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Psychedelic Science: Magic Mushrooms
November 5, 2013 — xanthippaYet another example of how ideologically based prohibition is not only unreasonably and unjustifiably limiting people’s choices, but hampering medical research from which all of us could benefit.
Diversity for the Sake of Diversity: a 14-year-old’s rant
November 3, 2013 — xanthippaHere is a most excellent rant by a 14-year-old of my acquaintance:
Diversity. It sounds pretty good in theory, right? Lots of cultures and ideas coming together to get the best out of all of them. However, due to each culture’s history, some jobs attract different classes of people more. Office jobs often attract lots of white people, mostly males, basketball has a lot of African-Americans, and so on. That’s ok. People can do what they want. However, some people decided that everyone needs to be so politically correct that they not only avoid using derogatory terms, but actually make sure that they get a certain amount of visible minorities in certain jobs.
Why? That makes about as much sense as going through each box of Smarties and making sure each has an equal number of each coloured Smarty. There’s so much political correctness going around that even if you meant no harm, if you accidentally say something someone somewhere might find offensive, you can get sued for thousands of dollars by people who aren’t even the offended party, and they don’t even give that money to those who are offended.
When you own a corporation, you need to make sure you have at least a certain number of visible minorities working for you, or else the PC police get all up in your jimmies. Let’s say you start a company with lots of computers involved. Let’s say when going through your applications, you hire the best people for the job, ignoring their race. Then when they show up for work, they’re all white males. You now need to look in the applications for the next best application of people who are also visible minorities, even skipping the application of a boring white male who is better qualified. All this so you don’t seem racist to the PC (Politically Correct) police. Do you see the problem? You need to hire people NOT by how qualified they are, but how qualified they are AND their race/gender. That is almost a textbook example of racism or sexism. You need to be a bigot to look like you’re not a bigot!
And this is no small issue; this is a huge problem. You don’t really hear people talking about this in public, and that is because they don’t want to be sued. This is holding back freedom of speech, while taking lots of time and money to ensure people follow regulations. Not many people even know that this is a problem.
So you see, diversity is not always so good. Especially when it’s enforced. In fact, it is counter-productive a lot of the time, and puts a huge metaphorical boulder on everyone’s back. Toss away the boulder, get a back massage, work on your posture, and choose your employees based on skill, not race or gender.
“Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought” (with comments by Greg Lukianoff)
November 1, 2013 — xanthippaReason TV’s ‘Nanny of the Month for October 2013’: Tulsa May Ban Sex Offenders from Halloween … and Christmas
October 30, 2013 — xanthippaBanning people from decorating their own house!!!
Helping Muslim Girls is “Racist”: Edmonton Transit Submits to Sharia, Takes Down AFDI Bus Ads
October 29, 2013 — xanthippa
Fighting for Freedom of Speech
October 23, 2013 — xanthippaA young man I know well is taking a Civics class in High School. For his ‘Civics’ project on how to improve our society, he had chosen to seek to raise awareness of the importance of Freedom of Speech. He chose to do this in two ways:
1. Following the example of FIRE, he considered setting up a ‘Free Speech Wall’ at his school. He asked for and received a meeting with his Principal where he proposed the idea. Due to School Board constraints (High School kids are still minors), this was deemed not possible.
However, his Principal was very supportive of his overall goal and they did agree that a ‘Freedom of Speech Page’ in the school’s newsletter would be a good idea: all students would be encouraged to write why Freedom of Speech is important to them. Since this high school has students from very diverse backgrounds, it might help to be inclusive for students who have come to Canada recently from more oppressive countries to be encouraged to share their stories of what life without freedom of speech was like and why we, in Canada, must protect this most core of our civil liberties.
He is still negotiating with the teacher in charge of the school newsletter, but he has volunteered to do the work on it and is hopeful that this will become a reality.
2. Drafting and collecting signatures on a petition to ask our legislators to strengthen the legal protections on Freedom of Speech. He had sent me the petition and the accompanying letter: I have taken the names out of it and turned it into a template that each and every one of us can use, collect signatures on the petition and present our own MPs with the demand to strengthen or Free Speech protections!
The accompanying letter:
Petition to strengthen freedom of speech in our laws
To: ___________________________
Member of Parliament of Canada
Dear _________________________:
In the most recent Throne Speech, our Government stressed its committment to the protection of our core rights and fundamental freedoms. The most fundamental of these is the Freedom of Speech, without which no other right or freedom can be defended. There have been many attacks on freedom of speech as of recent, and despite it being the most crucial human right, many people see it as an optional bonus, despite how important it is.
Our Canadian laws are not in line with other democratic countries, like Australia and the United States of America, and make it very easy for unscrupulous people to abuse our laws to chill legitimate political debate. This type abuse was happening under ‘Section 13’ of the Human Rights Code, and you, our lawmakers, have listened to us, the citizens, and repealed that section. Thank you for that!However, our other laws are now being similarly abused and I would like you, and all our lawmakers, to take steps to pass legislation to strengthen our freedom of speech!
Sincerely yours,
The petition:
This is a petition to my Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, to ask that our law-makers pass federal laws strenghtening protection of the freedom unpon all our civil liberties depend, the Freedom of Speech, from attacks by those wishing to silence political discourse, so that Canadians within all of Canada would have better protections under the law for our most fundamental freedom.
SIGNATURE NAME (Please Print) City, Postal Code
1. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
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This is a petition to my Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, to ask that our law-makers pass federal laws strenghtening protection of the most fundamental of all of our civil liberties, the Freedom of Speech, from attacks from all directions, so that Canadians within all of Canada would have equal protections under the law for our mos fundamental freedom.
SIGNATURE NAME (Please Print) City, Postal Code
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This is a petition to my Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, to ask that our law-makers pass federal laws strenghtening protection of the most fundamental of all of our civil liberties, the Freedom of Speech, from attacks from all directions, so that Canadians within all of Canada would have equal protections under the law for our mos fundamental freedom.
SIGNATURE NAME (Please Print) City, Postal Code
31. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
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This is a petition to my Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, to ask that our law-makers pass federal laws strenghtening protection of the most fundamental of all of our civil liberties, the Freedom of Speech, from attacks from all directions, so that Canadians within all of Canada would have equal protections under the law for our mos fundamental freedom.
SIGNATURE NAME (Please Print) City, Postal Code
46. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
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If you would like to receive these files as an attachment to an email, where the formatting is properly done up, please, drop me a line in the comments and I will be happy to send it to you.
John Stossel – Legal Parasites
October 17, 2013 — xanthippaOf course, this translates to not just industry and medicine, but every aspect of our lives – including freedom of speech.
Because, as we have all learned, the process of defending one-self itself becomes the punishment…
Seriously, we should get out of our habit of permitting lawyers to draft legislation as well as appointing judges from among lawyers, as this will necessarily skew the whole legal/ justice system itself to favour ‘lawyers’ over any other member of society.
Help Ezra Levant Protect Our Freedom of Speech
October 17, 2013 — xanthippaFrom an email I received:
Dear Xanthippa*,
Please help: tomorrow (Thursday) in a Toronto court house, I’m being sued by Khurrum Awan, the youth president of the Canadian Islamic Congress who tried to censor Mark Steyn.
In fact, he’s suing me for writing about what he did at Steyn’s trial — five years ago!
Of course, it’s just more “lawfare” — the abuse of our western legal process, as a soft jihad against our traditional freedoms.
I won’t get into the details of the lawsuit here — you can see Awan’s Statement of Claim, and my Statement of Defence, here. I’ll make my official comments from the witness box. And you can see a column I wrote about it in the Sun, here. And the great Mark Steyn himself wrote about the trial, here.
But my point is, these radical, Islamic censors are still at it, still trying to silence their critics.
Awan himself gave away the game, in an interview he did after Steyn won his case. Awan told a reporter, “we do not plan to appeal the decision because we attained our strategic objective—to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material.”
That’s what this latest lawsuit against me is: the “strategic objective” of punishing someone who criticizes radical Islam. I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed; I supported Steyn; and now I have a TV show where I regularly report on radical Islam.
Since joining the TV station, I’ve been protected by the company’s lawyers. But this lawsuit started when I was a blogger, on my own. So I’m on the hook for all of my legal bills. And unlike Awan, I don’t have a big benefactor financing me.
Would you please consider helping me out? I am reluctant to ask, because I know you’ve helped me before. But a lot is at stake here.
This lawsuit is an attempt to undo the free speech victories of the past few years, and to send a warning to any Canadian journalist who dares to speak freely about radical Islam or censorship. It’s designed to instill a sense of fear into the national discussion, to create a “libel chill”.
It’s not just me who’s being targeted — it’s everyone who might ever want to talk about radical Islam. That’s the “strategic objective” of getting everyone to shut up.
I’ve already spent tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers, preparing for the trial. The trial is scheduled to last a week, and could go longer. The total cost will easily reach $50,000 — even if I win, I’ll lose. That’s why they’re doing it.
Can you please help me level the playing field? Can you help fill up my legal war chest, so I can keep standing on guard for our western values of freedom of speech, and the separation of mosque and state? If you can help me with my legal bills, I promise I’ll keep fighting.
You can chip in right now using my secure PayPal button here.
Whether you can donate $5 or $500, it all adds up. Let’s show them we’re as passionate about freedom as they are about censorship.
Wish me luck – I go to court at 10 a.m. tomorrow!
Yours gratefully,
Ezra Levant
P.S. Please help me level the playing field in this lawsuit, by chipping in to my defence fund, here.
P.P.S. And please visit www.StandWithEzra.ca to see the latest news about the trial, and read comments from free speech supporters across the country!
P.P.P.S. Feel free to forward this email to your friends and family who care about freedom too!
*I substituted my ‘nom-de-keyboard’, Xanthippa, for my ‘real-life-name’
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 