Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad!
Came across this on Dvorak Uncensored:
If this is true, then people in Russia who are thought to be likely to soon commit a crime could be picked up by the successor to the KGB, interrogated and told how to alter their behaviour…or else.
Could this even be true?
For once, I am at a loss for words…
This is one of those ‘charged issues’: moral and religious issues get muddled up with cultural prejudices and pseudo-scientific propaganda. So, I’m really not sure where and how to begin…
The easy one first…
So much has been written about this, I will not go into details of the various ‘levels’ of female genital mutilation (recently re-named ‘female genital cutting’ in order to escape the deservedly bad PR). I’ll just note that it is a horrible thing which I condemn.
Rather, I would like to concentrate on the 3 reasons ‘why’ ‘female circumcision’ is practiced.
1. Religious
Many Muslims believe that Islam mandates both female and male circumcision because in the Islamic texts, the sex act is, at times, referred to as ‘when the circumcised parts meet’. This makes many Muslims believe that in order to emulate the prophet Muhammad, as their religion commands, both men and women ought to be circumcised – despite the fact that Muhmmad himself urged that ‘cutting less is better than cutting more’ because this ‘increases pleasure for both the man and the woman’ (I am paraphrasing).
2. Cultural
Some cultures have such contempt for women that they believe that without removing the clitoris, a woman would not be able to control her sexual urges and would copulate with anyone, anytime. Therefore, removing a source of sexual pleasure will help protect her honour and the honour of her family.
But contempt for women is not the only cultural reason for this practice.
In some places, like Ethiopia, female circumcision is a cultural custom, practiced both by Muslims and Christians. It is part of the cultural fabric: the mom was ‘circumcised’, the grandma was ‘circumcised’, so the possibility that the daughter might not be ‘circumcised’ does not even occur to anyone. It’s just what is done!
I have commented on this phenomenon before: people cannot possibly stop a harmful practice if it never actually occurs to them that there is something they could – and should – question…. It is only after people figure out that that something could be questioned that the actual battle for change can begin.
3. Medical
As bizarre as it seems to us, there are people (women) who honestly believe that complete clitorectemy is medically necessary. I saw a video (long ago) of an old woman who was renown as an expert practitioner of clitorectemy explaining (through an interpreter) that unless the clitoris is removed before puberty, it will grow and suffocate the child during childbirth. She even cited ‘real evidence’, where women had ‘bad, partial’ ones and the baby suffocated in the womb…
Of course, most of us would recognize this as a symptom of the ‘operation’ itself: the severe scaring which results in less flexible tissues which do not stretch properly, which causes the child to suffocate in the birth canal. But, they ‘have their observations’ and truly and honestly believe that full clitorectemies are a medical necessity.
To recap:
‘Female circumcision’ is practiced for religious and cultural reasons as well as because trusted members of their society who preform the clitorectomies honestly believe that it is medically beneficial to do so and are believed by the members of their society.
Here, in The West, this vile and inhumane and – well, horrible, sadistic torture – is not tolerated.
YET!!!
Unfortunately, recent voices – from among the people who would be the ones who wish to perform (and benefit financially from doing so) this procedure – have began a propaganda to normalize this practice ‘for the good of the little girls’! Their argument goes something like this:
The choice we are facing (they convincingly explain) is between horrible, painful, ‘back-shack-clitorectomies’ with no anaesthesia or even clean surgical instruments on one hand, and permitting a ‘ritual nick’ or ‘ritual pin-prick’ here, in the safety of a sanitary medical facility.
It’s the only safe option!
Don’t you care about these girls safety?
Please, consider, really consider, why is it that our political and cultural leaders are having such a hard time rejecting this flimsy excuse and ripping it to shreds for the ‘soft-racism’ and financial self-interest it so thinly veils?
I think that most of us would arrive at ‘the other circumcision’….
We tolerate it.
Many of us practice it.
If we permit bits of male infants’ genetalia to be chopped off (without anaesthetics to boot), how can we effectively combat a similar practice on female infants? Equality of the sexes and all….
Which brings me to:
Again, most of us are familiar with the ‘mechanics’ of what the term refers to. And, many of us, in The West, accept it as unquestioningly as that Ethiopian clitorectemist accepts ‘female circumcision’!
Some of us have, however, began to question this extremely painful practice which can lead to permanent re-wiring of a newborn’s brain. Many studies demonstrate that male infants who underwent circumcision display symptoms of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) months or even years later and that the neurological damage the infant suffers may cause life-long damage. And, most doctors now know that perfectly well.
And, there is always the issue of where do the rights of the parent end and the rights of the child begin….
Let me quote from the policy manual on non-therapeutic male circumcision by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia:
“Under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an infant has rights that include security of person, life, freedom and bodily integrity. Routine infant male circumcision is an unnecessary and irreversible procedure. Therefore, many consider it to be “unwarranted mutilating surgery”.
So, why are we still tolerating this practice?
There are 3 reasons:
1. Religious
The first thing most of us (at least, those of us born in Europe) think of when we hear ‘male circumcision’ is the practice of Judaism. So, for those of the Jewish faith, this has sort of been ‘grandfathered in’ and is never really questioned. Even though it goes on and on about how Jews must also circumcise their slaves…
If nothing else, that ought to give us a moment of pause: Jews are mandated by God to circumcise all their slaves?!?!?
Well, the Bible says so.
So, how did this practice enter the North American society?
Victorian ‘religious puritans’ (for lack of a better term) brought in the practice in order to decrease young men’s sexual pleasure so they would stop masturbating and spent more time thinking about God.
Really.
By removing the skin that protects the glans of the penis, the very sensitive nerve endings are constantly rubbed by ‘stuff’ – from undies on. This ‘constant stimulation’ is too much – so the brain decreases the sensitivity of these nerves. (Sort of like once you’ve been in cold water for a while, the nerve impulses screaming the message ‘this water is cold’ become weakened and you are ‘used to the temperature’.)
That is the reasoning behind removing the foreskin. By constant mild stimulation, the strength of the pleasure signals decreases and the mutilated man can better keep his mind on God!
To sum it up: just like ‘female circumcision’, the religious goal of ‘male circumcision’ is the reduction of sexual pleasure.
2. Cultural
In North America, this practice became so deeply culturally entrenched that, for generations, nobody questioned the practice. It was ‘simply done’. Promoted on the grounds of hygiene, the religious origins of this practice became forgotten by much of the population and became ‘the norm’.
Now, some parents circumcise their male infants ‘so they would not feel different from dad and/or other boys’… I know – I have seen it.
3. Medical
Many medical practitioners who perform infant circumcisions claim all kinds of wonderful medical benefits as a result of the procedure. Sort of like that Ethiopian clitorectomist does….
And there are tons of claims that circumcision reduces AIDS and other infections…. Yet, for each one of these studies, there are others that prove this is not so. And if one reads these ‘circumcision reduces AIDS’ studies, you will find that ‘circumcision’ in these studies is accompanied by a comprehensive education on AIDS and other STDs…. Yet, the studies do not make any difference between reduction in AIDS through education or circumcision. That is kind of like saying that learning the alphabet will make you good at math without mentioning that to learn the alphabet, you go to school where you are taught both the alphabet and the math….
So, what do the ‘Western’ MDs say about the medical benefits of male circumcision? Let’s see what the CPSCB has to say about the ‘Medical Perspecives’ (my emphasis):
Circumcision removes the prepuce that covers and protects the head or the glans of the penis. The prepuce is composed of an outer skin and an inner mucosa that is rich in specialized sensory nerve endings and erogenous tissue. Circumcision is painful, and puts the patient at risk for complications ranging from minor, as in mild local infections, to more serious such as injury to the penis, meatal stenosis, urinary retention, urinary tract infection and, rarely, even haemorrhage leading to death. The benefits of infant male circumcision that have been promoted over time include the prevention of urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases, and the reduction in risk of penile and cervical cancer. Current consensus of medical opinion, including that of the Canadian and American Paediatric Societies and the American Urological Society, is that there is insufficient evidence that these benefits outweigh the potential risks. That is, routine infant male circumcision, i.e. routine removal of normal tissue in a healthy infant, is not recommended.
In other words, any claims of medical benefits of male circumcision are about as well grounded in fact as the Ethopian woman’s belief that not cutting out the clitoris will cause it to grow so bit, it will suffocate the infant during childbirth!
Yet – we tolerate it….
Why?
Both male and female circumcision is done for the same reasons: religious and cultural pressures to decrease the ability of the individual to experience sexual pleasure, medical misinformation and cultural momentum.
Until we recognize the parallels between the two and criminalize the practice of parents imposing this choice onto their children, we cannot pretend we are a civilized people who respect basic human rights!
CUPE – Canadian Union of Public Employees, according to its website, represents 600,000 civil servants and is Canada’s largest labour union.
The important bit here is that it represents civil servants. Only civil servants. These are the people who put public policy into action.
As in, these are the ‘Agents of the state’!
This, of course, does not mean they are not ‘their own person’ in their ‘free time’. Of course they are, free to express their views and all that.
Still, since their role as Agents of the State is known, their actions necessarily reflect on the state, too. This places ‘greater-than-average’ responsibility on them to uphold the laws of the State and not breech them in their public conduct.
I guess what I am trying to say is that breaking laws is always bad. But, if it is broken by someone who is not just ‘an average citizen’, but by someone who is either charged with enforcing the laws (like, say, a police officer), or enacting the laws (like, say, a public servant), it reflects badly not just on the individual, but on the State as a whole.
So, when a well-know CUPE member Ali Mallah assaulted BlazingCatFur, a blogger who was acting in the role of a journalist and filming/photographing a public protest in which Mr. Mallah was taking part, it reflects badly not only on Mr. Mallah personally, but also on CUPE and on all the civil servants of Canada!
What was the provocation?
Mr. Mallah did not like that BlazingCatFur was taking images of a public protest, in a public area.
In other words, this CUPE member, this civil servant, this Agent of the Canadian State, wanted to muzzle a journalist – and when he failed, he assaulted him!
This is a very serious thing. It is not just ‘one guy getting annoyed’ and, in the heat of the moment, loosing his temper.
This is a reflection of the attitudes of the Civil Service – and a very bad PR situation for CUPE.
The attack is documented:
Quoting from the video, the CUPE member demands:
“Who gave you permission to take a picture?”
On a public street, at a public event, this public servant wants to deny citizen journalists the very right to take pictures? What a frightening attitude for an Agent of the State to take!
And, when he is not immediately obeyed, he assaults the picture-taker: BlazingCatFur!
Mr. Mallah clearly recognized BlazingCatFur and the role as citizen-journalist which he plays – so his action was not simply an attack on one person: it is an attack on every Canadian journalist!
Once this has occurred, it is really irrelevant what the public protest was about, or what the various political views of whatever actors in this event or any bystanders are. Because once violence occurs, it is no longer the ‘beliefs’ or ‘convictions’ which motivated someone to one-sided display of violence and attempt to muzzle the press, it is the behaviour – and only the behaviour – which must be the subject of investigation! Attempting to censor and physically intimidate journalists is not a matter that can be taken lightly.
This is Canada – we do NOT tolerate violence! And, we demand that reporters and journalists of all types must not be muzzled, intimidated, attacked, or otherwise interfered with!
An internal investigation (of CUPE by CUPE) is needed, so that violent elements within the union can be expelled and, if necessary, brought to criminal justice. Nothing less than that can restore CUPE’s reputation as a respectable organization. I call on CUPE to take this action, clean up their ranks, to expel and publicly denounce those of its members who would use intimidation and violence to silence journalists and reporters!
Failing that, the various levels of government who employ CUPE members will need to re-evaluate CUPE’s eligibility to represent members of the Civil Service.
And, I am not joking about this.
We cannot tolerate Civil Service Unions which permit their members to intimidate and do violence to members of the press! And, we must demand that all levels of our governments expel from its ranks any and all unions which tolerate their members to assault this cornerstone of freedom of the press, of freedom of speech, on which our society is built!
Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘freedom fighter:
If ‘freedom fighter’ means ‘fighter FOR freedoms’ or ‘fighter OF freedoms’…
If the ‘freedom fighter’ is fighting so that everyone may exercise their unalienable rights equally, or fighting so that a select/elite group would be free to do impose their views on the everyone else…
You ‘get the picture’!
As for the Taliban: in which sense are they ‘freedom fighters’?
They forbid freedom of religion.
They kill women for the crime of holding a job – or even leaving the house without male supervision.
Sounds to me like the Taliban are ‘fighters OF freedoms’!
Yet, for some reasons which are not quite clear – perhaps mis-applied attempt at objectivity, perhaps an expression of guild and self-loathing for having been born into one of the best, ‘safest’ human societies ever – keep suggesting that the Taliban are, in some sense, ‘freedom fighters’.
These people claim that just because the Taliban fight in a ‘different way’ than we would expect ‘proper armies’ to fight does not mean that they ought not be regarded on equal footing with our soldiers….
Aside from the offensiveness of this statement which reduces our soldiers to the level of terrorists and murderous thugs, there is an objective way to demonstrate that the ‘difference in fighting style’ is not just some ‘cultural thing’…. Because it is not!
This type of fighting – using small units which are indistinguishable from the population, then ‘malting into the crowd’ – has occurred in the past in just about every human society, in every continent, in every culture.
This is the easiest method of using the civilian population as ‘human shields’, because the other side (whether army – during war, or police forces if there is no war officialy declared) cannot defend itself without harming its own civilians into peril. That is why this type or ‘fighting’ is universally reviled and opposed.
We don’t have to look further back than WWII: consider the differences between the ‘partisans’ who fought against the Nazi’s in the different parts of the occupied lands. In most Slavic countries, the partisans may have been secretly supplied by the civilian population, but they did not live among them. To ‘join the partisans’, one had to leave the village and find the caves or temporary camps they set up in forests, away from populated areas.
Of course, they had spies and allies among the civilians, but the ‘active soldiers’ typically avoided the civilian areas so as not to endanger innocent people when the Nazis would come hunting them. This was a conscious decision they made – at least, so I have been told by several veterans who were indeed partisans in WWII in ‘the East’.
It was a little different in France. Yes, the French Resistance units were also supposed to stay away from the towns and villages. But, the French resistance fighters were much more ready to hide among the civilians than the Eastern partisans. This is why, I was told, partisans object to the term ‘partisan’ being extended to the French Resistance fighters…..
By hiding among the civilians to the degree they did, the French Resistance fighters were ‘not worthy’ of the term ‘partisan’. So I have been told – by those who lived it and were very passionate on this subject.
This bitterness towards those who would fight in this reckless manner, who place their own safety above the safety of the civilians by using them as human shields (whether it was focused on the French Resistance or not) was quite palpable following WWII. That is quite clear from reading the Geneva Convention!
In order to prevent, or, at least, minimize, this form of warfare, the drafters of the Geneva Convention included very real measures.
It is precisely to ‘discourage’ this ‘Taliban-style’ form of warfare that was the goal of the Geneva Convention!
They specifically protect people who are not taking part in the hostilities (civilians, health workers and aid workers) and those who are no longer participating in the hostilities, such as wounded, sick and shipwrecked soldiers and prisoners of war.
To this end, if an active fighter is found to be hiding among the civilians (even his/her own family), under the original terms of the Geneva Conventions, such a person was specifically excluded from any protections under the convention!
In other words, the drafters of the Geneva Convention thought this behaviour to be such a high crime against humanity that they specifically excluded those who practice Taliban-style warfare from any and all protection! In no uncertain terms, their message was that for people like that, no punishment is strong enough, no treatment is harsh enough.
Since then, there have been amendments to the Geneva Convention that extend humane treatment to everyone – makes good sense, too – including all prisoners and detainees (even the Taliban-type fighters).
Just keep in mind: there is a provision in the Geneva Convention that permits any member of a legitimate military, in uniform or wearing appropriate identification as such, who identifies an active combatant hiding among the civilian population to decide whether to detain the combatant – or whether to summarily execute him/her! Right there, right then – the legitimate soldier has the right to execute a combatant hiding among the civilians.
Quite a power to give even the lowest-ranking soldier!
But, in the eyes of the people who wrote the Geneva Convention, it is just and proper: not just as a punishment for this vile crime, but also as a deterrent.
After all – the aim of the convention clearly states that the prime purpose of it is to protect the civilians first. And, it considers those who use civilians as human shields and endanger them by hiding among them to be the vilest, most despicable criminals who ought to be summarily executed.
Still think the Taliban can be labeled as ‘freedom fighters’?
Monday, 3rd of May, was the 30th ‘Freedom of the Press Day:’ with the release of the 2009 ‘freedom of the press’ ratings by FreedomHouse. Reporters Without Borders has a slightly different – though no less grim – set of results. And ‘they’ ask why people are going to the blogosphere to get their news.
Still, it is, in my never-humble-opinion, difficult to measure just how ‘free’ the ‘press’ in the West really is… Some shackles are self-imposed, and cannot be reflected by a measurement on ‘external’ limitation!
The ‘xkcd blag’ has an absolutely awesome post on the colourful things Aspies do for fun!
Talking about colour: ‘Passion for Freedom’ 2010 art competition, by OneLawForAll, has opened. It will run in September 2010 and the focus is to expose the discriminatory nature of Sharia – submissions are now being accepted.
OneLawForAll also announced a rally on June 20th 2010 in Trafalgar Square (that would make it London, England – methinks). This will commemorate the brutal murder of Neda Agha-Soltan during Iran’ ‘women’s revolution’.
Sorry to post a list of interesting ‘stuff’ without that much commentary. And, I still have a lot of unfinished (though most are close) posts on the Free Dominion appeal hearing – both background and my take. It is taking me longer than I thought to understand some of the legal precedents….so, my time is spent reading.
I promise I’ll be back to ‘normal’ soon – well, whatever it is that passes for ‘normal’ with me!
Just like BCF says:
Geert Wilders Needs Our Help Urgently
With four weeks to go before the general elections in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom are now engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the forces of jihad. In the last couple of years Geert Wilders has emerged as the international symbol of the struggle against Islam.
The Party for Freedom (PVV) refuses government subsidy in order to remain independent. All other Dutch parties receive government money. Therefore, the PVV is facing a serious challenge in order to survive this election season. Dutch state television is engaged in a massive campaign to smear the PVV.
The Party for Freedom needs your help urgently. Every donation is welcome.
There is a Paypal button on the English-language site: www.geertwilders.nl
…
ING bank account of the Stichting Vrienden van de PVV in The Hague: 67.04.72.344(IBAN: NL98 INGB 0670 4723 44, BIC: INGBNL2A)
Postal address:
Postbus 20018
2500 EA Den HaagThere is a Paypal button on the English-language site: www.geertwilders.nl
Please, don’t get me wrong: I hate the burka.
In my never-humble-opinion, wearing a burka (or niqab) is immoral.
So, I resent having to write in the defense of the burka!
…because, nothing, not even the burka or niqab, grant any government the power to legislate a citizen’s choices in clothing.
The government does not – and must not – have the right to tell me how to dress. What to wear or what not to wear. EVER!!!
‘Governments’ simply lack the authority to a law that determines how I choose to dress.
However…
This does not mean that governments do not have the right to enforce a dress code in public buildings/parks/vehicles etc.
As in, if you enter a public building – for whatever reason – the government which administers it has the right to demand that you wear shoes (that is a safety/liability issue – stepping on stuff can harm an unprotected foot), and so on. In the same way, the government has the right to demand that every person entering a public building or park (anything administered by that level of government) must not cover their face.
Therefore, schools, libraries, public transit, hospitals, government offices – well, all the ‘public spaces’ – are areas where the government has the authority to pass a law that people must show their faces. Fully.
That IS within the government’s jurisdiction to pass laws about.
And yes, governments SHOULD pass these laws!!!
Leaving all the ‘obvious’ reasons aside (many people have made these arguments very eloquently already), another very valid argument could be made that it is absolutely necessary that a person’s mouth be fully visible while in public buildings: obscuring one’s mouth is discriminatory.
Our laws , our very constitutions, forbid discrimination on he grounds of disability. Governments naturally hire people based on their skills, regardless of any potential disabilities – like, say, being hearing impaired…. Whether accessing or providing a government service, lipreading is an accepted means of communicating and much more common than most people realize. Many of us even do it without realizing it!
Obscuring one’s lips behind a veil thus discriminates against people who are hearing impaired and rely fully or partially on lipreading to communicate. This is an important issue: a constitutional matter! Perhaps this argument appears disproportional, but, please, take a moment to think about it. It is a valid point.
And, for a society which prides itself on being inclusive and does not discriminate against people with physical disabilities, this is a big deal.
Of course, all private places of business also have the right to enforce dress codes for people who enter their premises. That is fully accepted in our society, and must remain so. It is best captured by the signs: “No shoes, no shirt, no service.”
Perhaps the new ones will read: “No shoes, no shirt, no face, no entry!”
And that would be good.
It not only ‘would be good’, in my never-humble-opinion, it is necessary.
It also seems to me that our existing laws already cover this issue (no pun intended).
Private places of commerce have the right to enforce dress codes. They are free to ban ‘face coverings’ – and must remain free to do so.
Public places are also governed by rules which can be interpreted as forbidding ‘face coverings’: on the grounds that covering one’s mouth discriminates against people who are hearing impaired. This is not permitted in public places. Therefore, no burka, no niqab.
We even have a law (at least in Ontario) which says that a driver’s face must be fully visible and recognizable from outside the vehicle: that is why the front windows in a car are not permitted to have a dark tint. Wearing a veil of any type which is not transparent and obscures a driver’s face, or any other thing which prevents the driver’s face to be fully visible from outside the vehicle is, therefore, already illegal!
No new law needed!
It is not a good idea to have more laws than absolutely necessary. Passing multiple laws to govern one thing is misguided and dangerous.
To sum it up:
Perhaps I’ve missed a few specific instances, I’ll grant that. BUT – they would still be ‘specific instances’! It is wrong to pass a blanket law which bans the burka.
Permitting the government the exercise any authority to legislate how people dress is as frightening as it is ludicrous!
Who’d enforce these laws?
The ‘Fashion Police’?
OK – I don’t understand how ANYONE would think this is a ‘good idea’!
IBM has now created a machine which can detect ‘pre-crime’ – by measuring a person’s brain waves.
It sounds like a bad science fiction flick, or a particularly stupid April fool’s joke – and I wish it were! Alas, it appears to be ‘real’…
From GIZMODO:
IBM clearly wants this to go big. They have spent a whooping $12 billion beefing up its analytics division. Again, here’s the full quote from Deepak Advani [emphasis added]:
Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities. It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens.
IBM says that the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom—which has an impeccable record on not pre-judging its citizens—already uses this system to prevent criminal activities.
This turns our society upside down!
Our ‘Western’ society was built on the very principle all rights and freedoms are inherent in each individual: we broke free of the shackles of state and religion which claimed to ‘own’ its populations, where the only rights people had were those that State and Temple permitted them!
To make sure we were never enslaved again – to prevent the Government from choosing who has he right to exercise which freedoms and when….and who does not….we have built in mechanisms into our Constitutions, from Magna Carta on down, that limit the power of the government.
Yes – the whole point of our ‘Western’ constitutions is to protect us, the individual citizens, from the government.
From the government telling us what to do, what to believe, how to live and worship….
Yet here, the Florida government plans (and, apparently, the UK government already does – King John must be ROFL in his grave) have announced their plans to invade the thoughts of youth offenders, and set then jail based on their thought patterns!!!
And if you have any illusions that re-education camps are not prisons, ask Solzhenitsyn: he spent decades in a government-run re-education camp! Yes, in socialist Soviet Union, a person who was picked up for ‘being intoxicated in public’ was indeed sent – for his or her own good – into state-run re-education camps in Siberia… And the Soviet Union was not alone in their belief that government could ‘re-educate’ people in order to help them better fit into the society they had engineered…
I can’t believe this is actually happening!
And if you think that re-education camps in the US are being planned are being planned only for youth offenders – think again. Voices are speaking up about ‘re-education camps’ being planned for ALL they youth in the US, under the guise of ‘volunteerism’ (which, happens to pay a salary).
Yes. (When I was young, I had to join the young pioneers – prove I was ‘officially registered’ and was continuously ‘earning achievement stamps’ in my ‘pioneer passport….oh, the headaches I used to get!)
When things got too oppressive in Europe, people escaped to North America to win back their freedom. Which leaves me with the question: where do we run to now?
They narrative of my observations of this event started out in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner: fully aware of the importance of this case, this was my way of relieving some of the tension. However, now that I will be describing the proceedings themselves, my reporting will be as accurate as possible. Connie Fournier’s observations of these same proceedings can be found here and here.
When I last left off, the 3 judges had entered the courtroom, dispensed with another matter and invited all the lawyers present – for both sides in the action as well as the two intervening parties.
Describing positions as seen from the spectator benches in the courtroom, the introductions began on the right:
On behalf of the intervenor Canadian Civil Liberties (CCLA), there were
Representing the appellants, Connie and Mark Fournier, there was
On behalf of the intervenor Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), there was
On behalf of the complainant, Richard Warman, there were
Very interesting group of people!
The judges did not introduce themselves. However, these are their names (again, the order is from right to left, as observed if one had their back against the ‘main’ door):
I do not know the name of the Clerk of the Court or the Bailiff.
As I said in my earlier post, the spectators included David Fewer, as well as Connie Fournier, Mark Fournier, Guy Poirier, a young woman whom I presume to have been an aid to the Katz/Lewis team, an unidentified blond woman in a gray pantsuit and myself.
Surprisingly enough, these were all the people there!
Update: the attack occurred not in downtown Ottawa, but just on the other side of the Ottawa river in Ottawa’s twin city, the Gatineau, PQ. This area is still within sight (and walking distance) of both the Supreme Court of Canada and the Parliament buildings. BCF has the Michael Coren interview with Nick Bergamini.
Nick Bergamini is a student at Carleton University and active in student government.
According to his facebook page:
…
“Quickly, we both responded that yes we were Zionists. All of a sudden we were surrounded by 10-15 men who began to shout at us in Arabic. We tried to back out and run away. All of a sudden, I was struck in the back of the head. I’m not sure if it was a fist, a rock or a pipe but it left me dazed and bleeding.
We quickly ran back to the bar and stood beside the bouncers. The crowd of anti-Israel thugs dispersed.
About 10 minutes later, assuming that it was safe, we began to walk home. We were walking through a parking lot when a car pulled up next to us. The driver shouted “I fucking hit you, you Jew.”
We stood our ground. Quickly we had three guys around us. We were able to push them away. As the cowards that they were, they retreated. Then I heard, shouts of “Open the trunk!” One of them opened the trunk and I saw glistening in the street light the reflection of a 12-inch machete. “Fucking Jew,” he shouted. I began to run for my life as he was only 5 or 6 feet away.
I ran, and as I looked back, I saw the long shiny blade slicing through the air about 12 inches from my neck. I ran as fast I could and, thanks to my grade 9 track and field training, got away.
People who were around the scene said the blade came within inches of my neck.
Read his whole post here!
Is this really happening here, in Canada?
Here, in Ottawa, Canada’s Capital?
Here, right downtown Ottawa – just blocks from our Parliament and the Supreme Court of Canada?
Now?
Yes, that would indeed appear to be true!
Question: This happened in the club district, downtown Ottawa. At 1:45 in the morning, this is hardly an abandoned or ‘quiet’ part of town – being so close to the University of Ottawa campus, there are usually quite a few people about! The Ottawa Police usually have a ‘presence’. It’s their job!
So, I am curious to hear their side of the story: how come these guys are not arrested yet?
OK – so Nick Bergamini and Mark Klibanov got themselves beaten up and bloodied.
OK – so some guys with a machete chased them, trying hard to decapitate them.
Goodness knows, we all loose our tempers, some times!
A much more dangerous crime occurred in Ottawa that night!
They were engaging in hate speech – right in the middle of a crowd!
Do you realize just how many people might have had their feelings hurt?
How many might have been traumatized: by hearing there were 2 Zionists in our midst?
How do the police expect us to be able to sleep tonight? We are a city – nay, a community – traumatized!
After all, we ran that Zionist Ann Coulter right out of town (yes, she may be an anti-Semite, but she is still a Zionist!)! Yeah, the Ottawa Police made sure she was not permitted to speak!
We thought we could relax a little…..
But no! Now these two Zionists crop up! Right in the middle of the City!
They even freely and openly admit they are Zionists – and through the admission of their very existence, they traumatize a whole crowd!
Just think of those poor thugs – they must really have had their feelings hurt! They were so traumatized, they got their machete out and went after the Zionists!
This is really, really terrible! These two Zionists have provoked these poor guys so much, they might never calm down from it and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of their lives.
Yet, Nick is obviously still free to write this up for his facebook page! Writing down all this self-incriminating evidence – how he admitted openly that he was indeed a Zionist!
So – how long do YOU think it’ll take the Ottawa Police to arrest Nick Bergamini and Mark Klibanov for their hateful speech!?!?!
And the Ottawa Police have still not arrested them… Sheeeeesh!!!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 