Removing religion as a defence for hate speech is worth examining, antisemitism envoy tells MPs
The Criminal Code states people shouldn’t be convicted of the willful promotion of hatred or antisemitism if, ‘in good faith,’ they expressed an opinion ‘on a religious subject’
Author of the article:
The Canadian Press
Stephanie Taylor
Published May 23, 2024 • 4 minute read
46 Comments
Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, appears before the House of Commons human rights committee on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Photo by parlvu.parl.gc.ca
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OTTAWA — Canada’s special envoy for combating antisemitism is “very interested” in exploring the idea of removing religion as a possible defence against hate speech charges, she said Thursday, raising concern about creating a possible chill on religious expression.
Deborah Lyons, whose title also includes preserving Holocaust remembrance, made the comment before a parliamentary committee that is studying antisemitism on university campuses.
“I am very interested in exploring (it) as an option because I think, frankly, we are seeing it used in this country and in other places as a defence that frankly does not stand the ground in these very difficult times,” she testified Thursday.
Still, Lyons said she is not ready to offer a final opinion on the matter, and is still discussing it with Justice Department officials.
Jewish leaders, students and faculty have for months been voicing concerns over an increase in hate speech and violence since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war last fall.
Lyons said she believes universities’ equity, diversity and inclusion strategies are “failing Jews in this country” because they don’t make much mention of antisemitism specifically.
Her office is working to develop better training to counter anti-Jewish discrimination, which she hopes institutions, including governments, will use.
Members of Parliament also asked Lyons about the role police and prosecutors play in laying hate speech related charges, and whether Criminal Code changes are needed.
They pointed to a recent decision by Quebec prosecutors not to charge Montreal imam Adil Charkaoui over comments said during a prayer — a scenario Lyons says she is discussing with the government.
The comments were delivered at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Montreal, and led to a complaint alleging threats and incitement of violence, which was investigated by the RCMP.
Leading a prayer in Arabic, Charkaoui had called on God to “take care of aggressor Zionists,” adding “O God, don’t leave any of them.”
Last week the province’s director of public prosecutions announced that a committee of three Crown attorneys found the evidence insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the words amounted to an incitement of hatred toward an identifiable group, as defined in the Criminal Code.
Using the case as an example, Bloc Quebecois MP Rheal Fortin asked Lyons whether she supports his party’s proposal to eliminate a section of the Criminal Code that allows the use of religious beliefs or a religious text as a defence against the promotion of hatred and antisemitism.
The Criminal Code states that people shouldn’t be convicted of the willful promotion of hatred or antisemitism — defined as downplaying or denying the Holocaust — if, “in good faith,” they expressed an opinion “on a religious subject” or “based on a belief in a religious text.”
Fortin says his party wants to ban “exceptions” to hate speech based on religion.
“Certainly I think that it’s something we’ve got to continue to examine,” Lyons said.
Justice Minister Arif Virani’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He is already seeking to increase the punishments for existing hate-related offences — including increasing the maximum consequence for advocating genocide to life imprisonment — in the Liberals’ legislation against online harms, tabled back in February.
The stiffer criminal justice reforms have fallen under harsh scrutiny from critics, including civil liberty advocacy groups, who say it could stifle free speech. Justice officials say criminal charges would only be laid in the most extreme examples.
Removing religion as a possible defence to a hate speech charge would likely be welcomed by those who oppose religion, but would create “genuine fear” for those who have deeply held religious beliefs about what they could say in the public square, said Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett, who works at the public policy think tank Cardus.
“Often, religious people privatize their faith because they’re afraid that if I speak about what I believe, in good faith, in the public square, I’m going to be cancelled, or I’m going to be shut down,” said Bennett, Cardus’s faith communities program director.
He says if a “chill” is placed on religious expression it risks marginalizing a sizeable part of the population, including many new Canadians for whom “religion is not just some sort of cultural relic” but “informs all aspects of society.”
“In many cases, they’ve come here because of the religious freedom we enjoy, and so to then say to those new Canadians in particular, ‘Oh, by the way, you can’t speak about your religion publicly for fear of being censured,’ I think that’s a very bad message to send.”
Bennett said the debate raises questions of how hate is defined and what makes a hateful view “different from a peacefully-held opinion that someone might profoundly disagree with?”
Charkaoui’s comments were “perhaps one of the most egregious offences that I have seen” he told Thursday’s committee.
Mendicino, a former prosecutor who previously served as public safety minister, also cited other examples of demonstrators chanting offensive language, including glorifying Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
He believes “Zionists” fit the Criminal Code’s definition of an identifiable group, which refers to “any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.”
ST. CATHARINES, ON: May 15, 2024 The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is pleased to announce that two charges against federal party leader Maxime Bernier have been withdrawn. The charges stemmed from his 2021 attendance at a protest against Ontario’s Stay-at-Home Order in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The Justice Centre provided for lawyers to represent Mr. Bernier. The charges against him were withdrawn on May 14, 2024, in the Ontario Court of Justice (Provincial Offences Division) at the request of the prosecutor after Mr. Bernier donated to a Niagara Region charity.
On April 17, 2021, Mr. Bernier attended a peaceful protest in Niagara Falls, Ontario. The protest started at the Clifton Hill War Memorial and moved across the street to the Oakes Garden Theatre where a crowd of approximately 500 people listened to various speakers, including Mr. Bernier. For his participation, Mr. Bernier was charged with failing to comply with the Stay-at-Home Order and with failing to comply with an order under the Reopening Ontario Act.
At the time, the province’s Stay-at-Home Order prohibited citizens from leaving their residences unless it was for one of 29 purposes deemed “essential” by the Ontario government.
Mr. Bernier is a former Cabinet Minister under the Conservative Government of Stephen Harper. He held ministerial portfolios in Industry, Foreign Affairs, and State. He was chair of the National Defence Select Committee from 2009 to 2011. In 2018, he left the CPC and founded the People’s Party of Canada.
Chris Fleury, lawyer for Mr. Bernier, says, “With the exception of Randy Hillier’s challenge of the Stay-at-Home-Order and our ArriveCAN challenge, this was the last ticket case that we were defending in Ontario. We are slowly putting this shameful period behind us.”
Former Ontario provincial politician Randy Hillier continues his fight against the Stay-at-Home Order with an appeal following the loss of his constitutional challenge to that Order. Mr. Hillier’s hearing is scheduled at the Ontario Court of Appeal in September.
Details on the ArriveCAN challenge can be found on the Justice Centre’s website here.
Chris Fleury continues, “While we would have preferred that no one who attended this protest was charged in the first place, this is an excellent outcome for Mr. Bernier. Ontario’s Stay-at-Home Order was unnecessary, unscientific, and ultimately harmful. It is encouraging that prosecutions of this nature are finally coming to a close.”
Marxist ideology has permeated nearly every Canadian institution and has captured our education system.
Cheryl Gould is one of the few teachers who has been brave enough to speak out against the indoctrination of children in Canadian schools, and she has now paid the price.
During a union meeting, Cheryl criticized the use of tax dollars to gift a book advocating for modern-day segregation written by a radical left-wing Marxist titled ‘So You Want to Talk About Race’ to teaching staff.
Her colleagues called her ‘racist’ as a result. Soon after, one of them reported her for posting anti-Marxist satire on social media under a pseudonym.
Cheryl wasn’t just cancelled socially for the concerns she raised in the meeting that day. She was fired from her job, and now her regulator is trying to have her teaching license revoked for the thoughtcrime of criticizing Marxism and critical race theory online.
What happened to freedom of expression?
“We are being subjected to a soft revolution and it’s being done through DEI bureaucracy, and we’re paying for it,” Cheryl told me.
It’s becoming more apparent that the Canadian education system punishes teachers for questioning dangerous ideas and rewards them for indoctrinating children into radical schools of thought!
Not only are our schools hell-bent on stoking racial division among teachers and children through the lens of Marxism, but they are teaching kids they may be born in the wrong body and encouraging them to explore an endless range of sexual identities at a young age.
To fight back against this dangerous system and support teachers like Cheryl, who have been bold enough to speak up, please head to www.StopClassroomGrooming.com to sign our petition.
Yours truly,
Tamara Ugolini Rebel News
P.S. Cheryl was right when she said, “Revolutionary Marxism does not have a history of making society better, even for the marginalized.” It’s important to counter woke ideology by exposing its bad ideas.
Cheryl Gould is a former Catholic school teacher who is being cancelled by her regulator after it was discovered that she posts satirical content denouncing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies, including critical race theory and gender ideology, as Marxist beliefs.
Gould was fired from her position in 2021 after nearly two decades of high school teaching experience and a clear track record.
Now, the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) is vying for a complete revocation of Gould’s license for the commentary that she posted on social media under a pseudonym that had no ties to her, or her work.
Having taught at inner-city schools within the Toronto Catholic District School board, Gould specialized in alternative education. She became especially involved in teaching those of different backgrounds and capabilities including highly sensitive youth facing life challenges with histories of mental illness or trauma. Gould had never so much as had a complaint from a parent or student, yet that all changed in 2021 when she spoke out in what she thought was a safe and confidential union meeting.
Concerned about ideological capture by Marxist ideology and political intimidation in the workplace, Gould felt compelled to speak out. “For someone like me, who is dissenting against the prevailing ideology that is radically far left, there is no place to voice [those concerns],” explains Gould.
Gould took issue with a book gifted to all teachers by the school Chaplain titled, “So You Want to Talk about Race” by Ijeoma Oluo, and felt it was a clear effort to politically indoctrinate teaching staff.
“This book is written by an American Marxist who has spoken about supporting violent left-wing revolution. It’s about race and appropriate ways to talk about race,” Gould explains, going on to describe how the book advocates for segregating groups based on race. “I don’t think that a book that promotes that sort of messaging should be purchased with tax dollars, so that’s what I said.”
“Revolutionary Marxism does not have a history of making society better, even for the marginalized,” she continues.
But after the meeting, Gould was told she could not raise those concerns and that her colleagues were calling her a racist as a result.
Gould was subsequently suspended for a few months before being terminated completely, not for what she voiced in the union meeting but rather because a colleague who knew of Gould’s pseudonym account had reported her.
Gould pleaded guilty to professional misconduct due to excessive language used in some of her remarks, but as the OCT moves forward with the revocation of her license, Gould claims that one of the adjudicators in her ongoing case is a “Black Power Marxist” and hints at judicial bias.
“We are being subjected to a soft revolution and it’s being done through DEI bureaucracy, and we’re paying for it,” Gould states.
We’re being subjugated by our own tax dollars to the tune of billions of dollars because every institution in Canada now has a whole layer of middle management called DEI and they enforce ideological conformity and they punish and expel dissidents. It’s really like Maoism with Canadian characteristics and it’s being made clear in this hearing with the OCT. Why do we even have a catholic system if we’re not going to promote catholic values and throw them under the bus for a Marxist political movement? I find that objectionable.
Gould has begun crowdfunding her legal defence on GiveSendGo and partnered with United Kingdom-based stand-up comedian Nicolas De Santo to bring a benefit tour to South Eastern Ontario in the weeks ahead. Gould also writes longer form critiques on Substack under C.C. Harvey, The Cancelled Club and provides commentary on X under Catherine The Grateful.
This afternoon at Leeds Crown Court Sam Melia, the Yorkshire PA Regional Organiser and husband of PA Deputy Leader Laura Towler, was found guilty of inciting racial hatred and encouraging criminal damage.
The jury of nine men and three women unanimously found Sam guilty for creating downloadable templates for stickers which bore slogans such as:
Reject White Guilt
It’s OK to be White
We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066
White Lives Matter
Stop Anti-White Rape Gangs
Love Your Nation
The prosecution contended that despite the content of the stickers being lawful, they were produced as a body of work intended to stir up racial hatred. Out of a total of 310 stickers which were read out in detail to the jury during the eight-day long trial, only a handful mentioned race and the jury was reminded by the prosecution that it did not matter whether the content of the stickers was true, as the truth is no defence in such a case.
Sam awaits sentencing on 1st March and has been advised not to talk about the case as it could impact the sentence.
Earlier Laura posted of her pride for her husband:
“I will say that I am proud of my husband. He put his head above the parapet, defended his people and told the truth.
“As detailed above, I won’t say any more about Sam just to be on the safe side, but I and many others unapologetically stand for a safe homeland for the British people. This will never change for us, no matter what they throw at us.”
Prosecution claims
The prosecution, in their opening statement, claimed that the stickers in isolation were lawful, however the Hundred Handers (HH) project in whole was incitement to racial hatred. The prosecution also claimed throughout the trial that the stickers being truthful was no defence.
The judge stated that Sam was not on trial for being racist, if the jury should decide he was, he was on trial for inciting racial hatred through HH stickers only.
Throughout the trial, the prosecution made numerous statements proving Sam’s innocence of the crime he had been accused of: intending to stir up racial hatred. The prosecution claimed multiple times that Sam had no intention to threaten anybody, commit “hate speech” or do anything illegal. The following two quotes are from the prosecution’s own opening statement:
“The defendant claimed in one exchange on Telegram that he was careful to keep a tight control on what stickers were published under the auspices of the Hundred Handers group, or which bore the Hundred Handers logo, so as to avoid the risk of someone else creating or posting stickers which potentially linked to his operation, but which were overtly threatening or illegal.” “…and he made clear that he wanted to avoid anything that was openly “fascistic, threatening, or hate speech”
When the prosecution’s “expert witness” was called – a far left academic activist who writes for the far-left gossip rag, Searchlight Magazine – he was asked why people on the right may use stickers to spread their message. The “expert witness” responded by saying “to spread a message, recruit people, to start conversations, etc.” The prosecution then responded by adding, “and they could be used to threaten, couldn’t they?”, to which the “expert witness” responded “yes”.
The jury were advised by the judge during the trial, if they were 99% sure that Sam was guilty, they should vote not guilty, so let’s look at the evidence of Sam intending to incite racial hatred vs the evidence of him not intending to.
Sam’s defence evidence
The Hundreds Handers archive contained a rule which advised not to put the stickers on any private property, and not to put them anywhere where they could be considered threatening or intimidatory
There were multiple streams played of Sam saying publicly that he had no intention to incite hatred and the stickers were created to raise awareness and start a conversation
In the Hundred Handers change log, Sam removed sticker number 188 because it bordered on incitement. The log read: “01/09/19 – Addition of 13 new stickers. Removal of #0188 as it bordered on incitement, it’s use is not condoned by the Hundred-Handers.”
Sam archived each sticker with its own personal number, writing in the archive that he had done this so that nobody could create any illegal or threatening stickers and link them to him, as that kind of language is not condoned
There were multiple private and public messages from Sam, dating back many years, stating that the Hundred Handers was created to raise awareness and spread a message and that there was no intention to cause hatred or violence
This is all clear evidence of Sam stating, publicly and privately, that he had no intention to incite hatred, the crime he was being accused of.
There was not a single piece of evidence indicating that Sam intended to incite racial hatred.
Circumstantial evidence
So what evidence did the prosecution rely upon?
They referenced a picture of Adolf Hitler in a garage that Sam and his friends rented to exercise in during the Covid-19 lockdown. The picture of Hitler was a funny picture placed in an amusing position.
They referenced a book written by and a canvas featuring Sir Oswald Mosley. Both were owned by Laura, who admitted to this in her testimony.
After looking through Sam’s entire message history dating back many years, they found four examples of slurs, averaging at one per year. None of these words were said to anybody of another race but were communicated in private messages, mostly in humour.
Other Points to Note
The prosecution brought up stickers during the trial that were not part of the Hundred Handers project, and then admitted they made a mistake and they weren’t part of the project and had nothing to do with Sam.
The prosecution brought up two articles about razor blades behind stickers, and then admitted they’d had no police reports about razor blades behind HH stickers and no proof that this had happened at all.
The police admitted there had been zero incidents of crimes being reported (or hatred being incited) that related to the stickers.
The jury were asked to consider all 310 stickers in the archive and whether the archive in whole was considered to be incitement to racial hatred. In his closing statement, the defence barrister revealed that over 80% of the stickers didn’t mention other races, religions or ethnicities, or even reference words like “multiculturalism” and “diversity”, seemingly making it impossible that the archive in whole could be considered incitement to racial hatred.
Support Campaign
Over the last few years, Sam and Laura have worked tirelessly for PA, despite having this court case hanging over their heads. Now Sam has been found guilty, it is likely he will serve a custodial sentence. As such, PA is launching a campaign to raise money to allow Sam and Laura to go away for a week as a family before the date of Sam’s sentencing.
Finally Sam may have been the one in the dock throughout the past eight days, but it is the wider community of nationalists who are in the gun sights of the British State. Our people are under relentless attack from the globalists who seek to replace us with a flood of migrants. Those of us in Patriotic Alternative who defiantly resist this programme of demographic replacement are all in the frame.
We cannot allow that to happen and we must stand together as one to resist our wholesale removal.
The House of Representatives passed the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act” on May 2, by a vote of 320-91 in reaction to demonstrations on numerous university campuses and elsewhere against the brutal and genocidal policy of Israel in Gaza. The Act has now been sent to the Senate, where it seems certain to pass. This is an extremely dangerous bill that could criminalize the Bible, many Christian Churches, as well as any negative remarks about Israel and Jews. In brief, it threatens us with totalitarian thought control. We must do everything we can to oppose it.
First, let’s take an overview of the Act. It adopts the very broad definition of anti-Semitism of the “International Holocaust Remembrance Association.” The Act calls this definition “a vital tool which helps individuals understand and identify the various manifestations of antisemitism.” Gardner, Andy Buy New $19.57 (as of 09:02 UTC – Details)
What does this definition say? “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed in hatred of Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” How you can be anti-Semitic toward someone who isn’t Jewish isn’t immediately apparent.
The authors of the definition give someone examples of what they consider anti-Semitic. These include saying that the Jews control the media and Congress, saying that Israel is a racist state, propagating the “blood libel” that the Jews killed Jesus, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, and claiming that Jews in America have “dual loyalty.”
As a number of writers including Tucker Carlson and John Zmirak have pointed out, the definition allows large parts of the Bible to be banned. The most famous such passage is Matthew 27: 25. “His blood be upon us and our children.” This is the “blood libel” that the Act wouldn’t let us teach!
You might object that the Act would never be enforced in this way. The American people would never stand for it! But it would always be there, like a sword of Damocles, hanging over our heads. And don’t be so sure it wouldn’t be enforced! The Scottish Hate Speech Act was passed in 2021, and people predicted it would never be enforced. Beginning in April 2024, though, it has been enforced, and many people have been fined and imprisoned for violating it.
The biggest problem with the Act, though, isn’t the definition of anti-Semitism. If it were, we could substitute a more reasonable definition, such as “hatred for all Jews.” Even if this were done, however, we would still be in an untenable position. Banning any kind of speech, whether it is good or bad, is incompatible with a free society. As the great Murray Rothbard has taught us, all rights are property rights. Everyone can set the rules for speech on his own property, and no one has the right to control what anyone says on someone else’s property. This includes speech which counts as “offensive.” Of course, we don’t live in a libertarian society, but we should come as close as we can in practice to it. This means following the strictest possible interpretation of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law. . .abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”. ‘No law” means “no law” and that includes laws against so-called “hate speech.” As the great legal scholar Dr. Wanjiru Njoya says, “Jews must learn to live in a world where people say offensive things about them, same as anyone else. You shouldn’t jail people for saying offensive things about Jews or Israel.”
We need to ask ourselves, why the Act has been passed at the present time. The answer is obvious. It is to block all criticism of Israel. And Israel should be criticized, because of the genocidal policy it is following in Gaza. The US government, led by brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers, have supported Israel with money and advanced weapons throughout Israel’s invasion. Anthony Blinken, “our” Secretary of State, flew to Tel Aviv as soon as the invasion started and, standing beside war criminal “Bibi” Netanyahu, said, “I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state but also as a Jew.” See here.
Is it “anti-Semitic” to report this? One of the examples the International Holocaust Remembrance Day Association’s definition of anti-Semitism is to say that Jews have a strong influence on American foreign policy. But it’s the simple truth.
And what policy do Blinken and his cohorts support? It is Israel’s policy to exterminate the Palestinians who live in Gaza. The great Ron Unz has called it “the greatest televised massacre of civilians in the history of the world.” Under the Act, Unz could be prosecuted for saying that, because saying that Israelis are committing genocide, or comparing then to Nazis, is forbidden.
As if that were not bad enough, conditions in Gaza are getting worse. Because of Israel’s constant bombing and interdiction of food shipments to Gaza, a famine is occurring there. According to Cindy McCain, the Director of the World Food Program, “There is famine, full-blown famine, in the north, and it’s moving its way south.” Now it will reach the south, because Israel has just blocked food shipments to Rafah.
Should calling attention to horrendous news like this be an offense punishable by jail? You don’t have to be a libertarian to recognize that we can’t have a free society under the censorship conditions this Act would impose.
Many Jews would have to be banned by this standard. The eminent Jewish historian Omer Bartov said last November that “functionally and rhetorically we may be watching an ethnic cleansing operation that could quickly devolve into genocide.” His worst fears have come to pass since then. He too would be banned under the Act. So would Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer.
Jews who don’t criticize Israeli’s war could also be banned under the Act. For example, some very religious Jews are anti-Zionist and don’t recognize Israel as a legitimate state. They could be charged with anti-Semitism. Also, what about Orthodox Jews who don’t recognize conversions to Judaism supervised by Reform rabbis? If they say that such converts aren’t Jewish, they could be charged under the Act as anti-Semitic. So could Reform rabbis who mock the Orthodox as benighted reactionaries.
One of the oddest aspects of this whole deplorable business is that the Act bans statements that the Jews have a lot of political power. One wonders how the Act passed by the astonishing margin of 320 to 91 without pressure from the Israeli Lobby. The sellout Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is bought and paid for. How then can the Act ban a statement that is obviously true and that the passage of the Act shows to be true?
One target of the Act is the heroic university students who are protesting what is going on in Gaza. The sponsors of the Act depict them as lawbreakers who need to be suppressed to preserve “law and order”, but students protests against criminal wars are part of the American tradition. Student protests against LBJ’s criminal war against Vietnam helped bring down his presidency. Libertarians and all other lovers of freedom should never forget that we are anti-war. Cushatt, Michele Best Price: $11.96 Buy New $11.88 (as of 09:07 UTC – Details)
Of course the neocons behind the Act don’t see matters this way. These days, students often learn about news through social media platforms like TikTok. Many students learned about what was going on in Gaza though discussions on that platform, and because of this, the neocons in Congress voted to force TikTok’s parent company to sell it within 270 days; if not, it will be banned in America. As Dr. Ron Paul notes, “ The head of the Anti-Defamation League was actually caught on tape complaining about the “TikTok problem.’”
When we talk about the neocons, we should never forget that they got us into the disastrous invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush. The US government killed a million people –half of them children thanks to the US starvation blockade — and cost us trillions of dollars. Despite this—or maybe because of it—neocons like Robert Kagan still praise the Iraq war today. This is the sort of person behind the Act.
In my opinion, the evidence for Israeli genocide is overwhelming, and those who want to ban people from saying so are calling for a ban on the truth. But suppose you disagree. You should still oppose the Act. As John Stuart Mill said in his great On Liberty (1859): “But the peculiar evil of silencing an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race;. . .those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
You shouldn’t be surprised that neocons like Kagan smear this great libertarian and anti-war crusader as an anti-Semite.
We should take the opportunity provided by the Act to engage in a full and frank discussion of American foreign policy. Why are we supplying billions of dollars in aid to a country engaging in genocide? Why are we supporting Ukraine in a war against Russia that could lead to a thermonuclear war? What groups benefit from these policies? By the way, if you are looking for real anti-Semites, you should start with the pro-Nazi Azov Brigade backing the tyrannical dictatorship of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Let’s do everything we can to get rid of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act and to return to our traditional foreign policy of non-intervention, following the guidance of Dr. Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard.
B.C. man faces strict conditions after breaching sentence for anti-Semitic hate crimes
CBC
November 23, 2020·2 min read
A B.C. man convicted of an online hate crime is facing strict new rules on his public expression after breaching his sentencing conditions.
Arthur Topham, who ran a publication from his rural home near the central Interior city of Quesnel, was convicted in 2015 of communicating online statements that wilfully promoted hatred against Jewish people.
As part of his sentence, Topham was forbidden from publishing or publicly posting information about “persons of Jewish religion or ethnic origin.”
But In October, a provincial court judge ruled Topham had breached that condition by creating new posts throughout 2018.
Late last week, the judge sentenced Topham to a 30-day conditional sentence and three years probation for the breach, placing strict new conditions on Topham’s public posts.
B’nai Brith/Contributed
For the next three years, Topham is forbidden from publishing or printing publicly any reference to or information about the Talmud, Zionism, Israel, and the Jewish religion, ethnicity or people.
Topham is also forbidden from publicly posting the names of people he knows to be of Jewish origin.
According to court documents, he will still be allowed to publicly name his wife and her family, but not to mention their ethnicity or origin. During his original trial, Topham told the court his wife is Jewish.
In addition to the terms of his three-year probation, Topham will serve a 30-day conditional sentence, with a nightly curfew and a requirement to remain in B.C. He’s also prohibited from having weapons, liquor, or alcohol.
“Justice has been served,” said Ran Ukashi, National Director with B’nai Brith, a Jewish advocacy group that’s been closely following the case.
“It serves as a deterrent for others, to realize there are consequences, there’s a price to pay,” said Ukashi.
Betsy Trumpener/CBC
“There are limits to … free speech and promoting hatred against identifiable groups is not on,” he said.”This person has been given opportunity after opportunity to not behave this way.”
A retired teacher now in his 70s, Topham was first charged in 2012. A website he produced featured frequent posts with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and demonized Jewish people, according to evidence at his trial.
Wil Fundal/CBC News
At his original trial in 2015, Topham’s lawyer argued the posts were political satire, did not incite violence, and included materials that could easily be ordered on Amazon.
Topham’s case was the first hate crime prosecution in B.C. in almost a decade.
It drew support from the Ontario Civil Liberties Association, which champions free speech, as well as from self-proclaimed “white nationalists,” who attended Topham’s jury trial in the Quesnel courthouse, 700 km northeast of Vancouver.
Paul Fromm helped to fund Topham’s defence and covered his trial through video blogs from Quesnel. Monika Schaefer, who served jail time in Germany for Holocaust denial, also attended court
2020: Can be Arrested for Refusing to Wear a Mask – 2024: Student Protesters Face Criminal Charges for Wearing a Mask
Total Views : 47
Left image source. Man forced to wear mask in protest. Right image source. Student compared to KKK for wearing mask.
by Brian Shilhavy Editor, Health Impact News
In yet another insane example of how “free speech” is a myth and only defined by what side of whatever political debate you are on that is dominating the news of the day, Pro-Palestinian student protesters faced criminal charges in Ohio this week for wearing face masks during the protest.
This is happening just 4 years after people were arrested in 2020 during the fake COVID pandemic for REFUSING to wear face masks in anti-lockdown protests.
In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine issued a statewide mask order in 2020 requiring everyone in Ohio to wear a face mask in public.
Governor DeWine announced that beginning on Thursday, July 23, at 6:00 p.m., a statewide mask mandate will go into effect for citizens living in all 88 Ohio counties.
All individuals in Ohio must wear facial coverings in public at all times when:
At an indoor location that is not a residence
Outdoors, but unable to maintain six-foot social distance from people who are not household members
Waiting for, riding, driving, or operating public transportation, such as a taxi, a car service, or a private car used for ride-sharing.
After issuing this order, a woman was tased and arrested for criminal trespassing for not wearing a mask during an outdoor school football game.
Woman tasered after refusing to wear face mask at Ohio school football game
An Ohio woman was tasered and forcibly removed from a middle school football game on Wednesday evening after refusing to wear a face mask.
A video of the incident, which garnered over 440,000 views on Facebook, shows school resource officer Chris Smith in a heated exchange with a fan in the stands of Logan High School Stadium.
Smith reportedly asked the woman to wear a face mask, but she refused claiming she has asthma, according to a statement from the Logan Police Department.
The exchange escalated when the woman, who was later identified by the Logan Police Department as Alecia Kitts, apparently refused to follow Smith’s instructions and started to yell.
“Get off of me! I will not put my hands behind my back. I’m not criminally doing nothing wrong!” Kitts can be heard yelling in the video.
After refusing to put her hands behind her back, the officer can be seen tasering her in the back and then handcuffing her, before escorting her out of the arena. (Source.)
Fast forward to almost 4 years later, and Governor DeWine’s Attorney General, Dave Yost, is trying to bring up criminal charges against two peaceful pro-Palestinian student protesters at Xavier University who were wearing masks, citing an old 1953 law designed to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members for covering their faces.
Pro-Palestinian Protesters Slapped with Felony Charges for Wearing Masks Outside Xavier Commencement
The 1953 “anti-disguise” law was written to curb the KKK. Now, Attorney General Dave Yost is using the law to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters.
Two pro-Palestinian protesters are facing felony charges for attempting to demonstrate on Xavier University’s campus just hours before a commencement ceremony over the weekend.
On Saturday, May 11, Sophia “Soup” Dempsey, an XU student, and XU alum Julia Lankisch, both 22, were arrested by campus police around 7:30 a.m. outside the Cintas Center where a graduation commencement was set to begin a few hours later.
“They were holding a Palestinian flag by this statue, and that was about it,” said Andrew Zolides, an XU professor who also leads Take it On, a university program for civic engagement. “But they weren’t making any noise. They were just standing, both kind of holding the flag.”
Zolides told CityBeat that Dempsey and Lankisch, the only two protesters there, were approached by campus police within 15 minutes of starting their demonstration. Zolides said he immediately walked over to the scene to offer help.
“I was about 30 or so yards away — because I wasn’t a part of the protest; I wasn’t organizing; it was them. By the time I got there, they were under arrest,” he said. “Probably from police approaching to being arrested, I would say was probably 60 seconds. Maybe.”
Dempsey and Lankisch were booked in the Hamilton County Justice Center on Saturday and each charged with trespassing and “conspiracy while wearing a disguise,” a felony charge for wearing medical face masks while protesting.
If the latter charge seems strange, that’s because it is. The Ohio law was created in 1953 in response to ongoing violence by the Ku Klux Klan, saying it is a felony to commit a crime, including misdemeanors, with two or more people “while wearing white caps, masks or other disguise,” according to Ohio Revised Code 3761.12.
Ohio is one of 15 states with such anti-mask laws still on the books, according to the Free Speech Center at East Tennessee State University. (Source.)
Whatever remnants of the First Amendment that still exist are now in serious danger as the Zionist coalition with their mega-funding lobbyists seek to redefine the First Amendment to basically read: You a have a right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion as long as you support the Zionist cause and don’t criticize Israel.
Also this week, more GOP Zionist politicians in DC are calling for nuclear bombs to be launched against Palestinians.
GOP Rep. Greg Murphy echoes Lindsey Graham in suggesting Israel would be justified in nuking Gaza pic.twitter.com/ju3DKjxeVd
Notice how the rhetoric these Zionists use is that this is an attack on the Hamas terrorists. But not everyone protesting Israel’s war belong to Hamas, which is actually the ruling political party in Gaza, as it was only members of its military branch who carried out the attacks.
It would be same as some country calling for a nuclear attack against Americans in the United States to pay back for the crimes of the CIA.
And as these Zionist Evangelical Christians cry out to launch nuclear bombs against the Palestinians, the suffering of native Christians in the Palestinian territories continues to be ignored.
A reader sent me this video about the Armenian Christians living in Palestine. I had not realized that Armenia was the first country in the 4th Century (301 AD) to adopt Christianity as their state religion, even before the Roman Emperor Constantine did the same in 325 AD, before watching this video.
Tornados of controversy are swirling around the subject of mass graves in Canada and Gaza. Mass graves in Gaza were created along with the Israeli occupation and destruction of hospitals in Gaza. These grave sites are being dug up between rounds of Israeli bombing of Palestinian civilians. The evidence of mutilated humans coming out of Gaza’s mass graves have reportedly contained evidence of organ removal, handcuffing of doctors and patients, as well as point-blank executions including shots to the head.
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The discovery of mass graves is often seen as a hallmark that acts of genocide have occurred. While the association of mass graves with genocide is virtually irrefutable in Gaza, the same is certainly not the case in Canada. The discussion in Canada about the supposed discovery of unmarked mass graves adjacent to Christian residential schools is just now heating up.
From the late 1800s until the 1970s these federally-funded institutions were a core institution in providing education to Indian students. Issues concerning the provision of education to Indian groups often figured prominently in the Crown-Aboriginal treaty negotiations with Indian groups east of the Pacific watershed. To this day, this watershed marks much of the border of British Columbia with the rest of Canada.
The claims concerning the discovery of unmarked graves adjacent to Indian residential schools have been accepted as established fact by the government of Canada and much of the media since 2021. The story was quickly absorbed and adopted by the government of Justin Trudeau. In 2022 was adopted by Parliament without investigation as if it was a proven fact.
These claims are being subjected to vigorous scrutiny and a concerted effort of debunking. This project is being advanced by a formidable group of academics, journalists, retired judges and such. The volume is entitled Grave Error; How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools)
Before and After Pictures were a staple of Indian Residential Schools in Canada and the United States.The Idea was to illustrate the success of a “civilizing” process.
The Forward to Grave Error is written by the legendary neocon elder, Conrad Black. Black is the former Zionist media mogul and prison inmate who some see with justification as an authentic embodiment of a renaissance man. Besides making business history with his edgy (too edgy?) handling of Hollinger Inc., Black has written many important history books. I remember when I was working on my Ph.D. in Canadian history at the University of Toronto in the late 1970s that Black’s biography of former Quebec Premier, Maurice Duplessis, was required reading.
The co-editors of Grave Error are C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan. Professor Flanagan rivals the importance of Conrad Black in terms of the mark he has made for better or worse on Canadian history. Flanagan was at the core of the transformation of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada into the Conservative Party of Canada. The iconic leader of the CP was Stephen Harper, the core person in one of the few Canadian governments not dominated by Laurentian elites.
Flanagan took hold of the Social Credit legacy of Alberta that came to be embodied in Preston Manning’s Reform Party. Flanagan and Manning teamed up. Coming in from the edges was Torontonian Stephen Harper. By performing well as a student in Flanagan’s circle, Harper was successful in his quest to present himself as a credible Albertan politician.
Flanagan mixed the Manning heritage with Reagan-Thatcheresque enthusiasms of his circle of students who pretty much saw their prof as the rock star of the Texas North University in Alberta’s rising oil and gas metropolis. Among the Flanagan devotees were Harper, Ezra Levant, and the current Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith.
In the 1990s when I was a member of the Native American Studies Department at the University of Lethbridge, I saw Tom Flanagan as something of a nemesis. This American political scientist was one of the the original hires in 1968 at the nascent University of Calgary. In seeking to fit into his new academic home, Prof. Flanagan chose as his first Canadian subject the life and times of Metis Rebel Leader Louis Riel. Did Prof. Flanagan picture himself as the ring leader of an Alberta rebellion in the making?
Flanagan built on this base to become sufficiently expert on Aboriginal Affairs in Canada that he was able to hire himself out to federal agencies in order to give advice and to perform as an expert witness in court. I saw it then and see it now, Prof Flanagan’s expertise lay in directing judges how to undermining the exercise of Aboriginal rights as defined in their dubious rulings.
Regardless of my view of these matters, this aspect of Flanagan’s career has put him in a good position to intervene with insight into the growing furor driven by the supposed discovery of unmarked mass graves adjacent to Indian residential schools.
Thus it is that Black and Flanagan, both heavy hitters, have joined forces with a high-powered team of devoted writers and thinkers. Their shared aim is to say enough is enough to what they see as woke opportunists.
It is well known that Justin Trudeau tends to be especially generous with his patronage dollars to those who attach themselves to his agendas for First Nations peoples. Trudeau inherits a long Liberal tradition of using large concentrations of money to keep hand-picked leaders in partisan line with Liberal policies.
Not surprisingly, Trudeau did not do his homework as he has latched onto yet another divisive boondoggle to float his “post-national” contention that Canada is a genocidal country that should be enwrapped asap into more globalist webs of conniving intrigues. Of course in my view neither Black nor Flanagan have been exempt from implicating Canada in their own forms of conniving globalist intrigues.
This background helps explain how it is that a seemingly obscure book on an seemingly narrow subject is suddenly selling lots of copies in spite of it being banned here and there. As far as I know there hasn’t been a ritual book burning yet but the volume has definitely been removed from several libraries.
In the BC town of Quesnel, just looking at Grave Error was made to seem in April like an act of heresy to be punished by spurning, economic boycott and various forms of deplatforming. As in many small communities throughout Canada, Quesnel businesses depend on the ample purchasing power of many First Nations people in the region.
Frances Widdowson attended the meeting with the intention of explaining her own essay, “Billy Remembers.” Even before she made the long drive from her home in Calgary to Quesnel, she was interrogated by a CBC journalist Jordan Tucker, a person who embodies the transcendental character of the Liberal government’s state broadcaster these days.
The Transcendent CBC Journalist, Jordan Tucker
Interview with Jordan Tucker (she/her) by Frances Widdowson Frances Widdowson
It seems Dr. Widdowson has been appointed by some overseeing committee of high wokedom as the main embodiment of a new type of heresy designated as a “residential school denialism” by those in and around the Canadian version of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Investigation. Dr. Widdowson long wrangled with her former employer at Mount Royal because her discourse was allegedly not in line with the College’s policy of “Indigenization.”
In February of 2023 the then-President of the University of Lethbridge, Dr. Mike Mahon, gave the green light to silence Dr. Widdowson by overwhelming her scheduled talk with well-organized drumming, chanting and electric guitar screeching. The object of this attack on free speech and open debate was to block her capacity of making herself heard.
Many in Alberta and beyond saw this display as a very powerful symbol of the DEI intolerance that is replacing independent thought and articulation with group think in increasingly authoritarian universities throughout the West. As a result of the extension of the debacle in Gaza to sharp divides on university campuses, this pattern of sacrificing to large donors of control over curriculum and faculty staffing is being put on full display by many prominent IVY League schools in the USA.
I agree with the authors in Grave Error that the existence of unmarked mass graves adjacent to Indian residential schools have not been proven. The great weight of evidence points against the conclusions that arose first from a press release in May of 2021. The release came from Rosanne Casimir, Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc (Kamloops Indian Band). Without presenting credible evidence, Chief Casimir made the startling claim that an unmarked mass grave containing 215 bodies had been discovered in an apple orchard beside Kamloops Indian residential school.
I agree for the most part with Grave Error’s authors. They maintain that a solid evidentiary basis has not been established to prove the new thesis that mass murder and mass graves constitute an integral part of the history of Indian residential schools in Canada.
I do not agree, however, that these findings preclude the need to look at the possible role of various forms of genocidal activity in the genesis of northern North America from pre-Columbian times to the Canada that exists today. I find the conclusion that because certain claims about the existence of mass graves attending Indian residential schools have been disproven, the possibility of genocidal expressions in Canada’s history need never come up again.
I think it ill-advised to declare that all of Canadian history is devoid of genocide before and after the UN’s creation of the Genocide Convention in 1948. Canadian history does not exist in an isolated void. I have repeatedly put forward the view that the entire Western Hemisphere has been the site since 1492 of an inter-generational genocide that can be pictured as a single monumental event whose commemoration might be marked by a different kind of holocaust memorial.
For now, however, I’ll leave it at that. I’ll simply add that Dr. Widdowson and I are working together these days. We are engaged in a case study of the assault on free speech and open debate at University of Lethbridge, where I taught for 26 years. See the announcement of our upcoming meeting on the matter in the addendum below.
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Addendum
10 May, 2024 Dear Friends, Colleagues and Associates;
Above is the poster for an important upcoming public event on the afternoon of Saturday May 25 at the main branch of the Lethbridge Public Library. Many of you will remember when Dr. Frances Widdowson was overwhelmed by chanting, drumming and the screech on an electric guitar. The object of the ruckus was to prevent the speaker from delivering a public presentation in the Atrium of the University of Lethbridge. The censorship action proved to be a “success.”
Dr. Widdowson was silenced and those who came to hear her talk were deprived of her articulation. Certain faculty members had decided Frances Widdowson was afflicted with a malady they labelled “residential school denialism.”
Some faculty members decided to act on this judgment. For their students, these faculty members painted a picture of Dr. Widdowson as an embodiment of a constituency they identified as hostile to the idea that all residential schools at all times should be equated with genocide.
Disgruntled faculty and others pressured U of L President, Dr. Mike Mahon, to cancel Dr. Widdowson’s lecture after he had already announced that his Office approved of her talk. Some interpret what happened as a cave in by Dr. Mahon to political pressure. He ordered that a speaker on campus should be cancelled because she was the bearer of interpretations that some faculty and students wanted to censor. The rest, as they say, is history.
The key point in this matter is not that one side or the other is right or wrong. Individuals especially in the hallowed Halls of Academia have a right and sometimes even a responsibility to decide such matters for themselves. The key point is that academics must be able to research, argue and articulate issues in an environment of protected free speech and academic freedom regardless of the prevailing group think. Certainly it is not the role of academic administrators to jump in arbitrarily by making themselves instant experts in whatever academic debate they want to dominate and/or disrupt.
Dr. Widdowson has written academic essays and books in and around the topic of the history of Indian education in Canada. Whether one agrees with her views or not, it was wrong to have tried to silence her at an Alberta University. I attended the organized shutdown of her talk. In my view and in that of many other people I have since met and talked to about what happened, the shutdown of Dr. Widdowson in February of 2023 was not a proud moment. It was a very troubling occurrence in the history of the institution of higher learning where I taught from 1990 to 2016.
I moved to Lethbridge in 1990 to be Associate Professor of Native American Studies. In the early weeks of 2016 this tenured full professor was abruptly suspended without pay completely outside the rules of the Board’s collective agreement with the Faculty Association. Then in 2017 the matter went to court in the Lethbridge Court of (then) Queen’s Bench.
By court order the judge ruled that I should be reinstated into my academic position at the U of L. As I plan to discuss, there is every reason that the Board’s objective in trying to deplatform me was to silence my interpretations because my views went contrary to the agenda of a very rich and powerful lobby. I would still like to know how this lobby gained such a tight grip on the policies and actions of the administration of the University administration.
As the commentator in Frances’ forthcoming presentation on 25 May, I’m sure I will disagree with her on many points. Agreeing to disagree is a vital attribute of healthy academic life. But trying to shut down those with whom one disagrees, undermines the entirety of the whole academic project that is supposed to be a fair and balanced meritocracy.
When I met Frances after the event where her talk was shut down, we of course compared notes about our treatment at the University of Lethbridge. Eventually we came up with the idea of mounting the initiative we started earlier this year. In due course, as this process unfolds I intend to talk about my own experiences with the process of being deplatformed in ways that include many elements outside the set of facts outlined above.
I never did get back into the classroom. In 2018 I decided to retire. I did retire as a full professor in good standing. I gained the new title of Professor Emeritus. I am announcing here that I am henceforth acting in my capacity as a Professor Emeritus of the University of Lethbridge in the remaining part of the process that Frances and I have mounted. I think my taking on this responsibility in unusual times and under unusual circumstances is entirely consistent with the duties of an individual carrying the title of Emeritus Professor.
As I see it, I shall be speaking and acting in this process from within the U of L’s faculty. I have devoted some of the best years and professional efforts of my life to my academic endeavours at the University of Lethbridge. I would like to see the institution thrive and prosper.
As a senior faculty member I want to help in the process of making some suggestions that might assist our school in getting back on track. A University simply cannot fulfil a mission to be a school of authentic higher learning without creating a sound foundation for the expression of unhindered speech and academic freedom.
Since retiring from teaching I have continued to involve myself in research and publication as well as in very active community involvement starting with the manufactured COVID crisis. The questions come up in my community work: Where are all the hundreds of University professors and why are they not contributing more actively to working through issues of immense import– life and death issues in, for instance, public health matters.
What kind of message does our university send when it shuts down, rather than encourages, the highlighting of a diversity of perspectives in public discourse in local, regional, national and global contexts? The community wants and deserves better than what we have seen from the University of Lethbridge in recent years.
In this context I am not making any claim about who is right or wrong in the matters we have recently faced and are facing. But in my view there is no doubt that the University of Lethbridge has become way too isolated and partisan in key aspects of the community life of this region.
Please consider attending the public event at the Lethbridge Public Library on Saturday May 25 at 2 pm.
