EU: More Censorship to "Protect" You

by Judith Bergman • March 14, 2018 at 5:00 am

There appears to be a huge disconnect here between the EU's professed concern for keeping Europeans safe -- as expressed in the one-hour rule -- and the EU's actual refusal to keep Europeans safe in the offline world. The result is that Europeans, manipulated by an untransparent, unaccountable body, will not be kept safe either online or off. And what if the content in question, as has already occurred, may be trying to warn the public about terrorism?
Regardless of these facts, including that women can no longer exercise their freedom to walk in safety in many neighborhoods of European cities, the EU has staunchly refused to stop the influx of migrants. It is, therefore, difficult to take seriously in any way the European Commission's claim that the security, offline and online, of EU citizens is a "top priority". If that were true, why does not Europe simply close the borders? Instead, the EU actually sues EU countries -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- who refuse to endanger their citizens by admitting the quota of migrants that the EU assigns for them.
These EU ultimatums also fail to take into account what a recent study showed: that the second most important factor in the radicalization of Muslims, after Islam itself, is the environment, namely the mosques and imams to which Muslims go and on which they rely. Although the internet evidently does play a role in the radicalization process, the study showed that face-to-face encounters were more important, and that dawa, proselytizing Islam, plays a central role in this process.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

On March 1, The European Commission -- the unelected executive branch of the European Union -- told social media companies to remove illegal online terrorist content within an hour, or risk facing EU-wide legislation on the topic. The ultimatum was part of a new set of recommendations that will apply to all forms of "illegal content" online, "from terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products and copyright infringement."

The European Commission said, "Considering that terrorist content is most harmful in the first hours of its appearance online, all companies should remove such content within one hour from its referral as a general rule".

While the one-hour ultimatum is ostensibly only about terrorist content, this is how the European Commission motivated the new recommendations:

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Fundamentalist Terrorists Benefit from "Fundamental Fairness"

by Sandra Parker • March 14, 2018 at 4:00 am

An American jury unanimously found the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) liable for the terror that had been inflicted against these American citizens.
Late last year, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the verdict. The Circuit's strange reasoning was that "fundamental fairness" does not allow U.S. courts to exercise civil jurisdiction over terrorists who act outside of U.S. territory.
American courts have long held that the Due Process Clause does not bar the federal government from freezing the assets of terrorists, bringing them to face criminal trial, or even imposing the death penalty upon them.
Given the Second Circuit Court's controversial decision, the case warrants an opinion from the Supreme Court.

Pictured: The Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse, home of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in New York City. (Image source: Heather Paul/Flickr)

In January of 2002, a 28-year-old Palestinian woman named Wafa Idris detonated a 22-pound bomb outside a Jerusalem shoe store. The explosion killed 81-year-old Pinhas Tokatli, and injured more than 100 other people – including an American citizen named Mark Sokolow. His wife and two of his daughters were also wounded in the attack.

Two years later, Sokolow joined with ten other American families who had been wounded or lost loved ones at the hands of Palestinian terrorists, and sued the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under the 1992 Antiterrorism Act.

The plaintiffs in the case alleged that Idris and other Palestinian terrorists had killed and wounded Americans with the PLO's support. In addition, in what has come to be known as the Palestinian Authority's (PA) "pay-to-slay" policy, the plaintiffs also alleged that terrorists and their families were receiving salaries and stipends as compensation for their crimes.

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