Monday, November 10, 2008

Riding The Censorship
Highway To Utopia
By Paul Schneidereit
11-10-8

An excellent article that depicts in lucid examples the strange, (might I say even, alien?) world of state censorship bodies like Canada's Human Rights Commissions. Foregoing the fact that these bodies were ostensibly "set up" for alternative reasons (discrimination in the workplace, etc.) the current crop of bureaucrats who man these Bolshevik terror organizations in the name of "human rights" for minorities are merely mimicking the original instigators of such despicable practises i.e. the Marxist-Leninist Communists who overthrew the Romanov Russian Empire in 1917.

When Lenin decided in 1919 to exterminate the Cossacks of the Don Valley because they weren't willing to give up their independence and their land to the Bolshevik's "collectivization" scheme the Communist Central Committee stated in a then secret resolution, "After the experiences in the civil war against the Cossacks one must grant that the merciless fight and massive terror against the rich Cossacks, who are to be exterminated to the last man and be physically destroyed, is the only politically correct measure." Here for the first time we see that lovely expression "politically correct" being used by the Communists.

As the great and recently deceased Russian writer Alexandr Solzhenitsyn recorded in his anthology, 200 Years Together volume two, The Jews in the Soviet Union: "in the few weeks between mid-February and the end of March 1919, Bolshevik special units executed more than 8,000 Cossacks. In each Cossack area, "Revolutionary Tribunals" operating under martial law passed out capital sentences on long lists of suspects after deliberations of a few minutes each ­ usually for counterrevolutionary behavior."

If we transpose these draconian measures into today's "politically correct" world of Canada's "Human Rights Commissions" where truth is no defense when it comes to justifying one's actions with respect to expressions of opinion in newspapers or on the internet then it quickly becomes apparent that for all the rhetoric, "utopian" or otherwise, of these cheka-like "commissions" and "tribunals" and their spokespeople like Krista Daley, the ice-cold reality is that they pose a clear and present danger to Canada's fundamental, God-given right to freedom of expression. As such they need to be exposed and eliminated from Canada's once free and independent political landscape.-

Please pass this article on.

Arthur Topham
Pub/Ed
The Radical Press
Canada's Radical News Network
radical@radicalpress.com
http://www.radicalpress.com
"Digging to the root of the issues since 1998"


Riding The Censorship Highway To Utopia
By Paul Schneidereit
11-4-8

Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission director and CEO Krista Daley seems like a nice enough woman.

We just inhabit alternate universes.

In Daley's world, based on her comments at two debates on human rights bodies and free speech last week, commissions are engaged in the good fight, a struggle ­ one case at a time ­ towards an ideal, "utopian world" where hatred doesn't exist and everyone enjoys equal respect for and protection of all their rights.

In my universe, however, using the world "utopia" to describe any kind of policy goal is a bell-clanging, red light-flashing warning to be very wary about the means proposed to get "there."

I'm all for trying to make the world a better place. But let's remember two things. One, mankind is imperfect, so utopia is unreachable. Two, in our zeal to get there anyway, people have wrought terrible damage throughout history.

Which brings us to the notion that human rights commissions should be in the business of repressing people's free speech when their words are likely to expose persons or groups to hatred or contempt.

Do such restrictions actually accomplish anything? Is there any evidence that censorship changes people's beliefs? State repression of ideas ­ for that is fundamentally what it is ­ leads, in fact, to hardening of viewpoints. Evolution of thought comes through open, sometime sharp debate, not suppression. As Saint Mary's philosophy prof Mark Mercer put it at last Thursday's debate, people not speaking their minds is not people tolerating others.

To Daley, although free speech is, of course, important, it's only one thread in a fabric of human rights, just another patch in ­ to use her metaphor ­ a quilt of freedoms. Free speech does not hold any special place in that pantheon, so it must be balanced, as equally as possible, with all other rights. And it's the government's job to do that.

More sirens go off. Back in my universe, freedom of speech is the building block on which all other rights are supported. I don't remember who coined it, but I recall an apt saying that went sort of like this: "Take away all my rights, but leave me free speech. With that, I can win all the others back."

Or as Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, the director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association's freedom of expression project, eloquently put it at Saturday's debate at King's College: "We can't search for truth, fight for a fair society, protect minority interests, shed light on injustice, without having open and robust debate, without having a free press, without having free expression tucked into our back pockets, in case we need it."

Salman Rushdie, who knows a little about the repercussions of offending others, has summed it up perfectly. "Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game," he said. "Free speech is life itself."

The danger of government-appointed bureaucrats deciding what will pass for "acceptable" speech should worry all of us. The inconsistencies in rulings by human rights bodies across this country on matters of speech underline that concern. Most worrying of all, there's ample evidence to believe that those handling the censor's scissors don't really get the problem, at all. They're waging the good fight, after all. Free speech? That's often just a shield for saying nasty stuff to people who can't, or shouldn't have to, fight back.

The problem is that the more government wields a stick on matters of speech, the more people will look over their shoulder when drawing that edgy cartoon, or writing that news story about the (fill in the blank of your most oppressed minority) person whose actions otherwise would be deemed newsworthy, for fear of being labelled "hateful." That's chill, and it's anathema to free speech.

But a chilling moment at the sessions came, in fact, when Daley, responding to a comment about the consequences of media being policed by human rights commissions, said she herself didn't see "any chill."

My reaction was: Well, why would you? When a writer or artist self-censors, it's not going to be highly visible. Though less likely at big media outlets ­ although they, too, are certainly conscious of the costs ­ I can readily imagine small-town reporters working for weekly papers, for example, avoiding a story, either on their own or directed to do so, because some of the principals may later claim discrimination.

I don't believe human rights commissions have no value. Although some of their rulings on other matters, at times, defy common sense, people suffering from acts of discrimination need somewhere to turn. Free speech, however, should be beyond their reach.

pauls@herald.ca

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1088377.html

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