The Dish

Equal opportunity offense. This cartoon is particularly offensive. And I laughed. Call the Sharia police!

"It used to be the case that in order to be considered a "liberal" or someone "of the Left," one had to actually ascribe to liberal views on the important policy issues of the day – social spending, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, immigration, "judicial activism," hate speech laws, gay rights, utopian foreign policies, etc. etc. These days, to be a "liberal," such views are no longer necessary.

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required ‚Äì a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" — or, for that matter, a "conservative" — is now no longer a function of one‚Äôs actual political views, but is a function purely of one‚Äôs personal loyalty to George Bush." – Glenn Greenwald, diagnosing the current situation accurately.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if people with HIV can engage in sports, we should all celebrate. It’s a symbol of overcoming illness, staring down stigma and living fully. So I’m delighted to see that the Homeland Security Department has temporarily waived the ban on any non-American with HIV from entering the United States for the Gay Games in Chicago this summer. It’s still stunning to me, however, that the Bush administration, which has done so much to advance treatment for people with HIV and AIDS in the developing world, should still be perpetuating stigma by keeping the (largely unenforceable) ban on all HIV-positive visitors from legal entry into the U.S. Nothing stigmatizes a disease more than a country saying that no-one with HIV can enter its borders or become one of its citizens if he or she is HIV-positive. Being HIV-positive should not bar anyone from becoming an American citizen. But it does. You could remove the worry about people coming to the U.S. for free medical care by adjusting waiver requirements to ensure that immigrants have private health insurance before they get here. The stigma can be ended – if the administration finds a way.

The movie won’t be shown in much of the Arab world. It’s offensive to Muslim values.

A pro-free speech counter-demonstrator in Paris gets warned by the cops.

Here’s a case study in which the complete pessimists seem to be wrong. We’ve just seen a self-run democratic election in Haiti – with most parties accepting the results peacefully. Cultural change takes time. The debate between the neoconservatives and realists might not be so zero-sum. The neocons are right about the long term; the realists have much to contribute in assessing the short term. Why not a fusion?

A Veterans Administration nurse writes an anti-Bush letter to the editor. Next thing she knows she’s being accused of potential "sedition."

How the Western media kowtowed to Muslim intolerance. My latest Sunday Times column is now posted. I’d like to thank my editors for allowing me to vent in their paper: liberalism at its best.

"What they [the bombers] did was good. They have warned that we are here, we Muslims. People have taken notice that we are here. They died so that people would take notice . . . big meetings and conferences make no change at all. With this, at least people‚Äôs ears have pricked up," – Ali, spiritual leader of the Al-Madina Masjid mosque in Tunstall Road, Beeston, where London’s 7/7 bombers had worshipped. Check out the full story for how Islamist terrorists receive backing from some mainstream clerics in Britain.

Its important to keep an eye on moments of Western abandonment of freedoms to accommodate Islamists and over-sensitive mainstream Muslims. An email from Denmark is a pretty good place to start:

"Here is an interesting bit of background that has been overlooked, but is a perfect example of the chill on freedom of ideas that is going on here.

On Oct. 4, 2004 (a month before Theo Van Gogh was murdered), a professor at Copenhagen University’s Middle East Studies program (the Carsten Niebuhr Institute) was lured into a car by 3 Arabic-speaking men. He was then verbally abused for reading aloud from the Koran in his classroom (with the reason given that he is a Jewish "infidel") and viciously beaten. As they threw him out of the car, his attackers threatened to murder him and his family if he went to the police.

In the aftermath, the university’s head of department gave the following telling account:

"We have members of Hizb ut-Tahrir (an extremist group that on its Danish website has advocated the murder of Jews "wherever they are found") that are trying to solicit new members. They never let themselves be known, but suddenly a poster will appear with a veiled incitement to kill Jews, or pamphlets will be pushed under someone’s door. We have apparently been subjected to a form of infiltration (…) So there are several reasons, independent of one another, that have made me change my opinion on the university as an open place, where all can come and go. The world has changed. Today, we simply have to know who we are letting in."

Translated from the Danish Wikipedia: The chairman of the Danish branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Fadi Abdullatif, was in 2003 sentenced to a 60-day suspended sentence for threats, aggravated harassment, and incitement to murder Jews (…) or distributing leaflets directed at Jews with the following quote from the Koran: "And kill them, wherever you find them, and drive them, wherefrom they drove you."

Yet, Denmark has continued to allow this group to operate, which shows how inclusive this country’s freedom of speech norms truly are."

The Danes allow murderous Islamist thugs to practice free speech, including the advocacy of murdering Jews, but are not allowed to publish cartoons revealing the extent of the intimidation – without consequences.