Liveblogging the Maclean’s Trial III: Die Another Day

Macleans.ca ^ | June 4th, 2008 | Andrew Coyne

[bamahead]

Day three dawns, and the crowds have thinned. Maybe a dozen spectators today, none of the protestors (pro-Steyn!) of the first day. Media is down to me and Brian Hutchinson of the National Post, whose fine piece on yesterday’s proceedings is definitely worth a read. (Where’s the Globe? Their office is across the street. Couldn’t they spare even one reporter?) Ian Mulgrew also offers a trenchant article in the Vancouver Sun.

Further assigned reading, on the whole damn mess: Convenant Zone.

First witness today is Faiza Hirji, an expert in “analyzing stereotypes in the media with regard to minorities,” with a speciality in Muslim minorities. She’s a prof in communications at Carleton School of Journalism. Also heavily into gender and “discourses.” Masters thesis on “representations” of Afghan women during the 2001 war. Doctoral work on media “constructions” of religion and nationalism in Bollywood films. Currently writing an encyclopedia entry on media and the Muslim world. She talks very quickly.

10:00 AM Maclean’s counsel Roger McConchie is working through her c.v., perhaps in an attempt to poke holes in her credibility. Personally, I think she’d make a fine human rights commissioner.

Her dissertation, he’s pointing out, was in Indian cinema and identity construction, and not, say, stereotyping of Muslims in Canadian national weekly current events magazines. Now going through her publications in refereed journals (sample title: When Local Meets Lucre: Commerce, Culture and Imperialism in Bollywood Cinema.) Other articles deconstruct Queen Latifah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and still more Bollywood.

[bamahead]

Yesterday's thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2025384/posts

And...

http://www.freemarksteyn.com/

[marron]

She’s de-constructed Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so she’s qualified to pass judgement on you and me.

[Billthedrill]

BTT for a slow train wreck. I guess if you set up a kangaroo court you shouldn’t be surprised if kangaroos show up.

[VanShuyten]

Although Macleans wishes to lose so they can take this to a real court, they don't seem to be succeeding at that. The "sock puppets" just keep exposing themselves to such ridicule that even the tribunal would be embarassed to side with them.

Everyone on FR should be following this, especially those who are going to sit out this election instead of voting against Obama.

[bamahead]

That’s just it. I don’t think it matters that the ‘expert testimony’ is a complete joke (a joke that would be quite comical if it weren’t actually happening in a real free speech trial.)

I think they’ve already basically decided on a guilty verdict against Macleans. This is a 100% show trial.

[Pontiac]

The "sock puppets" just keep exposing themselves to such ridicule that even the tribunal would be embarassed to side with them.

From my observations of Canadian Courts I doubt that there is anything too ridiculous for them to grasp on to if it furthers their idea of an ideal society.

These tribunals are all about social engineering; creating a perfect society by their twisted ideals.

[bamahead]

10:55 AM They’re back, and they’ve decided they’re going to hear her evidence. Buffy scholars everywhere breathe a sigh of relief.

She’s read many studies of racism in the media, although “Islamophobia” is a term she prefers not to use. Talking about stereotypes of Muslims as being associated with terrorism and the like. She does not believe the media are deliberately racist, but that journalists lack training in cultural sensitivity. On pressure of deadline, they rely on “shorthand,” stereotypes that are easily recognized by the readers. Not widespread, she says, but it happens often enough.

[Liberty Valance]

bump and ping

[pierrem15]

The most ironic thing is that this woman from a totally different culture has been 100% brainwashed by the Western left.

She's a cast-iron jockey figure carrying Derrida instead of a lantern.

[bvw]

2:41 PM [PST] Porter is now quoting Ayoub from a story in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, in which he’s quoted as speculating that the planes on Sept. 11 might have been flown by evangelical Christians. He denies saying it. What he said, he said, is that there are evangelicals who want to hasten the day of Armaggedon and the Rapture.

“I am (also) an American, and I love America, and I would never do anything to harm either of these two countries. I don’t live in Quebec because their taxes are too high.”

Ayoub is against hate speech, eh? Sort of hard to avoid, when discussing the well-known and public actions of any group, or members of that group, acting as group members!

Why? Because -- to paraphrase Mr. Lincoln -- a few groups will be bad all of the time, and some groups will be bad some of the time, but no group will ever be good all of the time.

And in being a group, there comes a duty. A social duty WITHIN that group to uphold social standards and to check, to rebuke and to correct any bad actions of its members when they are acting as members by self-claim, or by actual agency.

THAT is where Islam has failed horribly and nigh wholly to date. Where is the Islamic outcry and vigorous Islamic policing of the violent and the hateful within its own ranks?!!!