Aug. 16, 2006: #1

Freedom of speech ... squelched

Freedom of speech is tolerated ... only if it is the accepted speech ..... accepted by all the leftist stakeholder groups


Chronicle Herald, Nova Scotia -- Cape Breton University prof suspended for website -- He is accused of violating school’s harassment, discrimination policy , Aug. 14, 06, Holly Fraughton, The Chronicle Herald, via Instapundit and the Bearblog (www.sleepyoldbear.com/Bearblog/)
thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/521864.html

[....] The trouble began after Shane Wallis, student co-ordinator of the university’s sexual diversity centre, read two open letters Mr. Mullan posted on his website.

The letters, written nearly two years ago and addressed to the bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada, criticized the church’s acceptance of same-sex marriage.

Mr. Mullan said he believes "our society’s obsession with homosex is undermining the very liberal foundations of our society," because it stifles freedom of speech.

"I have no desire at this point of my life to recriminalize homosex behaviour, but what is happening is that not only must I be nice toward it, I must be affirming toward it."

He also believes the "homosex" lifestyle can have negative health effects. [....]

There is more -- worth reading.

By the way the "diversity centre" is obviously not a "diversity of opinion" centre.

Most people I talk with espouse the same idea as the prof -- that they simply don't want to be forced to--and criticized if they don't--affirm homosexuality. Think of the AIDS conference. That is not a spot where anyone with another opinion on AIDS would have been acceptable. (Of course, that is why I didn't attend.)




Subcommittee on Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Cybersecurity
and the
Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science, and Technology
of the
United States House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security , David B. Harris, Senior Fellow for National Security, Canadian Coalition for Democracies, Bellingham, Washington, 8 August 2006
canadiancoalition.com/HarrisDavid20060808
/TestimonyHomelandSecurity.html

[....] Since coming to power in January 2006, the minority Conservative Government of Stephen Harper has committed itself to confronting those who would impose terrorist warfare and subversion upon Canadian democracy and Canada’s liberal-pluralist allies. Under the current Canadian regime, achievements in the struggle with extremist Islam – the predominating foreign and domestic enemy – have assumed various forms.

Abroad, Canadians are in combat on the Afghan Front, and their Government has set its face firmly against attempts to intimidate our country into withdrawal from that mission. In the terror war’s Lebanese salient, the Harper Government has sponsored effective humanitarian efforts, while all the time asserting explicitly Israel’s right and duty, as a sister peace-loving democracy, to end the killer-sanctuary that our Hezbollah enemy has long enjoyed under Syro-Iranian dominion of Lebanon. In this, the Canadian Prime Minister is doubtless aware of Hezbollah’s record of undertaking targeting reconnaissance in Canada against Canadian sites.

At home, it is to the credit of a predecessor Liberal Government that it brought in a new, post-9/11 Anti-Terrorism Act, and the current Government has vigorously supported efforts to guarantee internal security. Indeed, the eighteenth person was last week detained in connection with an alleged largely-homegrown Toronto-area Islamic terrorist ring accused of preparing mass-casualty attacks. Accusations claim that those concerned – all of them Canadian residents, and most of them Canadian citizens – sought to use three times the explosives detonated in Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City outrage. Meanwhile, Crown prosecutors prepare their case for the unrelated January 2007 trial of Momin Khawaja, a young Canadian Muslim who worked for a time with our Department of Foreign Affairs, and is now claimed to have had a role in British terror-cell preparations.

[....] the present Canadian Government has inherited a dangerous and unacceptable situation from the preceding thirteen years of federal leadership.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director some years ago first alerted us to the presence of fifty terror organizations in Canada, the second-highest number in any country after the United States, itself. In June, the Deputy Director Operations of Canada’s intelligence service warned a Canadian Senate subcommittee that Canadian residents include those who are “graduates of terrorist training camps and campaigns, including experienced combatants from conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere.” He offered that “Canadian citizens or residents have been implicated in terrorist attacks and conspiracies elsewhere in the world,” some having “been involved in plots against targets in the United States, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Singapore, Pakistan and other countries.” [....]

Ottawa not our boss, Charest tells French -- 'We are a people and a nation' , Jack Aubry, CanWest, August 16, 2006
www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=b48f96ce-9a55-4d7b-9458-6354419134ed

OTTAWA - Quebec is on equal footing with the federal government on the international stage and the province's distinct place in Canada is similar to France within the Europe Union, Premier Jean Charest said in a recent interview with a French magazine.

Mr. Charest told Express, a weekly newsmagazine in France, that asymmetrical federalism in Canada gives Quebec a unique political status apart from the other provinces and that his government is able to express itself "without inhibition" on the world stage.

"There is no doubt that we are a people and a nation. And I see no contradiction in the fact that we, Quebecers, are also Canadian, like the French are French, but also European," said Mr. Charest, pointing out that Quebec federalists are just as aggressive as separatists when it comes to defending Quebec's identity.

[....] "We are a nation but don't take it in the meaning of a country [....]

Canada is not the European Union so the above is a false analogy.





Lester Pearson would not be impressed , Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen, August 11, 2006, posted by SeanMcElroy, 8/16/2006 08:35:49
tinyurl.com/qoue5 [for the original]
www.canoe.ca/mb2/messages/cnewsf/11940.html

[....] For the whining left, America is always wrong, especially when there's a Republican in the White House.

Israel, too, is always wrong except when it's giving away the store. As for the UN, it is a sacred institution, a repository of principle and wisdom with an unblemished record of bringing peace and security to the world.

It's hard to say what Lester Pearson would have made of the whining left.

The real Lester Pearson, that is.

The veteran of the First World War. The champion of NATO and Israel. The man who got Canadian involvement in the Korean War upgraded from a minor naval contribution to a major ground force. The fierce anti-Communist who always saw the defence of Europe as the central mission of Canada's military and the struggle against the Soviet Union as the great imperative of Canadian foreign policy.

What that Lester Pearson would say about the whining left, I don't know, but I'm guessing he wouldn't be too happy with the way his name is being tossed around these days. [....]