First Burny took up book burning, now he's into historical revisionism

National Post online today has this interesting story by Kevin Libin about Internet censorship, mentioning a failed attempt by Bernie "Burny" Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress and Richard Warman, Canada's self-appointed Censor-General, to shut down Internet websites they didn't like. They had applied, ex parte -- that is, with no notice given to anyone on the other side of the argument -- to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to simply order Canadian Internet companies to ban a website that they didn't like, and to set up a process where they could do the same thing over and over again.

They wanted to bring a little bit of Communist Chinese values, of Saudi values, to Canada.

They failed -- the CRTC wouldn't allow themselves to be abused, unlike the Canadian Human Rights Commission does. But Libin reminded the world of Burny and Warman's attempt.

That's embarrassing to Burny, of course, because censorship isn't just an un-Canadian value, it's un-Jewish, too.

So Burny wrote this rebuttal on the Post's website, in which he laughably claims that all he was doing was "requesting permission from the CRTC to have a discussion with the Canadian ISPs."

That's a lie.

Burny didn't ask the CRTC for permission to start talking to anyone. You don't need a government order to pick up the phone to Ted Rogers or Jim Shaw. Here's what Burny was asking for, taken directly from Warman's application to the CRTC in August of 2006:

Directions on a second follow-up proceeding are requested where Canadian ISPs and any interested parties can provide submissions on whether the relief requested should be made final and whether or not the Commission’s approval to block the Subject Hate Sites should be mandatory.

 

Burny wasn't asking for permission for any discussions. He was asking the CRTC to ban websites he didn't like, and that, maybe, Internet companies could complain about it after the fact. And look at that last part: he was asking for the CRTC's censorship to be "mandatory".

 

Burny didn't want a discussion, and certainly not a debate. He's too intellectually lazy for debating -- that's why he's in the censorship business to begin with. So he wanted another stick to bully Internet companies with, the Canadian Human Rights Commission's 100% conviction rate apparently not brutal enough.

 

Burny lied in the National Post today. The evidence of what he truly asked the CRTC to do is right here. You can read the whole sordid story here, including seeing a copy of Burny's sworn affidavit.

 

You know, I'm starting to see a pattern here. First Burny was into Internet censorship -- the 21st century equivalent to Nazi book-burnings. Now Burny is into historical revisionism, too -- "denial". What's next for the Canadian Jewish Congress? A list of degenerate publications for libraries to round up?

 

I wonder if the troublesome National Post would be on Burny's list?