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Islamist blogger (and Pickering, Ontario nuclear power plant worker) Shaukat Khawja — also known as Rehmat, owner/operator of the Rehmatpedia blog — has had some very…interesting things to say in the past, but I’ve a feeling that this latest offering of his (put not on his blog but in the IslamUnity.net forums) might just take the cake. If nothing else, it at least confirms a suspicion that I’ve had about the guy for a while: underneath any pretense he might have established about being committed to peace and mercy (the name “Rehmat”, if memory serves, means “mercy” or “kind”), he’s just your typical anti-Jewish bigot.

Choice samples from his latest include:

Jew elites always played a major part in great wars and reactionary movements. They’re known for tricking the both parties in a conflict. For example, Jews funded most of Crusades against Muslims and Jews; Jew sided on both sides of American Civil War; they were behind French Revolution and Communist Revolution in Russia – and they declared war on Nazi Germany, while 150,000 German Jews were serving Nazi Army and some Zionist terrorist groups were having honeymoon with Hitler and Mussolini regimes.

Jew elites, eh? You mean, like this?

Okay, Photoshoppery aside, Shaukat is here saying more or less the same thing that got Mel Gibson into trouble a couple years back: “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world”. Now, to be fair, I’m sure that Jews probably did fight in e.g. the American Civil War, and then on both sides. But that is because such conflicts transcend religious considerations — neither the Civil War, nor the French or Russian revolutions or World War II were about religion, and did not have any real religious significance. Even the Crusades were more about politics and territory than they were about religion. And in such conflicts, people of the same religious stripe might well end up on opposite sides of the field of battle.

Case in point: there currently Muslims serving with e.g. NATO forces in Afghanistan, and who do battle with the Muslims in the Taliban.

Shaukat claims that he doesn’t need to prove this — or any other — statement made in the list of his that I have linked to, and yet the claim made above is hardly sufficiently self-evident to be able to stand on its own. Where is the evidence of Jewish funding of e.g. the Crusades against their own people?

Nazis never killed six million Jews. It’s 20th century’s biggest hoax – which has only flourished under government protection in several western countries.

Nazis are known for killing several million of Gypsies, Christians and Jews under their rule – but the largest victims were Gypsies. Even Auschwitz museum in Poland now have reduced the figure of Jewish killed by Nazis as 2.5 million.

Ah, Holocaust denial — pretty much a staple of Islamic discourse, unfortunately.

The problem with it is: the Nazis themselves were reasonably good book-keepers; we know from their own documentation that approximately 6 million Jews were murdered in various ways in the 1930s and 1940s. The figure of 2.5 million Jews that Shaukat gives is reflective of the number of Jews killed in Poland alone. And again, many of these deaths were documented and/or witnessed; the figures are not baseless.

Holocaust denial is ostensibly a punishable offence in Canada (not something I agree with, but that’s another matter). Strangely, however, I very much doubt that Shaukat is going to be charged with anything over this utterance.

September 11, 2001 attack on WTC and Pentagon was an inside terrorist job – conceived by Israeli Mossad, CIA and pro-Israel politicians and government officials.

Ah, the World Trade Center conspiracy. Another canard, and again a common staple of Islamic discourse.

There’s other stuff, some of it laugh-out-loud wrong, but these are some of the highlights. I think there’s room for one more, and that’s good…because of all the things Shaukat has asserted about Jews in his latest post, here’s my personal favourite:

Jews have the most powerful Jewish Lobby (AIPAC, ADL, AJC, etc.) in the US - which works for the interests of Zionist Israel instead of the US.

Here I had thought that the Hindu Jewish lobby was the most powerful. It appears, O Reader, that I have been grossly misinformed about the size thereof.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

All kudos to the Cat for getting a mention in the National Post. And such praising words, too!

[Wahida Valiante] compared Mark Steyn, the author of the Maclean’s article in question, titled The Future Belongs to Islam, to James Keegstra, an Alberta high school teacher who taught and tested his students on how Jews “created the Holocaust to gain sympathy.”

“They basically talk about the same theories,” she said. “This is not a civil dialogue.”

This isn’t BCF’s honourable mention, but it’s worth pausing here to reflect on what Wahida Valiante has to say: Mark Steyn’s quotations of Islamic community leaders saying — openly! — that Islam will dominate Europe are entirely the same thing as skepticism about the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

I can totally see the similarity.

She said that, in Germany, long before the Holocaust, “it was the words that set the stage for what happened later on…. We may end up with the same fate, and that is at the heart of why [the complainants] wanted to take this on.”

Yes, words were what really caused things to happen in Nazi Germany. Not the fact that Jews were legally denied property rights. Not the fact that Jews were denied the legal right to self-defence. Not the fact that the Jews were denied the right to move about freely, and ultimately to live and thrive as persons in the Reich. None of those things really caused problems — it was words.

Would the Reader be surprised to learn that, just prior to the Nazis taking power, the Weimar Republic had a very comprehensive body of anti-hate legislation? Is it perhaps possible that the Nazi reality became possible in part because the Weimar Republic muzzled freedom of expression?

Anyhow, on to BCF’s mention.

Both she and Ms. [Pearl Eliadis] had harsh words for the growing contingent of bloggers who lambaste the commissions, and have been invigorated by the prominence of the Maclean’s complaints.

Ms. Eliadis singled out one in particular, blazingcatfur.blogspot.com, as “poisonous” for referring to her panel at the conference as a “Texas cage match.”

She said it was evidence of the “appalling tone” that is “illustrative of how badly this debate has gone.”

Yeah, that’s poisonous talk, all right. A “Texas cage match” indeed…of course, perhaps for a lefty, any mention of Texas can be considered “poisonous”?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Strangely, morons like Haroon Siddiqui have jobs, while people like Kathy Shaidle — not only a far better orator in general, but also with something more important to say — are out of work. This is especially unfair in light of Siddiqui’s most recent offering of drivel.

The difference between what the Nazis said about the Jews and what people today are saying about radical Muslims is…

What we’re saying about radical Muslims is true.

To pretend otherwise is to perform the intellectual equivalent of hiding Nazis in your attic during World War II.

Whereas The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a proven hoax (something millions of your fellow Muslims seem too stupid to figure out or too stubborn to admit), the many declarations of radical Muslims of their intent to take over the world are all too true — they uttered those words themselves; have been doing so before your favourite punching bag, George Bush, was even born; and have been captured doing so on video.

Please present me with similar statements by Jews — let alone Baha’i (that’s the correct spelling btw).

You can’t, can you?

(And an aside to Mr. Farber, assuming he really said what you claim he did — should the unlikely day dawn when Baha’i fly stolen planes into buildings and incinerate 3000 people alive, or mutilate the genitals of millions of women, or slice up their little boys as part of “religious festivals”, or take over a school and rape pre-pubescent girls in front of their classmates, then shoot them in the back as they try to run away, then plenty of us will be more than willing to hate them for it, and we won’t be silenced either, especially not by an out of touch, would-be bully like Mr. Farber.)

Millions of us want to know: why do so many Muslims do things like that, Mr. Siddiqui?

And why don’t more of your fellow Muslims condemn them, loudly, publicly and without the usual “buts” about Israel’s or America’s mostly imaginary equivalence? Now that would be a column worth writing.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Ezra Levant has the details on an alarming story involving Richard Warman and a teenaged girl he exposed to the possibility of violence.

Quite a shocking thing for a supposed human rights crusader to do, no?

But then, one suspects that Warman, in particular, and his associates at the CHRC, don’t actually care about human rights as much as they do about a) their own pocketbooks, and b) silencing those with whom they personally disagree.

And now, it seems, we must add another entry to that list: c) settling personal vendettas.

Warman spent a lot of time posing as a neo-Nazi on various websites trying to coax out the identity of a high school girl who was led into the movement by her then-boyfriend. She ultimately recanted and apologized for ever espousing racist views, realizing that she had been led astray in her infatuation, and the CHRC accepted her statement and closed the case without imposing a monetary fine.

Perhaps because he had been denied another paycheque, Warman decided to leak the girl’s letter of recantation onto the Internet, and specifically onto a neo-Nazi web forum. These are people Warman believes hold views that might cause someone to come to harm — but to settle a score, he thought nothing of singling out, by name, someone who had gotten away.

That’s tantamount to incitement.

This sort of crap doesn’t belong in Canada.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Not that an atheistic government would persecute people of faith living under it or anything. Because we know, from history, that such atrocities have never happened.

And certainly, these German protesters give us no reason to think differently.

In what has been described as a blatant act of “Christianophobia,” a group of protestors physically and verbally assaulted some of the 15 thousand Christians peacefully gathered for the April 30 opening day of the Christival German youth festival.

About 450 gathered into a No Christival group protest procession only hundreds of meters from the Christian youth event, reported christianophobia.eu. About 100 of the self-described “antisexist alliance” protestors broke down barricades, while other No Christival members set off fireworks.

German chants of “No God, no state, no patriarchy”, “Masturbation instead of evangelization,” and “Never again Jesus“ filled the air together with speaker announcements that compared the gathered Christians to Nazis.

No Christival flyers also accused the hosts of Christival of holding “extreme conservative and right wing world views that are characterized by literal bible interpretation, homophobia and sexism”.

Attacks on Christians continued throughout the festival that concluded May 4.

If I had to sum up post-Christianity in two words, the two words I would use would be: pelvic issues. Seriously, you’d think that for some people, sex was the new deity.

If, you know, they weren’t so hasty to deny any belief in any kind of deity.

Rest in God’s peace, good lady:

Irene Sendler, known to many as the “female Schindler”, rescued children and babies imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, smuggling them out in bags, or through the sewers, and hiding them with friendly families around Warsaw.

Donning a Star of David armband used by the Nazis to mark out Jews, she passed incognito in the ghetto to organise the escape plans.

She was eventually arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and condemned to death.

But members of 20-strong secret organisation managed to bribe a guard so she could escape. She lived for another 65 years.

This woman was a hero many times over, and some reports credit her with saving as many as 2,500 Jewish children, often times by ways and means that involved putting herself in considerable danger.

May she be triumphantly welcomed into God’s glorious kingdom!

Islamist blogger Shaukat Khawja really, really doesn’t like Jews — so much so, in fact, that he would rather that Theodor Herzl’s proposal that all Jews convert (or be converted) to Christianity had gone through back in its day.

Got that? A radical Muslim so hates the Jews that he would rather they had all been converted into infidel Christians, instead of being allowed to remain Jews.

And why?

Speaks Shaukat:

The history of the world would have been so peacefully different if the propsed mass Baptism of European Jewry had gone through.

Because clearly, Jews are responsible for all the wars of the world, right?

How much more true would Shaukat’s statement be, I wonder, were it modified to allow for the possibility that Muhammad had been killed in a tribal skirmish just prior to his first “visitation” from whatever demonic entity decided to temporarily assume the identity of Gabriel?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Update - the Meltdown: I seem to have touched a nerve, as Shaukat has now done two things. He had begun by demonstrating the maturity I have come to expect from him now, on par with that of a twelve-year-old casting angry aspersions from atop a playground. But following that up, he says a couple of…well, to be honest, his statements are gems in their own right.

For example:

Without going into Biblical treatment of Jews, which quotes contempt coming from Moses, Jesus, and St. Paul - I wonder why Jews were expelled from almost every European country — England topping the list — expulsion of Jews for almost 350 years. Could it be interpreted as a sign of Christians’ love or hatred towards Jews - and for what reasons???

Poor grammar aside, it is interesting that Shaukat chose to mention Moses — the man who, arguably, was the instrument by which God established the foundations of Judaism — as an example of one who has only demonstrated “contempt” for Jews. I suppose a narrow reading of, for example, the Book of Exodus could lead one to think that, since Moses does spend quite a bit of time castigating the Hebrew people for their sinfulness.

But then, the Hebrew people did sinful things in the desert, not the least of which was to build a golden calf and worship it. Humanity as a whole regularly sins, and periodically needs to be corrected, sometimes harshly. Certainly, Jesus and St. Paul both give example of this, as did Moses in his day.

Following Shaukat’s odd statement, though, is a list of dates in history that supposedly demonstrate Christian persecution of Jews. And, to be fair, many of the dates he lists do in fact accurately mention instances of persecution of Jews by Christian religious authorities. Other dates he lists, however, do not belong on the list.
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…you know, for the hopefully small number of people left in Canada who can’t understand what a grave threat to our freedoms and rights the human rights commissions are.

Isn’t it obvious that in the case of Adolf Hitler, “hateful words” led to “unspeakable crimes”? This argument is offered routinely: if only there’d been “reasonable limits on the expression of hatred” 70 years ago, the Holocaust might have been prevented.

There’s just one teensy-weensy problem with it: pre-Nazi Germany had such “reasonable limits.” Indeed, the Weimar Republic was a veritable proto-Trudeaupia. As Alan Borovoy, Canada’s leading civil libertarian, put it:

“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.”

…

The problem the Jews found themselves up against in Germany and elsewhere was not the lack of hate-speech laws but the lack of protection of the common or garden laws — against vandalism and property appropriation and suchlike. One notes, by the way, that property rights are absent from Canada’s modish Charter of Rights. The reductio ad Hitlerum is the laziest form of argument, so it’s no surprise to find the defenders of the ever-more-intrusive “human rights” enforcers taking refuge in it. But it stands history on its head. Most of us have a vague understanding that Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 as a pretext to “seize” dictatorial powers. But, in fact, he didn’t “seize” anything because he didn’t need to. He merely invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Republic’s constitution, allowing the state, in the interests of the greater good, to set ? what’s the phrase? — “reasonable limits” on freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom from unlawful search and seizure and surveillance of postal and electronic communications. The Nazis didn’t invent a dictatorship out of whole cloth. They merely took advantage of the illiberal provisions of a supposedly liberal constitution.

Oh, and by the way, almost all those powers the Nazis “seized” the morning after the Reichstag fire, the “human rights” commissions already have. In the name of cracking down on “hate,” Canada’s “human rights” apparatchiks can enter your premises without a warrant and remove any relevant “document or thing” (as the relevant Ontario legislation puts it) for as long as they want it. And without anybody burning the House of Commons or even the Senate.

…

Happily, beginning on July 1, under Ontario’s “human rights” reforms, Commissar Hall will have far greater powers to initiate prosecutions against all and sundry. Under the new proposals, ” ‘hate incident’ means any act or omission, whether criminal or not, that expresses bias, prejudice, bigotry or contempt toward a vulnerable or disadvantaged community or its members.” “Act or omission”? Of course. The act of not acting in an insufficiently non-hateful way can itself be hateful. Whether or not the incident is a non-incident is incidental. I quote from “Concepts Of Race And Racism And Implications For OHRC Policy” as published on the OHRC website:

“The denial of racism used by so many whites in positions of authority ranging from the supervisor in a work place to the chief of Police and ministers of government must be understood for what it is: an example of White hegemonic power over those considered ‘other.’ “

Got that? Your denial of racism merely confirms your racism — because simply by being a “White hegemon” (like Barbara Hall or Jennifer Lynch) you wield racist power. The author, Frances Henry, cites the thinking of “modern neo-Marxist theorists” as if these are serious views that persons of influence in Canada’s “human rights” establishment ought to be taking into account, rather than just the latest variant of an ideology that’s led to the deaths of millions in Russia, China and everywhere else it’s been put into practice. Yet, underneath the blather about “omissions” and “denial” of racism is the bleak acknowledgement that, alas, Canadians just aren’t hateful enough to justify the cozy sinecure of taxpayer-funded hate police. “I would say that for a province as large and as diverse as Ontario, to have 2,500 formal complaints a year, that that’s a very low level,” Commissar Hall said. C’mon, you Ontario deadbeats, can’t you hate a little more?

Some feel that free speech in Canada is dead already, and perhaps it is. Perhaps, in due time, this and every other blog that articulates a dissenting opinion against the received wisdom of our progressive “betters” will be shut down for the greater good of society. Perhaps, in due time, people like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant will not be allowed to publish articles within, if not from within, the Great White North that articulate the same sort of dissenting opinions.

Then, too, perhaps in due time Sharia will become the law of the land. Once one’s freedoms have died, does it really matter whom one’s restrictions and privileges are bestowed by? Is there that much difference between a human rights commissar who can fine you into homelessness and bankruptcy for saying something anti-Islamic, and a pseudo-caliph or imam who can exhort “the faithful” to burn your house to the ground for doing same?

Myself, I remain somewhat hopeful that freedom will prevail, and I am not alone in thinking so. But at the same time, I think pretty much everyone on the “freespeecher” side of the debate can recognize that there’s still a tough slog ahead.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

So they draw their paycheque from the public trough — that is, we taxpayers foot the bill for their employment — but human rights investigators suspected of posting racist materials on various websites in an attempt to entrap the site operators will be questioned about their actions free from our prying eyes.

Great. Just great.

Anyone who has been following the abuses of the Canadian Human Rights Commission knows that using fake names, infiltrating “enemy” websites and even planting bigoted messages is their modus operandi. We know this not because it is alleged by any of the CHRC’s critics, but because it is confessed under oath by CHRC staff themselves, including CHRC investigator Dean Steacy and former CHRC staffer and serial CHRC complainer, Richard Warman, who personally admitted under oath that he would regularly end his online comments with Nazi shorthand for “Heil Hitler”.

But most Canadians don’t know that — partly because the CHRC is doing everything it can to keep its questionable tactics hidden from public view, including insisting that the upcoming March 25th cross-examination of its staff on this very subject be done in secret.

Of course I stand by my statement. And whenever a bigoted comment is left on a website in Canada, the first reflex of any skeptical person ought to be: “is this another dirty trick by the CHRC or Richard Warman to entrap their next victim?” rather than to take the comment at face value, as an indicator of any real bigotry in Canada.

If I didn’t know anything about human rights commissions and I read that Globe article, I’d probably think that whoever thought there was a conspiracy by the government to plant racist comments on websites to entrap them was a nutbar on par with 9/11 “truthers”. I’d think whoever said that was slightly mad, because that’s just not how things work in the real world, at least not in a country like Canada.

“With glowing hearts, we see thee rise, the True North strong and free…”

Welcome, Steynians!

Blazing Cat Fur sends in the following link:

http://www.warrenkinsella.com/index.php?entry=entry080207- 155248

The above is a link to an entry rather amusingly entitled “Bring It”. It’s primarily a pre-emptive response to an editorial by Jon Kay in today’s National Post.

Mr. Kinsella posits an interesting question:

This post is what has moved Jon to write about me and my views. The Wicked Witches of the West and East - plus their Muslim-loathing Winged Monkeys, and the Freespeech Martyrs Brigade, [Ezra Levant] and [Mark Steyn] - have also devoted lots and lots of space to it, in some cases sneering that I am a pedophile, that I made it all up, that I am a Nazi, and so on. Immodestly, all of this suggests to me that the things I have been writing on this web site about racism, anti-Semitism and human rights have perhaps had an impact. If I wasn’t having an impact, a friend said to me this morning, why would they bother?

While I’m not sure that I’d go so far as to suggest that Warren is “one toke over the line” — I don’t know whether Mr. Kinsella is currently a user of marijuana — I think there’s some validity to the statement that Neo ends his post with: “Or maybe Warren… you just need to take a couple weeks in Cancun… snag some rays… loll around on the beach? ‘Cos you’re sounding a little stressed out here, bro.“

Personally, my own reason for “bothering” to write about the post Mr. Kinsella links to in the excerpt above is that when I first read it, I was rather dumbfounded. Was I honestly reading an argument in favour of Censorship, an argument in favour of Dr. Keith Martin being told to shut up, to get in line, and to withdraw Bill M-446, that used as its key argument a blurry cell-phone picture of bathroom graffiti? Was that what I was seeing? Were the people opposed to the removal of Section 13 from the Canadian Human Rights Act so bereft of convincing and persuasive arguments that they were reduced to to taking pictures of pre-adolescent scrawlings in public bathroom stalls in order to find “proof” of widespread Naziism that must be stamped out through a rigorous censorship office?

Who wouldn’t comment after seeing something like that? I took Mr. Kinsella’s post as a sign that us freespeechers were scoring some major rhetorical victories. Who’d have thought that really, I was just in despair over how we were losing this fight?

That would seem to be Mr. Kinsella’s contention, at any rate. Or, rather, his contention would seem to be that because immature youth of today scrawl Nazi symbols on the walls of public bathrooms, MP Dr. Keith Martin should withdraw private members Bill M-446 and all the rest of us in Canada should just not worry about the HRCs or their mission of Censorship.

To be fair, I actually agree with Warren on one point:

That look like a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas, to you? Perhaps Keith Martin and the editorial-writers at the Globe, Gazette and Post think it is, but I sure don’t.

No, I don’t much think it’s a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas. But, equally, so what? So it’s a useless contribution to the marketplace of ideas. Again, so what?

Usefulness is a dangerous criteria to begin to use in determining what constitutes acceptable vs. unacceptable speech in any ostensibly free nation, much like wantedness is a dangerous criteria to use in determining whether it is acceptable, morally or under the law, to terminate the life of a human being prior to the point of natural birth. That is because usefulness, like wantedness, is a side issue, a distraction, a dodge that would-be censors can use in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

No, scrawling “White Power” and two swastikas on the bathroom wall is not a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas, anymore than drawing a picture of a penis on the same wall would be. Strangely, I don’t hear Mr. Kinsella arguing that depictions of human anatomy should be outlawed. I mean, he makes the point of mentioning that the scrawlings he took a picture of* are at “a kid’s eye level**” — if this is all about “the children,” then one would think that Mr. Kinsella, and all decent people, would be every bit as up in arms over grotesque depictions of the human anatomy on bathroom walls as Mr. Kinsella is over this bit of Nazi-eqsue rubbish. Why should some scrawlings be allowed and others disallowed, if in fact all of them send poor/bad/hurtful/disgusting messages to the children?

The beauty of the marketplace of ideas is analogous to the beauty of the actual open-air market, of the sort that one finds all over places like, for example, Greece. At a food market, you can tell within seconds when rotten meat is on display, and react with appropriate revulsion to it. In the marketplace of ideas, the same principle applies; when rotten ideas are aired, the rest of us can react — almost immediately — with the appropriate levels of revulsion. We can hear these ideas and make the conscious choice to reject them.

When ideas are suppressed, even distasteful ideas, people will go in search of them, because curiosity is a part of the human condition. That alone is sufficient argument against the imposition of censorship through the human rights commissions. That those who would seek to maintain the imposition of censorship are reduced to taking pictures of bathroom scribblings to advance their cause is just icing on the cake, I suppose.

* who whips out a camera — even a cell-phone camera — whilst sitting on the can, anyhow?

** perhaps this is a clue as to the probable age and level of maturity of the person who composed the scrawl in question? And maybe, just maybe, could it be that we don’t want to be talking about censoring freedom of expression in Canada because some ten-year old thought to draw a swastika or two just for kicks?

Update: I like Kathy Shaidle’s take on this:

With all due respect to my commrade in arms Jay Currie, I believe he is missing the key point of this entire story, which is:

Jesus in a rainhat! Warren Kinsella is taking pictures of graffiti in public washrooms for &*$#’s sake!!

Seriously, what do these pictures prove besides:

a) crazy men shit, and

b) Warren needs a life?

Is there, like, some connection between this graffiti and that concentration camp they’re building on the old Varsity Stadium site?

What? Nobody’s building a concentration camp in downtown Toronto?!

It’s been how long since the Christie Pits riots? Wow, that long, eh…?

This would be like blaming Orville Wright for 9/11 — except that 9/11 actually happened.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

I think we’ve all heard that saying before.

With regard to yesterday’s news about Bill M-446 introduced by MP Dr. Keith Martin, Mike Brock notes that the majority of blog support for Bill M-446 is coming from the political right. (Or from racist nutbars, who do also stand to gain from Section 13 being struck down…but that’s a necessary consequence of freedom, as I’ve been saying…)

The political left has been largely silent. Or, alternatively, they have chosen, like blogger BigCityLib, to turn on Dr. Martin and label him a Nazi sympathizer.

With friends like these…

Not that I’m all that surprised to see Liberals turning on one of their own who just happened to dare to depart from the established narrative. God forbid that a member of the Liberal Party of Canada be an actual liberal, in the classical meaning of the word. But then, that’s the nature of fascistic ideologies, I suppose; eventually, they turn the guns on their own followers.

The continued existence of Section 13 is an affront to the Charter-ensured right of every Canadian to freedom of expression. There is also, within that same , a sufficient framework in place for dealing with those rare occasions where what is expressed is genuinely harmful (i.e. to deal with torts and incitement). Hurting someone’s feelings, however distasteful the act might be, is not illegal. That is why Section 13 has to go: not because there is a large segment of the Canadian population that is anxious to freely and openly express Nazi sentiments, but because the best way to combat those sentiments is to let them be expressed in the light of day so that the rest of us, reasonable folk all, can reject them as the rubbish that they are.

That is, I think, the real problem with progressives like BigCityLib: they don’t trust the ability of the average Canadian to think for him/herself, and would that Canadians leave the thinking to their “betters.”

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

How can the ordinary British citizen be expected to distinguish between the law-abiding Muslim and the extremist? In these circumstances it is easiest, and safest, to assume the worst and to take refuge in whatever form of defence comes readily to hand — even foul language.

As an asylum-seeker myself, albeit of many decades ago from Nazi Germany, I can only draw Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s attention to the distinction between assimilation and conformity. Nobody is asking Muslims to assimilate, but it behoves immigrants, of whatever religion, to conform to the norms of the society in which they have chosen to live.

When we read (as we have just done) of Muslims seeking to behead another human being, or to commit other appalling atrocities, then it is reasonable for ordinary folk to ask — what are these people doing here anyway and why do they choose to behave in ways which appall us?

My generation of immigrants conformed. We retain and value features of our origins, but we do not demand privileges or special treatment and we contribute to the life of the nation as best as we can. Ten thousand of us fought for Britain in the Second World War — a small expression of gratitude to the country which gave us refuge.

I’m surprised that the writer of that particular letter to the editor decided to publish his name and locale; the above is the sort of thing that could get you arrested in England. Even though it is so shatteringly true.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Mr. President,

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rene Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?

In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal.

One might say, in Harry Truman’s words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements�and there will be three more this session — Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world — millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries — continue to go ignored.

So yes, this Council is doing something. And the dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights.

So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims.

But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions against Israel in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights — [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad], Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard — they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh�s troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?

Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the despots who run this Council couldn�t care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights.

They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: To distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.

You ask: What has become of the founders’ dream? Of Eleanor Roosevelt, of Rene Casssin, of John Humphrey, P.C. Chang, Charles Malik, who assembled here in Geneva sixty years ago? With terrible lies and moral inversion, it is being turned into a nightmare.

Thank you, Mr. President.

The preceding statement was declared inadmissable by the president of the UN Human Rights Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba. Its author, Hillel Neuer, was warned that any further statements of this nature would not be tolerated.

The UN has become the playgound of third-world dictators and international bullies, interested only in preserving their own grip on power and the condemnation of the one state in the whole of the Middle East that is a functional, stable, Western democracy where the people enjoy rights and freedoms unheard of anywhere else in the Middle East (or in most of Africa).

Dr. Sanity has more details, with video.