What does the CHRC do in its spare time???
Perhaps this http://shaidletheracist.blogspot.com/.
What else would Lucie, Jadewarr and Pogue Mahone do on “Family Day” but build an anonymous hate site? After all, they are aliases…they don’t have families.
Or, perhaps, the Lying Jackal used his wicked webskillz to take down Kathy. He can’t best her in debate so why not try and generate a CHRC complaint?
Meanwhile, thanks to Blazing and a number of other bloggers it looks like the Canadian Arab Federation is going to lose its federal funding. Not such a good idea to call federal ministers supporting the government’s position “professional whores”. (Which, it strikes me, is a redundancy.)
February 17th, 2009 at 10:24 am
When polls attack… right now 75% of respondents on the site answer that Shaidle is not racist.
Why not offer a pool for when the poll is disappeared?
February 17th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I just love the the jew-baiters oops anti-zionists, who signed up for the Lying Jackals impotent crusade against Shaidle. Kinsella is so stupid he likely has no idea who he is sleeping with.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Not such a good idea to call federal ministers supporting the government’s position “professional whores”.
So much for free speech, eh.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Why no, Robert, free speech is just fine – however funded speech is a whole other thing. If you take the government’s money your freedom to criticize the government is rather obviously diminished.
Now, CAF, fundless, is perfectly able to call whomever it wants whatever it wants and, delightfully, I don’t have to pay for it.
February 17th, 2009 at 11:04 am
If you take the government’s money your freedom to criticize the government is rather obviously diminished.
Wow! I’m speechless. I can’t believe you’re actually saying people must sacrifice their right to free speech if they take money from the government. So everyone who gets government funding, a paycheque from the government, old age security, employment insurance, welfare, etc. are not allowed freedom of speech.
Your hatred of Muslims has clearly rendered you insane.
February 17th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Robert, that’s dumb even by your standards. An advocacy organization – which is what CAF essentially is, has a choice: it can look for government funding and lose a measure of its independence or refuse government funding and say what it pleases.
The rest of your comment is a red herring on steroids.
February 17th, 2009 at 11:54 am
“Your hatred of Muslims has clearly rendered you insane.” Thats a keeper. I would put that on your masthead with proper attribution to RM.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Oh how I love it when a deregulation plan comes together.
All those special interest, ethnic and other lobby groups see an end to the cash cow from the taxpayer’s farm.
Can I say “OINK”?
February 17th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I would sleep just fine if ethnic groups didn’t receive any federal money at all. In particular, the CAF holds views which I find disgusting and odious.
But if a group that is otherwise eligible to receive funding is disqualified, it should be for some reason other than their leader saying something stupid or nasty about the minister responsible for their funding. The latter comes off as thin-skinned and petulant for cutting them off.
You’re right that an advocacy group loses a degree of independence in exchange for funding, at least to the extent that they must meet particular criteria and/or conditions. IMHO, the group’s leader’s opinion of the current government ought not to be among those conditions.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Robert,
Age security is paid as a matter of legal right because you are deemed to old to be able (or expected) to work. If the govt withholds it because of views you express, there’s a problem.
But if the govt pays your organisation discretionary funding to “promote community harmony”, and you then bite the hand that feeds you, and that hand is withdrawn, that’s just cause and effect.
Steyn and McLean’s do not receive their income as discretionary funding from either Lucy Warman or El-Masry’s sock puppets. Therefore the latter have no right to take it back from Steyn and McLean’s if they feel offended.
Hope this clarifies. Just remember – there’s two baskets – “state/ compulsory” and “private/ voluntary”.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
That doesn’t make it any better, Jay. Free speech is a right, not a privilege that must be sacrificed in order to receive funding from the government.
And don’t even bother leaping at hate speech in order to claim you’ve caught me in a gotcha moment. Calling Kenney a professional whore is not hate speech.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
You’re right, Robert, it is stupid speech and is a much greater disqualification than mere hate speech.
Mambo, I think you are onto something – defund them all. But that will not happen so long as the CPC is busy being the Liberal Party and chasing ethnic votes. Ethnic advocacy groups have long provided cover for the out and out bribery which characterizes much of what any “ethnic” strategy entails.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Mambo’s nailed it. This is the exact-same totalitarian urge that had the government nixing arts grants because they didn’t like the politics of the recipients.
I rather like the notion of equality under law, myself. So that, if there is funding for the arts, applicants should be judged on artistic criteria. If there is funding for advocacy groups, then people aren’t excluded because the Minister doesn’t like being called names. So Kenney’s feelings are hurt. Big deal. If that’s enough to have him interfere in a process allegedly governed by written criteria, we’ve moved just that much closer to arbitrary rule by individuals. Tyranny, in a word.
Want to end all such funding? OK, at least that’s consistent. Otherwise (and I think Robert has a rather obvious point here) you’re world-class hypocrites.
As for the subject of this thread: Kathy’s been trolling for a Sn.13 charge since God-knows-when, so allow me my suspicions about that website’s provenance.
And finally: “Stupid speech is a much greater disqualification than mere hate speech” is a keeper. That one, I think, will come back to haunt you, Jay. Just sayin’.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Dawg, I am delighted to allow you your suspicions as you allow me mine.
And, as I said, defunding all advocacy groups – ethnic or otherwise – should have been job #1 when the CPC took office – but as they have decided to dress up as Liberals you now have to say or do something really stupid to get your funding cut. CAF has now set the bar.
February 17th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Gee, I wonder why the anti-Shaidle-ites are not also gunning for a section 13 complaint against, say, the CIC?
February 17th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Dawg is gay. And when I say ‘gay’, I mean it like ‘retarded’...
Leave it to a leftist to think that I would set up a parallel, anonymous website so that I could then file a Section 13 complaint against… myself.
Prove I set up that blogspot site or shut up and admit that once again, your flaky lefty conspiracy theory worldview has tripped you up yet again.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
“If you take the government’s money your freedom to criticize the government is rather obviously diminished.”
We must fire all of the opposition MPs immediately!
But seriously, folks… it is presumptuous (AT BEST) for the Minister to override the judgement of the staff who awarded the funding. Until they have a “Is President a Boob?” Y/N box on the application form, what Kenney is doing is simply (very) petty political interference. If he doesn’t like being called a professional whore* he should propose a private member’s bill To Curtail Funding For Any Organization Whose Staff Hurt Jason Kenney’s Feelings.
Probably wouldn’t pass, but hey.
Also, I’ve known some whores, and as a rule they are much better people than that bunch of hypocritical dickheads on Parliament hill. If I was a whore, I’d be writing an angry letter to the CAF about now.
*Robert Heinlein said it best: if it isn’t true, it’s just meaningless babble and you ignore it. If it is true, then you have no right to get upset. Private message to Jason: there is a solution, and it’s not de-funding people you don’t like. No, it’s simultaneously harder, and easier: STOP BEING A WHORE.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Jay: Didn’t they yank funding for women’s groups that do advocacy? Was that a general principle they’re now continuing to implement on the flimsiest of excuses? Or was disempowering women just more of a priority than disempowering Arabs?
February 17th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Kathy, I’ve never seen you waste time so even cutting and pasting the Jackal’s “Collected Works of Fury” seemed like far too much effort.
Renee, horseshit. If more Minister “overrode the judgement of the staff” we would be a far better governed nation. For example, Rob Nicholson could have told his staff to switch sides in Lemire and go after the appalling tactics of the CHRC - which, eventually, they did on their own hook realizing just how procedurally buggered the CHRC was. The concept of “ministerial responsibility” means the Minister has to carry the can in any event – so the Minister should get his or her hands dirty. Staff recommends, it does not decide.
I suspect Kenny has been called worse by better – that isn’t the point. The point is that if you want to call names you can do it on your own dime, not mine.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
As I recall, Renee, they did yank SOW’s funding but restored it when the yowling became unendurable. Were it up to me I would buy earplugs and yank it again…but that’s just me. If you want to advocate go right ahead;but raise your own money. (It will, however, cheer you to know, that I would also yank tax exemptions for churchs, think tanks (right and left) and cultural/media groups.)
February 17th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Jay: It’s one thing to make a ministerial decision about your department’s policy and its application in certain situations. It’s another to meddle in the day-to-day affairs in a specific case where your personal pique is the sole arbiter. Either make a policy that applies to the entire program, kill the entire program, or shut the hell up and get back to work. It’s like the CEO of Google wandering into the server room and shutting off service to Kelowna because the mayor called him an asshole. It’s perfectly within his rights to do that. It’s just fucking awful public policy.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
I’m with you there Renee – a general rule might be “Don’t call the Minister or anyone else stupid names.” – but a better solution would be to kill the funding in general.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Do people really think funding was cut over a little name calling? Give Kenney a little credit: he’s taking a stand against antisemitism and an Islamist/Arab ideology that has engaged Western modernity in some kind of war. There’s nothing we need more than politicians willing to cut ties with self-appointed hate mongers who often don’t represent the people they claim. This isn’t the first step in this direction; CAF called a bluff, and lost. Now we get to see how many people really care, which will be useful one way or the other.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
And when it comes to free speech, why do people assume its defenders must hold it up as some ultimate principle that can’t be breached? And if we do we’re hypocrites. It’s as if people want to argue in some abstract world of ideal concepts. In the real world, even free speech may at times have to defend itself against its other, against the promotion of ideologies that serve a cause that would shut up free thought and expression, e.g. the kind of people who make excuses for Islamist terrorism against liberal democracies.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:01 am
truepeers: I think what they call what you’re doing “shifting the goalposts.”
“Why do people assume its defenders must hold it up as some ultimate principle that can’t be breached?”
Just like you can’t be a little pregnant, you can’t have mostly free speech. Either you are free to say whatever the hell you want, or you are not. You cannot have it both ways. Saying that a principle is hard to defend doesn’t mean the principle isn’t worth defending. And if you want to shut up people who say horrible things, well, I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but that is NOT free speech. It’s too bad, but allowing free speech means allowing people to say horrible things sometimes. People who make excuses for Islamist terrorism against liberal democracies are PERFECTLY FREE to say those things in a liberal democracy (it’s called irony). I wish they wouldn’t, but the only way to counter them isn’t to censor them, it’s to speak LOUDER.
If you don’t agree, simply stop billing yourself as a defender of free speech. Start calling yourself a defender of somewhat-limited-speech, instead. That’s OK too. Somewhat.
Also, “Give Kenney a little credit” ... waaaait, no, stop. Why?
February 18th, 2009 at 6:05 am
(Shutting down funding for a program that isn’t doing what it was designed to do – aid in resettlement, where 95% of its clients aren’t even Muslim – is one thing. Shutting it down to punish one person out of that 5% for saying something you don’t like is quite another. Lots of people who run things are assholes and jerks, but that doesn’t mean their management of the program is necessarily bad. The program itself wasn’t even an advocacy program.)
February 18th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Renee,
You know, I am not actually advocating shutting the CAF up, but I have no problem with their losing government money.
But my thought wasn’t about this particular case especially. I am simply imagining situations in which a free speech argument cannot be absolute if freedom is to be defended. Do you really think freedom lovers never have to fight forcibly against those who would deny freedom to others? Do you think that fight can always be limited to words? Sometimes it might well mean war on various levels.
Now I can suggest a difference between how much one can tolerate an anti-freedom ideology that grows out of the resentments that have evolved within one’s own society. These things need to be worked out and free speech is often the way. Does a nation have the same need to tolerate imported ideologies that are out to destroy what they see to be a foreign and inferior form of civilization? (I am unsure, however, how much we can distinguish foreign and Western ideologies in this day and age when there is really now only one global civilization – hence the Islamists quite rightly interpret their struggle to destroy global modernity of which they cannot really opt out however much they want to be outside it.)
We do have limits on free speech: defamation, fraud, incitement to violence. Now I always argue that incitement to violence should be the real test in discussing “hate speech”. But I also know that there will at times be situations in which tensions are high, violence is occurring with all the contagious psychological and social effects that attend violence, but our ability in some cases to draw direct links between incitement and violence will be hazy.
One may well support the argument I often make that to minimize the chance of such dangerous times coming to us, free speech will be the best approach. However, I think such times will come regardless, sooner or later. And I just can’t see how a society living on the knife’s edge has any choice but to draw lines between forces that think either that some kind of authoritarianism is the solution or that a new and freer order can only be won by shutting up the authoritarian path and imposing terms of peace. We may like to argue that hate speech laws were behind the Nazis’ rise, but they may have come to power regardless and at some point the Nazis had to be shut up. And for some time after the war in Europe, the Nazi party had to be criminalized.
So my point is that it is fine to make arguments that the CAF is not any kind of existential threat and should have its voice. But it doesn’t make sense to me to suggest that if someone suggests we shouldn’t fund them, or that we are now living in a dangerous world where restraints have to be put on anti-freedom forces, that this is necessarily an anti-free speech argument. NO, it all depends on how we interpret our circumstances and that is what we can have a legitimate debate about. We should be more interested in reality out there than in abstract metaphysical principles. That’s not making an excuse for self-indulgent arguments based on a lazy apprehension of reality; just a suggestion about what we should have serious arguments about.
I disagree that an organization that is promoting antisemitism (no less at the very heart of our political system – 2006 LPC convention), marching in sympathy with groups we brand as terrorist, should be funded by government, whatever “good” work it is doing. A society and democracy is only eroded by governments funding divisive hate groups. Though maybe an intelligent de-funding will entail insuring someone can pick up the necessary pieces of successful programs, if they really are doing some good job. We elect responsible governments to make such decisions and stand or fall accordingly.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Heh. I’d missed Shaidle’s response.
She can just never get it right, can she? The bogus site in question is soliciting its visitors to do the HRC complaint thingie. There’s no question of Shaidle launching a complaint against herself, whether she’s the site owner or not.
Whoever’s running the site (and forging my identity and that of others in the most clumsy way imaginable) is asking other people to do it. Our Kathy just makes stuff up as she goes along. Like being sued “for criticizing human rights commissions.”
She’s been bleating for some time about welcoming a S.13 complaint. That’s a less frigid venue, after all, than a civil court, before which, alas, she will shortly find herself. Martyrdom is all very well, but it’s better for the martyr if it can be done cheaply.
The site, meanwhile, has gone very quiet since a few of us started to pay attention to it. And one thing in the meantime has made me question my initial suspicions that Shaidle owned the place. That’s the poll: “Is Kathy a racist?” The “No” side was so overwhelming that the sudden disappearance of that poll raises new suspicions. Kathy would have left it up for a good laugh.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
My Allah is better than your Allah is a serious debate at the ministers’ office between his staff, Velshi -”Shia” and the CAF president, Moummar -”Sunni”
Is Jason Kenney an Anti -Muslim (Sunni) ? Who do we have on Kenney’s foreign Policy staff? Why Mr. Kenney was attacked by Canadian Arab Federation president Khaled Mouammar ( Muslim Sunni),
What is the real equation in the minister mind? This indicates that Jason Kenney is Pro
Shia but in the same token also he is an Anti -Iran ? Is this possible! we know that Iran supports Hamas and Hezbollah, but Kenney is Pro – Isreal, and ProShia hmmmmmm!!Alykhan Velshi, (Muslim Shia) Legal Experience: 2 years-Jurisdictions: New York- not Canada, advised his boss Kenney to Cuts Funds To Arab SUNNI Group For Noting His Professionalism! why These recent attacks at the Minister from the Sunni Muslim, and not the Shia Muslim.
He is an Ismaili Conservative Shia Muslim, graduated from the London School of Economics and was appointed , senior special assistant for foreign policy and parliamentary affairs, he is one of Jason Kenney’s staffers ‘living multiculturalism’ .We have a Hindu, Christian, Muslim and a Budhist,’ says Tenzin Khangsar, staff director to Mr. Kenney. ‘It’s a great example of the minister’s commitment to his job.’
What Mr. Velshi is really saying is that if the government can do as it pleases with any one of us, it can do what it pleases with all of us. It would be in our own self-interest to consider Conrad Black innocent until such time as is proven otherwise.
Jihad Watch: Alykhan Velshi and Mahathir Mohamad on moderate …
Posts Tagged ‘Alykhan Velshi’
Misjudging Charity
Keyword: 911Alykhan Velshi, a spokesman for Immigration Minister… U.S.-based Imam Urges Muslims to Join the Gaza Battlefield. 01/13/2009
Alykhan Velshi on Islamic Fundamentalism on National Review Online
Alykhan Velshi Responds to Robert Spencer and I Respond to Him.
Conservative Minister Jason Kenney visits Humayun’s Tomb in New Delhi, India
His Highness the Aga Khan’s 71st Birthday
Iraqi Expat: Sheikh al-Azhar sides with the Iraqis
CSIP Quotes Mr. Velshi:” Look – I suppose I’m what one would call a moderate Muslim, though for reasons I won’t get into I dislike the term (I also dislike being called a “compassionate conservative”, the adjective being redundant and somewhat offensive). I support the Bush doctrine, have a favorable disposition towards Israel, and supported the right to publish the Danish cartoons. Yet I cringed when reading Benedict’s speech, and not jut because of its laughable recounting of 15th century Christianity’s embrace of reason and tolerance, The problem with Benedict’s speech, and it’s illustrated perfectly by the quotation I cited above, is that it gives moderate Muslims no option other than to renounce our faith
Velshi contends that by quoting the words “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,” Pope Benedict is “not giving moderate Muslims any wiggle room in which to offer an internal-Islamic critique of the bin Ladenists.” Velshi :”adds that he doesn’t even like the term “moderate Muslim,” suggesting that the adjective is “redundant and somewhat offensive”—in other words, to be a Muslim is to be moderate. But evidently Pope Benedict, Jihad Watch and I, as opposed to National Review and the AEI, do not offer “a bold challenge to moderate Muslims,” but instead we are “alienating them. “What I have asked again and again of Muslims who identify themselves as moderate is this: that they acknowledge to exist, and renounce definitively, the elements of Islamic theology that jihadists are using to wage war against non-Muslims around the world.
The Pope is not giving, and I’m not giving, peaceful Muslims a chance to fight the “bin Ladenists” because we point out that that is happening? Just the opposite, Velshi.:” The Pope is showing the way, and since you mention me also I’ll say that in my small way I am also trying to show the way, to the only truly viable path to genuine Islamic reform. But only showing the way: of course, that reform can be accomplished only by Muslims, if it can be done at all. Do I think that reform is likely? I don’t, and for two reasons: 1. Because the texts to which I refer do actually exist, and jihadists can and do use them to paint any Muslim reformer as a heretic or apostate—thus putting his life in danger. And 2. Because of denial from moderates, such as I have been discussing: If you won’t even admit there is a problem, Velshi,:”you will never, ever, be able to fix it. Unquote
CSIP Lobbying Group believes as any Canadian Political party believes, that Our Canadian policies, focus on these (4)main points, which all other policies connect to and are dependent upon. Without these solid points addressed, Canada becomes a shell of a country, a colony under corporate rule.
Monetary Control- The use of our Bank of Canada in the best interest of all Canadians and to maintain and enhance sovereignty.
Sovereignty-The ability to make laws and decisions for Canadians by Canadians.
Civil and Human Rights -The restoration and fulfillment of our rights as originally intended under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Constitution.
Parliamentary Reform-The changes needed to bring our country to a state of complete interactive democracy, for the people, by the people.
Energy Freedom Compel the release to the public and funding of existing alternate technology that can free us from a dependence on damaging fossil fuels. Moratorium on the use of depleted uranium.
Without these solid points addressed, Canada is a shell of a country, a colony under corporate and financial rule