Month: October 2006

TURKS PROTEST PLANNS FOR LAS VEGAS ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’ MONUMENT

The New Anatolian
Oct 18 2006

Turkish associations in Las Vegas, Nevada yesterday protested
the mayor’s allocation of land for the construction of a monument
commemorating victims of the Armenian "genocide."

The Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), an organization
that coordinates Turkish associations in Las Vegas, sent a letter
of protest to Mayor Oscar Goodman, in which they stated that such a
monument would distort historical truths and could only be described
as a "lynching" monument.

ATAA head Vural Cengiz asserted that there is no evidence proving
that Turks committed genocide against the Armenians. He urged Goodman
to withdraw his approval, saying, "Please change your mind about the
construction of a monument that is a realization of a bad proposal
making reference to a fake genocide."

Las Vegas is a U.S. city with an influential Armenian lobby.

Cengiz also sent another letter of protest to French Ambassador to
Washington Jean-David Levitte, criticizing the French Parliament’s
passage of a bill aimed at criminalizing the questioning of the
Armenian genocide claims.

‘ARMENIAN BILL IS VIOLATION OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION’

The New Anatolian
Oct 18 2006

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
yesterday expressed concern about the French Parliament’s passage of
a bill to criminalize questioning of the Armenian genocide claims.

In a letter sent to the president of the French Senate, Christian
Poncelet, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Miklos Haraszti
asked the Senators to reject the bill when it reaches the upper
chamber.

"I acknowledge the humanitarian intentions of those members of
the assembly who support this proposal. However, the adoption of
the amendment raises serious concerns with regard to international
standards of freedom of _expression," wrote Haraszti.

"It is in the name of these same standards that I continue to call upon
Turkey to remove Article 301 of the Penal Code, ‘Insulting Turkish
identity’, which prosecutors in Turkey repeatedly use in the context
of the Armenian genocide debate."

France recognized the genocide claims in a 2001 law. The proposed
bill would introduce punishment for denial of up to one year in prison
and a fine of 45,000 euros.

"Both the fact of criminalization of statements, and the severity
of the sanctions would infringe upon editorial freedom in France,"
added Haraszti.

"The adoption of the amendment by France, a nation with a longstanding
tradition of freedom of _expression, could set a dangerous precedent
for other nations of the OSCE."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

‘I HOPE THE FRENCH COME TO THEIR SENSES’

The New Anatolian
Oct 18 2006

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul yesterday assured Parliament that
Turkey would take all effective measures, including recourse to high
international courts, to combat the French bill that penalizes the
denial of Armenian "genocide."

The declaration of Gul, his first to Parliament since France’s General
Assembly passed the law last week, indicated that Turkey would not
"forget" or "let go" if the bill, which still needs to go through
Senate and be ratified by French president, were enacted.

"I hope that the French come to their senses," said Gul.

He also assured that the government would use all the tools it has in
its hands. "We will use all our rights from international accords. We
are already doing a great deal of preliminary work. Timing is, of
course, another question. We are fully benefiting from the experience
of our legal experts and diplomats," he said.

"We hope that this bill will be left behind without being enacted,"
said Gul. "I hope that they also take into account the international
pressure."

"If this law is enacted, the wounds could not be repaired. It would
be the political, economic and security-related ties which would
receive a large blow," he said.

He also praised Turkish society, saying; "Racism that would be seen
in various countries, intolerance, has never been seen in Turkey. The
basis of our national culture is tolerance," he said.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party leader Deniz Baykal, at
his party’s group meeting, offered a four-phase strategy to show a
response to France.

According to the CHP leader, Turkey should bring the case to
the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), asking the court to
suspend France’s membership in the Council of Europe. The country
also should go to the European Court of Justice, asking the body to
impose sanctions on France and to say the bill violated the European
Union acquis.

The third pillar of Baykal’s strategy was mostly about Turkish citizens
living in France. He proposed organized action against the law as a
response, which would also keep the matter in the headlines.

His last point was economic, Baykal said that Turkey should reconsider
its economic transactions with France. However, he didn’t call boycott
a must.

He said that accusing a people of having committed genocide is not
a simple allegation, and that nobody has right to accuse Turkey
of having done so. He also cited anti-France remarks from several
European countries, and said that truth cannot be hidden.

He also put emphasis on the security of the Armenians living in Turkey
and called on people no to feel hostility towards them for a mistake
made by France.

Motherland Party (ANAVATAN) leader Erkan Mumcu’s focus was what he
called Turkey’s silence on the French bill, for which he criticized
the government.

He lashed out at the government for remarks urging the people to rule
out economic sanctions against France, and said that since France
had insulted Turkey, it should be responded to in kind.

GREENWAY BOARD WANTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OUT
By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff

Boston Globe, MA
Oct 19 2006

Panel cites group’s lack of progress on garden

The board created to run the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway
Conservancy in downtown Boston wants the Massachusetts Horticultural
Society stripped of its right to occupy three prime blocks of the
new parkland near South Station.

Frustrated by lack of progress on the 30 acres of parks and
cultural institutions intended to replace the old Central Artery,
the conservancy board made that request yesterday to the Massachusetts
Turnpike Authority, which is running the Greenway project as part of
the Big Dig.

It is one of several recommendations designed to speed development
and hasten the conservancy’s control over the corridor.

Peter Meade, chairman of the conservancy’s board, acknowledged to
Turnpike board members that eliminating the horticultural society
could be controversial. But, he said, the society is financially
"not prepared to build a significant Garden Under Glass, which was
the reason for their designation in the first place."

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society has indeed struggled
financially, but recently has shown signs of stabilizing under new
leadership. Thomas Herrera-Mishler, the society’s executive director ,
reacted forcefully to the recommendation, saying he was "quite puzzled
by Peter Meade and the Conservancy’s whole approach. "

"Mass. Hort has had three solid years of financial performance based
on audited reports," he said.

The move to "de-designate" the horticultural society for the blocks
between the Evelyn Moakley Bridge and Summer Street comes after it
tried and failed for years to deliver on its plan for a "winter garden"
on the Greenway.

Because that vision was incorporated into state environmental
approvals granted about 15 years ago, the Turnpike Authority —
if it accepts the conservancy’s recommendation — would have to
undergo a potentially lengthy regulatory process to win approval of
the horticultural society’s removal.

Recently the society has geared up again and gained support for its
Greenway mission — though that has been scaled back to a plan for
gardens and a modest educational center. Those are not scheduled to
be completed until 2008.

Meade acknowledged the horticultural society "does not have nothing
to bring to the table." The conservancy envisions working with the
society on horticultural issues the length of the Greenway.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino, however, sided with the conservancy. "Mass.
Hort has been out there for 10 years trying to do something, and they
haven’t done a thing," he said. " We can’t live with all these false
and broken promises."

The conservancy designated one of its board members, Edwin Schlossberg,
husband of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and grandson-in-law of Rose
Kennedy, to head a committee that would determine the future of the
three blocks. The parks are scheduled to be completed by the end of
summer next year .

The conservancy also recommended that other institutions with plans
to build on Greenway development blocks be given deadlines for
architectural and financial plans.

The YMCA of Greater Boston, which gave up on trying to build a facility
and community center on a North End block because of the high cost,
would have until the end of this year to reconsider. The Boston
Museum Project, the New Center for Arts and Culture, and the Harbor
Island Pavilion, designated for other blocks, would have until July
to submit plans.

Other recommendations in the 50-page report include:

Scrapping a tentative plan for a Greenway park commemorating the
Armenian Genocide of 1915, and placing it somewhere else in Boston.

Speeding up designation of the conservancy as "the single organization"
with authority for the whole Greenway — both parks and development
blocks — and responsibility for its maintenance.

Employing organic landscape management techniques in the corridor.

Turnpike Authority chairman John Cogliano said the board would take
the report and recommendations under advisement. Mary Z. Connaughton
and other board members said they want to be fair to all organizations
working on Greenway projects.

EDITORIAL: FRENCH FAUX PAS

Sacramento Bee, CA
Oct 19 2006

Law could strain Europe-Turkey ties
Story appeared in EDITORIALS section, Page B8

Relations between Turkey and Europe were testy enough even before
the French National Assembly voted last week to make it a crime
to deny that the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish troops
during World War I was genocide. Aside from whether French lawmakers
are qualified to make that judgment, such a law could fuel tensions
between Europe and Islam and further weaken Turkey’s flagging bid to
join the European Union.

The vote in Paris took place just as Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk
was named winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Pamuk had been
charged with "insulting Turkishness" for saying Turks had killed a
million Armenians during World War I. The prosecution was dropped, but
similar charges have been brought against others despite the Turkish
government’s objections and despite the risk to Turkey’s EU bid because
they violate free speech rights. So would the proposed French law.

Both EU officials and the Turkish author oppose the French law,
which could reinforce European second thoughts about making a Muslim
country of 70 million part of the EU. Those feelings have been fueled
by the murders by Muslim immigrants of two Dutch public figures who
had criticized Islam, and by other incidents that provoked fury among
many Muslims.

The Armenian controversy will not be resolved with gratuitous laws.

Turkish officials say they are willing to allow historians with
diverse views to search the archives and reach their own conclusion.

That hasn’t happened, and growing Turkish-European tensions don’t
help. Many Turks now feel their future does not lie with a Europe
they see as hostile to them.

Speech can be truly odious, especially denial of the Holocaust, which
is a crime in France and other European countries. But criminalizing
speech that offends undermines the principles of a free society. And
a new French law on the Armenian issue invites retaliation: Some
Turkish lawmakers have called for a law to brand as genocide French
atrocities in colonial Algeria.

Turkey’s location, its democracy and its status as a Muslim society
living under secular law make it an optimum bridge between Europe and
the Middle East. Enacting gratuitous laws meant to compel people to
take sides is wrongheaded. An EU spokeswoman criticized the proposed
law by saying it "would prevent the dialogue and debate that are
necessary for reconciliation." Exactly.

SWISS CABINET REBUKES JUSTICE MINISTER

Swiss Info, Switzerland
Oct 19 2006

The cabinet says it regrets comments made by Justice Minister Christoph
Blocher in Turkey earlier this month that he wanted to change the
Swiss anti-racism law.

Swiss President Moritz Leuenberger said this gave the impression that
Switzerland could be pressured into changing its laws depending on
the circumstances.

"The cabinet remains opposed to a pure and simple abolition of the
anti-racism law," Leuenberger said on Wednesday. "This text will
remain in force and will continue to be used."

He said it was legitimate to propose making modifications, but said
the cabinet regretted that the discussion had been started during a
visit abroad.

Blocher, a leading light of the rightwing Swiss People’s Party, had
remarked during his Turkish trip that part of the anti-racism law –
which was adopted in 1994 and includes sections aimed at preventing
revisionist views about the Holocaust – gave him a "headache".

The law has led to investigations in Switzerland against two Turks,
including one historian, for allegedly denying the 1915 Armenian
massacre.

Armenians say around 1.8 million of their people died as a result of
a forced mass evacuation by the Turkish government during the Ottoman
Empire. Turkey puts the figure closer to 200,000. Under Swiss law any
act of denying, belittling or justifying genocide is a violation of
the country’s anti-racism legislation.

However, Blocher said at the time that it was ultimately up to the
government, parliament and possibly the population, to decide on
any changes.

What’s this? Federal Commission against Racism Under scrutiny

According to Leuenberger, Blocher has told his cabinet colleagues
that a working group at his ministry was already re-examining the law,
in particular article 261bis, the cause of Blocher’s headache.

The justice minister was ready to include a member of the Federal
Commission against Racism in this work, Leuenberger added, refusing
to any further questions on the matter – which caused a media and
political outcry in Switzerland – saying the content of cabinet
meetings was confidential.

For his part, Blocher, speaking at a different media conference
earlier in the day, said he was simply waiting for the feedback from
his working group by the end of the year.

"It’s about making the anti-racism law clearer, more secure and
unambiguous," he said.

THE RIGHT TO DENY GENOCIDE
By Timothy Garton Ash

Los Angeles Times, CA
Oct 19 2006

Passing laws that criminalize denying past atrocities is no way to
address historical grievances.

WHAT A magnificent blow for truth, justice and humanity the French
National Assembly has struck. Last week, it voted for a bill that
would make it a crime to deny that the Turks committed genocide
against the Armenians during World War I. Bravo! Chapeau bas! Vive
la France! But let this only be a beginning in a brave new chapter
of European history.

Let Britain’s Parliament now make it a crime to deny that it was
Russians who murdered Polish officers at Katyn in 1940. Let the
Turkish parliament make it a crime to deny that France used torture
against insurgents in Algeria. Let the German parliament pass a bill
making it a crime to deny the existence of the Soviet gulag. Let the
Irish parliament criminalize denial of the horrors of the Spanish
Inquisition. Let the Spanish parliament mandate a minimum of 10 years
imprisonment for anyone who claims that the Serbs did not attempt
genocide against Albanians in Kosovo.

ADVERTISEMENT And the European Parliament should pass into European
law a bill making it obligatory to describe as genocide the American
colonists’ treatment of American Indians. The only pity is that we,
in the European Union, can’t impose the death sentence for these
heinous thought crimes. But perhaps, with time, we may change that too.

Oh brave new Europe! It is entirely beyond me how anyone in their
right mind – apart, of course, from a French Armenian lobbyist –
can regard this proposed bill, which will almost certainly be voted
down in the upper house of the French parliament, as a progressive
and enlightened step.

What right has France to prescribe by law the correct historical
terminology to characterize what another nation did to a third nation
90 years ago? If the French parliament passed a law making it a crime
to deny the complicity of Vichy France in the deportation to the death
camps of French Jews, I would still argue that this was a mistake,
but I could respect the self-critical moral impulse behind it. This
bill, by contrast, has no more moral or historical justification than
any of the other suggestions I have just made.

In an article last Friday, the Guardian averred that "supporters
of the law are doubtless motivated by a sincere desire to redress
a 90-year-old injustice." I wish I could be so confident. Currying
favor with French Armenian voters and putting another obstacle in
the way of Turkey joining the EU might be suggested as other motives.

It will be obvious to every intelligent reader that my argument
has nothing to do with questioning the suffering of the Armenians
who were massacred, expelled or felt impelled to flee in fear of
their lives during and after World War I. Their fate at the hands
of the Turks was terrible and has been too little recalled in the
mainstream of European memory. Reputable historians and writers have
made a strong case that those events deserve the label of genocide,
as it has been defined since 1945. In fact, this year’s winner of the
Nobel Prize in Literature, Orhan Pamuk, and other Turkish writers have
been prosecuted under the Turkish penal code for daring to suggest
exactly that. That is significantly worse than the intended effects
of the new French bill. But two wrongs don’t make a right.

No one can legislate historical truth. Insofar as historical truth
can be established at all, it must be found by unfettered historical
research, with historians arguing over the evidence and the facts,
testing and disputing each other’s claims without fear of prosecution
or persecution.

In the tense ideological politics of our time, this proposed bill is
a step in exactly the wrong direction. How can we credibly criticize
Turkey, Egypt or other states for curbing free speech, through the
legislated protection of historical, national or religious shibboleths,
if we are doing ever more of it ourselves?

Far from creating new, legally enforced taboos about history, national
identity and religion, those European nations that have them should
repeal not only their blasphemy laws but also their laws on Holocaust
denial. Otherwise, a charge of double standards is impossible to
refute.

I recently heard the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy going
through some impressive intellectual contortions to explain why he
opposed any laws restricting criticism of religion but supported
those on Holocaust denial. It was one thing, he argued, to question
a religious belief, quite another to deny a historical fact. But this
won’t wash. Historical facts are established precisely by their being
disputed and tested against the evidence. Without that process of
contention – up to and including the revisionist extreme of outright
denial – we would never discover which facts are truly hard.

Such consistency requires painful decisions. For example, I have
nothing but abhorrence for some of David Irving’s recorded views about
Nazi Germany’s attempted extermination of the Jews, but I am quite
certain that he should not be sitting in an Austrian jail as a result
of them. You may riposte that the falsehood of some of his claims was
established by a trial in a British court. Yes, but that was not the
British state prosecuting him for Holocaust denial. It was Irving suing
another historian who suggested that he was a Holocaust denier. He was
trying to curb free and fair historical debate; the court defended it.

Only when we are prepared to allow our own most sacred cows to be
poked in the eye can we credibly demand that Islamists, Turks and
others do the same. This is a time not for erecting taboos but for
dismantling them. We must practice what we preach.

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is professor of European studies at Oxford
University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University.

OUTDOOR GRILLING IN GLENDALE ROASTED
By Eugene Tong, Staff Writer

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Oct 19 2006

Councilmen say issue turned into a cultural standoff

Article Last Updated:10/18/2006 08:52:56 PM PDT GLENDALE – An ordinance
to legalize outdoor grilling for local businesses – often practiced
at banquet halls catering to Armenian-Americans – has died after
failing to garner enough City Council support.

The 3-2 vote Tuesday night broke down along ethnic lines, with the
council’s Armenian-American majority in favor and Mayor Dave Weaver
and Councilman Frank Quintero dissenting.

Passage required at least four votes on the five-member panel.

Current laws require all commercial cooking to be done indoors.

"Many years ago, we set the rule that commercial barbecues should be
done inside," Weaver said. "We should not move backward."

It was a victory for vocal critics who have complained that excessive
noise, smoke and parking congestion from local banquet halls disrupt
their neighborhoods.

"We are taking (the existing ban) off the books to allow a hazard,"
said resident Margaret Hammond, speaking against the ordinance. "They
should be made to put these grills inside."

Councilman Bob Yousefian, who is Armenian-American, said Wednesday
the city missed an opportunity to create a reasonable law that could
resolve the issue for all parties.

"The reality is there has been grilling outdoors in this city for
at least 30 years," he said. "In those days there were not a lot of
Armenians, there were other races that did grilling outside.

"This issue isn’t about grilling. The issue is the Armenians are
grilling. I tried to change this to make this about grilling instead of
about banquet halls or Armenian banquet halls. But I couldn’t do that."

The proposed ordinance would require grill operators to register
with the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Businesses with
grills larger than 10 square feet and used within 200 feet of homes
need to apply for a conditional-use permit.

There also were specific guidelines for grill construction and fire
safety regulations. In a last-minute attempt to sway the dissenters,
Councilman Ara Najarian proposed the ordinance expire in December
2007 so the council can remove or adjust it if needed.

"This is not a closed deal," Najarian, also Armenian-American, said
Tuesday. "I want to know if the regulations are going to solve the bulk
of the problems. I’m happy to tighten it up if this is insufficient."

After the vote, Yousefian urged the city to enforce the ban on outdoor
grilling, whether they’re operated by banquet halls, supermarkets or
at special events. "If we’re going to enforce the rule, you enforce
it on everyone."

Vrej Sarkissian, president of the Restaurant and Banquet Hall Owners
Association, which represents 13 of the city’s halls, said he was
disappointed by the decision.

Grilling and barbecue using charcoal and copious fanning to whip the
flames – khorovats in Armenian – has been a part of family celebrations
for centuries.

"We put a lot of time and energy into this ordinance, and I think
this is something the majority of the residents wanted," he said.

"I’m disappointed that certain individuals didn’t recognize the
cultural significance of outdoor grilling."

DYER: A GENOCIDE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD STILL STINK

VUE Weekly, Canada
Oct 19 2006

Words matter. The Holocaust of the European Jews during the Second
World War was a genocide. The mass deportation of Chechens from their
Caucasian homeland during the same war was a crime but not a genocide,
even though half of them died, because Moscow’s aim was to keep them
from collaborating with German troops who were nearing Chechnya, not
to exterminate them. Which brings us to the far more controversial
case of the Armenians and the Turks.

On Oct 12, the French parliament passed a law declaring that anyone
who denies that the mass murder of Armenians in eastern Turkey in
1915-17 was a genocide will face a year in prison. But the French
foreign ministry called the law "unnecessary and untimely," and
President Jacques Chirac telephoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyib Erdogan to apologize.

Why would the conservative majority in the French parliament
deliberately set out to annoy the Turks, knowing that the law would
eventually be vetoed by the president? Because they hope to provoke a
nationalist backlash in Turkey that would further damage that country’s
already difficult relationship with the European Union.

French public opinion is already in a xenophobic mood over the last
expansion of the EU, with folk-tales of "Polish plumbers" working for
peanuts and stealing the jobs of honest French workers causing outrage,
especially among right-wing voters who never much liked foreigners
anyway. The prospect of 80 million Turks-Muslim Turks-joining the
European Union, even if it is at least 10 years away, is enough to
make their blood boil.

So a big row with Turkey should attract lots of votes to the right’s
presidential candidate in next May’s election, who is likely to be
none other than current prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy-who announced
last month that Turkey should never be allowed to join the EU: "We
have to say who is European and who isn’t. It’s no longer possible to
leave this question open." The new law is not really about Armenians
or Turks. It’s about the French election.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, anti-EU nationalists have their own game
underway. While Turkey was busy amending its penal code to make it
conform to EU standards over the past few years, hard-line lawyers and
bureaucrats smuggled in a new law, Article 301, which provides severe
penalties for "insulting Turkishness." In practice, that mainly means
trying to ban public discussion of the Armenian massacres, and some 70
prosecutions have already been brought by the ultra-right-wing Union of
Lawyers against Turkish authors, journalists and other public figures.

For several generations the Turkish government flatly denied any guilt
for the Armenian massacres, insisting that they didn’t happen-and,
if they did, it was the Armenians’ own fault for rebelling against
the Turkish state in wartime. Latterly, a new generation of Turkish
intellectuals has been saying that a million or more Armenians did
die in the mass deportations from eastern Anatolia, and that Turkey
needs to admit its guilt and apologize-though most still refuse to
call it a genocide, as that would put it in the same category as the
Jewish Holocaust.

Israel, too, refuses to use the term "genocide" for the Armenian
massacres, on the grounds that there was some provocation (Armenian
revolutionaries conspired with both Britain and Russia in 1914-15
to launch local uprisings in support of their planned invasions
of Turkey), and that the Turkish state’s actions, though brutal,
illegal and immoral, were not premeditated. Most Armenians, of course,
desperately want the label "genocide" to be applied to their ancestors’
suffering, since they feel that any other term demotes it to a lower
rank of tragedy. But there is room for dialogue and even reconciliation
here, if people can get past the issue of nomenclature.

The prosecutions for "insulting Turkishness"-even against Turkey’s
greatest living novelist, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk-are not just
an attempt to stifle this dialogue among Turks, or between Turks and
Armenians. The ultra-nationalists also want to derail the negotiations
for EU membership by painting Turkey as an authoritarian and intolerant
state that does not belong in Europe. They are, in effect, Sarkozy’s
objective allies.

But Prime Minister Erdogan will probably repeal Article 301 once
next year’s elections are past. France’s law, which requires people
to discuss the Armenian massacres in precisely the terms that 301
bans, will probably be vetoed by Chirac. And Turkey’s best-known
Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, who has already been prosecuted
several times under 301, has just announced that he will go to France
"to protest against this madness and violate the (new) law … And
I will commit the crime to be prosecuted there, so that these two
irrational mentalities can race to put me into jail."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

POOR CUSTODIANS OF FREE SPEECH

Virginian Pilot, VA
Oct 19 2006

Last week in Baghdad, dozens of heavily armed Shiite terrorists stormed
the offices of Shaabiya, a new television station, suspected of Sunni
sympathies, which had run nothing more controversial than a few songs
to test its broadcasting equipment.

That the freedoms to speak, publish and broadcast have not taken
hold in Iraq shouldn’t come as a big surprise. In a region dominated
by dictators, petty monarchs, official state media and the brutal
repression of dissidents, the Middle East was always going to be a
stony soil for Western ideals.

But before judging the Iraqis too harshly for failing to accept one
of our better ideas, or beating on President Bush for acting like the
Federalist Papers might be a best-seller if translated into Arabic,
it is worth remembering what a hard sell real free speech is even in
the places where it should be safest:

The University. Last week, the president of Columbia University in New
York announced an investigation into the circumstances surrounding
several pro-immigration student groups’ decision to storm the stage
and unfurl a banner rather than let a leader of the Minuteman Project
give a speech.

The Internet. Over the past two weeks, YouTube has been purging
its site of politically incorrect videos, arrogating to itself
the authority to remove videos based on such a vaguely worded
user agreement that Saturday-morning cartoons easily violate its
"standards."

France. If there is a birthplace for the Jeffersonian ideals embodied
in our Bill of Rights, France is one of two contenders. Last week,
the lower house of parliament there decided that anyone who disagrees
with historical accounts of the Armenian genocide should go to jail
for a year.

With American and NATO troops in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan,
trying to bring a bit of freedom to places it has never been known,
it is profoundly sad that we practice that freedom so poorly here.