraw [ in 2013]. And as soon as we triumphed, Seattle transit imposed the infamous Geller ban, banning political, religious and cause-related ads in Seattle (following NY, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, etc),” Geller told Breitbart News in the email.
In a document outlining the transit agency’s advertising restrictions, King County officials noted that the policy bans advertising on transit facilities and vehicles that fall within the categories of political, religious, government (except for the county’s), and other forms of “speech.”
“They banned all political ads, as that was the only course of action they could possibly take in order to continue to avoid running my ads,” Geller said. “They’re so determined to continue whitewashing Islam and denying and obfuscating the roots of jihad terror that they are willing to lose immense amounts of revenue from all political advertising.”
Transit agency officials argued that their “viewpoint neutral” ban seeks to prohibit “advertisements that interfere with and divert resources from transit operations, that detract from transit purposes by creating substantial controversy, and/or that pose significant risks of harm, inconvenience, or annoyance to transit passengers, operators, and vehicles.”
“Such advertisements create an environment that is not conducive to achieving increased revenue for the benefit of the transit system or to preserving and enhancing the security, safety, comfort, and convenience of its operations,” the officials added.
Responding to the agency’s argument Geller noted, “I see ads that annoy me all the time. If that is the criterion [for the ban], whose annoyance counts, and whose doesn’t, and why?”
She told Breitbart News that King County’s decision to ban FBI wanted posters featuring some jihadis amounts to the “enforcement of Sharia blasphemy law in another American city.”
King County officials described the transit agency’s advertising ban as“restrictions” that “foster the maintenance of a professional advertising environment that maximizes advertising, revenue, and protects the interests of the captive audience that uses Metro’s transit services.”
In other words, the county’s transportation department believes that banning certain ads will allow the county to generate more revenue.
“The ban will, obviously, drastically curtail their ad revenues. To argue otherwise is plain deception” Geller noted.
Nevertheless, the county asserted that the advertising policy intends to fulfill the following goals:
Maximizing advertising revenue; maintaining a position of neutrality and preventing the appearance of favoritism or endorsement by the county; preventing the risk of imposing objectionable, inappropriate or harmful view on a captive audience; preserving the value of the advertising space; maximizing ridership and maintaining a safe environment for transit customers and other members of the public; avoiding claims of discrimination and maintaining a non-discriminatory environment for riders; preventing any harm or abuse that may result from running objectionable, inappropriate, or harmful advertisements; [and] reducing the diversion of resources from transit operations that is caused by objectionable, inappropriate or harmful advertisements.
Geller vowed to keep fighting for free speech all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary to ensure Seattle upholds the appeal court’s ruling.
Read my latest over at The American Thinker:
Jihad and the Media in an Age of Delusion
By Pamela Geller, American Thinker, April 1, 2019:
On Sunday the BBC reported about another horrible news story from London: a knifeman went on a stabbing spree of “defenceless” people in London. The story revealed less about the incident it was purporting to report on than it did about our age of anti-reality and delusion.
In this age, it is not difficult to step back and observe almost indiscernible but seismic historical shifts in the making — not in the big-bang news events, but in the nitty-gritty details of the social fabric of our daily lives, where life happens. It is usually not so easy to detect such subtleties, let alone observe the silent measures a nation or a civilization takes when it quietly but most decidedly has… given up. One need not be an anthropologist to detect seismic changes in human behavior or societies.
First, it’s language. Language is key. Subtle and not-so-subtle restrictions are placed on what would offend the invading force with its hair-trigger sensibilities. These restrictions are rigorously enforced by quisling societal institutions — media, academia, and so forth. So, for example, “Muslim” is replaced with “South Asian” or “Asian,” with no fear that the “South Asians” or “Asians” will bomb a pop concert, mow down scores of families on a national holiday such as Bastille day or Halloween or Christmas, shoot up a gay nightclub, and so forth. Actual South Asians and Asians have held demos against the media using them to cover for jihadis, but no media reported on them, of course. Only the small, sagacious group of readers who follow websites such as the Geller Report were aware of the South Asian community’s opposition to the wrongful blame.
Every time there is an attack by a jihadi, all apologies are extended by the host Western country, with admonitions of impending “phobia” of Islam and backlash, and so the cycle of self-flagellation begins and builds with each ensuing attack (all 34,800 since 9/11).
In initial reports of all jihad attacks, we are told “it is not terror related.” The shifting definition of terror is slippery but expected. Then President George W. Bush dropped the ball on September 20, 2001, when he danced around whether “A is A,” decidedly avoiding jihad and Islam. Even with the thick, acrid smell of burnt blood and flesh, ash and steel in the NYC air, Bush opted instead for the vague, blame-free “War on Terror.”
Read the rest here.
Geller: Iran Arrests 29 Women for Appearing in Public Without a Hijab While Western Feminists Impose World Hijab Day
By Pamela Geller, Breitbart News, February 3, 2018:
The Daily Mail reported Thursday that “Tehran police have arrested 29 women for appearing in public without a headscarf as protests against the dress code in force since the Islamic revolution of 1979 intensify,” citing Iranian police.
“Those arrested were accused of public order offences and referred to the state prosecutor’s office, Iranian nnews [sic] agencies reported without elaborating,” the report noted.
Thursday was also “World Hijab Day,” which its organizers say is designed to “fight discrimination against Muslim women through awareness and education. It is a day on which women of diverse backgrounds and persuasions are encouraged to wear the Islamic head veil in solidarity with Muslim women.”
And so under the hashtag #StrongInHijab, Islamic supremacists and their willing gophers on the left – middle-class Western feminists – observed the first annual “World Hijab Day” yesterday. In one of the most pathetic and destructive shows of “virtue signaling,” non-Muslim women were urged to wear the garment of oppression, subjugation, and misogyny. While women are fighting and dying for their most basic rights in countries ruled under Islamic law, left-wing goons in the West are working to impose the misogyny of the sharia.
Look, no cares if you wear the hijab. No one cares if you wear purple hair, for that matter. But what about the women forced to wear the hijab. American girls like Jessica Mokdad, Amina Said, Sarah Said, Noor Almaleki, and so many others who were honor murdered for not wearing the hijab, for wanting to live free. Who speaks for them? The real world recognition day should be in tribute to women who are forced to wear the hijab, beaten and/or arrested if they don’t.
One campaign fighting against the enforced hijab in Iran set up by Ms. Masih Alinejad is My Stealthy Freedom. It is “dedicated to Iranian women inside the country who want to share their ‘stealthily’ taken photos without the veil,” and aims to be a “living archive” of their fight.
For years, my work in defense of Muslim women wanting to live free, be free, out from under the boot of sharia misogyny, was smeared, mocked, labeled “Islamophobic.” Girls such as Rifqa Bary and the now-dead girls, including Aqsa Parvez, Amina and Sarah Said, Jessica Mokdad, Noor Almaleki, et al, wanted to be free not to wear the hijab – in America. Our calls for such an elemental freedom were viciously attacked amid the constant cries of “racism” (Islam is not a race) and absurd claims that we were making it hard for Muslim women to wear the hijab. That was laughable, of course, because I never so much as addressed Muslim women and their choices, no matter how submissive and subdued, but this was uniformly repeated and chanted by Islamic supremacists and their leftwing lapdogs, most especially in the “feminist movement.”
And now we see an entire nation of women, Muslim women, standing up against the hijab. Are they, too, “Islamophobes”?
Remember: the Islamic Republic of Iran is the country that the Democrats are fighting for today, opposing President Trump’s efforts to stop Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons.
As David Kurten in Breitbart News points out, punishments for removing a hijab can be brutal – Islamic regimes are known to physically beat women for non-compliance with their dress codes. This is true not only in the Middle East, but increasingly on a local level in the West.
A brave headteacher in a London primary school recently took action to ban children under the age of eight from wearing hijabs in her school. The school is in an area of east London that has undergone almost total population replacement of the white working-class there 50 years ago to mostly people of Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslim origin today. The response of the local community was to organize a campaign of intimidation against her until she backed down.
World Hijab Day is a stunning indictment of the hypocrisy of the evil left as much as choosing the sharia-promoting, forced marriage advocate Linda Sarsour for their leader. The real “feminists” are the women who are fighting for a fraction, a sliver of the freedoms their Western “sisters” enjoy.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
Background: In 2008, I was in Florida covering Rifqa Bary’s court hearings to return her to her devout family who promised to kill to her because the teen had left Islam and converted to Christianity.
I was waiting on my ride to the courthouse when I saw this ad on a bus:
Thus began the very first of my many bus ad campaigns. I responded with this ad and the greatest putsch against free speech commenced:
Check out my latest at The Thinker:
After Ten Years, Court Strikes Down Ruling Banning Ads Offering Help to Those Leaving Islam
It took nearly twelve years, but we did it. My organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has just won an important victory for the freedom of speech.
Back in 2009, the Detroit area’s SMART transit refused to run our AFDI ads offering help to people who were in fear for their lives for wanting to leave Islam or having left it. After an incredibly protracted court battle, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals just stood up for the First Amendment and completely reversed the judgment banning our ads. It’s a total victory for freedom: we won our free speech lawsuit in Detroit by a unanimous decision.
Our ad read: “Leaving Islam? Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Got Questions? Get Answers! RefugefromIslam.com.” That’s all it said. It offered a life-saver for those who were completely and utterly alone with no system of support or help.
Islamic law mandates death for those who leave Islam; even in the United States, those who leave the religion live in fear that a devout Muslim might decide to apply this penalty. So we were offering help. That is all. But as Eugene Volokh explains at The Volokh Conspiracy, “Michigan’s Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) rejected this ad under two of its speech restrictions. The first prohibits ‘political’ ads; the second prohibits ads that would hold up a group of people to ‘scorn or ridicule.'”
Our ad was not political and didn’t scorn or ridicule anyone. It’s ridiculous to say saving lives is a political act, and so of course we won the initial case. The first judge who ruled on this case, Judge Denise Page Hood, understood the law and so ruled in favor of our free speech rights. She understood the First Amendment. Therefore, although she was clearly not sympathetic to us, she had to rule for us.
But then SMART appealed. SMART adamantly refused to run outreach ads that might have helped Muslims living in dangerous households and appealed to the notoriously leftist Sixth Circuit. You might have thought the Muslim Brotherhood was running SMART. It was astounding. And consider the fact that Detroit was bankrupt around this same time. Sharia adherence was still more important to the broken city’s failed leaders than were the freedom of speech and fiscal responsibility.
And so SMART continued to refuse our ads and appealed in the notoriously leftist Sixth Circuit. The court called our religious ads political and created a new narrative out of whole cloth. Our ads were never actually rejected on political grounds. Individually and in her official capacity, Beth Gibbons, marketing program manager of SMART, said our ads were rejected because they were controversial — not because they were political. It was always understood that these were religious ads. Gibbons testified that she saw “nothing about [the advertisement] itself that was political[.] … I knew that [the fatwa advertisement] was of concern in that there is controversy on both sides of the issue on whether they should be posted.” That was the position of SMART. In fact, that was the agency’s official testimony.
We in turn appealed. In 2013, I was deposed and harassed for six hours by a small, profane blowhard attorney — all billable hours to fight an ad created to help Muslim girls escape honor violence. And the deposition was so hostile that you would think I had committed a heinous crime. Apparently, blasphemy in America is.
The case dragged on and on. But now, in American Freedom Defensive Initiative v. Suburban Mobility Auth. for Regional Transp. (6th Cir.), the court makes the correct ruling, noting that “the Free Speech Clause limits the government’s power to regulate speech on public property. The government has little leeway to restrict speech in ‘public forums.'” Accordingly, “SMART’s ban on ‘political’ ads is unreasonable for the same reason that a state’s ban on ‘political’ apparel at polling places is unreasonable: SMART offers no ‘sensible basis for distinguishing what may come in from what must stay out.’ Likewise, SMART’s ban on ads that engage in ‘scorn or ridicule’ is not viewpoint neutral for the same reason that a ban on trademarks that disparage people is not viewpoint neutral: For any group, ‘an applicant may [display] a positive or benign [ad] but not a derogatory one.'” Consequently, the court declared: “We thus reverse the district court’s decision rejecting the First Amendment challenge to these two restrictions.”
This is all common-sensical and clear even to those with no legal training or experience, but it has taken an incredibly long time to get here. The American Freedom Law Center, whose ace lawyers David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise fought long and hard to win this case, noted: “AFDI’s religious freedom advertisement was rejected even though SMART had no problem accepting and running an anti-religion ad sponsored by an atheist organization. That approved ad stated, ‘Don’t Believe in God? You are not alone.'” However, now “the Sixth Circuit ruled unanimously in favor of AFLC, finding that SMART’s rejection of the ad was unreasonable and [a] viewpoint based in violation of the First Amendment. This is a final ruling.”
Bottom line: Everyone has the same right to a free life. The Sixth Circuit agreed.
If you weren’t reading this, you would likely never know that it had happened at all. No media covered it. If we had lost, then you would have heard about it, because the media would have been popping open bottles of champagne and running huge pieces on how sharia restrictions on speech are altogether reasonable — as heads roll (literally).
Jessica Mokdad, an honor killing victim living in that area at the time, might have been saved. We know that the ads have helped Muslims — they told us. The ads save lives. Contribute here.
Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report, and author of the bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Another city bans free speech. Chilling. Read this.
Related:
Seattle Imposes Ad Ban to Annul Pamela Geller’s Free Speech Lawsuit Victory
Officials who oversee Seattle’s transit system moved to ban political, religious, and other ads from its facilities and public transportation vehicles soon after Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) prevailed in a freedom of speech lawsuit against the city, earning the right to run FBI’s Most Wanted terrorist posters, Breitbart News has learned.
By: Edwin Mora, Breitbart, April 16, 2019:
“People should realize that this is a struggle for the very foundation of any free society: the freedom of speech. If there is a group you can’t criticize, then that group can impose tyranny over you. If we lose this free speech battle, all our other freedoms are lost” Geller recently told Breitbart News via email.
She argued the advertisement ban sidestepped the September 2018 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling in AFDI’s favor, which allowed the group to advertise the Most Wanted terrorist list in Seattle.
However, the new restrictions, dubbed the “Geller ban” and instituted in December 2018 by the King County Department of Transportation’s Transit Division that oversees Seattle’s public transportation system, have ended up preventing AFDI from running the terrorist wanted ads, Geller pointed out, noting that her free speech lawsuit victory was bittersweet.
Before the appeal court’s ruling, judges had denied AFDI the right to place public service ads featuring images of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists on Seattle’s public transportation system, due to a perceived disparagement of Islam.
The city’s rejection prompted AFDI to sue the King County Metro system for its suppression of free speech.
“We won the right to run the FBI wanted terrorist poster that Seattle prevailed upon the FBI to withdraw [ in 2013]. And as soon as we triumphed, Seattle transit imposed the infamous Geller ban, banning political, religious and cause-related ads in Seattle (following NY, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, etc),” Geller told Breitbart News in the email.
In a document outlining the transit agency’s advertising restrictions, King County officials noted that the policy bans advertising on transit facilities and vehicles that fall within the categories of political, religious, government (except for the county’s), and other forms of “speech.”
“They banned all political ads, as that was the only course of action they could possibly take in order to continue to avoid running my ads,” Geller said. “They’re so determined to continue whitewashing Islam and denying and obfuscating the roots of jihad terror that they are willing to lose immense amounts of revenue from all political advertising.”
Transit agency officials argued that their “viewpoint neutral” ban seeks to prohibit “advertisements that interfere with and divert resources from transit operations, that detract from transit purposes by creating substantial controversy, and/or that pose significant risks of harm, inconvenience, or annoyance to transit passengers, operators, and vehicles.”
“Such advertisements create an environment that is not conducive to achieving increased revenue for the benefit of the transit system or to preserving and enhancing the security, safety, comfort, and convenience of its operations,” the officials added.
Responding to the agency’s argument Geller noted, “I see ads that annoy me all the time. If that is the criterion [for the ban], whose annoyance counts, and whose doesn’t, and why?”
She told Breitbart News that King County’s decision to ban FBI wanted posters featuring some jihadis amounts to the “enforcement of Sharia blasphemy law in another American city.”
King County officials described the transit agency’s advertising ban as“restrictions” that “foster the maintenance of a professional advertising environment that maximizes advertising, revenue, and protects the interests of the captive audience that uses Metro’s transit services.”
In other words, the county’s transportation department believes that banning certain ads will allow the county to generate more revenue.
“The ban will, obviously, drastically curtail their ad revenues. To argue otherwise is plain deception” Geller noted.
Nevertheless, the county asserted that the advertising policy intends to fulfill the following goals:
Maximizing advertising revenue; maintaining a position of neutrality and preventing the appearance of favoritism or endorsement by the county; preventing the risk of imposing objectionable, inappropriate or harmful view on a captive audience; preserving the value of the advertising space; maximizing ridership and maintaining a safe environment for transit customers and other members of the public; avoiding claims of discrimination and maintaining a non-discriminatory environment for riders; preventing any harm or abuse that may result from running objectionable, inappropriate, or harmful advertisements; [and] reducing the diversion of resources from transit operations that is caused by objectionable, inappropriate or harmful advertisements.
Geller vowed to keep fighting for free speech all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary to ensure Seattle upholds the appeal court’s ruling.
Read my latest over at The American Thinker:
Jihad and the Media in an Age of Delusion
By Pamela Geller, American Thinker, April 1, 2019:
On Sunday the BBC reported about another horrible news story from London: a knifeman went on a stabbing spree of “defenceless” people in London. The story revealed less about the incident it was purporting to report on than it did about our age of anti-reality and delusion.
In this age, it is not difficult to step back and observe almost indiscernible but seismic historical shifts in the making — not in the big-bang news events, but in the nitty-gritty details of the social fabric of our daily lives, where life happens. It is usually not so easy to detect such subtleties, let alone observe the silent measures a nation or a civilization takes when it quietly but most decidedly has… given up. One need not be an anthropologist to detect seismic changes in human behavior or societies.
First, it’s language. Language is key. Subtle and not-so-subtle restrictions are placed on what would offend the invading force with its hair-trigger sensibilities. These restrictions are rigorously enforced by quisling societal institutions — media, academia, and so forth. So, for example, “Muslim” is replaced with “South Asian” or “Asian,” with no fear that the “South Asians” or “Asians” will bomb a pop concert, mow down scores of families on a national holiday such as Bastille day or Halloween or Christmas, shoot up a gay nightclub, and so forth. Actual South Asians and Asians have held demos against the media using them to cover for jihadis, but no media reported on them, of course. Only the small, sagacious group of readers who follow websites such as the Geller Report were aware of the South Asian community’s opposition to the wrongful blame.
Every time there is an attack by a jihadi, all apologies are extended by the host Western country, with admonitions of impending “phobia” of Islam and backlash, and so the cycle of self-flagellation begins and builds with each ensuing attack (all 34,800 since 9/11).
In initial reports of all jihad attacks, we are told “it is not terror related.” The shifting definition of terror is slippery but expected. Then President George W. Bush dropped the ball on September 20, 2001, when he danced around whether “A is A,” decidedly avoiding jihad and Islam. Even with the thick, acrid smell of burnt blood and flesh, ash and steel in the NYC air, Bush opted instead for the vague, blame-free “War on Terror.”
Read the rest here.
Geller: Iran Arrests 29 Women for Appearing in Public Without a Hijab While Western Feminists Impose World Hijab Day
By Pamela Geller, Breitbart News, February 3, 2018:
The Daily Mail reported Thursday that “Tehran police have arrested 29 women for appearing in public without a headscarf as protests against the dress code in force since the Islamic revolution of 1979 intensify,” citing Iranian police.
“Those arrested were accused of public order offences and referred to the state prosecutor’s office, Iranian nnews [sic] agencies reported without elaborating,” the report noted.
Thursday was also “World Hijab Day,” which its organizers say is designed to “fight discrimination against Muslim women through awareness and education. It is a day on which women of diverse backgrounds and persuasions are encouraged to wear the Islamic head veil in solidarity with Muslim women.”
And so under the hashtag #StrongInHijab, Islamic supremacists and their willing gophers on the left – middle-class Western feminists – observed the first annual “World Hijab Day” yesterday. In one of the most pathetic and destructive shows of “virtue signaling,” non-Muslim women were urged to wear the garment of oppression, subjugation, and misogyny. While women are fighting and dying for their most basic rights in countries ruled under Islamic law, left-wing goons in the West are working to impose the misogyny of the sharia.
Look, no cares if you wear the hijab. No one cares if you wear purple hair, for that matter. But what about the women forced to wear the hijab. American girls like Jessica Mokdad, Amina Said, Sarah Said, Noor Almaleki, and so many others who were honor murdered for not wearing the hijab, for wanting to live free. Who speaks for them? The real world recognition day should be in tribute to women who are forced to wear the hijab, beaten and/or arrested if they don’t.
One campaign fighting against the enforced hijab in Iran set up by Ms. Masih Alinejad is My Stealthy Freedom. It is “dedicated to Iranian women inside the country who want to share their ‘stealthily’ taken photos without the veil,” and aims to be a “living archive” of their fight.
For years, my work in defense of Muslim women wanting to live free, be free, out from under the boot of sharia misogyny, was smeared, mocked, labeled “Islamophobic.” Girls such as Rifqa Bary and the now-dead girls, including Aqsa Parvez, Amina and Sarah Said, Jessica Mokdad, Noor Almaleki, et al, wanted to be free not to wear the hijab – in America. Our calls for such an elemental freedom were viciously attacked amid the constant cries of “racism” (Islam is not a race) and absurd claims that we were making it hard for Muslim women to wear the hijab. That was laughable, of course, because I never so much as addressed Muslim women and their choices, no matter how submissive and subdued, but this was uniformly repeated and chanted by Islamic supremacists and their leftwing lapdogs, most especially in the “feminist movement.”
And now we see an entire nation of women, Muslim women, standing up against the hijab. Are they, too, “Islamophobes”?
Remember: the Islamic Republic of Iran is the country that the Democrats are fighting for today, opposing President Trump’s efforts to stop Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons.
As David Kurten in Breitbart News points out, punishments for removing a hijab can be brutal – Islamic regimes are known to physically beat women for non-compliance with their dress codes. This is true not only in the Middle East, but increasingly on a local level in the West.
A brave headteacher in a London primary school recently took action to ban children under the age of eight from wearing hijabs in her school. The school is in an area of east London that has undergone almost total population replacement of the white working-class there 50 years ago to mostly people of Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslim origin today. The response of the local community was to organize a campaign of intimidation against her until she backed down.
World Hijab Day is a stunning indictment of the hypocrisy of the evil left as much as choosing the sharia-promoting, forced marriage advocate Linda Sarsour for their leader. The real “feminists” are the women who are fighting for a fraction, a sliver of the freedoms their Western “sisters” enjoy.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
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