Galloway Lapping Up the Attention

As I posted a little more than a week ago, it was a mistake to bar George Galloway from Canada.

With the ensuing controversy, he's become a media star. You can find reference of him in every major Canadian newspaper and he appeared via video-conference on CBC's The Hour. He's ratcheted up the grandstanding by asking Jason Kenny to debate him.

In a speech delivered live to more than 600 supporters in a Toronto church, the outspoken Galloway called the ban over his support of Gaza's Hamas government – a decision upheld hours earlier by a Canadian judge – as "foolish and counterproductive."

Loud applause greeted his challenge to Kenney for a one-on-one debate: "Let's book the biggest hall in Canada," said Galloway, "and you and I will debate these issues of war and peace and freedom of speech and censorship.

"You won't be able to hide behind your spokesman. You won't be able to hide behind your immigration officials that can't speak up for themselves (or) behind the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It will just be you and me and the Canadian public ..."

He continued, "It's just not credible, Mr. Kenney, to call a man touring the United States of America, playing to packed audiences ... a terrorist or a security threat."

He would have been greeted with almost no fanfare had they allowed him entry in the first place. Now he's a free speech martyr.

Funnily enough, we find new free speech advocates:

Or take the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) --perhaps best known for its human rights complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine.

As for George Galloway, the CIC maintains that people should be free to "draw their own conclusions" about what he has to say. The spectacle of the CIC leading the charge for freedom of speech is certainly absurd, but the depths of their hypocrisy reach even deeper.

Most people who supported barring him claimed it was not a speech issue but a security choice by a sovereign country. It certainly doesn't look that way, and ends up bringing you down to the level of the censors at the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Jason Kenney has had a lot of good publicity lately, but this was a really bad decision.

UN Backs Appalling Blasphemy Proposal

I nearly put my fist through my monitor when I read this AP release:

The resolution urges states to provide "protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general."

"Defamation of religions is the cause that leads to incitement to hatred, discrimination and violence toward their followers," Pakistan's ambassador Zamir Akram said.

"It is important to deal with the cause, rather than with the effects alone," he said.
Muslim nations have argued that religions, in particular Islam, must be shielded from criticism in the media and other areas of public life. They cited cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as an example of unacceptable free speech.

I wonder what they are going to designate a crime? Is it defamation, if I don't believe Mohammed was delivered the word of Allah, from the Angel Gabriel, and dictated the Koran according to these words? Sorry, it didn't happen. The guy made it up. Just like Jesus, probably was a real person, but he wasn't the Son of God. Moses' parting of the Red Sea was probably a result of prehistoric Global Warming. I don't think Noah made it to the South Pole to round up two penguins. Is that "defamation?"

Why should I respect what I don't believe in and think causes huge problems? Easy for me to say as well. But what about people in Islamic countries that aren't believers? This legitimizes their oppression.

Another reason why the UN should be closed down. Some people in countries a world away want me to respect their invisible sky ghosts.

Predictably the Galloway Ban Backfiring

As I mentioned a few days ago, barring British MP George Galloway from entering Canada was a mistake. It gives ammo to to far-left, conspiracy theorists. They are already making noise:

"We think this move is politically motivated and is simply about silencing someone who has very strong views on our position on Afghanistan and other issues," Clark said.

He said Galloway has been elected five times to British parliament, has never been charged with a crime, has no criminal record, and "it's unclear just how the government sees him as a national security threat."

The groups campaigning to bring Galloway to Canada include The Council of Canadians, Canadian Civil Liberties Union, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, as well as anti-war coalitions, labour unions and community groups.

Now they can feel very self righteous. Their free speech is being unfairly stopped. This gives strength to their cause. Next thing you know we are going to be hearing that the Free Masons secretly ordered it stopped.

As much as I detest the treasonous Galloway, you can never win this sort of battle by silencing people.

Hitchens on the UN Anti-Blasphemy Resolution

This is why Hitchens is great. Kudos to Lou Dobbs here as well.

Queen's Axes Language Police

Queen's finally came to their senses and got rid of the thought crime police at Queen's reports the Montreal Gazette:

Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., has scrapped its "dialogue facilitator" program, calling it "incompatible with the atmosphere required for free speech." A scandal arose last year when it was revealed the student "facilitators" were mandated to intervene in private conversations to encourage discussion of social justice issues and discourage offensive language. In a report to the administration, a panel of experts noted the risk of "making students feel unsafe or under surveillance because of their opinions."

Three cheers! What a bad idea. I bet those volunteers who signed up to "monitor" conversations are being ridiculed, as they should. You can picture some liquored up students on pub night:

"Hey, asshole, you got a problem with what I'm saying? Well there's nothing you can do about it!"

Good! Those types of people deserve our scorn.

I've written about this before here and here

Babs Hall Wants National Press Council

The National Post has an op-ed about Ms. Hall's quest for a censorship council. Frightening stuff:

As if Barbara Hall's own crude, broadsword agency were not destructive enough of free speech rights, now the Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) wants a national press council to further chill free expression in the media. And she is not looking just to curtail newspapers, talk radio and television news. Ms. Hall wants any new press council to have jurisdiction over Internet sites and blogs, too.

Of course, using the typically topsy-turvy logic of most modern rights crusaders, Ms. Hall has convinced herself that this thinly veiled censorship board would actually be the ultimate free speech defender. She seems to think the best way to preserve free speech is to limit it.

(...)

Similarly, making all writers, bloggers and broadcasters hostage to a national press council is merely the first step toward letting the Barbara Halls of the world decide what you get to hear, see and read. To that, we say: "No, thanks." And so should every newspaper reader, Web surfer and television viewer in the land.

There's no way I'm letting a dogmatic, commie like Babs get her mitts on the Daily Salt Shaker, that's for damn sure!

Stages

Mark Steyn has a powerful piece about his thoughts after his testimony to the Ontario legislative committee reviewing the Human Rights Commission. (read)

... Once you accept the degree of state management that the citizens of modern social-welfare democracies now take for granted, why be surprised that your rulers are no longer prepared to treat you as "citizens"? America is now catching up to the happy condition of Canada and Europe - the Big Nanny security state in which you're relieved of every adult responsibility - to provide your own health care, to look after your family, to work to support them. Why then be surprised that Ontario's Liberal and NDP members assume you can't be entrusted to think for yourself? Or that President Obama talks of his fellow citizens as if they're lame pets and feeble-minded urchins? It may yet prove the case that the Big Government security-blanket state can co-exist with a lively level of individual
liberty, free speech and intellectual inquiry, but the results from the heart of the free world are not encouraging.

(...)

... If, in the interests of "cultural protection", the state keeps foreign newspaper owners, foreign bookstore owners, foreign TV operators out of Canada, why be surprised that, in return, it assumes the right to police the ideas disseminated through those newspapers, bookstores and TV networks it graciously agrees to permit?

UPDATE: To see what all the fuss about Mark Steyn is, check out his excellent book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It

Steyn Blasts Ontario Human Rights Commission

Free speecher Mark Steyn had some choice words for an Ontario legislative committee reviewing the need for the provincial human rights commission. He's at his best when battling.

"Free societies should not be in the business of criminalizing opinion," Mr. Steyn, a columnist for Maclean's, told members of Ontario's standing committee on government agencies.

"When you go down that road, all you do is lead to the situation that you have in, say, Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, you can't start a newspaper and print what you think, so if you object to the House of Saud, the only thing you can do is blow stuff up."

And from the transcript we have this quote:

Mr. Mark Steyn: Yes. Let me just talk about this hateful words business. This is again the sham of this Human Rights Tribunal, in that it does not treat all hate equally. At the time—you claim, for example, to be interested in women’s rights. We have honour killings, we have arranged marriages against the wishes of the brides in this province. The Human Rights Tribunal is silent about that.

It always amazes me that western so-called feminists have nothing to say about arranged marriage, burkas and honour killings. Why is it politically incorrect to mention that? It's something I'll never understand about leftist "tolerance."

UPDATE: Christina Blizzard of the Toronto Sun interviews OHRC Commissioner Barbara Hall:

It was her response to Steyn's criticism of OHRC's silence on honour killings that shocked me.

"There are thousands of things that happen in the province of Ontario on a daily basis and we don't comment on all of them," she said.

But, I spluttered, women are being murdered.

"As I said, we are a small commission.

"There are many problematic things that happen in our community and
we have to make choices because we can't respond to everything," Hall said.

So honour killings are merely "problematic"?

Here's a woman who's advocated for years on behalf of women's rights. She found time to crucify Steyn and Maclean's, but she's too busy to raise the issue of women who are being murdered over some hideous interpretation of "honour"?

Absurd "Human Rights" Complaint on Canadian Blogger

Free speech has been under fire in Canada in the guise of the provincial and federal Human Rights Commissions who deem to punish speech deemed "hurtful" to minorities. This has received much publicity over the last year when Maclean's Magazine, for articles written by Mark Steyn, were brought to the BC HRC Kangaroo Court here in BC. Also Ezra Levant had a complaint against him for publishing the dreaded Danish cartoons. Ezra Levant's website is dedicated to defending free speech,

Yesterday a blogger at Right Wing Canada received this threatening email:

Mr. Lawton:

I am writing today to inform you that as of 10:27am EST this morning, I have filed a claim against you under the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Among other hateful and inflammatory remarks made on your blog, ww.RightWingCanada.com, you referred to President Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama," citing that he is an Arab-American. This was made in a hateful and dirogatory manner, and such racist propaganda is forbidden under section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

I hope that you go down in flames like your other Nazi friends.

Ma-Z

This one doesn't pass the laugh test, but that doesn't matter. The thought police at the human rights commissions will doubtlessly "investigate" it. Your tax dollars at work.

I regularly visit Ezra, as mentioned above, and Mark Steyn's site for updates on the free speech issue.

Hitchens on Media Self Censorship

Christopher Hitchens has another must read article, on the Vanity Fair website, about the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie and how that has frightened the media into pleasing fundamentalists. (Read the entire article)

So there is now a hidden partner in our cultural and academic and publishing and broadcasting world: a shadowy figure that has, uninvited, drawn up a chair to the table. He never speaks. He doesn’t have to. But he is very well understood. The late playwright Simon Gray was alluding to him when he said that Nicholas Hytner, the head of London’s National Theatre, might put on a play mocking Christianity but never one that questioned Islam. I brushed up against the unacknowledged censor myself when I went on CNN to defend the Danish cartoons and found that, though the network would show the relevant page of the newspaper, it had pixelated the cartoons themselves. And this in an age when the image is everything. The lady anchor did not blush to tell me that the network was obliterating its very stock-in-trade (newsworthy pictures) out of sheer fear.

Hitchens knocks down the multicultural sensitivity argument beautifully:

In other words, the situation is the exact reverse of what the condescending multiculturalists say it is. To indulge the idea of religious censorship by the threat of violence is to insult and undermine precisely those in the Muslim world who are its intellectual cream, and who want to testify for their own liberty—and for ours. It is also to make the patronizing assumption that the leaders of mobs and the inciters of goons are the authentic representatives of Muslim opinion. What could be more “offensive” than that?

Unless we have more people stand up for the importance of free speech, I imagine it will get worse in the future. Children in school are taught that the worst crime is to offend somebody.

A Courageous Woman

Irshad Manji is an admirable free speecher and reformer. As a Muslim, she has the courage to stand up to dogma and orthodoxy in her religion. (A place that does not put out the welcome mat to a shit-disturber woman. There are death threat and security issues that she has to live with everyday.) This is definitely somebody to root for and I hope she succeeds. The Globe & Mail has an update of what's she's doing:

It would be far more helpful - to Palestinians, if nobody else - for Muslims to ask questions out loud. We have relied far too long on self-appointed "higher-ups" to do the interpreting for us. We have given them the ability to abuse passages and power. We Muslims have forgotten Islam's own tradition of independent thinking: ijtihad.
...

Of course, most people - not just Muslims - could use more independent thinking. This point grabbed me at the Gaza office of Mohammed al-Hindi. As we left, I asked his translator why Dr. al-Hindi would give me an on-camera interview, knowing that he could not find a single verse to prove his claim that the Koran justifies suicide operations.

The translator replied: "He assumed you were just another dumb Western journalist." Reporters from the West had never asked this veteran terrorist the most basic of questions: Where is the evidence for what you do in God's name?

Maybe it's time that the media joined Muslims in embracing ijtihad. I would be happy to supply both groups with security tips.

That last line has a wallop to it. Who has real courage to stand up for principles? Easy targets like criticizing American evangelicals is not courage.

Free Speech At Universities

Union may ban Israeli academics who support offensive:

An Ontario union may ban Israeli academics from teaching or speaking at the province's universities unless they condemn the current military action in the Gaza Strip, according to the Globe and Mail, sparking a fierce debate.

This is dreadful. Why is it these days that the universities are centre for the anti-free speechers and book burners? I thought the whole point was to have a forum with variety of opinions to be criticized and debated.

Future Queen's and Carleton Graduates?

"Parsons was Winston's fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms—one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the thought police, the stability of the Party depended."

- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 2

Queen's Speech Police Update

Here's a transcript from Ezra Levant's website, as he discusses the Queen's issue with CTV's Mike Duffy. Duffy makes a great point here:

I've had a number of Conservative MPs say to me, Duff, this will be used by people at Queens of a left wing persuasion to go after Conservatives. They'll try to bait the Conservatives into conversation and then have the speech police have them up on charge for daring to defend their political point of view which is at odds with the lefties.

I will post the video of this interview if it is available.

Earlier posts on this: Official Language Police at Queen's and Hello Queen's University

Hello Queen's University

I see some folks at Queen's U in K-town have been onto my site. Howdy!

The reference you're looking for is here:

Official Language Police at Queen's

Update: I don't know if things have changed since the early 90's but don't you just hate Queen's students? I remember these two women at a party I was at in England. They were pulling the trademark Queen's snobbery, going as far as making Carleton jokes at me in front of the Brits. The ironic Brits rolled their eyes and were unimpressed. Nobody had heard of Queen's and they thought their humour was witless. Stupid hicks didn't realize that they weren't in Eastern Ontario anymore.... Now they have conversation police. What a joke.

Official Language Police at Queen's

(Article here)

KINGSTON (CP) -Students who make politically incorrect comments at Ontario’s Queen’s University can expect a lecture, whether they’re in or out of class.

The Kingston university has hired student facilitators to step in if they overhear students making homophobic or racial slurs, remarks bashing women or other offensive language.

The dean of student affairs at Queen’s says if students are making offensive comments loud enough for others to hear, it’s not a private conversation anymore.

Jason Laker says the facilitators use a respectful, non-confrontational approach.

But Angela Hickman, who edits a campus newspaper, says having such a program could stifle public discussion.

Can you imagine the type of people that will sign up to be a facilitator? University campuses are hardly the hotbed of racism. These people are going to make up everything conceivable to be able to exercise their power. It's not like they're going to report back at the end of the year and say they witnessed no homophobic, racist or misogynist comments.

UPDATE: Meet some facilitators here. Listen to the saccharin explanation:

"If there's a teachable moment, we'll take it," said assistant dean of
student affairs Arig Girgrah, who runs the program. "A lot of community building happens around food and dining."

She gave the example of a conversation about a gay character on
television as a good example of such a moment.

"It is all about creating opportunities to dialogue and reflect on
issues of social identity," Ms. Girgrah said. "This is not about preaching. It's not about advice giving. It's about hearing where students are at."

Can a university student survive without being able to make a 'perfume ponce' reference from 'Withnail and I" every now and then? Impossible, I say.

Most Hilarious "Correction"

I read Ezra Levant's site regularly. He's a free speech crusader. He battles phony politically correct censors who will tell us what we can and cannot read. Yesterday, he had a hilarious take down of J-school professor John Miller, who was on a panel with him at a free speech conference. (Here)

Today I saw the headline "Correction." I was wondering what facts he got wrong in the previous article. It ended up being a laugh-out-loud post. (Here)

I think this is delicious. For a year, "the journalism doctor" has been lecturing mere bloggers like me (and mere international best-selling authors like Mark Steyn) about not being real journalists. We aren't responsible; we're not competent; we're not professional. What a hoot to learn that he's not a doctor at all -- nor does he have a master's degree, or even a degree in journalism itself. But he's so snobby about his "craft" that he pretends to have one.

Read the whole thing.