DailyIowan.com - Threat Stops Reading (RW Terrorism or censorship?)

[cascadiance]

Damn, this just happened in my alma mater yesterday! If this had been a Christian bible study group meeting instead of a talk on a woman's book on abortion by some "Muslim sounding" group, don't you think they'd be trying to catch those people and looking to send them to Guantanamo? Or if it wasn't "that significant" as the local officer said here, do you think that in a bible study group case they might not have canceled ('er censored) that event?

Hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I'm guessing that some anti-abortion groups might be emboldened by this sort of action in the interest of shutting down other similar events too!

From: http://media.www.dailyiowan.com/media/storage/paper599/news/2007/01/31/Metro/Threat.Stops.Reading-2687843.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dailyiowan.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com&mkey=467509

Threat stops reading
Emileigh Barnes - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 1/31/07 Section: Metro

Prairie Lights Books, an iconic Iowa City bookstore, closed early Tuesday evening after receiving a threat about a book about abortion that was to be the subject of that evening's "Live from Prairie Lights."

Krista Jacob, who edited the book Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges Facing Choice had planned to read at 7 p.m., but the store had closed by 6 p.m. because of possible safety issues.

"I was really surprised, because I always have protesters at my events, but my events always happen," Jacob said Tuesday night, unwinding over a meal at Masala, 9 S. Dubuque St. "I just really would have liked the opportunity to talk about my book."

Lauri Wollner, one of the book's contributing writers and a former antiabortion activist, agreed.

"It's scary that 'pro-life' people are threatening lives," she said.

...

[xchrom]

1. curious that the police sgt would say this:

''Iowa City police Sgt. Bill Campbell said he didn't have enough information to comment but said he thought the word "threats" might be too strong to describe the incident.''

whatever the ''it'' was -- ''it'' was enough to cancel the event -- why isn't that threatening?

[Edweird]

2. All the while they are loudly

protesting their so called "persecution" and "discrimination". As if they weren't in control of every freakin' thing. They talk out both sides of their mouths.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Scary--and terribly ironical!

"'It's scary that 'pro-life' people are threatening lives," she said."

"Pro-lifers" threatening life.

Kind of a clue, isn't it? --as to how much they really care about life.

They want to electrocute, lethally inject or hang prisoners, guilty or not. They're all for war and slaughtering ragheads, babies or not. And they particularly like slowly starving the poor--first their telephone, electricity and water, cut off, cuz their medical bills are so high they can't pay other bills. Then less and less food on the table. Then eviction from their homes. Can't find a job. Can't go to school. Life is a constant crisis. Exhaustion. Exposure. Maybe then they'll listen to Bible thumpers. Or just die, and be swept off the street like garbage.

Real Christian souls, these "pro-lifers." The only thing they are interested in is controlling the sex lives of women. It goes wa-a-a-ay back. 5th century AD. Council of Chalcedon*, where the male powermongers finally took over the Christian movement, anathematized all the earliest Christian groups who had more balanced male/female notions, and cemented this very un-Jesus-like religion with the power of the state, to be enforced by violence.

----------------

*One of my favorite facts: Two Bushite corporations now control our election results with electronic voting machines run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. One of them is Diebold--the most well-known--whose CEO, until recently, was a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser. The other, lesser known, is ES&S, a spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also have one million dollars to an extremist 'christian' group called the Chalcedon Foundation. (See above: cementing of a very un-Jesus-like religion with the power of the state, to be enforced by violence.) These are the people who "counted" 80% of the votes in the 2004 election, under a veil of corporate secrecy.

[Bonobo]

4. My Alma-Mater too! You can't know what a cool town it is unless you go.

The Daily Iowan... ah, that brings me back. Sad to hear this news.

[cascadiance]

7. It's bad enough that they had to deal with that downtown tornado last year...

Saw some of the damage in September before they tore the church and other places down. Now this.

Well the place still has soul and that won't be taken away quickly. I'm just concerned that this will be a strategy in the future that other events that are "controversial" will be forced to shut down by police or other security forces, and still give a rationale that the threats weren't serious enough to go on a crackdown to find and prosecute those who made them, and not comment on them either. It allows the police/FBI to arbitrarily shut down certain assembly of people that they don't want gathering without having to explain themselves. I would think that there should be some way of having a certain person in different communities with a certain security clearance be able to review such situations to see if the threats were indeed threatening enough to stop an event, and if they were, then whether or not they are sufficiently pursuing prosecution of them too and not trying to downplay their seriousness if the liklihood of the perpetrators being "neighborhood Christians" that would perhaps get more favorable treatment than "neighborhood Muslims" or the like.

[Zero Division]

5. Prairie Lights...I've been there many times. Shame to hear about this.

But I also know that Iowa City has some very dedicated progressive activists, some of whom I've known personally, who will make certain Krista Jacob gets her time to talk one way or another. I really miss Iowa City.

[enki23]

6. Loved Prairie Lights, and I miss Iowa City too

not my alma mater (iowa state), but i lived there for a few years while working at the hospital. it's a hell of a town. shame the anti-freedom (and anti-human) forces won that round.