Censoring Science

Two significant censorship stories:

Here in Canada, Member of Parliament Charlie Angus has put forward a bill, C-372, that would criminalize any speech claiming the benefit of ‘fossil fuels’, punishable by $1,000,000 and two years in prison. Promotion of said fuels is defined broadly and vaguely as:

a representation about a product or service by any means, whether directly or indirectly, including any communication of information about the product or service and its price and distribution, that is likely to influence and shape attitudes, beliefs and behaviours about the product or service

We’re in uncharted waters here, when insane people run the country, and want to make the rest of us insane – or at least speak or act insanely – by force of law. Insanity may be defined as an unhinging of one’s mind from reality – the opposite of truth. In the real world, the only way to heat Canada, and get around Canada, is by ‘fossil fuels’, unless Mr. Angus has some secret plan to place small modular nuclear reactors in every village, and fit them into nuclear-power vehicles. Solar and wind, to put it mildly, just won’t cut it.

And speaking of a cool million, that is what Mark Steyn has been ordered to pay Michael Mann in his what go down in history as the defamation trial of the century. Mr. Steyn, twelve years ago – yes, the right to a speedy and quick trial is no longer a right it seems –  criticized the famous, or infamous, ‘hockey stick graph’, which started the climate-change hysteria, the one that shows global temperatures staying the same for much of history, then spiking in the year 1880. Steyn also criticized one of its primary authors, the aforementioned Mann, who took great umbrage, for he seems a prickly, sensitive sort. There are any number of problems with that graph, its own connection to reality dubious, if not deceitful.

Mann’s lawyer’s final statement summed up the agenda:

These attacks on Climate Scientists have to stop, and you now have the opportunity—

‘Attacks on Climate Scientists’ means ‘criticism of climate scientists’ which means ‘criticism of climate science’ is now more or less illegal, and you will be seven-figures in punitive damages.

To say that this verdict puts a pall on free speech is an understatement. And this before we get to the censorship of any questioning of the Covidian regime. The doughty Mark Steyn about to court again against OfCom – the censorious censoring body of British broadcasting – for raising questions about the efficacy of the mRNA ‘vaccines’, and the putative harm they have caused, which now seems beyond any reasonable doubt. But, of course, we can’t the hoi polloi thinking that, can we?

If the Galileo affair taught us anything, it’s that any scientific hypothesis, along with its author(s), must bear up to scrutiny, questioning, debate, withering and heated criticism, even words that may faintly mock and ruffle sensitive feathers. For the more sensitive those feathers, the more it signifies that one is not really confident in what one holds to be true. Their models and their theories are brittle, and break easily and cease to work when faced with reality – like electric vehicles and wind farms on a minus 40 morning in Alberta. So rather than convince others, they coerce. But science cannot proceed by such means. Its very nature implies free inquiry and constant questioning.

Both Monsieurs Angus and Mann don’t want that, and doth protest too much, methinks. The truth will win out in the end, as it always does, even if we must go through much suffering to get there. Such as these want to punish to protect their pet theories. They may have their day, but that day is drawing to a close.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/d-c-jury-awards-1m-in-damages-to-suppress-climate-denialism/

Carney’s Amoral Majority

After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→

Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress

This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→

A Tale of Two Benedicts

A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→

My Name is Bernadette

April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→

Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully

Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→

The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus

As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→

Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów

We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→

Saint Gemma Galgani

On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→

An Ideological and Improper Translation

I noticed something odd with the psalm reading at Mass the other day. Our bishops’ conference here in Canada has decreed that the Mass in English – Novus Ordo – use the ‘NRSV’, the ‘New Revised Standard Version’, an ‘updated’ translation of the original RSV, first published in 1952. This ‘new translation’ has the tendency[…]Continue reading→

Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle: A Teacher for Teachers

Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (1651 – 1719), a French nobleman, ordained a priest, founded the first order in the Church’s history entirely without priests, and this came about almost by accident. I say ‘almost’, for, of course, there are no accidents with God. Destined for ordination from an early age, Jean-Baptiste never looked back, even[…]Continue reading→