Stephane Despatie Exit Revue de poesie

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Michael A. Giaquinto

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The other cartoon on the museum is posted here:  https://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/09/hrant-r-russian.html

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Unsurprisingly, no response was ever received from Giaquinto...

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From: George Slone

Sent: Monday, February 17, 2020 8:55 AM

To: exhibit@ccmoa.org <exhibit@ccmoa.org>; cmfadirector@ccmoa.org <cmfadirector@ccmoa.org>; education@ccmoa.org <education@ccmoa.org>; hrussian@comcast.net <hrussian@comcast.net>

Cc: Christopher Busa <cbusa@comcast.net>

Subject: Giaquinto satirized in a new P. Maudit cartoon

 

To Michael A. Giaquinto, Exhibitions Curator, Cape Cod Museum of Art:  

Surprise!  No response at all from you regarding my December 14th art-exhibit proposal (see below).  In any case, attached is a cartoon I sketched on you yesterday.  It incarnates your Achilles heel.  Examine it, that is, if you seek to improve, as opposed to remaining in your Chamber-of-Commerce safe space of "acceptable" art.  Likely, I will eventually include the cartoon and exhibit proposal in a flyer, which I shall distribute in front of your museum as a cogent example of CAPE COD CENSORSHIP.  The curators of art on Cape Cod are truly shameful in their utter inability to deal with rare criticism that comes their way.  They are censors and against the very FREEDOM OF ART!

Sincerely,

G. Tod Slone (PhD—Université de Nantes, FR), aka P. Maudit, Radioactive Dissident, Founding Editor (1998)

The American Dissident, a 501c3 Nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence

www.theamericandissident.org

wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com

todslone@hotmail.com

217 Commerce Rd.

Barnstable, MA 02630

An Art Exhibit Proposal:  FREEDOM OF ART vs. THE HANDS THAT FEED

To criticize the hands that feed, or potentially can feed, constitutes the prime taboo of artists (and poets and writers) today, one that most of them cannot even contemplate as a possibility.  Might that incapacity implicate clear cooptation and castration?  Probably.  

As an artist, I’d like to see the art/academic/literary  establishment open its hermetically-sealed doors to art (and poetry and writing) that dares to criticize it, including its multitude of organizations, cultural apparatchiks, and icons.  

In vain, I have tried prying open those doors one the past several decades, but have almost always encountered the same reaction, one of silence, ad hominem, and/or outright absurdity, as in, for example:   

—“go away troll” (dyke poet Eileen Myles)

—“Your idea of criticism, from the shrillness of your rants, excludes any sense of illumination. Please do not contact me again.” (Chris Busa, Ed., Provincetown Arts)

—“Please feel free to criticise Quillette and myself in any forum you see fit. However please refrain from submitting to us in the future.” (Claire Lehmann, Ed., Quillette, “a platform for free thought”

Art publishers, art editors, art museum curators, and artists truly do tend to possess extremely thin skin.  I have knocked on the doors of both local and national establishments, including Cape Cod Art, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Cape Cod Art Center, Provincetown Arts, Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown, Mid-Cape Cultural Council, Cultural Center of Cape Cod, the NEA, ALA, PEN New England, and on and on.   Sturgis library was the only door that opened and allowed me in September 2011 to exhibit some of my establishment-critical “work.”  Sadly, nine months later, its director, Lucy Loomis, permanently banned me without warning or due process, five days after I’d posted an open letter critical of its hypocrisy, in particular, with regards to its collection development statement: “libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view.”  Loomis rejected a free subscription offer to the nonprofit magazine I publish.  In fact, not one library on Cape Cod will subscribe to it, whereas  Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, NYPublic Library, Newton Free Public Library, and a handful of others subscribe.  

Today, my civil rights are being denied because I cannot attend any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library.  Nobody on Cape gives a damn about that, not even the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission. 

In any event, I would like to exhibit critical cartoons and critical aquarelles, especially regarding the local art and literary establishment, including the two cartoons I sketched on the Cape Cod Museum of Art. 

 

HR 569

Below is the front cover and editorial for Issue #31 (2016), which I decided to publish in an effort, likely futile, to somehow help convince Tricia Somers that the assaults on free speech are far more from the left, than from the right.  Seated on the Democrat donkey is the one of the bill's Sponsors,  Rep. Donald S. Beyer, Jr. [D-VA-8].  On the left is Ibrahim Hooper, Communications Director, CAIR, then on the right is Nihad Awad, Exec Director, CAIR and Roula Allouch, National Board Chair, CAIR.

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..Editorial

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Political correctness dead-bolts the mind and rigs an alarm system that demonizes any challenge to orthodoxy…  [It] divides society into an oppressor class and a victim class, and elevates group rights over individual rights. In this view, individuals have only the distinction of drops of water in a clear pond… Politically correct superstition is now dominant, a veritable jihad of junkthought, and increasingly deployed by government.

—Lloyd Billingsley

Absolut Conformity 
From The Age of Reason to The Age of Multiculti
Assaults on Freedom of Expression

Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.  

—Omar Ahad, co-founder of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

 

Without freedom of speech and expression, art and poetry inevitably become safe and innocuous… for the pillars of society.  As PC continues its conquest of the American mind, art and poetry continue on their way to becoming mere state-friendly ornamentation.  Poet laureates ineluctably illustrate the point.

     America seems to have become the last bastion of freedom of speech in the West.  Canada and the EU possess so-called hate-speech laws, whereas the US does not yet possess such laws, though it is clearly heading in that direction, as noted by Robert Spencer:  “We already have hate crimes in the United States.  […] The difference between a crime and a hate crime.  Well, it is speech.  And so we already have hate speech in the United States.”  

     The front cover of this issue of The AD was created as a result of HR 569, a bill that seeks to be the first hate-speech or anti-blasphemy law in America.  It clearly contravenes the First Amendment.  Over 82 Democrat congressmen are co-sponsors of it.  Only Democrats have signed on to it.  That alone ought to make a freedom-loving individual turn against the Democrat Party. A PC-groupthinker, however, would likely proclaim all Republicans racists and islamophobes, since not one Republican has yet been willing to co-sponsor the bill, which in itself is surprising considering the mass of Islamic Muslim Brotherhood money and influence pouring into both sides of the aisle.  

   Pope Francis would have people believe that an 11th Commandment exists:  Thou shalt not criticize religion! But religion tends to be anti-reason, anti-fact, and, in some cases like Islam, outright anti-freedom of speech and expression. How can a thinking individual not protest against attempts like HR 569 to limit the basic human right of freedom of speech and expression? Shamefully, President Obama and Hillary have been on the wrong side of this issue, as manifested by their collusion with the UN and its Resolution 16/18 (the Istanbul Process).  Shamefully, Trump has also been on the wrong side of this issue. Recall that he’d blamed Pamela Geller for the jihad attack on her free speech Muhammad cartoon event in Garland, TX.  Well, he’s gotten a taste of his own medicine: the media has largely blamed his speech for violence at his rallies. Thankfully, HR 569 is likely not going to be adopted. 

On another freedom note, bravo to artist Milo Moiré (see photo on p.4), who protested alone the day after the mass sex assaults in Köln at Domplatte square in Deutschland.  She stood naked, holding a sign for 20 minutes in 39 degree weather:  „Respektiert uns! Wir sind kein Freiwild, selbst wenn wir nackt sind!“ [Respect us!  We are not free game, even when we stand naked!]  Sadly, her protest will likely not convince the New Year’s Eve rapists—most, if not all, of whom were Muslim—to stop raping.  Multiculti feminists of the far left seem aberrently silent on Islam and its culture of rape.  They did not even come out from their comfy dwellings to back Milo.    

Yet on another freedom note, the following exchange (see video here: https://youtu.be/QFM6kLiUO14) between a young preacher named Joshua and an unnamed black cop took place in front of the University of Texas at Austin. It serves as an excellent example of the perhaps widespread, pitiful ignorance of the police with regards First Amendment citizen rights. It illustrates the gulf between de jura and de facto rights.  In essence, sure you have the right, but sure a cop will arrest you anyhow, put you in jail, and collect time and a half pay to watch you in court.  Yeah, that happened to me a decade ago in Concord, home of Thoreau and Emerson.  Hmm.

Intern: Um, does freedom of speech protect offensive speech?

Officer: Does freedom of speech do what?

Intern: Uh, protect offensive speech?

Officer: It doesn’t matter, freedom of speech. Someone was offended, that’s against the law. I- I don’t wanna argue with you—it’s against the law…

Intern: I’m sorry, can you say that again, it’s against the law to offend somebody?

Officer: Yes.  

    Finally, imagine being brought to court and fined for writing this—or anything else for that matter—on Facebook:  “…The ideology of Islam is every bit as loathsome, nauseating, oppressive and dehumanizing as Nazism. The massive immigration of Islamists into Denmark is the most devastating event Danish society has suffered in recent historical times.”  Flemming Nielsen was fined 1600 kroner for those words. Blasphemy is a crime in Denmark, even if the blasphemy is entirely factual and reasonable. Those depicted on the front cover of The AD want it to be a crime in America too. The Ages of Reason and Enlightenment are ever yielding to the Age of Multiculti.

I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas. One is as free to condemn Islam — or Muslims, or Jews, or blacks, or whites, or illegal aliens, or native-born citizens — as one is to condemn capitalism or Socialism or Democrats or Republicans.  To be sure, there are some kinds of speech that are unprotected by the First Amendment. But those narrow exceptions have nothing to do with “hate speech” in any conventionally used sense of the term. For instance, there is an exception for “fighting words” — face-to-face personal insults addressed to a specific person, of the sort that are likely to start an immediate fight. But this exception isn’t limited to racial or religious insults, nor does it cover all racially or religiously offensive statements.

                    —Eugene Volokh, Constitutional scholar

 

Sandra Inutiq