Let's stop "tolerating" the abuse of our language and common sense

Howard Rotberg is not content to relocate Tennyson's lotus eaters:

My forthcoming book, Exploring Vancouverism: The Political Culture of Canada's Lotus Land views the "Lotus Land" culture of Vancouver, where organized religion has its fewest proponents on a per capita basis in all of Canada, as a culture that has abandoned the yardsticks of Good versus Evil. The mariners in Alfred Tennyson's great poem, "The Lotos Eaters" land on the idyllic shores of a Lotus Land where life on the beautiful beaches is complemented by the intoxication of eating the "Lotos" leaves brought by the natives. Soon the mariners decide not to go back to Greece and resume their struggles for good versus evil, because, after all, what pleasure do they derive from that struggle, as compared to life in Lotus Land.

In fact, if one checks out the on-line Urban Dictionary, (www.urbandictionary.com),

one sees that there is a term being used by young people, called Tolerism, but it is defined as: One's skill in consuming massive quantities of alcohol without displaying obvious signs of drunkenness.

I suggest that in our wider culture, Tolerism is the skill in consuming massive quantities of political correctness, and moral and cultural relativism, without displaying the obvious signs of the drunken leniency toward, and even taking pleasure in, the slow ascendancy of Islamist values of terrorism, breach of human rights, and attempted reversals of the wonderful liberties and advances made in western societies, where church and state have been successfully separated, and an enormous degree of freedom reigns.

The drunken Tolerists, with the abymsal ideology of Tolerism threaten all that we have accomplished.

That's from Part I of Howard's essay on the ideology of Tolerism. It's a powerful way of summing up the moral sickness that has flowed from our descent into cultural and personal non-judgmentalism, all in the name of a "tolerance" which cannot mean very much if you yourself do not have a clear centre, a clear sense of right and wrong, from which to truly tolerate other positions. If you have given up on that hard, Eurocentric, heteronormative stuff, you know, good and evil, then you can't really be tolerant. True tolerance comes from recognizing the limits of your own ability to know good and evil; but to get there, first you have to try to know as much as you can...

In fact, once you have given up thinking hard about good and evil, in a world where human reality is such that there nonetheless is always such a thing as good and evil, better and worse, you must descend into a mythic consciousness and ritual practise that will positively require the public rendering of a whole array of sacrificial victims to replace your society's former, more rational, more "Eurocentric", more monotheistic, approach to learning about right and wrong, and hence about true tolerance of your own limits in knowing right and wrong. And in becoming religiously dependent on a culture of victims, i.e. on a mythological system of many victims, or gods, you will become relatively more evil - i.e. more in need of bloody rituals - than were our immediate forebears in Western modernity.

If all gods are equal, if that's your idea of "tolerance", then the inevitable conflicts between the gods cannot be mediated rationally but must be proven in the fatalistic flow of events, though "observation" on who, today, but maybe not tomorrow, is the noble victim and who the ennobled or ignoble sacrificer (or vice versa). And since such "observation", your unscientific questing after signs of divine favour, will become so important to you, you will act to anticipate it by encouraging events to move in the direction of rendering more victims, not that you will be very aware of what you are doing.

So we should definitely welcome Howard's redefining of "tolerism". In Part Two of his essay, Howard notes:

Treating very bad behaviour with excessive leniency, and even taking unrestrained pleasure in that behaviour, hardly seems to me an admirable ideology. Yet, over and over again, we are told that "Tolerance" is our most important value. I disagree.

Now, when talking to Tolerists, I avoid the Israel-Arab problem entirely and I just ask them what they would have done with Hitler and the Nazis. Would it have been an admirable and tolerant position to be lenient with the Nazis?

If you think that the Tolerist mind gives in at that point, I have news for you. I have now heard the argument, made in all seriousness by a highly educated (but morally infantile) Vancouverite, that the Nazis were, in his opinion, the result of the Allies after World War 1, imposing draconian terms on the losing Germans. To this Tolerist, then, in an astounding leap of tolerist logic, the Americans were responsible for World War Two and even the Holocaust!

The Tolerists have infected so much of our Cultural Elites. Here is the example of PenCanada which gave its inagaural 2005 Paul Kidd Award for Journalistic Courage to an anti-American ranter named Paul William Roberts, as if it takes courage nowadays to join the chorus of anti-Americans. Roberts succeeded in getting a three page excerpt from his nonsensical book carried by the Globe & Mail, which shows the current reach of Tolerism.

Follow the above link to read Howard's letter to the Globe and Mail condemning their publication of Roberts' infantile polemics. Finally, in his latest post, Howard considers how the British love for the masochistic has led them to be the world leaders in "tolerism".

What is a human right in today's British Columbia?

Compare and Contrast:

1)

A program to remove panhandlers and homeless people from streets and parks amounts to "systemic discrimination," says a complaint filed Thursday with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

The complaint, put forward by the Pivot Legal Society, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users Society (Vandu) and the United Native Nations Society, takes aim at the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association's Downtown Ambassadors Program.

The program employs ambassadors to patrol parts of downtown, dispensing information to tourists and trying to deter petty crime, vandalism and aggressive panhandling.

The complaint says the ambassadors order people who are sitting or sleeping on the street to move along, prevent persons from searching for recyclables in garbage cans, identify people as undesirables, take pictures of them and tell them they are not allowed in certain areas of the downtown.

That amounts to harassment and discrimination against the homeless and the poor in Vancouver, it says.

The complainants ask for $20 in damages for every person affected by the Ambassadors' conduct, to a maximum of 1,000 people.

2)

The city's police department has unveiled a safety program for restaurants in the hope it will deter gangsters from frequenting their establishments.

Modelled after the successful Bar Watch program, Restaurant Watch encourages staff to call police if they spot someone who fits the criteria of a gangster, gang associate, drug trafficker or violent person.

Police officers then take on the responsibility of deciding if the suspicious person should be removed from the restaurant.
[...]
Police said uniform and plainclothes officers will also do periodic walk-throughs of the 40 restaurants.

"We're not going to tolerate violence from these criminals," VPD superintendent Warren Lemcke said in a news release. "They're not welcome in our city."

AND:

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association dismissed the program as "bloody odd," with the easy potential to threaten the rights of restaurant patrons. Micheal Vonn, BCCLA policy director, wondered how restaurant staff will be able to tell people with gang-like appearances are actual gangsters with violent tendencies.

"It certainly raises a very serious question about what these people look like. On the basis of what possible criteria do you determine someone has a 'propensity for violence'?

"This is a very different thing than saying someone is causing a disturbance, which is always a justification for seeking police involvement," Ms. Vonn said.

"It is completely bizarre to assume there is some kind of behavioural or appearance profile that is going to effectively make this work. The slippery-slope notion would be how long before we say, 'We're going to scan your ID before you come into a restaurant.' "

Supt. Lemcke said that he is mindful of civil-liberties issues and that he and his officers would act within the law.

Restaurants have always been free to call police, but Restaurant Watch is being touted as a more visible and organized alliance between police and restaurants.

Ian Tostenson, president of the British Columbia Restaurant and Foodservices Association, said the effort will take the guesswork out of calling police on gang issues.

"If the restaurant is somewhat uncertain and not quite sure and detect something but they are not feeling good about it, it puts the onus on the Vancouver Police Department to make that determination. That's really key to this program," Mr. Tostenson said.

So... if you use drugs, and generally look pathetic, are you more likely to be seen as having your "human rights" violated than if you are a gang member making good money from dealing drugs?

It might seem so. This would suggest that "human rights" have become in good part a question of our capacity to feel guilt for those being claimed as victims.

Guilt is an irrational, potentially delusional, form of "thought" because even where guilt may be appropriate, we are not able to reflect rationally on our feelings of guilt when we are feeling guilty. We have to snap out of the feeling first to truly judge our feeling of guilt and, when necessary, to decide on any appropriate course to redeem our guilt.

But in today's society, we are more and more encouraged to dwell in and use our feelings of guilt as a true guide to reality. Pathetic looking dumpster diver, or barely cogent addict panhandling and making tourists feel guilty and scared? at what point along the way were his human rights violated? Expensively-dressed and obnoxious young men with an expensive sports cars eating steaks? when are we going to stop them and let the rest of us live in peace?

Resentment, you see, is the flip side of guilt and equally delusional: you can't think rationally about whatever you resent, at the time when you are feeling resentful.

Because guilt and resentment are delusional states of being we should always struggle against thinking about "human rights" claims when under their influence. We can't avoid seeing the scenes that make (some of) us feel guilty or resentful. But we must attempt to view and judge them from within the framework of a larger discipline of real thinking that does not allow our so-called "emotions" to rule.

Because if we reduce "human rights" to mean whatever makes a successful claim on victim status, whatever makes us feel guilty, we likely make victim status more and more desirable and create a positive need for it. Then, on the one hand, we may well become cynical towards any victim claim because we have become aware that it's a way to game the system (are we now to think people who look like gangsters have a right to eat in restaurants???) and are less able to identify genuine human rights victims. Or, on the other hand, we may become so enamored of victimary thinking that we fall in love with the heavy hand of the state (I'm taking you to the Human Rights Tribunal, you nasty business owner, you) as part of some Utopian dream of overcoming "victimization". This, of course, only has the unintended effect of creating a whole new kind of victim of the heavy-handed state. In Vancouver, it seems the povertarians and workplace victimologists are always looking for ways to use moral blackmail, a kind of extortion, on the business owners and taxpayers.

"Human Rights" needs to mean guaranteeing the freedom of any and all to access and play out their lives on our various public stages, when they agree to play by the rules that maximize freedom for all. To do this, we need to avoid giving some the power to manipulate the scenes that we "play" out (the more they are manipulated, the less free we are to play them out), by giving them the power to appeal to our guilt and resentment, which is ultimately an appeal to enforce a form of closure on our freedom. Those who think of human rights in terms of equality of outcome and not equal rights and opportunities under law, are people who will restrict all freedoms, because any freedom when exercised will have the effect of making differences among people. And social differences even when part of a rational economy that attempts to maximize wealth and exchange can make us feel guilty and resentful.

We should only care about keeping these differences in constant circulation and exchange, that people may have the chance to work their or their family's way out of a bad situation. We should not try to eliminate differences in some Utopia where no scene will make us feel guilty or resentful. Utopia can't be done, and the attempt only makes things worse. It creates a dependent class, people willing to play their part in "guilting" and blackmailing the successful. And no system can do that for long and remain free and successful.

Of course, for all I know, maybe the Downtown Ambassadors are doing something wrong in respect to the homeless and the addicts. It would be nice to have a real court of law with real rules of evidence where such claims could be played out. But in our victimary culture, I'm not likely to take the word of povertarians or the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal for it. And that's the problem. Civil suits with respect for our legacy of Common Law and torts don't seem to be in fashion among lawyers for "victims".

Nor can we be sure that the police understand "human rights" either.

Converting the neo pagan: Can Muslims lead the way?

This story has been out a week and already gotten a lot of coverage in the blogs, but since we often talk about the nature of conversion at our meetings, I don't want anyone to miss it. Writer, Raymond Ibrahim is quite revealing about the nature of Islam as it is experienced in Egypt today:

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure on screen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones... Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.
[...]
Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

A third reason for Botros’s success is that his polemical technique has proven irrefutable. Each of his episodes has a theme — from the pressing to the esoteric — often expressed as a question (e.g., “Is jihad an obligation for all Muslims?”; “Are women inferior to men in Islam?”; “Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?” “Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary according to sharia?”). To answer the question, Botros meticulously quotes — always careful to give sources and reference numbers — from authoritative Islamic texts on the subject, starting from the Koran; then from the canonical sayings of the prophet — the Hadith; and finally from the words of prominent Muslim theologians past and present — the illustrious ulema.

Typically, Botros’s presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open — and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their response be based on “al-dalil we al-burhan,” — “evidence and proof,” one of his frequent refrains — not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence — which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers. The ulema who have publicly addressed Botros’s conclusions often find themselves forced to agree with him — which has led to some amusing (and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.

Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith department at al-Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s most authoritative institution — went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing “Rida’ al-Kibir” (sharia’s term for “breastfeeding the adult”), which prompted such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.

Botros played the key role in exposing this obscure and embarrassing issue and forcing the ulema to respond. Another guest on Hala Sirhan’s show, Abd al-Fatah, slyly indicated that the entire controversy was instigated by Botros: “I know you all [fellow panelists] watch that channel and that priest and that none of you [pointing at Abd al-Muhdi] can ever respond to him, since he always documents his sources!”

Incapable of rebutting Botros, the only strategy left to the ulema (aside from a rumored $5-million bounty on his head) is to ignore him. When his name is brought up, they dismiss him as a troublemaking liar who is backed by — who else? — international “Jewry.” They could easily refute his points, they insist, but will not deign to do so. That strategy may satisfy some Muslims, but others are demanding straightforward responses from the ulema.
[...]
But the ultimate reason for Botros’s success is that — unlike his Western counterparts who criticize Islam from a political standpoint — his primary interest is the salvation of souls. He often begins and concludes his programs by stating that he loves all Muslims as fellow humans and wants to steer them away from falsehood to Truth. To that end, he doesn’t just expose troubling aspects of Islam. Before concluding every program, he quotes pertinent biblical verses and invites all his viewers to come to Christ.

Botros’s motive is not to incite the West against Islam, promote “Israeli interests,” or “demonize” Muslims, but to draw Muslims away from the dead legalism of sharia to the spirituality of Christianity. Many Western critics fail to appreciate that, to disempower radical Islam, something theocentric and spiritually satisfying — not secularism, democracy, capitalism, materialism, feminism, etc. — must be offered in its place. The truths of one religion can only be challenged and supplanted by the truths of another. And so Father Zakaria Botros has been fighting fire with fire.

Now I think it likely that the Covenant Zone bloggers will have few occasions to attempt conversion of Muslims. What about the yet dominant religion in our own neck of the woods? Last week, the Vancouver Sun had an article that is telling on what a good number of Vancouverites consider the epitome of the sacred: no, not the traditional symbols of Christianity, but a good piece of real estate with a good view:

A controversial piece of public art depicting an inverted church will soon be removed from Harbour Green Park.
The sculpture, by world-renowned artist Dennis Oppenheim, has generated "mixed reviews" since its installation, said Vancouver park board arts coordinator Jill Weaving.

Device to Root Out Evil was first stuck, spire-down, in the ground as part of the Vancouver Biennale in 2005.

Although an offer was made to donate the piece to the city on a long-term loan, Weaving said Wednesday: "We're recommending it come out in part because of the mixed public responses."

That includes, she said, concern from area residents that the seven-metre-high piece blocks view corridors and takes too much of a small patch of green space.

These would be view corridors for some of the million-dollar condos in Vancouver's Coal Harbour.

"Some people have also contacted us to say that they feel the subject matter isn't appropriate," said Weaving.
[...]
Vancouver Biennale chairwoman Michaela Frosch said the Oppenheim piece is "a very important work because of the magnitude of the artist's reputation worldwide."
Frosch, who said the Biennale is very pleased with their partnership with the park board, also said that the removal of Device to Root Out Evil is in keeping with their agreement with the board.

"It was an 18-month deal," she said. "Pieces would then be removed to make room for the next Biennale."

Extenuating circumstances, including last year's civic strike, extended the sculpture's stay at the foot of Bute Street beyond the original plan of 18 months.
Currently there is a proposal to make Echoes by Michel Goulet - a series of stainless-steel chairs planted in the sand at Sunset Beach - another piece from the 2005 Biennale, a permanent fixture in Vancouver.

Device to Root Out Evil was purchased from Oppenheim by Vancouver's Benefic Foundation for $300,000 in 2006. The foundation subsequently offered it to the city on long-term loan.
[...]
Permanent or long-term installation on park property, said Weaving, must be "subject to public process where site-specifics such as view corridors are taken into consideration, as well as community response."

The park board will hear opinions from the public about the removal of Device to Root Out Evil, and about extending the stay of some Biennale pieces through 2015 at their meeting Monday night.

That's tonight, by the way, in case you want to get out and point out that the so-called "device to root out evil" is an upside down church, a postmodern pseudo-irony, seemingly ignorant that it is Christianity above all other religions, including the esthetic cult of the modern artist, that goes farthest in discounting apotropaic (casting out evil) gestures and objects. Christianity normalizes human evil, as a question of original sin: that's to say, as an anthropological question. And it tends to teach that more primitive sacrificial gestures and violence have reached their conclusion in, and been unveiled by, the crucifixion.

Anyway, what is really at stake in our cultural war between those who hold view corridors sacred and those who take the model of Christ, that God who is almost human, and secular, in nature? (I've got nothing in principle against good views. I don't think people should live in dark holes, but you have to know Vancouver to know how seriously, above many other things, view corridors are taken.)

Ultimately, what may be at issue is who gets to convert the pre-modern masses of humanity that still dominate, demographically, this world. The neo-pagan nature and consumerism crowd? or the modern people who also happen to be Christians? What will bring order and relative peace to the world?

Let us consider the words of Dr. Mabuse, at Kraalspace

Creeping Sharia Watch: Muslims should be seen and not heard

That seems to be the opinion of The [Ottawa] Citizen's religion writer, Jennifer Green, in this post on her blog (it was also printed in this morning's Citizen).

The Vatican has always had a sublime talent for getting its message across without saying a word. So what is Pope Benedict really communicating by baptizing a Muslim convert who mouthed off about his former faith?

Excuse me? Mouthed off? MOUTHED OFF???

Let's try that sentiment again, transposed into a higher key:

So what is President Reagan really communicating by insituting a special day to honour Martin Luther King, Jr., a black leader who mouthed off about civil rights?

Or maybe

So what is Stephen Harper really communicating by urging China to "use restraint" in dealing with Tibetan monks who mouthed off about oppression in their homeland?

Just what is GREEN "really communicating" by her mealy-mouthed complaint that the Pope of Rome, IN ROME, should watch his step when carrying out his duties to his own flock?

Let me try to answer her question: He's communicating that we Catholics are VERY HAPPY that another person has become a Catholic. We are CELEBRATING. We think it is a GOOD THING to be a Christian.

This insinuation that if a person absolutely HAS TO convert from Islam to Christianity, he should at least do it in a shamefaced, hole-in-a-corner way, and keep it as secret as possible because otherwise the dogs will start snarling and baring their teeth, is offensive and outrageous. It's as offensive as insisting that a woman with a violent, jealous ex-husband should have to keep her remarriage a secret.

The majority of Vancouverites probably see no need to convert the angry millions with only one foot in the global economy - those who feel the new economic demands and hence cultural pressures, but without yet sufficient material and spiritual relief - other than to provide them, soon enough, good condos with nice view corridors. But the Pope's convert, Mr. Magdi Allam, is rather more insistent on the centrality of conversion to our present global struggles:

My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy ...

I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a "moderate Islam", assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Koran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive.

One might question whether in trying to turn Muslims away from the violence in their midst, it is useful or pragmatic to insist that their faith is inherently violent. Ultimately, it is accepting the universality of human evil that is the key to the kind of conversion Allam has undergone:

The miracle of the Resurrection of Christ has reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness of a tendency where hate and intolerance in before the "other", condemning it uncritically as an "enemy", and ascending to love and respect for one's "neighbor", who is always and in any case a person; thus my mind has been released from the obscurantism of an ideology which legitimates lying and dissimulation, the violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission and tyranny - permitting me to adhere to the authentic religion of Truth, of Life, and freedom. Upon my first Easter as a Christian I have not only discovered Jesus, but I have discovered for the first time the true and only God, which is the God of Faith and Reason...

The columnist "Spengler" notes:

Magdi Allam presents an existential threat to Muslim life, whereas other prominent dissidents, for example Ayaan Hirsi Ali, offer only an annoyance. Much as I admire Hirsi Ali, she will persuade few Muslims to reconsider their religion. She came to the world's attention in 2004 after a Muslim terrorist murdered Theo van Gogh, with whom she had produced a brief film protesting the treatment of women under Islam. As an outspoken critic of Islam, Hirsi Ali has lived under constant threat, and I have deplored the failure of Western governments to accord her adequate protection. Yet the spiritual emptiness of a libertine and cynic like Theo van Gogh can only repel Muslims. Muslims suffer from a stultifying spiritual emptiness, depicted most poignantly by the Syrian Arab poet Adonis (see Are the Arabs already extinct?, Asia Times Online, May 8, 2007). Muslim traditional society cannot withstand the depredations of globalized culture, and radical Islam arises from a despairing nostalgia for the disappearing past. Why would Muslims trade the spiritual vacuum of Islam for the spiritual sewer of Dutch hedonism? The souls of Muslims are in agony. The blandishments of the decadent West offer them nothing but shame and deracination. Magdi Allam agrees with his former co-religionists in repudiating the degraded culture of the modern West, and offers them something quite different: a religion founded upon love.

It is not very insightful to simply write off the modern West as decadent and degraded, however lacking many are in the finer arts and higher aspects of culture and faith. This post is already too long to get into that argument now. Suffice it to say that in making the individual sacred and giving him or her access to all the good and bad of consumer society, things and signs to use in telling the story of one's life and making of each life a sacred model for others to bounce off in building their own story, consumerist modernity too has its ways of recognizing the sinfulness and redemptive possibilities of all people. Consumer society is an important process for keeping order, for deferring potentially violent desires, whatever its many downsides and weaknesses, and it has emerged when other seemingly "higher" forms of order failed.

Still, it is certainly unwise to jettison the religion or high culture questions as we embrace consumer society. Bear this in mind as we decide whether our quest for transcendence will end with a good view corridor and an annoying denial that the Islam question need rock the world, or even with a willing acceptance that it be simply hidden from view, as Western elites and media are presently doing with the Fitna crisis, using nasty political correctness in an attempt to hide a film.

If the modern secular Westerner tries to end his quest for transcendence with a smart-assed rejection of all religious culture, he will be living in denial of what we, as humans are. Religion is the original form of anthropological thinking about human origins. Thinking religiously is one thing; it works for some, but not all condo dwellers; but thinking seriously about religion shouldn't be optional. Without the latter, the Vancouver condo dweller won't really be able to understand what our worship of nature is all about, and any sense of transcendence will be fleeting.

It is the beauty of our struggle with and within Islam that it returns us to the most fundamental questions of our shared humanity, as Magdi Allam sees. And in taking the fate of all involved seriously, we will appreciate the centrality of conversion, or of living with a regard for a living and shared human history, endlessly open to new revelations into the nature of our shared humanity. A regard for an open-ended history is the only way to limit our desire to find transcendence by sacrificing churches or people to nature or to false gods who demand violent war against the non-believer, in order to hurry-up the end of history.

I've linked the following video (in three parts) before. It may not give a representative idea of the dhimmi Coptic life in Egypt, I don't know. But it at least shows how bad dhimmi life can get. And yet you will see among the scenes of this documentary, an Egyptian convert from Islam to Christianity. She is willing to accept the worldly hell faced by the convert in Egypt. It should force us, once again, to reconsider what we love.

Egypt. Treatment of Christians (1-3)

To covenant or not to be...

Sometimes, you'd rather just sit at home and look at pictures from one of your favorite artists. Sometimes you'd rather you had invested everything in gold, now at a thousand dollars an ounce, forgetting that we inevitably need also rely on our fellow man and put our faith in shared national covenants if we are to live in anything other than a tyranny of big men and ideologies. The price of gold keeps going up as the world loses faith in the inter-national leadership of the American covenant.

And here one finds the Covenant Zone bloggers, meeting each Thursday in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9 pm, in front of Blenz Coffee, wearing blue scarves. Here we are in a city that is probably home to more gold promoters per capita than any other North American city enjoying the steady fruits of the civilizing covenants of our forebears.

How much longer can we keep our faith in something other than the preciousness of certain metals? I had the odd experience this week of touring the Vancouver Gift Show with a woman who couldn't commit to buying any of the many costume jewelry on display, because it all is sure to tarnish upon lengthy contact with human skin. To give such a gift would be to lose face, when one has sisters-in-law who expect more.

If gold holds value, it is only because someone is willing to trade for it because some covenant somewhere must always be renewed through exchange. But the more we learn this lesson, the less value gold will hold, which is no knock on those who hold gold that we may hold on to something...

But such is the way of all covenants, all signs we share in order to keep order and peace in our society: nothing human lasts forever but must be continually, actively, renewed. To succeed is simply to renew the challenge to our shared faith as we further develop the signs of our shared faith and ask others to sign on. Only in failure, or in faith in violence, can one hope to find a sure, if deadly, thing. The culture of shared life is inherently uncertain, paradoxical.

I am continually amazed by the times in which we live, the revelations into the erosion of our national covenant. How can one not read Ezra Levant's tales of the erosion of the rule of law by Utopian hatemongererers (those who have the gall to believe they can defend human rights by abrogating, without the rule of law, the rights of those they deem to be hatemongerers - follow the links, and you shall see... it is one thing if a responsible, transparent, and duly elected leader goes to war, qualifying rights along the way; but when unaccountable bureaucrats do it, we need to go to war with them...)

But then I am not really amazed, bloggers are really only "amazed" as a literary device, because this kind of thing is inevitable; we know that erosion is the way of the world, that the first rule is that nothing human lasts forever. Those who cannot renew their sacred truths must give way to those who can.

I will never be able to tell exactly how this renewal can happen for those of us who want to avoid for Canadians a future in which the nation lies on the cusp of death and like the Jews of today, we must quickly now decide once again, and maybe for the last time, to be or not. When that event comes, it will not be completely predictable. When it comes to your neighborhood, one will either be ready or not. One will either have faith in a shared covenant, where every individual is to be protected by the universal rule of our law, or one will believe in the inevitability of brute force or Utopian imperial schemes, or appeasement of those who cry bloody murder to manipulate emotions, without the rule of law. There is the sword and there is love of individual hands and arms and heads that surpasses all love of any neatly divided up and ritualized way of life.

You don't need a plan if you have others who will act in the name of a covenant that is always just being born when the unpredictable time and place demands it. If you don't yet have those others, your plan to help them approach the light must begin in uncertain faith.

Today, I received a letter from Keith Martin, MP, entitled "Please keep fighting against Section 13":

Thank you for writing me to express your support for the motion I recently introduced (M-446) regarding section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA). As a Member of Parliament, I am encouraged that my motion has brought more public attention to this issue and it is my hope that it will spur action within Parliament.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) was created in the 1970s with laudable objectives. At that time, we still had a society marred by bigotry and ignorance. As a dark-skinned immigrant myself, I know from painful, personal experience what it feels like to be on the receiving end of those beliefs. The Commission was originally created with the noble intent to investigate when people were allegedly being discriminated against as they sought employment or housing. However, the poorly crafted section 13(1) of the CHRA, has enabled the Commission to move into an entirely different area - investigating, prosecuting and fining people who communicate anything that someone else takes offence to. In other words, if an individual feels offended by what somebody has written, they can go to the Commission, lodge a complaint and the Commission's lawyers will investigate the case at taxpayers' expense. Although the plaintiff pays nothing, the defendant must defend themselves with their own money, and if they are found guilty, they must pay fines out of their own pocket and can be subjected to lifetime bans on their ability to talk about certain issues.

In the three decades of the CHRC's existence, not a single defendant has been acquitted; not one. The Commission has a staggering 100% conviction rate. Interestingly, more than half of the complaints have been launched by just one person ¬- a former employee of the CHRC.

In our country, we already have laws that protect citizens against slander, libel, discrimination and hate crimes. Civil suits, which are adjudicated through the courts, are another recourse for people when these laws are violated. But the Commission is using section 13(1) to investigate and prosecute people who they deem to have offended somebody. The Commission incidentally is accountable neither to the Canadian public, nor Parliament. They have their own rules where the balance that exists in our courts between prosecutor, judge and jury do not exist.

Thankfully, we have the right in our country to be free of slander, discrimination and hate crimes. However, we do not have the right to not be offended. Independent commissions that prosecute people for writings that do not meet the test of being a hate crime, slander or libel, is a very slippery slope indeed. To fix the problem, section 13(1) should be either amended, or deleted entirely.

Once again, thank you for taking time to share your thoughts with me.

Sincerely,

Dr. Keith Martin, P.C., M.P.
Esquimalt - Juan de Fuca

It's time to join Keith Martin and Ezra Levant in fighting for the covenant that free individuals must share. If you can write a letter, Blazing Cat Fur notes that the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission is presently requesting your submission.

There are sick and wounded in our ranks this week, but some of us will be out again tonight, in the atrium of the library, 7-9 pm, in front of Blenz Coffee.

Judging the Covenant

One of the reasons, dear Vancouver reader, you may not be attending our regular Covenant Zone Thursday night meetings - in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9 pm, look for the guys in the blue scarves - is the proximity of our meeting place to a modest hang out for homeless guys, some of whom beg and display their mental illness for all to see. But, for us, it's a constant reminder of how our society has given up much faith in a shared bond that would work against simply allowing Vancouver's public street culture of tolerance and dependency, that only facilitates some people's collapse into the abyss.

Charles wrote about this shocking assault on an elderly man by a homeless person who was the regular beneficiary of the elderly man's charity, last summer.

And now comes the verdict of the judge who seems more intent on telling off the "tolerant" folks of Vancouver for tolerating the intolerable, than on punishing the malefactor:

The violent encounter last August between a homeless panhandler and an elderly parishioner at the entrance to Holy Rosary Cathedral has led a Vancouver Provincial Court judge to question society's willingness to accept homelessness and the chaos it has brought to the city's streets.

Judge William Kitchen's remarks came during the sentencing of Darcy Lance Jones, who has lived in the Vancouver area for almost 20 years subsisting on income assistance, panhandling and petty crime to support a drug habit involving marijuana, crack cocaine and heroin.

Jones -- described by Kitchen as not being a productive member of society ... "in fact he has been pathetically inadequate" -- was given a two-year-less-a-day conditional sentence that amounts to house arrest with strict reporting conditions.

The court was told that on Aug. 1, Jones was waiting outside the cathedral for Peter Collins, who always made a point of speaking to him after mass, and would regularly give him $5.

But on this occasion, as the 81-year-old retired doctor took out his wallet, Jones lunged and grabbed the wallet and threw Collins to the ground.

Jones removed $40, then handed the wallet back to Collins, who was still on the ground.

Kitchen noted the age of the doctor and said he ought to have been injured, but Collins made light of the incident at the time and suffered no apparent injuries.

A video surveillance camera captured the incident and Jones was recognized. Police stopped him on the street the next day and arrested him. He admitted the robbery, was remorseful and told police he couldn't understand why he had done it.

"Nor can others understand," said Kitchen. "Why rob an old man while he is giving you money? And why in the sanctity of the man's church?"
[...]
Jones's criminal record did not show an inclination to violence, Kitchen said, and nothing in his past would predict this attack.

"Which raises again the issue of why this robbery occurred. Jones has been part of the street culture in Vancouver. He has been homeless most of the time and relied on public money and handouts to support a continuing drug habit. His idea of being a productive member of society is to frequent the entertainment district at night performing pushups in front of nightclubs, giving directions, and hailing cabs for money," said Kitchen.

"Most people would see this as being a nuisance but those living on the street view it as their role in society," he said.

Kitchen then made a number of withering observations about the state of affairs on Vancouver's streets and society's tacit acceptance of homelessness and all it brings.

"Two generations ago, there were almost no street people in Vancouver. If a person slept or begged on the street, the police would intervene. Public welfare was even more limited than now. Perhaps family and peers took more responsibility for people with problems.

"Somehow society coped without creating the chaos on the streets that we now have," said the judge.

"Today in Vancouver there are perhaps thousands living on the streets and in the parks. They sleep everywhere -- even in the doorways of the courthouse and police station. Public areas are their bathrooms and garbage disposal facilities. They subsist on inadequate income assistance, food lineups and public handouts, and low-level crime.

"Society created this situation. Law-abiding citizens condone it and it has become the expectation of those like Darcy Jones. In fact it is more than an expectation; it is viewed as an entitlement -- the public are expected to respond favourably to silly justifications for demanding money such as 'squeegee' car windshield [washers] or doing pushups on the street.

"It is not surprising that some street people have taken the next step of physically enforcing their right to this support. We have a name for it -- aggressive panhandling," he said.

Regardless, there was no excuse for Jones's crime, which must be forcefully denounced, Kitchen said.

Since his release on bail two weeks after the assault, Jones has been staying at Luke 15 House, a Catholic transition home for addicts and newly released prisoners in Surrey. His lawyer, Susan Daniels, said he should be allowed to continue rehabilitation there.

Jones told Kitchen he planned to stay at the home for the foreseeable future and was planning to become a Catholic at Easter -- decisions supported by staff at Luke 15 House, who spoke up for him on sentencing.

"How ironic that the very church where Jones committed this offence supports him when society will not provide the resources," said Kitchen. "It is a sad fact that there are more resources provided by such charitable organizations as Luke 15 than by our correction services."

Admitting that a conditional sentence -- house arrest -- would be counter-intuitive for many, Kitchen said this case required it. He sentenced Jones to two years less a day to be served at Luke 15 House, to be followed by three years probation.

How do we begin to even think about how to change the massive social problem that has evolved over the years on the streets of Vancouver? Well, there will be no silver bullet to solve this problem. It will take a lot of people saying "no" to the unacceptable and at the same time providing real opportunities that give lost or losing people a way out, opportunities, freedoms, that come with responsibilities. But none of this can happen until people start talking about and assuming the existence of a covenant we all must share to guarantee each other's freedom. That's what we do every Thursday, to the sometimes curious looks of the street people who hang out around us.

Whether you think Darcy Jones got off easy, or if you agree that church is a better place than prison for a man in need of reforming, just be thankful that Jones is seen as one of the bad guys in all this. More sophisticated players of mental illness can now pick up $80, 000 via our scandalous "Human Rights" Commissions, for lying to their new employers and then getting fired because of it. Margaret Wente asks:

Does it really matter if rights tribunals sometimes make dumb decisions? You could argue that's just the price we pay for all the good they do. The trouble is that they're more and more disconnected from common sense. They're taking on cases that would strike most of us as absurd. They're summoning journalists and magazines to defend themselves for exercising basic free speech. They're prosecuting private-sector doctors who choose not to perform elective vaginal surgery on transsexuals. They're about to hear the case against a small-time restaurant and pub owner who told a guy to scram because his marijuana smoke was bothering the customers. The smoker says he was discriminated against because his marijuana is medicinal, and he has the right to smoke it wherever he wants to.

These bodies are fast losing their legitimacy. They have no one to blame but themselves.

Yes, but are they losing legitimacy fast enough for our governments to actually get off their duffs and do something about them? Or will we all just accept the corrosion of common sense, like we accept the pervasive mental illness on the streets of Vancouver? Will our politicians be willing to stand up to all the ritualistic flack that in doing something about the rogue "human rights" tribunals, or about the mentally ill patrons of the professional social work povertarians, they would be attacking "human rights"? Or will we be forced to endure more and more costly and socially and economically corrosive rulings form the victim religionist at our tribunals? For our governments to act, the people need to lead. There needs to be a lot of phoning, faxing, letter writing to our politicians to tell them that there are rogue bureaucrats acting as Star Chambers with a destructive zeal for victimary thinking, and that it is ruining our national covenant and hence eroding freedom for everyone. If you want to share in working up this angle, making new ways of thinking both compelling and popular, that's one thing the talking shop that is Covenant Zone is for, here in cyberspace or at the library Thursday nights. Or wherever and with whomever you are.

Technorati Tags: Vancouver, covenant zone, homelessness, crime, human rights tribunals

I am Bill Simpson!

UPDATED, Below

Covenant Zone bloggers meet every Thursday in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9 pm, in front of Blenz Coffee. Look for the blue scarves. This week, I'm sure we will be discussing the following (I've got a cold and might not make it, but I'll try to and I'm sure by fellow bloggers will be there) and other issues relevant to the eroding freedom of Canadians:

Here's an audio file to this morning's CBC interview of Ethel Whitty, Executive Director of the Carnegie Community Centre: Ethel Whitty Says Simpson Out Because Of Worksafe Complaint.

For those readers not familiar with Vancouver, the Carnegie Centre is a city-run Community Centre at the heart of Vancouver's most drug-ridden and impoverished neighbourhood. A political storm has been brewing in that district for several months now, stirred up by a daring blog that reports, among other things, on various failures of the staff at the Carnegie Centre, who are variously alleged to fall down on their jobs and to have a penchant for banning, from the Centre and its programs, anyone who speaks against them.

Yet, without providing evidence, Whitty tells the CBC:

"We're accepting of negative feedback".

She also says that the banning from the Carnegie Centre of homeless Bill Simpson, elected a Carnegie Board member by his fellow users of the community centre (a board whose meetings he cannot attend due to his banning) "arose because of a BC Worksafe Complaint... not able to say more [because of the legal process underway], would really like to hear from Mr. Simpson".

I have (thanks to Bill Simpson) a copy of the letter that the City of Vancouver, under the signature of Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, General Manager, Community Services Group, sent to Mr. Simpson on June 21, 2007, telling him he was banned from the Carnegie Centre. It makes no mention of a Work Safe claim. The letter notes that a website registered by Mr. Simpson has committed the sin of merely linking to the infamous Downtown Eastside Enquirer Blog, which the City alleges "make very serious allegations of misconduct against Carnegie Centre patrons and staff, and unreasonably invade people's privacy rights."

The letter continues:

Several Points are clear:
- you are the author of material on the DowntownEastsideEnquirer.ca site [note: Simpson's site has almost the same name as the blog in question, but is not in fact the same site]
-you are responsible for, and have control over, the content of the website as the site administrator,
-you have used the Centre's address and a Centre phone number as your own for Internet purposes and as the Contact Us address for the site, and
-your site links to a blog with numerous inaccuracies and allegations of misconduct, and unwarranted invasions of privacy of other patrons and staff at the Centre.

These actions are deeply disturbing to Centre administration and staff, because they are so clearly at odds with the Centre's goals and objectives. For example, as you are aware, the Centre's written, published guidelines require patrons and staff to treat one another with respect, settle differences and misunderstandings through patience and goodwill, and respect personal and private space of one another. Your website and blog respect none of these qualities.

While you have a right to free speech, that right is not boundless. Your right to free speech does not entitle you to damage people's reputations and invade their privacy by publishing or linking to inflammatory stories based on half-truths, rumor, innuendo, and hearsay, nor does it entitle you to use the Centre's facilities to pursue these objectives

We are continuing to investigate this matter.

Now, whether what has been alleged by the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog is half-truth or not, the present blogger does not know, beyond the fact that certain accusations have the ring of truth since they entail revelations that must have happened somehow to someone. In any case, the bloggers at Downtown Eastside Enquirer are standing by (for many months now) the claims they have made about Carnegie staff, one of which, concerning the personal amorous affairs of one staff member with several Centre users that allegedly led to various successful and failed suicide attempts by upset lovers, was apparently the source of a Worker's Compensation Board Work Safe complaint, instigated by the alleged (though never named by the bloggers, as I understand it) Carnegie staff member/lover who felt that her personal safety had been compromised by the blogging that, while nameless, was apparently sufficiently detailed to identify its target to those familiar with the scene.

Now while this Work Safe complaint is not mentioned in the City's letter to Simpson, banning him from the Carnegie Centre, it may be the case that Ethel Whitty's later claims that the banning arose out of a Work Safe complaint are factual, and not a "make it up as we go along" attempt to strengthen a weak case.

In any case, what should concern the larger blogging community, not to mention every Canadian citizen, is the Carnegie and City's ridiculous, to my mind, claim to have the right to ban someone for merely linking to a blog that the City simply alleges, with no attempt to prove the case, is home to "half truths and rumour", a blog that sticks to its guns amidst the heat.

Now, I showed this letter to a lawyer experienced in civil litigation, including defamation suits, and he was slightly amused at the devious legal tactics of his civic colleagues, as demonstrated by the letter. My lawyer suggested it was the kind of thing they might get away with; it was not a legally obvious point; it would require (highly paid) lawyers thrashing out the claims in court, to come to some resolution of the question of whether the City can do this to Simpson. And, as I understand it, homeless Bill Simpson could probably afford no more than a minute or two of your average lawyer's time. And it's not obvious that this is a case that will attract the pro bono charity of local lawyers.

The only other way this case might be resolved is if there is sufficient public outcry at the City's stupidity, and cavalier attitude towards free speech and linking on the internet, and its apparent unwillingness to address seriously the now widespread complaints being made about the Carnegie Centre.

I was not greatly impressed by the CBC's interview of Bill Simpson. The interviewer seemed unable to focus on or grasp the key points at issue, and Simpson comes across as a man somewhat stymied by the world who does not have an easy time conveying his thoughts, at least not under the pressure of a radio interview. That such a person would be deemed a verbal threat to those charged with serving that part of our city that is home to our most impoverished people, many of whom must demonstrate far more challenging mental traits than does Mr. Simpson, suggests that the Carnegie Centre may well not be up to the task of dealing with the tough realities of its neighbourhood. I rather suspect the alleged "half truths" of the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog are rather more full.

In her CBC interview, Ethel Whitty suggests that she will let Simpson back into the Carnegie Centre if he arranges to meet with her, and come to some shared understanding of proper conduct. Whitty wants to save face, because she knows that banning someone for linking to a blog that led to an unresolved, perhaps not compelling, Work Safe complaint, is hardly face-making conduct.

I just hope the bloggers of Vancouver don't forget this attack on our free speech. Bureaucrats who don't want to be held accountable by bloggers need to learn that they have to become more transparent and capable of facing a wide range of complaints with more than a narrow legalistic argument that one can't comment on matters pertaining to an ongoing legal (Work Safe) matter.

Ethel Whitty takes on the tone of the victim, in her interview, the victim of irrational accusations that she need not seriously address. She is posing for a popularity contest, assuming her fellow bureaucrats in the CBC and the nicely-groomed professional classes will take her side. She is not facing up to the thrust of the Downtown Eastside Enquirer's many complaints about a long history of Carnegie banning those who speak out against it.

When a culture becomes addicted to victimary thinking, when the victim position is what is desired by all sides, we inevitably begin to erode free speech. The victim baiters at the BC Human Rights Commission will soon be forcing Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn to appear before them on charges of "Islamophobia".

This kind of thing is not just a threat to one person or another. Free speech is indivisible. If they can take it away from one person, they can take it away from anyone, including presumably Muslims whose holy book is replete, on almost every page, with curses towards the unbeliever. They can at least make it too expensive for any publication to employ a crusader like Mark Steyn.

Covenant Zone exists to remind our fellow citizens that we each of us has a responsibility to defend and guarantee each other's freedom - our freedom as individuals, and not as members of officially valorized victim categories/groups - even if we don't like what the other guy does with it. Otherwise we can forget about living in a free society. The law certainly provides remedies where defamatory speech or publication is untrue. But if we start to allow bureaucrats in kangaroo courts, with little or no respect for due legal process, where accusers have legal costs covered, while the accused have to go to expense to defend themselves, to pronounce on defamation and to impose penalties on those who supposedly overstep the bounds of free speech, as defined by the kangaroo courts like our Human Rights Commissions, then we have taken a step towards a totalitarian state. And one thing that can be said about that is that if you think you're being victimized by the give and take of free speech in a free society, just wait for the real victimary horrors that must come with any reversal of our history back to a more sacrificially-bound culture and state.

I am Bill Simpson! So are you! Join us in the covenant zone, defend my freedom, before they come for you.

-----------------------------

UPDATE, Jan 4:

I think the Downtown Eastside Enquirer makes a good point about how Whitty's use of the "WorkSafe" excuse may be a way to libel William Simpson with just the kind of innuendo the City of Vancouver claims, with yet no proof or justification, the DEE blog uses:

A further indication that WorkSafe is a damage control strategy is that Carnegie management and staff had been barring Simpson for political reasons long before the WorkSafe complaint had been lodged. The WorkSafe complaint was lodged in response to a Feb./07 article about sexual misconduct on the DTES Enquirer. That article was published after Simpson had already been barred from the Carnegie Learning Center (not yet the entire Carnegie Center) in Jan./07. He was taken by Learning Center Co-ordinator, Lucy Alderson, to the office of Carnegie Head of Security, Skip, and told that was barred from the Learning Center (situated on the third floor of Carnegie Center) for blogging on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer.

Two years before that, in 2005, Simpson was barred from Carnegie for handing out election literature in the building. The literature criticized management. After being barred, Simpson stood outside Carnegie handing out his election literature. Assistant Manager,Dan Tetrault, then allowed him back into the building on the condition that he not hand it out inside the building.

Whitty has a record – caught on tape – of smearing both Bill Simpson and the DTES Enquirer. At both a public Carnegie Board meeting and a Community Relations meeting last summer, she made defamatory statements about the blog and Simpson, providing no examples to support her claims. Even when Simpson specifically asked her for such an example, after he read the letter she delivered to him in June 2007 barring him from Carnegie, she offered none.

"They have nothing," said Board member Grant Chancy at a Board meeting last summer.

Chancy, a former unionized worker who has the WorkSafe manual at home, announced at a Carnegie Community Relations meeting last summer that he saw nothing in Simpson’s conduct that would justify a WorkSafe complaint. Chancy said he had found “no threats” on the DTES Enquirer blog and “I’ve looked and I’ve looked and I’ve looked.”

A number of Carnegie members feel the same way,leading to grumbling that there should be a fraud investigation into this WCB claim. The claim, which presumably resulted in a payout, was based on a non-libelous blog that, as Board member Sophie Friegang stated before her resignation, is well within the boundaries of "free speech".

When Whitty first floated the WorkSafe reason for barring Simpson in the summer of 2006, Board member Rachel Davis called Gordon Harkness at WorkSafe to find out what was going on. What Harkness told her was surprising. Davis included it in a statement she left on CBC's Talkback line in response to Whitty's claims: "Mr.Harkness told me that there has been no assessment by WorkSafe of William Simpson whatsoever."

Davis pointed in her Talkback statement to the defamation involved in Whitty's suggestion that Simpson posed a safety risk:

"I think people are aware that WorkSafe only deals with cases of violence or extreme verbal abuse, and nothing like that has happened. So for [Whitty] to use the Worksafe name in an attempt to legitimize this barring is really just a heartless blackening of William’s reputation and that makes me really sad, because if they will do this to him, a democratically elected board member, what would they do to your average member who disagrees with their policy? I find it frightening. And I know other members do too. I stand by my statement:The Barring of William Simpson was a political act against a whistleblower perpetrated by the City."

Povertarians and Povertarianism

Seen in the blogs:

PelaLusa said...
I loved these quotes in the Van Sun article:

"He [Simpson] believes that the agencies that are in the Downtown Eastside to combat poverty are actually codependent on the poor. "It's their raison d'etre."

"I call them the povertarians," he explains. "And they've created a system in the Downtown Eastside that is going in the wrong direction. It's a hell down here and I got elected to the Carnegie board by the members because I wanted to change the way these people are running things."
December 24, 2007 8:18 PM

See also.

Bob C said:

I must agree with William Simpson with his opinion of the so called service providers in the Downtown East Side. I have worked in and around the DTES for many years and have observed the people who provide these services to the poor become increasingly intrenched in what they do to the point that changing that area is the last thing they want to see. If the DTES was cleaned up and the poor were no longer poor and the addicted were treated then all of those nice fat grants the service provders get from the govenments and social organizations would dry up. Once the money is gone so are their jobs. So yes William Simpson is right when he called them "povertarians".
December 24, 2007 5:39 PM

These are responses to Miro Cernetig's recent Vancouver Sun column.

Now, here is the text of an email from Dag to me, dated March 2, 2007:

I did a Google search to look for povertaria[n], and below is what I found. I think that in a month I can make it one of the most used buzz words in our culture. Look at some of the other things we now think of as given: dhimmitude, infantalisation, philobarbarism, poligion, neo-feudlaism. Some words are better than others. I think "povertarian" has legs. Let's find out this time next month.

Revised March 1. 2007:

Povertarian: 5 pages

Povertarians: 9 pages

Povertarianism: 1 page

Yalla, Dag

Here is what I get today, December 26, 2007, on Google:

Povertarian: 33 pages

Povertarians: 30 pages

Povertarianism: 1 page

So, good work Dag, especially good work considering your typographical trials and tribulations. But we all have to do a little more work on the ism. Yeah, I know, we should be allergic to all isms. But maybe, in this case, we can drop it in every now and then for the old school crowd.

Kudos also to Reliable Sources at the Downtown Eastside Enquirer, who has been doing great and extensive work on the William Simpson story for many many months now, along with a host of other stories on the Downtown Eastside. There's someone working hard and braving the potential wrath of the Gnostic ideologues/postmodern slum lords to get us all closer to the truth about the open wound on the face of Ms. Vancouver.

UPDATES:

Povertarian • one who works in the ‘poverty industry’.

- Extracted and adapted from Schott’s Almanac 2008: conceived, written & designed by Ben Schott published by Bloomsbury on December 1.

"Feminists": a failure to covenant

There's something eerie about the Vancouver Sun publishing a defense of further legalizing prostitution on the same day Canadians are remembering the Montreal massacre. It seems to be a sign how much we really value women, whatever all the fancy feminist talk that goes around...

What do you think when you see women prostituting themselves?

Very few people, it seems to me, think, "oh, there goes another happy hooker!"

Nonetheless some people are willing to think: "oh there goes a poor woman who has to carry on a dangerous trade with the threat of violence always in the air; let's help her by making her poverty (of mind and spirit, if not of money) easier..."

In other words, you see a miserable women and instead of asking how can I help her to stop being such a miserable person, by helping her in ways that can help her to change her life, you ask, how can I get the world to recognize she is a victim, with rights, all the while affirming her for what she is, and not making moralistic demands on her.

The collapse of our public discourse into victimology/affirming difference, affirming the marginalized as a-ok just how they are, is leading a group in Vancouver to lobby for legalized brothels. It's not that we don't already have brothels, out in the open, that the governments and police tolerate - there is one in Burnaby in the same strip mall as a community police station. It's just that we call them "massage parlours" which the municipalities license and tax to make it all "respectable". This, notwithstanding that the Criminal Code of Canada still states it is illegal to operate a house of prostitution or to live off the avails of prostitution.

Anyway, apparently there is a class of street prostitute that either doesn't want, or isn't welcome, to work in "massage parlours" or "escort services". Thus they are at risk from whatever evil the men who pick them up off the streets are capable of inflicting. And sometimes that is murder.

A group of people calling themselves "feminists", and reportedly receiving support from politicians like Libby Davies and Mayor Sam Sullivan, have somehow become interested in advocating for the governments to license legal "co-op" brothels for such marginalized women, just in time for Vancouver hosting the 2010 Olympics. As they argue in today's paper:

Many feminists believe that adult sex work in Canada should be completely decriminalized.

To that end, Vancouver-based "First" is the only feminist organization in North America advocating the decriminalization of prostitution. First supports the right of sex workers to engage in consensual sex with other adults without being criminalized.

We believe that sex workers have the right to safe working conditions, the right to equal protection and benefit of the law, and the right to have their dignity, autonomy and liberty respected.

Decriminalization means the repeal of all criminal laws relating to adult prostitution. In Canada, prostitution is not technically illegal, but most activities associated with it are criminalized, including soliciting in public and living off the avails of prostitution.

Although decriminalization will not on its own stop the injustices experienced by sex industry workers, First believes that we cannot eliminate violence against sex workers and ensure their equal rights until we address the illegal and stigmatized status of their work.

The op-ed is given the demanding, don't-question-me headline "A 2010 deadline for prostitution".

Oh how heroic and righteous it is to be FIRST, to believe that everything will get better if we take this bold "first" step, if we are first to break new frontiers, to reduce prostitution simply to a question of an unquestionable "right" to sell your soul to the devil... Because we today are much too sophisticated to believe that what people used to refer to as the Satanic has any basis in reality, whatever name or analysis we now give to the unrestricted circulation of human desires. (By the way, true firstness, the true discovery of a sacred sign we can share with others, is an essential part of our humanity; but that just means it is important to work to distinguish it from Gnostic heresy.)

It occurs to me that a useful definition of many of the well-meaning fools who call themselves "feminists" is women who don't really know or believe in the sacredness of human love. In order to think it is ok to prostitute yourself, to treat your body and soul as a commodity, thinking it's just like any other worker who sells part of his or her body and its labour for money, you have to believe that sex and love are not something special, something sacred, reserved for only those who can make a total commitment to their beloved. It's the sign of a society that has made the dating scene for the average youth into a veritable rite of sexuality, where most young women do indeed come to see themselves as beings whose value is largely dependent on their sex appeal, who trade sex for friendship and social status without any great promises attached, who see the purpose of sex largely as pleasure, and as an envied object of conversation to show one's social value to others, and not necessarily as some invitation to a more holistic vision of one's humanity within marriage and family. And there's no sign that this is making anyone particularly happy. In fact, depression and nihilism among young people is epidemic.

Nonetheless, in this confused milieu, it is not surprising that we find women who think that trading in sex is ok; it's what everyone does, it's just natural and so it's healthy, and it's hypocritical to single out street prostitutes for victimization. It's just a form of class discrimination. And so the answer is to validate the hookers' status, to give them a greater stake in the "ownership" of their sexuality. And besides, if you legalize "co-op brothels" for street workers, you are making prostitution safer, making it harder for the violent men or pimps to do their evil.

But what if prostitution is inherently destructive of a person's soul, of the very purpose of their sacred humanity? Then, is there any way you can truly make it safer? Don't you make it more dangerous by making it easier and more secure, on a purely physical basic, for women to prostitute themselves? Say you see a man literally working himself to death, neglecting his family, so he can "retire at 50 and finally be free", or buy the McMansion, or whatever. Do you help him out by making it easier to put in extra long hours, or by suggesting he come to terms with his self- and family-destructive behaviour, behaviour that only a fool would consider a sign of freedom?

If feminists really cared about women, wouldn't they be putting all their energy into finding ways to help women out of prostitution, not making it easier for them to go down that dead-end road?

But how, in this day and age, do we even begin to understand that we have souls and a sacred purpose that can be destroyed?

I am not saying we have to believe in God (our soul exists, has meaning, on the scene of language regardless). But even if we don't, why isn't it evident to people that at the core of women's nature-in-culture is a need to be loved and respected, to be treated as something much more than a sexual commodity, a something more - an undivided, unconditional, and total love and family commitment - that can only be protected when you are not a sexual commodity? Because there are some things that no lover can provide to a woman who is a sexual commodity.

I imagine no adult, not least myself, has not allowed the sexual passions to lead him or her down dead-end roads. It's so ordinary as to be unremarkable. Such failures are not the greatest of sins; they are rather small ones usually, as many a girl trying to remember the difference between the failings of recent boyfriend #12, as compared to #6, can tell you.

But if we forget that there is a road with purpose out there for each of us to find, even if it be a chaste one, and that this road can't be found by simply giving in to the pressure or incentives to treat sex as a commodity and trying to validate that as a choice that is just as good as another, then we have given up as a species that treats its impressive sexual drive as a call to reproduce the species in body and divine spirit, a call to make a total commitment to something or someone.

Freedom depends on a market that is open to the circulation of our desires; it also depends our ability to resist the self-destructive potential of this circulation. No free market exists without a civil society resisting it. Covenant Zone exists to help teach ourselves how and why.

If prostitution were ok, why haven't they yet made it into an Olympic sport?

Maybe that can be the topic for today's Covenant Zone meeting. We meet every Thursday evening to discuss questions like this, in the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library, central branch, in front of Blenz Coffee. Look for the blue scarves, 7-9 pm.

Shining a light into our eyes

Catching up with an old friend this week, through the miracle of the internet, I was saddened to hear a nightmarish tale from a young lady (well, not so young anymore...) whom I had much admired for her good cheer, and ability to make anyone laugh despite their mood. Never shirking her own duties, she nevertheless always found time to make sure the stress we encountered would be lessened by her endless funny remarks. Looking back I can see that her philosophy was obviously to celebrate life as a great gift bestowed upon us, and to not become ungrateful for that blessing. She never said as much, but her actions regularly spoke for her.

From that cheerful heart came a letter filled with despair. I hope I'm not betraying a confidence by quoting a last line:

"I miss Vancouver so much. A place I wish I never had left."

She's not doing so well back home in Asia. Lots of danger in living where she's living; she returned home to find a much worse situation than before she left to live here in BC for a few years.

We in Canada live in such a secluded fantasyland, we often forget how lucky we are, and how grateful we should be for the comparable paradise in which we find ourselves.

Today in Vancouver, British Columbia, the weather is beautiful; sunshine, warmth, calm winds and clear skies. Somewhere someone is worrying whether or not they will be killed today, simply for wanting to turn their home into a little bit more like our Canada.
It's hard to imagine their fears, when the sun is shining in your eyes, and your biggest problem revolves around paying off a credit card debt.

It sometimes takes only the quietest of whispers to make the biggest noise, to bestir our consciences and re-awaken our Canadian tradition of valuing freedom; yet who has time to hear these soft notes when we fill our lives with useless noise and carefree tunes that drown out the world crying around us.
Sometimes the smallest of lights can shine in our eyes and penetrate the blinders we impose upon ourselves, as we vainly summon the nerve to feel sorry for ourselves in a world much more sorrowful than we, besotted with our liberties, our minds dulled by ingratitude, could ever imagine existing outside our borders.

This morning I thank God for having been born in Canada, seeing my blessing with a clarity of perception made all the clearer by having had a small, tiny light flash before my eyes, courtesy of a young lady forced to live a life in fear.

Autumn in Vancouver

Took a brief break from life to enjoy a brisk Autumnal day in Vancouver. For all its faults, this is still a city full of beautiful sights to see.

After enduring a cold wet summer, so far we're being blessed with a generally pleasant fall.

Hopefully, no matter where you're reading us from, you are having weather as pleasant as we are..!

Vancouver: world's most liveable city?

... according to a new survey produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister organization of The Economist magazine, as reported in last friday's National Post:

Vancouver is the most liveable city in the world, and Toronto the fifth, according to a survey that suggests there is a cost to the "big city buzz" of other, more cosmopolitan, centres.
... Paris ranked 22nd, London 46th and New York 56th in the most recent results. Bogota, Tehran and Algiers were among the worst cities. Baghdad was not counted.

... Stuart Green, a spokesman for Toronto Mayor David Miller, who was out of town, said size may matter.
... "Wouldn't it be great if we were No. 1, but Vancouver does have mountains."

And salmon, Mr. Green, don't forget our salmon...

I keep re-writing my reactions to this survey, because I have such mixed emotions about living here in Vancouver. Here goes attempt #3 to shape my thoughts about it all...

I didn't think much of the city of Vancouver when I first moved here from Toronto, but the natural splendour of the surrounding scenery has grown on me over the years, and softened me down to a begrudged appreciation. There is much to complain about (especially if you are a merchant on Cambie Street), yet there is undeniably much to enjoy. I keep resisting the easy siren song to drift towards a cynical extreme, posting nasty photos of the city's extensive nasty side as an ironic counterpoint to the praise mentioned throughout the survey. I'm settling instead for photos hopefully reflecting the more honest range, of good and bad, which the city displays for its citizens. With a few observations..:

"Vancouver is beautiful", we say as we look far away to the mountains, our backs to the city itself. "Vancouver is a great place to live" we say as our search for affordable housing drives us farther and farther out of the city core, tripping over the phalanx of professional panhandlers astride our path as we commute downtown to work. "Vancouver is so peaceful", we say as we venture miles outside our city, far up into the mountains, or along the coast, to seek a peace and calm that eludes us in the dirty, crowded and extremely noisy streets of the city itself.

I grumble but deep down I do like it here.

What has really helped me feel grateful for winding up in Vancouver, has been seeing the city through the eyes of my circle of friends who have moved here from other countries. Listening to what it's like to live and work in India, Mexico, South America, Eastern Europe, and other four corners of the world, makes me ever so glad I was born here in Canada, following the sun from one end of the country to the other, winding up in Vancouver, British Columbia, "Canada's most liveable city".

Beautiful day to be in Vancouver

What a day to be in Vancouver. Such glorious weather makes all the grey days and rain worthwhile.

Hope everyone is having as enjoyable a weekend as I am.

Deer visits city

Seems I wasn't the only one going out for a hike this saturday..!
Where I expected to meet people, I met a deer and her two fauns, and where I hoped to encounter wildlife I kept bumping in to other hikers.

Finding strength in unexpected places

I've written before on a custom in our part of British Columbia that moves me each time I see it, where friends and families sponsor small memorials to loved ones within our many parks, in the form of public benches.
In many quiet corners of our scenic parks, you may sit and read of how one special life touched another, and how that memory is being kept alive through gentle words of heartfelt sentiment.

An effective way to accept a painful personal loss is through an expression of gratitude for the time that such special people were in our lives. Memories can prove to be so valuable in getting us through our grief; acknowledging the gain helps mitigate the loss, recognizing how we've been loved can give the necessary strength to live on without the giver of that love. Sharing these signs of appreciation with the rest of us reminds us all how precious our blessings are, and to rejoice in them, while we can.
This little video shows a selection of these humble memorials from in and around Vancouver. I had trouble sleeping again the other night, troubled once more by thoughts about the tragedy at Virginia Tech. As the benches keep teaching me, it's better to channel your pain to productive ends, creating something that can be of service, hopefully, to others.
Enjoy...






[I hope my fellow hikers will forgive my creative geography in placing the imagery in the video; I plead poetic license for the sake of dramatic effect..!]