Professor behind Ontario's pro-gay sex education curriculum to plead guilty to child porn charges

Sometimes poor Walt just can't get a day off. I should know better than to see what's giving on the mojo wire, but it's good I did so today, otherwise I might have missed an item about University of Toronto Professor Benjamin Levin, the self-satisfied pervert pictured here.

I'd almost forgotten about Prof. Levin. He was last mentioned in this space eighteen months ago, after being charged with accessing child pornography, possessing child pornography, making child pornography, distributing child pornography, counselling to commit an indictable offence and agreeing to or arranging for a sexual offence against a child under 16. That's seven (count `em, 7) charges in all.

It wouldn't have been a big deal -- there are lots of paedophiles and kiddie porn lovers out there -- except for the fact that Prof. Levin once held the post of Deputy Minister of Education minister in Ontario's Liberal government, and was one of the chief architects of Ontario's proposed "modernized and improved" (read: pro-LGBT) sex education curriculum. See "Are perverts pushing Ontario's sex education curriculum? Could be!"

Following cries of outrage from old-fashioned (read: straight) parents, the new curriculum was quietly withdrawn "for further study", even before Prof. Levin embarrassed proud lesbian Kathleen Wynne, then the Minister of Education and latterly Premier of Ontario, by getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar... so to speak.

Prof. Levin denied the charges and was freed on bail, to be further dealt with according to the law at some time in the future... as far as possible into the future. He was relieved of his duties at the aptly-named Queen's Park, and dropped out of sight.

Fast forward to last November. Prof. Levin, still free on bail, has every reason to look pleased with himself when, following the surprising re-election of her very liberal government, Premier Wynne announces that the not-so-new sex education curriculum will be reintroduced. See "Pro-LGBT sex ed coming back to Ontario schools".

Vindication at last for Prof. Levin and the forces of progress, tolerance and so on. Unfortunately, his friends at the Pink Palace were unable to arrange for the charges against him to be dropped, and a trial date was set for March.

What to do? Today -- while Ontarians slumber through a wintry weekend -- Prof. Levin's lawyer announced (quietly) that his client plans to plead guilty to some of the child pornography-related charges against him, while others will be withdrawn. Which charges are which was not specified.

It is passing strange, Agent 3 tells me, for a guilty plea to be announced two months before the court date. And, he adds, it's also unusual for defence counsel to announce the withdrawal of charges. That would normally be for the Crown to do.

But Prof. Levin is not a normal person -- take that any way you like -- and the possibility of further embarrassment to Premier Wynne and the gay cause obviously cannot be countenanced. That's how things are in Canada's most progressive province.

Zimbabwe bans canning of children

Ed. here. This has been a pretty intense week, with all the furor and debate about freedom of speech and Islamic extremism. Walt is taking the weekend off to smell the roses, but, rather than end the week on a sour note, I'd like to offer you this little item, which appeared today on the landing page of Zimbabwe NewsDay.

Those not familiar with Zimbabwe's education system should understand that it's based on the British public school model, inherited from the bad old colonial days (now looking pretty good in retrospect), which included caning, shown in the cartoon. "Canning" suggests technological innovation in cannibalism, which presumably is still illegal in Zimbabwe. Geddit now?

The error, which tells you all you need to know about the quality of education in Zimbabwe, is repeated in the story. Click here to read the whole thing.

Islamic world disorder

Still more on what's wrong with the Muslims and their religion. Before you accuse Walt of being a racist [Surely not! Ed.], consider the argument that there must be something wrong with a people and a part of the world which is not progressing -- no matter how you measure "progress" -- as quickly as any other part of the world, not even sub-Saharan Africa.

The part of the world to which I refer is the Middle East and north Africa. At least three countries in those regions are actually regressing: Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Two others -- Somalia and Libya -- are "failed states". Somalia has been acknowledged as such for twenty years, and Libya was accorded that "status", more or less, in last week's issue of The Economist.

The people of those regions are followers of the Prophet Mohammed -- Muslims. So are their rulers, some fanatically so. (Hello, Saudis!) Is there, then, some link between their religion and the political, economic and social turmoil -- not forgetting civil and sectarian wars -- now raging in that area?

Thanks to Agent 3 for the link to "How the Muslim world is being left behind", in the current Maclean's. Read the article and judge for yourself. [Unless you're Pope Francis, of course. Ed.]

Scott Gilmore explains the meaning of the charts you see here, and concludes that the Islamic world is in decline. Where he goes wrong is in thinking that if we just reach out and embrace the Muslims, we can pull them up to our level. What do you think of that, gentle reader? Walt think Mr. Gilmore is wrong...WRONG!

Pope Francis needs to be reminded that Islam is a false religion

More fallout from the Charlie Hebdo atrocity and the reactions of Western politicians, "Christian" religious leaders and the lamestream media. Provoked by "Must free speech include the freedom to offend?", posted here yesterday, seldom-heard-from Agent 12 (welcome back!) sent us a link to "Pope Francis, blasphemy, Charlie Hebdo, and the punch".

The article, from a blog for Dallas-area Catholics -- real Catholics -- argues that there can be no real understanding of the whole controversy until there is an acknowledgement that Islam is a false religion -- one that is to be tolerated, to be sure, but false all the same.

With the last few popes -- JPII, Benedict XVI and Francis -- visiting and even praying in mosques, and generally pushing the enormous lie that is false ecumenism, we shouldn't expect any such statement from anyone except the remnant of traditional Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants.

The blogger writes: The Church used to know these truths: you cannot blaspheme against the Church and the Lord, because both are true. The second is, error has no rights. Thus, both Charlie Hebdo and the Islamic maniacs who attacked them are both violently wrong and to be repudiated.

I, for one, have been sickened by this outpouring of support for a magazine few had heard of and few cared about. Our modern culture likes to pretend that freedom of speech is a sacred right, but when the knife comes to the throat, vague notions about liberty are not enough to sustain a person in resistance.

Liberals will inevitably fall before religious conviction, and that is why the West is in collapse: the West has rejected the religion that built her. Dark ages seem to loom ahead.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Walt's post "West reacts to Islamist killing of Westerners... ONLY Westerners" seems to have attracted the attention of the CBC's Rex Murphy. [Either that or great minds think alike. Ed.] Like Walt, Mr. Murphy has difficulty understanding why the killing of a dozen cartoonists and four Jews has caused such furious breast-beating and rending of garments, yet the massacre of thousands of Nigerian Muslims by Islamic fanatics has resulted in... crickets... Check out "Why isn't the world rallying against Boko Haram?", as aired on CBC's The National last night.

Must free speech include the freedom to offend?

Walt has been silent for the last couple of days, pondering the ramifications of last week's atrocities in France and the implications for freedom of speech. My musings were concretized [Eh? Ed.] earlier today by an e-mail from one of our assiduous readers, who writes:

I initially felt that satirizing Mohammed was part of free speech. But then I thought how I was irritated years ago at some art exhibit that showed a crucifix sitting in urine or something like that. I felt it was tacky, unnecessary and insulting to Christianity, even to me an agnostic.

Now I am thinking, why are they going out of their way to insult Islam? What can be gained except alienating millions of fanatics who are just looking for an excuse to explode. Your thoughts please....

Walt had the same thoughts on seeing Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ". My initial reaction was that the "artist" should have been shot (or perhaps crucified), or at the very least prosecuted under anti-blasphemy laws. There are such things in several US states, in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, and also in the Criminal Code of Canada, but, needless to say [Why say it, then? Ed.], no-one ever gets prosecuted nowadays.

The prevailing orthodoxy is that any organized religion is fair game... unless of course it's Islam! I disagree. So, it seems, does our reader. And we are in good company. Today the Pope himself put aside his who-am-I-to-judge and we-must-be-tolerant lines. Freedom of speech, he said en route to the Philippines is all well and good, but religions must be treated with respect, so that people's faiths were not insulted or ridiculed.

Walt is reminded of the old saw about freedom of speech not extending to the right to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theatre -- words which have become a popular metaphor for the dangers of complete freedom of speech. Those words were written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Schenk v. United States, 1919 U.S. LEXIS 2223.

What has been lost, over the years, is the understanding that the result in that case was the affirmation, by the Supreme Court of the United States, of the conviction of Charles Schenk under a statue which, the appellant argued, was in violation of the First Amendment.

Justice Holmes' view, which he never changed, was that expressions of honest opinion were entitled to near absolute protection, but that expressions made with the specific intent to cause a criminal harm, or that threatened a clear and present danger of such harm, could be punished.

I think a good case can be made that the publication of cartoons intended to be offensive to members of a religion not known for its tolerance of disrespect to its prophet gives rise to the near certainty of violent retribution. That's exactly what happened in Paris.

Should I then rethink my criticism of the lamestream press for not showing the cartoons that brought down the wrath of the Muslim fanatics? Their excuse was that they didn't wish to further offend the Muslims. I'd buy that, except for a nagging feeling that if it had been Christians or Jews who had been offended, the response would have been quite different.

Further reading: "MSNBC's Maddow Shows ‘Piss Christ’ But Not Latest ‘Charlie Hebdo’", by Eric Scheiner on cnsnews.com.

Thinking about Charlie Hebdo: Kurt Vonnegut's views on freedom of speech and the role of the artist in society

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was an American writer -- one of Walt's favourite novelists. His works, such as Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973), blended satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. In spite of, or perhaps because of, his stint in the United States Army during World War II, he was until his death a committed pacifist. He was also a supporter of the ACLU and a crusader for not only freedom of speech but freedom of thought.

Kurt Vonnegut was born on 11 November 1922, eight years exactly after the Armistice that ended World War I. He dies on 11 April 2007, having lived through the Vietnam War and the first years of the Oil Wars or Gulf Wars or Wars Against Terrorism -- whatever you want to call them. I don't know if, prior to his death, he had ever read or even heard of Charlie Hebdo, but I imagine he would have applauded their lampooning of organized religion and secular sacred cows.

Back in 1973, Mr. Vonnegut was interviewed by Frank McLaughlin, for Media & Methods and by David Standish in Playboy, the magazine that men of my generation pretended to read. Perhaps we should have paid more attention when thinkers such as he cast pearls before us such as these comments about the role of artists -- writers, cartoonists and the like -- in our society.

From the Media & Methods interview:

I agree with Hitler and Stalin about a lot of things. Basic agreement with them and with...almost every dictator is that an artist should serve his society, and I would not be interested in writing if I didn't feel that what I wrote was an act of good citizenship or an attempt, at any rate, to be a good citizen.

What brought my ancestors over here from Germany was not oppression over there, but simply the attractiveness of the United States Constitution.... I was raised to be bughouse about the Constitution, and to be very excited about the United States of America as a Utopia. It still seems utterly workable to me, and I keep thinking of ways to fix it, to see what the hell went wrong, to see if we can get the thing to really run right.

[Now] I am heartbroken and confused.... I finally understand that I am not protected by the U.S. Constitution. I have never been protected by it, and it's only a piece of paper that we in America have always been dependent upon. The goodwill of those who govern us...that's all that has ever protected us....

We have entered a period now when our government doesn't really seem to like us much. I find this oppressive, and realize that the Constitution can't help much, can't help at all, really, if our leaders come to dislike us -- which they apparently do.

From the Playboy interview:

I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how a writer should serve. Mainly, I think they should be...agents of change. For the better, we hope....
We [writers] are expressions of the entire society.... And when a society is in great danger, we're likely to sound the alarms.

I have the canary-bird-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. You know coal miners used to take birds down into the mines with them to detect gas before the men got sick. The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam. They chirped and keeled over. But it made no difference whatsoever. Nobody important cared. But I continue to think that artists -- all artists -- should be treasured as alarm systems.

Walt suggests that, now that a dozen canaries have been killed by fanatics of a "deviant form of religion" (to use the Pope's words), perhaps the "leaders" of the Western world will hear the alarm and take some action beyond mouthing platitudes about peaceful coexistence and the brotherhood of man. Or perhaps not....

Source for these quotes: Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, edited by  William Rodney Allen (University Press of Mississippi, 1988).

West reacts to Islamist killing of Westerners... ONLY Westerners

It took the "public" beheading of a couple of Americans and a Brit to get the Excited States of America and its camp followers (hello, Australia, Britain and Canada... and France!) into the latest phase of the Oil Wars. As long as ISIS -- an extremist band of Sunni Muslims -- was beating up Shia Muslims, Kurds, and other denizens of the sandpit, who cared? Nobody! That's who!

Last week, Islamic terrorists -- which is what they were, no matter what the Prez says -- killed, ummm, 17 French people (including 4 Jews), and the world went nuts. As discussed here at length [great length! Ed.], suddenly we we're all Charlie. Some of us even proclaimed "We are all Jews"!

Sure, the killings in France were tragic, outrageous attacks on free speech and Western values, worthy of condemnation and outpourings of grief and determination to resist. But... did anyone notice that in the same week, Boko Haram killes literally 1000s of people -- all African, mostly Muslim -- in Nigeria? "See Meanwhile, in Nigeria, militant Islamists wipe out town of 10,000">

Today comes news that there were three -- count `em, three -- suicide bombings in the same part of Nigeria. 23 people were killed and dozens injured when three female suicide bombers -- one only 10 years old -- blew themselves up [or were blown up by remote control] in crowded markets. 23 dead, added to the 2000 or so killed in Baga. Are people in Paris, Washington, London or Toronto taking to streets with signs reading "We are all African Muslims!" Errr, no.

Most Rev. Ignatius Kaigama, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Jos, accuses the West of ignoring the atrocities perpetrated by Boko Haram. Speaking on BBC-TV's Newsday, he said the world had to show more determination to halt the militant Islamists' advance in Nigeria. Why, he asked, doesn't the international community show the same spirit and resolve that it did after the attacks in France? Walt will supply the answer. It's because the victims aren't Westerners, so who cares...

Archbishop Kaigama said facing down Boko Haram requires international support and unity of the type that had been shown after last week's militant attacks in France. "We need that spirit to be spread around," he said. "Not just when [an attack] happens in Europe, but when it happens in Nigeria, in Niger, in Cameroon. We [must] mobilize our international resources and face or confront the people who bring such sadness to many families."

Good luck with that. And I'm not talking about Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan [real name. Ed.] who is among those who doesn't seem to care. He has yet to comment on this week's violence, and BBC correspondent Will Ross says Nigeria's politicians appear more focused on next month's elections. Not like Western politicians, eh!