Time Immortal

Remarkably, I’m actually not talking about Jennifer Lynch’s tasteless and tone-deaf plan to lay a wreath at the national Remembrance Day ceremony to mark the passage of a UN declaration concerning human rights that a) most of its member states ignore anyhow, and b) wasn’t actually ratified until a month (less a day) after November 11th.

Although it must be said that Lynch’s gesture is the height of tastelessness. But then, what else might one expect from the lady in charge of the state Censorship organ in Canada. The mere fact that she is laying a wreath, when her very department exists as a mockery of one of the fundamental rights that so many Canadian soldiers sacrificed their lives for, is insulting beyond the ability of words to describe.

But I digress.

No, remarkably, I’m not talking about CHRC tone-deafness today. The tone-deaf group that is the target of my considerable ire today is something called the “Urban Alliance on Race Relations,” who are going after a magazine called Toronto Life for publishing an article on Aqsa Parvez which (gasp!) dares to discuss her brutal murder (at the hands of her father) as an “honour killing.”

There’s even a Facebook page, created by said Urban Alliance, urging people to complain to the editor of Toronto Life, Sarah Fulford.

The article in question, entitled Girl, Interrupted and written my Mary Rogen, presents the facts of Aqsa’s life and final days, and captures the tension that arose in the Parvez household between Aqsa and her father, Muhammad Parvez, who insisted that she wear the Islamic headscarf, the hijab. And when she refused, he strangled her to death.

Rogen’s article says some things which are at once uncomfortable to hear, but which ring true. But that’s the problem with truth, isn’t it? It can sometimes be very uncomfortable to hear:

Aqsa Parvez had a choice: wear a hijab to please her devout family or take it off and be like her friends. She paid for her decision with her life. When her father and brother were charged with her murder, it raised the spectre of religious zealotry in the suburbs. Is this the price of multiculturalism?

…

In the days following her death, Aqsa’s story was widely reported in the Canadian media as well as on CNN and the BBC. Was her murder an honour killing or simply a gruesome case of domestic violence? Worldwide, an estimated 5,000 women die every year in honour killings — murders deemed excusable to protect a family’s reputation — many of them in Pakistan, where the Parvez family had emigrated from.

Canada prides itself on its multiculturalism and, to varying degrees of success, condemns institutionalized patriarchy. But there is growing concern that recent waves of Muslim immigrants aren’t integrating, or embracing our liberal values. Aqsa’s death — coming in the wake of debates about the acceptability of Sharia law, disputes over young girls wearing hijabs at soccer games, and the arrest of the Toronto 18 — stoked fears about religious zealotry in our midst. Is it possible that Toronto has become too tolerant of cultural differences?

The rest of the article gets into a lot of depth, including interviews with many of Aqsa’s friends, and presents a very comprehensive picture of a girl torn between two worlds. Along the way, it gives glimpses into the home life of the Parvez family, and communicates the abject fear that Aqsa felt in her final days.

It also points out that Aqsa was a victim of peer pressure and a desire to fit in with the rest of her friends; she was aware that her religious garb was setting her apart, and took great strides to fit in with the crowd. Seraphic notes that in this sense, the article is “as much an indictment of youth culture in Mississauga high schools as it is of Aqsa’s family,” which I think is very much the case as well. Indeed, the article does a lot to suggest that Aqsa was being led astray by her “friends”, who evidently thought it was Aqsa’s “right” to part ways with her virginity before parting ways with high school.

Not that this excuses the fate she arrived at. And for all the threads it plucks at, the article leaves very little doubt as to the probable motive behind her murder — her death was, as the article notes, Toronto’s first honour killing. Or, at least, the first one to become public knowledge.

But let’s come back to the Urban Alliance folks and their tone-deaf campaign against Toronto Life. While there hasn’t been a human rights complaint filed yet, their clear opposition to the right of the magazine to publish content of its choosing comes across, and the usual points get missed. As Kathy notes, the group seems to be “more upset about Islam being “insulted” and “misrepresented” by the violence perpetrated by its own members (and by a mere infidel’s decision to publish an article about it) than by the actual dealth of a young girl.”

And much like the tone-deaf Jennifer Lynch, they opted to launch their campaign on Remembrance Day. Because hey, who cares about those 60,000+ dead Canadians anyhow?

This is why I can’t stand “professional victim” groups and grievance-mongers: they are unabashedly narcissistic, and think nothing of co-opting even solemn national holidays to serve their own narrow-minded ends. It’s Remembrance Day, you tasteless losers! Would it have been so hard to just wait until the 12th? Did you just have to attack a magazine’s right to publish content of its own choosing on the day that marks the sacrifices of thousands of Canadian men and women made in the cause of that very right, and others like it?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Predictably, this happened in a Muslim nation…Saudi Arabia, to be specific.

Equally predictably, the specific offense that the woman committed was that she was having an online chat with a man via the social networking site. For this terrible crime, she was beaten first, and then shot. The killer? Her father.

Blazing Cat Fur writes in concerning David Kahane.

The mind “God gave to Kahane” is a barren place.

I don’t know whether Mr. Kahane’s mind is barren or not. But something amusing did occur to me last night. On his Facebook profile, Mr. Kahane lists his Religion as Buddhist. In addition to explaining the basic methodology of his course, it reminded me of something that white people like.

White people will often say they are “spiritual” but not religious. Which usually means that they will believe any religion that doesn’t involve Jesus.

Popular choices include Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah and, to a lesser extent, Scientology. A few even dip into Islam, but it’s much more rare since you have to give stuff up and actually go to Mosque.

Barren mind? Maybe — I couldn’t honestly say, having never met the man myself. Eerily predictable? Yes, quite possibly.

So it would appear that the founder of the Facebook group opposed to Bill C-10, University of Alberta professor David Kahane, is also the teacher of a course where students meditate, repeat to themselves “May I have the ease of well-being,” and have as homework the task of sitting in public places directing thoughts of love and kindness at passers-by.

And this is apparently a “social justice“-themed class.

Look, I know a lot of Catholics out there have some strong reservations about the “social justice” movements that have been gaining ground in the Church of late (some see it as nothing more than a backdoor attempt to sneak socialism back in to the Church). Be that as it may…for all the reservations that people might have about such groups, at least they do works of social justice from time to time, usually.

Not Professor Kahane’s students, it seems. They’re too busy telling themselves that they are okay, too busy having “the ease of well-being” (whatever that might be). And when it actually comes time to do something apparently related to social justice, what do they do? Sit on a park bench and think happy thoughts at the people going by.

It’s nice work if you can get it, but do you suppose that any of Professor Kahane’s students — let alone David Kahane himself — has ever, I don’t know, seen the inside of a soup kitchen? That is social justice. Sitting on a park bench wishing yourself “the ease of well-being” and intently hoping that your positive vibes are reaching the people walking past is not social justice.

It’s just lazy, self-centered liberalism at its finest.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

So true.

“…younger workers will use your corporate network to run most any device, technology or social networking software they can get their hands on. Dubbed “Millenials,” these workers born after 1980 are nearly twice as likely to use cell phones and PDAs at work, and half admit to installing unauthorized software on their employer’s computers. On the upside, the Millenials are more security aware than their older co-workers.”

When they’re not causing security risks by updating their MySpace profiles during lunch breaks and downloading music, chat applications, and a host of other bits of media content that have traditionally served as vectors for malware and viruses, that is.

That’s what makes IT such a challenging field — you have to be smarter than the other users, and stay one step ahead of the craftiest cube-dweller. People will use proxies to get around firewalls, so you have to be able to identify and block proxies. People will try and use chat programs, reach Facebook, download games, watch videos, update their iPods, and so forth. To say nothing of the hosts of malicious programs that can get in by any number of means, even email.

It’s a challenge, to say the least.

“Me generation puts the ‘I’ in charity“

charity may begin at home, but it only counts if there’s an audience. That’s the implied message of what some are calling “competitive compassion,” a trend quickly turning philanthropy into an exercise in self-congratulation.

Putting the “I” in charity, Facebook’s Causes application allows Canadians to flaunt their benevolence with all the subtlety of a Pride parade, displaying everything from the money they’ve personally raised to the number of friends they’ve recruited for their preferred charity or non-profit.

On TV, Celebrity Apprentice and Oprah’s Big Give have transformed philanthropy into a game show, with players competing as teams but being judged as individuals in the fight to be the ultimate altruist.

Of the latter show, the Hollywood Reporter writes: “Shallow as a bird bath, the program would appear to exist less as a true philanthropic exercise than yet another self-aggrandizing vehicle in Oprah’s divine quest to become synonymous with all that is virtuous and good on Earth.“

Our secular world really has sunk to depths uncharted — turning helping out the needy into a vehicle for self-aggrandizement and preening.

Myself, I tend to prefer this sort of thing.

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Aren’t you so glad, O Reader, that our post-modern society has shed the last trappings of Christian mythology and mysticism in favour of hard empiricism and the pursuit of the almighty self?

I have to say, I think today might have set some kind of record for the number of Reader Mails I have received and answered. Not that I’m really complaining, mind.

At any rate, Erf writes in some follow-up thoughts to my response to a few questions he had about the Facebook group opposed to Bill C-10, and my dismissal of said group’s members as “whiny little liberals.”

Interesting. A couple of thoughts.

There’s a big difference between not getting around to answering your question about HRCs and actually liking HRCs. You may be right, but I wouldn’t take that as evidence. I do hope they respond, though! That sort of hypocrisy wouldn’t surprise me, sadly.

This is obviously subjective, but their charter doesn’t sound particularly whiny to me. Erroneous in places, yes — burying the text of a bill like this in a long and complicated piece of legislation (probably tied to some unrelated stuff) is unfortunately standard democratic procedure. But I don’t see the whining.

As for “imposing a conservative cultural agenda”, whether you’re a conservative or not the praise the bill is getting from a lot of conservatives does sound like that’s what’s going on. Whether this is bad or not depends on whether you’re a conservative, I suppose.

As for whether this bill will have negative effects, my answer is a resounding yes. My understanding of the bill is that the government doesn’t have to say whether they’ll fund a work until after the work is completed. Now, I’m not arguing that the government shouldn’t use discretion (sp?) about which works to fund. However, there should be clear, well-defined guidelines as to what gets funded and what doesn’t, and it should be possible to find out in advance whether a given work will qualify for funding or not. If filmmakers can’t know whether they’re going to get funds for something until after they’ve spent all the money producing it, they’re going to be extremely cautious as to what they try to do — and their other financial backers even more so.

In other words, this bill has the same kind of chilling effect that the HRC abuse has: people being very careful what they create, for fear the government will punish them for creating it.

Actually, this bill is rather different than what the HRCs do, because the government is not “punishing” anyone or exacting from any one person or group a financial penalty that is then awarded to another person.

I think the first error that is being made in how many people look at this bill and its implications is that there is an underlying assumption that Canadian productions are entitled to government handouts, which isn’t — or shouldn’t be — the case. No producer, no director, and no screenwriter is entitled, by virtue of being involved in the Canadian film and television industry, to access public funds to continue a project past a certain point in its development. And I, for one, think that the government should have every right to decide whether it wants to fund certain productions or not. That’s not the same as Censorship, any more than I am personally engaging in censorship when I…say…refuse to donate to charities that funnel some of their collected dollars into the abortion lobby. It’s simply saying that in the view of the government of Canada, which ostensibly represents the will of the people of Canada, certain productions aren’t of sufficient merit to spend public funds on.

Is it necessarily censorship when a university decides not to fund a new branch of research because, in the view of the university administration, the merits of the theory to be tested and the evidence collected for it thus far are insufficient? If not, then why is it censorship when the government proposes to act in a similar manner?

Obviously, there should be an established set of criteria that detail how one can and cannot qualify for public funding as a film producer or director. I would completely agree that if the government is going to be more restrictive in terms of how it doles out public funds, it should make clear the criteria it uses when considering whether to open its coffers. At the same time, there’s no point for the government to draft such guidelines at this point in time, when the bill that would make them necessary hasn’t even been made into law yet. If Bill C-10 passes, I imagine we will see exactly the sort of criteria that Erf is asking for drafted and put in place. But until and unless C-10 passes into law, there’s no need for the government to waste time drafting the criteria in question. So, they haven’t.

Now, admittedly, the bill does stipulate that the government doesn’t have to commit to funding a work until after it is completed. But then, as the leader of the Facebook group makes clear, most productions don’t apply for funding until the later stages of development anyhow. So I don’t get the sense that this bill will really put any kind of meaningful chill onto film and television production in Canada. I imagine that the criteria that the government will put forth will be fairly broad (’s government is not particularly socially conservative), so most producers won’t be adversely affected at all. Yes, there is a risk that some “art house” (read: soft-core porn films re-labeled as “avant garde”) productions may lose their funding…but by the same token, that will just mean that those productions will have to rely more on private investment, which I don’t think will dry up in the wake of this bill passing into law — if anything, the bill will increase the amount Canadian productions rely on private funds for their production, which I think is a good thing.

One would think that Canadian liberals and progressives, especially, would be happy to be free of government funding, because they’re all about “freedom” in what they produce, and decry any kind of “censorship” — even the “censorship” of negative press, at times. But the nature of government is to regulate that which it spends money on (be it healthcare, education, or film production), so one would think that the average filmmaker would be happy to be rid of government funding, and thus freed from government oversight. And yet, the exact opposite seems to be the case, and I admit I can’t quite wrap my head around this. But there it is: people demand that the government continue to fund Canadian film and television, without asking too many questions about the content being produced. We wouldn’t dream of telling a private citizen to fork over money without asking questions about what it will be used for (again, abortion is the one exception to this)…but apparently it is a sign of the coming chill winds of censorship when we start to say that governments are similarly entitled to be picky about what they fund and do not fund.

As for whether this bill reflects a right-wing social agenda…well, in a sense that’s not even the question. Did this bill emerge from a party that is, at least nominally, conservative? Yes, it did. But is the bill itself necessarily conservative in its stipulations and outlook? It doesn’t seem to be, no — if anything, a lot of it seems like common sense. And that shouldn’t be the exclusive domain of the Right (although at times it seems to be). Yes, it enjoys a lot of support from conservative elements in society, but the bill itself is not overly biased in one political direction or the other. To me, at least, it seems to be a bit of common sense thinking about the state of government funding of Canadian film and television production (which, we must admit, has churned out some pretty tasteless and questionable material over the years).

Update: Welcome, Steynians!