Glavin as Canada's Mark Steyn?

Terry Glavin makes the same type of racist conflation (between extremists and the Muslim population as a whole) that is the basis of the CIC complaint against Steyn's excerpt in Maclean's:

"Its weirdly Malthusian thesis more or less holds that Muslims are taking over the world and Europe will soon be peopled only by guillotine operators and women wearing tents instead of proper clothes."

Surely in over 2000 words it would have been appropriate to actually quote some of the offensive passages in the racist article in question, rather than just implying that the CIC were the real problem in this situation.

A CLARIFICATION: THE PASSAGE YOU CITE IS GLAVIN'S CRITICAL DESCRIPTION OF STEYN'S BOOK, NOT THE CIC COMPLAINT. -- TYEE MODERATOR

Islam

I'm certain that everyone would be more comfortable with Islam if prominent Ayatollahs and Mullahs, particularly those in the Mid-East, would publicly inform their faithful - for all the world to hear - that suicide bombing is sinful and contrary to the teachings of Mohammed.

indeed the CIC is having the opposite effect

with this action - if they wanted to promote understanding and tolerance they are surely doing the opposite with their complaints to human rights bodies attempting to stifle the free flow of information and free speech.

They are blinded by hatred of anything other than themselves.

Apologists for this stone-age religion are seriously harming progressive movements as well.

this case will only succeed

this case will only succeed if the human rights tribunal are politically correct lackeys, as they were when [EDITED FOR LEGAL CONCERNS. -MODERATOR.]. in a court of law this case holds absolutely no merit b/c steyn was simply telling the truth. most canadians, by the way, most likely agree with him in his assertion that the extremists who have hijacked islam are a risk to security around the world. how can anyone deny that after 911, bali, madrid etc.?

Perhaps Steyn can get

Perhaps Steyn can get Douglas Christie to represent him...since Zundel went back home to Germany he hasn't had that much to do.

such a pity that the left

such a pity that the left wants to shut down free speech in this great country while claiming that they champion rights and freedoms. how are we to take anything they say seriously? i guess that's why the ndp never wins more than 20 seats or so.

'Me, I stopped reading

'Me, I stopped reading Macleans shortly after Steyn started writing for it.'
perfect. free speech must be allowed, and if you don't like it, don't read it.

Doktors Office

If all I got to read at the Dr. is Macleans I`ll just stare at the wall thanks. Actually I take my own reading material ..when I remember.
Right on earthwind it is like a hideous joke.. kind of cornball cheesy parody.

Fine, but did Maclean's

Fine, but did Maclean's violate Human Rights? That's the question. Not whether Macleans butters your ideological stick. I'm surprised how quickly some of the commenters here forget that. They seem to think that just because they don't see a cloned copy of their own worldview staring out at them from the pages of the magazine, then it warrants a state-sponsored fatwa. This is what I mean when I often write about the prevalence and perverse social acceptability of modern secular liberal-left inquisitions. That's exactly what this is.

All The Deniers....

First, I accept the right of all people to resist genocide, as I accept the right of all nations' citizens to resist foreign invasion and occupation, by whatever means lay to hand for them, from the Jewish resistors of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland to the brave Palestinian resistors against the Western Zionist occupation of Palestine in Gaza and the West Bank-, again, by whatever means lay to hand for them.

That said, what is most passed off as so-called progressive here in Tyee, at least at the Terry Glavin and Tyee Editorship level, are the views of the generally pro-Zionist Palestinian Holocaust deniers. No less a view beyond the pale than the denier views of the Jewish Holocaust, wrecked upon those people and many others, by Europeanfascism, not Palestinians, or even Iranians for that matter.

There IS a double standard at work here, and it is not generally in the direction assumed here by the Palestinian Holocaust deniersand their sympathizers. A European Nazi fascism visited upon Jews, communists,anarchists, socialists, liberals, homosexauals and many, many others does not justify a Zionist fascism directed against the entirely innocent people of Palestine. (The Russian people for example, lost more people in the war against Nazi Germany than all other countries of the world put together.)

But the persistent din of the, like I say, generally pro-Israeli Zionist's Palestinian Holocaust deniers have it here in the pages of Tyee, I understand that. And they are shored up by what passes as Tyee editorial "moderation".

Tres amusante. :-)

In closing, we have heard much here from these pro-Zionist deniers of the Palestinian Holocaust. Which I do not begrudge them. How about, just for once, a Tyee article from a more pro-Arab Palestinian, Iranian, Iraq and Afghan resistance viewpoint? Just for some more even handed balance on this subject, say?

B-D LOL. Ya think?

Baloney

Canis Latrans,

It took me ten seconds on our site's search engine to come up with these pieces we've run. None of them can be remotely described as anti-Palestinian in their point of view or subject matter. In fact they are highly critical of the actions of the Israel state and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Usually I don't take your bait, since I know you just mean to provoke, but I'm tired of your claim of bias.

The Cartoon 'Palestine'
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/09/22/JoeSacco/

A Palestinian Viewpoint
A vote cast for Hamas? To gain a Muslim perspective, listen to Ali.
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/04/17/APalestinianViewpoint/

'I Believe in War'
Its leader slain, Hamas vows Israel 'has opened the gates of hell.' How did we get here? Then I recall the words, six years before, of a Palestinian work buddy.
http://thetyee.ca/Life/2004/03/22/I_Believe_in_War/

Rewriting Israel's Story
Nathan, author of 'Other Side of Israel' Nation's claim to moral high ground attacked by Israeli authors.
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/01/15/Israel/

What to Read While the Cradle Burns
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/07/21/MiddleEast/

Who Knows the Muslim Mind?
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/08/11/MuslimLit/

Ann Coulter

At least she is entertaining (in the omg kind of way) - something I can't say about Steyn.

Sleaze

Oh please NB, Steyn is a racist, and Glavin is one of his many apologists (no surprise there). The whole trajectory of most of their writing is to drum up fear and hatred toward muslims. That they do it indirectly is merely a device to make their drivel palatable to those who wholeheartedly share their vile views. Their fans and employers simply want a hedge against being easily condemned by outright expressions of hate.

I'm all for free speech, but if Macleans and the Tyee are going to give people like Steyn and Glavin a platform for their sickening propaganda, then they should have the decency to place rebuttals alongside. Both publications have a duty to provide their audience with accurate information, rather than half-truth, fear and outright lies.

Anti-Christian hate in Toronto

While reading this blog, I also was scanning "Now" Toronto's "progressive" entertainment magazie. Here's a quote from a letter to the editor printed today:

"There are few books that are as hate-filled, intolerant, homophobic, racist and demeansing to the human spirit as the Bible. If someone tried to print it today for the first tie, the printer would probably be liable for hate cries. Yet it gets a free pass from any such analysis. If we're going to examine moral content, maybe we should start there. I'll get the bonfire ready."

(Yikes! Shades of Kristalnacht!)

We've evolved into a society in which we promote hate and intolerance under the guise of advocating tolerance and "multiculturalism".

Amen, James...

Amen, James Burns.

:-) Ya know I really love ya, David. That old Yankee bias of yours does show through though, bro. :-D

Still, Tyee IS better than the Sun or the National Post, no doubt. :-) It's just that MacLeans sensibility that is so icky-, itself of course a wannabe Times or Newsweek. As is increasingly my previously much loved "publicly owned" CBC.

The neoconazi impact, frequently in these times dressed up as Zionists, as strangely contradictory as that may seem, is continuing to be felt everywhere and act upon, what used to be called, bourgeois "liberalism", dragging it further and further right.

When the gloves do come off here though David, as they will around a subject such as this, really do be even handed, and I will continue to love you-, despite yourself and that closet "American innocent abroad" sensibility you exude. :-)

nightbloom you are mistating the case

iut is not secularism as you say

"modern secular liberal-left "

but rather fundamentalists who DO NOT WANT SECULARISM - they only want their own p.o.v. to reign supreme - in your case, catholicism and generally belief in imaginary beings who overlook all aspects of someone's life - in others, other positions like no eating other animals, etc etc etc.

Secularism is simply letting everyone have their own beliefs and no one set of beliefs be FORCED upon anyone through pain of death or force of law.

I appreciate you may hate the non-religious but I cannot stand these slurs against the only thing that has made us civilized in the west.

And I would caution you to realize that the end of secularism means that one ideology or one faith must reign supreme and there is no garauntee your own faith would be that ideology.

You seem to be open to reason and I think you would agree to this even though we have very different ideas on what is proper and real and what is not.

Cry me a river

Cry me a river over those offending magazines!
Every publications is there only because some sponsors put advertizing in them, so follow the money!
If you dream that the money you pay for that magazine even counts, then dream again!
They are all in the pocket of rich powergroups, and they will print whatever it takes to continue to get advertizing.

Personally I am fed up listening to all that hassle between 2 sets of stubborn people who fight over some stretch of desert.

Every nation and every race can find grievances!

As a born Dane I should insist that all the territories the Vikings once occupied belongs to me and my children?

The problem is a one poster remarked what we are dealing with stone-age mentality here, why do they not grow up?

What's discussable ?

Nightbloom wrote:

"The "progressive" left has grown accustomed to the regulation of speech, thinking it just a useful way of sticking it to Christian fundamentalists, right-wing columnists, and other despised groups. They don’t know they’re riding a tiger that in the end will devour them, too."

I’ve become a big fan and promoter of Tyee – and an occasional conributor – simply because I’ve seen as much con as pro discussion of topics traditionally dear to the Lefties’ heart. That includes, for example, articles and discussion critical of Israel, and I entirely concur with David Beers response to Canis Latrans. I was particularly impressed with the discussion on Catholicism, and it is fair to note that if we played the same hardball with Islam, the fat would be in the fire, for sure, so we’ve a way to go yet.

For years and years, through keeping the public eye focused on the Holocaust and through the use of Political Correctness, anyone critical of Israel has automatically been given the sobriquet of Holocaust Denier, and as a result Israel enjoyed the luxury of a free PR ride world-wide. That has all gone down the tube with the overt display of Israel’s aggression to its neighbours and the Palestinians. If accurate reportage had occurred 30 – 40 years ago, would that have been a deterrent? We’ll never know.

Roughly the same techniques have been used to promote the cause of First Nations in Canada. The European settlement of Canada has been likened to the Holocaust in respect of FNs, and forms the basis of their popular support. From there the argument has been successfully made that Canadian society was then – and some say is still – irrevocably racist, bent upon “decimation “of native peoples.

There has been NO public debate or examination of these claims, except by FNs and their advocates. In fact if most of the inflammatory statements made regarding the “white” races were reversed and instead hurled against FNs, their makers would quickly find themselves in court for inciting racist hatred.

What is relevant here to the current discussion is that any dissent re FN claims has been squashed by precisely the same techniques the Jewish Defense League so successfully used for all those years. The effectiveness of this has been seen with the media refusing to do the “wrong” kind of investigative journalism and instead currying to popular pro-FN sentiment.

Does this mean all that we’ve heard re FN issues are lies? Not at all, only that as with all propaganda efforts, some are, some are “stretched” facts, and regarding the rest, we simply don’t have enough information to make a proper decision.

Now then, how can we cherry-pick what are or are not discussable topics.?

TTTT - I'm actually

TTTT - I'm actually agnostic. Some of my statements on these threads tend to be shorthand for much lengthier dust-ups from way back, so you can be forgiven for the misconception. I don't promote faith, I only object to the one-sided,uni-directional, and highly selective critique and aggressive pillorying to which Christians are often subjected to, and to the broad-brush way all Christians are often lumped in with the hard-right protestant evangelical Republican base. And to the way journalists often use Christianity as an easy foil to advance an indirect critique of modern Islamic fundamentalism without actually mentioning Islam and thereby offending muslims. And to the mendacious way any Christian who speaks up is immediately assailed with specious accusations pertaining to events that took place hundreds and even thousands of years ago (inquisitions, conquistadors, yada-yada). I also object to the selective bastardization of Western history which is a staple of liberal-left constituency consolidation efforts.

That's all. I certainly don't believe in using human rights law to quash writers who do the above-mentioned things. But I do think writers should be called on it and challenged in the free market of ideas (which was what I did, for example, with Rafe's "Catholic Smack-Down"). There's a huge difference between that, and what the CIC is now trying to do.

ME2 - Just to clarify, I was quoting Mark Steyn there. Yes, I generally agree, although I'm occasionally exasperated when The Tyee seems to be peddling mere cynicism rather than actual critical thinking on some of these issues. Yes, I've found The Tyee fairly even-handed in covering the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Kudos for that, because it's a hard one. No matter what you write, someone will always be mad at you. There are other issues the Tyee covers which consistently display a particular bias, and I try to call it as I see it.

This current article we're discussing is an occasion where The Tyee is fighting the good fight, drawing on a diversity of examples to illustrate its point, without unduly pathologizing the entire constituency which the complainants claim to represent. Good stuff.

got it nightbloom

thanks

Not even needed

"As a born Dane I should insist that all the territories the Vikings once occupied belongs to me and my children?"

We already have our mark on Newfoundland. Check out the coat of arms: On the background of Dannebrog, and the two flanking Beothuks are wearing an Ingwaz on their armor. Can it be clearer?

Don't know about elsewhere, but it seems Estonia, at least, is looking for 'closer ties' with Scandinavia. There you go!

praying

this joke may have a point?

A CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time.

So she went to check it out.

She went to the Western Wall and there he was walking slowly up to the holy site.

She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane in a very slow fashion, she approached him for an interview....

'Pardon me Sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN, What's your name?'

'Maury Fishbein' he replied.

'Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?'

'For about 60 years.'

'60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?'

'I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims. I pray for all the Wars and hatred to stop, I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man.'

'How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?'

'Like I'm talking to a fuckin' wall.'

I have a better one...

"A British district officer, coming upon a scene of suttee, was told by the locals that in Hindu culture it was the custom to cremate a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre. He replied that in British culture it was the custom to hang chaps who did that sort of thing."

— Mark Steyn

Might not be so funny

Perhaps Steyn wouldn't think the habits of the wogs were quite as primitive and lacking in 'culture' if the officer he was quoting had been Brigadier Reginald Dyer.

Every society, every culture has its horror stories - anyone who, like Steyn, pretends that Yanks and Brits haven't lots of horror shows to live down ought to pick up a free crack pipe in Victoria - because they're smoking something.

That's exactly why folks like Steyn are so dangerous...they look at the world through a one-way looking glass…..

BTW, I do like your 'joke' 'alive'

Quote:That's exactly why

How is that any different from the journalistic hit-men of the left? Steyn's hardly "dangerous". That's silly.

Oh, right. Honour killings were a regular part of Catholic school when I was growing up (Rafe forgot to mention that one). And every second Sunday we gathered outside the church to burn the latest crop of widows too. Gwest, you do relativize these things to the point of absurdity, at times. That kind of religiously sanctioned murder went out even before Abrahamic times (in fact, that is the meaning of the Biblical tale of Abraham and his son). Now the only religious community that still apparently regards such killings as acceptable is a certain segment of the Muslim community. Take, for example, the recent "honour killing" of young Aqsa Parvez for not wearing her hijab and for wanting to be like every other Canadian girl her age. Weren't you impressed with the statements from the Muslim community that this is not in any way, shape or form a "Muslim issue"?

Oh Please...

"How is that any different from the journalistic hit-men of the left? Steyn's hardly "dangerous". That's silly."

Name a few.

"Oh, right. Honour killings were a regular part of Catholic school when I was growing up (Rafe forgot to mention that one)."

No, but something damn close to it was going on in the residential schools.

"Now the only religious community that still apparently regards such killings as acceptable is a certain segment of the Muslim community."

Uh, actually, no. Sikhs and Hindus have been known to practice the same, well into modern times and on going as of today.

This is what we mean when we say one way mirror. It's not even so much a one way mirror as it is just historically ignorant.

My analogy used a British Indian precedent

For obvious reasons...Maybe Steyn should brush up on his history.

I wasn't “relativizing” at all - whatever that means. I simply mentioned a parallel - from the other side of the looking glass - for the 'joke' of Steyn's that YOU quoted.

I've read Steyn for years...and I think he is dangerous - just like Horowitz, Coulter, David Frum and Rush Limbaugh.

They, like a certain former Prime Minister who has been in the limelight lately, all have a very passing acquaintance with the truth.

I don't agree with the CIC's stand - but I'm not so culture insensitive to suggest I can't understand.

I happen to have friends whose Muslim wives were spat on in the days after 9/11 -right here in Canada.

Nothing 'relative' about that!

Now you've done it.

Another insult to Muslims

Budd

Glavin would probably deny that!

But, Human Rights Commissions, as you say may not be the best place to adjudicate these things...the whole concept is still really in its infancy.

A lot depends, too, on the way the legislation is written and on the administrative regulations governing a commission's actions.

There certainly IS a need for human rights legislation in the workplace and minorities need some protection against discrimination:
soccer players with scarves; skirt length regulations etc.

Still, the CIC must have had legal advice before they filed their brief and they’re hardly be the first group use the law (however inappropriately) to make a point. We have a Vancouver Mayor who thinks it’s appropriate to white libel chill letters to his political opponents…where’s Glavin’s outrage about that.

A little balance please.

I’m constantly shocked by the number of parties these days who avail themselves of mediation to settle disputes of one kind or another. Perhaps Ken Whyte mightn’t have been so hasty to dismiss the feelers the CIC put out and Terry Glavin oughtn’t to be burning his shorts about how ‘terrible’ this all is.

Social change is neither linear nor neat and clean.

I think we have to live with it.

Good. I was worried this

Good. I was worried this thread was dying. I guess it's just been a busy week for everyone...

Wake up

NB, the most common cause of death for pregnant women in the US is homicide. You're ready to glory in cultural superiority, yet you don't seem to have much grasp of the west's dirty secrets. Well, not really secrets, things that the press here just doesn't cover in comparison to the honor killings of other cultures.

Moreover, the fact that the west is engaged in simply massive slaughter and displacement of the civilian population of Iraq doesn't seem to phase those who bring up personalized stories of tragedy, like that of Aqsa Parvez, in order to vilify entire ethnic communities. Why is that when Robert Pickton commits his crimes he is extolled as a lone monster in the press, yet an honor killing of a muslim girl is something all muslims are guilty of, and thus a demonstration of their moral inferiority?

Violence toward women for no better reason than they are considered a form of property by men is ubiquitous across all cultures. How many caucasian women experience violence from their families even now, for becoming involved in relationships with non-white men? Why aren't those stories told in the press? They happen. How many homosexuals experience violence from their own families even now? They still happen. When they do happen, why doesn't our press spin those stories as demonstrations of the evil nature of our culture, and foist on all of us blame for our willingness to participate in that culture?

Steyn and his ilk focus on stories that enable them to generate fear and hatred toward ethnicities that are the targets of their racism. Morally our own culture is far from superior, particularly when you stop to consider the mass slaughter of so many innocents that we facilitate. Yes the level of violence and coercion toward women in many ethnic communities is unacceptable, but so are its levels in traditional western cultures.

These problems need to be tackled by creating more just societies, not by vilifying others in order to make ourselves look better in comparison, and hence do nothing.

Is discussing Residential Schools racist?

You've all just made my point about some issues being undiscussable - except from a politically correct perspective - and that foremost among those today is the Residential school issue, which has NEVER seen a full pro and con debate.

Consider that prior to the coming of the white man, tribal groups were in constant bloody warfare over the usual human concerns, ie land and resources. Each tribal group spoke its own unique language, totally undecipherable to the others.

If trade took place, it was accompanied by warriors, or in highly ritualized manner designed to minimize danger to the incoming traders.

The onslaught of the introduced diseases, causing huge losses of population, destroyed the self-sufficiency of many tribes, particularly on the BC Coast, and many natives fled the ancestral villages to group around the trading posts.

The response was to create Reserves and lay on provisions for subsistence, where FNs could coalesce and retain their identity. To do otherwise, to leave them to fend for themselves, would have been to follow the example of other colonizers of the time who either enslaved indigenous peoples, or left them to fend for themselves or starve.

As any poster here will agree, the route to prosperity lies in education. So how does one educate a people with a thousand different languages, people who cannot do simple math, read or write?

How would one even begin to translate modern concepts into a stone-age dialect? Moreover, how would one have found teachers proficient enough in each of these languages to teach? How would doing so have aided in helping these people in coping with dealing with the “dominant Society” without English language proficiency?

More follows below.

more residential schools

The “suppression” of native languages at Residential schools was done for the same reason as we now do Immersion schooling, and also aided in the forming of friendships among children of different, formerly antagonistic tribes, who shared no common language. And we should remember that distinct tribal languages were already doomed with the development of Chinook, a polyglot trading language which was replacing the original languages even within the villages. As far as I know, the only relatively “pure” Coastal language saved has been Haida, the results of the work of linguist John Enrico. http://www.uaf.edu/news/a_news/20050606101917.html

I recall reading an account of a Potlatch held in honour of Frank Calder, who in addressing the gathering said words to this effect…”When I was a little boy, I was taken before the elders and told that I was to learn the white man’s ways well, so that when I came back I would be able to lead my people in the fight for our rights”. And, as we all know, he had impressive success in doing so. And so too all the lawyers and other FN professionals who are direct and secondary beneficiaries of the Residential Schools..

SO I would ask all the bleeding hearts who are more intent upon vilifying everything about the white race and its culture than in acknowledging truth, “Where would FNs be today if the residential school system had not been instituted?” If any care to respond, please omit all the typical rhetoric intended to provoke sympathy. AND, while you’re at it, perhaps you might have some PRACTICAL ideas, given the times, of how it could have been done differently.

Surprisingly Voltairey round here

It's gratifying that neither Glavin nor even one of his left-esque commenters here actually supports or defends the hounding of our fellow citizen Mark Steyn through various sinister Commissions and Tribunals. This, even though most of you clearly wouldn't yell "Piss!" if Steyn were on fire in a crowded theatre. Very Voltairey, very encouraging.

Couple points tho. Steyn's in hot water 'cos he's made a *demographic* argument, right? How come nobody here has addressed this argument, or even accurately described it? Glavin, a buddy of mine, pulls off a rare four-pointer here: he defends Steyn *and* dismisses him *and* sneers at him *and* mischaracterises him. Steyn's thesis isn't "weirdly Malthusian"; it's not a discredited mathematical theory about resources and population. It is a comment about a truism most "progressives" find too icky to discuss: childless societies go extinct, and get replaced. (By what?) Seems like the consensus here is that Steyn is OK to raise the question in print, but most would rule it off-limits for their own dinner tables, at which there are no high chairs.

Dorothy, I think you must be referring to the "Danegeld," which is basically the money you pay to the Danes so they won't burn down your village. Historically, it appears that if you paid Danegeld once, you'd have to keep paying more and more forever. Totally unlike sharia law, which I understand involves few fees or interest charges, although there is a "total submission" requirement you can't buy your way out of.

Quote:You've all just made

ME2, I totally agree. There's a "liberal orthodoxy" at work today, and to contradict it is to be a heretic, and to invite "inquisitions" before doctrinal police like human rights tribunals. They won't burn you at the stake, but they can certainly ruin a man. It's a form of public shaming that requires absolute recantation and submission, or else you lose your career, your friends, and your hard-earned social standing. The Inquisition method is indeed appropriate. No wonder the secular liberal fundamentalists can't hide their delight.

Correction:

Should'a typed: The Inquisition metaphor is indeed appropriate... (not "method")

Earnest Canuck

The whole notion that the west is going to render itself extinct because of its lackluster breeding habits is nonsense - and Mark Steyn is spouting nonsense when he tries to pretend otherwise - just as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, David Frum, that idiot Lou Dobbs on CNN who is constantly lighting his hair and his pants on fire about illegal Mexican immigrants are spouting nonsense.

Let them all rent a DVD of Stanley Kubrick's classic 'Dr Strangelove' and study their real avatar – General Jack D Ripper – he was at least funny.

“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

That’s the kind of un-ironic nonsense Steyn is shoving down the throats of the moral majority – and it sucks.

About THAT point Glavin is entirely correct.

The economic realpolitik which led to non-replacement population 'growth' in certain parts of the west is well known - and a long way from a being either a real concern or a subject worthy of discussion in this context. In places like Quebec where some effort has been made to provide decent childcare for families (in the broadest sense) population trends 'are' reversing; the same has been proved true in Germany simply because of relaxed rules about paid leave for 'fathers' - of all things.

The world is in danger of consuming itself into oblivion...reproduction is part of that problem and concern about the colour or religion of the last few folks left on spaceship is the real “utter nonsense”...whether it's Mark Steyn writing about it or someone else. Let’s leave the worry about the religion and colour and country of origin about the fella who shuts the lights off to someone else…it has no place in this debate.

errata

Just noticed I left out a word in the post above...in the last para. the phrase should be:

"...last few folks on spaceship earth..." & etc.

Okay fine, so the whole

Okay fine, so the whole argument is balderdash in your opinion. But is it illegal? Is it a violation of human rights? Should he be punished for expounding it? What exactly is on trial here?

p.s. as I tried to point out earlier, his argument is a vulgarized and politically opportunistic riff on a much more profound thesis advanced long ago by Oswald Spengler. So it's been the subject of serious debate for a while now, and is legitimate fodder for discussion by the aforementioned clercs and talking heads.

Let's just see what happens

It is balderdash and I suspect the CIC's appeal to the Human Rights Commishes won't get very far - the point is that Steyn and his fellow travellers need to be called out and exposed for what they're really up to in a free, vocal independent and iconoclasic PRESS which we don't have anymore.

That's the real problem - not the fact that Spengler wrote similar (but slightly less silly) nonsense about the 'decline' of the West a few generations ago.

What's to decline?

Most people, when you get right down to it, really just want to have a reasonably comfortable, slightly challenging and adequately fed life. For those with intellectual pretensions - there are lots of academic, theoretical and scientific challenges available.

Or, to riff on Cindy Lauper: ‘Girls just wanna have fun.’ Even girls who wear burkas and hijab.

Provide that for the billions of the world's citizens who don't have it now and we can argue about who gets the credit in a graduate seminar in every 'civilized' institution on the planet till hell freezes over - I could care less.

It's balderdash, always has been balderdash and for the most part it is an indulgent parlour trick to avoid the hard work of addressing real problems and attract a following of like minded, narrow minded, largely thoughtless bigots who’ll trudge off to the ballot box every few years and place an ‘X’ in a certain spot.

That's the 'quibble' I have with Glavin, Steyn and company - and their pedantic followers of any number of religious persuasions here and elsewhere.

So to translate, you

So to translate, you disagree with his argument, but you support his (and Maclean's) right to say it. Good on you.

...or maybe not. Just

...or maybe not. Just re-read your post. This is troubling:

Do you actually believe that is the proper mandate, role and use of human rights mechanisms? To act as a surrogate for a press that is insufficiently "iconoclastic" for your tastes? To be a mere instrument of the culture wars, a delivery system for propaganda, rather than a purveyor of universal values? And why iconoclasm for its own sake anyway?

I think you just let slip the real reason many of us have come to distrust the extra-judicial tribunals and star chamber courts which these human rights mechanisms have been turned into.

Re-read again please

Nightbloom
What I said was pretty obvious:

which you conveniently cut off and quoted only my appeal for and unhappiness with the monolithic press we have in this country today.

I assume you missed this (from 24 hours ago – same thread) which gives my take on Human Rights Commissions generally:

But, Human Rights Commissions, as you say may not be the best place to adjudicate these things...the whole concept is still really in its infancy.

A lot depends, too, on the way the legislation is written and on the administrative regulations governing a commission's actions.

There certainly IS a need for human rights legislation in the workplace and minorities need some protection against discrimination:
soccer players with scarves; skirt length regulations etc. [I could have added sexual and gender discrimination]

Still, the CIC must have had legal advice before they filed their brief and they’d hardly be the first group to use the law (however inappropriately) to make a point. We have a Vancouver Mayor who thinks it’s appropriate to white libel chill letters to his political opponents…where’s Glavin’s outrage about that?

A little balance please.

I’m constantly shocked by the number of parties these days who avail themselves of mediation to settle disputes of one kind or another. Perhaps Ken Whyte mightn’t have been so hasty to dismiss the feelers the CIC put out and Terry Glavin oughtn’t to be burning his shorts about how ‘terrible’ this all is.

Social change is neither linear nor neat and clean.

I think we have to live with it.

Hope that's clear. I'd just like to point out that former native leader David Ahenakew was tried and convicted of espousing 'hate' against the Jews for implying they were a kind of 'disease' in pre-war Germany. Justifiably I'd say. Although his remarks were made casually to a reporter (he later apologized) and his utterances weren't part of a longer written work of propaganda like Steyn's 'attack' on Muslims...

In fact, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see Steyn's attitude toward Muslims and what they're 'doing' to Western culture in much the same light.

I guess you'd be okay if the crown had charged him with inciting hate? Because it was the crown that charged Ahenakew!

Fair's fair, after all.

Double standards?

So, GWest, If Akhenakew was convicted for hate speech against Jews, how come he and an endless procession of other FN leaders have gotten away with far worse accusations against the white race, such as calling us "racists", "bent upon extermination of native peoples", and so on.

It may be that you would agree with their doing so, but what about other "whites" who don't?

Can one employ obvious hate speech with impunity in one circumstance but not in another?

And isn't the main reason for curtailing hate speech to promote tolerance between the races and other groups? To whom should this not apply?

I'm simply not interested in getting into this with you ME2

ME2
You know my feelings on this score.

We are the colonialists relative to the peoples of the New World.

Someone who tries to spin the residential school program the reserve system and its record of abuse and cruelty in this country as a putative (but failed) program to ‘help’ First Nations peoples is just not someone I'm interested in debating with.

Any more than I'm going to defend David 'Ahenakew' [as I clearly pointed out above] or excuse the same kind of thing (more sophisticated and carefully parsed but no less bigoted, mean-spirited and, in my opinion, hateful) when it's dished out against Muslims as a people and culture by educated writers like Mark Steyn and others of his ilk.

Have a look, for example, at one metaphor Steyn uses in the diatribe posted at Macleans.

Here, let me quote it for you, save you the trouble:

Here's another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland's radical imams settle the metropolis.

And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons.

But beyond that the very phrase "Indian territory" presumes that inevitably these badlands will be brought within the bounds of the ordered world

(bolding is mine)

Get the point? A few inverted commas don't obscure the 'meaning' behind what Steyn's driving at, now do they?

The real problem here is Steyn’s attitude – and the fact that there are very few people outside the Muslim community who have the balls to call him on it.

Like I said, I respect much of what you right and believe (on the basis of what I read in your postings) but your ideas about the treatment of our First Nations’ hosts isn’t among them. Fair enough?

errata

'right' in last sentence should be 'write'

No, not fair enough, GWest

For some, anything the white man did (and the FN experience in the US is NOT comparable to their Canadian experience) was OK since we had a "superior" culture, and for others anything FNs did and do is OK because they were/are the underdogs, which is YOUR consistent and only fallback position.

Neither attitude is rational, and both lead to the very same confrontational attitudes we are trying to suppress.

The answer to intolerance is reasoned discussion, of course, the bounds of which are precisely what we are trying to determine in the discussion currently underway.

So what happens when someone decides that his/her POV is sacrosanct and undiscussable, and refuses to address reasonable questions regarding that position, as you have just have done?

Since you are a thinking person, it might be useful for you to put aside your predjudices and try to put yourself in the shoes of your forebears who were faced with an extremely difficult problem, who acted without the knowledge of civil rights, cultural needs, etc, that we are privy to today.

If you do so fairly, you will come to understand that our forebears were light-years ahead of the rest of the world in their attempts at fair treatment of aboriginals.

If instead you are going to hold them to standards developed only in the last 50-100 years, then in fairness you should apply the same standards to aboriginals of the time. I guarantee you they will not meet the test either, even in treatment of their own kind.

Oh well, I guess we'll have to be satisfied with the double standard, eh?

The "cruelty and abuse of the reserve system"

And BTW, had Canadian aboriginals been given their lands in fee simple, they would have quickly fallen prey to the real estate sharpies and corrupt band hierarchies, and for the most part lost them.

This is why the reserves and Treaty lands were put into communal ownership, and managed - today without taxation for services - by the Federal Government.

Had the "greedy" Colonial Government coveted Treaty lands, they would never have agreed to perpetual ownership.

And those who think that outright ownership of the land and resources would have automatically brought prosperity to the ordinary FN, should take a real close look at the outcome of Alaska Land Settlement.

Gwest, according the Kenneth

Gwest, according the Kenneth Whyte's comments, the complainants were demanding a degree of special treatment that no free press could agree with. The complainants wanted total editorial control (right down to the cover design). Plus it was five months after the fact, after Macleans has already run a number of critical ripostes to Steyn's piece. Do you really believe Steyn's "attitude" is the real problem here? We'll send him to Attitude Correction Camp then.

Incidentally, your Steyn quote reminded me of this Max Weber golden oldie:

He was referring namely to capitalism, but one can infer a host of other Western innovations: modern science, separation of Church and State, the Rule of Law, democracy, the welfare state, human rights...These belong to periods of Western history, and now (rightly) lay claim to the possession of universal value. Not sure how that fact can be relativized away. The same people who are supportive of the universal values embodied in human rights commissions should be the first to criticize their misuse for opportunistic ends. The CIC is damaging the values they're pretending to appeal to, and also seems to be attempting to browbeat the free media (and by extension Canadian socity) by seeking a statist fatwa out of the human rights complaints process.

Look ME2

This sort of thing gets us nowhere. This material, my views (and yours) have been covered in detail before. I could dress up that paragraph and post it right back at you with a Xmas ribbon on it and it would apply, mutatis mutandis, to my analysis of YOUR approach.

People are people...they are NOT PROBLEMS - they have problems.

Anyone who tries to suggest that the Europeans who came to this continent in the 5 centuries since Columbus had no knowledge of civil and human rights STILL has a lot to answer for.

I’m not prepared to make excuses for the past OR the present with some kind of mealy-mouthed rationalization. And I don’t give a shit if the interior tribes and the coastal tribes were chewing each other up and enslaving their fellow native communities for a thousand years – it has bugger all to do with OUR behavior.

We had the power and the ability to behave otherwise, we didn’t – so we wear it. My view.

Moreover, please don't accuse me of not discussing my point of view - I've told you what I believe and why I believe it and why (even to this very day with, for example, the Tsawwassen Treaty) we are still not dealing with this situation properly.

I think you're dead wrong and the colonial powers who STOLE this country have as much to answer for as the Nazis and the German people do...they just performed the genocide more slowly and less honestly.

Mark Steyn's use of the term 'Injun' in the context of talking about his prejudices toward Muslims just further proves the case in my view.

You support and believe whatever you please if it soothes your conscience and helps you sleep at night.

Count me out!

Now, Nightbloom

Negotiation and accommodation is a difficult thing - I don't suppose one really knows what went on between Whyte and the CIC because we really only have Whyte's side of the story.

Since he's the one publishing Steyn's stuff, I think it could be argued that he might have tried a little harder.

No one publishes Steyn because they’re interesting in BUILDING BRIDGES, do they?

But really, who knows? Perhaps the CIC should have gone the route of charging Steyn criminally – the Ahenakew precedent would have been an interesting spectacle, wouldn’t it?

They could even have gone to court in Saskatchewan – where the case of the Jew hating Indian was adjudicated and where, after all, Little Mosque on the Prairie is fictitiously staged.

I'd refer you to Whyte’s facile explanation for not going with the Mulroney/Schreiber cash story about 4 years ago (you can find all the details around - including his exculpatory piece in Macleans) if you want to.

Ken Whyte has an agenda of his own and I'd suggest it is just about as provocative as Mark Steyn’s. In fact I think that’s precisely why Whyte has been chosen to do the deed whenever a media owner decides to turn a publication into a right-hand drive vehicle, don’t you?

As for the CIC – look back up the thread – I already posted an opinion about them – I much prefer Muslim spokespeople like Haroon Siddiqui

http://www.uni.ca/siddiqui.html

And, as a final summing up, I’m just not as much of a Western Civ booster as you are my friend – I always found old Harold a little stuffy and trite and, quite honestly, a bit of a tendentious bore although I think he’s pretty much on point when it comes to analyzing George Bush and his crowd…

In the end, as you know, I'm pretty much a hard-liner for wide open debate and unfettered free speech - it's a hell of a lot less likely to end up with people dead and blood in the gutter.

journalism is not about building bridges

G West - get over it.

The CIC wanted to art direct their piece ferchrissakes - something we allowed when we worked on university papers, but certainly not something one does with a professional publication - they wanted to control the magazine, full-stop.

And this controlling attitude is the problem.

Myself and at least 75 percent of readers of the GM according a to a recent globe and mail online poll, are sick and tired of political correctness.

Sure whyte is a neocon and steyn is braying at the moon but that does not mean the CIC's intentions are not sinister or that we should appease their fatwa against opinions and words.

It's time adults start dealing with their own hurt feelings and stop using courts to redress their out-of-control emotions.

TTTT

Did you not read this?

A couple of extremists sniping at each other on the margins of civil discourse.

Which I posted on this thread 2 days ago.

Why must I keep repeating myself?

Perhaps you could talk to Sam Sullivan about that last matter while you're at it.

"journalism is not about

"journalism is not about building bridges"

Absolutely correct, TTTT. Anyone who actually believes that is as blind as the most blinkered fundie. Incidentally, neither are human rights mechanisms, when they are exploited in this manner.

Incidentally, last week I was a little discomfited when someone showed me a Powerpoint slide containing an accountability logic model which placed "the free press" directly alongside ministerial accountability to parliament via the committee process. Clearly the proverbial kool aid is getting 'round. Perhaps the model will have to be amended further to accomodate the CHRC.

Jeffrey...

Good piece above Jeffrey, and well a balanced analysis.

There is a greater need in these times for us to more critically examine the Zionist claim of a Jewish right to occupy the lands of Palestine. And this is for many potentially global chaos causing reasons-, first because of the danger it poses to opening up other "ancient" claims, say of the Scots, Irish and other Celtic peoples to the Asian Steppes of Russia, from which they originally moved into Europe and further into Asia, even Turkey at one point, or say the Roma Gypsies of Europe. This latter whom have suffered various pogroms as greatly over the centuries in Europe as have the Jews, who a thousand years ago came from the Indian sub-continent-, and who have a claim according to Zionist logic, at least as credible, even more recent to their ancient homelands there. And this is to say nothing of the Danes/Viking inheritors, as has already been pointed out above, and is no more facetious a claim than the Zionists (who originally wanted Argentina), or even North American Natives who have the likely most recent and just claim to their stolen lands.

But of course it takes force of arms, preferably with the aid of a huge "imperial" backer like the US Empire, who has its own interest in the project, to actually establish such a reclamation of ones "ancient" homeland. And it is this, with Western imperial backing of so-called Israel that is still being fought out now in the Arab lands of Palestine-, aye,all this time still after WW2. Which is the final reason that we all need to look more critically at these "claims of right" of the Israeli Zionists; the escalating danger they are posing to a spiralling drift towards another world war, threatening even to set Russia and China against the US Empire and its lapdog allies in the Middle East.

Better that the Jews should settle for a peace giving them a minority position in an Arab Palestine, or lose this occupation war as quickly as possible and return to Europe from whence the source of their Holocaust actually stemmed. Perhaps give them land in Germany. the actual perpetrator state of the great crime against the Jews.

Though my actual hope is they will sooner be convinced of the first settlement option, a minority position in a re-united, right of return Palestine. (For as Amerikan power collapses in the Middle East, it is unlikely the "two state option" will actually longer thereafter fly.)

It is but the reactionary likes of Glavin and Steyn, and the Neoconazi Bush Whitehouse of course, who would seek to convince us otherwise. (Along with the bootlicker Western states of the likes of Canada, perhaps the most embarrassingly pathetic of all, here around this issue as well as in Bali, and, of course, including Mother Britain.)

Who claimed journalism was?

About "Building Bridges".

This is what I actually said:

No one publishes Steyn because they’re interesting in BUILDING BRIDGES, do they?

And my description of the kind of journalism I think is needed was this:

...a free, vocal independent and iconoclastic PRESS which we don't have anymore.

I'm accountable for what I write...not your interpretation of it...thank you very much - and try to read a little more closely.

If we had a varied and independent press instead of CanWest's cross-Canada photocopier some of these things might be debated in the main stream media instead of between a few folks here at Tyee.

That's the real problem - or at least part of it.

g west I think my comment

It's time adults start dealing with their own hurt feelings and stop using courts to redress their out-of-control emotions.

applies as well to commentators on internet boards.

I swear, I spent the last 20 years in an occupation where receiving and acting upon criticism was part of the job description and there are way too many adults who take a child's or teenagers view on criticism.

In fact I would go so far as to say that simply equipping youth and young adults with the ability to be able to take criticism no matter how harsh and no matter how cutting to their own personal beliefs would make the most headway in terms of creating a peaceable society than any "tolerance" class ever could.

enough already, get a thick skin or have personal strength in your convictions and stop using the power of the state to mediate your teenage impulses.

and g west

the fact that you cannot see that your comment clearly implied you thought building bridges was an intrinsic purpose of publishing says everything we need to know about this particular issue -less coffee in the morning maybe?

re: see comment on emotion above.

if you are retracting everything you wrote above, well then I believe we would all accept that - >:p

Pot calling kettle!!! 4T

I think you're whistling on your way to the graveyard if you can draw that conclusion from what I wrote...which isn't too surprising given what you've posted on the Ann Livingston story. Your penchant for character assassination on the basis of a discussion with a single individual is on pretty open display over there.

How come?

My comment was about how Ken Whyte and Mark Steyn 'use' journalism - that's all. If you like Steyn and agree with him – just come out and say so. I don’t and I did. PERIOD.

Moreover, maybe just look to the normal meaning of words and don't pretend you have a clue about what anyone else is thinking.

My feelings about Steyn and the CIC were posted days ago on this thread and you didn't have the wit or the presence of mind to read them before you decided you knew what I was thinking.

That's not my fault and I'd say you're the one displaying a thin skin because there's really nothing there for you to latch onto. In fact, if you read a little more carefully, you’ll see it wasn’t really even your comment I was responding to but nightbloom’s facile and programmatic adoption of it.

As for taking ad hominem abuse on this site - don't shed any tears for me - when you've been around here for a while you'll see I take plenty of it.

[OFFENSIVE COMMENTS REMOVED. -MODERATOR.]

pay-offs

Better that the Jews should settle for a peace giving them a minority position in an Arab Palestine
Amen!
In fact since when is a religion a nation?
every other nation has a sprinkling of religions as matter of cause, while the Jews somehow figure they are not a religion but a nation!
For centuries Jews have lived amongst other peoples, just as has Protestants etc., what makes them so special that they can't just co-exist like any other people?
Sure they were picked on by the Nazi's but so were homosexuals and black people.
When it comes to landclaims it is all a matter of the squeeking wheel getting the grease, there is no real justification!

yawn

g west I don;t really care what you think actually.

you wrote the line you were wrong in writing it and frankly the last post was just teasing you because [OFFENSIVE COMMENTS REMOVED. -MODERATOR.]

i made no ad homiinems btw but hey you're entitled to your projections.

>:o

When ignorance rules

TTTT you just don't have a clue:

You know it is so amazingly damn easy for the privileged to tell everyone else to grin and bear it. Humans are not wired to take a constant stream of abuse and humiliation. Your reaction to political correctness is one indication of that. I, thankfully, have rarely experienced racism directly. And if you think what white men have had to endure as a result of 'political correctness' is racism you're very sadly mistaken. [OFFENSIVE COMMENTS REMOVED. -MODERATOR.]

Political correctness certainly has given a few of the privileged the tiniest taste of the kind of humiliation and powerlessness many non-white people have to suffer under. And the virulence of the reaction of people like you and Steyn and Glavin are an indication of just how little you enjoy that experience. The bile it generates seems bottomless. Well now take that experience and magnify it a hundred or a thousand times, into a daily experience, and you'll have some idea what it's like to be a poor Native or a poor black in North America.

I've seen up close and personal the kind of hurt casual racism causes, and I've gotten into more than a few altercations because of it. Because of my own intimate relationships, I get to see, without anyone preaching at me, but simply from direct every day experience, just how much easier I have it because of the low melanin content of my skin. It's insane.

And good thing...

And a bloody good thing too, or there would never be any relief from the arrogance of the racists, the religious zealots of all stripes, including so-called Judea-Christian, or the Big Power national chauvanists.

Though still, it does seem to me, that the patience of the people is still way too goddamn much so. B-D lol

A good piece, James. Ehhhh, and you too, Alive. :-)

Route the buggers!!

wingnut fly magnet...

Mein Gott am Himmel GW, you certainly are a blowfly magnet for the wingnut goofs here. Which is okay, 'cause you hold your own against the blighters real well.

Keep hanging in there, brother. :-)

And if [OFFENSIVE COMMENTS REMOVED. -MODERATOR.] didn't care what you think, as he claims, you'd think he would have been gone long ago.Much to the relief of all of us.

So I conclude, actually, you are really ticking his ass, bro. Which means you can't be all bad. B-D lol And any enemy of my enemy is still my friend. A simple reality of politics-, most of the time-, allowing always for exceptions to the rule, of course. :-)

You just called him a rotting corpse.

Must be a coyote thing.

Canis Latrans, I disagree

Canis Latrans, I disagree with almost everything that comes out of your insolent cake-hole, but it's good to have you back. I think I'm finally detecting some vital signs on the threads here....perhaps even a full-blown pulse. Gwest has simply fallen prey to his own cleverness again. That's what happens when you simultaneously argue five different viewpoints in this kind of forum. Even I can't decipher him sometimes.

TTTT - Beware: Gwest & James Burns always do this tag-team routine. It's a recurring pattern whenever Gwest is under fire. In fact, the jury's still out on whether they're the same person posting under a different handle. The veteran posters here are all but convinced this is so. Whatever their game is, don't fall for it the way I did. Fool me once...

I love it...

You know I love it when you talk dirty to me, nightbloomer.

Bringing real, even insolent life back into a near dead corpse, is the key to pulse detection, of course. Though Tyee still, left alone to the wingnuts, the religious zealots, and the mugwamp liberal middle could still fall back into chain-stoke breathing.

We serious, hard lefties, as to be distinguished from the "liberal" Glavinesque so-called left, which in these times has actually drifted onto Neoconazi turf, in my view, and the (NDP) social democrats, do bring a perspective on capitalism, society, current global events and history that tends to breathe new life into even staid ruling class, status quo democracy that no one else can or does, for sure. (Certainly not dust and cobweb choked religion.) Which is why the loyalist minions of capitalism are really so frightened of us, and would dearly love to shut us out of the discourse.

Just to blow our own horn a wee bit. :-)

Response

Says GWest :

"You support and believe whatever you please if it soothes your conscience and helps you sleep at night.

Count me out!"

What an interesting thing for a major player on these Tyee discussions to say. Particularly since you've lambasted so many others on these threads for advancing opinions with which you didn't agree.

I particularly remember the column feet you've wasted pillorying poor hapless Ronnie for advancing his sophomoric theories.

It's fun shooting ducks on a pond, isn't it?

But not so much fun, eh, when it's you out there in the middle with a broken wing.

ME2: What ARE you talking about?

Selective and out of context quotation is a serious thing.

If all I'd written in response to your inflammatory challenge earlier today were the words you've chosen to post here you might have a point.

However, that's not all I wrote. Remember?

Here's the whole thing; and please note my words formed the second lengthy reply to something you’d addressed specifically to me on this story (about Mark Steyn and Muslims, by the way).

Quote:

Since you are a thinking person, it might be useful for you to put aside your prejudices and try to put yourself in the shoes of your forebears who were faced with an extremely difficult problem, who acted without the knowledge of civil rights, cultural needs, etc, that we are privy to today. [THIS PART IS YOURS]

This sort of thing gets us nowhere. This material, my views (and yours) have been covered in detail before. I could dress up that paragraph and post it right back at you with a Xmas ribbon on it and it would apply, mutatis mutandis, to my analysis of YOUR approach.

People are people...they are NOT PROBLEMS - they have problems.

Anyone who tries to suggest that the Europeans who came to this continent in the 5 centuries since Columbus had no knowledge of civil and human rights STILL has a lot to answer for.

I’m not prepared to make excuses for the past OR the present with some kind of mealy-mouthed rationalization. And I don’t give a shit if the interior tribes and the coastal tribes were chewing each other up and enslaving their fellow native communities for a thousand years – it has bugger all to do with OUR behavior.

We had the power and the ability to behave otherwise, we didn’t – so we wear it. My view.

Moreover, please don't accuse me of not discussing my point of view - I've told you what I believe and why I believe it and why (even to this very day with, for example, the Tsawwassen Treaty) we are still not dealing with this situation properly.

I think you're dead wrong and the colonial powers who STOLE this country have as much to answer for as the Nazis and the German people do...they just performed the genocide more slowly and less honestly.

Mark Steyn's use of the term 'Injun' in the context of talking about his prejudices toward Muslims just further proves the case in my view.

You support and believe whatever you please if it soothes your conscience and helps you sleep at night.

Count me out!

(conclusion below)

conclusion

[That’s the whole passage, from which you cherry-picked 20 words.]

Furthermore, you began by accusing me of prejudice, remember?

I disagree with your analysis.

I don't like your approach and I've discussed it with you ad nauseum already on other Tyee stories.

Since then, I’ve pointedly, for the most part, ignored your frequent references to your favourite exculpatory thesis about the white man and the Indians and I only took it up with you today because YOU directed your words directly and specifically to me.

Even so, before you take any further umbrage, please note that I also wrote, as part of an earlier reply on this thread, the following:

Like I said, I respect much of what you write and believe (on the basis of what I read in your postings) but your idea about the treatment of our First Nations’ hosts isn’t among them. Fair enough?

I think, on balance, that should have been enough on the subject - don't you? But you refuse to let it alone.

The more you keep bringing this up, the more apparent it is to me that you DO have a problem with anyone who happens to think differently than you do who has the temerity to say so and stick by his guns.

That's your problem, not mine; and, as I said twice very clearly on this thread - I'm not interested in re-hashing it with you any longer.

Surely, you can't have any more illusions on that score.

Capiche?

Missing the Issue

"The question isn't ... about whether suppressing hate propaganda is a good idea. It is a good idea."

I would contend that this is very much the question, and that "Human Rights" tribunals are very much to blame for this mess.

The consensus here seems to be that Ernst Zundel should be safely locked up indefinitely, but that Mark Steyn is a harmless right wing weirdo who can say his piece for now because of that whole "free speech thing." In a few years he'll either shut up or fall into step, right? Because we're PC liberals and we're infallible...

Personally, I am a free market liberal, or maybe more of a libertarian in today's political climate. But the way modern-day "liberals" deal with free speech really baffles me.

Canadian liberals tried to silence Zundel with the "false news" law, but failed miserably and were humiliated when the law was declared unconstitutional. Not to be outdone, the liberal establishment then started relying on the Human Rights Nazis to do their bidding. They finally nabbed Zundel with the help of 9/11 and a conveniently-timed “national security” law. Now that he's safely locked up you guys can sleep well knowing that you brought down a "real live Nazi."

Today you rely on the Human Rights Nazis to shut up anyone who scares you. Sort of a soothing mechanism because you don't trust yourself or your countrymen not to go along with the ominous tide of “racists” and other generally objectionable people.

You feel that people who don't share your values have made a conscious choice to be evil. Maybe they're jealous of the harmonious multicultural utopia that you've set up... or something like that... let's not over think it. Groupthink usually does the job, right?

What you don't understand is that by jailing someone like Zundel -- an oddball that few people take seriously -- you've sold out the values that liberal democracy is based on. Was it really worth it? Why not just let the "crazies" speak... what are you really afraid of?

That's what the First Amendment allows for, and yes (I'm sorry to say it), there are just as many racists in Canada as the U.S.. Saying otherwise is much like the President of Iran telling us that "there are no homosexuals in my country because we taught them Islamic values and they all got better!" Suppressing free speech to eliminate racism is equally ridiculous.

If you'd simply ignored people that you find objectionable, the Islamic Council wouldn't be giving hell to a legitimate magazine today. Also a pathetic "neo-Nazi" who did nothing more than share a few misguided opinions wouldn't be needlessly rotting in a German prison right now... and wouldn't have cost Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars.

For the record, I'm not a Nazi, holocaust denier, or scary bigot. I simply trust myself to judge people as individuals, and arrive at my own beliefs rationally, without the Human Rights Nazis telling me what to think. Don't you? Or is groupthink just easier?

nightbloom

I see you're up to your old tricks again:

nightbloom (12 hours ago)

Refer to my posting as G West and Alcibiades here at Tyee for one very proud and satisfying year and I'll tip my hat to you anytime...mention anyone else as being involved and you're getting back into territory that is neither fair, accurate, or has anything to do with me.

I've told you this literally dozens of times. I'm not responsible for anyone else's posts here - never have been. You constant return to this stale refrain is boring - but more than that it's unfair to all the others who speak (and have the right to be evaluated) for themselves.

Get off it - I waited 12 hours after flagging your post as objectionable - no editorial interference was forthcoming - consequently I'm bringing it up myself. For which I apologize to other readers who must be sick of this nonsense. You need to get over the fact that your views, on many subjects, just aren’t that popular to a wider range of persons than you’d like to believe.

If I am unclear...

Because the issue has been raised here by some assorted right-wingers here, most intelligently by jmaddock, I feel a need to respond.

Just in case I am unclear, I think all political viewpoints need to be present to the broader social, political and economic debate, including both the Jewish and Palestinian holocaust deniers, even the Neoconazis, as well as those of us opposed to the Zionist State in so-called Israel, and who support the Middle East resistance against imperialism cause, and the gathering global anti-capitalism movement. This is a contest, fundamentally, between those who support capitalism and those of us who advocate for its supplanting/ transformation by/into a new democratic social and economic order, that will not be resolved administratively by any one side attempting to shut the other down. Victory for either side, in the final analysis, can and will only come through the defeat of the other side in the course of the battle of ideas, and one, the other, or all sliding into clear redundancy over time. (And that battle may in the end take the form of a contest on the streets and elsewhere, and a lining up of forces, one against the other. I understand this too.)

The problem with capitalism and its bourgeois/ruling class dominated so-called "democracy" is that there is not equal access to the most effective instruments for equal participation by all, of course, hence the need for "street action", but nonetheless, in my view, it is a necessary process that must go on, and is unavoidable.

And to that end, because I do understand the dialectical dynamic that must go on here, while I may disagree with one fundamentally, like Ernst Zundel, as an example, or the Zionist Palastinian Holocaust deniers , I will defend to the inth degree their right to say it, and participate in the societal discourse.

Fail I, then I open the door to legitimizing the never ending shutting down efforts on my own world view, and participation in the discourse.

Make no mistake, I wish to defeat my enemies, what I see as the enemies of my class and society, and fully intend to :-), but it is a matter of tactics and strategy, and seeing the big picture and process.

dorothy

"For centuries Jews have lived amongst other peoples, just as has Protestants etc., what makes them so special that they can't just co-exist like any other people?"

So, I have a long track-record of getting along with just about everybody, and then I move one block away, and there is a kid there who decides I am dead meat. You will conclude it must be my fault? Please elaborate on the logic behind that. Be kind enough to accept, that I am not trying to 'take sides' here, just be sure we stick to the basics of logic. What am I not understanding?

As a general rule now, I try

As a general rule now, I try to avoid getting dragged into the Israel-Palestine debate. This is partially because my own position is ambivalent and has been shifting for a while now, but also because few are able to discuss it rationally, and those few are quickly shouted over by the hotheads and crackpots on both sides.

Nevertheless, on the question of Iran & nukes, it appears the big push is on in Israel to get U.S. leadership to renounce the recent intelligence report which undercut the Administration's position.

Here is a blog I follow regularly, written by a reputed free-thinking intelligence expert (he's no bloke - his C.V. is quite impressive). I've found it to be an excellent resource: http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

This comment is exerpted from his entry titled "Israel plans to "correct" the Iran NIE":

Cheers.

Mark Steyn

"Canada is not the United States. We have no First Amendment here. Canada's Constitution affirms our rights to free speech, but we've never had such cause to be so afraid of our government that we wet our trousers at the suggestion that it's okay to reserve to the state some authority to limit free speech."

Canada doesn't have a constitution period. It has a useless piece of [EDITED. -MODERATOR.] that discriminates against thirty percent of the population. It gives special rights to others. All of this can be wiped out when the government decides that, the "charter of rights and freedoms" and the Supreme Court notwithstanding we are going to enact this law anyway.

You do not live in a free state. You live in a state that grants you a few privileges. The Americans have a piece of paper that regulates what government can do , not the citizenry.

Remember: the government is not your friend, it is your employee.

Canada is not the United States

Let's thank whatever gods that be for that.

And hope it never becomes the United States.

Heaven knows, it's bad enough living next to them much of the time.

Tant Would be Fun

A discussion comparing the benefits and drawbacks between the US Constitution and the Canadian Charter.