PEN Canada envisions a world where
writers are free to write,
readers are free to read,
and freedom of expression prevails
Why should Canadians care about imprisoned Syrian blogger and poet Tal Al-Mallouhi? For the same reason we should care very much about Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on all Syrian citizens: because our relations with the Al-Assad regime helped foster the culture of impunity that is fueling today’s carnage.
But, in practice, within the public as a whole, there could be winners and losers and, ethically, that must be taken into account. What is ethical will depend on all the facts: Good facts (which can be difficult to ascertain) are essential for good ethics.
Argument based on speculation, even “very likely” speculation, is like heading down a rabbit hole.
China’s Peoples Daily Online recently declared that “the Beijing Olympic Games were widely regarded as the best ever.” China was both affirmed and emboldened by it triumphalist Games and subsequent economic ascension. It has no fear of disapproval from the international community.
Indeed it is appalling when a democratic government that pays lip service to accountability, openness and transparency creates convoluted internal policies to impede the free flow of information, uses an omnibus bill to hollow out environmental protections, and habitually dismisses scientific evidence that doesn’t fit the political plan. This should raise red flags for journalists and the watchful public. We should all pay attention.
Parody and satire may be the only thing that everybody agreed on in the protracted and generally acrimonious debates about updating copyright law. The idea was to expand ‘fair dealing’ – the ways we’re free to use other people’s work in our own – to include uses for the purpose of parody and satire.
On June 6, 2012 the House of Commons adopted Bill C-304 a private member’s bill introduced by Alberta Conservative MP Brian Storseth, to “amend the Canadian Human Rights Act by deleting section 13 to ensure there is no infringement on freedom of expression…”
I discovered the hard way that one of the most valuable freedoms is freedom of expression. In a way, all other freedoms depend on it. If we cannot speak out, we can be stripped of every right, and left unable to do much about it. We can drown in silence.
But both governments were reacting to a threat that was not a real threat at all; both were apparently driven by a deadening bureaucratic impulse in which orderliness and civic tidiness trumps free expression; both overreached.
Is the government obliged to subsidize, via charitable tax receipting, groups that oppose its opinions and policies?
Finding the Words: Writers on Inspiration, Desire, War, Celebrity, Exile, and Breaking the Rules