Ports and pitchforks

By Diana West
Washington Times | March 3, 2006

One of the weirder sideshows to open alongside a main event — the proposed operational transfer of six major American ports to a firm owned by the United Arab Emirates — is the growing chorus of road-company Zolas, “J’accusing” everybody opposed to the sale of “xenophobia,” “isolationist mass hysteria,” “bigotry,” “nativism,” “panic,” and “prejudice” against innocent Araby.

Such accusations are supposed to make you hang your head in shame. They make me shake mine in consternation — wondering how in tarnation a hefty chunk of the American elite has the chutzpah to castigate the American people (64 percent of whom, says a Rasmussen poll, think the deal is a Bad Thing) for “xenophobia” and “prejudice” on behalf of a culture that is the embodiment of xenophobia and prejudice. The words precisely describe the official state of normal in the Arab-Islamic world since at least 1948, when the modern state of Israel was founded.

Nonetheless, we’re the “pitchfork-wielding xenophobes” en route to the “Dark Ages,” says the New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman. I’d say we’re heading in the other direction, trying to escape the Dark Ages — as represented by the spreading influence of sharia (Islamic law), which, in terms of the sharia-compliant port deal, would make deep inroads into global financial markets. I would add, as Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen have suggested in this newspaper, “It’s time for the United States to limit financial transactions that involve American companies” — and the U.S. government — “to governance by secular laws.” Continue reading “Ports and pitchforks” →

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Hamas More Don’t We Know?

Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review | March 1, 2006

The $8 billion deal to turn over commercial shipping operations at major American ports to Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, continues to stoke controversy. The Bush administration and other supporters of the deal insist that, despite a history of facilitating al Qaeda — including what the 9/11 Commission described as contacts between high-regime officials and Osama bin Laden himself — the UAE is a “good friend” and a valuable ally in the war on terror.

Nevertheless, it has become necessary to ask whether, even now, the UAE is in felony violation of the 1996 law that has become the cornerstone of U.S. counterterrorism enforcement. Is the UAE providing material support to Hamas, a specially designated terrorist organization?

Any American citizen doing such a thing would be sent to prison. Any American company doing it would surely be convicted and put out of business â€” and its principals liable for prosecution and imprisonment. Continue reading “Hamas More Don’t We Know?” →

Integrated wealth management: the new direction for portfolio managers

By Jean L. P. Brunel

Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc, 2006, London

NOTES:
p. 38, Heidi L. Schneider and Alyssa A. Lappen, “Behavioral Finance: Old Wine in a New Bottle,” Journal of Wealth Management, Fall 2000, p. 11.

International and comparative perspectives on defamation, free speech and privacy

by Russell L. Weaver* and David F. Partlett**
New York Law School Law Review | 2005/2006

* Professor of Law and Distinguished University Scholar, University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.

** Vice President, Dean, and Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law.

Text: 3,772 words
SUMMARY:
… More than four decades have elapsed since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and time has given way to deeper reflection. … Sullivan involved the free speech rights of activists in the civil rights movement and the Alabama defamation law challenged in Sullivan had little salience in the vortex of that struggle. … ” Professor Eugenie Brouillet in Free Speech, Reputation, and the Canadian Balance also focuses on the Canadian approach to reputation and speech and agrees that Canada has struck a different balance than the United States. … In our article Defamation, Free Speech, and Democratic Governance, we discuss how Australia and England rejected Sullivan in favor of a speech-enhancing doctrine based on extensions of common law qualified privilege. … ” The article examines how the Australian and English extensions of common law qualified privilege affect media reporting and contrasts their impact with that of the Sullivan decision. … Professor Clive Walker in Reforming the Crime of Libel focuses on criminal libel rather than civil libel. … Today, however, they are of greater importance as we see that ideas about reputation, privacy, and free speech are fluid and subject to much practical contention. …
Citation:
n48. Ehrenfeld v. Mahfouz, 2005 WL 696769 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 23, 2005) (granting a motion to effect service of process). See also Sara Ivry, Seeking U.S. Turf for a Free-Speech Flight, N.Y. Times, Apr. 4, 2005, at C8; Dominic Kennedy, Libel and Money – Why British Courts are Choice of the World, Times (UK), May 19, 2005, at 6; Dominic Kennedy, Judge Attacks Author Over Libel Tourism Allegation, Times (UK), June 16, 2005, at 24; Alyssa A. Lappen, Libel Wars, FrontPage Mag., July 18, 2005; Jeffrey Toobin, Let’s Go: Libel, The New Yorker, Aug. 8, 2005, at 36.

Incitement in the Mosques–Testing the Limits of Free Speech and Religious Liberty

By Kenneth Lasson

University of Baltimore School of Law,

Footnote 20. See Alyssa A. Lappen, “Ford Has A Better Idea: One Nation Under Allah,” FrontPageMagazine.com (Dec. 30, 2003), http://frontpagemag.com/ ArticleslPrintable.asp?ID= 11513.

citation on p. 10

Incitement in the mosques:

Incitement in the Mosques:
Testing the limits of free speech and religious liberty

By Kenneth Lasson*
Whittier Law Review | Fall, 2005

* Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law [with diligent research assistance on this article from Martin Cohen].

Text: 28,778 words

SUMMARY:
… Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country.

… In April of 2004, for example, a Muslim preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem referred to Jews as “sons of monkeys and pigs,” and as “murderers of prophets.”

… In an Al-Aqsa Mosque sermon, the United States-sponsored road map was called by Sheikh Yousef Abu Sneina one of the plots fabricated against the Palestinian people like the Oslo accords and the Camp David summit.

… Some clerics now openly preach incitement, urging fellow Muslims to follow the path of the jihad by destroying Jews, who continue to be vilified as “pigs and monkeys.”

… Official PA television offers a children’s program that glorifies massacres of civilians and suicide bombings, and broadcasts sermons that “continue to encourage terrorist jihad against all Jews.”

… It is not difficult to draw an analogy between the symbolic speech in Virginia v. Black and sermons promoting terror between the recent history of violence in Muslim society and the sermons related to jihad.

… It should go without saying that there are many similarities between the symbolic speech (cross burning) in Black and sermons promoting terror between the recent history of violence in Muslim society and the sermons related to jihad. …

Citation:
n20. See Alyssa A. Lappen, “Ford Has A Better Idea: One Nation Under Allah,” FrontPageMagazine.com (Dec. 30, 2003), http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=11513.