Borders finally got around to responding to me… with the same form letter as I have seen elsewhere:
Dear Dale,
Thank you for your expression of concern about our decision not to carry the issue of Free Inquiry magazine featuring cartoons depicting Muhammad. Borders is committed to our customers’ right to choose what to read and what to buy and to the First Amendment right of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. In this particular case, we decided not to stock this issue in our stores because we place a priority on the safety and security of our customers and our employees. We believe that carrying this issue presented a challenge to that priority.
We value your thoughts and sincerely appreciate that you invested your time to tell us how you feel about the issue. I can assure you that our management team gave careful deliberation to this decision and considered all sides of the issue before reaching this conclusion. As always, we are interested in customer feedback about our choices and while we know you do not agree with our position, we hope you can understand the challenge of balancing the needs of our customers, employees and our communities.
I hope that this information is helpful. If you should have any other questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Borders Customer Care
http://www.bordersstores.com
I have responded:
Yes, I’ve seen this form reply posted on other well read blogs.
There are young americans dying overseas to fight these scumbags. You do not even have the guts to stand up against them on your own turf. By folding you endanger others. You prove that threats work.
You are, to use old fashioned terminology, lily livered cowards with yellow stripes down your back a mile wide and you are being called out on it.
Get some backbone. There is more to life than avoiding risk. Your life has to stand for something.
Borders does not stand for anything except cowering in a hole praying it will be left alone… for a little while longer.
Yes, it is indeed their right to be cowards. It is likewise my right to call them on it.
Bravo, Dale!
I read somewhere – foolishly didn’t save the reference – that Borders has been bought by a company in Dubai. I don’t know whether it’s true.
I’m sure the underpaid assistants in Borders would leap at the chance of dying, or even just being maimed for life, to assuage Mr Dale Amon’s moral outrage.
“I’m sure the underpaid assistants in Borders would leap at the chance of dying, or even just being maimed for life, to assuage Mr Dale Amon’s moral outrage.”
Why would such a climate have evolved in the United States, Matt O’Hallaran, in which this could be written with a straight face? (Of course, you could have written it sniggering.)
Could it be the success of similar bullying and threats from deeply ridiculous people, many of them burqa-ed to the nines and inexplicably carrying threatening signs written in English in their own, shithole, countries?
Appeasement, as we have learned (or not) through thousands of years of history, doesn’t work. It only encourages the advancement of the bullies. Borders is, essentially, finished. The bullies will have won no matter how low Borders crouched, no matter how they rolled over on their back and did a puppy-like submissive little wee.
Anyway, I think these points are moot, because I believe their company has been sold to a Muslim company in the UAE.
Chills the blood, eh?
Verity, welcome back! Not sure what the recent row was about, but I enjoy your posts, at least the ones I have read (so much good stuff at samizdata and so little time to read it all).
Matt O’-
I believe you have a point. In as much as I agree in principle with Dale, the problem is that the Islamist scum would gladly leave their goat’s or sheep’s … er, ah … behind, if they thought they could strike a juicy target like Borders. The executives of Borders, even if they aren’t Dhimmi’s yet as per Verity’s recollection, still cannot create an unsafe work environment or else there will be a host of bottom feeding American lawyers who would love to have at them, especially if they could get the *mental anguish* angle.
So onward with the Blogoshpere!
Barnes and Noble stocked it.
After years of being bugged I finally joined the Borders Rewards thingy . Then they screw everyone who beileves in free speech and they still expect me to buy books there.
The underpaid drones can work at mc doos if they are scared of ideas. Most people I know who work with books are not cowards, whatever their politics are ready to stand up for their right to sell books that may offend some people.
I think the corporate management at Borders not only insulted the US Constitution (as they have a right to do) but they insulted their own workers by assuming that they are gutless chickenfeed dhimmis.
Taylor-
I agree with you, but I think that we can use our technical savvy to give the Jihadi goat fiddlers coniptions. Let’s proliferate websites that proudly display Mo-toons, sell “satanic”books and so on. De-centralization is the key since these freaks are drawn to high visability targets (like the World Trade Center or large chain stores).
They are now focused on the Internet as “anti-Islamic” so that is where I believe we can give them a heaping helping of heartburn to go with their Hummus and Cous-Cous.
I used to be a regular customer at Borders…
Sunday, I dropped $100 at B&N.
I’m going to take the receipt, along with old receipts from Borders, photocopy them, and use the photocopy for a letter.
Not worth writing back to Borders. By now someeone there must have read Dale’s articles on the matter so one would hope that they must be aware of how dissatisfied people are with their stance over the Free Inquiry magazine issue, always presuming Borders’ staff can actually read. Perhaps they might also take the frustrated advice of Hezbollah’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, who said that Muslims have no spine for action, citing the failure of anyone to carry “out the fatwa of Imam Khomeini against the renegade Salman Rushdie”.
All that apart I trust that Borders will just do the usual corporate self-denial thing by jumping into the large hole they have dug for themselves and then pulling it over their heads.
By openly stating that they refuse to stock a book that might lead to violence, Borders will only ensure that the demands of these nutters will increase. I can certainly understand their response, but I nevertheless second what Dale said.
In the end, though, it is a private commercial firm and is entitled to do what it wants and live with the consequences.
Not only is there the matter of having guts… there is a business issue here. Borders has now ceded a veto control over what they place on their shelves. IIslamist? How can they refuse once they’ve already given in . Anti-abortionist? Just ring up and mention the doctors who were killed. Books about hunting? Oh, just wait until the PETAnuts ring them. An art book with the Piss-Christ image? I’m sure there are some fundies who didn’t consider a good bomb threat last time around. We can go on and on.
They have met the enemy and they peed themselves. Now they are slaves.
The last time someone speculated on a company (Carrefour) being sold to the ME it turned out to be hogwash, and I strongly suspect this is the case this time. Having done a quick google, and looked through the most recent SEC filings, I note that the firm’s ownership is widely dispersed (it is of course a publicly quoted company) and that the larger investors (the biggest holding about 10%) are investment banks and trusts (Link). So for another company to buy it (typically in some sort of private equity deal) there would have to be a significantly large number of shareholders all willing to sell. And I can’t find any reference to such a deal. The Borders web site reports its dividend policy, which it wouldn’t if it had been taken private. So I suspect that we can’t explain away the decision not to stock the magazine by reference to ME investors. Maybe losing a bookstore in the World Trade Centre helped their thinking. As of today I have not received a response to my critical email to Borders.
Thanks, Mark H.
Uain, I don’t know who you are to “welcome” me back and haven’t a clue what you are talking about when you say “not sure what the row was about”. What row? With whom?
dale– How keen would you be to stand in a market place frequented by Muslim weirdoes, hawking cartoons of their Prophet?
Don’t just demand that Borders workers should die for your principles– put your own neck on the line first. An ounce of example is worth a ton of exhortation, you know.
David Nilsson – They backed down. They surrendered to Islamofascism (and I am firmly of the belief that any other kind of Islam is rare indeed).
They should have hired armed security guards for the week (or the month) that that issue of the publication was on sale. They should have asked customers entering the store – just while the publication was on sale – to show ID. They should have refused to admit anyone wearing a burqa or any other form of bin liner or black sheeting.
They should have patted down anyone “of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean appearance” (BBC-speak for Muslim) before allowing them in the store.
They should have had signs in the window to say why they were taking these steps. They should have taken a stand. Instead, they caved, apparently without the Islamics even having had to makea single threat.
David Nilsson – Why do you capitalise “prophet”?
The difference is that I do not own a shop… but then here I am taking stands in a globally accessible place with 20000 readers a day from god and cthulu only know where noting carefully what I say…
I firmly believe that Borders faced close to ZERO risk. ZERO. ZILCH. NADA.
Now everyone has taken note of just how easy they are to push around.
Agree with Dale. In any event, Borders doesn’t even appear to have received any threats. This was a pre-emptive obeisance.
Verity-
On another thread there were folks asking you not to post. I am not one of the inner sanctum here, so I don’t know what passes for friendly banter or actual disregard. So I thought you were being set upon and was glad to see you came back on this thread. Call me a fool if you must, but I do enjoy your posts.
In my experience here, the strength of samizdata is the wide range of insights and experiences of the commentariat.
Dale, that argument would be more persuasive if you posted your real home address on that same “globally accessible place”.
If the nutters don’t know where you live, what real risk do you run?
Are you up to anything new in Civilization? Still in Somerset?
In other words, let’s not be silly. This is the internet.
“Maybe losing a bookstore in the World Trade Centre helped their thinking.”
Helped?? Losing a store should have set them thinking about the best way to avoid losing another one. And if they came up with the idea of appeasing a bunch of bloodthirsty murderers who are looking for weak targets to attack, all I can say is they need to think again. Standing up to religious censors would be a much better tactic, practically and morally.