Tag: freedom of speech

The War on Thought Error at Queen’s University

Another tale of PC gone amok
Queen’s new ‘dialogue’ monitors

To the students of Queen’s University,

Our school has, in recent years, been infiltrated by subversives who would pollute this academic environment with their improper thinking, “free speech”, and conversations behind closed doors.

The rogue agents who threaten our society must be brought to justice for their crimes. We must be ever vigilant in this war of ideologies. We must smoke out thought offenders wherever they dwell, unleash a campaign of shock and awe on their reputations and commence an operation of enduring freedom against their freedom to offend.

Queen’s has a reputation as a modern liberal university. The evil-doers have perverted the liberal faith to their own ends calling their followers to fight under a banner of free-speech. Queen’s is at risk of descending into sectarian violence as the so-called freedom fighters terrorize the feelings and post-modern sensibilities of the student body. Queen’s should ‘liberated’ rather than ‘liberal’ and when the thought insurgents are defeated, students will greet us as liberators.

For the errorists that offend us and those who ought to find offense, we have left their reputations in utter ruin, made them know that they shall find no safe quarter and have questioned their freedom from imprisonment. Some have condemned this campaign as a “disproportionate response”, however, let there be no doubt, in a post-9/11 world where the self-esteem of the marginalized victims of the neo-conservative heteronommative colonial imperialists were attacked under a clear-blue sky on a Tuesday morning, we must be ever-vigilant. Either you are with us, or you are with the thought errorists.

What to do with the subversives who disrupt our order? Thought errorists with potential information as to the locations and activities of other speech insurgents will be subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Their leaders will be put into a number of stress positions which include calling for resignations in the Queen’s Journal, debasing their names online and most importantly, forcing the abandonment of their neo-liberal views followed by full reprogramming (please vote “yes” in the upcoming referendum on the proposed thought errorist re-education mandatory student fee).

Appeasers of liberal fundamentalists will readily point out that some errorists have recognized their mistakes and have apologized. However, if they (or anyone) has the ability to offend again, the emotional freedoms of we the drum-circling, pachouilli-burning, self-loathing truth-speakers are at risk. I call for all Queen’s students to rise up against the errorist threat, whether you are a victim of American hegemony, an empathetically marginalized philosophy major or if you simply harbour guilt that your father is the vice-president of TD bank and is paying your tuition. Together, we can turn Queen’s from a place where a diversity of ideas are debated to an institution where the lives of those whose thoughts do not conform to our standard are destroyed.

We stand united against thought error, indeed against those that are an affront to the collective single-mindedness of the student body. Though they have infiltrated our governments at many levels, their thought crimes are not representative of the student body. All students must stand against these abominations to the new world social order. When the Society of Graduate and Professional Students unilaterally spoke with one voice against Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, they did so bravely standing against a majority of thought errorists in the graduate student population. The SGPS did not speak for all students, but they spoke against the errorists and we salute their tough stand. We are heartened to see the counter-errorist troops in the SGPS fighting to gain a thought foothold among graduate students. Once they do, proper thinking will spread like wildfire to all students in all nations. Agents from the elite dialogue facilitation division have been deployed to correct thought among those who still harbour errorist sympathies. Room 101 of the John Deutsch University Centre has been allocated for dialogue readjustment.

It is the hour of our calling, and for those that hear it, they will stand to serve in defence of all that is just and right by our collective voice. We must stand against the evil of offense wherever it shows its face and stand ready to uproot it wherever the seeds of thought error are sown.

May the non-denominational post-deistic spirit of the Queen’s collective bless you all.

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Speaker election – interviews

In general, I’m asking the same four questions

1) 30 second to 1 minute pitch on why you should be Speaker
2) Why replace the incumbent?
3) It’s a minority Parliament and the election was framed to reinvigorate a “dysfunctional” Parliament (Prime Minister’s framing of the situation). How would you work to improve the behaviour in Parliament?
4) The Speaker delegates authority of press-related matter to the Parliamentary Press Gallery which is slow to change to recognize the evolution of new media be it blogs, youtube, facebook, twitter. Will you direct Parliament to recognize new actors in the press space?

Merv Tweed:

Barry Devolin:

Andrew Scheer:

Joe Comartin:

Royal Galipeau:
[attending other business in the riding today]

Peter Milliken:
[not doing press]

Mauril Belanger:
[his helpful staff are trying to set up a phone call for later today. UPDATE: It appears that this won’t be possible.]

Is s.329 of the Elections Act quixotic?

Section 329 of the Elections Act reads,

“No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district.”

The polls in Newfoundland and Labrador close at 8:30pm local time whereas those in BC close at 7pm. In reference to the Eastern time zone, those eastern polls close at 7pm and those polls on the west coast at 10pm. Therefore, it is technically illegal to broadcast results of any poll between 7pm and 10pm tonight though results should be available as early as 7:45pm.

In this age of new media, bloggers, facebookers and twitterers are expected to operate in the framework of an antiquated law. When this provision of the Elections Act was written, the intent of the law was to prevent television networks from broadcasting results in Newfoundland to British Columbia in order to prevent BC voters from having results before they cast their own ballots. Now that new media offers populist broadcasting to everyone with a mobile phone or a computer, how will Elections Canada enforce this provision of the Elections Act?

In my opinion, this section is a violation of free speech. Yes, I understand the reasoning behind it, yet I do believe that the law does not reflect reality in this age of self-broadcasting. Laws should be enforceable because when it is impossible to enforce a law, a law ceases to have effect. If the purpose behind the law is valid (to prevent “specially informed” voters), a more realistic method of achieving it is required. It is much more reasonable to close all polls at the same moment no matter the time zone.

What is to stop an Atlantic Canadian from updating her twitter status as to the result of her Newfoundland riding? Or the Prince Edward Islander from posting who is in the lead on his Facebook wall? Since the possible forums for national broadcast have gone from a limited three television networks to practically limitless social media outlets, this particular provision of the Elections Act is de facto unenforceable.

And who is responsible for the rebroadcasting of early results? Do I shut down Blogging Tories for three hours this evening because a blogger whose RSS feed I aggregate there may put me in violation of the Act? Is the situation similar for Google Reader and iGoogle which both act as an RSS reader? More broadly, will Google shut down its Blogger site to Canadian IP addresses? Will Twitter face sanction because a Canadian might convey information to another Canadian through its American-hosted service?

Indeed, the law does not reflect reality and must be changed. What remains to be seen is whether change will come from mass social media violation of s.329 or through the legislative process.