There’s something altogether too “informative” about this Margaret Wente column;
Fortunately [the creator of the Obama cartoon cover for the New Yorker] works in the United States, where the worst they can do is denounce you. Here in Canada, they can take you to a human rights commission. That’s what happened in April when Halifax’s Chronicle-Herald ran a political cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon. It shows a burka-clad figure identified as Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, a woman who demanded a large amount of compensation after her husband was arrested in an anti-terrorism raid and later released. She holds a sign that says, “I want millions,” and her speech bubble says, ” I can put it towards my husband’s next training camp.” Outraged, a local Muslim group complained to the human rights commission, and, for good measure, called the police. […]
But it’s Europe where cartooning and Islam really don’t mix. In the Netherlands, eight police officers showed up recently to arrest an obscure cartoonist for sketching offensive drawings of Muslims that appeared mainly on his own website. He spent two nights in jail, and Dutch authorities are deciding whether to charge him with inciting racist hatred.
Wente shouldn’t have to expend column inches to fill in the background on these cases – they should have been reported on the front pages of every paper in the country and led every national newscast at the time they happened.
That’s what a responsible press would have done in the face of a force that threatens a fundamental right – but these aren’t responsible times in the media industry.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of 57 Muslim nations, has declared that Islamophobia is a menace and that any such defamation of religion should be criminalized and prosecuted vigorously. The OIC, which has growing clout at the United Nations, wants the UN to enact international “anti-defamation” rules that would forbid blasphemy. Islamic members of the UN’s Human Rights Council have succeeded in changing the mandate of the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression. In addition to investigating cases of censorship and violations of free speech, this person will now “report on instances where the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination.”
One can only hope that the when the times comes that the crocodile comes for them, the bite is neither swift, nor painless.
I often wonder why every placard carying individual (death to the infidels) doesn’t quickly find themselves in prison. Wishing death on someone or a group of people seems to be “hate” related. No??????
It’s those Belgians. They are taking over the world.
“The OIC, which has growing clout at the United Nations, wants the UN to enact international “anti-defamation” rules that would forbid blasphemy.”
I wonder if they would include anti-semitism in this new rule structure. Or anti-Christian, or anti Buddhist or for that matter anti- “fill-in-the-religion-of-your-choice”
Probably not. They are Islamists after all and consider themselves superior to everyone else.
It’s long past the time to cut the UN loose and let all of those thug states feast upon themselves.
The “Responsible Media” types will be the first to convert, once they decide amongst themselves that conversion is the new “chic”.
Love the crocodile reference…one of my favourite quotes.
Kudos Kate
Somebody remind me, who was it that told these UN Human “Rights” retards to go pound salt recently? Was it… Stephanie Dion? nope. Was it El Diablo Layton? nope.
Wasn’t it that Harper guy? I’m sure I remember that.
Good argument for ..
a) Mocking the the MSM relentlessly
b) Shutting down the UN … or at least cleaning house.
Steve Centanni of FOX news had to convert to Islam before they released him as a hostage.
I wonder if he has since renounced islam.
If he did he is a marked man as far as I recall what happens to renouncers of islam.
The UN
Fire Them All
with revenues falling like stones in much of the msm, I would think there would be some attempt to ask themselves if the road they’re on is correct… and true to the ideals of what was once journalism. but aside from the few shining lights, I don’t see it.
I see unemployment, and plenty of it, unless of course they’ve worked their way through university as an electrician/plumber or something actually useful. Then they’ll be alright.
But Margaret Wente has nothing to be worried about.
“Wente shouldn’t have to expend column inches to fill in the background on these cases – they should have been reported on the front pages of every paper in the country and led every national newscast at the time they happened.
That’s what a responsible press would have done in the face of a force that threatens a fundamental right – but these aren’t responsible times in the media industry.”
For media types who frequent SDA: Kate has crystallized in two sentences why we abhor the major media in Canada. You and your cohorts know about all these happenings the world over, even here in Canada, even the ones that involve Canadian media, but will not put the issues front and center before public eyes. The tenacity you demonstrate for liberalesque stuff, the constant bombardment on issues dear to your hearts, is nowhere to be found on this issue, an issue that threatens the very foundations of the nation: free speech.
Through silence at the keyboard and before the cameras you show complicity, and we despise you for it.
The ways of the new left related to Journalism are a complete mystery.
If one looks at “Special K’s” site today he is off and ranting about “Cops as Hacks” – that relating to Police posing as journalists. And that if a journalist posed as a Cop they would face criminal charges. OK.
He, like Dawg share no outrage nor make no mention of human rights investigators, non-practicing lawyers and a cop posing as neo-nazis and white supremacists for entrapment and enticement purposes and also were not charged under Neo-Marxist rule 13.1 of the CRA.
Is there something wrong with this red picture?
LS, Special K has gone a little too far left, fell off his little flat world and bumped his noggin. He talks to his fish attempting to get it to vote Liberal, shows his groceries on the web and now wonders why ravens eat road kill in his view while driving down the highway. I suppose there will be calls in addition to his rant on smoking advertising, to outlaw talking into a video camera while driving ? No? How about a new law forbidding ravens from eating roadkill? No? Will he report the raven to the OHRC? I’ll bet Babs Hall would be livid about these offensive ravens too. Progress I say, progress!
does anyone remember pogo. it was a cartoon. the main character once said, we have met the enemy and it is us. duh. how stupid are we in the west that we fail to see the enemy in our midst? very stupid.
Ms Wente writes, “‘Most of the professional humorists in Europe apply self-censorship now,’ says one commentator. You can hardly blame them. They have not only violent extremists to fear, but also – in the Netherlands, at least – their own government.”
“In the Netherlands, at least”? Hello!
Some background she might have highlighted more, for the generally unenlightened readers of the G & M, is that Canadians now, most definitely, have government extremists to fear in our own, ever so Canadian, illiberal HRCs.
That said, Margaret Wente is a bright light in the MSM. She appears to be very much on side in the Muslim mess. I think I’ll drop her a line and encourage her to keep it up.
“does anyone remember pogo. it was a cartoon. the main character once said, we have met the enemy and it is us. duh. how stupid are we in the west that we fail to see the enemy in our midst? very stupid.”
Don’t know the cartoon but the comment is correct. We self loath too much as a collective to look at ourselves in the mirror. Ignorance is bliss and complacency is too seductive. There is solace in crocs, but I cringe at every step we take backwards waiting until then.
The ones stepping backward are the lefty libcomsimps…in fact they who call themselves “progressive” as a group are in constant retreat.
From reality, from good sense, from moral integrity …
BTW – I own a collection of POGO and that particular quoted item is about the group who pretend to lofty goals and degenerate into petty bickering until things get too tough then they go home.
It’s pretty much a commentary on the lefty activists in the US …
A primer:
Step 1: The western world is compassionate, curious and open-minded. Entirely appropriate proscriptions against racism and parochialism evolve quickly into a relativistic mindset that all cultures are equal. A cynical immigration policy based on this sincerely compassionate mistake is implemented by a power-hungry “progressive” government who use people’s compassion to entrench their political advantage. They import the extended families of their political supporters in key ridings. A national narrative is written into the educational system; eventually, the default setting is that any criticism whatsoever of the “folkways” of non-founding ethnic groups or of immigration policy is indisputably a display of ignorance, racism and parochialism. Foreign (non-founding) ideologies, some of which include the belief that it should be illegal to examine and criticize their ideas, are given “respect”, and their demands for equal footing — the right to be treated with “respect” are granted.
Step 2: As a consequence of #1, people start to self-censor, first out of cultural conditioning, and then, as the results of that become entrenched, out of fear: social fear of being labeled a racist; financial fear of being hounded and bankrupted by prog-state enforcement; fear of being jailed by same; and then entirely realistic fear of physical harm from the newly-empowered “others.”
The “progressives” who helped create the conditions that allow for free expression to be banned will comprehensively elide the notion that it’s not acceptable for, say, a cartoonist or filmmaker to live in hiding or in mortal fear, or be put in jail; they will instead call the trembling/dead cartoonist “racist” or “Islamophobic.” In a cascading series of repulsively enlightening displays of profound character deficit, they refuse to even begin to admit that there’s something wrong with a social condition in which people are too afraid to criticize a violent philosophy that’s in the ascendant. They exempt from their criticisms those making the actual death threats; they imply that the victims are under attack simply because they’re racist/Islamophobic, or that they aren’t being respectful. These progs may also demonstrate that they’re not afraid by, say, flying a plane over Toronto towing a “Jesus Sucks” banner, or maybe they’ll get arrested protesting the G8 in front of a Starbucks — in other words, they’ll fight “the man”, who of course fully allows them the free speech they continue to use in their ongoing cultural war to undermine the west and the values of the Enlightenment. These “progressive” individuals, of course, have no reason to be afraid — not yet — by virtue of their putative multicultural sensitivities, and in the meantime they just can’t quite hide the fact that they enjoy how their political opponents, the defenders of freedom and the Enlightenment, are under attack by a proxy force.
Step 3: Islamists use their gains (see #1 and #2) by codifying their demands that their ideas and tactics are completely exempt from examination or criticism. This exemption they demand, which they do not grant to their enemies, is made official under international laws against “blasphemy”. Few non-Islamists in the west will be willing to risk their lives and livelihoods and the lives of their families by sticking their heads up at this point.
Step 4: Those who realize that western freedoms and our western cultural heritage is worth dying for will start to realize exactly who it was that ceded the hard-won freedoms their ancestors died for: the cowardly, craven progressive left, and not the Islamists per se. As the horrifying consequences of what our own treasonous fifth column has wrought start to sink in, political divisions will become incendiary. The west will either make the right choice, or lose the right to make it in the future.
OWG, it’s not that people (read: the left..) don’t realize the threat, it is that they embrace and facilitate the changes that are to come, as it fits into their agenda.
What they don’t realize is that the game they play is firmly based in the fantasy role play of university Marxism, whilst the real Islamists move behind and in front of the screen, pulling and manipulating the levers of our system feverishly, to enact their particular brand of fascism on us all
The leftist enablers only see the short term goal of upsetting ‘capitalism’, and ‘sticking it to the man’, while Islam sees the larger picture and moves to enact long term strategy for a world wide caliphate.
Even if they know this is part of the pact they have entered into with the Islamists, it still does not override the lefts irrational self loathing and hatred of the west, and their own kith and kin.
Much like the Swedish feminists, who will now only breed with non white males ( finding Swedish men too insecure and not masculine enough, after doing their best for decades to emasculate them..) the left is the author of their own demise. They seem to take great pleasure in some sort of future Goterdamerung in which both they and we perish in high nihilistic fashion
Islamophobia a menace? Islamophobia is an entirely sensible reaction to a religion whose adherents mutilate young girls, stone people to death, whip women in the streets, hack off limbs, blow themselves up in crowded market squares, fire-bomb schools, destroy the artifacts of other religions, hang homosexuals, fly airplanes into buildings, etc, etc, all in the name of Allah.
Yesiree the religion of peace.
Great post EBD!
A friend of mine in Vancouver recently complained that there didn’t seem to be much news in “the media”. I replied that there was plenty going on in the world, and plenty of reporting of it; just not in the MSM. So even the naive are beginning to notice …
WRT why the MSM cherry picks its stories, it is simple: we are on a “need to know” basis.
Did you here the one about the dumb muslim who was sent out to blow up a car, he burnt his lips on the exaust pipe.
MSM will shy away from any negative reporting regarding Islam, and I can’t blame them. Britain admitted it gives special/supreme status to Muslims because they are VIOLENT. Christians aren’t violent, when we become angry we deal with the issues in an open and honest manner-when’s the last time Christians burned their communities down? Muslims barbegue cars, torch their neigbbourhoods and threaten anyone who dareth speaketh the truth about the Religion of Peace with death. I wonder if the Islamist’s illiterate scum bag who coined the phrase “Religion of Peace” misspelled the last word-Peace. Perhaps what they meant to say was “Islam is the Religion of Pieces”? Because if you offend Islam that’s what you’ll end up being “scattered Pieces”.
I agree with Brian, we need to disown the UN and then kick it’s sorry useless trust fund arse out of the US. They have become the enemy within, they serve no useful role because it’s become tainted and corrupted by Radical/Political Islamist who’s sole goal is a global caliphate.
Wente’s mistake is that she writes for the Globe and Mail.
And as such while I sometimes find myself enjoying what she writes, I can never truly take her seriously.
The G&M is most definitely part of the problem. Same goes for Macleans, which for years championed political correctness, and suddenly claims to have seen the light now that the chickens have come home to roost.
I mean heck it’s not as if many of us didn’t see that the MSM were biased a long time ago.
I can remember as a teenager picking up a copy of the New York times thinking I was being worldly and clever, and being absolutely disgusted by what I read.
While I don’t want to admit my age, suffice to say that was quite a long time ago.
EBD, you nailed it. And that’s where sane people are at this time in history are starring down the barrel of the two distinct forces that would pulverize us into dust, the MSM and the Islamists.
The first group are simply craven cowardly idiots that can stylistically package the news, but, are too stupid to intellectually process the news. You can’t be this far from the ultimate wake up call, 9/11, and still not get it without gross cowardice and stupidity being the biggest factor.
The Islamists are just sociopathic scum that got really lucky to have as a protectorate the moronic western media with all of their lefty moral equivalence and muddled self-loathing. The West isn’t going to be destroyed by these raggedy-assed Neanderthals any more than Hitler’s troops once surfaced weren’t beaten back. It’s the MSM Fifth Column that we have to beat back first.
I’m with mark peters, if any of you MSM types are reading this count it as an insight as to why you are despised. You are terrorist enablers by your sickening omissions and failure to uphold basic principles like free speech. Cowards.
Censorship is Islam.
The Quran is the most inane ‘religious’ book ever written. One out of five verses makes no sense whatsoever. It’s wildly and historically inaccurate. Dualism and abrogation abound. And that’s all besides the actual racist, bigoted and savagely brutal rot called content.
And the Quran cannot stand unsupported without the even more vile Hadith and Sira.
Needless to say, questioning is the first sin in Islam, often punishable by death.
However, because of the internet, immigration and travel, the Islamic ideology has become a cornered animal. Exposure, criticism and lampooning of its doctrine, especially the life example and sayings of its prophet are fatal to its survival.
And then there are the Muslims in their own lands. Mostly irrationally hot-headed people to whom so-called ‘honour’ means everything. Criticism hits at their very core and when confronted – rather than conducting an objective examination into the historical veracity of their prophet and his fable – as a reasonable person might do – they explode in an orgy of death, typically killing each other.
Here, of course, the Muslim apologist depends more on taqiyya and kitman – in other words, lying through their teeth.
It’s little wonder the OIC, CAIR, etc., are attempting to foist censorship on the rest of the world. The survival of their fascist ideology and with it, the totalitarian Islamic regimes absolutely depend on it.
———
“Step 4: Those who realize that western freedoms and our western cultural heritage is worth dying for will start to realize exactly who it was that ceded the hard-won freedoms their ancestors died for: the cowardly, craven progressive left, and not the Islamists per se. As the horrifying consequences of what our own treasonous fifth column has wrought start to sink in, political divisions will become incendiary. The west will either make the right choice, or lose the right to make it in the future.”
Well said, EBD. Civil war is a growing topic in Europe – more than 50% in Sweden believe there will be a civil war in their country.
The future looks grim.
pretty good chance Mohammed was bipolar. lot of that hearing voices thing. also he was exposed on trade missions early on to Judiasm and Christianity. He seems to have got things pretty much amuk by the time he would trace out and some other illiterate tribesman tried to remember what he said.
its also been suggested that he was epileptic.
your jihadhaha for the night, next to Isam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NOBnpraR2s&feature=related
To the CBC. Its kind of hard holding down a Senate seat with no head.