Vancouver's Amoral Public Library

After reading Terry Glavin's article in the Vancouver Sun, "Does our library know there's another word for anti-semitism", I was pretty upset, so I went to the Vancouver Public Library to complain in person about this revelation that they were scheduling a flagrantly anti-semitic author to read excerpts from his book, at the library, later this month.

Armed with my camera, I wanted to accompany this post with pictures of the advertising the library had on display for the event. But there wasn't any advertisement for the author's upcoming talk. Maybe because it's too soon, maybe it's because somewhere within their moral core they know it is preposterous to use up their limited resources on guests like this, and they were trying to keep it low profile.

I spoke to a seemingly nice and well-mannered librarian about my disagreement with their decision. Despite how upset I was I tried nevertheless to be as gracious and polite as possible as I explained the reasons for my objections to this person being offered a prominent public pedestal by the library for his views.

The librarian was most helpful and attentive, however unsympathetic she was to my position. In fact she was so unemotional and detached, beyond dutifully offering good customer service, that I began to wonder if I wasn't making myself clear. She was talking to me as if my position was as morally neutral as it would be were a Toronto Maple Leafs fan chagrined that the library had scheduled an "award-winning journalist" to talk about why the Vancouver Canucks were the better hockey team.

At one point I asked, "You can understand why someone would be upset by the discovery that an author like this was being given a public forum in, of all places, the city's main library?"

To frame her answer, she consulted, as she did right from the start of my discussion with her, a document that she read from, verbatim, off her computer screen. I asked her about what she was referring to, if it was online somewhere so that I could read it as well. She said that it was not. I asked if I could have a copy, and after consulting a few others for their ruling on the matter, a decision was made that it would be okay for people to see it, so she printed off a copy for me.

In a follow-up post to his earlier article, Terry Glavin wonders about the decision process that led to the library making room for the "provocative" author now scheduled there later this month.

Maybe the document the library offered me, produced evidently in anticipation of complaints like mine, can shed some perspective on what that story is:

February 25 Greg Felton Reading Q&A

Q. Did VPL invite Greg Felton to read at the Central library?

R. Mr. Felton approached the library to read from his book as many authors do and publishers on behalf of their authors. Given that Freedom to Read week occurs in February, the Library felt this would be an appropriate event to hold during that week.

Q. Some groups and individuals believe Mr. Felton is a holocaust denier and neo nazi. Should such an author have the freedom to read at a public library?

R. The Library knew Mr. Felton’s book would be provocative but it has not been identified as hate speech.

Intellectual freedom is a core tenet of public libraries even though some subjects may be considered unconventional, unpopular or unacceptable. Upholding the right to intellectual freedom may put you in the position of appearing to support controversial views. The role of the public library, however, is to provide a forum for an open and public exchange of contradictory views and to make materials available that represent all points of view.

Public libraries have a responsibility for the development and maintenance of intellectual freedom. This is one of the reasons this event is being held during Freedom to Read Week.

Q. Even though Mr. Felton is a known neo-Nazi sympathizer, denies the Holocaust and calls Israel a parasite?

R. Before agreeing to Mr. Felton’s request to read at the Library, Library staff reviewed several excerpts of his book and reviewed a number of websites. We found no information indicating the book is subject to any legal action. Library staff conducted more research than is normal for an author reading to ensure the book has not been identified as hate literature.

Because his work is provocative and Mr. Felton has been the subject of debates over journalistic freedom, the Library believed this event was particularly relevant for Freedom to Read Week.

Q. Have you received any complaints about VPL holding this event?

R. Some concerns have been raised and we have communicated the Library’s perspective and explained our obligation to uphold and support intellectual freedom.

Q. Is there any possibility the event will be cancelled?

R. We have seen no evidence to indicate this event should be cancelled. Mr. Felton’s book has not been identified as hate speech. The event was scheduled because of its appropriateness for Freedom to Read Week and it would be highly ironic to cancel it without evidence that the book’s content is breaking any laws.

Q. Will Mr. Felton’s event be monitored to ensure hate-crime laws are not broken?

R. Library staff will attend the event as they do for virtually all author readings. Uttering hate speech is a crime in Canada. The Criminal Code of Canada prohibits willfully promoting hatred against any identifiable group. If Mr. Felton were to utter hate speech he would be dealt with according to these laws.

I checked the library's catalogue: they currently have another of the author's books on file ("in stock"? Not sure what the proper expression is here...). They don't have the newer book that the author is going to be reading from at the event, but I was disillusioned to learn that it is on order.

Is this really the kind of book that our library should be buying? How many new books can they afford each year, that they can find the resources to accommodate a book like this in their budget? I wonder what kind of standards are in place for them to follow when they are determining how and where to spend their presumably limited resources. (Maybe that should become a topic for them to schedule a discussion around at their evening lectures... "Why you can trust that we are handling your money wisely". We can have a "Freedom to Judge" week...)

It makes you wonder how much of those limited resources have also gone towards accommodating this author's upcoming personal appearance at the library. Who pays for the time they spent researching whether he's been "subject to any legal action"? How many man hours are involved when the library staff conducts, as they put it, "more research than is normal"?

And the costs keep coming: "Library staff will attend the event...". Given the tendentious nature of the event, will there be more staff than usually attend these events? And who is paying for that? And what does it mean that "hate speech" "would be dealt with"..? Is that implying the staff that would have been in attendance anyway, will deal with it, or will there be even more employees required to be there, adding to the library's expense?

And my questions keep coming: what book got left out, to allow for his book to be purchased for our library's files? They don't have a printing press in the basement turning out money as well as renewal slips... what got lost in the trade-off required to put his books on their shelves? Which speaker(s) did we not get to meet, in order to give the one slot for "Freedom to Read" week to this author? What can't be done at the library now that money was spent on costs surrounding this author's appearance instead? Who gets to oversee the judgment of whoever it is that judges how the library's funds get used up? Do I have any say in how my library uses its money? Whose library is it?

Well, despite whatever probable strain was placed on the library's limited resources, the guy is going to speak there, by the library's consent.

Now, what do we do about it?

What is the Right Thing To Do?

What would constitute a principled reaction to this person's appearance, and the library's acceptance of his appearance, for the reasons outlined in their Q&A document?

Do we seek to get this "provocative", to use the library's term, appearance canceled? What does that say about our belief in Free Speech, even for people who have vulgarly silly things to say?

Do we protest his appearance? Doesn't that just give him more attention? We can't do nothing... but what do we do?

Personally, my anger is aimed much more at the library than the author. His work is simply beneath contempt; I should be able to trust that my library should know better, and should have far better things to do with the money it is given. I thought they were hard up for funds these days. Apparently not. They certainly won't be needing the quota of books I used to occasionally donate, or the cash I would dutifully give them through their seasonal fund-raising book sales, if they can afford to finance "particularly relevant" events like this one.

Why nihilist neutralism is not a regard for free speech

Fat Man on a Keyboard: We've been here before:

What is staggering about all this is the failure to discriminate. If a public institution thinks that its role is to promote complete bollocks as part of a "range of views" then we are lost. If it cannot discriminate between lies and truth then we sink into a relativist hell.

I do not want to live in a society that bans books, imprisons journalists, persecutes writers and closes down newspapers. In that sense I am a free speech militant. However, we should notice something here. The writers trying to weasel their way to acceptability tell lies and seek to suppress truth. They are the book burners and the censors in the making, using 'intellectual freedom' as a cover. To support free speech is not a neutral act, it is to be a partisan for truth. Above all, it is to be a partisan for humanist values.

Partisans do not meekly surrender to lies. Partisans do not wallow in the fake neutrality of 'balance'. That is cowardice. Partisans contest, challenge and ridicule. They may not ban it, but they treat nonsense with contempt. They refuse to legitimate the vile filth of murderous prejudice, rooted in lies and dripping with irrational hatred. And they most certainly do not allow public institutions to host rabid nonsense in the name of 'free speech'.

Well said! More to come.

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Love Trumps the Covenant Zone

Due to Valentine's Day, the usual Thursday night covenant zone meeting will be postponed to Friday. We're meeting an hour earlier, at 6 pm, in front of Blenz Coffee, as usual, in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Look for the guys in the blue scarves if you want to discuss the library "freedom to read" scandal and any other concerns regarding the decline and renewal of Western culture. I'm not sure how late we'll stay.

Here's a love poem, kind of, something for all the bloggers out there. Click on the images twice to make them readable. John Gay (1685-1732):

Terry Glavin cuts into the darkness of the VPL-Fenton Scandal

Must Read: Freedom-To-Be-Antisemitic Week In Vancouver: The City Librarian Explains Why

More at and by Blazing Cat Fur

Howard Rotberg on the Vancouver Public Library - Greg Felton scandal

Our friend, the writer Howard Rotberg has penned a letter to City and Vancouver Public Library officials that is worth showing to a wider audience (with his permission). One of our readers has asked how can I attack the Library, when I am a staunch defender of freedom of speech. Howard makes the argument very clear:

I wish to lend my name to the body of Vancouver citizens who value decency and the upholding of minimum standards in the use of our library.

You have announced that you are giving a forum as part of a “Freedom to Read” series on February 25th to Greg Felton author of "The Host and the Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America". Felton's thesis is that a Zionist "junta" was at work on Sept. 11, 2001, and that al-Qaida is a mere concoction in a secret plan to subvert the American Constitution, demonize Muslims and commit mass murder. Felton is also an apologist for the book-banning Iranians.

Greg Felton has no problem getting his books published and is well heard in the sick society of anti-semites to which he panders. The anti-Israel message is just the current mask adopted by the vile anti-semite within. Unfortunately, anti-semitism is what ties the extreme right to the extreme left. The idea that the VPL is somehow upholding a “freedom to read” is laughable if it were not so sad.

The people whose books are really censored today are those like eminent professors Burr and Collins, whose book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World has just been shredded by Cambridge University Press after a rich Saudi threatened them with a huge libel suit. They made the determination that they could not afford the suit, and agreed to destroy all copies.

Or Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin Ph.D, whose new book on the psychology of terrorists was withdrawn by her publisher after Islamist threats against the publisher.

Or myself, whose book, The Second Catastrophe: A Novel about a Book and its Author (Mantua Books) was banned by Chapters/Indigo after an 18 year old Palestinian book clerk made a fraudulent allegation about what I said at a book lecture at one of their stores, when I was attacked and prevented from speaking by Arabs calling me a “f---ing Jew”.

Instead of really upholding the rights of banned authors, you give credibility to a sick, anti-semite, who should not be dignified with the forum you give him.

It is time you understood where the demands for censorship and book banning are coming from – Radical Islam.

We Jews have always upheld freedom of expression, but without some responsibility from our cultural elites, we are witnessing the debasement of our cultural values. I do not myself advocate book-banning, but I do advocate a responsible use of our public resources, and your actions are clearly irresponsible.

You have created a “lose-lose” scenario. If he is now uninvited, you allow him ammunition for his sick fantasy that Jews are controlling the world. If he is allowed to speak, you dignify his sick views with all the dignity of our Public Library system. Surely you exercise responsible judgment when ordering books, and you should do so in your choice of speakers. The only responsible thing you can now do, is make sure you invite a speaker, with real credentials, who can follow Mr. Felton, and give the facts and negate what your audience will hear from Felton.


Howard Rotberg B.A., LL.B

Vancouver B.C.

www.howardrotberg.ca

Thanks, Howard.

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Dhimmitude

The next time some youngster sees you with a "No Dhimmitude" sign in public, and accuses you of making up the word, refer him to these powerful videos on the fate of some Coptic Christian dhimmis in Egypt, linked at uppompeii

Technorati Tags: dhimmis, Egypt, dhimmitude, Copts, Christians

Letter from Chris Kempling

The teacher whom the liberal fascists in the BC teachers' college want to drive out of the profession:

A Letter from Chris Kempling
on the Latest BC College of Teachers Action Against Him

February 5, 2008

Friends:

I regret to inform you that the BC College of Teachers has again cited me for conduct unbecoming a teacher, in a letter dated January 28, 2008. They have cited me for participating in a CBC radio interview where I quoted the Bible saying that homosexual behaviour is a barrier to salvation, for contributing an essay discussing the philosophical differences between social liberals and social conservatives (published in the Calgary Herald on December 29, 2003), for publishing a scholarly article in a German family journal on the topic of homosexuality, for offering orientation change therapy as part of my private counselling practice and mentioning this in a radio interview, and, incredibly, for "knowing" that an article written by Christian Heritage Party leader Ron Gray in support of me was posted on the party's website. They also cited me for being "the local representative of the Christian Heritage Party". This is certainly true as I was the candidate for the CHP, Canada's sixth largest registered political party, in the last federal election in the Cariboo-Prince George riding (I came 5th out of 8 candidates.) All of the items listed occurred between February, 2003 and April, 2005.

Please read the whole thing and Mr. Kempling's request for financial help.

We previously discussed Mr. Kempling's plight here.

Barack Obama: Who let the dogs out?

Cobb: The Beginning of the End of Multiculturalism is an interesting prediction of the collapse of the Democratic party, with the now widespread revelation that the Democrats' multiculturalism has just been a form of subtle racism:

We don't often think of Barack Obama as a creation of the Democrat Machine, and it's really stunning to know that we haven't. But he is indeed the petard upon which Democrats have tried to hoist Republicans since his arrival on the scene. But where did he come from, really? The Democrats have given Obama an inch and he has taken a mile. With his recent four state sweep, the Clintons are really stumbling to keep up. Plus, Obama is pulling in more money. Who let the dogs out? This is the deep trouble in the Left that is forcing them to grapple with two attributes they have invested so much meaning and value in, race and gender. It's going to make their heads explode

RattlerGator has brought to my attention something about the Boomers' inability to get over their own roots, where the most significant moral chit was 'marching with Dr King'. I mean really, how scary is that? It is probably one of the last best significant things your garden variety white person could do of moral significance by virtue of the color of their skin. We, on the other hand, merely had to succeed against the odds - which is a lifetime endeavor. A march some Sunday weekend? Ha! It's like me saying 'I shook Barney Frank's hand!'. That may have been hugely significant in breaking the cultural barriers of the 50s, but then again, the 50s weren't all that retarded and lots and lots of Boomers were doing the same thing. The rewards of doing the adolescent rebellious yet moral thing against a regressive background of racist parenting should only count so much, and yet the Clintons of the world have been banking on it for decades.

This is the origin of multiculturalism. It is rooted in the basic countercultural idea that Boomer parents (and America by extension) were so incredibly wrong about race and war that they couldn't be morally right about anything. And the exploration (some Sunday march) that a generation of white youth had during the Summer of Love to find that blacks and hispanics and all the other 'others' were actually human destroyed their faith in their parents' American culture. The very humanity of 'others' came as a shock to these poor naifs and they haven't been right since. The problem is that such Boomers have been on stage too long, and their basic reversion to their signature memes, without any appreciation for what the Conservative revolution has long stood for, has left them derailed from the real track of liberty.

The Baby Boom is a market phenomenon. I'm one of that minority of Americans who never thought much of Dustin Hoffman or the Rolling Stones. Quite frankly I've never seen The Graduate and I only know three or four songs by the Stones. When Bill Clinton came rolling around in 1992, I didn't trust him, but I was glad to see the torch of the Presidency finally get to someone within 20 years of my age. Bill Clinton spoke my language and recognized the same parts of America I did, like the Arsenio Hall Show. But this was just a market phenomenon. He never got down to Constitutional purity. He never got down to core principles of America and he did nothing to bring me, or anyone, to a truer conscious patriotism as a citizenship. He never demanded sacrifice, instead he just gave us the flavor we desired. He was all about movement, and in 1992 that's what I wanted to see and hear - movement to a new generation, a Pepsi Generation.

Now it's easy for me to see all that movement was just agitation. If it took triangulation strategies, if it took bombing Serbia, then that was the cost. The point was that he could market us a Cabinet 'that looks like America'. What anybody did in those seats was not our concern, we just knew to let multicultural ethics force us not to look past race and gender. As Clinton took a whack at military policy, we knew he was going for the trifecta of sexual preference as well. He consciously politicized and brought front and center something that wasn't broke and should have been left alone.

We tend to forget the fundamental problem with godless communism which is that it sees human beings as getting their meaning from systems. To to the commie, there is no human soul which endows people with their fundamental value, instead, people get all of their meaning from the social contract. Outside of the system, people don't exist. And therefore the shape of the system defines the shape of the human without which we are supposedly all barbarians. It's easy to see the Civil Rights Movement from that perspective. Before it, blacks were not fully human because the system didn't recognize them. And of course it's also easy to see white humanity as augmented and enhanced due to their conformance to a new system recognizing black humanity. The communist, the socialist, the Marxist all see the human experience as not only being enhanced and affirmed by the System but established by it, and that said system is its only defense. In such a scheme, individuals are just like wild free electrons, not the captured flow of electricity - the only use for electrons. Recognition of a god is just a checkbox, a reason to conflict without the order imposed by the system. Race is another checkbox, gender is another checkbox, and so on. All generating 'natural' conflicts, the conflicts of Boomer parents. Multiculturalism is the ethics through which one should contextualize these essential conflicts according to the Left.

The Democrat's investment in the ethics of multiculturalism enables them to put faces in places and exploit the existential insecurities of so-called 'minorities'. It works, not so much because it satisfies the actual needs of various groups but because it satisfies the ideological desire to suggest that race, gender and preference 'gaps' have been bridged.
[...]
There are only two options, none of which is appetizing for that machine.

They will either disabuse their multicultural agenda by tacking towards the premise that Obama's race should not be considered and that where it counts, his skills and experience are most important. Then they go after him on skills and experience - which is an odd tack considering the other Democrats who were originally in the running many possessing much more skill and experience than the front runners. Or they find a way to marginalize his multicultural value by suggesting some equation like women + hispanics > black. Either way, African American and other voters who pay significant attention to this racial traffic are going to be pissed. The mendacity will be transparent, and that will stick to the Clintons and their Party like glue. A possible third way is to split the difference by offering a joint ticket. In that case, Obama becomes party to the old multicultural ethic and the game continues. But that's really just the first option all over again.

The necessary conflict between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is going to fracture the party along the multicultural lines that it drew on itself and on America. This is the beginning of the end of multiculturalism.

For Queen and Country

The other day I was having a conversation with someone who used the expression "menials". "What do you mean, menials," says I.

"The menials do the ordinary housework that the courtiers won't touch."

So what do the courtiers do?

Well, today comes the answer: they let the world know that the Queen is, how do they put it, not amused by the Archbishop and his calls for Sharia:

According to a royal source, the Queen has not expressed any view on whether Dr Rowan Williams was unwise to say it was "unavoidable" that aspects of the sharia legal system could be incorporated into English law.

But as Supreme Governor of the Church of England she has been dismayed by the controversy that the remarks have generated at such a difficult period in the history of the Established Church, which faces possible schism over the issue of homosexual clergy.

The Queen, who approved the appointment of Dr Williams on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, takes her role as Supreme Governor very seriously.

One royal source said: "I have no idea what her view is on what the Archbishop said about sharia law. But the Queen is worried, coming at such a difficult time in the Church's history, that the fallout may sap the authority of the Church."
[...]
Another royal courtier said: "The whole thing has not been skilfully handled. It can only have undermined the authority of the Church."

A Buckingham Palace spokesman declined to comment.

H/T Up Pompeii who argues:

Statements such as this do not get issued lightly and the words used go much further than a critique of the Archbishop, this is a clear indication that HRH is not happy at all with the Islamic presence in the UK.

HRH is obviously aware of the crisis within her realm and she has now broken her silence, we can only hope for more of the same.

We were happy to note last week that the Royal Family is granting the use of Windsor Castle for a special dinner to mark Israel's 60th anniversary. Again, the speculation is that the Queen is sending the British government a message on what values it should be upholding.

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Soharwardy leaves the field

Syed Soharwardy wants a "hudna" says Ezra Levant, on the news that the man who took him to the Alberta "Human Rights" tribunal is withdrawing his claim, which cost him nothing, while Levant says he spent $100,000 and who knows how much time and energy defending himself.

Unfortunately, this may also give an out to the Alberta Human Rights Commission, that their functionaries need not pass judgment on Levant's speech nor be lambasted by higher courts for their willingness to take on such a ridiculous case.

Let us not forget that many more "human rights" nuisance claims have been and are presently being waged against the exercise of our free speech.

Ezra says he will sue Soharwardy for abuse of process, claiming that Soharwardy has basically admitted that he was using Canadian laws in an attempt to impose Sharia law on Canada.

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Latest Legal Lunacy on Search and Seizure

We last discussed some peculiar discrepancies in the law's right to perform search and seizures, here.

Now, breathtaking new developments are being made in that hotbed of progressivism, Saskatchewan.

Either marijuana should be illegal, or it shouldn't. But if it is, we just make an ass of the law with thinking like
this:

The scent of weed wafting from an open car window doesn't give an officer the right to make an arrest and search a vehicle, according to a recent decision made by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal
[...]
The judge found Janvier's charter right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure had been violated. The scent of marijuana created a suspicion it was smoked, but didn't provide reasonable and probable grounds for an arrest or a search, the judge concluded before excluding the evidence. Janvier was declared not guilty.

The Crown appealed the verdict and the trial judge's decision was upheld.

"The smell alone can't constitute the grounds, because the smell of burnt marijuana - as opposed to raw marijuana - gives an inference that the material is gone, it's dissipated into the atmosphere. So how can you say you're in possession of something that doesn't exist?" [defense lawyer] Piche said.

Frankly, I think that horrible stench burning marijuana creates should be illegal. It's damned inconvenient. The other day I went into a public park washroom and found five boys smoking dope. The air was unbreathable. I cursed them and walked out, soon followed by two boys who jumped in their car and sped away, apparently afraid I was about to call the cops. Ahh, the naivety of youth.

The Queen is Back

Ferries again to cruise the straits in proper form. Bravo!

Protest Letters to Vancouver City officials needed

Dear readers,

Please have a look at this article in the Vancouver Sun, outlining the stupidity and hatred with which some library staff have aligned themselves in a desperate desire for controversy. They have confused "freedom to read", with public subsidy for antisemitic fantasies and crazy conspiracy theories.

It's not as if criticism of Israel is anything new in the meeting rooms of the Vancouver Public Library. This is hardly a topic that has been forbidden that we need to bring out in the open in the name of "freedom to read". What does seem to be forbidden at the Vancouver Public Library are pro-Israel speakers and a range of conservative books.

Please take a moment to write a note of protest to the City of Vancouver Mayor and Council (mayorandcouncil@vancouver.ca), the Chief Librarian (paulwhi@vpl.ca), and the librarian responsible for public events (janicdou@vpl.ca)

h/t Pastorius via Elder of Ziyon

God Save the Queen, and BC Ferries

I am a little dismayed, but perhaps also strengthened, by the inability of both the Queen's defenders and opponents in this country to reflect seriously on what it means for Canadian culture to have a head of state who is a rather distant (non)presence. I never see anyone arguing whether it is good or not to have a relatively distant (non)presence at the centre of our culture, a centre to which Canadian politicians (or anyone else) cannot lay a claim, or give a figure. No, those who argue for or against the Monarchy always have to struggle to make the Queen into something else, something more, or something less. I rarely find these arguments, for or against, compelling; and I wonder if, perhaps, this is not the sign of the institution's great strength. The Monarchy only really creates a sense of great resentment among those who have to try really hard to be offended by this part of our Constitution, or so it seems to me.

Some might say the lack of compelling arguments, for or against the monarchy, is a sign of its irrelevance; but do we really want to be constantly fighting about what or who should be "relevant" to Canadians, like academics arguing that their study of the latest pop culture fad or personality is a mark of their intellectual "relevance"? Is it perhaps not best to leave some sacred centres relatively unfigured, that we actually might give serious thought to the deeper mysteries of what it is about our culture that works to bind us together?

Whatever the answer, it seems to me that a fundamental fact of Canadian culture and identity is that we are a people formed in a relative equality of alienation from the sacred centre of state and society, an equality guaranteed by the fact that our head of state does not represent some fashion or faction in our political popularity contests. And, we've never had a Prime Minister who acted like a would-be king or president. Whatever the powers of office, this makes the person of our leaders rather like you or me.

Were we to become a republic, we would be turning our backs on what we are, whatever the relative merits of republicanism, in the abstract. And turning one's back is always a risky business. Instead of coming across a great new creation, one is likely to find oneself lost.

The latest seemingly thoughtless crew to take the risk is BC Ferries, which is removing the long-in-place portrats of the Queen from its ships, on the grounds that this taxpayer-owned, but independently operated corporation is no longer controlled by the government, even though it is ultimately a creation of provincial legislation and of government subsidies and service contracts.

Andy Ivens, Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, February 11, 2008

VANCOUVER - The Monarchist League of Canada is not amused that portraits of the Queen are disappearing from the B.C. Ferries fleet.

"It is important that we assert Canadian sovereignty on the Pacific coastal waters, and there is no better way to do that than with a picture of Her Majesty," said Keith Roy, chairman of the group's Vancouver branch.

He called the removal of the portraits, which usually were displayed in general seating areas, "a stealth manoeuvre by B.C. Ferries" over the past few years.

Company spokeswoman Deborah Marshall says the decision to remove the pictures was made five years ago when the former Crown corporation evolved into "an independent commercial company" - albeit owned by the taxpayers of B.C.

"We certainly mean no disrespect to the Queen," Marshall said. "It's a symbol of us not being part of government anymore."

Since 2003, the portraits have been taken down from vessels as they have been brought into dock for refits. It's unclear how many remain and on which vessels, or what has become of the old portraits.

Roy, a Vancouver real estate agent who grew up in Powell River, said he was always inspired by the Queen's portrait on board the ferries he remembers sailing on as a child.

"It's an important part of Canadian heritage and it's an important part of Canada as it is today," he said.

It seems that no one has told the MBAs at BC Ferries that the Queen, as head of state, is not merely one of the three houses of Parliament, and a symbol of government, but also the symbolic head of our (civil) society. This used to be well understood, in the days when private voluntary organizations would never forget to toast the Queen or King at their dinners and banquets, or when charitable and other organizations would solicit a symbolic patronage from members of the Royal Family. But today, we just make bad jokes about being not amused.

In forgetting this idea that Society has a symbolic, albeit distant and unclaimable, head, it's not altogether clear whether we are becoming freer, or just less in touch with the culture whose successful articulation must be the basis for our freedom. I tend to think the latter. In any case, would we be any freer if we spent our time arguing whether the President truly represented us, or those other guys? The Queen represents all of us precisely because she is not part of our popularity contests. She is a model for how each of us can make self-sacrificing attempts to represent the nation, as a matter of duty, in times when someone must step forward to defend the Constitution, or our bonds of trust and shared faith, without which no system of democratic rule, however rational, can long work to protect itself against human desires, resentments, and frauds. Each of us can represent the nation, after the model of the Queen, without our trying to lay claim to the centre, just as the Queen doesn't really dominate the centre of Canadian life, notwithstanding what the more silly resentments of our monarchy would lead us to believe.

If I'm ever on a sinking BC Ferries ship, I want to be with people who know it's time to do their duty. And that's what the portrait of the Queen should remind us to do. So, shame on those who would make the monarchy into a question of human popularity contests. God save the Queen.

UPDATE: The Queen is Back

Careful who you call a Nazi

Seems like the most-used slander on the internet can be worth a hundred g's, if you're in Canada.

Old Man Obama

While Gnosticism can, at times, have its creative side, when it comes to truly understanding the shared human source of our creativity, there's nothing new under the Gnostic Sun, not the least the desire of anxious youth to avoid facing certain humbling existential and human questions, preferring to think of themselves instead in the figure of a Sun King, as John Lennon once creatively imagined.

The power of Barack Obama's rhetoric, its ability to appear profound while saying little but "unite", "change", clearly appeals to the would-be uniters, the sun kings of latter days, as is now becoming all too apparent. One could snicker that Obama is simply telling the most guiltily race-conscious people in America that he is going to somehow free them from their guilt by constantly reminding them of the need for "change" and "unity". It's like the priest who keeps promising the forlorn that the Kingdom of God will appear on earth any day now.

But there is a larger point to be made: what Obama represents is a form of rhetoric that has for ages appealed to the young (and young-at-heart), including many happily race-conscious generations. In politics, there is always a divide, somewhere, and always a place for magicians who promise to overcome this hard reality. It's not that there aren't moments in political life when we can indeed overcome divisions; but these moments are always only temporary, as every new consensus gives way to new forms of difference: a consensus is something exchanged by people who have to be different to be engaged in human exchange, people who can never just all become the same thing and then freeze history in place. We are beings free to love and to resent any consensus; we can have no consensus, no shared new sign or idea, that is not already in the process of being exchanged, changed, eroded, reformed, etc. To be human is to exchange differences about what is only ultimately, i.e. originally, the same.

Joseph Knippenberg, writing about Dennis Hale's thoughts on the need for us to recognize the inevitability of division in politics sums up the question succinctly:

Hale makes the entirely commonsensical and grown-up point that choosing means dividing. Unity requires the overcoming or suppression of politics. Obama promises to build the kingdom on earth, which amounts to the overcoming of politics. But people who promise that usually end up trying to suppress politics.

If Obama were serious about unity, he'd be Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, or Mussolini. I credit him with not being altogether serious. He's merely, as Jonah G. would say, a liberal fascist.

I admit to rather liking that moniker, but at the end of the day, one has to face the reality that calling liberal fascists by their proper name is not a way to win them over to reality, as the outrage over Goldberg's book suggests.

As I say, it's not that unity is never possible; it's not that we can't all agree to change; it's just that if we are all to agree on change it has to be over a real promise that is truly open-ended, open to a further exchange of differences, open to new, if yet undeveloped, divisions. And if Obama presumes to represent such a promise, he needs to make clear how he can set up a new political dynamic, a new form of exchange, by bringing new ideas and realities into play in a way that widely raises excitement that a new game, a new challenge, is about to be unboxed and no one yet can know who will learn to master this game, since all players have reason to hope. That's a consensus: the start of an exciting game.

Since my colleagues here at Covenant Zone are frequently discussing how one can appeal to young people, this post began with the idea that I would put up some thoughtful comments from Knippenberg's colleague at NoLeftTurns, Julie Ponzi:

John McCain will not get the same kind of youth support that Barack Obama gets. Indeed, he ought not want to inspire that kind of reflexive, unthinking and insipid prostration.

But all young people are not twits. There is plenty to be tilled from the fertile garden of thinking and emerging-in-intelligence youth. John McCain can start by reminding us that he, too, was once young. He can talk about character in a way that inspires rather than chastises. His story is an inspiring one. He has not used it to as much good effect as he might--partly, I think, out of a sense of modesty and partly out of a (sensible) desire not to bring up the whole Vietnam debate and, thereby, hearken back to the debates of the 1960s (yet again). There is some danger in this, I admit. But the debate that Obama wants to engage is, for all his youth and inexperience, a very old one. This can be demonstrated. The truth is that Obama is nothing new under the sun. And he can be made to look very foolish for thinking that he is. Young people are always insecure about the possibility that they look foolish. Don't offend them by telling them that they are foolish--but point things out that lead them to this conclusion on their own.

There are things a septuagenarian can do to inspire young people. Two of them are NOT pandering to or ignoring them. Appeal to their minds and give them credit for having minds and then, perhaps, you may win their hearts. Such a strategy would do more than win McCain and the Republicans young voters. It would go a long way toward winning him all kinds of voters in general. For, in this need to have respect for our minds and in the desire not to appear as fools, we're all very young at heart.

French Youths Rampage On Reunion Island

Last week the French departement of the sleepy Island of La Reunion, tucked away in the South-West corner of the Indian Ocean, was again transformed into a veritable war zone, as a frightfully large army of youths, in a game of oneupmanship with their confreres back in the Parisian suburbs, went on a fiery rampage, possibly to protest an arrest made earlier the same day.

Last December the Island's rioting teenagers made the headlines when they specifically targeted one of the island's few police stations, attempting to set it on fire. Outnumbered police were at pains to contain the marauders.

This time, the police had to call in reinforcements from neighboring cities, in order to prevail... or so it sounds, from this [translated] account out of a local paper:

Around 8:00 pm, about fifty young men gathered at the Titan traffic circle, most of them masked by scarves. Many garbage cans were set on fire and placed in the middle of the causeway, on both sides of the street.

When fire-fighters from [the city of] Le Port arrived on the scene, the tension was palpable. Police were called to escort the firemen. Rioters and law officers watched them. Then a rain of stones poured down on the police. The warning is given. A rumor spreads. The arrest of a young thug earlier in the afternoon might have been the action's point of point of departure.

Reinforcements arrived from Saint-Denis. The police charged, the youths fell back to the buildings, fleeing on scooter. Tear gas grenades dispersed the youths. But the action kept getting bigger. Burning bottles started flying, molotov cocktails. A first car is set afire, then a second. Stones were thrown from windows. Soon, the ground is littered with dozens of projectiles and the remains of garbage cans, and various garbage still aflame.

Authorities took stock of the situation and the senior officers headed to the scene to be at the side of their troops. Nathalie Authebon, police commissioner of [the city of] Port is aboard a 4x4 with one of her teams. The departmental director of public security, Michel Clément, is also on scene. Soon, the sub-prefect of Saint-Pierre also heads to the area to oversee this exceptional situation. In the crush, the police manage to make arrests, immediately transporting the arrested to the Port precinct. The media is also targeted, a cameraman had his car stolen, which then ended up ablaze in the middle of the street. Between the youths and the police, a crowd of bystanders stood still at the base of the apartment buildings in order to watch the "show".

Over the radio airwaves, terrorized residents related what they were living through: "Impossible to go outside, I've barricaded myself in my own home, there are youths everywhere that are throwing stones and molotov cocktails. It doesn't stop. I won't be able to sleep the whole night", says one terrified female caller.

Around 10:00 pm, the situation seemed to calm down. Michel Clément makes a point on the situation: "Somewhere around 8:00 pm, there was a redeployment of about fifty youths at the Titan traffic circle setting fire to several garbage cans and when the police arrived, they became the target for showers of stones by these individuals. Therefore reinforcements were called in, coming from [the city of] Saint-Denis, they are now in action for making arrests and dispersing these individuals. The situation is almost under control at this time. Actually, there are about fifty police officers on the scene." ...

Here and there, police and youths continue to clash. But the majority of the bands are dispersed. And it comes down to face-to-face intimidation. Insults are hurled. Then a youth advances while rolling his shoulders. The police go forward, helmeted. When they find themselves close enough to the boy, they catch him and handcuff him before putting him in the van.

Hard to sum up last night's damages, the youths seemed ready to fight for a good part of the evening. Today, those arrested will have to explain themselves to the court. But most of them are minors. No doubt a strategy on the part of the elders, to send the youngest into the nets of law enforcement, all the better for [the older kids] to get away in the diversion. Also, it's difficult to establish precise responsibilities in these types of events, which are, on top of things, at night.
"For now, we have no exact explanation for these incidents. But we're going to figure out what happened", explained Michel Clément last night.

Here's a French language account from the island's television news program. It's pretty much the same information as in the written account, so I won't translate it...:

97420_Nuit_agitee_au Port
by banlieusarde974

If this story hadn't been picked up by French blogs, such as the vigilant Francois deSouche, where I found it, would anyone within continental Europe have heard about it otherwise? It doesn't seem to have been mentioned in any of the major French papers that I follow, a complaint echoed in FDS' comments section at his blog.
The island's press gave it lots of coverage, but elsewhere, I suppose, it's just not news anymore that a substantial number of teenagers living in French suburbs seem to be growing up as barbarians.

Are Canadians subsizing the evil of polygamy?

Muslim officials say yes; Canadian officials say no, at least not officially, hehe. In any case, anyone who can say, as does Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims - in reference to the current furore over the British government's decision to recognize polygamous marriages, contracted overseas (wherever that is in the era of the world wide web), when determining a family's welfare rates - that

Canada is a very liberal-minded country," ... "Canada is way ahead of Britain in this respect."

is someone who needs an education on why the concepts of "liberal" and "polygamy" are contradictory. But, sad to say, one can today imagine how a Canadian chap could come not to appreciate this contradiction. Perhaps we have here another schmuck misled by the Liberal Party of Canada? Or is this form of denying what liberalism (a word which I believe derives, etymologically, from an idea of sons being collectively liberated from the rule of the father and his horde) was once clearly about, just his way to avoid thinking about the unmarried losers back home who want to die for Allah, since they have no hope of any other bride, or about the women who whine to husband that wife #1 is being a tyrant , or letting her daughter act like a slut at school?

Canadians should be ashamed to think about what they are subsidizing in the larger world. Our political leaders and their attitudes towards "liberal" immigration policies that allow polygamous families to form in Canada (thus subsidizing their formation abroad) need to receive unsolicited letters on the meaning of liberalism, on the development needs of countries like Pakistan, and lessons on the necessary basis, in family structure, of a free society in which the individual is at the core of our shared Canadian understanding of what is sacred.

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English Dhimmi Christian Joke

The best comment I've heard on the Rowan Williams affair is from a chap who just called in to Radio Five.

After saying he was a proper Christian, unlike Rowan Williams, he said:

Jesus Christ will be turning in his grave.

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On a more serious note:

An artist has turned Lincoln Cathedral into a mosque in a protest against comments made by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Local artist Andrew Riddle said he found the Archibishop's comments "ludicrous". Mr Riddle, an artist and farmer from Corringham, near Gainsborough, said: "His comments seemed so ludicrous to me, the idea that different sections of the population should be subject to different laws. . . there was a different picture in the window, but when I heard his comments it inspired me to do this drawing."

There are cathedrals in Istanbul and Damascus that are now Mosques which I would imagine were Mr Riddle's inspiration.Top left, Mr Riddle's drawing, bottom right a photograph of the West Front. The third central tower is hidden from view at this angle.

The Archbishop of Sharia controversy

Adrian Morgan provides a useful overview of the present storm over the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments, and provides some background to recent developments in Britain.

Of course, despite Archbishop Rowan Williams' general political foolishness, and his unwittingly anti-Christian moral and cultural relativism, the Archbishop is at least correct that Sharia law already exists in some form in Britain as, for example,the reports of Muslim police and government officials helping families track down wives and daughters who have tried to escape to women's shelters testifies. When the state is helping to sustain a culture that still performs honour killings, the outrage over Archbishop Rowan William's testing of the Sharia waters is understandable. According to police, there are up to 17,000 women who are victims of honour crimes each year in Britain.

What is becoming more and more clear is that there is growing a very serious divide between the elites or the bureaucratic-academic-journalistic classes and the bulk of (increasingly internet-informed) public opinion in countries like Britain on the questions of "multiculturalism" and Islam and their place in (British) society. This is a highly dangerous situation that could lead to great violence because it testifies to a collapse of a shared conception of what the national covenant of Britain is. If the elites, full of their vague and fundamentally incoherent half-ideas about cultural and moral relativism, "multiculturalism", "European Union", (anti-)nationalism and democracy, are unable to represent the nation and political citizenship in ways that can be used, exchanged, modified, by the large majority of people, under a national political constitution that provides a people the non-violent means to constitute and renew their political identities, it is only a matter of time before there will be serious disorder.

According to a recent report for one of the world's leading elite-liberal-post-nationalist organizations, Europeans think Islam is dangerous:

An “overwhelming majority” of Europeans believe immigration from Islamic countries is a threat to their traditional way of life, a survey revealed last night.

The poll, carried out across 21 countries, found “widespread anti-immigration sentiment”, but warned Europe’s Muslim population will treble in the next 17 years.

It reported “a severe deficit of trust is found between the Western and Muslim communities”, with most people wanting less interaction with the Muslim world.

Last night an MP warned it showed that political leaders in Britain who preach the benefits of unlimited immigration were dangerously out of touch with the public.

The study, whose authors include the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, was commissioned for leaders at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

This divide between "leaders" and "citizens" is indeed frightening. The basis of all human order, the means by which we defer violent conflict, is through the exchange of signs or representations. These signs must emerge and be exchanged on shared scenes, a requirement that has led us in the West to develop shared national cultures, on the realization that multicultural empires have proven less capable of insuring the democratic exchange of signs. But this is a lesson we are always forgetting, due to the unhappy but inevitable history of conflict within and between nations, and due to the appeal of more simplistic Utopian ideas about imperial control and unified deferral to centralized signs of "multicultural", i.e. extra-cultural, rule. To speak of "extra-cultural" rule is to suggest that the "culture" ruling multicultural empires is parasitic on the subject cultures and does not provide a means for much cultural renewal in the long run. If "multicultural" "unity" comes at the cost of a loss to ordinary people's capacity to engage seriously in the renewal of the culture by which they are led, if unity means that politics becomes a game of horse-trading among demagoguing elites who stir up the mobs they presume to represent, focusing their resentment on the other demagogues and the other mobs-cultures of the multicultural empire, instead of engaging one's constituency in a serious exchange of signs, then it is not a unity that will last long the erosion that human resentment effects on any and every form of political order.

Multiculturalism, as a principle of rule, must be parasitic on all the cultures that constitute the political entity, for it cannot fully provide any one culture the freedom continually to renew the terms by which leaders and led will relate to each other. It robs any one culture of the degrees of freedom necessary to that essential human task. Whatever multicultural flourishing we (Canadians) should allow ourselves in the domestic, strictly (privately) religious, consumer, and economic spheres of life, when it comes to public politics, our ideal should be a universally shared national covenant. If multiculturalism means eating Chinese food, or becoming a Hindu, fine. But if it means that our political leaders speak primarily not to individual Canadians as free individuals, but to Chinese, Hindu, etc. "community leaders", then we are going down a road to a political culture that will rob ourselves of the necessary means for renewing our politics non-violently. Only a political order that has a constitution that allows the people the individual- (not group-)based freedoms to be variously involved in renewing their culture(s) can hope to survive long in history, especially at a time when our means of communications and resentment are so great.

Order is never primarily a question of brute force or power, but of shared opinion about the political and social lines that must be respected and defended. It is once that shared exchange of political representations is lost between putative leaders and led that the attraction of brute force to those seeking power and order becomes fantastically appealing.

But those who want to forestall the coming danger will not simply jump on the popular bandwagon of denouncing both Islam as a violent and supremacist cult, and the elites who insist it is a religion of peace. What Islam is or can be is not half as important as what Western nations understand themselves to be. Will Westerners, currently immersed in the religion of White Guilt, give up on renewing and championing their national cultures, both as the basis for a more transparent and effective inter-national mediation of conflict, and for maximizing our individual potential to live free and meaningful lives within the march of history?

The real leaders of society will take it upon themselves to sit down with their friends, neighbours, internet acquaintances - all fellow citizens of good faith - and start asking how we can start representing our nations in ways that can preserve and renew our traditions of individual freedom and self-ruling democracy. When I hear of covenant zones, or something like them, popping up in the UK, I will worry less that out-of-control street violence, or totalitarian government, is in the future of the land that gave Canada the basis of our constitutional freedoms.

Nigerian Archbishop Ben Kwashi responds to Rowan Williams:

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