… from a very personable guy named Fred, who works for the Conservative Party of Canada’s fundraising office (one of them, anyway). He was calling to say that they noticed that I’d made a pledge of support a few months back and, well, it seems to have slipped my mind.

“Nope, Fred, it didn’t,” said I. “I remember it quite well and, to tell you the truth, I have no intention whatsoever of sending the Conservative Party any money at all for the foreseeable future. I’ll even tell you why, if you like.”

Fred said that, sure, he’d be happy to hear what’s on my mind; so I told him. I was nice about it, mind you. After all, Fred didn’t set this malignant machine in motion, he’s just a guy working on the phone, trying to do his job and do it right. He doesn’t need cranky SOBs like me taking a bite out of his ass for things that aren’t his fault. Besides, like I said at the start, Fred’s a pretty personable kind of guy. Sounded a lot like me when I’m not pissed off about anything.

So I told Fred that I’ve had a bit of a burr under my saddle lately; bee in my bonnet, if you will. Actually, more like a whole hive of the damned things. I told him that the (laughably called) “human rights commissions” of this country, every last one of them, have long since gone rogue and that they are, in fact, in the business of trampling people’s rights, not protecting them. I told him that these show trials and the censorious legislation they auspiciously operate under look more like something I would expect to find in the Weimar Republic than in Canada.

“Ah,” said Fred, “section 13.1.”

Did I mention before what a smart guy Fred is? He knew, right off the hop, what I was talking about and he didn’t sound too happy about it, either. Gee, I wonder if he’d heard it before?

I told Fred that these commissions need to be scrapped altogether. Not reformed, not given new mandates, not restaffed; SCRAPPED. They are abominations in a country like mine, which has given so much blood for the cause of freedom. The laws that allow such things must also be scrapped altogether. They must be replaced with amendments to our Constitution which truly protect the real rights of people, things worded more along the line of “The Government Shall Not” than of trying to tell the people of this great nation how they should or should not think.

I told him that, while all these things bother me, what I have heard from the Conservative Party of Canada has bothered me even more: a silence as profound as when the whale swallowed Jonah. This is NOT how a party which believes in people’s freedoms, rights and liberty behaves.

I told Fred that until something real and concrete is actually done by the Conservatives about these Machiavellian thumbscrews, all the money that I would normally be giving them will be going elsewhere (see a few of the places at the bottom of this post). I told him that I wasn’t alone in this. Fred sounded about as surprised as a guy who wakes up in the morning and finds that his head is still there on his shoulders where he left it.

“Well,” said Fred, “part of what I do here is that I keep a list on my desk of everything that I hear about that irks the folks I talk to. At the end of the day, I pass it on up so that this higher-ups actually have an idea of what’s on peoples’ minds.”

“Well, Fred, now you know what’s been irking me. Have yourself a good day, now.” And that was about it (DAMNIT! …forgot to plug my blog to him. Oh, well). I hope the rest of Fred’s day goes better. Fred’s a nice guy, I like him.

What You Can Do To Help

If you want to help out, too, all you need to do is just go to one of the links below and hit one of their “donate” buttons. Remember now, folks, the Canuck Six could use all the help they can get.

Connie & Mark Fournier (Free Dominion)
Ezra Levant (EzraLevant.com)
Jonathan Kay (National Post)
Kate McMillan (Small Dead Animals)
Kathy Shaidle (Five Feet Of Fury)

… Let the sorry son of a bitch have it with both barrels. Again.

As a little follow-up to one of yesterday’s posts, it’s interesting to see that Tarek Fatah isn’t the only one polishing up the cluebat to beat would-be jihadi uber-censor Mohamed Elmasry over the head with. The Waterloo Record, from Elmasry’s hometown of Waterloo, Ontario, let the arrogant prick have it from their trenches too, the other day (tip o’ the chapeau to Ezra for this one). You know that you’re really buggering something up when even the paper in your home town is ripping you a new one.

[Exegesis: My apologies to the good folks of Waterloo. I know that your city isn’t really his hometown, Cairo is. Waterloo’s just a place where he has a house. In fact, no place in Canada is Elmasry’s home. If it were, he wouldn’t be giving one of our most cherished liberties the back of his hand. Sorry for any offense at being lumped in with that turd. -D]

For five depressing days in a nondescript courtroom in Vancouver last week, one of the most important rights in Canada — the right to free speech — was repeatedly kicked in the head.

It was a shocking, demeaning and unsettling spectacle that would be more at home in a totalitarian state than a country that claims to be a liberal democracy. But the attack on Maclean’s magazine for daring to publish the Oct. 20, 2006 article, The Future Belongs To Islam, was entirely permissible under British Columbia’s human rights laws. It is time those regulations, indeed the nation’s human rights regulations, are rewritten. Much depends on this.

The hearing before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal came in direct response to complaints made against Maclean’s by two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress. It is obvious that those two individuals, one of whom is congress president Mohamed Elmasry of Waterloo, were sincerely offended by the article in question.

Meanwhile, the National Post took a little time out of its busy schedule to deliver a good swift kick in the nuts to Elmasry’s favourite sockpuppet / sith apprentice for his peculiar notions about what value freedom of speech should have:

Apparently, Khurrum Awan doesn’t have much respect for those ideals. A recent graduate of Osgoode Hall law school in Toronto, Mr. Awan has put his name to various human-rights complaints against Maclean’s magazine and writer Mark Steyn, whom the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) accuses of Islamophobia. Mr. Awan and his coplaintiffs demand that the magazine provide a pro-Islamist writer with space equal to the amount devoted to Mr. Steyn’s work.

At a conference over the weekend, Mr. Awan betrayed just how thoroughly he and his fellow travellers misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech. He told the Canadian Arab Federation that Muslims must “demand [the] right to participate” in national media. “And we have to tell them, you know what, if you’re not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it’s time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars.”

Can you say “ambulance-chasing shakedown artist,” boys and girls? I knew you could. Favourite parts right here:

Perhaps what truly irks Mr. Awan is that the CIC’s position — pro-censorship, pro-Islamist, anti-free speech — has been so roundly disparaged in the mainstream media. He doesn’t just want his ideas floated in the general Canadian marketplace of ideas: He wants uncritical acceptance.

Sorry, but that’s not the way things work in Canada — or any other democracy: People with bad ideas are mocked, ignored or refuted. You have no “human right” to get your bad ideas taken seriously. […]

If someone were actively seeking to stir up the worst stereotypes Canadians hold in regard to the repressive political cultures being imported into Canada by Arab and Muslim immigrants, it’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job than Khurrum Awan.

Aw, don’t feel too bad, little sockpuppet. You’ve still got some friends out there. Yes you do. Quite the fan club…

When you see us, you think that you are superior to us. Even a prostitute thinks she is superior to us because she is white. You don’t know the real initial. I mean you don’t know the real man who played to your mother, but you think you are superior to us. You say you are rich. How did you become rich? By steeling our oil and the third world. Right?

Your men (army) are fighting oversees, and you say their wives are waiting for their husbands. Do they really wait for their husbands? I don’t think so. Why? Because she has her neighbor or the dog to look after her. Yes, the dog will do the husband’s job until he comes back from the mission. This is why many white women have dogs to have sex with or to clean the front part. You know what I mean (p—y).

This is actually by a cartoonist named Igor Kodenko, from the Ukraine.  To be honest with you, I had NO idea that they knew anything at all about our HRCs over there.  Go figure…

Damn!

For those of you that don’t go there much, pop on over to the National Post’s Full Comment blog and get a good look at Tarek Fatah letting Machiavellian maggot Mohamed Elmasry — and “his political apprentice Khurrum Awan” — have it with both barrels. Fatah, for those of you that don’t know, is one of the few Muslims in Canadian media (Salim Mansur is the only other one that I know of) who has absolutely zero tolerance for Islamofascist bullshit.  His basic message: if you have some kind of problem with freedom of speech… don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

When Mohamed Elmasry declared a few years ago that there was more press freedom in Egypt than in Canada, it took me some time and effort to lift my jaw up from the floor. However, since then I have become accustomed to the outlandish statements and claims of the good science professor from Egypt.

Keep on reading here.

… with twice the politically correct jargon!

For those of you that don’t know already, Andrew Coyne’s going to be live blogging C-Sixer Mark Steyn’s little chinwag with the B.C. Human Lefts Tribunalâ„¢ today, starting at 12:30 EST (in about 20 minutes) and going until… well, whenever the clowns get tired and decide to fold up the tent, I guess… Pop over and click your refresh button from time to time to keep updated.

Naturally, I’ll be brazenly plagiarizing/stealing the choicest tidbits and sticking them in this post as the days go on… 😉

Stay tuned.

-= THE BITS =-

(more…)

And just what the heck is hippocrisy, you ask? Why, it’s hypocrisy the size of a hippopotamus, of course. 😛 And it can be damned amusing stuff.

Things like this remind me of Abe Lincoln. What the hell does Lincoln have to do with anything in present-day Canada? That’s easy: Lincoln once quipped that “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” I feel the same way about censorship; nothing improves my mood like seeing some totalitarian little bastard getting some of his own medicine rammed down his throat. A good example of this is one dorkette by the name of Gilary Massa. You can get a look at her here, on an episode of TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin titled “Today’s Young Muslim Woman.”

What caught my attention (tip o’ the chapeau to Damian for this one) wasn’t her being a Muslim woman, however. To be honest, the first few times I read about her, the way the articles were worded, I thought she was a dude. No, what got my attention was the say she found her own guns pointed at her. Let’s start with the way that York U has stifled the debate on abortion by violating the rights of the pro-life side by banning all their groups:

Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it “within a pro-choice realm,” and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance.

“You have to recognize that a woman has a choice over her own body,” Ms. Massa said. “We think that these pro-life, these anti-choice groups, they’re sexist in nature … The way that they speak about women who decide to have abortions is demoralizing. They call them murderers, all of them do … Is this an issue of free speech? No, this is an issue of women’s rights.“

Hmm… A hijab-wearing Muslim woman who argues in favour of abortion. Didn’t see that one coming. 😯 A hijab-wearing Muslim woman who believes that the coercive power of the system should be used to shut up people she disagrees with? That’s a lot easier to picture.

Like Damian said; the minute somebody says “it’s not about free speech,” you can bet your ass it’s about free speech. And li’l Gilary obviously doesn’t like the idea of people being able to voice their opinions. Unless, of course, they happen to be her opinions; in which case, she becomes a free-speecher in one hell of a hurry!

Earlier this year, the McMaster University administration banned “anti-Zionist” organizations from using the term “Israeli Apartheid” in posters and banners on the campus. They gave their reasons, some I agree with and some I don’t. Do some digging and see for yourself.

But guess what? Massa got her bhurka all in a knot at the thought of being given a taste of her own medicine:

“We think what has happened at McMaster is an attack on freedom of speech and the right for students to be able to organize,” […] “We find it appalling that a university administration would strip students away of those fundamental rights without any consultation whatsoever. We think it sets a very scary precedent that other universities might follow.” […] “People should be allowed to have different opinions and try to convince each other and have a dialogue in a respectful manner. As student union representatives, we think that creating a safe space on campus means allowing people to use their freedom of speech, of course without being hateful or discriminatory. But they should also be able to use these words without fear of being clamped down on.”

Yeah, right. Hypocritical bitch.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for censorship, I feel a strong impulse to see her gagged with her own hijab.