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Tuesday April 15,
2008
Pucker up!
Get ready to kiss democracy goodbye
Because our freedoms - you know, the ones "Al Qaeda" hates us for - are
being slowly but surely chipped away, bit by tiny bit.
First, please take a look at today's Reader Comments,
particularly regarding the explosive news about Louise Arbour (Simone Williams),
and why it's unwise to make heroes out of ordinary humans, since all we
really know of most of them is the image created for us by the media.
After that, please read the Harper Index's article on
evangelical Charles McVety and the current success of his
campaign to curtail Canadian artistic freedom.
Being a raisin with a wandering mind, I found it a bit humourous that
Charlie is described as an "evangelical heavyweight". I've long
wondered why many prominent religious leaders are so eerily similar in
their corpulence when gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins? See
for yourself: McVety
Falwell
Hagee
Dobson
and while we're at it, let's airlift in a couple of their biggest
mouthpieces: Rush
Limbaugh and Michael
Coren. It's almost as if they all sprang from the same
pod.
It's too bad these guys are so smut obsessed. Charlie, for
instance,
should probably have put his efforts into stopping the CBC two-part
series, The Trojan Horse
from being aired last month. It's a gripping drama that stars the
popular Paul Gross, and it totally gives away the agenda of the SPP and
the sort of seamy, corrupt politics it is engendering, or is perhaps
born of.
I've come into a taped copy of it and I can tell you it's something
every Canadian should try to see if one hasn't already. I believe
the
CBC distributes its tapes for private use, and I'm sure there are torrent sites where you
can download a copy for free, using a program called UTorrent,
or something similar.
Anyway,
once in a while you do get to hear an encouraging word. Charlie has got himself a
formidable, extremely talented and highly unique counterpoint with
which to contend:
TorStar: Ms
Polley goes to Ottawa
Actor/director Sarah Polley awaits the start of the
Senate
committee hearing on legislation to revoke tax credits for productions
deemed too racy.
Polley is going to make the Senate's heads swim.
She's way
ahead of them in mental acuity. Me, I'm always hoping that, just
once
at least, they might misplace their rubber stamp.
Speaking of censorship:
I haven't read Greg Felton's book "The Host and The Parasite - How
Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America"
only because I'm inundated with materials about the Israel/Palestine
debate and sometimes I need to read books purely for enjoyment just to
retain my current sanity level.
But when I saw the
video of his talk
given recently at the Vancouver Public Library, I was struck by the
lack of public knowledge revealed during the Q&A, and especially by
the response of an otherwise refined and intelligent looking woman who
had no questions, no cogent arguments, but simply took the mic to call
him names.
For that reason alone, it's worth reading Felton's story of his
experiences since his library talk, including lies about his book being
told by the media:
Felton: ‘By way of intimidation, thou shalt do war’— the slogan of The
Lobby’s thought police
The Book, The Library and the
Lobby Part I
Part II
It's
quite probable the
Vancouver library has been intimidated into reconsidering allowing
criticism of Israeli policies on its premises. This, in my
opinion, is
tantamount to book burning.
Not incidentally at all, attempts to bring down Marc Lemire's Freedom
Site have so far failed. Canadian lawyer Barbara Kulaszka was credited
by supporters of Marc Lemire for achieving the dismissal of a
Canadian Human Rights Commission complaint against the site.
Kulaszka, who also acted
for Ernst Zundel
against deportation under the Security Certificate provisions for
having questioned the details of the "Holocaust", has told me she is
surprised that it's taken so long for Greg Felton to be on the
receiving end of this kind of intimidation.
I can't say that I agree with much of Marc Lemire's premises - and
Zundel's quibbling over numbers and means does not mitigate in my mind
Hitler's evil campaign against the Jews - but it's extremely important
to defend the right to speak one's opinions freely and openly.
You may find this hard to believe but the CHRC actually has people
who masquerade as members of certain chat groups and forums,
inserting vile and disgusting statements into conversations in order to
goad other members into making similar comments.
Ezra
Levant, for all his
callousness in publishing the Mohammed Cartoons in his now defunct Western
Standard, and despite his
avid
war mongering, has at least shown consistency in coming
out against the
CHRC's case against Marc Lemire.
Your taxes pay for these shady government tactics, and for the
protracted court proceedings that follow. But there's a much
larger
price to pay. Once we start allowing the very concept of freedom
of
speech - the hallmark of a democratic society - to be chipped away at,
bit by bit, we might as well get our lips puckered up and ready to kiss
democracy itself goodbye.
Another
encouraging note:
TorStar: Guard resources,
Ottawa urged
Canadians overwhelmingly sent a message to Prime
Minister Stephen
Harper to ease up on integration with U.S. policy and protect the
country's water, energy and public regulations, according to the
results of a recent poll.
Now all Canadians need to do is put their opinions
where
their votes are. They should vote anything but Liberal or Conservative,
and then be very vigilant about the result. And let's hope
bottled
water disappears from our grocery shelves as Canadians stop drinking it
and demand instead clean water in their taps and the end of corporate
practices that pollute our soil, lakes and streams.
===============
Join the
Caravan to End Canadian Involvement in
Torture, Toronto-Ottawa, May 1-9. More
info
yayacanada
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