Canada’s Mixed Censorship Messages
March 23, 2006, 11:19 am |
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By Andrew L. Jaffee
Is free speech alive and well in Canada or not? The CBC’s politically-correct censors have edited the word “hell” from a TV ad. But Canada’s Defense Minister, Gordon O’Connor, thinks publication of the Danish cartoons was a bad idea. And in 2004, Walid Shoebat was denied entry to Canada for a speaking engagement. Mixed messages, strange priorities, silly incoherence, or what?
From yesterday’s The Age (Australia):
Hell’s bells. Just as British censors clear Australia’s colourful tourism campaign, Canadian officials have banned it, but not because of the word “bloody”.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has refused to run the “Where The Bloody Hell Are You” ad during family television programming because of the word “hell”, Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper reports.
From Canada’s National Post (Feb. 14):
An Alberta magazine’s decision to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad has stoked fears of attacks on Canadian troops and embassies abroad, caused a major Muslim group to consider asking police to lay hate-crime charges and led the country’s largest bookstore chain and airline to withdraw the publication.
Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor warned the latest edition of the Calgary-based Western Standard, which features cartoons that have sparked riots and protests worldwide, will put Canadian troops in Afghanistan at greater risk.
“It doesn’t help. Radicals in Syria and Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, they get people roused up because their religion’s being offended,” Mr. O’Connor said in an interview. “We don’t need any more risk in the area than we have.”
And finally, from IsraelNationalNews (2004):
A former PLO terrorist who is now pro-Israel was not allowed to enter Canada - but he spoke to his scheduled audience anyway, via live video link.
Related: Political Correctness, Media/Blogsphere
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:44 pm
At the start of your article, you asked the following question, “Is free speech alive and well in Canada or not?”
As in the U.S., the answer is yes, but…..
In the violent raging Muslim fallout regarding the Mohammed cartoons, the Canadian government, like the U.S. issued an official statement deploring the violence, defending the right of free speech, and then counselling that freedom of speech must be responsibly exercised to as not to offend - code for self-censorship as regards Islam and the Muslim world.
Whether it is the U.S. or Canada, the media have been known to publish cartoons, editorials, documentaries and the like that have been offensive to Christians and Jews.
Though the U.S. and Canadian governments in such cases knew the publication was offensive to Jews or Christians, neither ever saw fit to make an official statement directed at the MSM about exercising Western freedoms of speech responsibly.
Then again, Christian and Jewish protests were limited to protesting by phone calls, e mails, letters to the editors, etc. Rage perhaps, but absolutely no violence and no threats to murder, behead or otherwise destroy anyone who insulted Jews or Christians as Muslims have done time and again with great effectiveness.
In Canada there is now a Conservative government in power that before the election often took the Liberal government to task for its insanely politically correct and morally indefensible and reprehensible polices, which at times were bound up in Anti-Americanism, especially in international affairs and in particular as regards the Israel-Palestinian issues.
As one can imagine, being in power is different than being a critic in opposition. The Conservative government has stumbled somewhat getting out of the gate in terms of a number of its official statements on international matters and in particular again the Israel-Palestinian issues.
There is still reason to expect that once the Conservative government gets more comfortable and confident in the seat of power, that its policies and statements will become a very refreshing change from the Liberal government’s offerings these past many years.
The mainstream media in Canada, like the U.S. refrained from publishing the Mohammed cartoons, offering explanations taken straight out of the manuals on universal humanism, multiculturalism and political correctness. The U.S. and Canadian governments of course read the same manuals in making their official statements.
Canadian Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor’s concerns noted in your article as regards the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in Alberta based Western Standard magazine is a pretty good indication of where the MSM and government is on the issue of defending Western freedoms of speech.
All the reasons given by MSM for not publishing the Mohammed cartoons and by the U.S. and Canadian governments saying that freedom of speech must be exercised responsibly were bound up in notions of tolerance and respect.
Those reasons offered were nothing but a veneer to hide the real reasons for their positions and statements. Most ordinary Canadian and American citizens were however not fooled and know the real reason for the MSM and Government positions.
In a word, it is FEAR!.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:48 pm
We berated the U.S. State Department’s submissive statement about the cartoons ad nauseam, which is why I didn’t mention it here.