well, let's see where this goes

Given all the threats to Fitna, I wonder how bad the threats for this will get?  I'll be stunned if this thing happens, The Satanic Verses is the OG of the works that cause Jihadis to go into a rabid frenzy, I'm guessing they aren't gonna be any happier about a German theatre's dramatic interpretation of it.  I wouldn't be surprised if there is a new push to get at Rushdie either.  Unfortunately, a Turkish actor has already had to withdraw from the project due to threats of attacks on him.  Then there's this,

But the head of Potsdam's security, Mathias Tänzer, said the theatre had not properly prepared authorities for the play. "When we discovered the play was in the theatre's programme, we asked them what security measures they had in mind, but they wanted neither police protection nor checks of people at the door," he said. "We're monitoring the situation, and if any concrete threats are received we'll advise the theatre to cancel."

Initially I read this and thought, wait, the theatre didn't get security for this?  Then I read that last phrase and thought maybe that was why they didn't want the Potsdam police involved with security?  At first glance, it makes you think the theatre production team was being reckless and stupid about their security.  Then you stop and think, maybe, but perhaps there's a reason they did it, and I'm thinking that last statement by Tänzer may be why.  It may well be in the best interests of Potsdam's security forces to simply shut the production down in order keep things from being stirred up.

Something we in the US need to take from this and the Fitna story is that government is not going to automatically choose civil liberties and Constitutional rights if we engage in similar criticism of hostile persons and ideologies and face similar threats.  Our Constitution is not a set of rights granted to us by our government, it is an acknowledgment by our government that those are our natural rights.  Those rights are ours to preserve. 

Governments will only go so far to defend your liberties.  Once you move past what your government will do to protect your liberties, you will either be faced with a choice of self-censorship, or to use the fullest extent of your Constitutional rights and liberties to fend for yourself.  This leaves Europeans in a much weaker position then we are in the US, particularly when it comes to self-defense. 

We can look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the obscene and truly depressing amount of difficulty she had finding security from government in both the US and Europe as an example, and she is very high profile.  Getting government sponsored security has to be even harder for a bunch of nameless people like the UK-based LiveLeak crew and a bunch of actors in Potsdam.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 04:05 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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