Barrel Strength

A 2.5 acre island of Forvik, which is formally known as Forewick Holm and is part of the Shetland Islands in the North Sea, has declared independence on June 21st, 2008. Mr. Stuart Hill, the sole-resident of the island, has posted the declaration on his website and states that he wants the territory to be a crown dependency like the Channel Islands, with an economy in which “There will be no income tax, VAT (value added tax), council tax, corporation tax, or any of the other taxes instituted by the British government”.

The basis of the independence is the historical fact noted in the aforementioned declaration, viz. “the only powers granted to King James III of Scotland in 1469, when he accepted these islands as security in the matter of payment of a marriage dowry, were those of trustee. His Majesty was holding them in trust until they were redeemed by King Christian of Denmark and Norway or his successors. Part of his obligation was to preserve the existing language and laws.”

Those interested in obtaining citizenship to the islands can find more information here.

So the EU will soon be receiving messengers from the Pakistani government who will demand that freedom of speech be restricted so as to avoid an onslaught of terrrorist attacks. Thankfully there is already a good script in place for the reply:

Direct link to video on Youtube

But I doubt that the Eurowusses will be up to the task.

I have maintained that the hostility shown by Human Rights Commissions towards Steyn and Levant comes from lawyers, some of whom drink deeply from poisoned wells on their passage through three years of law school.

The message being conveyed to the students who take courses from certain professors is that free speech is an American concept, which they are wrongfully exporting to Canada and other places through the usual instruments of cultural imperialism. Mr. Stacey of the federal branch of our human rights commissions was typical in his view that free speech was an “American doctrine”.

I cite as an example the essay found in (2003) 49 McGill Law Journal 59 by Professor Jane Bailey, “Private Regulation and Public Policy: Toward effective restriction of Internet hate Propaganda” as a pertinent example of the creeping abrogation of free speech in the name of “multiculturalism”, and “equality” that were enshrined in Trudeau’s 1982 Constitution. I argue that the consequences of that Constitution are being witnessed now in the prosecution of Steyn and Levant.

Read the rest…

British police and prosecutors have been forced to apologize and pay damages and legal costs to documentary makers over their factual reporting of statements made by extremist imams in their mosques:

West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have apologised for accusing the makers of a Channel 4 documentary of distortion.

The apology and the promise of £100,000 were made at the High Court on Thursday.

It follows comments made about a Dispatches programme, Undercover Mosque, which tackled claims of Islamic extremism in the West Midlands.

[...]

But in November, Ofcom rejected the police and CPS claims, and Channel 4 said it was going to sue the CPS and police for libel.

The statement, released to the media after the High Court hearing by West Midlands Police, said they accepted there had been no evidence that Channel 4 or the documentary makers had “misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity”.

It added that the Ofcom report showed the documentary had “accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context”.

The police statement concluded: “We accept, without reservation, the conclusions of Ofcom and apologise to the programme makers for the damage and distress caused by our original press release.”

Direct link to video on Youtube

the lovely and intelligent Great Canadian™, Jennifer Lynch, QC. After all, if one is seeking out political hacks without the skills to make it in truly merit-based jobs, we’ve hit the motherlode with this one.

This is the former chief of staff to Joe Clark, in his last fling at failing as PC Party Leader, who in a matter of months:

• chided staffers for not keeping up a “professional” profile since the Clark PCs were, in her words, “the government-in-waiting”
• purchased a $1000 Royal Doulton coffee service with the office funds of the smallest parliamentary caucus, because a “former Prime Minister needs to entertain guests in an appropriate fashion.”
• appropriated a high-speed network laser printer as her personal desktop printer, leaving a whole research unit without ready access to their written output.
• demonstrated her self-proclaimed skills as “a respected Alternative Dispute Resolution practitioner, with particular expertise in mediation and the facilitation of complex group processes” by allowing her office to deteriorate into outright mutiny, seeing six senior staffers resign within six weeks.

Update

The typical ethical slip is to pad a resume but it looks like Lynch’s is markedly economical with the truth:

Ms. Lynch has served as chief executive officer in both the private and public sectors: leading the international consultancy PDG People Development Global Inc. from 1998 until her appointment as Chief Commissioner;

But what of her half-year as ringmaster to the Clark circus? I guess she was sort of a CEO from December 1998 to July 1999… in an Enron kind of way.

A postmodernist academic at Dartmouth College is threatening to sue her students on grounds that their “anti-intellectualism” violated her civil rights:

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of “French narrative theory” that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will “name names.”

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. “My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful,” she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. “They’d argue with your ideas.” This caused “subversiveness,” a principle English professors usually favor.

Such loopy resorts to legalism by the unreasonable are, of course, nothing new to us in Canada. But finding students who resist these PoMo clowns rather than acquiescing to them for the sake of grades is astounding. Hope remains in the quest to reclaim sanity in academia.

I took a course in communications law at the University of Ottawa last year. As is usual in such courses, we had to deliver a class on a topic of our choice. One young man in the class gave his lecture on “freedom of speech”, contrasting Canada and the United States. He dismissed it as “an American concept”, alien to the concept of controlled speech which we have in Canada. He cited leftist, feminist professors of law; he repeated their views in the communications law class. I questioned him. When it got down to it, he frankly admitted that he did not trust the people of Canada to defend the right values, he had more trust in the Supreme Court and the specialized institutions of human rights commissions and state-subsidized Court Challenges program than in the electoral process and in Parliament. I told him a brilliant future awaited him in the Liberal Party. I thought him a scoundrel, another fatuous leftist whose only virtue was fthe frankness with which he disdained elected governments. He considered himself a “progressive”.

So when Mark Steyn went on Steve Paikin’s show last night, I considered the nature of the three young Canadians who are arguing with him about their rights. They are all lawyers. They are all Muslims. They seemed, from how they argued and what they said, to have learned their law from the same sources as my classmate.

Steve Paikin had to maintain peace between Steyn and his young Muslim contenders, and at times the show descended into everyone shouting at once. What was clear to me, was that the kids - I am at the age I will call them that - were unpreprared to discuss the fundamentals. One of their arguments was that, since the Human Rights Commissions are not criminal in nature, Steyn mischaracterized them when he said he had been subject to “criminal” prosecution. As if going to jail, being forced to pay a fine, and enduring years of state subsidized prosecution is somehow made better because it is not “criminal”? Well, can we agree it is prosecution for heresy?

The basis of their objection to Steyn was that they had been offended, and wanted MacLean’s to give them a mutually agreeable amount and type of rejoinder. Steyn pointed out that they had had exposure in seven Canadian major newspapers to make their point.

Paikin finally asked the question of them: do you have a right not to be offended? And apparently all the young Muslim lawyers can think about is how offended they have a right to be. They have been educated in Supreme Court rulings that have sustained the Human Rights Commission’s prosecutions of neo-Nazis. For them, there is no cultural experience of the Human Rights Commissions and hate-speech prosecutions as an exceptional novelty. This is the Canada they grew up in. They have no recollection of the Canada that existed before the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted in 1982. When Steyn talks of Trudeaupia, he is referring to a reality that I perceived last night in the attitudes of these young Muslim lawyers. I found it deeply disturbing that they were incapable of discussing the real issues - objective facts about demographics - which lead to the apprehensions we all have about the future of western societies.

Does it matter whether the take-over is peaceful or violent, in the great scheme of things? Would it be better if it were peaceful? Would it make a difference? From what perspective? From whose? The debate was not engaged.

I saw three young Canadian lawyers, accidentally Muslims, and essentially people whose sense of entitlement is so vast they would crush free speech in this country and not even know what they were doing. I have seen too many young lawyers, white, brown, you-name-it, who have no idea whatever of our pre-Trudeau British constitutional freedoms and responsibilities, and no concern that they are so ignorant. All they want is a Supreme Court and Liberal government appointing the judges. Then they and their kind can rule us forever without interference from Parliamentary institutions. Our law schools are failing us. The Sock Puppets are altogether typical of what modern Canadian legal education is producing. Thank God for Steyn for bringing them up short.

UPDATE: It’s back! Click and enjoy!

Direct link to video on Youtube

Alas! The IP Lawyers probably saw that the long excerpt from a German version of Hitler’s last days in the bunker offended “fair use”. That is the most charitable interpretation I can give. The subtitles in English had nothing to do with the bunker, of course. They were a completely accurate rendition of the facts in the Warman-Jadewarr-Barabara Hall-CHRC imbroglios. Anyone with the source of this parodic film, please let me know ehere it can be found. It is too precious to be lost.

The search for a Third Way to address the failures of socialism and perceived inequity of capitalism is a constant phenomenon. Despite the failure of this policy in Far East during the 1990s, where it was implemented by a honest, educated and intelligent civil service, the philosophy is once again advocated by the book Nudged.

The reviews describe this book as “gem of a book”, “utterly brilliant book”, “book is terrific” and so on and so forth. The book advocates “Libertarian Paternalism” or “Soft Paternalism”. This philosophy believes the state can “help you make the choices you would make for yourself—if only you had the strength of will and the sharpness of mind.” Ah yes, the sharpness of mind. Before one signs up an Obama-wannabe, complete with an attitude and sidekick with a chip on her shoulder, for advice let us see how the state has done historically.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this one is better than a thousand socialist slogans. Sovereign default seems to be a constant theme through the history. It seems all those who want to watch and hover over us, themselves need watching.

I think it was William Shirer in ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ who talked with a German who compared Adolf Hitler to the stock figure of the Heiratsschwindler, a confidence man who cheats widows and spinsters out of their little means with the promise of marriage. Like the marriage swindler, Hitler achieved his end by promising what he never intended and taking what could never be recovered. To me, the Heiratsschwindler is the human rights commissioner who swears to the truth of a glowing future against a guaranteed investment today. All will be well if you but surrender the right to think and speak and read and write. Within the marriage swindle, the crisis comes when the victim must assign all her assets to the custody of the mustachioed villain. At the first sign of resistance, the Heiratsschwindler gathers himself into a ball of principled and outraged fury to explode upon his victim. “How can you dare to doubt my integrity and my intentions? I give you the promise of love and assured financial security, based on the soundness of the investment scheme for which I need all your savings, more or less immediately and without conditions and certainly without troublesome questions which visibly upset me and delay our bliss.” Trust, indeed love, is the basis of the swindle but the closer is emotional blackmail of the basest kind. If you are not already acquainted with the sinister plans of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, I would urge you to study them without delay. This is the confidence trickster writ large.

The lamps are going out all over the world:

Direct link to video on Google Video

Barrelstrength announces the creation of a movement to assist the smaller defendants in the Warman case. We are calling it Tankards for Truth.

 The idea is that people across Canada will hold events in their favourite drinking spot to raise money.

Board games, movies, sports events, bicycle rallies, 100 meter marathons for out-of-shape bloggers - it does not matter. Help organize a fundraiser in your community.

No money should go to Tankards for Truth. All money you collect should be sent to the defendants.

Our goal is to raise money for Catherine MacMillan of Small Dead Animals, Mark and Constance Fournier of Free Dominion, Ezra Levant, and Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury. We assume that the Aspers and the National Post can take care of themselves.

We know that each of these bloggers has a donations button on their pages. We  intend to supplement their fund raising with fundraising on their behalf.

We will communicate with the defendants to tell them of our support and coordinate our efforts with theirs, as appropriate.

We will set up a website, www.tankardsfortruth.ca, which will be up shortly. A MySpace page will be created. We will allow postings of events and cooperate with other activists to help defray the costs of supporting freedom of speech.

We welcome all communication from supporters of the bloggers who have been made the subject of Richarrd Warman’s libel suit. 

Let every person concerned with freedom of speech in this country know of this movement. Organize your own Tankards for Truth event.

Let us know how you feel. Write to tankardsfortruth@gmail.com or Dalwhinnie@barrelstrength.com. Get out there and drink, run, play, bicycle, perform for freedom of speech! get every friend you know to your local event. Send the defendants money!

We will have more details as we develop our plans.

  G.R.A.S.P.

The Supreme Council

23-B Plurekh 4389

Commendation to Agent 117

From Department of Subversion, Supreme Council, Galactic Racially Aryan Supremacy Party

By the authority vested in us by the Executive Committee, know ye the following:

You are commended for the brilliant subversion you have achieved of the confidence and thought control techniques of the Dominators.

Read the rest…

These are excerpts from the Canadian Human Rights Commission Annual Report of 2007

Warman v. Wilkinson 2007 CHRT 27

In a decision rendered on July 10, 2007, the Tribunal upheld the complaint filed by Mr. Warman against Mr. Wilkinson but dismissed the complaint against the Canadian Nazi Party. The Tribunal found that Mr. Wilkinson communicated messages through a website that were likely to expose individuals to hatred and/or contempt on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, race, colour, national or ethnic origin, or disability. Read the rest…

Jennifer Lynch, QC, Chairman of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, writes as follows in the 2007 Annual Report of the Commission.

“In addition to its role in processing complaints, the Commission has represented the public interest by intervening in hate case hearings before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT). To date, the Tribunal has issued more than 15 decisions in complaints against Canadians connected to hate websites or materials. In all instances the Tribunal has ruled against the respondents and ordered them to close down their websites and pay damages - sending a powerful message of social solidarity to all those targeted by hatred and contempt.

“As effective as section 13 has been, the Commission recognizes that complaints are only one tool of many that must be used to combat hatred in Canadian society. The Commission is continuing to work with civil society organizations and governments towards developing a comprehensive strategy to combat hatred in all its aspects.”

All of which demonstrates that, once the law has created a category of crime, and set up an agency to deal with it, it must seek a broader mandate, because the crime problem is so much vaster than was previously imagined. Parkinson’s Laws are universal. Work expands to fill the time allowed it.