To a lesser degree, the same is happening in Quebec under the guise of the Charter of Quebec Values and the rest of Canada in the name of free speech. Indeed, their discourse has entered the mainstream. And he has had little to say about racist rants against Muslims and black people, such as a TV commentator wailing about “the ostentatious virility of blacks and Arabs seducing many young white women.”Įxtremist parties are doing well across Europe, and their racism is going unchallenged. In France, Interior Minister Manuel Valls has banned anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, rightly so, under a law that proscribes “inciting racial hatred.” Yet the minister is busy demonizing and deporting Roma. The Qatari network is appealing that 2004 ruling, saying it inhibits free speech for a service that’s broadcast, with no restrictions, in more than 50 nations, including Israel.ĭouble standards are also at work across Europe where anti-hate laws still exist. Harperites are also mum on a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ruling that Al-Jazeera Arabic TV could not be shown in Canada without installing elaborate around-the-clock mechanisms to censor anything that might be deemed anti-Semitic or is otherwise unacceptable. What was good for the goose was not good for the Muslim gander. The same MPs and senators had not said boo about the law that had long protected other maligned minorities - Indians, Jews, Romas, gays, etc. But the Conservative majority in Parliament was disingenuous in invoking free speech last year to enable unfettered anti-Islamic speech. Harming people with words is better than killing them with bombs. Stephen Harper axed the anti-hate provision of Canada’s Human Rights Act for no other good reason than that it was hampering those wanting to rhetorically whack Arabs/Muslims. Bush invaded Iraq for no other good reason than to whack an Arab/Muslim nation. 11, 2001, terrorist attack by 19 Arab Muslims, George W.
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