Letters to the Editor
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Clarification
I was just appending and venting, I looked at my post afterward, I hope RMP and Pedinska didn't think I was calling them neocon -- I wasn't. I should have put it in a separate note, sorry, I was upset.
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@RMP - re: MSNBC Question
The D.C. Court of Appeals has rejected claims for legal redress by three British nationals who were held in American military custody at Guantanamo, Cuba. The three wanted the court to hear their allegations of torture and the denial of their religious freedoms while at Gitmo. The court ruled that the three were not "persons" and could not argue about religion under existing statutes, and that their treatment was proper under the authority of an American cabinet officer.
Can you comment?
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I saved the pdf file
If someone wants to email me at my old yahoo address, naper_s, I will be glad to email my saved pdf file.
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Alberta's gauntlet of bias
from
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Monday, January 14, 2008
Ezra Levant is a courageous man. On Friday, he flipped the bird at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The AHRC, and the rest of the country's human rights witch hunts, have long needed the bird flipped at them.
Ezra is a long-time friend of mine and a former employee of this paper. That does not alter the fact that he is a courageous man.
Two winters ago, when Muslims around the world were rioting in the streets, killing one another by the score and destroying hundreds of millions in property, over cartoons of Muhammad that appeared in a Danish newspaper, Ezra was almost alone in Canada in summoning the courage to show his readers what the fuss was about.
At the time, Ezra was publisher of the newsmagazine Western Standard, now sadly defunct. He (rightly) felt civilized readers could be trusted to see the cartoons and make up their own minds whether they were offensive of not.
To the Western eye, the depictions were tame. Much worse is drawn of our own politicians every day.
And the notion that publications in the Western world could staunch the violence on the Muslim street half a world away by not reprinting the cartoons, was ludicrous, even if most politically correct talking heads nodded knowingly at the suggestion that reprinting them would make matters worse.
So Ezra decided to take advantage of the ancient Anglo-Saxon right to free expression and published the cartoons.
What he was reminded of, almost immediately, is that Canada is no longer an Anglo-Saxon nation. Gone is the robust belief held by our ancestors for 800 years that the citizen is sovereign, that he is free to do as he wishes unless the state can show unambiguously that there is an overriding need to limit his liberty temporarily. It has been replaced by the continental notion that nothing is allowed unless it is expressly permitted by the state. The belief that the citizen owes the government an explanation of his actions, not the other way around, has gripped our politicians, bureaucrats, judges and professors.
Ironically, human rights commissions are the best examples of just how many rights we have lost. They follow none of the rules of evidence built up over centuries to assure the accused of a fair hearing. Many commissions will hear plaintiff 's testimony in secret, violating the protection of being able to confront one's accusers. Most admit hearsay and limit the right of the accused to counsel or to call his own witnesses and experts.
Whether they will admit it or not, most also employ reverse onus: Before them, the accused is presumed guilty of racism, sexism, homophobia or general insensitivity if someone from a favoured minority claims to have been offended. It is the responsibility of the accused to prove he is not.
Unlike in a defamation court, at a human rights show trial truth is no defence. What's more, the accuser will be represented by the tax-funded officers of the commission, sometimes even by government-paid lawyers, while the defendant will have to pay his own way.
Ezra strode into this gauntlet of bias and hyper political correctness on Friday, knowing the deck was stacked against him. Even in Alberta, the human rights commission -- which has the power of a federal court -- is more interested in soothing the hurt feelings of vocal interest groups than preserving free speech. Even in Alberta, it is, as Voltaire wrote, "dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
[from Lorne Gunter in the National Post]
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Piling on, Dirigo
What does it say for the humanity of your country when a court holds that a flesh and blood human being in Guantanamo Bay is not a person before the law, but a company dedicated to profiting by denying health insurance claims in New Haven, Connecticut is?
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@ondelette
Do we want to pick the best questions or just have everyone submit their own?
For anyone who is ready to submit, here's the link:
Your chance to ask the candidates a question
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22574335/
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@RMP
My opinion -- We maximize our expected gain by posting individually, but people should help each other with wordsmithing, and by finding and correcting language slips that might give the candidates a way to dodge or deliberately answer the wrong question. (forgive me for forgetting who called in to David Boren the other day (bamage?), but Boren dodged because in a great paragraph of question, one bad word gave him an in).
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@Ondelette
I'm a little confused. Can you clarify?
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@ondelette
It was bamage and your plan sounds good to me.
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A couple of facts to liven the debate.
But equally pernicious, at least, are those who advocate laws that would proscribe and punish political expression, and those who exploit those laws to try use the power of the State to impose penalties on those expressing "offensive" or "insulting" or "wrong" political ideas. The mere existence of the "investigation," interrogation, and proceeding itself is a grotesque affront to every basic liberty.
While I have some experience of Human Rights Commissions getting out of control, I disagree with your description of the process for several reasons. First, being "offensive, insulting or wrong" is not a violation of the Canadian Human Right Code.
What the Code says is: "It is a discriminatory practice for a person . . . to communicate . . . repeatedly . . . by . . . a telecommunication undertaking . . . any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination."
It's the "hatred and contempt" that is the key. The fear is that such messages contribute to actual violence against people because of their religion or ethnic background. This is against the background of arson in an historic synagogue in Toronto, arson in a Hebrew school in Montreal and a surprising number of acts of vandalism in cemeteries of minority religions.
Levant complains (and complains, and complains!) that there has never been an "acquittal" (a finding that the complaint was invalid) under the "hate message" provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Code. He would appear to be correct. But a search of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal website reveals that there have been exactly eight (8) such cases in the history of the CHRT. All of them involved "white power" websites.
If you review the text of the decisions, I think you will agree that the specific cases are well beyond the hypothetical standard of shouting "Movie!" in a crowded fire house. They are way out beyond the Danish cartoons. On the other hand, the poisonous reaction expressed in to emails Muslim organizations in Canada after the Danish cartoons were first published suggest that there is an undercurrent of "hatred and contempt" against Muslims, even in nice, liberal Canada.
The penalties in the hate messages cases run from $1,000 to one of $10,000. (The CHRT does not have power to detain people. They can't even make them come to the hearing.)
Secondly, Glenn is wrong about the "interrogation" of Mr. Levant. The "interrogation" is a voluntary meeting with an investigator. If Mr. Levant does not want to talk to the investigator, all he has to do is say no. There is no penalty for doing so.
Finally, the concept of a human rights commission is not "a grotesque affront to every basic liberty," but an attempt to protect every basic liberty. Mr. Levant has a right to be disgusting; I have no quarrel with that. Equally, however, Canadians of Muslim belief or Arabic descent have the right to go about their affairs and practice their religion without being exposed to "hatred and contempt" because of their ancestry or religion.
And words do matter. If you are in doubt, research the history of an American play called "The Klansman." (It was made into a movie called Birth of a Nation.) Check out what happened to black Americans when the play was performed. We would like to avoid that sort of thing, if we can.