Daily Archives: 15 January 2015

Defending Freedom of Speech, Al Jazeera Style

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A leaked email from Al Jazeera English Editor and Executive Producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr, obtained by Fox News, had this remark, among others, in it:

Was this really an attack on “free speech?” Who is attacking free speech here exactly?

Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile.

Khadr also suggested that the slogan “I am Charlie” is

an alienating slogan—with us or against us type of statement—one can be anti-CH’s racism and ALSO against murdering people.

It may well be that being “obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile;” however, the rub is in whose definition of obnoxious, whose definition of offensive, whose definition of appropriate response to offensiveness or to obnoxiousness is to be applied. When governments make those definitions, all we have is tyranny and the arbitrary rule of a northern Korea, or a Soviet Union, or an East Germany. Or an Iran, or a Hussein Iraq. Or an al Qaeda or an ISIS.

When individuals are free to determine the appropriate sanction to be mayhem, all we have is a Hobbesian existence where the strong determine, arbitrarily, what is “right,” and the weak must obey or die.

Murdering someone—or even “merely” assaulting someone—just because the murderer or the assaulter was offended or thinks the victim’s behavior infantile is always and everywhere brutally wrong, and the deed wants the severest of responses and sanctions.

All apologists like al Jazeera do is give these murderous despotisms and barbarians cover.

If we’re to have free speech, we must be free to be obnoxious and offensive, too, else we have no freedom of speech: someone always will define a remark as out of bounds, and ultimately all speech not preapproved by the strongest becomes forbidden.

And we will have free speech—it’s a necessary part of that Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness that are an indivisible part of the fabric of every man’s very existence—Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, etc, alike. Nor al Jazeeras, nor barbarians, nor Muslim terrorists, nor anyone else can deny us that, even though they may murder our bodies. Full stop.

It’s also true that one can stand against racism and against murdering people at the same time. But this is Khadr’s cynical strawman. There’s no racism involved here. There’s no oppression of any group of people here. Khadr will have to play with that dolly without me.

Syria and the Bomb

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In 2007, an Israeli air strike blew up Syria’s nuclear reactor facility (the reactor itself wasn’t yet completed) and with it Syria’s nuclear weapons program.

Or so we thought at the time. If Spiegel Online International‘s reporting can be taken as even a bit accurate, al Assad is still working on a bomb at a couple of different facilities.

According to IAEA research, Syria possesses up to 50 tons of natural uranium, enough material for three to five bombs once the enrichment procedure is completed.

Keep in mind that, with Israel’s size, three to five bombs is all it would take for this Iranian client state to wipe Israel off the map.

And this:

The Institute for Science and International Security in Washington D.C. likewise has strong indications for the existence of such stockpiles [including fuel rods for the blown up reactor-under-construction]….

And:

Analysts say that the Syrian atomic weapon program has continued in a secret, underground location. According to information they have obtained, approximately 8,000 fuel rods are stored there.

I hate unnamed sources of any sort; this is why such reporting needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But what if the reporting is accurate?

Outside Qusayr, which is 20 miles southwest of Homs (and which would be an added motive for Syria’s desperation to recapture Homs from the Syrian rebels)

satellite images show six structures: a guard house and five sheds, three of which conceal entrances to the facility below. The site also has special access to the power grid, connected to the nearby city of Blosah. A particularly suspicious detail is the deep well which connects the facility with Zaita Lake, four kilometers away. Such a connection is unnecessary for a conventional weapons cache, but it is essential for a nuclear facility.

SOI also claims to have copies of Hezbollah communications that refer to the “atomic factory” and that mentions Qusayr.

What worries me if even a couple of details are being accurately reported is this: what happens if Hezbollah, or ISIS, or al Qaeda units operating in Syria get hold of the raw uranium or the fuel rods—which are a more purified version of the uranium?