Blue Like You

Ezra Levant has highlighted Mark Steyn’s appearance on today’s MDL.

If you care at all about the future of free speech in Canada, this is a must-watch.

Saturday Update : SDA - Lucy, look what you started!

In today’s Post - Vision TV once again the focus of controversy.

Gail Thomson, VisionTV’s director of marketing and communication, said the channel screened Mr. Oktar’s documentary prior to it being aired and found nothing offensive in its content.

A memo prepared by the individual who viewed the film describes it as a “Koranic interpretation of creation.”

Ms. Thomson said the channel also did some research into Mr. Oktar’s background, but that investigation did not uncover his views on the Holocaust.

“Had we known about his views, there would have been a different situation and a different decision made,” Ms. Thomson said.

Better get moving on setting up that task force, guys.

In today’s Post - Vision TV has promised once again to ban broadcasts of Pakistani fundamentalist Israr Ahmad. President and CEO Bill Roberts issued the following statement: “VisionTV profoundly regrets any offence that resulted from Mr. Ahmad’s appearances on our network.”

While VisionTV did not broadcast Mr. Ahmad’s derogatory comments about Jews, or his theories of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, Mr. Roberts said the decision about whether to allow him on Canadian airwaves should have perhaps taken those views into account.

The producer was apparently “distracted” by family matters, including his daughter’s upcoming wedding.

“So the show was pulled and another show was put in its place, but it ended up being a show that also included him [Mr. Ahmad].”

(Maybe the producer should have taken some time off instead of accidentally allowing a purveyor of hate propaganda to have airtime in Canada? Just a thought.)

One of Mr. Ahmad’s followers is, according to the Post, “Qayyum Abdul Jamal, who was arrested last summer for allegedly belonging to a Canadian terrorist group accused of plotting truck bombings in downtown Toronto.”

Vision promises to set up a new task force to review standards and procedures.

Sounds like a start, but if you read today’s editorial in the Post (Hateful Vision), you will see that the whole organization could use a good shaking up to put some balance in its obvious left-wing agenda. The Post points out a double standard in Vision and in our society in general when it come to bigotry:

While we accept that the July 21 broadcast was an accident, the incident fed into existing complaints about the network. Since its inception, VisionTV has shown a pronounced liberal bias. Evangelists have had to pay hefty sums to get their shows on the network — and even then, they have appeared late at night or very early in the morning. Meanwhile, the channel’s own original programming has been dominated by schismatic Catholics (those who favour female ordination, for instance) and United Churchers who question the divinity of Christ or who favour gay marriage.

Canadians also are understandably upset that Mr. Ahmad appeared on VisionTV in the first place. Our society (rightly) has zero-tolerance for traditional Archie Bunker-style racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. Yet when the same hatred spews forth from someone speaking Arabic or Urdu, the instinct of some liberal Canadians is to permit it (or at least look the other way) in the name of cultural sensitivity.

This relativism comes across as hypocrisy. As you read this, an Albertan youth pastor is facing human rights charges because he disparaged gay activists in a letter to a Red Deer newspaper. What message does it send to this country that such a man must be shut up, while a Muslim who foresees the “total extermination” of Jews has been permitted to preach on a television network available in eight million Canadian households?

Meanwhile, CBC reports that B’Nai Brith Canada has asked Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion to “remove new star candidate Jocelyn Coulon from an upcoming byelection in Montreal’s Outremont riding because of his past stance on Israel” (H/T National Newswatch). Apparently Coulon has a “well-documented anti-Israel bias, which is supposedly “out of step with current Liberal policy”.

Coulon insists he is merely a “proponent of healthy debate” when he writes such things as feeling that the international community should not isolate Hamas; that it is committed to fighting corruption and helping people.

The Gazette reports that MoOse Moghrabi, legal counsel for B’nai Brith’s Quebec region has grave concerns about Coulon:

“His hostile attitude toward Israel, his anti-U.S. rhetoric and his calls to end the isolation of a government controlled by Hamas, a terrorist group banned in Canada, ought to disqualify him as a candidate for the Liberal Party.

“Surely, the Liberals cannot continue to countenance having an individual with such biased views as their point person on foreign policy issues.”

Considering that Outremont has a considerable Jewish population, it should make for an interesting byelection.

While Free Dominion ponders how to deal with a Human Rights complaint, today’s National Post reports that Vision TV aired another hour-long talk by fundamentalist Israr Ahmad on Saturday - one day after saying it regretted broadcasting a previous lecture by the Pakistani preacher, who says Muslim scripture advocates violent holy war and the “extermination” of Jews.

Amad’s Saturday lecture apparently included statements comparing the Jews to “parasites”, and described the Holocaust as “divine punishment” and called Jews “condemned.”

“It is most troubling that VisionTV made a calculated decision to re-broadcast a segment featuring a radical Imam, whose words have the potential to incite hatred and violence,” Frank Dimant of B’nai Brith Canada said yesterday.

“It is a complete abdication of their responsibility to knowingly give a platform to this individual whose calls for jihad can clearly be interpreted by his supporters as a call to engage in terrorism. B’nai Brith Canada will be launching a formal complaint with the CRTC calling for a full investigation of this matter.”

The comparison is interesting because both situations deal with allegedly inflammatory third-party dissertations, but the first case is a conservative-leaning internet forum and the second is a TV channel supposedly regulated by the CRTC.

Free Dominion’s Connie Wilkins was interviewed last night by Michael Coren (Suzanne has it here). Wilkins alluded to the possibility that the end goal here may be to try to shut down Free Dominion, and other Conservative blogs when the business of worrying about third-party comments becomes too complicated and expensive to handle.

Personally, I think all bloggers need to be concerned about this eventuality. Few of us can afford lawyers. Most of us are providing this service free of charge. Some have tip jars to help pay for the costs of the domain site, but few if any are making a living from blogging.

Television broadcasters on the other hand, have access to corporate lawyers and cash.

I know what you’re thinking - What about that ‘faceless digital entity’ that used vulgarity to attack the mother of a recently-fallen Canadian Soldier? Well, I think blogs can be self-governing to a point. Once the offensive post is pointed out, the owner can then decide whether to delete and apologize or carry on, in which case they will likely lose readership in the long run. Also, remember that in that particular case, we are talking about the blog owner making an offensive comment; not a third party or guest.

I would also suggest that the remarks made by Israr Ahmad on Vision TV were far more inflammatory than those made by Bill Whatcott (Relapsed Catholic).

Kathy notes in a subsequent post:

And Coren made an excellent point: “Isn’t the notion that ‘radical Islam is a threat to national security’ actually the official policy of the Canadian government…?”

Perhaps there’s fodder here for another Human Rights complaint.