Look at Which Organized Group is Seeking to Squelch Free Speech … Again!

 Look at Which Organized Group is Seeking to Squelch Free Speech … Again!

Frederick Fromm's photo.

Jewish Groups Denounce Choice of Antisemite to Headline ‘Freedom to Read Week’ Event in Toronto

FEBRUARY 14, 2016 9:20 PM 35 COMMENTS

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Self-described anti-Zionist author and journalist Max Blumenthal. Photo: Wikipedia.

Two major Jewish groups gently ripped into the Canadian branch of the international organization PEN — which campaigns on behalf of writers persecuted or imprisoned for expressing themselves freely – for inviting a highly controversial author to headline an event it is co-sponsoring, theCanadian Jewish News reported on Sunday.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center asked PEN why it is headlining the event, to be held on Feb. 24 at the Toronto Reference Library, with self-described “anti-Zionist” Max Blumenthal, whose fringe positions on Israel have earned him the label of antisemite.

Blumenthal, author of The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza and Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, was invited by PEN Canada, in conjunction with Independent Jewish Voices and Another Story Bookshop (as part of “Freedom to Read Week”) to be the star attraction at the event, titled “Embattled Truths: Reporting on Gaza.” His co-panelist will be Toronto Star foreign affairs reporter Olivia Ward.

“We thought this is an odd choice,” CIJA spokesperson Martin Sampson told the CJN. “Why would they do that? Why would they put their reputation at risk by associating with Blumenthal? I think his extreme positions disqualify him for being a rational, reasonable contributor in the discourse about Israel.”

Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center CEO Avi Benlolo told the CJN: “Max Blumenthal represents the radical left’s extremist belief that Israel is the embodiment of all evil and has no right to exist. His most recent book – [which has been] dubbed the ‘I Hate Israel Handbook’ – supports the mainstreaming of growing antisemitic attitudes by conflating Israel with Nazi Germany. While shunned by conventional media outlets, the book is popular on major antisemitic, neo-Nazi and conspiracy theory websites such as Stormfront and David Duke’s Rense, where his work is used to promote anti-Jewish hate. I’m not sure what PEN is trying to achieve by giving Blumenthal a podium from which to spew his hatred, but if its goal is to contribute to increasing antisemitism in Canada, then I guess they will succeed.”

According to the CJN, PEN spokesperson Brendan de Caires responded by saying that the group’s mandate is to “raise difficult subjects… We are a free speech organization. We embrace an open exchange of ideas.” And “the whole premise of our discussion is that this [Gaza] is a hot topic.”

De Caires added, “We have no stake in the content of what Mr. Blumenthal says. [But] we support his right to say it.”

According to CJN, Toronto Public Library stakeholder relations manager Ana-Maria Critchley said that, in spite of the controversy, the event will be going ahead as planned. “Blumenthal has been invited very clearly not because of his personal views, but to speak on his experience as a journalist,” she said.

Max Blumenthal’s name came to the fore recently, when the latest batch of emails released from the server of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton revealed correspondence with her former adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, the author’s father. In these exchanges, Blumenthal senior sent Clinton links to a number of anti-Israel articles written by his son.

Why the Canadian State Literally Burns Books

Why the Canadian State Literally Burns Books

 August 20, 2014 Commentary

Paul Fromm, Critic of State Censorship & Defender of British Common Law Principles Paul Fromm, Critic of State Censorship & Defender of British Common Law Principles

Non-Aligned Media
August 19, 2014

I wish to bring to the attention of Non-Aligned Media readers the following episode of “The Fighting Side of Me”, the radio show hosted by Paul Fromm—founder of the Canadian Association for Free Expression—which I stumbled across on the highly stimulating website ofCounter-Currents Publishing. The show, “Paul Fromm on Censorship in Canada”, as the title intimates, addresses the problem of state-enforced censorship in Canada.

FULL SHOW – Listen here (right click to download)

Fromm elucidates the different ways certain forms of intellectual expression—most notably criticism of the organized Jewish community—are criminalized and expunged from the public domain in the second largest country on earth. The most notorious method is the deployment of armed police to the home or workplace of a targeted heretic who will typically be temporarily flung in prison, interrogated and then railroaded either through the pro-Zionist courts or through Canada’s federal and provincial “Human Rights” commissions. The Canadian state has incarcerated many violators of state-sponosred political correctness under this dispensation, most recently an elderly blogger named Arthur Topham who committed the “crime” of authoring a satirical article which delegitimized Israel.

Of course florid, sentimentalist lingo is harnessed by the well-paid “Human Rights” impresarios to fool the Canadian public into believing that they have a vested interest in relinquishing the hard-won right to freely express oneself in a peaceful and unfettered way. The naked truth is that this prevention-of-hate-speech-charade has little to do with affirming genuine Human Rights. It is all about preventing criticism of those who are foisting radical un-Canadian policies upon the citizenry of this once-loved nation. Just as the potentates of Saudi Arabia incarcerate their domestic critics, so those who rule Canada seek to imprison interlocutors who accurately delineate the anatomy of power in the former British Dominion now ruled out of Tel Aviv.

Implicit to this authoritarian procedure is the Canadian state ideology of Jewish Exceptionalism. White Europeans, Arabs, Muslims, Persians and Christians, in particular, can have their traditions excoriated and deconstructed by the Jewish literati but if they repay the favour they may find themselves behind bars. Judaism and Jewishness are treated exceptionally by the Canadian legal system due to the wealth and power of the organized Jewish community. Canada has the best legal system money can buy.

The Canadian State Burns Books Written By Dr. David Duke thus Preventing Canadian Citizens from Formulating Their Own Conclusions About the Merits of His WorkThe Canadian State Burns Books Written By Dr. David Duke Thus Preventing Canadian Citizens From Drawing Their Own Conclusions About the Merits of His Work

Fromm emphasizes an additional means of censorship which often goes under the radar of those interested in restoring the European tradition of freedom of expression in Canada, namely customs officials snatching and then disposing of books, DVDs and other paraphernalia deemed politically-incorrect. A 2008 Canada Boarder Services Agency posting acknowledged that such seizures are potentially violative of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which was conferred upon Canada by Britain in 1982:

Unlike many other goods with which CBSA officials routinely deal, expressive materials are protected by the freedom of expression guarantee set out in subsection 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Although not specifically tested in the courts to date, it is believed that, in respect of hate propaganda, sedition and treason, as with obscenity, the infringement of section 2(b) of the Charter is justified under its own section 1, because the overriding objective of the law is the avoidance of harm to society and that is a sufficiently substantial concern to warrant a restriction on freedom of expression.

CBSA, on behalf of those who rule Canada, claims the right to revoke a constitutionally-protected right, without judicial sanction, as is implied by the admission that their presumptive actions have “not [been] especially tested in the courts to date”. They claim this abrogation of a constitutionally-protected right is intended to mitigate against an alleged “harm to society” deemed arbitrarily to be of “substantial concern to warrant a restriction on freedom of expression”. In a posting on the CAFÉ website Fromm has listed some of the intellectual goods which CBSA has deemed of “substantial concern”:

[T]he Frankfurt School, a dvd produced by the Conservative Citizens Foundation; Communism With the Mask Off, a speech delivered in Nurnberg on September 13, 1935 by Dr. Joseph Goebbels; Pre-Emptive Ideology, Occasional Papers of the Citizens’ Foundation, Issue #7; The King Holiday and its Meaning, speech by Senator Jesse Helms, introduction by Samuel Francis; The Citizens Informer, Vol. 45, No. 1 (newspaper published thrice yearly by the Council of Conservative Citizens); The First Freedom, June, 2012, a newspaper; The Alabamian, May-June, 2012, a newsletter published by the Alabama Council of Conservative Citizens and CofCC Board member Leonard Wilson; and the Northwest Observer, Volumes #115 (February, 2012), #116 (March, 2012), and #117 (April, 2012), published by long-time U.S. writer Harold Covington.

Some of these materials are particularly benign. The documentary The Frankfurt School, for example, is merely a compilation of critiques by academics of what was arguably the most influential sociological tendency of the 20th Century—albeit one characterized by Israeli intellectual Gershom Scholem as a “Jewish sect”. “The King Holiday” is merely a speech about Martin Luther King delivered by a former US senator. Nevertheless, these scholarly materials were prevented from entering the country, clearly based on top-down political motivations rather than concern for society as a whole, which would benefit from having the forces critiqued in the aforementioned texts exposed to more, rather than less, intellectual criticism. Fromm adds:

How are books destroyed? A good supporter of CAFÉ who had a copy of David Duke’s [book] Jewish Supremacism seized some years ago, was told by a Customs officials that they were “burned.” So,our thought police practise book burning in Canada.

That’s right! The Canadian state—whose representatives are incessantly lecturing other countries on democracy and civil liberties—burns books to stop citizens reading them! The following message is projected by the state: Don’t worry about forming your own conclusions about this or that book or argument lowly citizens, the Canadian government has done it for you!

As I stated in a recent interview on Press TV, the organized Jewish community forms a significant locus of power in Canada. They are not the only locus of power but, in their totality, they wield disproportionate power and influence. The pro-Zionist uniformity of Canada’s parliamentarians during the recent massacre in Gaza—which was out-of-sync with the preponderance of world leaders—indicates this. If it is to be that Canadian citizens are, in effect, prohibited by law from criticizing that particular locus of power, which has great influence over both domestic and foreign policy, then this polity can be described as nothing else than a dictatorship. The dictates of the leaders of a hegemonic group in Canada, if critiqued too effectively, will result in the incarceration of the critic. Books which are critical of that elite group will be burned. DVDs containing critiques of that influential clique will be trashed. These are hallmarks of dictatorship.

Thankfully Paul Fromm is committed to Canada and its foundational system, based on British values including tolerance of conflicting viewpoints, rather than the foreign eliminationist values which have been foisted upon ordinary Canadians by agents of global Zionism and their puppet politicians.