Posts
****
Toronto marchers back right to publish Muhammad cartoons
11/03/2006 10:03:47 PM
More than 100 demonstrators took to the streets in Toronto on Saturday to support free speech.
CBC News
They were protesting against the sometimes violent riots that targeted Denmark and its embassies after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad last year.
The strong reaction to the cartoons has highlighted the conflict between the Western ideal of freedom of speech and what some Muslims say is a blasphemous offence against a religious figure.
The Toronto demonstrators marched in front of the Danish consulate, where former TV news anchor Peter Kent said "any democracy worth its salt should be strong enough to endure the most controversial speech."
Kent represented the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, which seeks to change Canadian policy that they say "consistently fails to support sister democracies who share our values," such as India, Taiwan, the U.S. and Israel.
Daniel Dale, a York University student who helped organize the protest, said "we will not stand idly and meekly by while a democracy and ally is violently and senselessly attacked."
He does not endorse the cartoons, but backs the right to publish them, as Calgary-based Western Standard magazine did in February.
- FROM FEB. 13, 2006:
Most Western publications did not reprint the cartoons, many saying they didn't want to give unnecessary offence. However, critics have said the publications had been intimidated.
Ezra Levant, Western Standard publisher, will speak in Toronto on Tuesday to explain why the magazine reprinted the cartoons.
http://news.sympatico.msn.cbc
****
2 comments:
People need to understand that normal Torontonians are among the most reserved of people. I once read - though i have never been able to find the original source - that the famous Canadian scholar, Northrop Frye, once called southern Ontarians the most brutally inarticulate people on the face of the earth. He was probably only partly joking. So while the many leftists in Toronto have their demos because they are just like moon barking leftists anywhere, for proper conservative people in that city, the idea of attending a public demonstration is altogether foreign. So, "more than a hundred" in Toronto = many thousand sufficiently angry to demonstrate in any other city. Way to go Toronto. The tide is turning.
Waterdragon52 has shown a long-term and intelligent commitment to this cause that few I know of can rival it. We are winning. We see it in our friends.
It's been my experience that those in Toronto are every bit as brutally inarticulate as Truepeers and Northop Frye claim, which one can easily verify by reading the Toronto Star. It takes sane and normal people to give them a voice.
I've heard the voice of Northrop Frye. Were he alive today he'd be with us, blue scarf and all, quoting the perfect line for the occasion from William Blake. When I compare the voice of Frye to the screeching of the howler monkeys in the minarets I know that we are winning. I can hear it now.
I'm off in a dream. Some of you are going to take his place. We'll do better than win, we'll excel.
Post a Comment