The Blogosphere is under attack!

There is so much happening in the whole wide world!  And the blogosphere makes it all so easy to access.

The internet is truly changing our society.  Not just within our town, or within our countries - it is truly allowing people from all ’corners of the world’ to build up a common pool of knowledge.  I truly think that the blogosphere is one of the most effective tools driving this change for the better.  (As a matter of fact, that is why, few months ago, I decided to join it!)

The blogosphere is not merely a communication tool, it is a completely new ‘animal’. 

It may  facilitate the exchange of information, but it is not just the sort of ‘information’ that ‘reading the same newspaper’ or ‘watching the same newscast’ could convey.  After all, as the mainstream media (msm) had already discovered, transmitting factual information is only a part of any ’story’.  While the msm has attempted to ‘flesh out’ their stories by including that ‘human experience’ factor, their medium is uniquely unsuitable to such a job.  Instead of adding dimension to their coverage of world events, they end up appearing to be manipulating the emotional context and reducing ‘news’ to ‘gossip’.

Add to this that many new journalists are being taught in school to put emphasis on ‘reporting the news and facts and presenting them in a manner which will indicate to the audience what their appropriate response should be’.  In other words, the very journalists whom we used to rely on to report unbiased facts only are being taught in journalism schools to be the tools of social engineers…

No wonder the msm are becoming irrelevant!

The blogosphere, on the other hand, is actually really, really good at adding a real human dimension to what is happening in the world around us. 

Why?

Because it is so highly interactive!  Because it is made up of millions of individuals!  Individuals from ALL over the world, with all kinds of backgrounds, all points of view! 

That is what makes the blogosphere so powerful!

I do not have to rely on some pretty/serious/demure/outraged face on TV to tell me how people on the other side of the world ‘feel’ about some event.  I don’t have to read a ‘cookie-cutter’ story with a preset word-count, surrounded by pointless ads, the ink of which is bound to come off on my fingers.  If I don’t like the slant of the story, or if I notice factual inaccuracies, I don’t have to be one of thousands of phone calls or emails or letters-to-editor, hoping, despite the odds, to be noticed…

Instead, I can go and look for a real live blogger (OK, I only access their virtual personnas’ posts, but I find these represent a real person, who can use the internet as a shield - and thus expose more of their ture self than they would ever dare in a person-to-preson interaction) who actually is from that part of the world.  And it is not somebody who makes a living from ‘how’ they report the event - which necessitates ‘offocial spin’.  Yes, there will necessarily be ‘personal spin’ - as in, it will reflect the person’s perceptions and understanding of what happened and thoughts and emotions about it.  But they will actually be ‘that person’s’!

And I can go to many bloggers there - and get many different individual points of view.  If I don’t understand things, I can post a comment - and usually get answers that are very useful and educational….and very personal. And if I like that blogger, I am likely to re-visit the site from time to time - just to keep in touch with what is happening in that part of the world and what is happening with that blogger. 

That makes a world of difference.

In a very real sense, the ‘bloggers of the world’ establish a virtual community. 

We may never meet in person, but that is not necessary to develop an empathy, an understanding - to let them into our monkeysphere!  That means we begin to perceive ‘our familiar bloggers’ as people, as individuals.  All of a sudden, should a tragedy occur in a faraway place, the body count is not just a statistic:  these are our virtual friend’s families!

It is impossible to overstate the incredible power in the combination of being able to access uncensored information and points of view along with establishing social bonds with people all over the world!

After all, it always affects us much more deeply if a wrong happens to someone we are connected to than if it happens to a stranger….

Now, we not only learn what happened, we know it happened to someone connected to our social network.  One of us.  Without these social bonds, most of us would lack the depth of desire to affect change.

During successful wars, the governments/rulers kept tight control over the flow of information - and used propaganda to dehumanize the ‘enemy’ into an abstraction!  Only then could they manipulate people into a war…  Large part of the US military failure in Vietnam was due to the fact that the American people were recieving more uncensored information from the frontlines than ever before. 

Make no mistake, this lesson has been learned by opressors everywhere!

It is not surprising, then, that censors and manipulators and social engineers are all waging a war on the blogosphere!

In Canada, it is in the gray drab of bureacratic HRCs which ban people from ‘ever expressing their opinions or thoughts or emotions’ on a subject….  They appear to follow a clear, well defined process, but use this process to bring financial ruin to those whose opinions they disapprove of, and silence them thus.

In Yemen - and, unfortunately, perhaps in Iran - this penalty could be death!

Let us hope the blogosphere is strong enough to withstand these attacks and continue to re-shape the world into a better place.

Yet another lesson… will it be learned?

All right, this clip is not from the boys down under, it is from Pen and Teller - the professional sceptics who put on the show ‘Bullshit’.

In their role as sceptics, they have gone on to challenge much - and not everyone is always pleased with them.  Here, they are teaching a lesson in how ‘environmental enthusiasm’ - a very real and honest desire to protect the Earth from harm by us, humans - can be so very easily abused by those who wish to use these honest, trusting and eager activists and subvert them and their voices for something completely different… 

In some ways, it kind of is like that ‘Trojan Horse’ idea!

More Mind Games

Yesterday, I had a fun post on how easily our perceptions can play mind games on us - looking at optical illusons.  Of course, optical illusions, at least of the ‘fun’ type, are just the tip of the iceberg!

The post showed, I hope, just how easy it is for our eyes to be tricked. 

Our brains are wonderful, comples structures.  They take the information from our eyes, and process it.  It is this processing of information which ‘tricks’ our mind.  Why?  Because our brains have developed some mightily useful ways of ‘figuring things out’ without telling us.  At least, without telling that conscious part of our thoughts we often think of as ’us’. 

Yes, it is a form of subconscious ‘prejudice’ system - but it is precisely through this type of ‘pre-judgements’ that let humans  anticipate what is likely to happen next, so as to react in the best, most advantageour (to survival) way.  {Aside:  it is precisely because so many of our bad prejudices are also rooted this very deeply, among other survival tools, that we have a hard time recognizing our own ones… and why it is healthy for us to see other people’s ‘obvious’ prejudice openly, so we may learn to recognize our own bad/destructive/unreasonable prejucices and guard against acting on them.  But, that is for another day…}

When our brain gets some input, it matches this input to ‘past experiences’, compares patterns, looks for similarities.  It then interprets this new inputas best as it can - with respect to all the stored past experiences! And it does so quickly, without us even noticing it is doing it…

That is why we find it so hard to ‘wrap our brains’ around something completely new and outside of our experiences:  our brain has nothing to match it to, and would be just as happy ‘not noticing it’…

The immortal Douglas Adams was quite fascinated by this phenomenon.  And, as was his way, he used humour to get his point across… Please, indulge me (highly paraphrased):

The story went something like this:  A guy had a bet with some people about erecting an invisibility field on the mountain that blocked his view…  It was no easy thing, and in the end, the nay-sayers had lost, because even though the mountain could no longer be seen, there was now a suspicious new moon in low orbit, just about the size of that mountain…  Douglas Adams said that trying to generate an ‘invisibility field’ was silly, that is just so very troublesome.  It would have been much easier to simply paint the mountain pink during the nighttime and erect an S.E.P. field on it.

What is an S.E.P. field?  It simply means ‘Somebody Else’s Problem’ - anything that is ‘unusual’ or appears’ unexpected, and has this S.E.P. field on it - will be less than invisible!  People will look straight through it and not see it!  Their brain will just process it as ’somebody else’s problem’ and refuse to acknowledge its existence…

Seems to me that this is one take on the whole ‘mind tricks’ phenomenon I am trying to get at.  Can’t relate to it - it’s not there. 

But, there are way more sinister uses of this ability we, people have, to interpret what we see according to familiar patterns.  This can be seriously abused by people with very particular - and not always honourable - aims.

Just like we can be tricked by a simple optical illusion, we can be tricked into seeing ‘things’ that never happened.  And once people ’see things for themselves’, they accept them as true… and belieave them.

All our actions are based on what we perceive.  Not on facts - only on what we think are the acts. Not on truth, because we have no way of separating truth from our very distorted - and sometimes intentionally tricked - perceptions of the truth, on what we think the truth is.

A lie repeated often enough will eventually appear to us as the truth (it’s precisely this ’previously encountered pattern’ matching thing in our subconsciousness that does this!). 

Conversly, a truth never heard of, will never be considered when one makes decisions.  After all, we can only decide on our best understanding of the truth…

Perhaps it is time we took a moment and re-evaluated just how easy it is for our brains to become victims of ‘mind games’…

Vaclav Klaus’ Washington CEI speech

This President is one smart cookie!

Yesterday, he delivered a speech in Washington, in which he said:

“It is interesting that you came up with the name Josef Alois Schumpeter (to intentionally use the Czech pronunciation). I don’t expect all of you to know that this great economist was born in 1883 on the territory of my country – the Czech Republic – in the small Moravian town of Třešť, belonging at that time to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. He was part of an important group of Austrian Moravians which includes names such as Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Karl Kautsky, Ernst Mach, Robert Musil, and many others.”

…

“Reading his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, which was published in England in the 1940s along with books such as Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, one comes across a slightly different story, which is his evolutionary theory of the demise of capitalism based on its very success. His main argument – as I remember it – was that innovations would become a matter of routine, progress would be mechanized, problems would be “simply solved” by means of reason and science, entrepreneurship would be replaced by mere calculation, individual motivation would subside, collectivistic mentality would prevail and the growing importance of teamwork in modern large corporations would lead to the gradual obsoleteness and at the end disappearance of the crucial player (or perhaps mover) of capitalism – of the entrepreneur. That was his vision of the end of capitalism. He regretted it, but did not see it as the end of history, progress and development.”

…

“The first problem this theory has is its connection with the reality because the world has not followed Schumpeter’s predictions.”

The complete text is on Mr. Klaus’ blog.

This, to me, is a telling analysis:  this economist looks at the theory, evaluates its internal consistencies (or lack thereof) - and then COMPARES THE THEORY TO REAL-LIFE OUTCOMES !!!!

Not only did he do EXACTLY THIS with the IPCC-type AGW/ACC ’theories’ (and I do use the term ‘theories’ loosely) in his book ’Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What is Endangered:  Climate or Freedom?’, he also points out the necessary consequence of actions currently being implemented to ‘mitigate’ AGW/ACC:  establishment of world government. 

So, why would anyone think there are any dangers in establishing this ‘world government’?  Mr. Klaus warns that we just might me passing world government into the hands of arrogant elitists who are convinced that ‘they know better than the rest of us’….  He asserts that some of the same people who are advocating establishing world authorities to regulate carbon emission - with the power of enforcment (that is, world government) - that were also advocating this 30 years ago in the name of world socialism.  Just listen to Glenn Beck’s second interview with him: 

 

Kind of makes you pause and think, does it not?

It should!

Blue Planet in Green Shackes

Finally, there is a release date for the much-awaited English version of Czech President’s Vaclav Klaus’ book,

‘BLUE PLANET IN GREEN SHACKLES 

What is endangered:  Climate of Freedom?’

President Klaus will be presenting it on May 27th, 2008 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C..

Thanks to Lubos Motl from ‘The Reference Frame’ for the tip!

Is this a trickle of reason?

Democracy is a wonderfu ideal.  Yet, there will always be a question of how to exercise our democratic rights, while preventing a ‘tyrrany of the majority’?

To many people, the best answer is:

Protecting the rights of each and every individual, the minority of ‘one’,  is the best and only way to ensure the protection of the whole society from tyrrany by the State.

Yet, not everyone agrees.  The philosophy which seems to currently be gripping much of ‘the Western world’ turns its back to the individual, turns a blind eye to the violations of individual freedoms, in favour of collectivism.  I have wondered how much of this is a philosophical difference, how much is simply due to the attitudes inherrent in different political systems.

Many people today think that the best way to ensure peope are not discriminated against - the best way to promote tolerance and harmony within a society - is to put limits on the freedom of speech.  By instituting ‘hate speech laws’, these people argue, hate and prejudice will not be allowed to spread and will, eventually, be eliminated from our society.

I wish this would be so!

Time and time again, ‘hate speech laws’ have not only failed to reduce prejudice, I woud argue that they have allowed it to fester, until a time when it erupts in hateful and abominable acts.  What is worse, they have resulted in political institutions which are invariably used to opress, all in the name of preventing opression.  We have seen this happen many times in history, but we still seem unable to learn the right lessons from history!  

Let us consider the example of  Germany in the 1930’s.  After all, it is precisely to prevent atrocities such as the Holocaust that ‘hate speech laws’ are being instituted.  Yet, in Maclean’s, Mark Steyn (both he and Macleans are also being persecuted under ‘hate speech laws’) quotes Canada’s leading libertarian lawyer, Alan Borovoy, as saying:

“Remarkably, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti-hate law. Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech. And, in the opinion of the leading Jewish organization of that era, no more than 10 per cent of the cases were mishandled by the authorities. As subsequent history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it.”

To the contrary!  Hitler, once elected, effectively used these laws to usurp power.

Should there be ANY limits on speech?  Mr. Levant, also currently being persecuted by the thought crime police, has videotaped part of his interrogation by the Alberta HRC.  He makes the most passionate, well reasoned speech on the attributes of free speech! 

But, is tide turning?

For the past several years, what would appear to be illegal behaviour in both its investigations and prosecutions by the HRCs in Canada has inexplicably been tolerated.  Now, this may come to an end. This week, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have announced they are opening a criminal investigatigation of some actions by the HRCs.  Ezra Levant has more information on this. 

Australia may also be changing its ideas with regard to limiting freedom of speech.  As Robert Jago writes on Dime a Dozen, Australia’s Liberal Party is calling for a change to its ’hate speech laws’, because they have been shown to promote, not curb, divisions in their society! 

But, perhaps the best news comes from Erope! Czech Republic is a nation of reason (fully 59% of Czechs describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or non-believers) and their scepticism extends to other areas, as well.  Lubos Motl, one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, writes that Vaclav Kaus, the President of Czech Republic, has vetoed an ‘anti-discrimination’ bill.  His justification?

“I consider the bill to be a useless, counterproductive, and low-quality bill while its consequences seem to be problematic….”

 Good on you, Czechs!

You can read the full, well reasoned and excellent speech here.  Mr. Motl writes that, ironically, “Because the bill has been “ordered” by the European bureaucrats and the country may face sanctions (let’s say it: the Czechs may be discriminated against) if the anti-discrimination bill is not approved”

Yes, the overwhelming bureacracies still want to control every aspect of society, including what we say and think.  But, little stories like this make me hopeful.  Perhaps these are the beginnings of a real change in attitudes:  one that will place more value on each and every individual, and treat all of us with the respect and equality in the eyes of the law that we deserve!

Has the dyke of opression finally sprung its first little leaks of reason?

 

P.S.  President Klaus’ book, ‘Blue Planet In Green Chains - What is Endangered:  Climate or Freedom’ is due for release in English this month.  

A Father with Real HONOUR!

Oppression comes in many forms, all of them disgusting and condemnable.  All of them have something in common:  the willingness to sacrifice the rights and well being of an individual, a specific human being, for some higher principle.  The principle itself is less imoportant - and it varies from ‘the good of the society’, or ‘religious piety’, or, paradoxically, ‘family honour’.

The opressors smugly wrap themselves in the ’cloak of righteousness’.  They truly and honestly believe their ends justify the means…which they NEVER do.

I planned to write about something else today, when I came across this  article on ‘A Chocoholic’s Piece of Mind’ blog:  Rand Abdel-Qader, a 17-year-old student, was murdered by her father an brother for being seen speaking to a Brit soldier….  She worked as an aid worker, and spoke English…translated and became infatuated.  No affair, no clandestine meeting, just a schoolgirl crush…and translating for him, as part of the volunteer work she did with refugee families. 

I wonder what another Rand, Ayn Rand, would have to say about this…her father’s reaction (quoting the article linked above) was:

‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,’

…

‘I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,’ he said, his voice swelling with pride. ‘My sons are by my side, and they were men enough to help me finish the life of someone who just brought shame to ours.’

…

He said his daughter’s ‘bad genes were passed on from her mother’. Rand’s mother, 41, remains in hiding after divorcing her husband in the immediate aftermath of the killing, living in fear of retribution from his family. She also still bears the scars of the severe beating he inflicted on her, breaking her arm in the process, when she told him she was going.

…

Sources have indicated that Abdel-Qader, who works in the health department, has been asked to leave because of the bad publicity, yet he will continue to draw a salary.

And it has been alleged by one senior unnamed official in the Basra governorate that he has received financial support by a local politician to enable him to ‘disappear’ to Jordan for a few weeks, ‘until the story has been forgotten’ - the usual practice in the 30-plus cases of ‘honour’ killings that have been registered since January alone.

…

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said.

This is not honour, and we must stop thinking that just because people come from different parts of the world, they should not be expected to treat each other - including their daughters and wives - with respect.  Thinking these attitudes are too deeply entrenched is a very insidious and destructive form or racism, and we must all work together to show it is unacceptable!

Please, indulge me with a story about an Iranian man and HIS attitude towards his teenage daughter:

When I came to Canada as a teenager, I befriended an Iranian girl who arrived at about the same time.  They were devout Muslims.  At her apartment, my friend showed me the charcoal-gray hijab she was forced to wear in Iran - the very first one I ever saw - and I tried it on.  Her father was angry at the sight of the hijab.   What he said has made a deep impression on me, and is with me still.

He told me that the hijab was not part of Islam.  Not even a little bit.  He explained that when the Koran was written, the rights it granted women were much more than women had in that society before, and that it meant that the Prophet wanted to eventually bring full equality between men and women.  It just had to happen one step at a time.

The hijab, he went on, was a symbol of opression:  not just of women, but of all true Muslims by those who wish to have power over them.  He was very angry that they would do this, when the religion itself teaches the equality of all humans.  He was also angry that many young Mulsimas were brainwashed to think the hijab was a symbol of a proudly pious Muslima - he said teaching young women that was a crime against Islam, because it was a part of a doctorine that reduced them from humans to possessions.

He explained that in Iran, he had done well, a professional with his own business…but he left because he would not allow his daughter to be brought up in a society which would only treat her as cattle, or a piece of meat!  He wanted her to grow up a good Muslima who has confidence in herself as a person, and who is not a slave to anyone…in other words, as a real human being!

Now THERE is a FATHER WITH HONOUR!!! 

If only more men - Muslim or otherwise - would have enough honour to value their daughters as much as my friend’s father valued her!

‘First they silenced…’

 The old saying says:

Those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it.

Perhaps we should re-phrase it to:

Those who do not learn the right lesson from history are destined to repeat it. 

After all, learning the wrong lesson could be worse than learning no lesson at all!

This all goes back to my rant on how often people do not recognize the difference between ’symptom’ on the one hand, and a ’cause’ on the other.  Are they really so difficult to tell apart?

Many years ago, I went through a period when I was reading a lot of eyewitness books about WWII and the political atmosphere in Europe following the war.  I came across something intersting that Barbara Amiel had written:   she spent her childhood in ‘wartime London’.  Following the war, there was a determination among her relatives that nothing like this must ever be allowed to happen again.  And because Hitler was perceived as being ‘right wing’, Ms. Amiel asserts, ‘everyone’ became suspicious of - and opposed to - everything that was deemed to be ‘right wing’.

In other words, the lesson this group of people learned was:

1. Hitler = right wing
2. Hitler = evil
3. ergo, right wing = evil

This is almost as sophisticated reasoning as that used for forcing women to wear a hijab, so they would not tempt men to rape them - as uncovered meat tempts cats to eat it. In other words, that is not the correct lesson.  Yet, many very intelligent people still fall into this trap in one form or another.

Yet, lots of people do learn the right lesson.  This one may be exemplified by the ‘First they came for…’ poem, attributed to Martin Niemoller:

“First they came for the Communists, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Yet, even now, people are misunderstanding the poem!  So, please, in my never-humble way, let me pay homage to the right lesson here and write today’s version, as it could be.

“First they silenced the crackpot and nutcases, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a crackpot or a nutcase.

Then they silenced the bloggers, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a blogger.

Then they silenced the journalists, newspapers, magazines and books, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a journalist and didn’t write newspapers, magazines or books.

Then they silenced the Christians, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t religious.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left who was allowed to speak.”

If we fail to learn this lesson, this will be in store for us!  This is NOT HISTORY!  This is now, here, in OUR WORLD! 

This is what happens when people think a political party, or a particular political bend is the problem and fail to recognize that political oppression and governments who do not follow due process of law to achieve their ends that is the problem!!!  And if you are an adult, and not afraid to see a graphic example of the result of a state not bound by its laws is, here are some pictures that were too gruesome to print in a newspaper. 

But I warn you - do not look if you are sqeemish.  It took me a while to realize what part of the human body I was really looking at…

As it is taking so many of us to realize what type of oppression it is that we are facing!

Common law vs. civil law

Humans form communities - that is one of our defining (and best) characteristics.  In order to coexist peacefully, we must agree on a set of rules to govern our interactions. Yet, different communities don’t always go about it the same way.

Some adopt ‘common law’, which takes the approach that all behaviours are permitted, except for those deemed to be harmful, which are then specificly forbidden under the law.  This suggests an underlying philosophy that each person is a free, independent individual.  People ought to be free to act according to their will, and only those behaviours that infringe upon the rights of other individuals within the community to enjoy thier freedoms are forbidden. The goal of laws is to ensure all individual members of the society are able to exercise their freedoms as much as possible.

Communities which develop one of the forms of ‘Civil law’ have a different point of view.  They specifically list the behaviours which are acceptable to the society and permits them, all others are forbidden.  This suggests a philosophy that it is ‘the society’ which is the ‘basic unit of worth’, not the ‘individual’.  As such, it is the goal for the laws to protect the society.

This is a really big philosophical difference. 

It seems to me that common law promotes individualism, while civil law seems more focused on collectivism.

Of course, this is a major simplification.  Also, there are several forms of civil law. This is not intended to be an exhaustive description…  Rather, it is meant to explore the differences in the philosophical undercurrents between societies which choose to govern themselves under civil or common law.  It is not meant to look at the specifics as they are, but at the patterns of thought that led to the differing attitudes of how we ‘ought to’ govern ourselves.

Common law (in its idealized state) sees the individual as the empowered one, the one with inherrent rights who chooses to lend some freedoms to the state in order to create a society.  The law is loath to interfere with these rights and freedoms of each one of its citizens and will only curb them with great reluctance.  It could be summed up by the sentiment: 

‘Upholding the rights of the one ensures the rights of the many.’

Civil law sees the society as the one with all the power.  ‘These are (or ‘ought to be’)  the customs of our society, thus codified here into law.  Do not stray outside of these behaviours, or you will have to answer to the state.’  And while many countries that practice civil law have accepted that an accused individual has the right to a fair trial, including a presumption of innocence, not all of them do.  It could be summed up by the sentiment:

‘Every one must adhere to these rules, because they are in the best interest of the society.’

Many modern countries do incorporate some aspects of both philosophies.  Rather than opposite sides of a coin, I see these as different ends of a continuous philosophical spectrum.  Most countries fall somewhere within this spectrum, and may move along it in one direction or another with time.

Yet, regardless where along this spectrum a particular state’s legal system lies at any specific time, these underlying philosophies will influence its attitude towards its citizens.

A letter to my PM

For those of you not following the Canadian struggle for free speech, this letter, which I emailed my Member of Parliament today, may seem a little confusing.  Here is a REALLY quick recap:

In order to provide disadvanteged groups easy and affordable access to legal protection agains illegal discrimination, Human Rights Commissions (HRCs) were established several decades ago:  one federal (Canadian, or CHRC) and one for each province.  These HRCs have, lately, been interpreting their mandate in unforseen ways, asserting that any speech which ‘potentially could’ have negative impact on individuals or groups because of their race, creed, disablitiy, and other reasons, must be censored and that this censorship overrules any rights of freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of thought.

Many individuals, and some media organizations, have been going through several years long legal battles in their defense of their inalienable rights.  Even the very people who originally created the HRCs have been apalled at the misuse of their powers in recent years…  What is even worse, recently released tribunal transcripts contain admissions by some HRC employees which suggest that in their zeal to pursue (and entrap) people whom they are investigating, criminal laws are being violated.  That is a serious matter, because no government agency should be allowed to break laws in order to enforce laws…

The Minister of Justice recently said what I understand to mean that as far as the Canadian Government is concerned, all is fine…hence, my letter.

Dear Mr. [MP], 

Thank you for your kind reply, in which you say you will direct my concern over the HRCs and their actions directly to the Minister of Justice.  It arrived at about the same time as the Minister of Justice made his position on this situation known….   

How unfortunate that the official Government position is based on a brief by Mr. Tsesis, who is not regarded highly among the experts in this area and whose disregard for supportable facts required to assess causality can clearly be seen in the document he produced. 

For example, Mr. Tsesis claims:  “[Hitler fomented] a mass delusion that Jews were responsible for bad times, and as a result, a Holocaust could be perpetrated against them without general opposition.”   This displays blatant ignorance of (or disregard for) the fact that during the 1930’s, Germany did indeed have ‘hate speech’ laws, which (ironically?) were almost identical to those we have in Canada today!  Jewish leaders in Germany in the 1930’s expressed satisfaction with the protections from persecution which they and their community received under these ‘hate speech’ laws. 

Since ‘hate speech’ laws were present in Germany of the 1930, proposing (as Mr. Tsesis does) that our current ‘hate speech’ laws are the one tool necessary to prevent another Holocaust-like event is an error of judgment at best, intentionally misleading at worst.  Either way, it clearly demonstrates the unsoundness of the conclusions in this document.   Basing our national Justice policy on it would be ill advised.

How embarrassing for our Government, to reveal that this is indeed its intention!  How embarrassing for our Minister of Justice!

 Yet, my original comment was not intended to request a simple review of the policies of the Human Rights Commissions by the Government.  It is essential that the Government maintain its ‘arm’s length’ distance from judicial and quasi-judicial bodies.  That should not change.   

The HRCs answer directly to the Parliament of Canada.  It is essential that the Parliament of Canada ensures that bodies such as the HRCs do indeed perform the tasks for which they had been created, and that they conduct themselves in accordance with the laws of Canada, the very laws they were created to uphold!  

 There is a widespread perception among the citizens of Canada that employees of these commissions may have broken criminal laws of Canada while performing investigations on behalf of the HRCs.  This perception is largely based on the information in legal documents, transcripts of hearings from the HRCs themselves.  These statements were given under oath, and in them an employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission describes actions he took while acting on behalf of the HRC which appear to be a clear and direct breech of the criminal laws of Canada, as well as a blatant breech of the very ‘hate speech’ laws the CHRC was created to uphold.

 It is not, and must never become, tolerable for an Agent of the State to break the laws of the State while acting on behalf of the State.  In order to assure the integrity of our governance structures, it is essential that a full criminal investigation be launched immediately, to determine whether laws were indeed broken, or not. 

 If it is found that criminal laws were broken, a further in-depth investigation will be required to determine whether some rogue employees broke criminal laws on their own, or if the policies of this public institutions are the root causes of criminal behaviour by its employees – in which case, a full evaluation of all the procedures and methodologies of the HRCs would need to be done.  If a criminal investigation determines that laws were indeed broken, laying criminal charges will be required against every employee who broke our laws as well as against all supervisory personnel (currently or in the past employed by the HRC’s), who, through ignorance or complicity, allowed this illegal behaviour within their department to take place. 

 If the perception that criminal laws are being broken at the HRCs is erroneous, it is important that we, the citizens of Canada, see them exonerated, so that we may again place our trust in our government agencies and institutions.  

 This determination cannot be made without a full criminal investigation of the HRCs, their procedures, methodologies and practices, as well as of the conduct all of its employees, past and present.  Therefore, I ask that you, Mr. Poilievre, as my Member of Parliament to which the HRCs report directly, channel your efforts and energies to launching a full and thorough investigation into this whole mess.

 Thank you.

If you wish to read more on this saga, please see the excellent sites Blazing Catfur, Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn, Small Dead Animals, and many, many more…