Seven years of bad luck are over. "Complaints against Alberta newspapers dismissed by human-rights commission," by Karen Kleiss for the Edmonton Journal, September 23 (thanks to Sounder):
EDMONTON -- Alberta's Human Rights and Citizenship Commission has dismissed nine complaints filed against the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald in connection with a controversial editorial published seven years ago.
The complaints were lodged by Muslim and Palestinian organizations and their supporters, who argued the editorial was likely to incite hatred or contempt toward Palestinian Arabs and Muslims, contrary to Alberta's Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act.
In a seven-page decision dated Sept. 21, commission director Marie Riddle dismissed all the complaints.
"Although in my opinion statements made in the editorial . . . were offensive, based on the recent case law, I can find no basis to forward the complaint for a human-rights panel, and I hereby dismiss the complaint," Riddle wrote.
Journal lawyer Fred Kozak said the editorial expressed the opinion that delegates attending a meeting in Malaysia should condemn the use of suicide bombers as an inappropriate way of bringing about political change.
"Free expression must always include the right to criticize people, organizations and governments," Kozak said. "It should also include the right to publish a wide variety of views and opinions and perspectives, especially concerning political events in the international community.
"(This decision) recognizes that language is, and will always be, an imperfect way of communicating, and that the expression of opinion will always provoke other expressions of opinion -- but that is highly valued in a democracy."...
At least for now.
How crusading... How racist... How blasphemous... How sinful... How islamophobic!!!
[/sarcasm off]
woo who! There is a reason why we have free speech and "Islamic Republics" do not.
Obviously the exposing of tyranny and the efforts of people like Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn and MacLeans Magazine are resetting our fundamental rights.
I recieved this email thaton the
25th of September, Muslims are calling for a Muslim Day of
Prayerin Washington DC (http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com/). They
are calling for 50,000 Muslims to gather and pray on the DC
Mall. This is the exact word of one of the Sheikhs who is
leading this historic gathering, “Muslims should
march on the White House. We are going to the White House so
that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White
House wil l become into a Muslim
house.” These are not empty
words. They speak of a dark spiritual intent and a coming
day of great trouble to
America.
is this real?
I received this email that on the
25th of September, Muslims are calling for a Muslim Day of
Prayer in Washington DC (http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com/). They
are calling for 50,000 Muslims to gather and pray on the DC
Mall. This is the exact word of one of the Sheikhs who is
leading this historic gathering, “Muslims should
march on the White House. We are going to the White House so
that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White
House will become into a Muslim
house.” These are not empty
words. They speak of a dark spiritual intent and a coming
day of great trouble to
America.
is this real?
Muslim and Palestinian organizations are behind a huge learning curve as to what our western human rights of free speech are all about. They should begin to understand what are the foundations of those rights, starting with historical perspectives on the ideas and institutions developed to safeguard them, going all the way back to Roman law where all persons are equal before the law, the Magna Carta's 'charter of freedom' and procedural law, habeas corpus, of 'innocent until proven guilty', the limits of power, of democratic ideals free of vote fraud, of limits on 'cruel and unusual punishment', and freedom of speech and limitations on censorship going all the way back to John Milton's Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Do Islamics even know of this work?
They should try to understand the fundamentals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and what they really mean to represent in safeguarding each person from abuses and coercions, not just violent coercions but also those that denigrate a person for their thoughts and beliefs, or race and freedom from bigotry. We are a free people built upon the shoulders of great men and women whose legacy stretches back through the centuries from our Judeo-Christian beliefs all the way to the Reformation and Declaration of the Rights of Man defining our 'natural rights' equally for all, regardless of race, religion, or sex. When will these be taught at Islamic universities, starting with their famous Cairo University? When will those ideals be discussed at study groups at the mosque, critical studies led by their mullahs and imams? No, this cannot be possible? Then there lies the problem with Muslim and Palestinian organizations, that they have not yet walked our shoes in the path of our centuries to understand what they are unable to even begin to fathom. Freedom of speech and the natural rights of each individual are on hallowed ground, based on human reason and conscience, and not subject to some primitive ancient god. Our rights are in the image of a far more evolved human vision of God than Mohammad's. Until they understand all this, they are way behind the learning curve, and to us appear as crude cultish barbarians.
Contrary to Islamic beliefs, it is not an offense to bring criticism where it is due, and where free men and women will discuss the affairs of the day without fear of reprisals and punishment. That is what free speech safeguards, our right to reason and discuss without anyone feeling 'insulted' over our doing so. Until the ignorant Muslim and Palestinian organizations can accept this as a basic fundamental right for all human beings, they have no business challenging it in court, and the case should be immediately dismissed. Our laws are built up on durable foundations going back centuries, and they clearly cannot understand any of it. Our Human Rights, like our human worth for each individual, are unshakable.
I can hear the Muslims: "Oh no! Not free speech!"
Their obviously phony flimflam of a prophet & "recitation from Allah" will have a hard time surviving common sense in the future if thinking people are allowed to voice their criticisms. Perhaps the "religion of peace" zombies will figure that their best hope is to make a lot of death threats. What disgusting creatures.
Hey d12salsa,
Yes, it's true but there are a few people who are doing something about it:
Clash Over 'Islamization' at DC Muslim Prayer Rally
I'm in LA but you know I'd be there if it was closer.
Yay for free speech! This is a great piece of news in a an often all-too-bleak landscape of Islamic violence and dhimmi capitulation.
But, since free speech is un-Islamic, this won't be the last.
Lan Astalem!
"Although in my opinion statements made in the editorial . . . were offensive..." -- commission director Marie Riddle
I wonder what it was that offended her precious sensibilities? According to the article, "Journal lawyer Fred Kozak said the editorial expressed the opinion that delegates attending a meeting in Malaysia should condemn the use of suicide bombers as an inappropriate way of bringing about political change." So commission director Riddle was offended by an editorial that called on Muslims to condemn suicide bombing, eh? Or perhaps the editorial didn't phrase it nicely and "respectfully" enough for Riddle's precious standards of decorum when coddling Noble Savages.
D12salsa, the Opinionator has posted this piece about this madness on his blog, with the following comment:
"The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service, and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit.[2] The term "National Mall" commonly includes areas that are officially part of West Potomac Park and Constitution Gardens to the west, and often is taken to refer to the entire area between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol, with the Washington Monument providing a division slightly west of the center. The National Mall receives approximately 24 million visitors each year."
Let's remember that Obama not only studied the Qu'ran but also stated the call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset" and he then went on the recite it with an 'first rate' accent. NYTimes LINK
So, on September 25th, visitors and residents of Washington will hear"Allahu Akbar" just like the 9/11 muslim hijackers screamed before killing over 3,000 people.
Outrageous?? - you bet!
So I guess we'll indeed see another display of bedouin-sandal-sole-licking-after-a-stroll-in-the-sheep-corral by Buraq Arafat Saddam Hussein Osama, as though such displays of surrender, appeasement and plain gutlessness could help at all in the fight against the jihad (and we know that the only thing that could help is the Sobieski/Jefferson methods for dealing with mahoundians supported by Tom Tancredo.)
OT
We have yet another Muslim lawsuit being launched against the Canadian government.
This time it's for, get this, $27,000,000
Abousfian Abdelrazik is filing a lawsuit against the federal government, and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, alleging his right to freedom and security of the person was violated.
In the lawsuit, Abdelrazik claims the government "took numerous actions to harm him in that country."
Abdelrazik was visiting his ailing mother in Sudan in 2003 when he was arrested on suspicion of having ties to terrorists and being an associate of al-Qaeda.
He was eventually freed, but his name remained on a United Nations no-fly list, and he couldn't get a passport to replace the one that expired while he was in custody in Sudan.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/09/24/abousfian-abdelrazik-sudan-lawsuit.html?ref=rss
Battle of Tours, here's a little something interesting that explains why mahoundians will never be taught anything like what you've mentioned at their "universities" (if that's what one can call a place like Al-Azhar Univ.; where, believe it or not, for the sake of not contradicting the Glory-Ass Quran/Mein Qurampf, geocentric astronomy is still taught):
(...) the Middle East lacks abstract principles by which to measure actions "against general criteria, irrespective of the affiliation of particular actors." Instead, intense particularism requires a family member to support a closer relative against a farther one, regardless of who may be at fault. Tribesmen and subjects, not citizens, populate the region. That most Middle Easterners retain this us-versus-them mentality dooms universalism, the rule of law, and constitutionalism. Trapped by these ancient patterns, Salzman writes, Middle Eastern societies "perform poorly by most social, cultural, economic, and political criteria." As the region fails to modernize, it falls steadily further behind.
I'm sure some people might be interested in the blasphemous, heretical, racist, Islamophobic, and just downright evil publication in question here. So after trying for about ten minutes to find the actual text, it having been scrubbed from the original sources, here it is:
http://ceppal.tripod.com/CEPPal/journal_racism.html
Please avert your eyes as I quote the caption and first few paragraphs.
Quote:
End Quote
Thank goodness a small army of obscurantist Muslim attorneys and benighted 'human rights' activists attempted to save us from this foul calumny.
free speech is Un-Islamic.
Beagle, thanks for digging that up. I looked myself, but gave up without success. The "sin" of that article is that it uses language that strongly implies a greater generalization of dangerously militant ideas among an indeterminate number of Muslims than is currently permissible under the unofficial yet powerful PC MC Canon Law.
There are strict guidelines about this sort of thing: one must not use language that implies a relaxing of the stringent boundary that has been set up around the "tiny minority of extremists" in order to isolate those "extremists" from the vast majority of Muslims who are, of course, harmless and decent people; and in order to isolate the "extremism" of that "tiny minority" from Islam itself which is, of course, peaceful and harmless (if not indeed a culturally attractive and positive force for "bridge-building", etc.).
This, incidentally, is why Spencer remains vilified in varying degrees by various people ranging from the solid Western mainstream to "Distinguished" Muslim "scholars" all the way down to scurrilous hate-mailers: No matter how strenuously, sincerely and accurately Spencer may protest that he is not condemning Islam itself and that he is not condemning all, or even most, Muslims -- nevertheless, as Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message": i.e., it is what Spencer is doing and the manner in which what he is doing is presented that strongly gives the impression of an implication that the problems and dangers we are to worry about and take actions against are much deeper and broader than that stringent delimitation of a "tiny minority of extremists" dictates. And at that point, once the genie is out of the bottle, there is really no definitive, coherent way to demarcate Spencer's actual view of the problem from a view that logically extends that to Islam itself and to all Muslims.
Spencer's project (and others like it) thus threatens the intended impermeability of the boundary that protects that narrow PC MC definition of the problem and the danger. If one were to take Spencer's implications seriously, that boundary would become porous, and all manner of indeterminable Muslims anywhere in the world would be opened up to rational suspicion. This cannot be permitted. It will lead us down the slippery slope to treating all these preciously ethnic masses of Third World type people in ominously unethical ways, and then our innate Western evil will be unleashed upon those poor peoples, and we will be unable to restrain ourselves from rounding them up, putting them in concentration camps, and committing genocide against them. We can't help it; that's how white Westerners are, at heart, you see. The only way to prevent "another Holocaust" from happening, then, against the New Jews, the Muslims, is to stop it at the source -- stopping people who criticize Islam beyond the proper bounds set by the PC MC though police.
Two more reasons to be proud of Canada today!
The dismissal of the complaints to Alberta's Human Rights Commission, and this:
"Canada boycotted a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday evening, protesting his denial of the Holocaust and verbal attacks on Israel.
The Canadian delegation, led by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, walked out at the start of Ahmadinejad's address. Several other delegations, including lower-level U.S. diplomats, left during the speech. Israel's UN delegation was not present for the speech."
CBC News
Hesperado,
I agree. If only we had a blood test which would allow us to find the Muslims most susceptible to (latent, chronic, or sudden) Jihad Syndrome after reading the mainstream Islamic texts. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Until then we'll just have to bite our tongues when we read the latest jihadi had recently become more religious, had always been extremely devout, and seemed like a really nice guy to his family and other brothers at the mosque. Although now I sometimes see the 'we all knew he was crazy but never bothered to mention it to anyone' argument.
Does this mean that Pastor Boisson, who dared suggest that homosexuality was a sin, will be off the hook, too?
For those of us in the USofA, lying just to the south of our newly sensible neighbors, we have a diversity czar at the FCC who's an admirer of Hugo Chavez. We need a bit of Free Speech vigilance down here, too.
As an American, I am suspicious of the UN Declaration on Human Rights. It seems that it was the "justification" for those who wanted to limit free speech in Canada. As a UN document, it is subject to easy manipulation by the best-organized blocs in the UN (a Hyena pack of the first order--and I speak as a former diplomat). I believe Amendments One through Ten of my country's Constitution are good enough.
ImNoDhimmi -
We (Aussies) walked out of that one, too; though Canada has the honour of having walked out *first*.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/24/2695146.htm?section=justin
I'm not sure that Australia has ever walked out of the UN Assembly while a Head of State was speaking, before now - would have to look it up.
The eleven who didn't leave at the beginning, as Canada did, but did get up and leave partway through, comprised: the USA; Australia; Argentina, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and New Zealand. (Canada isn't mentioned in the report I've linked, but I think that's because they got out right at the start; the next best thing to staying away altogether.)
What a pity they didn't all throw their shoes at him as they went!
That would certainly have registered their disgust!!
Why would Ms Riddle deem the editorial 'offensive'? It would
seem that any criticism of Islam or Muslims is considered 'offensive'.They would more than likely take offense to a statement such as,"In Islam the eating of pork is prohibited."
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