Ezra Levant Picking another CHRC Fight?

No sooner had Ezra Levant's show, The Source, gone on-air on Sun TV than he was once again digging up some old fights. Or perhaps even picking them.

During the April 18 episode of his show, Levant again showed the infamous prophet Muhammad cartoons. However whereas he was previously publishing them in the Western Standard, he's now broadcasting them on Sun TV.

He's already drawn the attention of Imam Steve Rockwell. Rockwell was previously in the news when he and Aly Hindy tag teamed a radio show caller who questioned the practice of polygamy in Islam. It immediately followed an episode in which a Canadian Muslim man had been caught maintaining three marriages; at least one of his wives were in the dark.

Now Rockwell's gone solo. The results have been truly remarkable.

“If he wants freedom of speech why doesn’t he go up to a black man and use the N-word?” Rockwell asked angrily. “There is no absolute free speech. With freedom of speech there are rules.”

Rockwell suggested that the media has a special tolerance for Levant's antics because his targets are Muslims, not Jews. Jews, you see, control the media.

“If he were to show 100 Jews in flames with soap coming out of the other end he would not have a job the next day!” he declared. “Why doesn’t he show his Jewish cousins being fried by the Nazis?”

Wow. Just wow.

Levant countered by noting that anti-Semitic cartoons are published so frequently, and the reactions to them are so relentlessly tame, that they are practically a non-story.

“Anti-Semitic cartoons run in newspapers around the world all the time,” he remarked. “If they were the cause of riots and 200 people dying you are darn right I would run them.”

It seems entirely fair to wonder whether or not Levant is deliberately attempting to provoke a complaint with one of the Human Rights Commissions his Islamist opponents previously used against him.

But one could be a long time waiting for such a complaint. When Levant was the editor of the Western Standard, it was one thing. Now that he has Quebecor behind him, it's unlikely that Steve Rockwell or anyone else will attempt to take him on in that forum.

Which basically demonstrates that that the proponents of Human Rights Commissions have been banking on the financial vulnerability of their targets for their success. When tye go after an organization like Macleans, who have some real money to defend themselves with... well, we've already seen the results.



Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Blazing Cat Fur - "F$cked Up Imam Steve Rockwell On Ezra Levant: 'Why doesn’t he show his Jewish cousins being fried by the Nazis?'”

God's Copy Book - "Bless You Ezra"

In Their Own Words: Soft on Crime, Tough on the Law-Abiding

On a recent edition of The Michael Coren Show, Coren, Andrew Lawton, John Downs and Nokha Dakroub face off over the issue of the long-gun registry.

Discussing the Liberal Party's most recent fear-mongering attack ad, Coren, Lawton, Downs and Dakroub discuss the issue of crime.

Seldom has the left ever demonstrated its intellectual impoverishment on the issue of crime, particularly as it pertains to the long-gun registry. Citing statistics claiming that long-guns are used to kill women, Downs is unable to address some of the very basic facts on this issue. This includes the fact that the long-gun registry hasn't actually reduced gun violence against women, or anyone else for that matter.

Downs and Dakroub go on to note that knives are also lethal, as are staplers (or at least can be). This would be utterly comical if it wasn't in their own words.

Downs goes on to note that it should be difficult to register a firearm so that there will be fewer guns. The segment concludes with Downs explaining why he thinks the Canadian justice system is so replete with impediments on the law-abiding, and various benefits and amnesties for criminals; at least he attempts to. The segment concludes with him flubbing the word "penal" (he instead says "penile"; laughter and cross-talk ensue).

Even with his comments left incomplete, Nokha Dakroub and John Downs make one thing abundantly clear: the Canadian left-wing favours a system that is soft on crime, and tough on the law-abiding.

These are the competing visions Canadians are choosing between in the 2011 federal election: on the one hand, a vision that is tough on crime, and soft on the law-abiding. In the other hand, a vision that is soft on crime, and tough on law-abiding.

Throughout the United States, the Far Left is Seething in Outrage

Somewhere, in the United States, hard-core leftists are branding Seth MacFarlane a traitor.

In the most recent episode of Family Guy, MacFarlane teams up with Rush Limbaugh to ridicule the extreme stereotypes the far left holds of conservatives.

Afer learning that Limbaugh is visiting Quahog, Brian first degenerates into sputtering nonsensical epithets (at one point even prompting Stewie to offer him a do-over). However, after reading one of Limbaugh's books, Brian becomes a full-out dittohead... at least for a time.

With Limbaugh's full support, Brian stops thinking for himself, and promptly believes everything that Limbaugh tells him to.

Naturally, in the end Brian returns to being what Lois describes as a "hard-core liberal". He was never a conservative at all, mostly because he never understood how to be.

Regardless of what some would-be conservatives have to say about it, torture is not a conservative value. Rather, quite the contrary. Conservatives believe in rule of law, and torture is contrary to the rule of law.

Having never been a conservative himself, all Brian can offer is the left-wing cariacture of conservatives.

If not for the participation of Limbaugh himself, many conservatives would likely be outraged. But with Limbaugh's cooperation, the episode instead becomes a parody of everything that the far left thinks about conservatives -- including about Fox News.

For example, Lois declares everything on Fox News to be lies. And even things previously true become a lie once mentioned on Fox. Sounds like the basic knee-jerk reaction that many leftists offer to anything appearing on Fox News.

The Limbaugh episode of Family Guy should offer clarity to the terms of the debate between left and right in the United States. Unfortunately, it probably won't. It will probably just leave the left branding Seth MacFarlane as a tratior.


Seed Newsvine

Somewhere, in the Darkest Corner of the Toronto Star...

...Heather Mallick could be heard screaming "pramface!!!"

Just Because It's Hanukkah

Why Sarah Palin is Wrong About "Death Panels"

Sarah Palin peddles "death panels" absurdity at doctors' peril

Regardless of what many people -- liberals and conservatives alike -- seem to think, Sarah Palin is not nearly as intriguing an individual as many seem to think.

But one thing Palin certainly has a gift for is provoking controversy then not backing away -- which is precisely what she has done since stirring up a hornet's nest with her "death panels" remarks over the summer.

In a recent post on her Facebook profile, Palin has pushed that button once again.

"We had been told there were no 'death panels' in the bill either," Palin wrote. "But look closely at the provision mandating bureaucratic panels that will be calling the shots regarding who will receive government health care."

As was noted when Palin originally brought up the issue, what she's actually referring to are panels providing counselling on end of life issues.

Rarely has the reason precisely why Palin is so wrong on this issue been made as crystal clear as in a recent episode of House MD.

In the episode, Dr Greg House (Hugh Laurie) and Dr James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) travel to a medical conference where Wilson plans to recite a paper about the need for support for doctors who may need to consider helping a terminal patient end their own life.

As the episode points out, it's simply naive to believe that doctors who deal with the most agonizing and deadly illnesses don't practice euthanasia, and it may even simply be dogmatic to pretend that it isn't the humane thing to do.

On that note, it's actually extremely inhumane to leave doctors with nowhere to turn when forced to make the decision between helping a patient end their own life or forcing that patient to live out the last hours of their life in agony.

Whether Sarah Palin wants to call them "death panels" or not, the fact is that these boards are badly needed. Not merely in the United States, but everywhere in the world.

A Medium the Pro-Abortion Movement Cannot Silence

Law and Order discusses abortion

A recent episode of Law and Order has apparently provoked quite the controversy amongst the pro-abortion movement.

In the episode, Detectives Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) and Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson) are investigating the murder of Dr Walter Benning, an abortion doctor killed while attending his church.

Dr Benning is clearly a stand-in for Dr George Tiller, who was murdered earlier this year while attending his own church.

Eventually, they identify Wayne Grogan (PJ Sosko) as their suspect. Grogan is defended by Roger Jenkins (Richard Thomas), who also acts as the legal advisor for a Crisis Pregnancy Centre.

He defends Grogan with a justification defense. They argue that, as Grogan was -- in his own mind, at least -- acting in defense of a single viable unborn child set to be born with a medical condition that would render her skin fragile, although she could survive the condition.

Based on the survivability of the condition, the judge in the case allows Grogan and Jenkins to present their justification defense.

The battle lines over the case are clearly drawn between the characters. Bernard is fervently anti-abortion, Lupo is pro-abortion. Executive Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) is anti-abortion, and Assistant District Attorney Conny Rubirose (Alana De La Garza) is stridently pro-abortion.

Despite the fact that both Bernard and McCoy oppose abortion, they pursue Dr Bennet's murderer to the fullest extent of their ability. McCoy even helps suppress knowledge that Dr Benning had apparently finished an abortion after a child was born live during a partial-birth abortion.

Oddly enough it's Rubirose, who is so strongly in favour of legalized abortion that she refers to the anti-abortion movement as "anti-choice", who discloses the matter to the defense.

While the pro-abortion movement is decrying the episode as presenting "almost every deranged anti-abortion talking point can be found in the episode — comparing anti-choicers to the civil rights movement — with little or no pro-choice rebuttal," they're overlooking the fact that virtually every argument of the pro-abortion movement is presented.

Numerous women in the episode note that seeking an abortion is the most difficult decision they will ever face, and many women display the emotional distress that many women feel after the fact. Even witnesses on the stand who oppose abortion agree that doctors such as Dr Benning provide a necessary medical service for the women who need it.

In the end, Grogan is quite rightly convicted. Even if Dr Benning was performing illegal abortions, Grogan's act was still an act of terrorism, and had to be treated accordingly.

What individuals like JJ are really outraged about isn't that the anti-abortion case was presented without pro-aboriton rebuttal, but rather that it was presented at all.

It's one thing for pro-abortion protesters to show up at an anti-abortion speech and disrupt the event so that the presenter cannot speak. It's entirely another for the pro-abortion movement to attempt to barge into the living rooms of every home watching Law and Order and prevent them from watching the show because it presents sides of the abortion debate that they don't want to be heard.

They can accomplish one of these things -- they cannot accomplish the other, and it seems to positively embitter them that the anti-abortion message has (although not unopposed within the episode itself) found a medium that they cannot silence.

(Although the producers of Law and Order may want to watch out for this lunatic sitting behind them in church.)

The Deadliest Terrorist

Taliban judged second best to IRA

For a show that was expected to generate an overwhelming wave of controversy, Spike TV's recent episode of The Deadliest Warrior pitting the Taliban against the Irish Republican Army has actually resulted in a rather meager response.

In a show that compared the training and weaponry of the two organizations -- comparing the AR-18 assault rifle to the AK-47, a flame thrower to an RPG rocket launcher, a landmine to a nail bomb and a slingshot to a bayonet -- the conclusion drawn, via computer simulation, was that the IRA was the superior terrorist force.

The show's analysts judged the AR-18, the RPG rocket, the nail bomb and the bayonet to be the superior weapons.

The results of the show leads one to even more deeply suspect that one of the key mistakes in NATO's prosecution of the war in Afghanistan was the American and British decisions to draw their focus away from Afghanistan and apply it to Iraq. In particular, British forces who had experience dealing with the IRA "troubles" in Ireland would have made for a tremendous asset to NATO operations in Afghanistan.

Then again, there are obvious questions about whether the desert theatre of warfare -- as opposed to the mostly-urban theatre in Ireland -- would have minimized the benefit of the lessons the British learned fighting the IRA.

All the same, the season finale of The Deadliest Warrior leads one to conclude that one of the worst errors made in Afghanistan was getting too ambitious in opening another front in the War on Terror.

Pop Culture and Philosophy vol. 3: Sexual Confusion In a Time of Cyber-Identity

When Ghost in the Shell was first released as an anime nearly fifteen years ago, it provoked a great deal of criticism for the sexualized nature of some of the violence.

In the film the main character, Kotoko Kusanagi, undresses before engaging in combat.

Interestingly enough, however, Ghost in the Shell is essentially about a futuristic world wherein cybernetics has advanced to the point where entire android bodies can be implanted with human brains.

Kusanagi is a member of Section 9, a police unit that consists almost entirely of full cyborgs. As a result, Kusanagi's body isn't really female. It's merely a machine built to resemble a female body. It cannot reproduce -- although the first film deals with the issue of reproduction in an intruiging manner -- and could be populated by absolutely anyone.

Sociologists have long recognized that sex and gender are often treated as the same concept, yet are markedly different. Sex is a description of the sexual characteristics of the body. Males have male sexual characteristics and females have female sexual characteristics. In terms of biology, this essentially comes down to the sex organs.

In Ghost in the Shell, fully cybernetic bodies have no sex organs. Accordingly, they can only accurately be described as asexual.

Gender, meanwhile, is a much more complex topic. Gender is largely considered to be a function of identity: a collection of the ideas, concepts and emotions one holds regarding their sexuality combined with their phsyical characteristics and impulses.

Clearly, gender confusion would be much easier to deal with in an age of cyber identity -- wherein one's physical form could be entirely customized at will so long as one were willing to compromise on conventional concepts of their own humanity.

Transplanting into a fully cybernetic body would pose to one the philosophical dilemma of embracing asexuality in order to rectify their gender confusion -- something they believe will be solved by transplanting themselves into a body of another sex.

In order for the transplanting of one's brain to fully solve their gender confusion one would have to find someone willing to have another brain implanted in their body, and their own brain implanted in someone else's.

Organized gender swapping could very much be a reality in such a world.

But it also poses larger questions about how one keeps track of identity in such a world. Many of the documents used today to keep track of one's identities deal with physical characteristics -- height, weight, hair and eye colour, skin colour and even date of birth. These are all characteristics securely grounded in time and space.

Take the case of the Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister suggested in episode one of Stand Alone Complex -- an anime series treated as separate from the feature-length films or the original manga. When the Minister gets drunk he occasionally likes to swap bodies with Geishas at a club he often frequents. The national security of Japan is eventually compromised when an individual with criminal intents steals the body of the Minister.

The individual in question has perpetrated the ultimate act of identity theft. With notions of identity naturally focused around one's body it doesn't even necessarily take a talented actor to steal one's body and, forthwith, their identity.

The individuals swapping bodies through an organized gender swapping scheme could be considered to be swapping not only their sex, but also their effective identities. While one has to imagine that a society in which the swapping of bodies is possible would have to employ more fluid methods of tracking identity, one also has to consider the likelihood that such methods would first have to breach a psychological and philosophical barrier.

Certainly, the idea that one's true identity lies somewhere other than with their body wouldn't be a new concept. Religious people believe in the soul. However, one has to remember that they treat the soul largely as an otherworldly entity. The more fluid sense of identity required for a society like that portrayed in Ghost in the Shell would need to apply such ideas in the corporeal world.

TV programs like Ghost in the Shell mount an interesting challenge to traditional notions of identity. One only has to wonder how long it will be before global civilization actually has to deal with that challenge in real life.