Fairness is just another word for something left to steal

Via Dust My Broom:

A Muslim journalist beaten with a cricket bat outside a Toronto-area home fears for his life after facing repeated death threats apparently because someone has deemed his writing to be anti-Islam.

A cricket bat? In North America the preferred club is the baseball bat... wait a second:

 The CP article doesn’t mention that the attackers were fellow Muslims.

And on the annversary of the Rodney King beating at that:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists.

(via The London Fog)

I'm guessing that the Peel Regional Police would like the same law:

More than a dozen Peel police officers facing Police Act charges have now been named in a $12 million lawsuit filed by two young men who claim they were roughed up after filming a wild booze party last summer.

via Daimnation

The Ottawa Citizen reports that the CBC are jumping into the censorship wagon:

A Booker Prize-winning Canadian writer was forbidden from reading from one of the world's most controversial anti-Semitic books on CBC Radio during Canada's Freedom to Read Week.

Life of Pi author Yann Martel said staff at CBC Radio Saskatchewan told him half an hour before a scheduled interview last Thursday that he wasn't allowed read excerpts of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf on the air.

Why, may you ask, was this Booker Prize winner reading Mein Kampf? Well, he was kind of asked to do so:

The CBC had asked Martel to do an interview on The Afternoon Edition because the author was planning to read from the book that evening at a Saskatoon Public Library event for Freedom to Read Week, an annual campaign raising public awareness about intellectual freedom in Canada.

The library asked Mr. Martel to read from any banned or challenged book, and Mr. Martel chose Mein Kampf.

"It's a horrible book, but a horribly important book, because you get in the brain of one of the monsters of the 20th century," Mr. Martel said.

As Daimnation states in support of the reading:

Know your enemy--and I mean it.

Though when you follow the link ityou find that it takes at least 2-5 months before you get the chance to start.

(also posted at The London Fog)

Here's my question: I understand the British have a different free speech tradition than ours; they're not bound by our First Amendment jurisprudence; there are indeed some speech restrictions that we forbid but that other democracies can tolerate and still preserve a vibrant marketplace of ideas, and means for democratic self-government.

But can anyone tell me just what European (including English) students, and citizens more broadly, are free to say about Islam without fear of expulsion from college, or even potentially criminal punishment (as has been discussed in other cases of harsh criticism of Islam)? ...

Read the rest.

(also @ The London Fog)

Democracy gives us the right to say "no." No to the forced burka, no to the drug trade, no to warring rulers who use religion and culture as a method to foment division.

How ironic is it then, that, in support of democracy, a young hockey player who says "no" is ejected from his team?

In the aftermath of Saint John Sea Dog winger Dave Bouchard being cut for not signing a flag sent to Canadian troops in Afghanistan, the coach has been suspended for two games and the team fined $1,000.

In a democracy, we have the right to say "no."

Players and creators of video games could face imprisonment for acts of virtual violence under draft legislation being drawn up by two of Germany's state governments.

Politicians in Bavaria and Lower Saxony have proposed a new offence that will punish "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters" inside games. Early drafts suggest that infringers should face fines or up to 12 months' jail for promoting or enacting in-game violence.

Research has yet to show a link between violence in video games and violent acts in the real world

Why look to research and science when intuitively we know that immediate intuitive based action gives the best political results?

(HT: Instapundit)

(look for this post in The London Fog)

This is not a victory for free speech, which was already protected; it is a victory for the perpetrators of libel and slander.

A while back I reminded myself that it was time to post on the hate laws in Canada. While the intent of such laws, like so many, is admirable, laws that impinge upon rights, or in this case, trample upon the freedom of expression, invariabaly backfire and are used for purposes for which they were not intended by the framers.

Hate laws were brought about by demands from and with the full support of various Jewish groups. They wanted to stop the Ernst Zundels of this world from propagatng hate against Jews. The result has been far from expected as jewishmag.com writes:

Canada is widely regarded as a model multicultural society; tolerant, peaceful, fair. To be sure, we have our share of bigots, racists and malcontents. But we are a progressive society. Progressive societies resolve their internal differences peacefully, and respectfully. And if some should confuse intolerance for truth or mistake might for right? Well, unlike the US, we also have criminal hate censorship laws, as well as assorted human rights, equity, and hate speech codes to set them right. But before anyone thinks of emulating the "true north strong and free," they better have a close look at what is happening on progressive Canadian campuses.

....

And so, Benjamin Netanyahu and Daniel Pipes cannot equally freely, or fearlessly, speak at any progressive, multicultural, Canadian campus. No pro-Zionist can. But just about every self-serving anti-Zionist demagogue and Israel-demonizing progressive ideologue can. Hate is whatever those with the power to disrupt, destroy, and silence, say it is. And so, only the Jewish voice is a campus security concern. Hate censorship has been hijacked. A shelter against illegitimate promotion of hate has been turned into a sword against legitimate exercise of Jewish voice.

How could it be otherwise? Censorship is force not talk. It is not about demonstration of right, but an exercise in might. Might is a double edged sword. In the end, the sharper edge, as is the nature of might, belongs to the more belligerent, or the more popular, not the more tolerant or the more civil. The popular have sympathy. The belligerent have force. The tolerant, and civil, have only words. By legitimating hate censorship, Jews have robbed themselves of rights to their own words and armed those of their intolerant adversaries. Jewish students on Canadian campuses find themselves neither with equal freedom to speak nor equal freedom from hate. The message is clear: if you are visibly Jewish you do not equally belong, even as every other historically vulnerable community – blacks, gays, Asians, transsexuals, Arabs, and Muslims – does.

There is a lesson in all this. Jewish faith in hate censorship and campus speech codes was a mistake to begin with. Rights to silence weaken, rather than strengthen, the Jewish voice. To be sure, freedom of speech carries risks. But for the tolerant, a political culture built on censorship might, at the cost of talk is, in the end, riskier still. Inclusion by silencing is tolerance built on quicksand. Quiet is not the same as acceptance. Compliance is not comprehension. Jewish hate censorship has been a self-deceiving, and self-debilitating, ruse. In fact, progressive Canadian campuses were rife with undercurrents of singularly anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish sentiment long before the Concordia riot. But it took a Netanyahu to ignite the truth, and bring the failings of campus hate speech and equity codes to light.

While I take the point of the article, I do not suspect that Jewish speech is being repressed by these laws. The state is not charging the speakers under the laws. The problem for the Jews is that when you legitimize "offence" as being worthy of sanction, you are legitimizing the use of force to prevent/stop the "offence".

Offence is the key to freedom of expression. To paraphrase, I may hate what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it. This is the freedom of expression. Once there is a decision that certain speech is offensive and will be subject to state sanction; or when the state decides that it will not use its monopoly on the use of force to prevent a mob from committing acts of violence against those who have offended through speech, the right no longer exists. It is  merely a privilege, subject to the whims of the majority or the mob. It is time to repeal these progressive laws which, like many progressive laws, is draconian in its result.

Some of my other posts on free speech can be found here.

Hat Tip: The Volokh Conspiracy.

cross-post: The London Fog

 Elton John wants to ban organized religion. I love celebrity. So used to having no one say no, you eventually believe you are always right. Some enlightened leadership will tell us how to think, what to believe, what to say and with whom to associate. It certainly worked well in the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, China, Syria, Iran and the like. Freedom of religion ( and I should note here that I do not have a religion) is the most fundamental of freedoms. Ban it and ban just about every other right as we have now entered the realm of the thought police.

Speaking religion, have a look at how unorganized religion is working out:

Spirit attacks PLE candidates, disrupt exams

SEVEN pupils missed their Primary Leaving Exams (PLE) on Friday after they were attacked by evil spirits, writes Elizabeth Namazzi.

The evil spirits reportedly struck in the morning when the pupils of Lwampanga Church of Uganda Primary School in Nakasongola District were halfway through the Mathematics examination. Possessed by the evil spirits, seven pupils rushed out of the examination room, hurling insults at people. Thereafter some rolled on the ground and others danced madly around the school compound as people in the vicinity looked on in awe.

Efforts to get a comment from the headmaster and district education officials were futile. However, the LC3 chairman Lwampanga Sub-county, Kassim Dimba, confirmed the incident.

During a ntelephone interview he said the evil spirits first attacked the pupils three weeks ago.

“The spirits first attacked three pupils three weeks ago. We called our local cultural leaders in charge of spirits and they managed to calm them. We thought they had been appeased but the spirits attacked more pupils on Tuesday”, Kassim said.

A total of nine pupils, seven of them candidates, were attacked by the end of Tuesday, two days before the commencement of the PLE exams.

“By the time of the first exam on Thursday, the evil spirits had been cast out and the pupils were able to write the first two exams peacefully. They were however attacked again on Friday morning during the Mathematics examination, sending the school into a panic,” he said.

A development worker who works at the Nakasongola District Headquarters, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Sunday Vision that she had heard about the incident from a local council official.

However, Sunday Vision could not immediately establish whether the incident was hysteria spell or an evil spirit.

According to Kassim traditional healers who were called in to deal with the spirits forced them to talk through the pupils.

“The spirits said that they were brought by a man in our are at a cost of sh1m and put inside a pot,” he said. The hunt for the pot is underway.

The science exam done in the afternoon was completed without incident but the affected students were unable to sit for it as they had not recovered from the attack.

(via Colby Cosh)

cp The London Fog

Borat Sagdiyev may have taken the United States by storm, but he won't repeat his box-office success in Russia.

Less than three weeks before a feature film about Borat, a character created by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, was to open in Russian movie theaters, the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency refused to license it out of concern that the film could offend audiences in this country.

The movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," about a misogynistic, wife-beating Kazakh journalist with a penchant for mustaches, thus becomes one of the first non-pornographic films to be banned since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

A court in Denmark has dismissed a defamation suit against the publishers of the cartoons of Mohammed. A victory for free speech on a continent where such speech is under threat.

Indeed there is a bias at the BBC as this leaked report indicates, ( I assume it is this report) . An excerpt:

The full account of the meeting shows how senior BBC figures queued up to lambast their employer.

Political pundit Andrew Marr said: 'The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'.

Former BBC business editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a 'very senior news executive', about the BBC's pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: 'The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.'

Randall also told how he once wore Union Jack cufflinks to work but was rebuked with: 'You can't do that, that's like the National Front!'

Quoting a George Orwell observation, Randall said that the BBC was full of intellectuals who 'would rather steal from a poor box than stand to attention during God Save The King'.

The BBC is in court to block the release of an internal report that is thought to be quite critical of the BBC's Middle East coverage:

The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers' money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.
The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.
The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.

Read the article. I am sure there will be plenty of commentary on the same. I simply point out that the BBC is government funded and that freedom of the press is an included part of the freedom of expression. I would love to see a similar report on the CBC.

(from Instapundit) Freedom of speech concerns the use of force by the state to restrict speech or the refusal of the state to use force to prevent the use of private violence to restrict speech. This excerpt from Brendan O'Neill's column concerning free speech on climate change is not so much about state action as the call for such action by the state:

The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around. Whatever the truth about our warming planet, it is clear there is a tidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is eroding free speech and melting rational debate. There has been no decree from on high or piece of legislation outlawing climate change denial, and indeed there is no need to criminalise it, as the Australian columnist suggests. Because in recent months it has been turned into a taboo, chased out of polite society by a wink and a nod, letters of complaint, newspaper articles continually comparing climate change denial to Holocaust denial. An attitude of ‘You can’t say that!’ now surrounds debates about climate change, which in many ways is more powerful and pernicious than an outright ban. I am not a scientist or an expert on climate change, but I know what I don’t like - and this demonisation of certain words and ideas is an affront to freedom of speech and open, rational debate.

Closing down freedom of speech in France. From the BBC (via Bourque):

Turkey has condemned a French parliamentary vote which would make it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered "genocide" at the hands of the Turks. Turkey called it a "serious blow" to relations and has threatened sanctions. The vote was also criticised by the EU.

.....

The French vote came as controversial Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.

He has faced prosecution in Turkey for talking about the murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during World War I and thousands of Kurds in subsequent years.

The charges have since been dropped.

This reminds me that it is time for me to do a post calling for the repeal of the Hate Laws in Canada.

Is anyone else sick of the anti-tobacco lobby and the way they assume we are all a pack of children? The labeling of packages with light and mild was the brainchild of Health Canada, not the ever so evil Big Tobacco.

I thought I was looking at footage from Concordia University ... turns it it's a little more Ivy League. With that said, I was in Montreal last weekend and did see the standard scruffy looking Concordia activists handing out pamphlets and selling books equating Dick Cheney to Satan.

Via Bourque

Police hunt farting dissident
Police in Poland have launched a nationwide hunt for a man who farted loudly when asked what he thought of the president.

Hubert Hoffman, 45, was charged with "contempt for the office of the head of state" for his actions after he was stopped by police in a routine check at a Warsaw railway station.

He complained that under President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, the country was returning to a Communist style dictatorship.

When told to show more respect for the country's rulers, he farted loudly and was promptly arrested.

Hoffmann was arrested and released on bail but failed to turn up at a Warsaw court early this week to be tried, and the judge in the case rejected an appeal by defence lawyers to throw the charges out.

A court spokesman said: "Such a case of disrespect is taken very seriously."

Instead the court ordered the police to start a nationwide hunt for the man, and interpol have been alerted

.

You do not have to be a serious observer of Canadian politics to figure that a spring election is somewhat likely. Neither the NDP nor The Bloc have any interest in allowing the new Liberal Party Leader get his feet under him and start running. The Tories are in a similar situation but have to play more coy. As such there is little chance that the 2007 budget will be passed and we will find ourselves at the polls. There is little time then to tackle a few issues that need tackling and we should start with free speech.

This writer is calling for the repeal of Part 17 of Canada Elections Act which places spending limits on third parties during elections. The Limit is $150,000 with no more than $3000 in any riding. The alleged purpose of this act was to protect the public, who clearly must be stupid and/or gullible and/ r selfish from being influenced by non registered political parties. In other words, it protects state sanctioned speech. Here are sections 350 -352 of the Act:

350. (1) A third party shall not incur election advertising expenses of a total amount of more than $150,000 during an election period in relation to a general election.  

Spending limit electoral district

(2) Not more than $3,000 of the total amount referred to in subsection (1) shall be incurred to promote or oppose the election of one or more candidates in a given electoral district, including by

(a) naming them;

(b) showing their likenesses;

(c) identifying them by their respective political affiliations; or

(d) taking a position on an issue with which they are particularly associated.  

Expenses re party leader

(3) The limit set out in subsection (2) only applies to an amount incurred with respect to a leader of a registered party or eligible party to the extent that it is incurred to promote or oppose his or her election in a given electoral district.  

Spending limit by-election

(4) A third party shall not incur election advertising expenses of a total amount of more than $3,000 in a given electoral district during the election period of a by-election.

Third party inflation adjustment factor

(5) The amounts referred to in subsections (1), (2) and (4) shall be multiplied by the inflation adjustment factor referred to in section 414 that is in effect on the issue of the writ or writs. No combination to exceed limit 351. A third party shall not circumvent, or attempt to circumvent, a limit set out in section 350 in any manner, including by splitting itself into two or more third parties for the purpose of circumventing the limit or acting in collusion with another third party so that their combined election advertising expenses exceed the limit. Advertising must name third party 352. A third party shall identify itself in any election advertising placed by it and indicate that it has authorized the advertising.

One would think that it is indefensible and that the Supreme Court of Canada would never allow this violation of free speech. Think again. Apparently the majority of the Court believed that when harm cannot be defined it is best to err on the side of regulating speech. The majority worked around the obvious and adopted the statist position that equalityt is found at the finish line, not the starting blocks. The reasoning of the Chief Justice in dissent makes much more sense, though it still is not completely satisfactory. Here is an excerpt:

35 On the other side of the equation, the infringement on the right is severe. We earlier reviewed the stringency of the limits. They prevent citizens from effectively communicating with their fellow citizens on election issues during a campaign. Any communication beyond the local level is effectively rendered impossible, and even at that level is seriously curtailed. The spending limits do not allow citizens to express themselves through mail-outs within certain ridings, radio and television media, nor the national press. Citizens are limited to 1.3 percent of the expenditures of registered political parties. This is significantly lower than other countries that have also imposed citizen spending limits. It is not an exaggeration to say that the limits imposed on citizens amount to a virtual ban on their participation in political debate during the election period. In actuality, the only space left in the marketplace of ideas is for political parties and their candidates. The right of each citizen to have her voice heard, so vaunted in Figueroa, supra, is effectively negated unless the citizen is able or willing to speak through a political party. 36 On this point, this case is indistinguishable from Libman, supra, where the Court held that the spending limits imposed on citizens in the course of a referendum campaign did not satisfy the requirement of minimal impairment. The Court held that the legislature in a case such as this must try to strike a balance between the right to free expression and equality among the citizens in expressing their views. The limits imposed failed to meet the minimal impairment test in the case of individuals and groups who could neither join nor affiliate themselves with the national committees. The Court stated that the restrictions were so severe that they came close to being a total ban and that better, less intrusive alternatives existed. The situation is precisely the same here. 37 In Libman, supra, at para. 63, the Court stated that “[i]t can be seen from the evidence that the legislature went to considerable lengths, in good faith, in order to adopt means that would be as non-intrusive as possible while at the same time respecting the objective it had set.Here, too, Parliaments good faith is advanced, said to be evidenced by the ongoing dialogue with the courts as to where the limits should be set. But as in Libman, good faith cannot remedy an impairment of the right to freedom of expression.

38. There is no demonstration that limits this draconian are required to meet the perceived dangers of inequality, an uninformed electorate and the public perception that the system is unfair. On the contrary, the measures may themselves exacerbate these dangers. Citizens who cannot effectively communicate with others on electoral issues may feel they are being treated unequally compared to citizens who speak through political parties. The absence of their messages may result in the public being less well informed than it would otherwise be. And a process that bans citizens from effective participation in the electoral debate during an election campaign may well be perceived as unfair. These fears may be hypothetical, but no more so than the fears conjured by the Attorney General in support of the infringement. 39 This is not to suggest that election spending limits are never permissible. On the contrary, this Court in Libman has recognized that they are an acceptable, even desirable, tool to ensure fairness and faith in the electoral process. Limits that permit citizens to conduct effective and persuasive communication with their fellow citizens might well meet the minimum impairment test. The problem here is that the draconian nature of the infringement to effectively deprive all those who do not or cannot speak through political parties of their voice during an election period overshoots the perceived danger. Even recognizing that [t]he tailoring process seldom admits of perfection (RJR-MacDonald, supra, at para. 160), and according Parliament a healthy measure of deference, we are left with the fact that nothing in the evidence suggests that a virtual ban on citizen communication through effective advertising is required to avoid the hypothetical evils of inequality, a misinformed public and loss of public confidence in the system.

In any event, the time has come for the law to be repealed. This is particularly so if you look at the nominal plaintiff in the Charter challenge to the Supreme Court (Hint: He is the Prime Minister of Canada). The Harper Government can give people back their voice, allow them to organize and to attempt to influence people to subscribe to their point of view. Perhaps you will not like the position of someone. Perhaps you will find it offensive. Perhaps it will motivate you to get involved in the process and work for a particular candidate or party. Or, perhaps the advertising and spending will have no influence on you at all. The fact is that the ability of individuals to express themselves as they see fit is worthy of protection while the electorate need less protection from themselves than the social scientists happen to believe. So, Mr. Harper, if you happen to be reading, repeal the third party election spending provisions of the Canada Elections Act. There will not be a public outcry and you will make some friends on the Libertarian side of the fence. And while you are in the mood for good policy, drop the three strikes and you're out idea.

Update: I forgot to comment that now that the Tories are in Government and the Act is particularly helpful in protecting incumbents, I doubt we will hear much about this.

As well, there have been developments in the Supreme Court of The United States on McCain-Feingold