Discontent

We are in an era of observable discontent. Former times, if not good, were tolerable, causing most of us to ignore the signs of protest. The power base of late mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, consisted of voters who felt left out of the good municipal life. He became mayor with almost half the votes cast, more than 383,000. The system was not working for them, the former suburbs.

In Great Britain, discontent moved 17 million to vote to leave the European Union. Few guessed 62 million Americans would cast ballots for Donald Trump, the ultimate candidate of discontent.

It may be argued these results were a good thing. They alerted us a revolution may be brewing, unless changes were made.

We like to believe we live in a society blessed with equality before the law, opportunity for all to achieve financial comfort, and freedom of expression. None of these is true.

Reasonable access to the legal system is a financial impossibility. Economic benefits go to a minority. Diversity of opinion is snuffed out when all political parties present the same policies. The media censors the whole truth, publishing only what suits their agendas. They no longer observe and report, but seek to direct public opinion.

Too often we for what we dislike least.

Discontent.

More censorship at the Toronto Star

The issue here is the Toronto Star's apparent double-speak. The photograph that appears in the Star shows Justin Trudeau in a Pride Parade alongside a young women with her breasts exposed. The Star blurred out her nipples. Thus my unpublished letter of August 8, 2015. 

Re Topless photos with Trudeau cause Internet commotion, Aug. 7:

The Toronto Star promotes the Pride parade as a "family event." In other words, you recommend we take our children to see topless women in the flesh. Yet, when it comes to publishing photographs of this "family event," you indulge in censorship, as in this case. Can you explain this double-dealing scented with a whiff of hypocrisy?

Canada Post, censorship or not?

In March 2014, Canada Post issued a public apology. It had delivered to residents of Happy Valley-Goose Bay flyers critical of the homosexual lifestyle. In a published letter to the Toronto Star, I asked if the corporation had become a censorship agency responsible for the content of what it delivers.

This month, the issue flared up again. The flyer in question was pro-life (anti-abortion to others) but found offensive by some. The postal union got into the act by claiming some letter carriers were upset about the flyers and have balked at delivering them. The union "supports our members who feel they have a legitimate concern that a corporation like Canada Post should work to preserve family values."  So now it's the the union that wants into the censorship business.

Common sense at last. A Canada Post spokesperson stated that the corporation is not responsible for the content of mail and is legally obligated to deliver all such material.

Charlie Hebdo and Free Speech

Letter to Toronto Star, January 28, 2015. Unpublished.

The initial reaction to the January 7 events at Charlie Hebdo has faded. We may now quietly examine the situation.

This weekly of juvenile effusions itself indulges in censorship. In 2008, the magazine published cartoons challenged as anti-Semitic. Because of the outcry, cartoonist Maurice Sinet  was asked to issue an apology. He refused and was fired.  So much for Charlie Hebdo being "on the front lines of the free-speech fight," as the Toronto Star describes this purportedly satirical publication.

We currently have a visitor trying to raise funds for the cash-strapped magazine (Canadians urged to fight against fundamentalism, Jan 27). She frames her effort as a battle against Islam which "must submit to secularism." Is it Cartesian reasoning to equate a radical element with an entire religion?

Dialogue and accommodation promote understanding, not confrontation. That's something Charlie Hebdo and its fund-raiser apparently do not understand. It is to be hoped that our visitor return to France wiser but empty handed.

Only the news the Toronto Star wants you to know

No one challenges the right of a publication to print what it wishes, that is to publish only what it wants its readers to know. It becomes offensive when the publication poses as being open to all reasonable viewpoints. Instances of selective reporting by the Toronto Star:

In 2006, a survey by the Toronto District School Board indicated that the bullying of gay students was not even on the radar of complaints. The Star did not mention it. 

* * *

The Star believes all races should be represented in public bodies in proportion to their numbers. The Star disagrees with Martin Luther King Jr whose dream it was that people would "not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their content of their character." The paper did not publish my letter advocating ability as the only necessary quality. 

* * *

The Star made no mention of the death of Heather Robinson. It was she who waged a successful legal campaign against certain media, including the Toronto Star, seeking compensation for artists whose work was used by the Star and others without permission or compensation. Nor did the Star report the results this multi-million dollar class-action lawsuit.

* * *

The issue is Liberal Party Justin Trudeau's banning of pro-life candidates. My plea for democracy:

Justine Trudeau disappoints (No choice but pro-choice, Trudeau tells candidates, May 8). Polls consistently show that most Canadians favour at least some control over access to abortion (Angus Read January 2010, Harris-Decima March 2010, Ipsos Reid, July 2012).  The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that with certain conditions an abortion law might be constitutional and not in violation of human rights legislation. Justice Bertha Wilson found the state has "a perfectly valid legislative objective" in seeking to protect the fetus. The fetus has a DNA distinct from that of the mother indicating a different life, to some a different person. There is no law dealing with attacks against womanhood by gender-selection abortions or the rights of still-born babies. The issue is hardly "settled" as Trudeau contends. All this deserves debate, especially in Parliament. It is undemocratic for the Liberal leader to snuff out debate of this important topic among would-be candidates.

On May 20, the Star ran an opinion piece which flies in the face of the truth. The writer, Ottawa professor Paul Saurette, denied, or was unaware of, the results of polls mentioned above. My May 21 letter to the Star:

Re Pro-choice advocates should welcome new abortion debate, May 20: The writers claim that "polls consistently" support abortion, but offer no proof. On the contrary, polls consistently show that a majority of Canadians favour at least some control over access to abortion. Here are three of them:  Angus Reid January 2012, Harris-Decima March 2010, Ipsos Reid July 2012. 

A 2012 Angus Reid poll found that 60 percent of Canadians (66 percent women to 54 percent men) believe a law should be enacted on sex-selection abortions. An Environics poll in 2011 found that 92% of Canadians thought sex selection abortions should be illegal in Canada. In an Ipsos Reid of June 12, 2014, 75 per cent disagreed with Trudeau's refusing admission into the Liberal Party of pro-life candidates. 

This too did not appear in the Toronto Star.

An e-mail to Professor Saurette remains unanswered.

The messenger apologizes for the message. Wrong.

Canada Post has issued a public apology. What did this bedraggled enterprise do that demanded such an action?  It learned that it had delivered to residents of Happy Valley-Goose Bay flyers that condemn gay marriage and homosexuality. 

This gives rise to the obvious question -- With all its current problems has Canada Post also become an censorship agency? Is the messenger now responsible for the message?  Must it read and approve of every flyer it delivers? 

A letter to the Toronto Star that expressed similar reaction to the newspaper's report (Canada post sorry got anti-gay flyers, March 6) was published March 16, 2014.

"It's just a book"

Pornographers claim that you cannot judge a book unless you have read it. By that standard, we would spend our entire lives reading pornography. No, we are entitled to judge a book from reviews, other opinion, and authors' earlier work.  On August 19, 2012, a Toronto Star reader defended the latest porn offering by stating, "It is just a book." My unpublished response to the Star:

In defending the Shades of Grey trilogy, Paula Berry makes two errors. The first is the implication that books have little or no influence for good or ill.

Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said that Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe caused the Civil War. Slight exaggeration, but it did fire up Northern antagonism against the South. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair brought about a revolution in the U.S. meatpacking industry, and lead Theodore Roosevelt to create the Food and Drug Administration. Yes, a book, even fiction, can have great influence.

Ms. Berry's other error is to equate the New York Times bestseller list with quality, along with the belief that "smut, prejudice or whatever" would keep a low-grade book off such lists. Bestseller lists are not endorsements. They merely indicate sales, and not literary, social or any other value.

* * *

To the list of highly influential books we might add the fiction of Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. The anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque was so influential that Adolf Hitler ordered it burned. A hot topic in the current U.S. election campaign is the door-stopper novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Other significant works of fiction appear in any history of Western thought, such as European Intellectual History since 1789 by Roland N. Stromberg.

And in the The Globe and Mail of September 22, 2012, scholar, author and broadcaster Kenan Malik commented on the fatwa placed on Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. Malik wrote, "Rushdie was in effect sentenced to death for writing a story. Many were to be killed for translating and publishing that story. Bookshops were bombed for stocking it. It is a measure of the strangeness of the world in which we live that storytelling can be such a hazardous craft."  Even Rushdie himself, just before the novel's publication, said,"It would be absurd to think that books can cause riots."

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code slithered into best-sellerdom. This work of fiction defied logic and history, yet became truth to the unwary and to those unfavourably disposed toward the Catholic Church.

On the death of Pole Pius XII in 1958, the secular media accorded him great tribute. This ended with the 1963 appearance of the fictional work The Deputy. In it, Communist playwright Rolf Hochhuth portrayed the pope as having done nothing to save Jews from the Holocaust.. This has gained such currency that today many accept it as truth.

What's strange is the surprise some of us have at the power of the written word.

Media Myths

The common media may get carried away by its own myths. This renders it unable to acknowledge the truths which give the lie to those myths. Here are two letters offering such truths, but which the Toronto Star refused to publish. The first destroys the Star's oft-expounded myth that the Catholic Church is contributing to the spread of AIDS in Africa. The second letter points out the pro-choice stand of the Star is actually pro-death.

Re Lewis sees tide turning in war on AIDS, Sept 30:

This report lists the "big players" in the war against aids but fails to mention the biggest players of all. Christian faith-based organizations provide more than half of AIDS health care worldwide. Specifically, one out of every four AIDS patients in the world is treated in a Roman Catholic centre.

The church has a network of 1,600 hospitals, 6,000 clinics, and 12,000 initiatives of a charitable and social nature, not only in Africa, but in Asia and elsewhere. Craig McClure, executive director of the International AIDS Society has acknowledged that these services do not receive the media attention, if not gratitude, they deserve.

Re Desperate mothers, Oct 3:

A healthy mother can and wants to give birth to a healthy baby girl. Because of a cultural preference for boys, her family forces her to have abortions on two occasions. Where are the pro-choice people defending a woman's right to choose life? Not at the Toronto Star.

Only what the media want us to know

On March 17, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI opined that condom distribution in Africa was not the total solution to the scourge of HIV/AIDS, in fact, might worsen it. Neither the Toronto Star nor The Globe and Mail reported his reasons, preferring to adopt their usual stance of mocking anyone, especially a religious person, who disagrees with them. Neither newspaper printed letters critical of their stand. Neither printed letters detailing the reasons for the statement. Neither wants its readers to have the whole story to judge for themselves. These are the same people who proclaim the public's right to know, that is, to know only what they want readers to know.

Unpublished letter to The Globe and Mail:

Rather than taking the simplistic approach (as in today's cartoon) to the debate over condom use and HIV/AIDS, The Globe owes its readers the complete story.

Edward C. Green is the director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. In claiming the condom distribution exacerbates the AIDS problem, Green states, "The Pope is correct, or put it another way, the best evidence we have supports the Pope's comments."

Protestant minister Martin Ssempa of Uganda's abstinence and faithfulness anti-AIDS programs: "Condoms have not reduced HIV-AIDS anywhere in the world... Higher condom (use) across Africa has resulted in higher HIV... In countries where the Catholic Church is strong, there is lower HIV than places where the Catholic Church is not."

Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda's AIDS prevention Committee: "Profiteering has trumped prevention...AIDS is no longer a disease. It has become a multibillion-dollar industry. Meanwhile, effective HIV prevention methods, such as urging Africans to stick to one partner, don't qualify for lucrative universal-access status. Our wisdom about our own culture is ignored."


Unpublished letter to the Toronto Star:

Re Papal blind spot on HIV, editorial, Mar. 19

There is much to agree with in this editorial, but it paints a lopsided picture. While the debate over condom use in Africa rages in the Western media, mostly at the expense of the Catholic Church, these same media make scant mention of Catholic work combating the HIV/AIDS scourge.

The Church is the largest single contributor to the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. One out of every four sufferers in the world benefits from Catholic initiatives, hospitals and clinics.

If the easy availability of condoms has not controlled HIV/AIDS in Canada, how can it do so in the Third World? Condoms may or may not be a quick fix for Africans, but experience indicated the long-term solution lies elsewhere.

We must also be wary of manufacturers, advertisers, distributors, foundations and other "charitable" organizations which have financial interests in the promotion of certain products.

Mindset Journalism

In his book, The Death of Free Speech, John Ziegler examines how the news media have created arbitrary, biased, and illogical rules for determining what can and cannot be said in the public arena. Ziegler limited his investigation to secular events.

But his observations hold true for media reports of religious matters. Is it laziness or a propensity for steel-trap thinking that develops the rigidity all too evident in the common media? It is akin to censorship. Two recent examples.

1.   Pope Benedict XVI recently lifted the excommunication on a number of Catholics, one of whom, Bishop Richard Williamson, was later exposed as a holocaust denier. No matter what the multitude of Catholic news agencies reported, the secular press refused to acknowledge that the lifting of the excommunication and the holocaust denial were in no way related. The media linked the two events, often in the same sentence.

2.   The reportage of the profoundly troubling sex scandals within the Catholic Church is another example of mindset thinking. Child Maltreatment 2006, a report of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, states that 66 per cent of sexual abusers are parents, other relatives, unmarried partners of parents, friends or neighbours, and that only 0.5 per cent are "professionals." And clergy are a subset of "professionals," and Catholic clergy a subset of clergy.

The 2007 Annual Report of U.S. Catholic bishops, prepared by outside auditors, identified 15 allegations of childhood sexual abuse in the American Catholic Church from 2000 to 2007, an average of fewer than two per year. A 2007 investigation by the Associated Press identified 2,500 public school teachers who from 2001 through 2005, had their teaching licences revoked or restricted as a result of sexual misconduct with minors -- an average of 514 per year. The ratio of abuse in American public schools to that of the Catholic Church runs as high as 275 to one.

This in no way excuses any of this behaviour. All perpetrators must be prosecuted. But this does illustrate the media bias as to how these dreadful incidents are reported.

Universities and Freedom of Expression

Have the censorship-prone, politically-correct taken over our universities?

In February, the York University Federation of Students denied their fellow students space for a debate on abortion. The issue quickly became the right to express one's views. The students federation denied the pro-life students the enjoyment of that freedom.

The justification for censorship was that the subject matter might "upset, appall or traumatize sensitive" students. Surprised and intimidated by media coverage, the federation reversed itself. A friendly debate ensued, with no reports of anyone rendered upset, appalled or traumatized.

To its credit, the University of Waterloo held the same debate without incident.

About the same time, McMaster University administration cancelled a proposed Israeli Apartheid Week. Curiously enough, the same York Federation that initially banned a debate on abortion, objected to McMaster's suppression of free speech.

In 2007, pro-life students were denied official recognition by British Columbia's Capilano College, Kelowna College, and University of Victoria, as were similar groups at Newfoundland's Memorial University, Lakehead University, and Carlton University.

Carlton's student council dropped its support for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Fund when it learned that  cystic fibrosis was a white man's disease. It was therefore unworthy of support as not being sufficiently inclusive. Does that mean these students will never support the fight against sickle cell anemia which only afflicts black people? To their credit, the council reversed its position, but the concern over misguided political correctness continues.

Some students, and not a few interloping gay activists, at Ryerson University protested, less than peacefully, at the granting of an honorary degree to Margaret Somerville. The ethicist from McGill University is an advocate of the traditional family, something certain activists oppose.

In an edict smacking of vigilantism, officials at the University of Calgary will cancel your debate, talk, presentation, whatever, should they fear the slightest possibility of violence. That's tantamount to censorship by threat of violence. Does the university cancel raucous debate over student fee increases?

Queen's University joined this parade to oblivion by creating an "Intergroup Dialogue Program." This initiative pays students to roam the corridors of academe seeking out the private expression of opinions officialdom deems offensive, and substitute in their place the politically correct version.

The common media condemned this version of censorship, but not that related to abortion. Is this yet another example of selective reporting in order to impose on the general public another's view of the world?

What is it with certain young people, merely a few years out of high school, that they feel competent to judge opinions, withhold the right to express them, and replace them with their own? Let us hope we are not talking about future activist supreme court judges, or biased media editors, whom we already have in over-abundance.

The Globe and Mail and democracy

What is it that The Globe and Mail does not understand about democracy?

The issue in certain states in the recent U.S. elections was whether or not marriage was exclusively something between a man and a woman. Voters in most states affirmed their belief that such is the case. California made this affirmation for the second time when a majority voted for Proposition 8.

In a Globe and Mail editorial one can charitably describe as sniveling and churlish, this newspaper decried an exercise in democracy as backward, the work of social-conservative Republicans, a message of exclusion, et cetera.

In a most egregious and unforgivable statement, the editorialist observed that the California proposition was supported by 70 per cent of black voters. In a 19th century mind-set, the editorial opined, "That is not surprising, given higher rates of religiosity." My dictionary defines "religiosity" as sanctimonious. In Globe parlance, it is code for uneducated, backward African Americans.

This type of narrow thinking has provoked outbursts of racism in California. Homosexuals attacked, insulted and swore at black people for the democratic expression of opinion homosexuals describe as hate. The world awaits the Globe's expression of disapproval of: church invasions and vandalism by gay protesters, a gay theatre owner in California black-balling a director who supported Proposition 8, people being thrown to the ground, urinated on, shouted at and swarmed. And disapproval of mailing packages of white powder. The Director of the Los Angeles Film Festival was forced to resign because he donated to the Proposition 8 campaign. All this because homosexuals disagree with traditional marriage. And when one defends marriage, it is called hate speech.

Had the vote gone the other way, the Globe would have chastised complainers for not understanding that the people have spoken. Democracy is good only if one agrees with its results.

In Canada, the dilution of traditional marriage was imposed on us by a mere handful of activist judges across the country, cheered on by the common media. In Ontario, three judges purported to speak for all of us. The daughter of one of them, Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, was living in a lesbian relationship at the time her father signed the judgement. The obvious appearance of bias did not register on McMurtry. He  refused to withdraw from the case. Two weeks later, the Chief Justice of Ontario attended a party where he danced with the litigants who earlier had appeared before him.

The next step in this tawdry process will be jurists declaring unconstitutional laws against polygamy.

McCarthyism in the Toronto Star

Letter to the Toronto Star. unpublished obviously*

Re Uncommon wisdom on Morgentaler, Comment, July 22

Rob Mitchell's opinion piece should be compulsory reading for all students of political science and communication. It illustrates the many tactics of McCarthyism.

The first lesson is avoid the issue. To do this, Mitchell employs argumentum ad hominem --- attack the messenger, not the message. This appeal to feelings rather than intellect insults the reader.

He then drags out another rhetorical trick of McCarthyism --- the Big Smear. By pointing out defects in the Catholic Church, he implies that automatically the Church's pro-life advocacy is wrong. This is a variation of the Big Lie and Straw Man devices --- that by by implying defeat of a non-message, one has destroyed the real message.

Mitchell wants his readers to believe that only Catholics oppose abortion. This technique --- Isolate the Opposition, is another tool of McCarthyism. Yet, polls consistently indicate that a majority of Canadians favour at least some restriction on access to abortion. Mitchell belittles their right to express these views.

Using the Big Smear technique, Mitchell attempts to silence all opposition by the egregious allegation that anyone opposed Dr. Henry Morgentaler's Order of Canada is anti-Semitic. Lacking evidence for this calumny, as authority he cites (wait for it) a Montreal newspaper cartoonist. His style shows an inability to deal with differing yet honestly-held opinions.

To bolster the other side of the argument, Mitchell employs what every propagandist recognizes as the Rosy Glow. He tells us that Dr. Morgentaler is a tiny, frail, 85-year-old man, and a holocaust survivor. All this may be true, but quite irrelevant to the issue.

We continue to wonder if columnists, cartoonists, and selected letters to the editor provide the shield for the expression of the publisher's own opinions, while maintaining the pretense of journalistic objectivity.

* Obviously, because the Toronto Star censors comment that goes against any of its agenda, such as, in this case,
pro-abortion.