Conservative Party of Canada is against science

There is a surefire way to ensure tyranny – undermine the education of the populace. When the people don’t have the tools required to determine truth from lies or to obtain their information from a variety of sources, they become dependent on the state to tell them “the Truth™”. We can see this currently happening in the Arab world, where state television in Libya is still being used to broadcast misinformation that is (perhaps fatally) undermining the cause of the pro-democracy rebellion.

One way to ensure a religious tyranny is to ensure that the populace doesn’t have access to adequate scientific information. Science is inherently hostile to religion, since the two are very different methods at arriving at answers. The scientific method involves testing repeated observations and inferring rules and laws from trends within those observations. The religious method involves arriving at a conclusion and then finding observations that support the a priori position. The problem with the latter method is that it is trivially easy to arrive at false conclusions and then justify them afterward. By ensuring that the public doesn’t have access to scientific knowledge, you can erode the cause of science and replace it with whatever system you like.

Enter the Conservative Party of Canada:

The public has lost free online access to more than a dozen Canadian science journals as a result of the privatization of the National Research Council’s government-owned publishing arm. Scientists, businesses, consultants, political aides and other people who want to read about new scientific discoveries in the 17 journals published by National Research Council Research Press now either have to pay $10 per article or get access through an institution that has an annual subscription.

Now this on its own is an incredibly minor development. The vast majority of people who access the scientific literature are scientists working at institutions that can afford to buy subscriptions. Furthermore, the lay public get most of their scientific information from people who interpret the studies that are now behind a paywall, so most people won’t notice the difference. This is not the straw that breaks the camel’s back by any stretch of the imagination.

However, erosion doesn’t work in giant leaps – it occurs gradually over time. One of the strengths of science is the ability of anyone who is curious to go back and investigate the source material. Someone tells you that a drug works to treat diabetes, you can go to the paper and check it for yourself. Someone tells you that homeopathy cures warts, you can go check it out for yourself. Someone tells you that the universe was created in the Big Bang, you can go read the papers. This process encourages skepticism and critical thinking, while increasing the trust that the public has in the scientific community (by increasing transparency).

By placing additional barriers between lay Canadians and the products of Canadian scientific researchers, the privatization of the National Research Council is inherently anti-transparent and anti-science. It discourages scientific scrutiny and question-asking, which are two things that the CPC really doesn’t like in the first place. If Harper can’t get a majority right now, at least he can do as much damage as possible with the limited powers he wields.

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My cup of dissonance overfloweth

As a thoughtful person with strong convictions, it is inevitable that I find myself conflicted over some issues. For example, I’m not 100% confident in my stance on free speech, I sometimes have trouble  drawing the line in racial issues, and I continue to struggle with my feelings about Anonymous.

This story doesn’t help:

A U.S. military base is the latest target of the online activist group known as Anonymous, which has taken up the cause of Bradley Manning, the U.S. army private accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks. The group’s objective is to “harass” the staff and disable the computer systems at the Quantico, Va., marine base where Manning is being held, Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown said in an interview with MSNBC. The group plans to reveal personal information about base officials and disable the base’s communication networks in protest against how Manning is being treated at the base, Brown said.

Here’s my issue. On the one hand, I abhor what the United States military and government are doing in response to what is being called “Cablegate”*. Bradley Manning broke the law, and I do not dispute that (although it hasn’t been demonstrated in the court of law yet, let’s just stipulate that he didn’t confess to a crime he didn’t commit). As a result of breaking the law, it is entirely right to try him and punish him. Furthermore, hacking the U.S. military is no joke, particularly when they have active agents in the field. If such actions were undertaken by a foreign government, it would surely be interpreted as an incitement to war.

However, Manning has not been formally tried, but has been kept in solitary confinement. He is not a danger to anyone; he’s only threatening to the careers of politicians. The level of punishment far outweighs the crime. Considering that soldiers that are accused of war crimes have more freedom and privileges than Private Manning, his arbitrarily-harsh sentence reflects what the clear priorities of the military are – protecting their own asses. Considering also that the United States has set itself up as the ‘shining example of freedom’ for the rest of the world, their blatant hypocrisy in dealing with their military’s shortcomings and human rights violations is also a matter of national security. Also in light of the fact that freedom of speech is being suppressed by autocratic governments worldwide (and being met with overwhelming protest), it is entirely in the spirit of the Jasmine Revolution for a group to lodge protest against the suppression of free speech here in America.

So is Anonymous a cyber-terror organization, or a staunch advocate of free speech and a punisher of the iniquitous? At the present moment, I’m inclined to lean toward the latter definition. Their targets have been, up to now, unfailingly deserving of the negative attention. And it seems that their particular brand of internet policing is coming none to soon:

Last year on May 21, the United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) reported reaching initial operational capability, and news stories abound of US soldiers undergoing basic cyber training, which all point to the idea that traditional super powers are starting to explore this arena. Recent activities with one government contractor and Anonymous, however, show clearly that cyber operations have been going on for a long while, and that the private sector has been only too ready to fill the cyber mercenary role for piles of cash.

While I am wary of a disorganized mob of vigilantes hacking various websites, I am far more threatened by the collusion of government and private interests conspiring behind closed doors to spy on computer systems. Anonymous’ activities are done in the open, with a reasoned and defensible justification posted for all to read. The government and military have shown their duplicity for decades when it comes to covert operations. The strength of democratic government is predicated on its openness – the people must know exactly what they are voting for so they can know when a regime must be voted out.

Nobody voted for Anonymous, and it seems as though they/it are/is self-policed and limited only by its own ambition and the complicity of its individual members. There is no auditing Anonymous, no way to check its power, no way to punish it for abuse. In that sense I prefer government. I can show up at my MPs office and voice my displeasure. If I try to do that to Anonymous, I am likely to have my e-mail accounts flooded with child porn. There is no mechanism by which one can defend her/himself from a headless organization – no courts can protect you, no lawsuits can be filed, no restraining order can be put out. As we know, humans given great power and no mechanism for controlling it almost inevitably abuse it.

And so my mind is still not made up. I applaud Anonymous for making the U.S. military deal with the consequences of their treachery and their betrayal of human rights, but I fear what may happen if Anonymous decides that fighting the good fight no longer provides the necessary amount of lulz.

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*The -gate suffix is really stupid. The Watergate scandal, upon which all other ‘-gates’ are based, was based on a hotel called “The Watergate”. It was not a scandal that was related to water, and adding the suffix is therefore completely nonsensical

Let’s call this what it is…

Those accommodationists among us (I am not calling them “diplomats” here – there is nothing diplomatic about being a coward) will say that one ought not to use mean words or phrases against our opponents. Rational discussion is, they say, based on both sides maintaining a respectful stance – a stance which is impossible if people use words or phrases that put the other side on the defensive. When confronted, people will put their fingers in their ears and refuse to hear your side.

If the protests in the Arab world have taught us anything, it’s that the accommodationist position is full of shit. Standing up and calling out your opponents is an effective method of achieving change, provided you can mobilize those who agree with you. This has long been my suspicion, but it’s nice of the Arab world to prove it for me.

So, in the spirit of not pretending that bullshit arguments have merit in order not to offend the bullshitters, I invite everyone to call these anti-Muslim “hearings” what they are: straight up racism

A U.S. congressional hearing on homegrown terrorism has been labelled “shameful” and “un-American” by prominent Muslim leaders. A Republican-led Homeland Security committee began hearing testimony Thursday in Washington on radicalization in the U.S. Muslim community. Representative Peter King, the New York Republican who organized the hearing, has stirred controversy by accusing Muslims of refusing to help law enforcement with the growing number of terrorists and extremists.

Muslim Americans, according to Peter King, aren’t licensed to simply exist as law-abiding citizens. No, that’s too good for ‘those people’. They also have to help law enforcement do its job, I suppose by acting as sleeper agents. You know, just like how white Christians flocked to aid law enforcement crack down on anti-abortion terrorist groups. Oh wait… that never happened, did it? You know why? Partially because it’s not a group’s collective responsibility to do law enforcement’s job for them, partially because terrorists are a tiny fraction of the overall population of white Christians, but also because they’re white! White people don’t get scapegoated – it’s in their contract.

I wish I could accuse Mr. King of being shockingly ignorant of American history, but I am not so sure that he doesn’t know who Joe McCarthy was and what his legacy is. Considering the number of people making the explicit comparison between the two, I will simply take a step back now that I’ve planted the seed and let you read on your own (if you care to).

If this were a more popular blog, and we had more American Conservatives(tm) commenting (or indeed, any American Conservatives), I’m sure I’d be flooded with comments like this one:

Nobody is “targetting” the entirety of American Muslims. That being said, an overwhelming majority of terrorist incidents in the United States within the past two years have been perpetrated by Muslims. These are FACTS – not biases or racist screeds – duly recognized by Congress, and the executives within the Obama administration.

It’s not racism, guys! Really! It’s just that those durn Mooslims keep blowin’ stuff up! Well, unless you actually bother to count:

But even if it was Muslims who are predominantly committing acts of terror (and it isn’t – I can’t stress this enough), that doesn’t empower Mr. King to put the Muslim community on trial for those acts. If Mr. King was really interested in getting to the bottom of this issue rather than just demonizing a minority group, he’d be inviting experts and members of the community, talking to law enforcement specialists, consulting statistics.

But he’s not:

Consider, for example, that so far at least, King’s witness list does not contain the name of Charles Kurzman, a professor of sociology of the University of North Carolina. A non-Muslim, Kurzman has produced a report for the university’s Triangle Centre on Terrorism and Homeland Security that actually uses statistics and facts to examine the question posed in the report’s opening paragraph: “Are Muslim-Americans turning increasingly to terrorism?” Kurzman examines things like the number of Muslim-Americans who perpetrated or were suspected of perpetrating attacks since 9/11: 24 in 2003, 16 in 2006, 16 in 2007, a spike of 47 in 2009, and a drop to 20 in 2010. A total of 161 over nearly 10 years.

In a few cases, Muslim groups have even turned in provocateurs urging jihad who turned out to be undercover police agents.

This isn’t a concerned citizen looking to find the solution to a serious problem – this is an opportunist who is cashing in on the rampant anti-Muslim sentiment of the populace to make hay and brand himself as a patriot. Considering his hypocritical stance on state-sponsored terrorism – defending the IRA in the 90s when they were perpetrating acts of terrorism in Ireland – it’s patently obvious that Mr. King’s motivation here is to demonize the “other”. In this case, in this day and age, that “other” is the Muslim community.

And why do I care (and, by extension, why should you)? I’m certainly no friend of Islam, and am suspicious of all religious people, particularly those whose religion requires extraordinary levels of piety and compliance with arcane rules. Why should I defend people I disagree with so vociferously? First of all, I care because it’s the right thing to do. Innocent people are being scapegoated by the U.S. government, and that’s a violation of their rights. Second, any time a minority group is made an example of, every person should become immediately uneasy. As an atheist and a black person, two groups that have received its unfair share of negative attention from governments and social institutions, I am standing up for myself here too.

There is no virtue in pretending that Mr. King has a noble purpose in these witch hunts. It is not diplomatic to try and hear his side – his side is built on lies, hypocrisy and thinly-veiled racial animosity. The virtue here is in calling this exactly what it is, and refusing to stop naming it until Mr. King is shamed into obscurity.

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Freedom: it’s contagious

Something important is still happening. It’s still happening, and it’s spreading.

Egypt struggles with constitutional reform

Mohammed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate and former head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, has said on a privately owned TV channel that he intends to run for president in Egypt’s 2011 presidential election. “When the door of presidential nominations opens, I intend to nominate myself,” ElBaradei said on ONTV channel on Wednesday. ElBaradei also said that suggested constitutional amendments to move Egypt toward democracy are ‘superficial.’ He appealed to the military rulers to scrap them or delay a scheduled March 19 referendum on them.

These protests have been somewhat akin to life-saving heart surgery, or perhaps limb-saving removal of gangrene from a wound. All the drama happens at the beginning – the dramatic removal of damaged and dying tissue, the machine that goes “ping!” – and there is a flurry of activity. However, once the problem has been removed, there remain the several hours of tissue salvage and repair. You see, just because you get rid of a corrupt government (to put the metaphor aside for a second), it doesn’t result in good government springing up overnight. The people of Egypt have a long road ahead of them if they want to move toward a true representative government.

Any state that overthrows its government has to deal with the aftermath, and this is even more challenging in countries that have been ruled by autocrats for decades – most of the citizenry doesn’t remember life any other way. To return to the metaphor for a final moment, after the surgery is done and the patient is stitched up, there still remains months of painful rehabilitation and physiotherapy – these uprisings will have implications that will resound for decades to come.

Gaddafi’s forces fight back

Forces loyal to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi are reported to have made gains against anti-government rebels in two key areas. Western journalists in the city of Zawiya, west of Tripoli, confirmed the Gaddafi regime’s claims that the city had fallen after days of bombardment. Rebels are reported to have fled from the oil port of Ras Lanuf to the east.

Whereas the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Oman were (mostly) peaceful, Libya’s revolution has devolved into a civil war, with two separate factions vying for control. There is a non-centralized (but soon to be centralized) rebel “government”, and the forces loyal to the deposed Muammar Gaddafi. This state of bilateral conflict was made official when the French government formally recognized the rebel force as the legitimate governing regime in Libya. This recognition was, in my mind, premature and stupid. No elections have been called, no official leadership has been formed, and the situation is still incredibly volatile.

There have been repeated calls for the establishment of a “no fly zone”, including a petition from Avaaz. For the record while I am usually directly on board with Avaaz’s causes, they got this one dead wrong. A “no fly zone” means that foreign military aircraft will be patrolling Libya’s airspace and shooting down any Libyan military aircraft. However, in order to do this without being shot themselves, the foreign powers would have to disable Libya’s anti-aircraft capabilities, which necessitates the deployment and active combat engagement of ground troops. Yes, this means declaring war on Libya. Considering that a) the African Union has explicitly denounced the plan, b) the Arab Union would not look kindly upon Western military involvement in their territory, and c) military intervention by the West is what started all of these problems in the first place, I am opposed to the idea of getting more involved than trade sanctions and the seizing of foreign holdings.

However, that means I have to stand impotently by and watch as Libyans are slaughtered by their own military. This is one of those times where we have to go with the lesser of two evils – foreign involvement in this conflict will only make things worse.

Saudi Arabia gets bitten by freedom bug

Hundreds of police have been deployed in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, ahead of anti-government rallies planned for after Friday prayers. Security forces have blocked roads and set up checkpoints, while reports suggest some protesters have begun to gather in the eastern town of Hofuf. On Thursday, police opened fire at a rally in the eastern city of Qatif, with at least one person being injured. Activists have been inspired by a wave of popular revolt across the region.

Saudi Arabia is an unlikely place for such widespread protests, given the disproportionate wealth and absolute power of the ruling class. However, the fact that there are protests is testament to the fact that once people get a taste of their collective power they are willing to use it to improve their standing in life. Egypt showed us that protests can work to effect change even in autocracies. Libya showed us that people are willing to fight and risk death for their freedom, and Saudi Arabia is showing us that no matter how oppressed a people are, they will rise up and fight when given the opportunity. These protests are also happening in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Yemen – this is no isolated thing.

The irony in all of this is that the United States devoted billions of dollars to wage war, with the ostensible goal of promoting democracy and freedom in this very region. History will eventually decide, but it seems today that that war only succeeded in increasing resentment toward the West and retarding the cause of democracy. Now, while the western world is cracking down on the rights of people in Europe and North America, it seems as though the Arab and North African world is giving us a lesson in how to wage freedom.

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Movie Friday: The American religion

Hate is not a word I like to throw around lightly. Talking about ‘hatred’ for a group of people in the sense of “hate speech” or “hate crimes” somewhat diffuses individual responsibility, and is a reasonable descriptor; however, I am loath to say that a person is deserving of hate. I am irritated by creationists. I disagree with and oppose the beliefs of conservatives. I dislike certain individuals, sometimes strongly, but I would rarely go so far as to say that I hate anyone.

I hate the people in this video:

It’s hard not to see these people as a pack of braying dogs, mouth foaming as they corner innocent prey. These are people who have been led so blindly astray by the malicious lie of “American exceptionalism” and a conservative revisionist history (one in where the United States is a Christian, rather than a secular country), that they feel justified in persecuting people based on their personal beliefs. The chant of “go back home” simply reveals their deep-seated racism, which has been allowed to slip its leash because of rampant anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment that equates Islam with terrorism.

I am sure that those holding the reins of the Tea Party (or perhaps the leashes is a more apt metaphor in this case) will tut-tut and say what a shame it is that certain individuals do hateful things, but that people are just scared and you have to understand their fear. The politicians you hear speaking in this video are the authors of that fear, using it to whip up unthinking support for a political agenda that will leave most of their followers worse off than they are now. It’s straight out of Orwell – create a stereotyped enemy, sow seeds of dissent and hatred against that enemy, and then quietly screw the masses while they are distracted in their hatred.

This is the ugliest side of mankind, and it will persist as long as those at the top can continue to galvanize those on the bottom in hatred against “the other”.

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U.S. shows its hypocrisy over free speech

Sadly, with this whole free speech thing, sometimes this is what it looks like when your side wins:

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a grieving father’s pain over mocking protests at his Marine son’s funeral must yield to First Amendment protections for free speech. All but one justice sided with a fundamentalist church that has stirred outrage with raucous demonstrations contending God is punishing the military for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. The 8-1 decision in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., was the latest in a line of court rulings that, as Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opinion for the court, protects “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

Yeah… fuck. Possibly the worst scum of the earth, Fred Phelps, has been granted a landslide license from the Supreme Court of the United States to picket military and private funerals, spreading his ludicrous doctrine. In the name of free speech, he’s allowed to cause widespread suffering to grieving families who have done nothing to deserve such hateful condemnation from a group of people they’ve never met.

I’ve never been less happy to win.

Nate Phelps, estranged son of Fred Phelps and director of Centre For Inquiry’s Calgary branch is, understandably, opposed to this ruling:

It has been my contention all along that protesting at a funeral is unconscionable. For the Court to give greater consideration to Free Speech, at the expense of a citizen’s right to bury a loved one in peace, is a dangerous travesty of justice… If ever there was a just reason to limit the time and place that a person can exercise their First Amendment right to free speech, this would be it.

I admire Nate a great deal, and his journey away from his family cannot have been an easy one. Forever being known as the son of that crazy hate preacher must be incredibly tiresome. It is therefore with some trepidation that I must disagree with him in principle. First of all, there is no law in the national constitution or any state constitution that grants an explicit right to bury a loved one in peace. To be sure, privacy isn’t a guaranteed or delineated right in the US Constitution either, so there is an argument that can be made over explicit and implicit rights. However, an implicit right cannot trump an explicit one, and the right of free speech is an explicit one. While it is certainly not a good thing to picket funerals, the rule of law dictates that we must prioritize rights that are codified over those that we wish were codified.

Secondly, there are far better reasons to curtail the right of free expression. From the government’s perspective, vibrant and wholesale protestation of the actions of government officials is dangerous. It could in fact be dangerous to the safety of citizens to have certain ideas made public or encouraged openly. Curtailing that kind of free speech would be far more justified than telling a tiny group of zealots that they’re not allowed to wave ugly signs at a funeral. However, the government is specifically enjoined from banning such demonstrations of lawful speech, and so by the literal interpretation of the law, the WBC slides in.

That being said, since the United States government is more than happy to curtail even legitimate free speech, it seems incredibly hypocritical of them to give the WBC a pass. Apparently it doesn’t violate the constitution to lock political protesters into fenced-off areas, but when those protesters are only harassing innocent civilians, it’s an 8-1 matter for the SCOTUS? Not to mention that since the content of the protests are personal in nature, a legitimate argument could be made that these protests are tantamount to criminal harassment, which is against the law. Not to mention the fact that even if they are not harassment, they are certainly disturbing the peace (another crime). It seems as though these protests can be moved on other legal grounds.

But of course, it is definitely too much to expect consistency from the United States. Free speech is a fundamental right! Well, unless it’s speech we don’t like:

The US army has filed 22 new charges against the soldier accused of leaking thousands of classified documents published by the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning is facing life in prison if found guilty to the charges which include aiding the enemy. Manning, 23, had previously faced a host of charges including downloading and transmitting to an unauthorised person a classified video of a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters employees.

I am well aware that Private Manning has broken military law and is subject to prosecution as a result. However, his ongoing imprisonment and his treatment as a hostile combatant is both cruel and unusual (there’s that pesky constitution again!). Considering that “the enemy” hasn’t been defined, and that Private Manning didn’t release the information to any specific foreign government or terrorist group, the charge of “aiding the enemy” is as ridiculous as it is transparently a ploy to torture someone who caught the US government with its pants down.

While politics, particularly (it seems) in the United States, is a breeding ground for hypocrisy, this kind of double-speak is particularly egregious. Free speech is important to uphold for hate groups who persecute grieving families, but speak against the government and your rights under the constitution are shredded. Land of the free and home of the brave indeed…

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Flirting with free speech

There’s an interesting wrinkle in the debate over free speech, which has to do with the issue of truth. If I say that Stephen Harper is the worst Prime Minister we’ve ever had, that falls under the category of political criticism and opinion, which is protected speech. However, if I say that Stephen Harper raped a 12 year-old girl in 1997, that falls under the auspices of defamation and is punishable under law (where I would have to produce some evidence or face a legal repercussion). Both of these things are reasonable statutes – while we should be allowed to criticize our political leaders (and each other), it would certainly be harmful to society as a whole if people were allowed to level damaging accusations at each other without restraint.

There is, however, a large middle ground where the line between these two things blurs. If I say, for example, that Stephen Harper seems to me like a guy who would rape a 12 year-old child, that’s still my opinion, but it’s definitely defamatory. What if someone tells me that they heard that Stephen Harper did something like that, and I repeat their lie based on faulty information? Is that my fault? What if I am a prominent public figure? Does my position as an opinion leader impart on me some responsibility to check into the factuality of claims that I make before I repeat them?

What about if instead of being a singular opinion leader, I am a news organization? Do I have a duty, both to the public and to the rule of law, to ensure that the things that I report are based in fact? The CRTC seems to think so:

The CRTC has withdrawn a controversial proposal that would have given TV and radio stations more leeway to broadcast false or misleading news. Indeed, the broadcast regulator now says it never wanted the regulatory change in the first place and was only responding to orders from a parliamentary committee. The committee last week quietly withdrew its request for regulatory amendments in the face of a public backlash.

The CRTC has been in the news quite a bit recently for its approach to telecommunications, the Fox News North issue, and now once again for its withdrawal of its own proposal over false news.

There are two issues to consider with this move. First, it is notoriously difficult to establish a standard for “truth” outside the realm of science. If we look at what is happening in Libya right now, it is both a populist uprising against a brutal dictator, and a band of anti-government rebels using unlawful force against the legitimate ruler of the country. Both of those completely contradictory claims are completely true, depending on the editorial position one takes. How could one determine which of these claims, if made from a media outlet, would be considered “false or misleading”? Are the Democrats in Wisconsin bravely refusing to capitulate to an over-reaching and clearly corrupt governor, or are they fleeing the legitimate government and abdicating the legislative role they vowed to uphold? Again, these are both completely true claims, and if station A adheres to the first, while station B trumpets the second, which one is lying? Both? Neither?

The second issue to keep in mind is that, thus far, this has never been an issue in Canada. The CRTC has never had to prosecute or fine a television or radio station for broadcasting false or misleading news. There’s a great diversity of opinion among the various outlets, save for the fact that we don’t have an outlet that specifically caters to the bizarro-nut right wing (we also don’t have one that caters specifically to the bizarro-nut left wing, if that helps). It’s a sort of non-issue that, if the CRTC is to be believed, was raised about 10 years ago (before the days of the Harper government) and was quietly shelved for most of that time. Given that there’s never been a challenge to the ruling, it’s hard to claim that this is an unreasonable restriction of free speech.

These two issues aside, there is still an underlying conflict at the centre of free speech when it comes to truth. Since truth is always a shifting target outside of science, banning false or misleading news is a tricky issue. By any objective standard of truth that we could agree on as a society, religious statements are all false and misleading, as are ghost stories and UFO sightings. Clearly we are not comfortable banning those statements. What do we do when someone does make a blatantly false claim in a news outlet, given that we have no precedent? While we can trumpet “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” until the cows come home, can we turn that into a general rule for the state to follow? Or must we let the liars continue to lie, with our only recourse being to counter their false speech with true speech?

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I so very much want to believe!

The title alone probably caused a few heart attacks from the atheists who visit the site from Twitter or Facebook – please rest assured I am not talking about a deity. No, I am referring once again to the important thing that is happening. The Middle East and northern Africa are still up in arms over the protests and changes in power, and we are starting to see some of the political fallout of these actions.

Libya is still on fire

At least 30 civilians have been killed after security forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, Libyan leader, attempted to retake the rebel-held town of Az Zawiyah, near the capital Tripoli, that has for days been defying his rule, witnesses have said. The rebellion in Az Zawiyah – the closest rebel-held territory to the capital and also the site of an oil refinery – has been an embarassment to the Libyan authorities who are trying to show they control at least the west of the country. Eastern regions of the country, around the city of Benghazi, have already fallen out of Gaddafi’s control after a popular revolt against his four decades of rule.

Widespread fighting is happening all across Libya. What makes the situation in Libya much different from Egypt or Tunisia is the fact that the pro-government forces (including part of the military) are unashamedly attacking Libyan civilians, and the anti-government forces are responding in kind. This has the potential to turn into a civil war (although MSNBC’s Richard Engel points out that a civil war is really defined by civilian forces attacking other civilian forces, which is not really the case here… yet), with the “People’s Army” arming itself and rising violently against the government. Attempts by the government to retake eastern cities has been largely unsucessful, and the anti-government protests appear to have hit Gaddafi’s stronghold in Tripoli.

While I would very much like to believe that once the army has overthrown Gaddafi they will divest themselves of their arms and stand for peaceful elections. There is not a lot of precedent for “people’s armies” doing anything other than installing themselves as a new regime, and perpetrating the same evils of the old regime on a different group of people. One can only hope that the international community shows some uncharacteristic restraint and doesn’t listen to idiots like Joseph Liebermann and John McCain, who want to arm and train the rebels. Yeah, because that strategy’s never failed before…

Egypt’s new Prime Minister is pledging democratic reform

Egypt’s new Prime Minister, Essam Sharaf, has pledged to meet the demands for democratic change sought by protesters, and to resign if he fails. He made the comments in an address before thousands gathered at Cairo’s Tahrir Square before Friday prayers. The former transport minister told the crowds that he drew his “will and determination” from the people. Mr Sharaf replaced Ahmed Shafiq, who was appointed in the dying days of the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Essam Sharaf is an interesting guy, who I have some hope for. Unlike many of his contemporaries in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen, Sharaf didn’t just suddenly discover his taste for democratic reform once the people began calling for politicians’ heads on pikes. He’s been a critic of the Mubarak government for a few years, which lends him a great deal of credibility in my eyes. The trick to democratic reform is that you cannot guarantee that the outcome will be what you like. Sharaf seems to understand this, and is pressing for democratic reform anyway. However, a lot can happen in between now and August, when the current provisional government has been ordered to step down.

I would very much like to believe that Egypt, a state with a strong secular history and many Western ties, can implement a real democratic state following constitutional reforms. The forbearance of the army during the popular uprising strongly suggests to me that they are not interested in grabbing power from the people, but instead are invested in returning Egypt to a state of relative peace and stability. Only time will tell though.

Tunisia is talking about elections

Tunisia’s interim president Fouad Mebazaa has announced details of new elections promised after the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Mr Mebazaa said voting for a council of representatives to rewrite the constitution would be held by 24 July. He said a new interim government would run the country until then.

This is even more encouraging, because an actual date has been set. I react viscerally and negatively to any “plans” that are made without concrete details. When someone says “we should hang out sometime” or “someone should do this” or “yeah, Ian, best sex ever, I’ll call you sometime”, I immediately write off that statement (and, sometimes, the person making it). President Mebazaa has made a definitive date for new governmental elections. Good thing, right? Well…

The political confusion has been compounded by the constitutional provision limiting a caretaker president to 60 days in office, he adds. Mr Mebazaa has argued that, since the current constitution no longer has any credibility, he will stay in office beyond the limit. In his speech, he said the constitution “no longer reflects the aspirations of the people after the revolution”.

This, this, this, THIS is how it starts. First, a politician says that he is taking “temporary” power. Second, he claims to represent the will of “the people”. Third, he says that the rules of the constitution (or whatever document) do not apply in this unique situation. Fourth, he declares himself to have emergency powers until the state of _________ has been resolved, after which he will call for free elections. Fifth, the state of emergency is constantly renewed, meaning that no elections ever take place. Sixth, free speech criticizing the seizing of power is branded as seditious and treasonous, and political opposition is therefore outlawed. Seventh, meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

I want very much to believe that democratic states can foster in the Middle East and northern Africa. I’d love to see the same spirit of peaceful and organized protest carry forward into a secular state that respects free speech and individual human rights. But, as with all things, I am extremely skeptical.

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Religion’s double-edged sword cuts through Libya

One of my (several) major problems with religious faith, particularly that faith which is based on scripture, is that it can be used to justify or condemn just about any action. Like a fortune cookie, a Tarot card reading or an astrological prediction, scripture is vague and contradictory enough that a wide variety of interpretations can be said to have equal validity. It is for this reason that people as day-and-night different as Shelby Spong and Fred Phelps can both call themselves “Christian” and claim to be “followers of Christ”. They have both read the same document diligently and came out with wildly different interpretations, both of which they can defend with equal fervor.

It is for this reason that a government that is based on religion is pretty much guaranteed to get caught in its own hypocrisy – not because religious people are inherently hypocritical but because the scriptures do nothing more than give the illusion of divine justification for one’s a priori decisions. Moammar Gaddafi is learning this lesson:

Violence flared up even before the Friday sermons were over, according to a source in Tripoli. “People are rushing out of mosques even before Friday prayers are finished because the state-written sermons were not acceptable, and made them even more angry,” the source said.

Libyan state television aired one such sermon on Friday, in an apparent warning to protesters. “As the Prophet said, if you dislike your ruler or his behaviour, you should not raise your sword against him, but be patient, for those who disobey the rulers will die as infidels,” the speaker told his congregation in Tripoli

Contrast this state-sponsored co-opting of religion, not to mention Gaddafi’s full-throated endorsement of an Islamic Europe, with what he said in a long, rambling, and mostly incoherent speech last week:

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has said in a speech on Libyan state television that al-Qaeda is responsible for the uprising in Libya. “It is obvious now that this issue is run by al-Qaeda,” he said, speaking by phone from an unspecified location on Thursday. He said that the protesters were young people who were being manipulated by al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden, and that many were doing so under the influence of drugs.

So when Islam is used as justification for his continued reign, it is a good and useful thing. However, when it is used as justification for violence (as is al-Qaeda’s whole reason for being), it is a bad thing. Mosques are to spread pro-government propaganda as decreed by Allah, but are to be bombed when used against the government, supposedly under the same authority. It should be stated unequivocally that there is no truth to Gaddafi’s assertion, or at least no evidence to support it. Given that he is becoming crazier and more disconnected from reality, it is probably wise to just assume that everything he says is a self-serving lie.

The tragic thing in all of this, aside from the thousands of people dead and the thousands more injured by pro-government forces and foreign mercenaries, is that both sides are claiming that Allah favours their cause rather than the other. It means that no matter what the outcome, it is because of Allah, rather than placing the credit (and blame) where it firmly belongs – on the people of Libya.

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The more things change…

For someone with a more than passing interest in politics, religion and human rights, my cup doth overflow this week with stuff to talk about. I am hoping to group this week’s posts thematically so as not to completely drown you in my random thoughts, but if my threads aren’t clear please forgive me – I am doing my best.

I am not an expert in international law or foreign relations (“and the ‘Understatement of the Year’ award goes to…“), but I knew that the protests in Egypt were going to be a big deal. What I didn’t for a moment suspect is that they would explode in the way they have, turning much of the Arab world on its heels in a way that, to my knowledge, has no precedent. Of course my attention, along with the rest of the world’s, has moved from Egypt to Libya where things have taken a much more frantic and vitriolic turn. However, when I got a chance to step back from the rah-rah pro-democracy feeling I had about what’s happening, I realized that there’s a much more interesting picture happening.

The more things change…

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention (and you really should be), Libya has been completely turned upside down:

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s long-standing ruler, has reportedly lost control of more cities as anti-government protests continue to sweep the African nation despite his threat of a brutal crackdown. Protesters in Misurata said on Wednesday they had wrested the western city from government control. In a statement on the internet, army officers stationed in the city pledged “total support for the protesters”. Much of the country’s east also seemed to be in control of the protesters, and an Al Jazeera correspondent, reporting from the city of Tobruk, 140km from the Egyptian border, said there was no presence of security forces

Libya has an interesting political layout. In the stereotypical style of a warlord, Gaddafi was able to unite a number of tribes under one banner that was formerly ruled by a monarch. Libya has no constitution per se, instead purportedly relying on the general will of the people to govern itself. However, in reality it has been a dictatorship that is only egalitarian on paper. There is a significant east/west divide, based on historical tribal affiliations, now punctuated by the dictator’s strongholds in the western city of Tripoli standing in opposition to the bastion of the anti-government movement based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

The take-home message of all of this is that eastern Libya (which, perhaps coincidentally, shares a border with Egypt) is out of government control. Not only has Gaddafi lost control of the eastern cities, but his power base is rapidly crumbling:

Libyan diplomats across the world have either resigned in protest at the use of violence against citizens, or renounced Gaddafi’s leadership, saying that they stand with the protesters. Late on Tuesday night, General Abdul-Fatah Younis, the country’s interior minister, became the latest government official to stand down, saying that he was resigning to support what he termed as the “February 17 revolution”

While I have to express a little bit of skepticism at the true motivation behind these resignations and sudden allegiance to the protesters, the short-term result is that Gaddafi is finding himself more and more without allies.

Libya isn’t the only place facing major changes as result of protest:

Algeria’s cabinet has adopted an order to lift a 19-year-old state of emergency in a concession designed to avoid the tide of uprisings sweeping the Arab world, but protesters said the measure did not go far enough. A draft law approved by the cabinet would repeal the emergency law as soon as it is published in the government’s official journal, the official Algerie Presse Service reported on Wednesday. Ending the emergency powers was one of the demands voiced by opposition groups which have been staging weekly protests in the Algerian capital that sought to emulate uprisings in Egypt and neighbouring Tunisia.

These “emergency powers” are nearly always problematic, especially in countries with a weak opposition party. To exist in a state of emergency for 19 years is essentially the government’s way of cracking down on all opposition and adopting a sort of “l’état, c’est moi” approach to governance wherein the political rulers conflate themselves with the entire country – political dissent thereby becomes treason. Seemingly inspired by what’s been happening in neighbouring countries, Algerians have pushed the government to release their grip in an effort to save their state control. They’ve also passed a number of economic measures designed to stimulate the private sector (which makes my inner capitalist very happy). We’ll see if it goes far enough to placate the people, who may not stop until they have achieved the same kind of wholesale change being demanded in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and their other African neighbours.

…the more they stay the same

It is incredibly tempting to see these protests as the dawning of a new era of Western-style democracy in the Middle East, but such a conclusion would be incredibly naive. The region doesn’t have a history of democratic rule, and has far too much foreign entanglement to simply start afresh. One of the most sensitive entanglements is that of the United States:

In finally supporting the Tahrir experiment, President Obama was, in effect, pledging to end decades of American hypocrisy in its policies towards the Middle East and larger Muslim world. But in order to live up to this promise he will have to develop one set of policies for all the peoples and countries of the region. And doing that will demand an even more costly break with the past, putting old allies at arm’s length until they respect the rights of their peoples while embracing, however tentatively, groups that once seemed more easily characterised as, if not quite foes, then at least untrustworthy partners in securing American interests.

Unless the United States (and the West in general) suddenly becomes uncharacteristically non-interventionalist and allows these protests to reach their equilibrium on their own, there is a real risk that after a brief and bloody insurrection, the status quo will simply re-emerge and the region will simply exchange one set of dictatorial rulers for another. This, sadly, seems to be the case in Egypt:

Egypt’s key portfolios of defence, interior, foreign, finance and justice were unchanged in a cabinet reshuffle, state television confirmed. The list of new ministers that was presented on Tuesday included changing the veteran oil minister, as well as introducing politicians who had been opposed to the rule of Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down from office after widespread protests. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who leads the ruling military council and has been defence minister for about 20 years, took the new ministers’ oaths of office.

But the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s biggest opposition group, said the new cabinet showed that Mubarak’s “cronies” still controlled the country’s politics. “This new cabinet is an illusion,” Essam el-Erian, a senior Brotherhood member, said. “It pretends it includes real opposition but in reality this new government puts Egypt under the tutelage of the West.”

One must be aware of the fact that these criticisms come from the Muslim Brotherhood, which does not support democratic rule, and any pro-democracy politicians could be considered “under the tutelage of the West”. Given that the entire direction of this movement is balancing on a knife edge, the only way to ensure there is no backlash against Europe and America is to stay the hell away from the whole situation, and encourage the protesters to decide their own path.

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