Is there some way we can make Senator Doug Finley the next Canadian Prime Minister?
“Honourable Senators,
“I rise to call the attention of the Senate to the erosion of freedom of speech in Canada.”
“There could scarcely be a more important issue than this.
“Freedom of speech is, and always has been, the bedrock of our Canadian democracy.
“The great Alan Borovoy, who was the head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association for more than forty years, calls freedom of speech a “strategic freedom”.
“Because it is the freedom upon which all of our other freedoms are built.
“For example, how could we exercise our democratic right to hold elections, without free speech?
“How could we have a fair trial, without free speech?
“And what would be the point of freedom of assembly, if we couldn’t talk freely at a public meeting?
“It is the most important freedom. Indeed, if you had all of your other rights taken away, you could still win them back with freedom of speech.
“Benjamin Franklin once said that “Without Freedom of thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such thing as public Liberty, without Freedom of speech”
“Freedom of speech is embedded in Parliament’s DNA. The word Parliament itself comes from the French word, parler — to speak.
“And as Parliamentarians, we guard our freedom jealously. No Member of Parliament or the Senate may be sued for anything he says in here. Our freedom of speech is absolute.
“And yet just last week, only a few miles from here, censorship reared its ugly head.
“Ann Coulter, an American political commentator, had been invited to speak at the University of Ottawa.
“But before she even said a word, she was served with a letter from Francois Houle, the university’s vice-president, containing a thinly-veiled threat that she could face criminal charges if she proceeded with her speech.
“And on the night of her speech, an unruly mob of nearly 1,000 people, some of whom had publicly mused about assaulting her, succeeded in shutting down her lecture, after overwhelmed police said they could not guarantee her safety.
“Colleagues, it was the most un-Canadian display I have seen in years.
“It was so shocking that hundreds of foreign news media covered the fiasco, from the BBC to the New York Times to CNN.
“It was an embarrassing moment for Canada, because it besmirched our reputation as a bastion of human rights, a reputation hard-won in places like Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach, and Kandahar.
“More important than international embarrassment is the truth those ugly news stories revealed.
“Too many Canadians, especially those in positions of authority, have replaced the real human right of freedom of speech with a counterfeit human right not to be offended.
“An angry mob is bad enough. That might be written off as misguided youths, overcome by their enthusiasm.
“But such excuses are not available to a university vice president who obviously wrote his warning letter to Ms. Coulter after careful thought.
“Ann Coulter is controversial. She is not to everyone’s taste. But that is irrelevant.
“Because freedom of speech means nothing if it only applies to people with whom we agree. To quote George Orwell, “Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
“In a pluralistic society like Canada, we must protect our right to peacefully disagree with each other. We must allow a diversity of opinion – even if we find some opinions offensive.
“Unless someone actually counsels violence or other crimes, we must never use the law to silence them.
“Freedom of speech is as Canadian as maple syrup, hockey and the Northern Lights. It’s part of our national identity, our history and our culture.
“It is section two of our 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, listed as one of our “fundamental freedoms”.
“And it’s in the very first section of Canada’s 1960 Bill of Rights.
“But our Canadian tradition of liberty goes much farther back than that.
“In 1835, a 30-year-old newspaper publisher in Nova Scotia was charged with seditious libel for exposing corruption amongst Halifax politicians.
“The judge instructed the jury to convict him. At the time, truth was not a defence.
“But the publisher passionately called on the jury to, quote “leave an unshackled press as a legacy to your children”, unquote. After just ten minutes of deliberations, the jury acquitted him.
“That young man, of course, was Joseph Howe, who would go on to become the Premier of Nova Scotia.
“Our Canadian tradition of free speech is even older than that. It is part of our inheritance from Great Britain and France.
“Les Québécois sont les héritiers de l’article 11 de la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789.
“L’article stipule que : « La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l’homme; tout citoyen peut donc parler, écrire [et] imprimer librement … »
“La France a produit le défenseur de la libre expression le plus réputé dans le monde, François-Marie Arouet, mieux connu sous son nom de plume, Voltaire.
“Voltaire était un provocateur, qui usait de la satire et de la critique pour faire pression en faveur de réformes politiques et religieuses. Il en a payé le prix personnel, face aux censeurs et aux menaces de poursuites.
“Voltaire put it best when he wrote “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
“His passionate advocacy helped shape liberty on both sides of the Atlantic.
“English Canada has an impressive legacy of free speech, too. Like Voltaire, John Milton, the great poet who wrote Paradise Lost, was constantly hounded for his political views.
“His 1644 pamphlet on free speech, called Areopagitica, is perhaps the greatest defence of free speech ever written, and it is as relevant today as it was 350 years ago.
“In it, Milton wrote, quote, “let [truth] and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” and “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature… but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.”
“Yet, despite our 400 year tradition of free speech, the tyrannical instinct to censor still exists.
“We saw it on a university campus last week. And we see it every week in Canada’s misleadingly-named human rights commissions.
“This week, in Vancouver, a stand-up comedian named Guy Earle goes on trial before the B.C. human rights tribunal for the crime of telling jokes that someone didn’t find funny.
“An audience member who heckled him is suing him for $20,000 because she found his retorts offensive.
“They may have been offensive. But what’s more offensive is that a government agency would be the arbiter of good taste or humour.
“Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years of hard labour for telling a joke about Stalin’s moustache. It’s a disgrace that Canada is now putting comedians on trial, too. Earle has already spent $20,000 defending himself.
“There is not a lot that the Senate can do about the B.C. human rights tribunal. But our own Canadian Human Rights Commission has egregiously violated freedom of speech — without any shame.
“In a censorship trial in 2007, a CHRC investigator named Dean Steacy testified[1] that, quote “freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.”
“He actually said that. The Canadian Human Rights Commission actually admits they don’t give free speech any value.
“That’s totally unacceptable.
“Freedom of speech is the great non-partisan principle that every member of Parliament can agree on — that every Canadian can agree on.
“I will never tire of quoting the great Liberal prime minister, Wilfred Laurier, when he said “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.”
“And I will readily give credit to Keith Martin, the Liberal MP from British Columbia, who, two years ago, introduced a private member’s motion to repeal the Censorship provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
“Fellow Senators, I called for this inquiry to accomplish five things:
1. To reaffirm that freedom of speech is a great Canadian principle, that goes back hundreds of years;
2. To put Canada’s censors on notice that their days of infringing upon our freedoms with impunity are over;
3. To show moral support for those who are battling censors;
4. To inquire into the details of what went so desperately wrong at the University of Ottawa, to ensure those awful events never happen again;
5. To inspire a debate that may lead to a re-definition of Section 13.1 of the Human Rights Act;
“Colleagues, there are times for partisan debate, when the parties must naturally be at odds with one another. This is not one of those times.
“Freedom of speech, and respect for differing views, is the foundational principle of our entire Parliamentary system – indeed for our entire legal system as well.
“I look forward to the constructive comments of my friends on both sides of the aisle, to build on the bi-partisan history that Canadian free speech enjoys.
“If we can rededicate our parliament to protecting this most important right, we will have done our country a great service.
“But if we fail to stop and indeed reverse this erosion of freedom, we will have failed our most basic duty – the duty to uphold our Constitution and the rights it guarantees for all Canadians.
“I know that, like so many generations of Canadians before us, we will meet the challenges of our time, and live up to our responsibility to pass on to our children the same freedoms that we inherited from our parents.
“God keep our land, glorious and free.”
Is it just me, or did he just re-cap every major freespeecher argument from the last five years in one spectacular speech?
This inquiry needs to happen, and needs to achieve it’s goals. Moreover, it needs (and should have) the support of the Prime Minister and his party, if not all that of all parties in the elected House.
At any rate, Finley opened his official inquiry into the sorry state if free speech in Canada yesterday, with these stirring words. I will make a point of raising a beer to good Mr. Finley’s health and success tonight!
(via)
Popularity: 4%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: Canadian News - Canadian Politics - Censorship - Freespeechery | Tags: Alan Borovoy, America, Ann Coulter, Areopagitica, BBC, Benjamin Franklin, Bill of Rights, British Columbia, Canada, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Human Rights Act, Canadian Human Rights Commission, Censorship, Charter of Rights and Freedoms, CHRC, CNN, Dean Steacy, DNA, Doug Finley, France, freedom of speech, George Orwell, Guy Earle, Halifax, human rights commission, John Milton, Joseph Howe, Juno Beach, Kandahar, Keith Martin, New York Times, Nova Scotia, Paradise Lost, University of Ottawa, Vancouver, Vimy Ridge, Voltaire
…and, with the help of Rev. Jay Scott Newman, makes quite fine mincemeat out of the various false allegations circulating around Pope Benedict XVI, with particular focus on Sinead O’Connor’s recent ramblings.
It’s a good read, although I won’t comment on it more than that; we’ve already covered some of the surrounding issues here on the site already.
Popularity: 2%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: Catholicism | Tags: George Weigel, Jay Scott Newman, Pope Benedict XVI, sexual abuse, Sinead O'Connor, The Scandal
David Pryce-Jones looks at the public image and fortunes of Israel in a lengthy (but worth the read!) piece at NRO. A couple of things stand out from it, the first being that anti-Israel sentiment from neighbouring Arab states long predates the manufactured Palestinian “crisis”:
There was another factor as well. Between 1948 and 1967, the neighboring Arab states blockaded and boycotted Israel, and this had the unintended consequence of allowing — positively stimulating — Israel to get on with the business of settling and defining itself. From the Arab point of view, was this really a productive way of resolving what at its origins was an issue of rival nationalisms, in the final resort a boundary dispute? A foreigner like me who wanted to go from Israel to the Arab world to take the measure of the rival nationalism, had to travel with two passports via Cyprus. In Jordanian-held Jerusalem, when my wife and I were tourists at the Wailing Wall, then abandoned and desolate, children emerged from the Old City to throw stones at us. They were doing only what their elders had taught them to do, a whole population oblivious to the reality that their hostility was conditioning Israel’s Golden Age.
Israel emerged, triumphed, and prospered under the reflexive adversity of (predominantly Muslim; let’s not pretend this isn’t a factor) Arabs to the idea of Jews in their midst, and especially in proximity to Jerusalem (not like they built the place or anything). Antipathy, on the part of the Arab states, toward Israel is not a function of the Palestinian situation; the Palestinian situation is in fact a result of Arab (and Islamic) hostility toward Israel.
The Arab states could absorb every Palestinian refugee without great difficulty, but choose instead to let their fellow Muslims fester in Fatah- or Hamas-dominated ghettos, where they can at least be a thorn in the side of the Jews.
The other thing that stands out is Pryce-Jones’ observations on the rather…fickle, almost emotive nature of the liberal/progressive view of Israel (hence the name of his article). It was fine to root for Israel when they seemed like the plucky underdog struggling to survive the barbaric, overwhelming onslaughts of the Arabs. But once Israel demonstrated her ability to kick some ass? Not so much:
When Nasser moved troops into Sinai in May 1967, war became a certainty. John Anstey, editor of the Daily Telegraph Magazine, was willing to send me to cover it. A general sense of fear — more than that, panic — spread that the world was about to witness another Holocaust. Grown-up men and women were reported to be in tears over what seemed bound to come. The Six Day War that June proved that the Israelis already had a national identity strong enough to enable them to survive.
The most extraordinary thing then happened. Public opinion was reversed in exactly the process described by George Orwell in 1984 as the Two Minutes Hate. His model had been the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, whereby a stroke of the pen made allies of two totalitarian powers fundamentally hostile until then. In Hate Week, as Orwell depicted it, the speaker switches from one line to the other in mid-sentence. “A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete,” wrote Orwell, showing, as he put it, that Ignorance is Strength. “Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound tracks, photographs — all had to be rectified at lightning speed.”
Prior to that war, a very famous playwright had talked to me about the bloodthirsty Arabs and the imperative of smashing them. The next time we had a conversation, he was full of righteous indignation about Israel as an imperialist, colonizing American puppet and the need to rescue the Arabs from it. In objective reality, nothing had changed; but the roles of aggressor and victim had been switched, as it were, in mid-sentence for this man and millions like him. Purposeful lies really could manipulate public opinion…Since then, the mendacious representation of Israel as racist, illegitimate, and analogous to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa has been a regular illustration of Orwell’s Ignorance is Strength.
What changed?
Fundamentally, I think what changed is that Israel proved that she was no victim, potentially or actually. She was tough and self-sufficient, not a hapless dependent. And as such, she became the villain in the minds of millions of progressives the world over.
Includng a certain Barack Obama, who I’m told holds some important government office in the United States, which until recently had been Israel’s biggest backer and closest ally.
There’s a lesson here which we might also apply to the debate over e.g. health care reform, regarding how the likes of Obama and Nancy Pelosi regard those who can afford health insurance, and those who are in great health and see no need for insurance in the first place. These people, not being victims in need of aid and government largesse, are the enemy, villains all. Because that’s how progressives see the world: one is either a victim to be aided, or a villain to be thwarted. And the government is Superman.
Popularity: 2%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: History - Islam - Judaism - Middle Eastern Politics | Tags: 1984, Barack Obama, Cyprus, Daily Telegraph, David Pryce-Jones, Fatah, George Orwell, Germany, Hamas, health care reform, Holocaust, Islam, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, John Anstey, Jordan, Nancy Pelosi, Nasser, nationalism, Nazi, NRO, Sinai, Six Day War, South Africa, United States, Wailing Wall
In an ideal world, people would oppose the now-passed health care reform bill in the United States on rational grounds. They might decry any of these deeply negative outcomes that the proposed — now passed — reforms are likely to either cause directly or exacerbate, including:
Chicago-style politics running Washington
Double-digit unemployment
Unprecedented debt
Government takeovers of the private sector
16,500 new IRS agents
Downsized economy
Czars
Higher taxes
Wealth redistribution
Continued slaying of the unborn
Of course, this being a fallen and rather imperfect world, not everyone stands in opposition to health care reform (HCR) on the grounds that it will be a wasteful, hyper-expensive, over-regulated, freedoms-curtailing mess.
Some people (read: liberal women in California) are, for example, suddenly voicing concerns about HCR because it increases the cost of tanning sessions.
Yeah, I wish I was making that up. Tanning sessions.
Eydie McNeill was fuming about the newly passed healthcare bill, but her rage had nothing to do with socialism, death panels or the deficit.
She just likes a good tan, and because of a provision in the bill that puts a 10% additional tax on tanning salon fees, her sessions are probably going to cost her more.
“I’m angry. I’m really disappointed by all this,” said McNeill, 51, waiting for a tanning bed at the Tanning Club in Westwood. “It just feels like we’re being taxed for everything nowadays.”
No, Eydie, you aren’t being taxed over everything quite yet. Give it two to four years, when the costs of HCR really begin to spiral out of control.
Allow me to make a guess: she (Eydie) probably voted for Barack Obama back in 2008, swept along by and swooning in the rhetoric of hope, change, and “our first black president!” Of course, now that the change “everyone” (not counting between 65 and 70 percent of American citizens) had been hoping for has arrived…well…
…let’s just say that the free unicorn looks an awful lot like the Grinch’s antler dog instead. And is about as carpet-unfriendly.
You know…every time I read a story like this, la Shaidle’s conjecture makes so much more sense: perhaps women shouldn’t get to vote.
Popularity: 2%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: American News - American Politics - Health - Men and Women | Tags: America, Barack Obama, Chicago, debt, deficit, HCR, health care, health care reform, healthcare, IRS, socialism, tanning, taxes, unborn, unemployment, United States, Washington, Westwood, women
…and it killed a young boy late Sunday night.
This one probably wasn’t set off by Muslim terrorists, though. Radical leftist groups seem the more probable culprits.
Popularity: 2%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: European News - Terrorism | Tags: Athens, Greece, Terrorism
Two bombs detonated on a crowded subway in Moscow…we’ve seen that tactic before. Thirty-seven people killed at the time of the report, and it looks as though a pair of female suicide bombers were the perpetrators.
You can pretty much guess who is behind this: as Mark Steyn said, “starts with ‘I’, rhymes with ‘blam’.” Apparently, there is a group known as the Black Widows, which is part of a group of “Muslim militants from the North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency spreading from Chechnya to neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia.”
Business as usual, in other words, for the Religion of Pieces.
Popularity: 2%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: European News - Islam - Terrorism | Tags: Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Islam, Kremlin, Mark Steyn, Moscow, North Caucasus, Russia, Terrorism
Gabe at Ace’s reported on this; I meant to hit on it earlier when I saw the story on the BBC, but just managed to fire off a Tweet; curse being in a 3G-shielded building all day!
But anyhow:
The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.
Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.
A slow-down — dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow — is projected by some models of climate change.
The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Well, then!
You know, it’s funny…ever since those leaked emails from East Anglia, we’ve been seeing a steady increase in the number of stories like this. It’s almost as though…nah, couldn’t be.
Popularity: 1%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: American News - Environmentalism - Research | Tags: BBC, climate change, East Anglia, Geophysical Research Letters, global warming, Gulf Stream, The Day After Tomorrow, United States
This is significant for a couple of reasons. One, Guy Earle is a comedian, so the case is at least a litmus test as to whether humour has, or does not have, government-imposed limits in Canada. More than that, however, the case is demonstrative of how the HRCs in Canada (the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal in this specific case) can turn on those who might once have thought them not a bad thing at all.
Earle is, if memory serves, a liberal in until-recently-good standing, who made the mistake of lipping back at a pair of lesbian hecklers during a show. They filed a complaint, and the BCHRT dutifully took up the case. But unlike others whom Canada’s “human rights” apparatus has gone after, Earle is neither one of Canada’s twelve white supremacists, nor is he a single, impoverished waitress. Heck, he isn’t even a conservative author or magazine publisher! He doesn’t fit the image of the respondent in HRC cases that we’ve seen up until now.
Not that it matters. Today we shall learn, hopefully, whether it is still acceptable to make a joke at a rude, heckling lesbian’s expense.
Earle, for his part, has at least come to the correct understanding: freedom of speech is being eroded in this country. At taxpayer expense, mind you! That’s right…some of the money you and I, good Canadian reader, have forked over to the government has gone toward prosecuting Earle in this way. (Meanwhile, he’s on the hook for his own legal costs.)
A website has been set up which will hopefully provide live-ish updates of the proceedings. Do go there for the latest updates.
(via)
Popularity: 2%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: Canadian News - Canadian Politics - Celebrities - Censorship - Freespeechery - Humour | Tags: BCHRT, British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, Canada, freedom of speech, Guy Earle, HRC, human rights, lesbianism
Or any American media outlet, for that matter. Even FOX News irks me for various reasons, though at least they offer an overall more fair and balanced representation of things. Which is not to say that their representation is either fair or balanced, in any objective sense. It is, however, to say, that when it comes to fairness and balance, they do better than their contemporaries.
Case in point: CNN. If their fact-checking of a Saturday Night Live sketch that was ever so slightly critical of Barack Obama wasn’t evidence enough that they, like most other media corporations in the United States, have become a shill for the Obama administration…their characterization of this scene as being a crowd of “hundreds, at least dozens” surely must be:
Oh yeah...there's dozens of people there, for sure!
That’s the Searchlight Tea Party, which was held yesterday in Searchlight (natch), Nevada. The event was evidently attended by upwards of 20,000 people, and I suppose it is technically accurate for CNN to say that dozens of people were in attendance there; 20,000 is a goodly number of dozens (hundreds of dozens, in fact…over a thousand dozens, to be even more precise). Still, when we hear the term “dozens” of people, we typically think of groups numbering no more than thirty people at the most.
Like…oh, I don’t know…the usual number of anti-war protesters on Parliament Hill (which the CBC will typically identify as a “large crowd”) on Remembrance Day. (Except that thirty would probably be a highball estimate.)
But I digress. Wantonly.
CNN is attempting to downplay the number of attendees at Searchlight for one reason: to avoid giving the impression that opposition to Obama — and the Democrats, health care reform, and God knows what else the progressive Left want to introduce against the wishes and will of the people — is a mainstream thing. Separate and integrate, as we used to say in advanced calculus; if people who disagree with Obama can be made to think they are part of a tiny (and then perhaps delusional) minority, they can be cowed into accepting the changes that are being foist upon them. And so twenty thousand become mere dozens, at least on CNN. I would be surprised if MSNBC even bothered to run a story on Searchlight.
(via)
Popularity: 1%
Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: American Politics - Television | Tags: Barack Obama, CBC, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, Nevada, Parliament Hill, Remembrance Day, Saturday Night Live, Searchlight, Tea Party, United States
Lord Carey of Clifton, former Archbishop of Canterbury has signed a letter to the Telegraph from a number of senior bishops in the Church of England.
The letter comes on the heels of a national row over the wearing of crucifixes in public by government employees. The latest victim, a nurse at an NHS hospital in Devon, has been suspended from front line health care because she refused to remove a small crucifix from her neck.
Asian employees, however, remain free to wear a headscarf. The bishops call it a double-standard and are demanding equality in the workplace.
In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, the bishops express their deep disquiet at the double standards of public sector employers, claiming that Christians are punished while followers of other faiths are treated far more sensitively.
Their intervention follows a series of cases in which Christians have been dismissed after seeking to express their faith. They highlight the plight of Shirley Chaplin, a nurse who was banned from working on hospital wards for wearing a cross around her neck. This week she will begin a legal battle against the decision.
Christians are also increasingly concerned that the Government is ignoring their views on issues such as sex education and homosexuality when introducing new legislation.
A group of 640 head teachers, school governors and faith leaders have signed a separate letter to this newspaper warning that compulsory sex education in primary schools will erode moral standards and encourage sexual experimentation.
Read the whole thing, here.
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Posted by: Charlemagne
Posted in: Asides - Catholicism - Censorship - Christianity - European News - European Politics - History - Law - Protestantism - Religion - Society - The British Nanny State |