Excellent. {Mr. Burns fingers}
Ahenakew made revolting, disgusting, and untrue statements about Jewish people, but he did not intend to willfully promote hatred against them, and consequently was eventually not convicted of willful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group.
He gave a speech in which he ranted against non-aboriginals, and included many groups in the rant. The purpose of the rant was not to incite hatred against any particular group, but instead was to urge his fellow aboriginals to stop negotiating and start confronting with respect to a policy proposed by the federal government to require an aboriginal seeking medical care to sign a consent form. Ahenakew and others perceived this to be a violation of both an individual’s privacy and a barrier to a treaty right to medical care. Since he did not intend to incite hatred against Jewish people, he was not in violation of the law.
Following his speech, he was interviewed by a reporter who repeatedly asked Ahenakew about his views on Jewish people. The interview became confrontational. That’s when Ahenakew said some truly horrid things. Throughout the interview, however, it was clear that Ahenakew did not want to talk about Jewish people. Again, there was no intent to incite hatred against Jewish people, so he was not in violation of the law.
As an aside, yes, Ahenakew was a threat, although not to Jewish people in particular, and thus there is no connection between his ability to promote violence and the law concerning willful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group. He had previously been the National Chief, and still was a highly respected elder. He strongly advocated confrontation rather than negotiation, and in that 2002 speech he advocated fighting in Caledonia. There has now been a blockade, protests and intermittent violence in Caledonia for about four years, with such goings on as to lead to charges of attempted murder, and to local non-aboriginals wanting to form a militia to roust out the aboriginals. About the only thing that has come out of that confrontation that Ahenaakew urged is increased hatred between aboriginals and non-aboriginals.
I would hope that all innocent identifiable groups would be protected from people wilfully and publicly promoting hatred against them. Of course degree of protection and the mechanism of protection must be debated – read through the cases to which I referred for some excellent debates.
Could you give me the full names of Andrews, Presseault, and Elms? I’m not able to google them. I was able to research the others, and they seem pretty open-and-shut cases of people saying over the line hateful things (Jews deserved to be killed by the millions, etc.). Keegstra’s case is interesting - apparently he was promoting his hateful views as a teacher, and students who didn’t agree with his propaganda were subject to lower marks - that doesn’t sound very free to me.
I guess you could argue these cases are debatable since what I saw was conviction and overturned on appeal and re-convicted and back and forth and so on.
Andrews: http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1990/1990canlii25/1990canlii25.html
Presseault (CBC News link): http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/01/23/qc-presseault.html
Elms: http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2006/2006canlii31446/2006canlii31446.html
ETA: Cat Whisperer, there is generally only one trial at which a conviction can occur. If cases are appealed after the trial, you look to the appeal decision for the answer to the issue. If more than one appeal has occurred (as, say, when the case has gone all the way to the Supreme Court), you look to the last appeal decision.
Or you get really lucky and find that the appeal court decision is to send the matter back to the trial court, which then makes a decision that no one bothers to report, leaving you wondering WTF? :smack:
Interesting cases - thanks for the links.
It’s that close review by panels of appellate court judges that really scopes out what the law is, what the law is not, and how it is to be applied.
Here are direct links to the cases to which I referred upthread:
Keegstra: http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1990/1990canlii24/1990canlii24.html
Andrews: http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1990/1990canlii25/1990canlii25.html
Krymowski: http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2005/2005scc7/2005scc7.html
Harding: http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2001/2001canlii21272/2001canlii21272.html
Presseault (as to sentence): http://www.canlii.org/en/qc/qccq/doc/2007/2007qccq384/2007qccq384.html
Elms: http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2006/2006canlii31446/2006canlii31446.html
Ahenakew: http://www.canlii.org/en/sk/skpc/doc/2009/2009skpc10/2009skpc10.html
Warman v. Bahr: http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/chrt/doc/2006/2006chrt52/2006chrt52.html
Elmasry and Habib v. Rogers Publishing (Mclean’s/Steyn): http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bchrt/doc/2008/2008bchrt378/2008bchrt378.html
I’m not sure I’d describe the US as “Backwards” when compared to the rest of the Western world, but it certainly does raise a few eyebrows the way so many people not only believe in Creationism but are active in trying to stop the alternative from even being mentioned in school.
Also, the way comparatively minor things like the introduction of $1 coins results in massive wailing and gnashing of teeth and incredible opposition seems a bit… odd, too. In most other places that introduced $1 coins, the Government said “We’re phasing out the $1 note and replacing it with a coin. You can still buy the same stuff with it, but now you’re using a shiny gold coin instead of a coloured piece of paper” and everyone said “Alright then” and got on with their lives. But in the US? There’s a GD thread on the issue every six months and people have Very Strong Opinions on the subject.
So yeah, not necessarily “backwards” but certainly the sort of thing which doesn’t usually pass without comment outside the US.
On that note… introducing the metric system.
The only countries that have not officially adopted it are Burma, Liberia and the U.S.
I know that there is a cost to the conversion, but on top of that there are people who insist that the historical chaos of the imperial units is “better” and “more natural”, in a case where there is an objectively superior, consistent and much less error-prone system available.
And there is a cost associated with not switching, as well. Unrealized savings through international standardization, loss of space probes because of unit conversion errors, …
All the European countries had their own quaint measurement systems as well, often different ones in different areas, and it was madness.
Starving Artist, I’ve asked this question before but never got an answer to it so perhaps you can help me here. Apologies for picking on you for these answers (and apologies for the slight highjack but this kind of ties in with some of your comments above) but it seems your position gels with others who I’ve asked these questions of.
From your point of view and assuming you live in a society where everyone wants to be and works just as hard to become a high flyer;
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Who will do the jobs that are not classified as being a high flyer job? Sell you your grocerices, clean up your streets, pick your fruits and vegetables from the fields, work on the factory lines to make the items you want to buy, etc
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Assuming that no one wants to do these jobs but has to in order for society to function, how much are you going to pay these people to do these jobs?
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Assuming that you cannot pay a street cleaner the same amount as a CEO (dependant on point two above), would you be willing to provide additional bonuses in the form or healthcare, living subsidies and so on to those people who want to work just as hard as the CEO’s but cannot (assuming we agree that not everyone can be a CEO)?
I’ve heard this idea, “everyone can work hard and better what they have” before but have yet to see how it would work out if everyone (or just a large proportion) actually did what wass suggested. Surely this would be totally unworkable. How is any company going to make anything if nobody wants to be the person to make it and if they have to do this to live then how much compensation are you going to have to pay them to do this job they don’t want to do?
Aaaah, I get it now.
So, when we mangy Europeans ban* some elementary and God-granted stuff, such as blatant hate-mongering or Holocaust denial and such, it’s out of an oppressive socialist grip the government has on us freedom-less serfs crushed under the heel of a crypto-monarchist and de facto fascist State.
When you enlightened and freedom-loving aesthetes ban such 'orrible 'orrible things as tits in public, it is a sane and most reasonable regulation by a well-meaning, and even better thought out conservative government which the whole world envies.
Have I got that right ?
*well, fine really. No one’s getting clapped in irons and thrown in the Bastille. Good thing, too, since it’s not there anymore and we’d be forced to throw them onto an open plaza. It’d look ridiculous.
Just because a country has “officially adopted” the metric system doesn’t mean they actually use it in all circumstances.
Case in point: In Britain they still measure road distances in miles.
IMO this has been greatly exagerated. First of all the courts have ruled many times that Creationism cannot be taught in public schools as if it were science. See this case for a very recent example.
In fact that case is instructive, for it shows that the voters threw out of office all the school board members who had voted for the “intelligent design” curiculum in the first place.
I know a lot of people who have gone to public schools in various places around the U.S., and all of us learned about evolution in high school.
Not a single one of which is of relevance to your claim that a country that does not criminialize speech in the manner of s.319 is “backwards.”
I know. They’re a bit backwards as well in that regard.
There are other areas where imperial units are used (almost) worldwide: aviation and screen sizes for example. But that’s because the U.S. is so important there that they could dictate the standards.
Look, I think it’s fairly clear that any movement in that area will be towards the metric system, never away from it. International cooperation and commerce is on the rise, and most of the world already has a standard which really is better.
I know there are reasons for resisting change, and it’s not like I see it as a moral failing, but to me it’s the clearest example of the U.S. being backwards.
I thought that I had stated: “Of course degree of protection and the mechanism of protection must be debated – read through the cases to which I referred for some excellent debates.”
Son of a gun, I did state: “Of course degree of protection and the mechanism of protection must be debated – read through the cases to which I referred for some excellent debates.”
You are being silly again by taking that to mean that I was saying that the courts were debating whether other countries are backward.
If only the rest of the country would see the light and follow Chicago’s lead, we could drop our murder rate to their level.
You’re again avoiding the issue. The question is pretty straightforward; do you in fact think the United States is “backwards” for not having hate speech laws similar to Canada’s? If so, can you justify your reasoning for this? I’m not talking about Canada fine-tuning its laws or for you to regale us with Googled case law; I’m asking you straight out to explain why you said the United States is “backwards” for not having a law like Canada’s.
I’m happy to answer, bugt you probably won’t find the answer very satisfying.
Whenever people who feel like I do say that anyone can get ahead by working hard, we’re saying that predicated on the observation that not everyone, or even most people, are ever going to be willing to do so. The fact of the matter is that most people just want to slog through their workdays doing little more than what is expected of them or to keep their bosses happy. They’re just there to put in their eight hours or whatever until they can get off work and their real lives begin. This means that anybody willing to put out a little extra effort and/or to work extra hours is going to get noticed, and, as long as they’re also striving to do their jobs well too, they’re going to find themselves moving up the ladder much more quickly than their coworkers, and becoming more attractive to competitors as well. And the good news is, you really don’t have to work all that hard to get ahead in the first place because so few other people are willing to work hard at all.
I learned this long ago when I was working in a large auto parts warehouse. I found that I didn’t really have to work that much harder in order to stand out, simply because, like I said, so few people there were willing to work any harder than they had to to begin with. But still I busted my butt to fairly good degree and soon found myself being given better jobs and more responsibility, and then better (and more difficult) jobs and even more responsibility, and then when the company I worked for built a new warehouse in another part of the state, they promoted me to assistant manager of the new warehouse, and six months later I was running the place, with responsibility over seven departments and more than fifty employees. I was twenty-seven years old and had been working for that company only five years at that time, and there were people still at the original warehouse, logging their eight hours and pulling parts off the shelf and filling orders for little more than minimum wage just like they were doing when I first went to work there.
Then before long I was promoted to the job of traveling sales rep calling on accounts in the part of the state served by that warehouse. It paid a nice salary, bonuses, and traveling expenses more than enough to cover the cost of a new car, insurance and the gas it took to do the traveling. It also paid a certain amount in expense money every day that I stayed in town, and double that amount if I was out overnight.
And during both my warehouse time and traveling rep time I was being offered other jobs on a regular basis, including my own parts store.
I’m no longer in the auto parts business and haven’t been for a long time, but my experiences there will, I think, give you a pretty good idea what a person can accomplish even starting out in what most people would regard as a funky, deadend job.
There are also ways people who are willing to work hard can make money on their own. Mowing lawns pays $30 to $35 per job for lawns that generally take only an hour to mow. A person can make $900 a month from seven weekly accounts just by mowing one lawn a day that takes only an hour more of their time. And of course, if you’re mowing eight lawns a day at $30 a pop, you’ll be making $240 a day, with even greater amounts possible if you’re willing to hire and manage employees. For example, what if you and three other guys could be knocking out four lawns an hour? At a minimum of $30 each, you’ll be generating $120 and hour in revenue, and even at a total cost of $10 per hour for each employee (including Soc. Sec. withhold and insurance), you’ll still be clearing $90 an hour, minus a relatively small amount for gas and upkeep on your equipment. There are guys in that business who make enough during grass growing season to live on all year around. There are even a couple of guys in south Texas who use legal Mexican employees who have to stay on the job in order to stay in the counry, and their enterprise mows over 2,000 lawns a week! Imagine the dough they’re raking in.
And lawn mowing is just one example. Power washing, landscaping, cleaning out rain guttering, cleaning windows or cleaning houses, hauling unwanted items and junk to the dump, etc., are all ways to make money that pay around $30 an hour, but you do have to be willing to work to make them pay off.
Now, back to your question about what if everyone was like that. Clearly if everyone was equal in every regard in terms of capability, intelligence and the effort they put into their work, I would fully and wholeheartedly support a 100% socialistic model, where everyone shares equally in terms of pay and benefits. Clearly that will never happen though. There will always be people who are willing to work harder or who are just innately smarter or more talented, and these people will always do better than the rest, and there will always be people who just don’t want to put in the effort or who don’t have the intelligence and talent to rise about the herd, and they’ll stay pretty much where they are, and that’s the way it should be. Why should there be equality of outcome when there isn’t equality of input? Still though, it’s possible for most people, without regard to exceptional intelligence or skill, to rise above poverty and attain at least a nice middle-class lifestyle simply by applying themselves mentally and physically to doing the best job they can and always keeping an eye out for opportunity.
As I already said:
To the degree that the USA does not do this, it is backwards.