Islamist Lawfare Defeated in Texas

Islamist Lawfare Defeated in Texas

by Daniel Huff

January 25, 2010

Libel suits are not normally associated with national security, but a case the Texas Supreme Court ruled on January 15 carries just such implications. The suit against internet journalist Joe Kaufman is a prime example of how libel law can be manipulated to stifle dissemination of information about terrorism and radical Islam.

It arises out of Kaufman's September 28, 2007 FrontPage Magazine article on the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which sponsored a "Muslim Family Day" at Six Flags Over Texas. Kaufman vowed to protest the event citing, among other things, ICNA's alleged "physical ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and financial ties to Hamas."

Within days, Kaufman was sued, but not by ICNA. Rather, seven Dallas area Islamist organizations, none of them named in the article, sued Kaufman for defamation arguing they were implicated by inference since they too sponsored the event. In June 2009, a Texas appellate court dismissed the case before it could go to trial because "a reasonable reader who was acquainted with [plaintiffs] would not view Kaufman's statements as 'concerning' them."” Undeterred, the seven Islamist groups asked the Texas Supreme Court for review.

In what Kaufman termed a "victory for freedom", the Court rejected their petition and let the appeals court decision stand.

This result is important for two reasons. First, plaintiffs had argued that Kaufman, as an internet journalist, was not entitled to certain procedural protections afforded traditional media defendants that make it easier for them to get libel cases dismissed before they reach the costly trial phase. In a precedential ruling, the appellate court rejected this contention finding generally that "an internet communicator may qualify as a member of the media”."

Second, the lawsuit fits a growing pattern of Islamists exploiting libel law to silence critics. They file questionable suits knowing they need not win to intimidate, demoralize, and bankrupt opponents. For example, in 2006, a Saudi banker's mere threat to sue prompted Cambridge University Press to pulp unsold copies of a book on terror financing titled Alms for Jihad, and to request American libraries to remove their copies from circulation.

That this tactic of "lawfare" may have had a role in the Kaufman case, was suggested in a May 17, 2009 broadcast of Crescent Report hosted by Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Legal Society Freedom Foundation. After personally castigating Kaufman, Bray explained, "we've got to be willing to spend our money in a court of law … and not necessarily because we're going to look for money, but … to spend our money and make you spend your money."

The appellate court found the plaintiffs could not even meet the basic requirements for proceeding. However, as a bid to use legal fees to bleed Kaufman into submission the suit was much more promising. In fact, Kaufman would almost certainly have been bankrupt well before the case was dismissed were it not for the legal and financial aid of those dedicated to defending journalists from the threat of lawfare, including the Legal Project of the Middle East Forum and the Horowitz Freedom Center.

Kaufman explained that the plaintiffs' goal was to stop him from criticizing "those who wish to do harm to the United States, specifically those tied to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood."” Last Friday's decision has frustrated these Islamists designs.

A Texas tradition of vigorous commitment to free speech is evident in its founding documents. The 1836 Texas Independence Constitution went even further than the First Amendment by guaranteeing an affirmative "liberty to speak" rather than simply restricting governmental interference with debate. The Texas Supreme Court's decision preserves this legacy and we should applaud it.

The Wall Street Journal on Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution

To the short and brutal list of life's certainties, let us add that socialism invariably leads nations to economic ruin. Latest case in point: Hugo Chávez's "Bolivarian" Republic of Venezuela.

Earlier this month, the Venezuelan strongman moved the official U.S. dollar exchange rate to 4.3 bolivars to the greenback from 2.15. At a stroke, he wiped out the savings and purchasing power of the very working-class people he purports to represent, most of whom have barely been getting by. News of the devaluation instantly sent the country—where consumer prices had already risen by 25% in 2009, according to official figures—into a panic, with consumers standing in line to stock up on goods before prices rose.

Mr. Chávez next decreed that he would fine and even arrest any merchant caught adjusting prices, eliding the fact that Venezuela imports nearly everything and exports only oil. Now Venezuelans have the Hobson's choice of either complying with the diktat, which means shortages, or disobeying it, which means inflation.

Yet no sooner was one catastrophe of "21st-century socialism" inflicted on Venezuelans than Mr. Chávez unveiled another. On January 12, the government instituted a series of rolling blackouts due to an electricity shortage that had been building for months. Ostensibly, the reason for the shortage was a drought that had left water levels at the country's huge Guri Dam—the source of more than 70% of its electricity—at critically low levels. But that is a function of the government's failure to maintain the dam and build additional capacity.

The instant result of the blackouts was chaos, particularly in Caracas, where people were left "stuck in elevators or in dangerous parts of town without street lighting," according to Reuters. The capital city already has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world, and Mr. Chávez was forced to suspend blackouts there two days later. The rest of the country, however, remains subject to sporadic power outages.

Behind the crack-up of Mr. Chávez's utopia is the fact that he's running out of money because Venezuela's oil production is plunging. In 1998, the year Mr. Chávez was first elected, the country pumped 3.3 million barrels a day. Today, the figure is 2.4 million barrels, and that's an optimistic estimate.

Venezuela isn't running out of crude. The problem is that Mr. Chávez has expelled or seized the assets of foreign companies capable of properly maintaining the country's fields, including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. It didn't help, either, that in 2002 Mr. Chávez fired thousands of skilled employees of state oil company PdVSA because he didn't like their politics and replaced them with his political cronies.

On Monday, Mr. Chávez made a grudging concession to reality when he agreed to a joint venture with Italian oil major ENI, which itself had been run out of Venezuela in 2006. We'll leave it to the Italians to place their own bets about the limits of Mr. Chávez's caprice. They've already had fair warning that Bolivarians, like other predators, rarely change their spots.

From Best of the Web

ObamaCare may be dead, but TV reporter Keith Baldrey, in an op-ed piece, argues that getting health costs under control is still crucial:

Is health care becoming the mortal enemy of our country's education system?

I don't pose this question facetiously. When we're discussing public
services, it's important to remember that at the end of the day, everything
comes down to money.

And it is obvious that health care is increasingly getting that money at
the apparent expense of other public services--most notably education.

In fact, our health-care system's voracious and unending appetite for tax
dollars is crowding out spending in all sorts of other areas.

If only we had a single-payer system like Canada's . . . Oh, wait! Baldrey's article is about Canada's system. It appears in the Surrey (British Columbia) Now.

Merits Reading

Remember the Muslim cable TV executive in Buffalo who beheaded his wife?

Well, his trial has began and he offers an interesting and novel approach in his defense. Read about this and the defense approaches in the trials of other Muslims in the West.

Click here to read the article.

Charles Krauthammer on the soft stance on terror of the Obama administration.

Click here to read Krauthammer

Sick, and getting sicker...

Political correctness running amok.

In Great Britain, a recruitment agency worker was told by a job agency that she couldn’t advertise for “hard working and reliable” workers, because an ad with such requirements could be offensive to unreliable persons.

No, this is not something published in The Onion.

The offensive ad.

Click here to read the article.

Is anti-Semitism inherent in the Polish character?

Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek

Reading an article in the Jerusalem Post on comments by Polish Catholic bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, a close friend of Pope John Paul II, I was reminded of former Prime Minister of Israel Itzhak Shamir who said in 1989 that “Poles suck in anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk.”

The article in question reports on statements made by the bishop to the effect that Jews use the Holocaust as propaganda:

The Holocaust only receives media coverage because of affluent Jews’ financial backing, military might and lobbying fronts, presenting a skewed version of events to the world, a high-ranking Polish bishop told a Catholic news portal on Monday.

Polish bishop and professor Tadeusz Pieronek told the Web site Pontifex.roma that while the Holocaust was not exclusively Jewish, Jews had monopolized it in lieu of encouraging “serious historical debate, free from prejudice and victimization.”

Pieronek alleged that Jews today use the Holocaust as “a weapon of propaganda, used to obtain benefits which are often unjustified,” citing as an example the unconditional support for Israel by the US. “This promotes a certain arrogance that I find unbearable,” he said, explaining that Israel was using its position of power and exploiting historical tragedies to treat the Palestinians “like animals.”

The bishop stated that American support for the Jews had not always been so readily given. “What did the Jewish-American and allied forces do in [World War II] to avoid these tragedies? Little or nothing,” he said.

Pieronek stressed that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians did not compare to “the shame of the concentration camps and the aberrations of Nazism,” but was still a cause for concern ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which occurs on January 27.

“The Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention … a day of remembrance must also be set for the many victims of Communism, persecuted Catholics and Christians and so on,” he told the Web site. Tragedy, he stressed, must not be turned into propaganda.

Every time that I begin to question my perception of Poland as a bastion of anti-Semitism, some Polih political or religious leader manages to make a statement that again removes any doubt that Shamir was not exaggerating about the contenet of Polish maternal milk.

Hatred and the Religion of Peace

The "Moderate" Malaysian PM and Al Gore.

Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has once again stuck his foot in his mouth and made comments that show that the leadership of Muslim nations is either engaged in demagoguery for survival or worst, they actually believe the dangerous nonsense they utter.

To illustrate this point, the Malaysian PM stated that 9/11 was a staged event to justify an attack on the Muslim world. Of course, no attack against the United States can take place without also attacking Israel, whom Dr Mahathir calls a creation of Europe to address the Jewish problem that the final solution and the Holocaust failed to solve.

The political correct crowd keeps calling Islam a great religion and a religion of peace. Terrorists, they tell us, have perverted Islam and are the exceptions among Muslims. Yet, Muslims around the world embrace leaders such as the Malaysian PM and so many of the crazies that are ruling Muslim countries around the globe. No condemnations are heard, and no demonstrations are staged to protest the insanity of the statements made by their leadership.

The reason for this is simple. The Majority of Muslims agree with them. As long as the West fails to accept this, the situation is going to get worst.

Read article about Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad