WATCHING THE MOB AT WORK: TWO EYEWITNESSES OF THE SHUTTING DOWN OF ANN COLTER'S TALK

Written by Paul Fromm

Saturday, 27 March 2010 08:11

*Watching the Mob at Work: Two Eyewitnesses of the Shutting Down of Ann Colter's Talk in Ottawa* *Our democracy is absolutely farcical and we cannot continue to have faith in Conservatives to guard such precious values for us. This is exactly what happened to the Plains of Abraham celebrations. This government allows a minority (of thugs and terrorists) to rule over the majority!* ** *---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Andrew Phillips * * To this message from my fellow Libertarian I can only add my own experience last night. After waiting patiently for almost 2 hours for the doors to open I was told that while I had ordered a ticket online my name was not on the list for admission. As such I wasn't allowed into the hall to hear Ms Coulter give her presentation. That was a fair call on the part of the organizers and I took my not being allowed to enter in good spirits as I had not received a confirmation email that my request had been received in time. I arrived at about 5:45 pm. and there was a small group patiently waiting for the doors to open. When I left it was 7:20 pm. and the crowd waiting to hear Ms. Coulter speak stretched around almost three sides of Marion Hall. I saw no disruptive behaviour anywhere so whatever took place happened after. Imagine my surprise to wake up and find out that Ms Coulter wasn't even allowed to speak because of demonstrations by people who have decided they and only they can say who can and who cannot be heard in Canada. It should certainly have you in the media questioned what manner of goons we are creating who appear to follow the rules of what Abe Lincoln once referred to as "mob" law. Last night at Ottawa University Canada's reputation as a civilized nation might well have suffered a grievous, of not deadly, body blow in the eyes of anyone who appreciates the need for open debate as a forum for change. Were the actions that lead to the cancellation planned, if so by whom, and will they be charged under the law? Since federal money (our money) is given to those institutions it would seem an RCMP investigation is warranted to get to the bottom of this and find if it was pre-arranged. Given the letter the Provost Mr Houle wrote that appeared in the news I think there is a good place to start any inquiry into what happened. If Mr. Houle did have anything to do with this situation I would expect him to be charged under the proper legal statute. That people who may erroneously think of themselves as our future leaders can decide , on their own, who has the right to speak with all this taking place at public expense is absolutely unacceptable and they should be expelled and the student council dissolved. At the very least the federal Government should reconsider any and all funding to these institutions until it is found out just what it is they are teaching them. In fact it might not be a bad idea to also look at our public school system and secondary school systems as well. As it stands at the moment if this is what our money is producing I want my part of it back. Lastly it appears it's time to change, not our national anthem, but our flag. Let us take off the Maple Leaf and replace it with a banana. This would be so much more in keeping as a symbol of what our nation is becoming. Andrew Phillips - Libertarian Party of Canada - Ontario Libertarian Party ----- Original Message ----- From: Sue Reid To: Scott - M.P. Reid ; Prime Minister Minister ; **[email protected]*<[email protected]> * ; **[email protected]* <[email protected]>* ; ** [email protected]* <[email protected]>* ; ; ** [email protected]* <[email protected]>* ; ** [email protected]* <[email protected]>* Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 10:16 AM Subject: Reply Required* *Gentlemen* *I went to the University of Ottawa last night, to listen to Anne Colter speak. It is my understanding that my tax dollars support the U of O and therefore pay the salary of the Provost Houle. I trust that he will be held accountable for the expense he caused to the taxpayer for policing last night, and for instigating the shameful behavior of a group of thugs who prevented the rest of us from hearing Miss Coulter.* *There were not 2000 protesters there last night as reported by some news outlets. There was, as I have already said, a group of radical anarchists who prevented the majority of us from exercising our rights to enter that building unmolested and hear the scheduled speakers. Though the police were there they did nothing to stop the illegal actives of these un-permitted protesters or to remove them. I know what happens when anti-abortionists get too close to those abortion clinic doors - they're arrested - but apparently it's okay. if you're a member of a radical far left gang who uses threats and intimidation to disrupt the civil liberties of others- namely the multitude of attendees who peacefully gathered to hear Miss Colter speak.* *I want - no I demand - that Provost Houle be fired immediately. It is precisely his kind of Progressive, Marxist ideology fully displayed in his threatening letter to Miss Colter -and taught in our schools at all levels today which produces, and will continue, to produce ever increasing degrees of radicalism which inevitably leads to violent clashes. I know. I come from the sixties. I witnessed the Detroit riots. I studied Saul Alinsky and followed the Weather Underground. I saw first hand the civil unrest and violence whipped up by these radical Marxists who disguise themselves as do-gooders seeking social justice. Social justice, by the way, is the code now used for Progressivism which by the their own admission espouses Marxist ideology. This is dangerous territory Houle is leading his students into and it will be law abiding tax payers who will suffer in the end. * ** *There are only two possibilities for the letter Houle wrote to Colter. One, he is ignorant of history and politics or he is a Progressive. Either way there is no place in our taxpayer funded school system for him to exercise his personal agenda. However, as long as this is still a free society he is welcome to **open his own school anywhere in Canada he wishes. Perhaps he could call it The U of Cloward and Piven. If you are not familiar with them, I suggest you look them up as they are who we are contending with right now.* *I want to see some leadership out of Ottawa and Toronto; leadership which actually defends the rights of its law abiding citizens, not places them in harms way at the hands of an unruly few. This entire incident is nothing but shameful and all levels of government need to stand up and say that we will not tolerate such behavior.* *I would also like an answer as to why the police did not expel those people who illegally blocked our entry, something you can be sure they'd have done if it had been a door to an abortion clinic.* *Sue Reid Lanark, Ont*

 

THE CREEPY TYRANNY OF CANADA'S HATE SPEECH LAWS

Written by Paul Fromm

Thursday, 25 March 2010 09:41

The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws By Glenn Greenwald *(updated below - Update II)* I've written many times before<http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/11/fruits-of-hate-speech-laws.html>about the evils of "hate speech" laws<http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/02/are-there-american-political-values.html>that are prevalent in Canada <http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/bernstein200312020910.asp> and Europe <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2002/11/56294> -- people being fined, prosecuted and hauled before official tribunals<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/01/13/hate_speech_laws>for expressing political opinions which the State has prohibited and criminalized. I won't rehash those arguments here, but I do want to note a particularly creepy illustration of how these laws manifest. The far-right hatemonger Ann Coulter was invited by a campus conservative group to speak at the University of Ottawa, and the Vice Provost of that college sent Coulter a letter <http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2710037>warning her that she may be subject to criminal prosecution if the views she expresses fall into the realm of prohibited viewpoints: Dear Ms. Coulter, I understand that you have been invited by University of Ottawa Campus Conservatives to speak at the University of Ottawa this coming Tuesday. . . . I would, however, like to inform you, or perhaps remind you, that our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or "free speech") in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here. You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, *promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges.* Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind. . . . Hopefully, you will understand and agree that what may, at first glance, seem like unnecessary restrictions to freedom of expression do, in fact, lead not only to a more civilized discussion, but to a more meaningful, reasoned and intelligent one as well. I hope you will enjoy your stay in our beautiful country, city and campus. Sincerely, Francois Houle, Vice-President Academic and Provost, University of Ottawa Personally, I think threatening someone with criminal prosecution for the political views they might express is quite "hateful." So, too, is anointing oneself the arbiter of what is and is not sufficiently "civilized discussion" to the point of using the force of criminal law to enforce it. If I were administering Canada's intrinsically subjective "hate speech" laws (and I never would), I'd consider prosecuting Provost Houle for this letter. The hubris required to believe that you can declare certain views so objectively hateful that they should be criminalized is astronomical; in so many eras, views that were most scorned by majorities ended up emerging as truth. For as long as I'll live, I'll never understand how people want to vest in the Government the power to *criminalize* particular viewpoints it dislikes, will never understand the view that it's better to try to suppress adverse beliefs than to air them, and will especially never understand people's failure to realize that endorsing this power will, one day, very likely result in their own views being criminalized when their political enemies (rather than allies) are empowered. Who would ever want to empower officious technocrats to issue warnings along the lines of: *be forewarned: if you express certain political views, you may be committing a crime; guide and restrict yourself* *accordingly*? I obviously devote a substantial amount of my time and energy to critiquing the actions of the U.S. Government, but the robust free speech protection guaranteed by the First Amendment and largely protected by American courts<http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7819>continues to be one of the best features of American political culture. *UPDATE*: When Noam Chomsky (yes, I'm quoting him twice in one day) is asked whether he thinks America is irrevocably broken and/or whether its political process has any extremely positive features, he typically says -- as he did in this 2005 interview<http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200506--.htm>: "In other dimensions, the U.S. is very free. For example, *freedom of speech is protected in the United States to an extent that is unique in the world*." That's the critical point: as long as the State is absolutely barred from criminalizing political views, then any change remains possible because citizens are free to communicate with and persuade one another and express their political opinions without being threatened by the Government with criminal sanctions of the kind Provost Houle conveyed here and which are not infrequently issued by numerous other Canadian and European functionaries. *UPDATE II*: Just to underscore the point: last year, Canada banned the vehemently anti-war, left-wing British MP George Galloway from entering their country<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/20/george-galloway-banned-canada>, on extremely dubious "national security" grounds. Galloway is a vociferous critic of Canada's involvement in the war in Afghanistan as well a defender of Hamas, which were clearly the bases for his exclusion. Though that was under a different law than the one with which Coulter is threatened, that's always the result of this mindset: those defending these sorts of speech restrictions always foolishly think that the restrictions will be confined to those views which they dislike, and then are astonished and outraged when these censorship powers are turned against views with which they agree (the Bush administration sought to exclude Muslim scholars from the U.S.<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901334.html>who were critical of its wars based on the same rationale). To see how a genuinely principled individual thinks about such things, see this comment from a right-wing Canadian<http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/03/22/canada/permalink/5ded50e2e1b7666523458a12051ba692.html>decrying the exclusion of Galloway despite the fact that he finds Galloway's left-wing views noxious in the extreme. In 2006, Newt Gingrich advocated that free speech rights should be restricted<http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/12/todays-tour-around-world-of-bush.html>for "radical Muslims" because they were preaching dangerous "hatred," speech which Gingrich wanted criminalized. Those who defend "hate speech" laws like the ones in Canada and Europe are Gingrich's like-minded comrades, even if they want to criminalize different views than the ones Gingrich happened to be targeting.

 

THE STREET THUGS SILENCE ANN COULTER

Written by Paul Fromm

Thursday, 25 March 2010 09:40

*THE STREET THUGS SILENCE ANN COULTER* ** *Canadian Association for Free Expression* *Box 332,* *Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3* *Ph: 905-274-3868; FAX: 905-278-2413* * * March 24, 2010 The Editor. *Globe and Mail*, 444 Front Street, West, Toronto, ON., M5V 2S9 * BY FAX: 416-585-5085* (FOR PUBLICATION) Dear Sir: What’s the distance from the Washington, D.C home of conservative gadfly and controversialist Ann Coulter and hotbeds intellectual freedom like Pyongyang and Rangoon? About 500 miles -- the distance to the University of Ottawa and its Red Guards and censorious administration. What a sorry banana republic we have become. Tuesday night, a riotous crowd that press estimates put at between 300 and 2,000 forced organizers to cancel a speech by Miss Coulter The street thug opponents of free thought had all but been given the okay from the top. Francois Houle, the Vice Provost of the University had written Coulter warning her not to offend any thin-skinned minority: ""You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. ... I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind. . . .Hopefully, you will understand and agree that what may, at first glance, seem like unnecessary restrictions to freedom of expression do, in fact, lead not only to a more civilized discussion, but to a more meaningful, reasoned and intelligent one as well." Well, of course, there was no reasoned or civil discussion on campus, the Red Guards saw to that. It will be interesting what, if anything, the politically correct administration operatives do about them. Sincerely yours, Paul Fromm Director