timeimmortal

As some good Readers may be aware, I run several websites, not the least of which is Ultima: Aiera, my Ultima project archive site. It’s basically an aggregator for news related to the various projects out there on the great big internet that have something to do with Ultima. And whether that’s a patch for an existing Ultima title or a remake of an Ultima game using a new (and fancier) game engine, Aiera exists to keep track of everything I can find “out there”.

I’ve been working on updating Aiera all day, so there won’t be anything else done today in the way of blogging. But that’s okay — an article I read in Wired magazine this morning suggested that mixing up one’s content every now and again was a sure-fire technique to spruce up the blog. So I expect thousands of readers now.

Yeah, right!

However, one thing I do want it to get my various blogs a bit better-integrated with each other, and because Time Immortal is kind of the master domain for each of these that means that anything that gets posted to those “other” sites from now on will be mirrored back to here.

So…news from Aiera today.

I was contacted a while back (an inexcusably long while back, as it happens — my apologies!) by a fellow named Zen, who passed along a bit of an addon module for Dungeon Keeper based on the first level of the Abyss in Ultima Underworld.

As Zen doesn’t have a website to host the project at for himself, he has made it available to the world via Aiera, and I have (finally!!) created a project entry for it. Check thou it out, O Reader, if you’ve still got those Dungeon Keeper discs tucked away in a drawer or closet!

Also, I have added a download for the Ultima 6 Project’s Milestone 5 release to that project’s entry, so if you haven’t grabbed it from somewhere else already, you can now get it here as well.

Other news, courtesy of Dino’s Ultima Page:

Ultima V: Lazarus

Cheerful Dragon has released version 1.29 of his various mods and bugfixes for this remake of Ultima 5. These can be downloaded either at the previous forum link, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

Seven Towers Exult Mods

Marzo has released updates to his mods for Exult, for both The Black Gate (Keyring) and Serpent Isle (Fixes). The latest revisions of both can be downloaded through their respective project entries here at Aiera:

• Black Gate Keyring
• Serpent Isle Fixes

Ultima: Iris

Apparently, the project’s developers took home first prize at the Dusmania 10 hobby game development meeting in Frankfurt, Germany. Congrats!

Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

Ranman has released version 1.01 of his port of Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator. The up-to-date download can be found via the project entry here.

Exult

This Ultima 7 remake has been updated recently — or, rather, the unstable 1.4 version has been updated, as has Exult Studio and its accompanying tools. The Exult team’s plugins for GiMP have also been updated this month, and the whole mess of things can be downloaded via the project entry here.

EUO

This Ultima-inspired game has seen the release of version 0.16 of its rudimentary 3D client, which can be downloaded via the project entry here at Aiera.

Ultima Restoration

This comprehensive multi-project has released screenshots of the Kilrathi space station from their remake of Ultima 1. With this completed, they now have all the cities, dungeons, and space stations fully mapped in the game — which, if I do say so myself, is damn good progress!

They’ve also added links to a good couple-dozen Neverwinter Nights modules that I’m going to have to sort through in short order, so…well, it’s nice to know in advance what I’ll be up to for at least part of next week.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad that the Calgary imam who filed a human rights complaint against Ezra Levant has swung his opinion ’round and set it against the HRCs, more or less.

But he still doesn’t get it entirely.

“Is it safe to say you miscalculated the public response?”

Syed:

It was not a miscalculation. I honestly believed at the time that, in Canada, if you felt offended by something that had been said about your religion or identity, this was the way you resolved the issue.

Incredible. 99% of Canadians had never even heard of the HRCs before he brought his complaint against Levant, and most still don’t know what they are. But Syed knew all about them. So where did he get this wacky idea?

Based on what I’d seen in the media and read on the internet, I thought this was a process that brought the parties together to set things right. I had seen, for example, that other groups, including members of the homosexual community, had done it.

Well, thanks again, gay activists, for your absolutely fabulous contributions to Canadian life! This is right up there with amyl nitrate and French bulldogs.

Yeah, gay activists‘ complaints against Christians who dare to publically express their Christian beliefs has brought people together all right — now more straight people hate gays than they did before! Brilliant…

And congratulations to an orthodox Muslim imam for taking a page from the gay agenda manual. I’m sure your co-religionists will be thrilled to learn who inspired you. Will Syed be the token “righteous straight dude” grand marshall at the next Pride Parade?

What a country. Syed, your Order of Canada is on its way.

…

Anyway, Syed’s newfound objections to the HRCs has more to do with this kind of elitist snobbery than with Enlightenment principles. He tells Maclean’s:

Basically, it’s a bunch of bureaucrats: some of them are lawyers, but for the most part these are people without a great deal of legal training. They have neither the ability or [sic] the means to deal with these sorts of issues.

And make no mistake — Syed wants “these issues” “dealt with”. Hooooo yeah.

I’ve never been a fan of the old saying “enemy of my enemy is my friend” — I’ve always preferred http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030929.html”>”enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy” myself — and I’m willing to grant that imam Soharwardy is a fair-weather ally at best. It’s good that he’s swung around to set his opinion against the human rights commissions, but it would seem that his transformation is only one of self-interest.

And self-interest is a fickle sail indeed with which to run any ship.

There’s just something wrong with somebody who says “Unless you can scientifically demonstrate that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ, I don’t understand why you should be upset at me for breaking into your house, stealing the thing most precious to you and defecating on it.” Normal people don’t have trouble figuring that out. Emotional defectives do. Not all (in fact, not most) atheists or unbelievers, in my experience, do this. Just the ones who make atheism their raison d’etre. And the internet tends to disproportionately represent such emotional defectives for a number of reasons. First, because you just don’t hear from unbelievers who aren’t obsessed with making everybody else know how stupid they are. Second, because the computer in the basement is the Best Friend to the emotional defective (and the coward) who would never dream of going around insulting people face to face, but who can get out all his aggressions on line. The Internet is a breeding ground for human toothaches who, for good reason, never get invited to parties and who explain this to themselves by saying “The world is unworthy of my Great Thoughts.”

This all has to do, of course, with P. Z. Myers and his half-hearted threat to desecrate a Eucharistic host. In the end, the whole outing is probably for the best, as it paints a very clear picture of just what overt hatred of God does to a person’s intellect and mental stability.

Still, it’s a disgusting act of anti-Catholic bigotry on the part of a tenured professor. In a just world, Myers’ particular brand of feverish mind would find its only audience in white, padded walls, rather than in a classroom full of unsuspecting students.

Vox Day responds to an atheist critic of his book, The Irrational Atheist, with his usual barbed wit.

…the reason no one looks askance at Christian accoutrements is that the Christian who makes a public statement is making statement about himself and his own beliefs. Atheists, on the other hand, are making a statement about everyone else and everyone else’s beliefs. Unsurprisingly, everyone else tends to look on this askance.

Let me see if I can explain this in sufficiently simple terms. If I wear a shirt that says “I like chocolate”, this does not offend anyone who prefers strawberry or vanilla. It is merely providing you with information about me. If, on the other hand, I wear a shirt that says “Vanilla is evil and everyone who likes it is stupid and bad”, then I should not be surprised when those who happen to like vanilla are not favorably disposed towards me. It is not only providing you with information about me, it is providing you with information about my negative attitude towards you. And to those atheists who are so narcissistic as to believe that another individual’s Religion is a statement that somehow concerns them, I merely say: Get over yourself! Life, the universe and everything are not about you!

There are those who wear their atheism in approximately the same way that Christians and other religious people wear their beliefs — matter-of-factly, presented simply as an aspect of character that intends to say nothing about what other people might think or to impose an opinion thereupon. On the internet, at least, such level-headed sorts are a bit more of a rarity, though not impossible to find.

But on the Internet, as in real life, there are also those who are very “out there” in their atheism, to the point that Vox Day describes above. And whereas all but the most hardcore Christian evangelists (and Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses) tend to present their case in the form of a dialogue, it has been this blogger’s experience that evangelistic atheists tend to present themselves as “the learned” dictating “the truth” to “the deluded” proles into the midst of which they have dared to wander.

This is equally true of atheist “accoutrements” that one typically sees out and about. The “Jesus Fish” is relatively innocuous, whereas the “Darwin Fish” is not so innocuous; the “Jesus fish” tells us only about the beliefs of the driver of the car it adorns, while the “Darwin fish” seems to be intended as a “teaching moment” that the atheist in the adorned car would like to offer to all the other drivers around him (the gender pronoun here is significant; it is usually a man in a car thusly adorned).

(The critic to whom Vox is responding is one notable exception, then.)

At any rate, here’s a couple of other good barbs from Vox:

Ethical belief systems are far less similar than atheists would usually have one think, of course, an atheist attempting to compare ethical systems is rather like a deaf man attempting to distinguish between Mozart and Vivaldi.

This is something to keep in mind, I think, the next time I’m having to deal with the old moral relativism canard.

The relevant point isn’t that religious people don’t ever kill - all are fallen - but that religious people are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE less likely than atheists to kill when they are in positions that enable them to do so. I suppose it should be expected that Kelly would find this statistical reality to be an incredible coincidence, though, since her entire worldview is founded on a series of incredible improbabilities occurring for no reason at all. Life must be interesting for the atheist, coming as it does as a series of totally unexpected, completely unconnected surprises.

I don’t know about you, good Reader, but if all I had to believe about life was that it was an improbable result of unpredictable reactions that occurred for no particular reason, I’d probably be an alcoholic….like Christopher Hitchens.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

In yet another response to the CHRC’s proposed self-review, the National Post editorial board delivers a simmering indictment of the whole idea.

…In an interview with the Post on Tuesday, [CHRC Chief Commissioner Jennifer Lynch] exclaimed, “I’m a free speecher. I’m also a human rightser,” as though the two were separate. No human right is more basic than freedom of expression, not even the “right” to live one’s life free from offence by remarks about one’s ethnicity, gender, culture or orientation. Ms. Lynch seems mistakenly to believe there is a delicate balance between free expression and other, newer human “rights.”

She also tipped her hand about the probable outcome of the review she had initiated: “We have a responsibility to lead the debate on how we can keep our policy up to date to effectively regulate hate on the internet.” Her interest appears to be in not whether to regulate speech, but merely how to do it “effectively.” There seems to be little doubt in her mind that a government agency must have the ultimate say.

Frankly, we doubt the sincerity of Ms. Lynch’s call for review, especially given the timing. The CHRC has recently landed itself in hot water for the overly aggressive methods it appears to have used to investigate white supremacists on the Internet and for investigating Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine over material they published that offended some Muslim law students. It’s a little too precious that the CHRC has chosen now for its self-examination, when a private member’s bill in Parliament would strip it of the right to investigate hate speech allegations altogether.

The only splinter of hope we hold out for the review is that the chief reviewer, University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon, appears to be a fairly impartial expert on the constitutionality of free expression. He has upbraided judges in obscenity trials for trying to impose their personal value judgments simply by “dressing them up in the objective garb of community standards.” Yet at other times, he has appeared favourable to more collectivist notions, writing that speech has a “social character,” with great “potential for harm.” And that expression, if left unchecked, “can cause fear, it can harass and it can undermine self-esteem.”

Sadly, it seems Professor Moon is not all that and a bag of chips, at least as far as his supposed impartiality is concerned. Reading some of his material, it’s hard to tell him apart from an HRC apparatchik.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

I’m not a convert to Catholicism, so I don’t get deluged with emails urging me to revert to the “true”, “Biblical” faith that I abandoned by becoming Catholic. So in that way, I can’t relate to what Mark Shea is talking about in this article.

But in the web forums I post to, I am unapologetic and open concerning my Catholicism, and I find that on a cycle almost as predictable as the cycle of atheistic commentators here at Time Immortal, I am periodically deluged by well-meaning, if misinformed, fundamentalists urging me to abandon the false, man-made teachings of Rome in favour of true, “Biblical” Christianity and the inerrant, preserved Word of God that is the King James Version of the Bible.

And in such matters, I take Mark Shea’s response as my own:

Almost every other day, it seems, I will open my e-mail and find something like this specimen (culled from my “deleted” file):

Dear Mark, just came from your Web site and have some questions. It sounds like you were a “Protestant” before becoming a Catholic? I don’t know which church you were in but I have to question whether you were ever taught the Word of God there? If you had been in a church which taught the truth concerning Baptism according to the Word of GOD and not the “traditions of men” you would have learned that not only does baptism NOT save nor “grant justification” but it is ONLY for those who ARE BORN-AGAIN by the SPIRIT of GOD by placing their faith in the LORD JESUS CHRIST! It is to be symbolic of the new birth ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED by GOD as Romans 6 clearly teaches! PLEASE READ the Gospel of John and pray asking GOD to show you HIS TRUTH — HE LOVES THE WORLD and DESIRES TO SAVE the LOST — which we all are apart from the New Birth which IS FREELY offered to ALL! Please read and be saved! I will be praying for you in JESUS Name. Carolyn

You have to wonder what is going through the minds of people who write such stuff. What do they think they are accomplishing?

One is terribly tempted to reply: “The Word of God? What’s that? Never heard of such a thing. Is that, like, the Bible? We used to read something called a ‘Bible,’ I think, at our old Church. But that was an awfully long time ago.

“Boy, thanks for setting me straight. I have never ever ever heard before that Jesus Christ loves me and desires to save the lost with His free gift of grace! I always thought that I had to perform magical rituals to make God love me. But now that you have so thoughtfully set me straight, I see clearly that when that big black book we used to read in my old church-that-never-taught-me-the-Bible says ‘Baptism now saves you’ (1 Pet 3:21) what it means is ‘Baptism does not save you.’

“And thanks also for explaining that when Romans 6 says, ‘All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death,’ and ‘We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life,’ this has absolutely nothing whatever to do with Baptism. I really appreciate your setting me straight on that as well.

“And finally, thanks for making me see that all that stuff in John 3 about being born again of water and the Spirit really means water and the Spirit are complete opposites.

“Golly. It is so good to finally — after all these years — have somebody who really teaches the Word of God clue me in. Who would have thought that all those years of studying . . . what’s that big black book called again? Ah yes! ‘The Bible.’ Anyway, who would have thought that all those years of studying the Bible could have left me so totally ignorant of what Scripture really means? Thanks ever so much for enlightening me.”

Yes, kind of facetious and tongue-in-cheek. But sometimes, that’s all one can do to respond to the misguidedly overzealous persons one encounters on this big, wide internet.

It kind of sounds like an attempt to save face. Of course, it’s easier to save one’s face before one blows it off with a shotgun, but perhaps we won’t tell the CHRC that just yet.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) has launched a comprehensive policy review of how best to address hate messages on the internet. Leading constitutional law expert Professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor will conduct an independent study as an important part of this review.

Speaking today to the Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies (CASHRA), CHRC Chief Commissioner Jennifer Lynch, Q.C. said, “The current debate on how to balance freedom of expression with the need to protect Canadians from hate messages in the Internet age is an important one. We are confident that this review will provide insight into the issues and move the discourse one step further.”

Growing public interest and continued advances in technology all point to a need to examine issues surrounding hate on the Internet. The Commission is dedicated to ensuring that the Canadian Human Rights Act remains effective. “Legislation must evolve – when necessary – to respond and reflect changes in society,” said Lynch.

I think one of BCF’s commenters expresses the sentiment that captures the mood of this situation the best: foxes are indeed extremely vigilant when given the opportunity to guard the henhouses. And unless the outcome of this review is the conclusion that the HRCs of the land have no authority to prosecute cases against Internet hate sites (with the government retaining the right to prosecute those site operators whose websites engage in incitement), that’s more or less what will have been achieved in Canada: the foxes of the human rights commissions will have been entrusted to guard the hens that are the rights Canadians are promised in the Charter.

And just like hens, such rights will be eaten up one at a time, when it suits the needs and aims of those in power over them.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

This isn’t the reason I spend as much effort as I do criticizing atheism and those who follow said belief, but it speaks to something else which is also important:

Yes. Really. I am the one who needs to learn tact. Because I got very angry when someone contributed something to my web site that I feared might deeply upset someone I love. I may be crazy, but it seems to me that those commenters up there that I quoted might need slightly more urgent and detailed lessons in tact.

Because can someone explain to me what kind of raging ASSHOLE goes onto a personal web site, reads a post about a loved one in a coma wherein the author asks for people to pray if that’s their thing, and picks a fight about the post title because it’s just SO FUCKING IMPORTANT to clarify that there are, in fact, atheists in foxholes? (I’m assuming we all know that ‘foxholes’ basically means ’seriously bad situations particularly in military combat.’)

Anyone? Can anyone explain it to me? Am I just missing their righteous justification because I’m emotional about Joe? Am I too fond of too many Christians and it has muddled my thinking even though they still haven’t converted me and never will?

When I was working in sales, part of our sales training was about how to converse with customers (obviously!). One scenario presented to us was how we would go about conversing with a customer who came in with a story about having been on a beach in Hawaii and having seen a beautiful necklace on a passerby, wondering if perhaps something similar could be found.

It would be a mistake, the trainer insisted, to launch into a series of questions about the necklace at that point. The key word in the whole scenario was…

…anyone?

HAWAII!!!

And you start the conversation with that. Eventually, and when appropriate, conversation can shift to the necklace, and perhaps a sale will be made. Actually, in most cases, a sale is more likely when a salesperson has not only been personable, but personally interested in what the customer has to say.

I digress a bit, but let’s come back to the main point, shall we? A blogger writes a story about a loved one in a coma, and asks people to pray if that’s…you know…their thing. Said blogger, in an emotional state, elects to title the post with an old cliché about atheists in foxholes (I am sure the good Reader is aware of the saying).

Most civilized, normal, polite people would offer a measure of condolence for said loved one in a coma. The internet atheist, though, is a somewhat different beast, and proceeds instead to pick apart the title of the blog post and evangelize in the cause of the great godlessness. And this can hardly be called an isolated incident — I’ve seen it myself, in more than a few web forums and comments threads.

And it’s always the atheists. Sometimes, a Jack Chick fan will wander in with similarly grim pronouncements about damnation and what-not, but not typically. I think Vox has the right idea here: “An atheist is an individual who asserts there is no God because he is a socially autistic asshole.”

I noticed this in my visitor logs from yesterday…

Number of Entries: 6
Entry Page Time: 2nd June 2008 13:33:16
Visit Length: 18 hours 50 mins 43 secs
Browser: MSIE 6.0
OS: Windows XP
Resolution: 1024×768

Returning Visits: 0
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Hostname: alpha.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca (205.193.97.2)
Entry Page: http://www.timeimmortal.net/2008/06/02/rehmatpedia-returns/
Exit Page: http://www.timeimmortal.net/2008/06/02/rehmatpedia-returns/
Referring URL: No referring link

It seems that someone from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is taking an interest in a certain internet personality that I periodically make mention of.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Count Roland follows up on an observation he had previously made concerning the fact that Time Immortal is blocked at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster, Alberta. Apparently, I’m classified as an “advocacy organization” by the IT personnel there.

But it appears that the rabbit hole goes even deeper than that. Roland has done quite a lot of investigative work, and his conclusions are…surprising, on one hand, and yet unsurprising as well.

O Writer,

I did a more extensive perusal of a small sample of organizations that have websites.

You are still blocked as an advocay organization; FreeMarkSteyn is blocked as a message/discussion board.

I was allowed to go to Planned Parenthood, CHRC, COLF, CCCB, CCRL, and Lifesite.

Given the Catholic position on abortion, I was surprised that PP was allowed, but as a defender of free speech it must be allowed - dynamic tension that is better than simple dichotomies, no?

CHRC and CCRL are opposing legal organizations. Lifesite was to test if the Catholic organizations were only allowed because the developers were told to allow Catholic sites — it was allowed as a non-Catholic life issues site, which is good.

But I am stil surprised that they, in general, were allowed considering they are as advocative as you are, if not more.

Right away, I confess myself surprised by the level and scope of the site categorization that is in play here, not all of it accurate. Lifesite is more or less correctly categorized: it is a life issues site, though not one that takes a specifically Catholic perspective.

On the other hand, Time Immortal is very incorrectly categorized: I am just one guy, not an organization, and though I do have a couple of guest bloggers (e.g. my wife) there is no explicit advocacy done through the site, certainly not in the sense of “one cause/raison d’etre” that my being categoriezed as an advocacy organization would imply. Contrast this with the allowance of Planned Parenthood’s website, despite the fact that PP openly admits that (pro-abortion) advocacy is part of its mission.

(Note that I’m not suggesting that the Planned Parenthood website should be banned — unless the ban on advocacy groups is to remain in place: consistency is important!)

And then there’s the issue of Binks’ FreeMarkSteyn aggregator, which is not really a discussion board (not more than any other blog that allows comments is, at any rate), nor a message board (according to the normative definition of the term). It is more properly termed an aggregator; that is: a collection or compliation of links to various stories from around the internet, which may or may not revolve around a common theme.

But this is also not as deep as the rabbit hole goes, O Reader. Roland notes, in a follow-up message, that a rather peculiar, though perhaps predictable, trend has begun to emerge.

Here is a list of more sites I tried.

Blocked:
Real Women of Canada - advocacy
National Rifle Association - weapons
Stormfront - hate
Black Panther - advocacy

Allowed:
PETA
National Organization of Women
Jack Chick
Coalition for Gun Control
Canadian Islamic Congress
Jihad Watch
SteynOnline
Reverend Wright on wiki -> tucc.org
Christianity Today

From my observations so far, the blocked sites all seem to be from the “conservative” side of the spectrum. Many allowed sites, from PP to now to PETA to Gun control, are largely advocacy groups but are on the “progressives’” approved list, although it also has a fair number of ‘conservative’ sites. How, though, realwomen/nra is blocked while now/gun control is not is beyond me.

Also, how is Jack Chick or TUCC not a hate site, or at least problematic on advocacy grounds for black liberation / anti-Catholic Theology?

I am somewhat confused (although I guess the web-block company likely has a liberal bias) and dismayed. I would hope that any censorship be in favour of groups closer to Church teaching and that Censorship be minimized, or if more widespread, to be at least not in favour of non-Church teaching sites.

This is a confusing trend, to be sure. For all intents and purposes, the person or persons responsible for policing the Internet access at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster — Holy Rosary High School — seems to be operating under something of a liberal bias in terms of how he or she applies the school’s presumably extant web access policy.

To wit: if advocacy groups are banned, why can the websites of organizations like PETA, Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the CIC still be accessed? If weapons-related sites are banned, why can the websites of gun control groups still be accessed? Roland points out other dichotomies which would appear to exist as well.

The extent of the bias is not great, but in general this situation doesn’t pass the old “sniff test” — there does seem to be some effort that has gone in to reducing access to conservative opinion on the Internet at Holy Rosary. And since censorship in any form is unacceptable…

Holy Rosary High School

Principals
Principal: Mr. T. Brochu
Vice Principal: Mr. Vince Orieux
Vice Principal: Mr. C. Musyj

Contact Information
Address: 6611A-39 Street
Lloydminster, AB T9V 2Z4
Phone: (780) 875-3600
Fax: (780) 875-9516
Email: hrhs@lcsd.ca

Do drop them a line, O Reader. There’s quite enough censorship — especially censorship of conservative opinion — going on in this country of late as it is, without some tin-pot IT dictator adding to the list of problems. That this sort of thing is happening at a Catholic hich school, especially one which states that its mission is to “nurture spiritual, academic, emotional, social and physical growth in every individual.”

Update: Welcome, readers from Sleepy Old Bear, Walker, and BCF! And welcome, Steynians!

Since it has been testified under oath, by a Bell Canada employee, that members of the Canadian Human Rights Commission may very well have hacked into a private citizen’s secured wireless network, the RCMP is now investigating the CHRC.

On April 2, 2008, Marc Lemire filed a criminal complaint against the Canadian Human Rights Commission for theft of an innocent woman’s internet connection. In that complaint, Marc Lemire is alleging that:

Dean Steacy and/or other Commission employees willfully connected to the wireless access point owned by Nelly Hechme, in order to hide their online identity. Then impersonating Mrs. Hechme, via her internet connection, browsed to Stormfront.Org website and printed documents that were submitted as evidence of material fact before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

1. By wilfully and with malicious intent connecting to Nelly Hechme’s wireless access point and then using her internet connection without authorization, they have committed Mischief in relation to data in contravention of Section 430 (1.1) (c)(d) of the Criminal Code.

2. By wilfully and with malicious intent connecting to Nelly Hechme’s wireless access point and then using her internet connection without authorization, they have committed Unauthorized use of a computer in contravention of Section 342.1 (1) (a)(b) of the Criminal Code.

3. By wilfully and with malicious intent connecting to Nelly Hechme’s wireless access point and then using her internet connection without authorization, they have committed Theft of telecommunication service in contravention of Section 326 (1)(b) of the Criminal Code.

4. By wilfully and with malicious intent connecting to Nelly Hechme’s wireless access point and then using her internet connection without authorization, they have committed Interception of Communications in contravention of Section 184 (1) of the Criminal Code.

5. By wilfully and with malicious intent connecting to Nelly Hechme’s wireless access point and then using her internet connection without authorization, they have committed other Criminal Code violations which this Police Service may deem applicable.

On May 2, 2008 the Ottawa Police Service came to a decision on the criminal complaint. And the decision was to put it onto the RCMP. The RCMP will not directly accept criminal complaints in Ontario. You have to go through a local police service, and according to the rules, the local police service will then forward to the RCMP.

This is good news indeed, although one suspects that the minions of the CHRC have been very good at covering their tracks. Still, there are ways to tell if a computer has been connected to a particular network, and I’m sure that the forensic analysts at the RCMP are quite well-equipped to detect evidence of any such incursion.

The actions of the CHRC are outrageous and shouldn’t fall under the scope of what is permissible, even in the cause of upholding Canadian law. Indeed, had this been a police investigation that had abused a private citizen’s wireless internet access, the evidence procured from it would have been tossed out of court with startling rapidity.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Canada’s age of sexual consent is going to be bumped from 14 to 16. I realize that’s not much of a jump, but it does bring Canada in line with the laws of other nations around the world, which is good. If I understand it correctly, Canada had a bit of a reputation as a place where one could go if one’s…uhm…preferences tended toward the younger crowd.

The legislation was brought in by the Conservative government in part to deal with older internet predators who troll the web looking for younger victims.

Canada’s age of consent will now be in line with other countries, such as Britain and Australia, and most American states.

The intent of the new law is not to criminalize teenage sex, but to crackdown on adults who prey on youth, former justice minister Vic Toews said when the bill making the change was introduced.

I keep accumulating reasons to be a) happy with the government, and to b) be happy to be Canadian again. I count this as another entry in both categories.

This:

Last month, an investigator with the [Canadian Human Rights Commission] told a hearing into a hate complaint that he made postings on websites under the password-protected pseudonym “Jadewarr.”

In response to a subpoena, Bell Canada linked “Jadewarr” to [Nelly Hechme]’s personal internet account, and provided her address and telephone number at the public hearing.

…

Hechme disputed an initial media report that her wireless Internet access was unsecured and therefore easily hacked. In fact, she said, it required an encryption key that could not have been guessed or casually cracked.

When she forgot the key, even she couldn’t access the connection, she said.

“It was so secure to the point I couldn’t get into it (so) I’m not sure how they got into it. It’s very bizarre.”

Reminds me of this:

Today only!

That’s right — any Mark Steyn merchandise or books purchased today will mean money donated to the legal defence funds of Canadian bloggers Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle, Kate MacMillan, Mark and Connie of Free Dominion, and National Post columnist Johnathan Kay against the lawsuit filed by Richard Warman. These men and women have been vocal, vital advocates in the cause of freedom of expression rights in Canada, and both need and deserve our support, O Reader.

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Wordpress.com blogger Lorelle wonders why more people aren’t concerned about Brazil’s banning of the Wordpress.com domain on account of a single blogger there posting an embedded video in a blog post showing a couple having sex.

I think bloggers around the world have become apathetic. Lazy. Uninspired. Dumbed down. Honestly. When the term echo chamber was coined, it was a good label for all the regurgitation of content spread all over the web, drowning individual voices. Self-interest blogging is pervasive. What happened to altruism and using the blog publishing platform to support freedom of speech and bloggers around the world?

What happened to us? Why am I not seeing protests and opinions on this issue all over the web? Why isn’t the banning of three million WordPress.com blogs a big deal? Why aren’t we talking about this instead of the latest iPhone gizmo and useless SEO techniques? Why didn’t people get angry and protest loudly when WordPress.com blogs were banned in Turkey, China, and other countries? WordPress.com continues to be banned in places - why aren’t we talking about this?

Have we really become desensitized to the plight of other bloggers and the oppression of freedom of speech?

We need to find our indignant righteousness again, fellow bloggers. We need to make our voices matter. Three voices should not have to shout to be heard on behalf of millions of bloggers. I want my WordPress.com blog to be read by those in Brazil, Turkey, China, and everywhere in the world. Don’t you? Why should my blog be penalized because of the actions of one?

People are asking Automattic to take a stand. I’m asking bloggers around the world to take a stand and let their voices be heard when others can’t.

Let not millions of bloggers be blocked and banned for the sake of a couple of idiots. You don’t send an entire city’s population to jail because two people break the law. Maybe the world would be a better place if we did, but that’s another discussion.

I wholeheartedly agree. Oh, that’s not to say that I agree with a blogger who posts sexually explicit material on his website, of course; I find that sort of content unnecessary and immoral. But just as I will defend the right of someone to articulate racist views on a public website, I will defend the right of someone to post sexual material on a website…because the essence of freedom of expression is that we have to accept that people will use the right to express immoral and vile things. Chesterton noted that love means loving the unloveable, or it means nothing at all. Much the same can be said about defending freedom of speech — either we defend the rights of people who say the unsayable, or we may as well not defend the rights of people to say anything.

I disagree with the Brazilian government’s move in its entirety, as surely as I disagree with the actions of the CHRC and other human rights commissions in Canada. And I think bloggers not only should speak out about blatant acts of censorship such as these; I think they have a moral imperative to do so. To refrain from doing so is, in essence, to be a parasite, sucking at the flesh of the great, big internet while doing nothing to foster the fundamental freedoms that is offers, freedoms that are slowly being eroded.