Movie Friday: The Christian Right in Canada

We can no longer afford to believe the lie that Canada is immune from the religious fervour that is ruining the United States.

It’s happening here too.

What can we expect when the Christian Right takes over? Goodbye free speech when it comes to discussion of religion. Goodbye freedom of religion (obviously). Goodbye personal freedoms of many kinds, as well as gay rights and abortion rights. Hello religious tests for political office, creationism in schools, and probably finding a way to throw God into the national anthem a couple more times.

Anyone who says that religion is harmless and is a personal choice that nobody is trying to force on anyone else, I say that you are talking out of your arse sir, and I would like you to teach me to do that trick.

The Pope comes soooo close to getting it right

Richard Dawkins has a really funny line about how Christianity is “better” than Hinduism because it’s much closer to recognizing the actual number of gods; but they overestimate by one. It’s amazing how tantalizingly close you can get to the truth with religion, but fail to make that final leap across the chasm of rationality (to borrow unashamedly from Kierkegaard).

After watching the Catholic church blame isolated pockets of individuals, the media, and finally “the gays” (it always seems to come down to them), Pope Benedict finally came close to actually acknowledging that the systemic sexual abuses taking place in the Catholic Church were the fault of… THE CHURCH:

Critics have previously accused the Vatican of attempting to blame the media and the Church’s opponents for the escalation of the scandal. But the Pope made clear its origin came from within the Church itself, and said forgiveness “does not replace justice”.

I’m not a demagogue. I am completely willing to recognize when someone I disagree with does something noble. Recognizing that the church had a role in the abuse and saying that having God’s forgiveness (note: evidence not shown) does not replace earthly justice is a marvelous and courageous admission. It takes a great deal of humility and respect for others to stand up and say “I have made a mistake, and the fault is mine.”

Which is almost what Benedict did here. Now I am not trying to suggest that Benedict (as his Clark Kent alter-ego, Cardinal Ratzinger)  himself is solely or even primarily responsible for covering up the sexual abuse, although there is evidence to suggest that his office was complicit. I am not expecting him to go out and own up for all of the abuse that’s ever happened in the church. However, there’s one final step that the Pope needs to take if he’s interested in being honest – he needs to stop blaming “Sin”.

Sin is a ridiculous ephemeral concept. It’s a disembodied entity that sneaks into the souls of righteous people and influences their acts. It’s like blaming the devil for possessing you and making you get drunk and beat your kids. Saying that sins within the Church are responsible for its actions is creating a non-corporeal scapegoat. It’s like Jeffy from Family Circus and his ghost pal “Not Me”. You can’t confront “Sin” and take it to task for its actions. You can’t remedy “Sin”. “Sin” is just out there, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

I’m waiting for the pope to recognize that wearing a cloak of impenetrable infallibility is going to lead to corruption. Insisting that the “good of the church” should trump doing the right thing is begging the question – how do you know that what’s good for the church is good for anyone else? What we see over and over is that the more power and secrecy a group has, the bigger the potential for abuse. That isn’t because of “Sin” or because of bad people who sneak in under the radar. It’s the inevitable outcome of an establishment that refuses to play by society’s rules and insists on its own superiority without evidence. The reason the RCC is catching all the attention right now is because it’s the biggest organized religious entity – I’d be shocked to learn it isn’t happening in other places.

As I said, I applaud the Pope for coming close to getting it right. His office’s unrepentant actions immediately following this pseduo-apology are contemptible and I am still no friend of Benedict, but I am willing to recognize when steps are made in the right direction.

Deepak Chopra comes to Vancouver

UPDATE: Write-up of the event and pictures are now posted.

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On Friday, June 4th, our fair city of Vancouver will receive author and spiritual guru Dr. Deepak Chopra, speaking at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre downtown. Vancouver’s Centre for Inquiry will be present before Dr. Chopra’s show on Friday to encourage audience members to think carefully about the claims that Dr. Chopra makes. We will be handing out flyers with some specific information to help get the wheels of thought turning, and answering any questions that we can. Here’s a few answers to questions you might have:

Who is Deepak Chopra?

Dr. Chopra is a trained medical doctor who began practicing transcendental mediation in the 1980s and since then has become a prolific writer and speaker. Some of his favourite topics of discussion are supernatural claims about the human mind, the intelligence of DNA, and the philosophy of “quantum consciousnes” – an attempt to introduce mysticism and metaphysical concepts into quantum physics. As someone with a background in medicine, Dr. Chopra spends a great deal of time discussing how his ideas are applied to human health, including the power of positive belief and the harmonizing of multiple “selves”.

Why are Deepak Chopra’s ideas wrong?

It is important to make the point that not all of Dr. Chopra’s ideas are “wrong” as such. Dr. Chopra advocates expanding human awareness to include the interactions between the body and the mind. Dr. Chopra says that the world is made up of interconnected systems that cannot be fully understood by just looking at one piece of the puzzle. These are perfectly reasonable ideas – human existence and the world in general are more complicated than can be explained by looking at only one facet. However, Dr. Chopra takes these ideas and stretches them far beyond reason, creating entirely unobserved (and indeed, fundamentally unobservable) forces and phenomena. To give credibility to these ideas, he borrows phrases from various scientific and pseudo-scientific concepts and attempts to explain them that way.

  • Quantum consciousness

“If you go to the very fundamental levels of activity in nature, you find that nature is a discontinuity; and even though our perception of the universe is that it is continuous, it is in fact going on and off at the speed of light.” – D. Chopra

Dr. Chopra is a great fan of quantum physics, due to its central tenet of uncertainty. Basically, quantum physics posits that at the atomic level it is not possible to determine the absolute position of an electron (incredibly tiny packets of energy that orbit around the nucleus of an atom), only the probability that it will occupy a given space. Furthermore, subatomic particles like electrons seem to “disappear” and “reappear” at different points in their orbits. From this phenomenon (observed, incidentally, using the scientific method), Dr. Chopra concludes that human consciousness exists independently of the “off and on”, and that explanations using forces in the observed world (the “on”) neglect the influence of unobserved things (the “off”). While it sounds like a nice idea, Dr. Chopra is conducting what is known as an “argument from ignorance” – we don’t know how something works, so we bring in supernatural forces as an attempt to “explain” it. The problem with this type of thinking is that any made up idea is equally possible, since there is no way to test it. Is Dr. Chopra’s theory about consciousness correct? We have no way of knowing, since his explanation invents forces that are by definition unknowable. However, in creating a theory for thought and existence based on a flawed understanding of the subatomic world (somewhat similar to saying that we can’t trust election results because we didn’t look at all the brain cells of the individual voters), we can be reasonably sure that whatever the answer to the question of consciousness is, Deepak Chopra doesn’t have it.

  • Biological science

“But arch materialism is just as superstitious as religion. Someone like (Richard) Dawkins still believes there are solid objects randomly colliding to haphazardly form more and more complex objects, until over the course of billions of years the universe produced human DNA with its billions of genetic bits.” – D. Chopra

Dr. Chopra is deeply misinformed when it comes to biology and evolution. Evolution is not the random collision of solid objects, nor is it the random progression from lower levels of complexity to increased levels of complexity. Evolution refers to the process by which forces in the external environment (for example, food shortages or changes in weather patterns) seem to “favour” certain expression of genetic mutations in a species’ population, leading to increased reproductive success of some individuals. Evolution is a process which has been observed in daily life (for example, antibiotic-resistant bacteria), in human history (the selective breeding of certain types of plants to make hardier fruits and vegetables, the domestication of dogs from the wolf), and natural history (patterns of types of life seen in fossil records). Since we know evolution to be certainly true, it is a useful way to hypothesize the origins of life on Earth without needing to rely on other explanations for which there is less (or no) empirical proof.

  • The human mind

“It’s my personal conviction that the brain was created by consciousness. There is no other viable explanation, because our current explanation, that the human brain evolved through random mutations, simply doesn’t hold water.” – D. Chopra

Once again, Dr. Chopra is deeply misinformed about the way that the brain and mind work. While he holds personal convictions that the brain is the creation of a “mind” process, he offers no evidence to support it other than the fact that it’s more complicated than he can understand. The problem with using the argument from ignorance is that you’re not allowed to simply invent whatever explanation you want. Most of us don’t know (in fullness) how the stock market works. We are more than happy to accept our ignorance and talk about the actions of “the market”, which is a euphamism for an incredibly complicated system. Many would agree that nobody really knows why “the market” does what it does. We are happy to use this slang term, understanding that it stands for the input of millions of people operating for any number of different reasons. Dr. Chopra would have us believe that “the market” is a real entity that exists beyond the observable world and influences the price of stocks. Would you trust an investment broker who told you that concentrating your positive thoughts on “the market” will cause your stock prices to change? Probably not. Once again, Deepak Chopra doesn’t have real answers to the complicated questions that make up the universe.

Why do we care about Deepak Chopra?

If he’s just another kook with wacky ideas, why bother paying him any attention at all? Why not just let him sell his books and have his talks? The problem is, he’s not just another kook. Deepak Chopra’s books sell millions of copies. He is featured frequently on the Huffington Post and on Oprah’s website. Tickets for this Friday’s event range from $115 to $200 per person. He is taking millions of dollars from people and giving them falsehoods in return. He is taking the hard work of dedicated scientists, doctors, and legitimate philosophers and distorting them to sell merchandise. In any other field we would call such a practice fraud. However, because of his high profile and the elusive nature of his claims, we instead call it “alternative medicine” or “mysticism”.

Because of his celebrity, people trust Deepak Chopra without closely examining the things he says. Since most people don’t completely understand quantum physics, biology, neurology, or medicine, they fail to see the glaring holes in the logic of Dr. Chopra’s claims. When he tells people that their bodies are products of their consciousness, that disease is an imbalance between the consciousness and the body, and that problems like cancer can be fixed with positive thinking, people trust that he knows what he is talking about. However, Dr. Chopra has no evidence whatsoever that the things he says are true. They might be (although with his flawed understanding of science, they likely aren’t), but he has offered no reasons to support them, merely relying on the fact that “we don’t know everything”. People abandon the treatments where the risks and benefits are known and have been tested for a system of thought which makes it your fault if you are sick and don’t get better. This is wildly unethical and totally ineffective.

Deepak Chopra in Vancouver

As skeptics, we think it’s important to challenge the pseudoscience and outright falsehoods that will be foisted on the audience on Friday. While Dr. Chopra has made his dislike for skeptics and scientific inquiry quite clear, on more than one occasion in fact, it is clear that like quantum physics, biology, neurology, and human physiology, Dr. Chopra is profoundly mistaken (or indeed misinformed) about what skepticism actually is. Far from merely being nay-sayers who villify those who “peer into the unknown” (many skeptics are astronomers, the archetype for peering into the unknown), skeptics are those who encourage the deliberate and careful appraisal of things we see in the world.

Skeptics know that the universe is a complex and beautiful place, filled with profound questions and mysteries. Human beings are curious and want real answers to those questions, and have discovered a method for discovering useful and practical explanations for many of these quandaries. It is by the application of this method, for example, that we know the cause of infectious disease isn’t an imbalance of bile; or a flux of “humours”; or the will of the wrathful gods. This method allowed us to travel to the moon, rather than seeing it as a giant eye that opens and closes once a month. This method produced computers, medicine, electricity, food, and any number of the things we take for granted that make our daily lives possible. It is by this method, and by this method alone, that we can separate facts from fiction. We observe, we test, we try to disprove, and at the end of this process we make our decisions based on what we see to be true. It is the skeptical position that claims about the universe, about the mind, about human health, about anything in the natural world should be subject to the same type of scrutiny that we use for anything else.

If, like us, you believe that science and medicine get the best results when they are based on evidence, not simply ideas dressed up in “sciency” clothes; if you want to see people given real answers to the fundamental questions of the universe; if you think that people with flawed ideas shouldn’t be allowed to take money from unsuspecting people, please join us on Friday as we try to encourage people to THINK about what’s being said. We’re starting at the Vancouver Public Library, and will be passing out flyers and answering questions between 6:00 and 7:30 as people arrive for the show.

It’s not all doom and gloom here at the Manifesto

I’ve been pretty critical and negative for the past couple of weeks, so I thought I’d clear the air with some more things that make me happy.

(WARNING: Pun ahead). This is the kind of international conflict I can sink my teeth into. I’ll pause for a moment until you stop splitting your sides with laughter at my hilarious jokes.

…

Done yet?

Okay, good.

Apparently in between bombings and incursions into each other’s national territory, Israel and Lebanon have been waging a delicious war to see who can make the most hummus (a delicious chick pea-based spread/dip). I’m all for international rivalries, so long as they’re peaceful and fun like this one. Competition makes us strive to be better. There’s no ethical or philosophical point to be made here, it just made me chuckle.

Muslims are exhorted to pray 5 times a day at specific times. A muezzin calls them to prayer at those times from a loudpseaker at the mosque. Apparently though, some muezzins in Turkey weren’t quite up to scratch, pitch and tone-wise. So the city’s religious affairs officer arranged to get the more egregious offenders singing lessons. I am anti-religious, and I make no apologies for that. However, I realize that not everyone shares my belief that religion should be (or can realistically be) completely abolished. The trick is to find a way to make religious practice more tolerable for everyone, and subsume religious identification in favour of secular identification and obligation. This is at least a step along the right path. Although, now that I think about it, it makes religious practice easier to do… dammit!

Metropole is a club in the area where downtown meets Gastown (incidentally, only a few blocks from where I live). That area (referred to as the Downtown East Side or DTES) has a major drug problem. In addition to being a city with a large homeless population, drugs run through the DTES like mad. Main and Hastings is Vancouver’s Jane/Finch equivalent – low income, high crime, lots of drug use (without the benefit of York University being there). Donnelly Nightclubs is a major group that owns a lot of restaurants, pubs and clubs around metro Vancouver. They (Donnelly) just purchased the Met and are turning it from its seedy roots into a more upscale place. “Gentrification!” the cry goes out. Here’s the cool part: 25% of the annual Metropole profits are earmarked for local charities, including the Vancouver Food Bank and the DTES Women’s Center. It gives me warm and fuzzy feelings when companies show social responsibility and reinvest in the community. Yeah, so it’s all a big PR stunt that makes people look the other way as Donnelly consolidates its grip on the hospitality market. You know who doesn’t care? The single mother who gets food for her kids and job counselling for free from the charity groups supported by rich people’s drinking habits.

So yeah, things do penetrate my heart of stone and put a hop back in my step.

Sodomy laws are sooooo gay!

You might remember last week when I talked about a Malaysian politician who has been charged with violating the country’s sodomy laws. For good measure, I mocked the ridiculous attitude of religious bigots in that week’s edition of Movie Friday. It seems that things aren’t getting any better for LGBT people around the world.

Oh Malawi, why do you insist on being such a stupid, backwards country? When you’re not busy protesting the striking down of polygamy laws, you’re prosecuting people for doing what comes naturally to them (under the excuse that it’s unnatural – there’s a head-spinner for you). What exactly constitutes an ‘unnatural’ act? Is driving a car ‘natural’? How about flossing? Am I at risk of being sentenced to 14 years in prison for eating processed cheese (because as you know, nothing could be less ‘natural’ than an individually packaged “cheese” slice that tastes like the wrapper it comes in)? No, it seems that the violation of ‘natural law’ is centred all on where you put your penis. Putting your penis in multiple women under the guise of “sheltering” them is completely natural, apparently, but as soon as it comes near another dude… WATCH OUT!

Of course this is being done for religious reasons, as the Bible likes to think it is very clear on what God thinks about gay people. Again, when religion is done in the privacy of one’s home, I suppose it can be tolerated. However, when people are being put in jail because of a religious prescript rather than because they’ve actually… oh I don’t know… harmed someone, you can’t pretend that religious belief is a good thing for society.

Of course… it could apparently be worse. I don’t know if you click on these links, but this one is a video link that talks about Uganda’s attitude towards homosexuals. It’s pretty frightening. My favourite part is when they talk to Pastor Martin Semper (sic). He gives us little gems of the love and tolerance of the teachings of Jesus like this one:

“Muslims are taking over your country! Your children stuff themselves! You laugh about it! I beg you, abandon sodomy!”

I love the reaction of the reporter, John Simpson who calls him out on it: “This is an act!” Apparently Pastor Marty weeps every time he talks about sodomy. Soooomebody’s been watching Glenn Beck.

Joking aside, Uganda is currently debating legislation that would make it a capital offense (that means state-sponsored execution) to be gay. It is, of course, religious – just like Malawi, Uganda is predominantly Christian. Wait a minute – isn’t Christianity supposed to be the tolerant religion? It’s almost as though any time you allow superstition and nonsense beliefs to dominate politics, you end up with brutal, evil totalitarian states! Weird how that happens…

Not wanting to be left out of the bigotry Olympics, Asia has thrown its hat into the ring. According to a UN report, 19 out of the 48 countries examined have laws against homosexuality ranging from imprisonment to corporal punishment (beatings, whippings) and death. Do you know what happens when you criminalize something? It still happens, just illicitly, and in a less safe manner. When you take away condoms and HIV education and counseling, you don’t stop HIV – you make it worse. How is it that we are unable to see that enforcing a narrow morality, often with its origin in a specific interpretation of religious text, only makes the problem worse? If we want to stop AIDS, making it illegal to be gay (because, as everyone knows, only gay guys get AIDS, and no “straight” men ever have sex with other men and then go home to their wives) is about the biggest backward step you can take.

Of course, we must protect the sanctity of marriage, like the Japanese have done. As everyone knows, marriage is a sacred contract between a man, a woman, and the Kokoro robotics corporation. I’m waiting for the Christians to start protesting this ‘unnatural’ abomination in the eyes of YahwAlladdha – but I’m not holding my breath. What’s hilarious, of course, is that while Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality, he had quite a bit to say about hypocrisy. But it’s probably too much to ask religious people to actually read their own scripture… right?

Who am I to talk about race?

I had a conversation with a friend recently who said something to the effect that the reason people don’t object to my discussions about race and race issues is because I am black. Specifically, they don’t want to express any disagreement they may have with me because my status as a minority means I get to set the rules, and disagreement would look like racism. While I don’t think his/her statement was accurate in the specific case of people who read this blog (who are, for the moment, predominantly personal friends of mine or people who get here from comments I leave around the internet that link here), he/she may have a point for the population in general. It may be that nobody wants to disagree with a black guy about racial stuff because they don’t want to look hateful.

I would honestly hope that isn’t the case for me. I have been trying my best to lay out the reasons for why I think what I do, and provide evidence (wherever possible, or at least corroborating opinions) to back my beliefs up. As I do with my discussions of free speech, religion, and other important topics, I try to lay out a case for where my opinions come from. I provide and encourage a forum for people to disagree with me, and engage in robust discussion.

Be that as it may, there may still be people who disagree with me, but won’t say anything. I want to take this opportunity to explain where I’m coming from in all of this, and what my “qualifications” are to talk about race.

1. Being black doesn’t make you an expert on race

I grew up in mostly white communities. I went to a Catholic elementary school in which I was the only black kid in the class, of 2 in my grade. I went to a high school in a program where there weren’t a lot of black kids in my classes. I went to university in Waterloo, Ontario and did my graduate degree in Kingston, Ontario – neither town is exactly known for its large population of black folks. I now live in Vancouver, BC – again, not a bustling African Diaspora metropolis. My life and upbringing are about as far from the stereotypical black experience (at least the one that makes it into popular media) as you can get. There are white and Asian kids who know far more than I ever will about growing up in the “black” parts of the city – “growing up black”. I self-identify as a black person, despite this upbringing. Being black does not mean being “urban” – there are countless different “black experiences” that are all equally valid.

2. I don’t have an academic background in race, psychology, or anthropology

I took a handful of courses in undergrad, mostly for personal interest, in psych. I did a lot of private reading about philosophy and books with black characters. I’ve seen Roots a bunch of times. I don’t have what you would call a robust academic background. If pressed for specifics, I would be quickly overrun by anyone who is 2 years into a bachelor’s degree in social psych, or anyone who’s been to a historically black college for just about any subject. Nothing in my academic history makes me any kind of expert.

3. I can’t claim to speak for black people

My upbringing does not give me some magical authority to speak on behalf of all black people. I don’t know a lot of black people, to be honest. As noted earlier, I didn’t grow up around a lot of black kids. Most of the black kids I do know had childhoods similar to mine. Even now as an adult I am not deeply entrenched in “the black community”, which I say in quotations because it’s entirely mythical. Black people, like tall people, or Greek people, or people born in the 80s, do not have “a community” except insofar as we recognize when issues affect us all. People group themselves by any number of arbitrary (or non-arbitrary) characteristics. The larger the group, the more difficult it is to point to any one person and say “(s)he represents what we all think.” I cannot, nor will I, claim to be able to speak on behalf of anyone except myself, and perhaps a few of my friends.

So what the hell am I talking for?

There are two main factors that make me at least somewhat qualified to speak about these issues, and that make my opinions at least worth listening to.

The first of these is my racial heritage. While I self-identify as black, it is more mathematically accurate to say I am half black and half white. Of course the whole idea of anyone being half of something implies that it is possible to be pure something, and that idea is as unscientific as it is offensive. As I said above, I spent most of my life as a self-identifying black person among white people. When I got older and went out of my way to make black friends, I found myself feeling “not black enough”, or at least not as black as those who had been around other black people their whole lives. This experience gave me a unique perspective: I can look at race from an entirely outside perspective, having a foot in either camp but a home in neither. I will never know what it is like to be a non-black person, and I won’t even pretend to be able to speak on behalf of white people, but I have spent most of my life in white company, and have shared some very interesting and revealing conversations with my white friends about race.

The second factor in my qualifications is that I am happy and eager to talk about race and racial issues. I relish robust discussion. While I am constantly worried that I will get something horribly wrong and my position might get twisted to suggest that I want racial supremacy or segregation or something of the sort, I am willing to deal with that fear. I find often, in my conversations with all kinds of people, that as soon as racial issues come up, people immediately shut down and refuse to speak for fear of being misconstrued. I might not like hearing ignorance, but I won’t condemn someone for saying what’s on their mind. It’s only through open, honest and vigorous discussion that important issues become resolved. Ignoring them is not helping.

What my whole history has made me is the kind of person you want talking about race. From a black perspective I have at least somewhat informed ideas, and can get in touch intuitively with those things that resonate with the general population of black people. From a non-black perspective I am someone who understands a bit what it’s like to look at racial groups from an outsider’s perspective, and so won’t immediately get my back up whenever someone says something impolitic. From both sides I am a skeptic and a scientific observer whose criterion for the value of an idea or theory is results rather than whatever makes people feel good.

This kind of reads like a self-congratulatory piece, and it is not intended in that way. In any issue, there needs to be a number of different voices articulating different sides. I like to think that my role in this is to give people the vocabulary and the tools which allow them the courage to speak about their perspective on race and racial issues.

A number of people have said to me that they’re glad to see someone talking about this, since they don’t feel qualified to do so themselves. That’s nice to hear, but you’d have to work pretty hard to be less qualified than me, and it won’t take that much effort to surpass me. Everyone has a position or an opinion about race, even if it’s just to say “racial issues don’t play much of a role in my day-to-day life.” We shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it, and if my essays help spur a discussion, then I’m happy to continue to write them. As I’ve consistently said (and will continue to say), the issues of racial disparity and conflict will not merely dissipate with time. Like any major social issue, it must be discussed openly and without fear. It is only through such fearless and robust debate that progress can be made, and I am trying my best to get the conversation started.

What you missed this week: May 24th-28th

Holy crap! You missed it! What were you thinking? No worries, because you can always go back and see:

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

  • I’ll tell you what qualifies me to talk about race;
  • More sodomy!;
  • Another happy news post;
  • The Pope getting so close to being right that I could almost taste it; and
  • A look at the gathering storm of Christian fundamentalist influence in Canadian politics

All that, and maybe more, next week!

Movie Friday: God Hates Fred Phelps

Some things are so unbelievably over-the-top evil that you just have to laugh (DISCLAIMER: if you are easily offended by strident and hateful homophobia, you might not want to watch this):

For those of you who don’t know, Fred Phelps is the head of a ultra-right-wing hate group that calls itself the Westboro Baptist Church (link not safe for work). The group is famous for its slogan: “God Hates Fags”. As Freddie reveals here, God hates pretty much everyone and everything. Fred’s God is kind of a dick, actually – He wants them to picket military funerals and funerals for kids killed by homophobic hate crimes. Of course Fred’s God doesn’t exist any more than anyone else’s – he’s just using the idea of YahwAlladdha to push his own small-minded puritanical agenda. The sad thing is that children are brought up in this group, and taught to believe that hating people who you don’t like is a virtue. Fred’s no better than the Taliban or Al Qaeda leaders who seduce kids into suicide bombing

Fred is bent out of shape in this video because his group was denied entry into Canada under the auspices of the hate speech laws. As much as I disagree with them, they do have at least one useful upside: they kept the WBC out of my country. Fred is right to castigate Canada for not having completely free speech; however, that is entirely immaterial. Canada’s laws guarantee free speech to Canadians, not damn dirty foreigners. Keep your bigotry and your Dick God on your side of the 49th, Freddie baby!

Any country that a guy like Fred has such contempt for is one that I am proud to be a member of, and I will wear the title of “fag enabler” proudly. I also rather like Michael Moore’s response to this walking scum.

Sometimes the only thing you can do in the face of overwhelming evil is highlight how ridiculous and risible it is.

Free Speech under attack… apparently EVERYWHERE

Every morning when I come in to work I scan the headlines in the CBC, local news and the BBC. The more interesting stories, or those that I think deserve my special attention, get thrown into a folder in my e-mail that I keep filed away for later. That’s why sometimes I’ll feature news stories that are separated by a few days or a few weeks. Oftentimes there’s nothing blog-worthy – stories about federal politics and African elections are interesting to me, but not really the purview of this forum.

Other days, the shit really hits the fan.

Seems like I’m always picking on China. There’s a reason for that – the Chinese government is a repeat offender when it comes to free speech. China is in its economic position because it has perfected economic and industrial techniques that were developed in the United States and Europe. Those techniques were only possible under a capitalist system that allowed free speech. It’s the height of hypocrisy to use those techniques to shut down the very principles that made the techniques possible – I am seeing flashes of Hugh Ross and other fundamentalists that rape the principles of science and logic to “prove” religion. China is using the internet, the biggest source of free speech in the history of the world, to shut down dissent. Part of me thinks that people who post comments online should be held accountable for the things they say, rather than being allowed to engage in the kind of hit-and-run tactics we see in forums all over the internet. However, that kind of accountability is not possible under an oppressive regime that makes it a criminal offense to criticize those in power.

Apparently there’s been a state of emergency in Egypt for the past 30 years, such that the emergency powers that allow the government to tap the phones of political opponents, crack down on free media and confiscate property have been on the books since then. Police are also allowed by law to beat protesters – good thing too, because as everyone knows, freedom rings with the sound of boots and truncheons on skulls. While the president has said he plans to remove the wire tapping, confiscation and media provisions, he still insists there’s a constant state of emergency, and that the laws are required “to battle terrorism”. Someone’s been paying attention to the United States – Patriot Act anyone?

How do you know when your government is corrupt? Surely one of the telltale signs must be when people are imprisoned for being critical of government policy and actions. Every night I pray that someone at Fox News spends an hour or two watching episodes of The Daily Show and realizes that it’s possible to keep your ludicrously-obvious bias while divesting yourself of obvious hypocrisy. Clearly, they never do, and feed the beast known as John Stewart’s sarcasm gland more and more each day. In a similar act of blind obliviousness, the Iranian government has sentenced a reporter to 13 years in prison and more than 70 lashes with a whip for reporting on the massive protests and accusations of fraud that surrounded the last federal election. They don’t even have to pretend to be a legitimate government at this point, it’s blatantly obvious that they’re corrupt.

Ever wonder how dictatorships get started? This is how – by giving an elected leader immunity from prosecution, abolishing term limits, and passing laws enshrining him as a figure above criticism. My prediction is that, like Egypt, a state of general emergency will be declared, the president will be granted “emergency powers” that place elections on hold indefinitely, and parliament will eventually be dissolved. It’s not rocket science… it’s barely political science. The paradox of power is that those who seek it the most vociferously are the ones you want to have it the least.

This all happened in one day.

I talk about free speech because it’s important for me. Democracy and enlightened government are built on free speech. The same rights that prevent a government from declaring it illegal for women to own property or for black people to vote have their foundations on principles of free speech and equality of personhood. When those rights are chipped away, we end up with situations like the ones I described above. It is of the utmost importance that we fight for the right to speak freely, to criticize those in power, and to have open, accountable government. I’m much happier living in a society where I can say what I want, even if it means living in a country where morons and racists are afforded the same privilege.

Pakistan gets it EXACTLY wrong

May 20th was “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” (Yes, clearly I keep abreast of the latest goings on – I write these 2 weeks in advance, give me a break). People from all around the world drew pictures of what the prophet Muhammad might look like (nobody really knows) and posted them on the internet, as a protest against the actions of radical groups threatening or carrying out acts of violence against people who draw the prophet (including Trey Parker and Matt Stone). Muslims all over the world completely missed the point and protested that they were being victimized. How one is ‘victimized’ by a campaign supporting the rights of people not to be censored or physically attacked is beyond even my considerable mental powers of comprehension.

True to form, the Muslim world responded by doing exactly what everyone was complaining about, making violent threats and completely ignoring the purpose of the criticism. And of course, not wanting to be left out, the government of Pakistan blocked all access to Facebook, and for greater measure canceled YouTube as well, citing concerns that there might be content that was offensive to Muslims. First of all, Pakistan, not all of the people who live in your country are Muslim. Second, those who are Muslim have the option to simply not use Facebook or Youtube. Third, they can still use it, but not navigate to those pages they find offensive. Fourth, there’s content on the internet that everyone finds offensive (or at least should) – that’s the world. You can’t simply stick your fingers in your ears and make all the bad things go away.

Fida Gul, the lawyer who asked the high court to uphold the ban was quoted as saying:

“I am grateful to the High Court judges for this verdict… We needed to provide a message to non-Muslims not to disrespect our prophet.”

The problem with Mr. Gul’s reasoning is that it does not provide a message of any kind. It provides a giant non-message. It says to the world “every time you do something we don’t like, we will walk out of the conversation.” It says, quite proudly “we will refuse to engage in any kind of rational discussion, and let religious superstition and irrational idiocy rule our lives.” What a sad statement to be proud of.

A part of me wishes I was more sympathetic to Muslims in this matter. Right now, Islam is the whipping boy of the entire world, and people who have no dog in the fight are being dragged in. The problem is, it’s not arbitrary. Atrocious acts are being committed on a regular basis under the guise of Islamic teaching. Women are being subjugated and abused, children are being seduced into murdering people, secular education and life is being forced to make accommodation after accommodation for impractical dress codes… Islam is not being targeted at random. And while I’m sure there are many moderate Muslims who don’t think it’s right that these things go on, they complain until they are blue in the face when someone draws a picture, but there is no similar outrage when someone firebombs a hack cartoonist’s house. Where’s the protests then? Where are the Facebook groups decrying the distortion of your purportedly peaceful religious beliefs? Oh right, they’re right there next to the “Evangelical Christians for Abortion Rights” and “Jews against Palestinian civilian deaths” groups. You can’t have your hypocrisy and eat it too.

There is one group of people in this story with whom I do sympathize. Just like you’ll find in any group of people, there are many smart Muslim people who can see the point of Everybody Draw Muhammad Day – affirming the statement that one’s personal religious beliefs do not apply to anyone else. If I believe that the ghost of Colonel Sanders lives in the apartment next door, my neighbours don’t have to let me into their home to pray and eat chicken 4 times a day. Just as they are not obligated to accommodate my superstition, nobody in the world has the right to tell me that I must censor myself to abide by their religious beliefs. Talk about why it offends you, if you wish. Engage in a dialogue. But when people see that the beliefs of one group of people are affecting how they live their lives and express themselves, they have every right to fight back and do the exact same (minus the violence). While I deplore anyone who lifts a finger to hurt an innocent Muslim (or an innocent anyone) as an act of revenge for the actions of extremist groups, I cannot condemn someone for drawing a picture and forcing a debate.