BCF is SOOOO dangerous, the head commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission – Madame Lynch herself – would appear to have banned all her minions from reading his blog!
Or, something like that… with all the blacked out ‘ink’ on the ‘Access to Information’ thingy, citing “protected solicitor client privilage”, who can tell?
Blazing Catfur has a guest-post by Laura Rosen Cohen: Freedom will set us free. This is a response to the ‘official Jewry’ calls for increased censorship as they fight a war long won, instead of facing an enemy ready for a new and bloody battle:
…
“Time after time, when Jewish “leaders” resort to their default position on hate speech and fatuous accusations of anti-Semitism, I am called upon by my exasperated pro-Israel gentile friends to explain why these “leaders” seem so hell bent on alienating them with their knee-jerk anti-Christian biases and their frankly completely un-Jewish moral support of censorship-such as the Canadian Jewish Congress’s support of the CHRC “Hate Speech” and other “Hate Crime” legislation.”
…
“The real danger facing the Jewish people, and the civilized world is not Nazi words-it is deeds; beheadings, suicide bombings and highjackings with the umbrella name of “jihad”. Furthermore, it is morally and intellectually dishonest to point to insulting words as the root cause of the Nazi dehumanization of Jews.
It was the disassembling of Jewish civil liberties and civil rights that began the downward spin toward hell on earth. The descent began when Jews were stripped by the state of their rights to own property and businesses. Their physical property and humanity were legally expropriated. When the state took away the Jews’ freedom to marry whom they chose, and when the state legally defined the Jews as less than human, the descent was unstoppable.”
…
“The Nazi state and its laws enabled the dehumanization of Jews-not words and insults. Concentrated, dictatorial legislative powers were Hitler’s best weapon and were among the Nazis most profoundly and rapidly absorbed anti-Jewish functions within German society.
Read the full post here.
And – Ms. Rosen Cohen – well said!
Just read Ezra Levant’s ‘Christmas column’. It sums up the problem rather well…
It has taken me a long time to write this post, because I just can’t seem to get the proper wording.
But, there is no easy way of saying this…
The ‘conservative movement’ or ‘right wing’ includes what is referred to as ‘the religious right’.
I am not referring to people who are conservative, but just happen to be religious. Not at all. Rather, I am referring to the people who see themselves as ‘conservatives’ because they have what they consider to be ‘conservative social values’. But, their social values are not so much ‘conservative’ as ‘old-fashioned’, or, even better description would be ‘religiously motivated’.
There is no problem with holding these views – even though they mistakenly think them to be ‘conservative’. Where the problem comes is that many of these people wish to impose these so-called ‘conservative’ values on all of our society: they think that in order to be a ‘conservative’ a person must subscribe to their brand of religious ‘morality’.
To much of this ‘religious right’, ‘freedom of religion’ appears to mean replacing the religious oppression of every member of the society by another religious faction by the religious oppression of every member of the society according to their own religious dogma. All else they call ‘moral relativism’…
And, they say this as if it were a bad thing!
Legislating one religious group’s morality to rule everybody is not freedom!
Which, I rather thought, is the whole point of separating the State from the Church (or Synagogue, or Mosque, or whatever other temple may wish to influence the State).
In a free society, the citizens must not permit anyone to legislate morality or to turn religious prejudices into laws which rule the land!
Most of you have doubtlessly heard a variation of this statement:
“Our Western values of freedom of speech and religion are deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition and it was time we became true to our roots!”
This statement is so ludicrous, I do not know where to start…or even if I need to…to debunk it!
It is in the scientific revolution that our society has its roots!
It is through the rejection of Judeo-Christian principles that we have gained freedom of speech and freedom of religion!
In ancient Greece, thinkers and philosophers (‘yellow horses’ included) reasoned out that so much of what was happening around them – and which was attributed to deities – was no more and no less than natural phenomena. This freed their thinking of the blind desire to be servants to invisible, intangible deities. Their now unfettered minds were free to reason – truly reason – about their surroundings. This led to new advances in science and technology, raising everyone’s standard of living.
The beginning of the end of this era of free thought was ‘the conversion of Constantine’ to Christianity. The event that marked the final end, the ‘death blow’ to the religious tolerance which people then took for granted, the demise of the very ancient Greek civilization, was the brutal murder of Hypatia of Alexandria.
Hypatia grew up in the famed Library of Alexandria, as her father, Theon, the astronomer and mathematician,was the second last curator of the library. She became the last (if one is to take Carl Sagan’s word for it).
Famous for her breadth and depth of knowledge and wisdom beyond her years, Hypatia was a much sought after teacher, astronomer, philosopher and mathematician in her own right. Historical records indisputably demonstrate that she headed up the Neoplatonic school of Philosophy at the main site of the Alexandrian Library, the Museum (named for the Muses). She was highly respected – even by Christians, many of whom attended her lectures.
St. Cyril, the Christian Bishop of Alexandria at that time, was attempting to fuse the power of the state with religion – with himself in full charge of ruling Alexandria. Famously – and illegally – his mob of ‘monks’ leveled all the synagogues of Alexandria and expelled the Jews. He destroyed the churches of Christian sects he deemed too moderate. But, he did not forget the ‘pagans’!
Cyril declared that ‘learning and intellectual pursuits’ kept people form ‘religious fervor’ and therefore had to be destroyed. His predecessor (and uncle) had started, by burning thousands of scrolls which recorded scientific knowledge. Cyril continued.
And, he could not suffer the popular symbol of Greek learning and wisdom, Hypatia, to live.
A mob of Christians, led by St. Cyril’s right-hand henchman, Peter, dragged Hypatia from her carriage/chariot and stripped her naked, dragged her through the streets, into a Christian Church, placed her on the altar and scraped her flesh off her bones with sharp oyster shells. They then set her on fire, in an attempt to disguise the crime…
The end of the ancient Greek period of enlightenment ended when Christians took the reigns of secular power in the Roman empire, burned and destroyed libraries, and imposed ‘Christian morality’ on all the land!
Yes, this ascension of Christianity into a position of power brought us – what was it? Ah, yes, the Dark Ages.
And when science began to re-emerge in our society, when Copernicus made his observations, what did the Christian culture respond with? What was the most widely printed and circulated (aside from the Bible) book Christiandom produced then? Ah, that wonderful treatise on religious tolerance and love between all humans: Malleus Maleficarum!
It had excellent instructions on opening inter-faith dialogues!
Are these the Judeo-Christian principles in which our modern freedoms are rooted?
Is this what we want to return to?
Because that is what theocracies inevitably degenerate into!
If you listen to the ‘religious right’, that would seem to be the plan….except that they truly seem to think this is ‘freedom’.
That is why I think that so many people do not wish to be associated with ‘the right wing’: very few people wish to be lumped together with the people who wish to impose their religious ‘morals’ onto the whole society.
The worst thing is that our society is, slowly but incrementally, submitting to Islamic religious ‘morals’ – and this push is coming from the ‘left’, under the guise of ‘tolerance’. Which it is not. Again, I do not understand how so many people can have such a large blind spot.
Fighting imposition of Islamic ‘morals’ on our society by attempting to impose Christian ‘morals’ on us instead is not the way to win back our freedom!
If we do not recognize that, we are doomed…
What should happen to somebody who accuses another person of anti-Semitism and associating with terrorists?
Well, in a ‘Western’ country, the person who was accused of these nasty things has the recourse of suing the accuser for defamation: we have courts that resolve exactly this!
Ezra Levant is being sued for something exactly like this. And, Mr. Levant reports the process: first, he was served with libel notice, and later (6 months later, in this case) his lawyer was served with the lawsuit itself.
While I do not support lawfare – the use of the legal system to financially exhaust a person and shut them up this way – this is how we handle things when one person does not like what another person says about them and considers him/herself defamed by such statements.
…like being accused of being an anti-Semite and associating with terrorists.
That is what we do in ‘civilized countries’!
It seems that the United Kingdom of (Formerly) Great Britain and Northern Ireland can no longer be considered one of these!
What the [insert expletive of your choice here] is happening in the UK?
A 71-year old disabled immigrant widow, whose house was pelted with rocks by young punks, was charged with assault for telling them off while poking one of the punks in the chest with her finger. She was given a 6-month suspended sentence and a 50 pound fine…
A 9-year old got busted for playing in a park, a 2-year old got an ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Order’ for playing with a ball in his own back-yard….and parents are banned from council play-grounds.
Now, a blogger who criticized a clergyman gets a visit from the police!
In what kind of a country does slandering or defaming a person launch a police investigation?
In what kind of a country does slandering or defaming a person earn you a police visit to your school or place of employment, where your ‘misdeeds’ are brought to the attention of your educators/superiors?
In what kind of a country does slandering or defaming a person gets the police to ‘open a file’ on you?
As Seismic Shock has learned – the hard way – this will happen in a country like the UK…
At 10am on Sunday 29th November 2009, I received a visit from two policemen regarding my activities in running the Seismic Shock blog. (Does exposing a vicar’s associations with extremists make me a criminal?, I wondered initially). A sergeant from the Horsforth Police related to me that he had received complaints via Surrey Police from Rev Sizer and from Dr Anthony McRoy – a lecturer at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology – who both objected to being associated with terrorists and Holocaust deniers.
(Context: Sizer has associated with some very nasty terrorists and Holocaust deniers; McRoy has delivered a paper at a Khomeinist theological conference in Iran comparing Hezbollah’s struggle against Israel via suicide bombing with the Christian’s struggle against sin via the atoning death of Jesus, and describes the world’s most prominent Holocaust denier as an “intelligent, humble, charismatic, and charming” man who “gives quick, extensive and intelligent answers to any question, mixed with genial humour”).
The sergeant made clear that this was merely an informal chat, in which I agreed to delete my original blog (http://seismicshock.blogspot.com/) but maintain my current one (http://seismicshock.wordpress.com). The policeman related to me that his police force had been in contact with the ICT department my previous place of study, and had looked through my files, and that the head of ICT at my university would like to remind me that I should not be using university property in order to associate individuals with terrorists and Holocaust deniers (I am sure other people use university property to make political comments, but nevermind).
With my research on Reverend Sizer’s associations with terrorists and Holocaust deniers making its way into a publication of the Society of Biblical Literature, I was quite content to hold my peace. However, now that Reverend Sizer is now misrepresenting what has happened in my case in order to intimidate others, now is the time to speak up.
This is just wrong. And – indeed, the vicar attempted to intimidate an Australian blogger who carried the story, threatening him with police…
So, I say: WE ARE ALL SEISMIC SHOCK!
H/T: BCF
This is a frightening thought indeed!
But, from Caledonia – where a police officer is reported ti have broken down in tears at the shame of following an obviously illegal order, as she followed it and arrested a man who’s only crime was that he tried to go h0me…while his home was in an area illegally occupied by Native protesters, to this incident reported by a citizen-journalist, the blogger Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy:
“There exist in Toronto today legally enforced no-go zones for Zionists.
The location and boundaries of these Zionist-free zones are defined at the whim of anti-Zionists and enforced by police.
…
What had I done? I stood near (but not too close) to a gathering of anti-Israel people. I photographed them as they held their signs and candles on a public sidewalk in a public display of protest which was advertised publicly. I had spoken only when spoken to and then not with any profanity or threats. I did not have any signs, logos, buttons or flags on my person. I did not chant or sing or say anything political. I had called for the police when I felt threatened.
…
Now, throughout this whole thing, a freelance reporter stood nearby with his large camera and no one stopped him from recording anything and no one made him leave. I was threatened with arrest and made to leave because I was identified as a Zionist whose mere presence was so upsetting that I was guilty of a criminal offense.
Read it and weep! I did…
Thanks to BCF for bringing it to my attention!
All right, this is bad, no matter how you look at it.
‘Canadian Government’ did not like the content of 2 blogs/websites.
Who the hell do these bureaucrats think they are?
Are the elected politicians aware of this fascism? (Collusion between big government and business which infringes the rights of everyone else is ‘fascism’ by definition. Just ask Prime Minister Harper!)
If you read my blog every now and then – especially during November and early December 2009 – you will probably be aware that I do not support the IPCC warm-mongers, that I have worked to expose how they falsified the data and to explain what they did and what it means, that I am appalled by their perversion of the scientific method and destruction of the peer-review-process….(I could rant on and on). And, I don’t like the fraud-inviting cap-and-trade scheme being forced on the whole world by imposing a world-government that we, in the West, would be forced to pay for and which would actively prevent the ‘developing world’ from developing….
Nor do I look kindly at ‘spoofs’ that pretend to come from a Government Department – they are not funny and, in-my-never-humble-opinion, are actively counter-productive.
This self-described ‘culture jamming activists’ protest group, ‘Yes Men’, is nothing more than a bunch of dumb-asses, taken in by obvious half-truths and more interested in the publicity which their stunts will generate them than in taking the time to learn the science which underlies the issues. In other words, I think they are silly bunnies who turned themselves into publicity hounds.
So, while I condemn their methods, I also reject their message…
That does NOT mean that I will stand by and do nothing as their voices are silenced!
The Canadian Government did not seek an injunction against these clowns.
They were not charged with fraud.
No judge issued a warrant to suspend their website or blog or whatever other means of online communication they happened to be using.
NO!
A bureaucrat wrote a letter to a business – and together, they deprived the citizens of the legal service the citizens had paid for, which, in this case, is the platform for those citizens to exercise freedom of speech!
That is SO UNACCEPTABLE, I am having trouble finding polite words to express the depth of my anger! …and, fear.
Because if the government can get away with shutting down the voices of idiots it disagrees with, I am likely going to be next!
We must all stand up and tell our government that they have seriously erred in trying to shut up voices it does not like. Then, they compounded this by circumventing the proper procedures, which permit it to protect itself from fraud or other illegal acts without arbitrarily stripping people of their rights and freedoms.
We must all speak up and shout as loudly as we can – until we are heard – that a government colluding with a business to deprive people of their rights and freedoms without due process of the law is SIMPLY NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!
NOT NOW, NOT EVER!!!
Just like only total seclusion will provide the environment in which an individual can exercise 100% of their personal freedoms, countries/nation-states must also find ways to ‘get along’ with its neighbours and the all the other ‘countries’ out there. Therefore, countries must develop rules: treaties, agreements, etc. to govern their interactions.
This is kind of like the matryoshka dolls!
Families have ‘rules’ which govern how individual members interact, villages/towns/cities have by-laws that govern how people and families in that municipality behave and interact, provinces/states have the next level of rules that govern how all the people in the municipalities that form that province/state behave and interact…. and so on, and so on…
Through this very process – through agreeing to rules how ‘communities’ at each ‘level’ interact with each other, we are necessarily building the governance framework of government at the ‘next higher level’. The treaties and agreements governments enter into become binding rules which their industries and citizens must abide by.
And THAT is where a very great danger to the ability to exercise our individual rights and freedoms is coming!
We have, to a better or worse degree, worked out rules about what rights we can exercise, and to what degree. This we have done within our borders, all the citizens agree (or, at least, respect) in the form of constitutions and the body of our national laws. Right?
But, our countries do not exist in seclusion. We need to trade and interact in all kinds of ways with ‘other’ countries.
To do that in as peaceful and amicable way as possible, we enter into international agreements about ‘things’. All kinds of things. But, the primary focus of most international treaties is ‘trade’.
When our legislators propose laws, we examine them publicly for all kinds of ‘things’ – including any infringements on the ability of us, the citizens, to exercise our freedoms. And so it should be. But, when countries enter into binding, international agreements with other countries, there is nowhere this level of scrutiny!
These agreements and treaties are negotiated by a limited number of representatives (all bureaucrats) from each side, usually in secret, giving in here to get an advantage there… And the aim of these treaties is usually one form of economic interaction or another: ‘freedoms’ are not usually even ‘on the radars’ of those doing the negotiating.
Please, do not misunderstand – I have nothing against international treaties and agreements in principle. They are necessary. All I am trying to do is highlight something many people do not consider very seriously: whenever our government signs a treaty or similar international agreement, its rules are just as binding on us as the laws our government passes, but do not undergo anything like the scrutiny…
A recent example relevant to Canadians is the EU-Canada Trade Agreement…
To make this work, some of our laws – and even attitudes – would have to change.
For example, our ideas about our ‘property rights’ might need a serious adjustment…
Right now, if we purchase a painting – or another other piece of art – most of us think that we own it. That we can hang it on our wall, store it in the attic or even use it as kindling… Or, perhaps, that if we wish, we can sell it.
That might be just one of the laws and attitudes we would have to change: according to a leaked chapter of the EU-Canada Trade Agreement now under negotiations, the EU is pushing for a royalty to be paid to the artists EVERY TIME their work is re-sold, FOR EVER!
This post is not about that particular trade agreement.
It’s about the fact that so many of the people who are valiantly and tirelessly fighting to preserve our freedoms are focusing only on ‘government policy’ and on the laws which our governments are passing. And that is important!
But, our rights and freedoms can be lost ‘through the back door’, so to speak, when our governments enter into binding international agreements which are very large ‘packaged deals’ which our countries may be forced to enter into in order to remain a member of the international community…
And THAT is something we should be thinking and talking about!
In this post, I quoted John Perry Barlow, who warned us that the greatest threat to our freedom of speech in the future will come from corporations ‘protecting’ their IP, and individual’s freedoms ‘be damned’. And, I do think he is correct.
Because we have seen ‘states/governments’ strip its citizens of rights and freedoms, we are ‘sensitive’ to the threats to our liberties which come from that direction. OK, not ‘sensitive enough’ as a society… What I mean is, those within our society who are looking out for our rights and freedoms in order to preserve our liberties are used to watching the state/government and firmly regard it as the biggest threat.
And, that threat is very, very real – and, we discuss it a lot, oppose the encroachment on our rights – as we should!
But, the very people who are vigilant of the state/government creeping oppression seem deaf and blind when it comes to corporations using ‘commercial laws’ to forward their interests at the cost our liberties….
There were two things I should have included, but did not.
The first is Michael Geist‘s movie, ‘Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law’, in which this law professor explains the real-life implications of the draconian ‘digital copyright’ laws these days…
The second is this little news story which Dvorak Uncensored highlighted while I was working on my original post:
…
“We were extremely disappointed to learn of the White House meeting to be held later today on the issue of intellectual property and ‘piracy,” said PK’s Gigi Sohn. “It is unclear why three cabinet officers, several subcabinet officers, the directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service are needed to tend to the worries of the big media companies, particularly the motion picture industry which is completing a year in which it will set box-office records.
It is difficult to explain just how serious this situation is becoming without sounding like a ‘conspiracy nut’.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I LOVE conspiracy theories! They are truly FUN! I just don’t buy into them – not as ‘description of reality’…at least, not most of them.
But, we do need to educate ourselves about ALL the treats to our liberties.
…this is just the tip of the iceberg…
Commercial encroachment on the freedoms and liberties of Canadians is a very real and immediate threat to us all. Yet, this is hardly ever seriously discussed among the ‘core’ of conservative and pro-freedom thinkers.
Why?
It seems that the ‘government’ types and ‘corporate’ types of freedom fighters (in our current, non-violent use of the expression) do not talk much – even regard each other with a significant degree of suspicion. This could, perhaps be because they usually come from such very different backgrounds and usually do not share common educational base or many leisure-time interests. Even their language is so different, they don’t ‘get’ each others’ message.
That is a pity, because each side is only getting a part of the picture…. and, what was that thing about ‘divide and conquer’?
John Perry Barlow, the co-founder of Electronic Frontier (and a former lyricist for ‘The Grateful Dead’) has very perceptively analyzed the corporate threats to freedom of speech in his 1994(!) article, The Economy of Ideas.
“Notions of property, value, ownership, and the nature of wealth itself are changing more fundamentally than at any time since the Sumerians first poked cuneiform into wet clay and called it stored grain. Only a very few people are aware of the enormity of this shift, and fewer of them are lawyers or public officials.”
Barlow explains how, traditionally, people protected their ‘ideas’ through physical control over the means of expressing these ideas: a book is a tangible object which can physically be controlled, an inventor ‘owned’ the ‘idea’ in the form to holding the right to produce objects which made ‘use’ of this idea in the very particular product she/he invented, and so on. The ‘idea’ itself, once expressed, was ‘in the public realm’ and everyone had access to ‘learn it’: that generates progress.
This has all changed: now, ideas can spread without a physical vessel one could control, it is now ‘the ideas themselves’ which are the valuable bit. Barlow makes the case that corporate interests will, if allowed, protect their investment in their ‘ideas’ and that could involve significant curbing of our freedom of expression.
He wrote this in 1994 – and what he warned of is already coming true.
‘Protection of their intellectual properties’ has permitted, for example, the entertainment industry to successfully lobby governments to legalize really, really invasive ‘digital locks’ on their ‘products’.
Here is just one such example, where the corporate world is permitted to treat its customers as criminals by default, and curb their individual rights in the name of protecting their product:
Far from being simply a mechanism to prevent copying, these ‘digital locks’ often include ‘executable code’ which, without the computer owner’s knowledge or permission, install themselves very, very deeply into the computer (at times, removing the ‘lock’ may damage the computer on which it had been installed), search all the files on the hard drive and report all this information, via an internet connection the ‘lock’ itself initiates, back to the company that put the lock on.
This, ostensibly, is to make sure that there are no other ‘stolen files’ on the computer. In reality, it permits that corporation full access to every program, every bit of data, every file, every picture on your computer – and the laws that permit the corporations to install this on your computer without your knowledge do not, even a little bit, address what this corporation may or may not do with all the stuff it found on your computer. That is, frankly, quite frightening!
But that is just the tip of the iceberg – in just one industry!
Please, don’t call ‘Godwin’s law’ one me now, but, I will mention ‘THE OLYMPICS’!
Everyone just shrugged their shoulders and blamed ‘The Chinese Government’ for the zeal with which the names of any business which did not pay protection money was not ‘an Olympic Sponsor’ were covered up: from sticky tape over faucet brand marks to sheets covering the name of a nearby hotel. The media treated it as some sort of a ‘cute Chinese thing’. But, it was not a ‘Chinese thing’, nor was it ‘cute’!
It was an IOC (International Olympic Committee) thing. The IOC claims that without this draconian censorship, it could not make money.
SO!?!?!?!?!?!
Why should anyone’s desire to make money outweigh people’s rights and freedoms?
But, that was China – it could never happen here!
Well, actually…
The Vancouver 2010 Olympics are an example in how corporate interests strip people of liberty!
The IOC has demanded that Vancouver create a ‘buffer zone’ around the Olympic Venues where all speech, signage, logos, symbols and any other means of communication be strictly controlled. And, since it’s ‘The Olympics’, the various levels of government complied.
They passed a series of bylaws which not only made it illegal to display the brand-name of a ‘non-sponsor’, but also where any sentiment which was not ‘celebrating the Olympics’ was forbidden from being expressed! Public and private property!
Oh, and driving on some public roads would also be illegal for mere ‘citizens’ (similar ones are planned for the 2012 Olympics: that makes it a pattern, not a ‘cute Chinese thing’)….and if you happen to own an aerial sight-seeing company – well, you’ll be forbidden from earning a living, because it ‘needs to be controlled’ during the Olympics, too.
If, for example, you were to put up curtains which were made of a fabric that said ‘Olympics Suck’ in your window, you could have ‘officials’ enter your property and remove the offensive curtains, without a warrant and without your permission: then, you could be charged a financial fine ($10,000 per day) or tossed in jail or both!
This is Canada?
Under pressure, the Vancouver city council has attempted to soften the harshest bits of these oppressive laws: at least, the bits that look the most oppressive. But, I don’t know how much of an improvement the latest version of is…. Now, they have pretty much handed the right to decide what forms of expression will and will not be censored to ‘The Olympic Sponsors’ – the corporations propping up this oppressive organization!
If this is not an ‘Olympic Sponsorship Scandal’, I don’t know what you could possibly call it.
Some people say that it’s not that big a deal – that it’s only a temporary limit… They miss the point: nobody must ever have the right to put a limit on the freedom of speech, the most basic of our rights without which none of the others are possible. If someone can put a ‘temporary limit’ on it, then someone else can put another ‘temporary limit’, and another, and another…and before we realize it, the ‘limit’ will be a permanent one….
Yes, these are just two ‘highly visible’ instances….but, there are too many to document is a simple blog.
John Perry Barlow maintained that the biggest threat to freedom of speech in the future will be from ‘corporate censorship’.
I think he is right.
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