GagWatch

Nova Scotia’s leading newspaper, the Chronicle Herald, is being hauled before that province’s human rights commissions for… publishing the cartoon you see on the left.

The cartoon depicts 44 year old Muslim convert, Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal who said she “wants millions” in compensation from the federal government for the suffering her family allegedly went through after her husband was arrested in 2006 in an anti-terrorism raid.

The cartoon by Bruce Mackinnon was printed on April 18, and immediately drew the ire of Zia Khan of the Centre for Islamic Development who claimed that it went beyond the boundaries of free speech. Which it clearly doesn’t.

According to Khan, quoting someone in a cartoon is extremely offensive and has “far-reaching implications”.

“This is a horrendous thing in this day and age where you are feeding the seeds of hatred toward a whole community of 1.8 billion people.”

This is clearly nonsense and the cartoon is a comment on a single individual and has no bearing on any wider community, Muslim or otherwise.

Dan Leger, director of news content for The Chronicle Herald, has said the newspaper would vigorously defend the cartoon and that investigating the editorial content of a newspaper does not fall within the commission’s mandate.

Spokeswoman Theresa Rath of Halifax Regional Police said officers are investigating a complaint under Section 318 of the Criminal Code, which deals with hate propaganda. That section says: “Every one who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.”

A Seattle Times editorial (via) notes that author and columnist, Mark Steyn has fallen foul of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.

Steyn, who is well known for his outspoken opinions, suggests in his most recent book, America Alone, that Muslims will swarm over Europe, ban alcohol and put women in veils. Maclean’s magazine printed an excerpt and Canadian Islamists decided to take offence and complain to human-rights tribunals in Ottawa and the provinces.

Steyn’s book may well be hateful in some way. The Seattle Times thought the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were hateful, and did not reprint them. That was one newspaper’s decision. In Canada, the law makes such questions the government’s decision.
British Columbia now bans all words and images “likely to expose a person … to hatred or contempt” because of race, religion, age, disability, sex, marital status or sexual orientation.” This sounds like a libel law for groups, except that libel is a misstatement of fact that damages an individual reputation. In the United States, for a public figure to be libelled, the false statement has to be made maliciously or recklessly.

The Canadian idea of hate speech is less specific and more dangerous. Hate is like obscenity, about which Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, “I know it when I see it.” The difference is that a ban on obscenity does not touch political discourse, and a ban on hate does.

It also sets up government for open ridicule. Steyn is gleefully marketing his book as a “Canadian hate crime” and daring the tribunal to pronounce him bad.

Racial harmony in Canada would have been safer had the question never become official.

American anti-games campaigner, Jack Thompson appears to have taken a turn for rhe bizarre. Strauss Zelnick is the Chairman of Take-Two, the company that produces the GTA series of video games, so Thompson has written to his mother (via).

The email is provocative, to say the least. Not only does it say Mr. Zelnick is “like the Hitler Youth,” it also attributes the deaths of three Alabama policemen and “a recent plethora of cop killings” to prior entries in the GTA series.

Thompson claims that the email - which is addressed to Mrs. Zelnick and carries a subject of “Your Son, Strauss Zelnick” - was not sent to Zelnick’s mother, but to his lawwyer, in keeping with a prior settlement that prevents Mr. Thompson from contacting Take-Two, unless he does so through legal counsel.

Two weeks ago YouTube deleted a 10,000-subscriber channel run by well-known Scientology critic Mark Bunker. The reason they gave for pulling Xenutv1 was that they had already axed Bunker’s earlier account, Xenutv, for infringing a few copyrights. The Register points out:

YouTube’s terms of service clearly say “A user whose account has been terminated is prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts.”

But the world’s largest video sharer hasn’t applied this rule to the brand new channel launched by Scientology itself - and trumpeted with an official Scientology press release. Like Bunker, Scientology had an earlier account erased after it violated site policy.

In March, the New York Post reported that Scientology launched a YouTube channel in an attempt to discredit members of Anonymous, the internet group intent on making life difficult for the cult. Dubbed the “Scientology Official Report on Anonymous Hate Crimes,” the channel identified individual members of the group, describing them as “terrorists.”

YouTube doesn’t allow videos that broadcast personal information. And the account was suspended.

In a conversation with The Post, a Church spokesperson confirmed the organization was behind the channel. “We absolutely made the videos,” they said. “We have researchers that have found these men. When you get death threats and bomb threats directly going after the church, we don’t take it lightly.”

A similar statement was made by a church minister speaking to The Battle Creek Enquirer after an alleged Anonymous bomb threat.

And now, in contravention of YouTube’s terms of service, Scientology is back on the video sharing site. And not only are they back, they are also paying for ads on the site, looking to drive some traffic onto its new channel.

Not surprisingly, Mark Bunker is annoyed. “I hope YouTube does the right thing,” he said. “It certainly looks like there’s a double standard at work.

Portland bookseller Michael Powell and owners of a dozen independent bookstores and community organizations are suing (via) the Oregon state attorney general and all 36 county district attorneys to block enforcement of a law forbidding the sale of “sexually explicit material” to people younger than 18.

The plaintiffs - which include Powell’s Books, Dark Horse Comics, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the Association of American Publishers – are arguing that the four-month-old law violates their constitutional right to free speech and criminalizes material that would otherwise not be considered sexually explicit, like textbooks, comics or magazines.

In an affidavit, Michael Powell said his six stores sold books of all types that could be considered sexually explicit under the new law. Those include the sale of books in stores and online on photography, graphic novels and health and wellness titles.

Ken Lizzi, Dark Horse Comics’ general counsel and assistant secretary, said in an affidavit that his company store, Things From Another World Inc., often sells graphic novels and comics that could put it in legal jeopardy. The company publishes about three dozen comics or other books each month that might include sexually explicit content, Lizzi said in the affidavit.

“I believe the only way for Dark Horse to ensure compliance under the statute would be to refrain from publishing this material entirely,” He said. “Attempting to determine, book by book, what may fall under the purview of the satute, including whether there are any ‘sexually explicit’ portions and if so whether such portions ‘serve some purpose other than titillation’ (even if I knew what that meant) is totally impractical, unduly burdensome and surely would result in our over-inclusive self-censorship.”

US campaign group, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is demanding (via) a stricter rating on Grand Theft Auto IV because the game – which currently has a Mature rating - includes the ability to drive while intoxicated.

The group is also calling on publisher Take-Two Interactive and developer Rockstar Games to consider stopping distribution of the game “out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.”

“We have a great deal of respect for MADD’s mission, but we believe the mature audience for ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game’s content,” Rockstar Games said in a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday. “For the same reason that you can’t judge an entire film or television program by a single scene, you can’t judge ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ by a small aspect of the game.”

Discredited American lawyer Jack Thompson has also waded in to make the bizarre assertion that “Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio.”

The Muslim Canadian Congress has expressed (via) shock and disappointment at the move by Islamic countries to bulldoze the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) into approving a resolution curtailing freedom of speech under the guise of protecting religion.

The resolution approved at the UNHRC and initiated by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) is disingenuously titled “Combating Defamation of Religion.” However, the fact is that the OIC resolution is nothing more than a cover to silence opponents of Islamist oppression inside Muslim countries, as well as in the West.

The MCC in a statement said “the UNHRC resolution instead of protecting the right to freedom of conscience and religious expression, will become a tool in the hands of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the world jihadi movement to strike fear among the opponents of Islamic extremism.” The move is a retrogressive step greatly undermining the rights of individuals who believe in questioning, evaluating and challenging religious dogma. Many Islamic countries have no qualms in executing their Muslim citizens on trumped up charges of apostasy and using it to instill fear in the hearts and minds of Muslims who reject the tyranny of man-made Sharia law of the 12th century, and it being applied in the 21st.

The MCC is also calling on the Canadian government to follow Britain’s example and repeal the country’s blasphemy laws. They rightly point out that these laws exist purely for the benefit of the Church of England and have no place in pluralistic societies guaranteeing freedom of belief and conscience.

Publishers Weekly (via) have picked up on the news that the state of Indiana has passed a new law that will require any businesses that sell “sexually explicit material” to register with the state government.

The new law, H.B. 1042, was signed by Governor Mitch Daniels on March 13, and calls for any bookseller that sells sexually explicit materials to register with the Secretary of State and provide a statement detailing the types of books to be sold. The Secretary of State must then identify those stores to local government officials and zoning boards. “Sexually explicit material” is defined as any product that is “harmful to minors” under existing law. There is a $250 registration fee. Failure to register is a misdemeanor.

The Indiana Library Federation’s Intellectual Freedom Manual provides an explanation of what “harmful to minors” means:

For the purposes of the law, matter is “harmful to minors” if “it describes or represents, in any form, nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse; considered as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors; it is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable matter for minors; and considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors”

Now here’s the problem: “and considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors,” is an entirely subjective statement. I may think that something has serious literary or artistic value, you might disagree. Is Anaïs Nin an artist or a pornographer? What about Bunny Yeager? Or Irving Klaw?

And nudity? On its own. Is National Geographic really harmful to minors?

Not surprisingly the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression has condemned the law, calling it “un-American to force booksellers to register with the government based on the kinds of books they carry.” The organisation is planning to challenge the law as a violation of the First Amendment rights of Indiana booksellers and their customers.

Canadian Heritage officials confirmed (via) on Thursday they will be “expanding slightly” the criteria used for denying tax credits to include grounds such as gratuitous violence, significant sexual content that lacks an educational purpose, or denigration of an identifiable group.

Arts groups are planning to fight the change and director, David Cronenberg is among those warning that the edgy, low-budget films that have garnered Canadians international acclaim will be at risk. Novelist Susan Swan, chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada, has also pledged to lead her 1,600-strong membership in a protest.

The groups claim the changes violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees certain political and civil rights of people in Canada from the policies and actions of all levels of government.

According to Cronenberg: “The irony is that it is the Canadian films that have given us an international reputation [that] would be most at risk because they are the edgy, relatively low-budget films made by people like me and others that will be targeted by this panel.”

Inevitably, the moral minority have been quick to claim credit for the changes. Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, and “numerous” meetings with officials in the Prime Minister’s Office.

“We’re thankful that someone’s finally listening,” he said yesterday. “It’s fitting with conservative values, and I think that’s why Canadians voted for a Conservative government.”

McVety, as is common with so many on the religious right, seems not to understand that he is not obliged to watch any films that he doesn’t want to.

The US Air Force is tightening restrictions (via) on which blogs can and can’t be read by its troops. Pretty much every independent site including the word “blog” in its title is now blocked as part of a wider struggle within the US military over the value and risks of the sites.

At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so “utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream.”