Q&E With Stephen Coughlin from the Ottawa Brief.

Posted on by

Sometimes the Question and answer session can be more interesting than the presentation. Especially if you edit out the people who try and give their own lectures. In this case it is at least a tie. Below the Q&E I embedded the video Maj. Coughlin refers to in one of his answers which took place in Warsaw in May of 2015

The OSCE event

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

2 Replies to “Q&E With Stephen Coughlin from the Ottawa Brief.”

  2. Whenever I am present at a discussion involving people who are not speaking in their mother tongue, I wonder how much is lost in communication. That is one thing that came to mind in watching the OCSE video.

    Even more, however, is the speed in which the panel concluded that speaking the truth could constitute hate speech or at least would have to be carefully brandished in order to avoid singling out groups. Steve Coughlin’s intervention at that point was timely and as spot on as a rhetorical JDAM. First he cut through the ambiguity of the “What is ‘Truth'” argument offered by the British panelist by fastening on to the concept of facts. He brilliantly turned the discussion towards the a rebuttal of the Russian panelist`s suggestion that the Islamic State should not be referred to as the “Islamic State” in what remains of the free press.

    For all of Coughlin’s success in turning these arguments back upon their perpetrators, the fact that there are so many perpetrators, that not one of the panelists spontaneously expressed anything like Coughlin’s insights, leads me to despair.

    Indeed, in the Q&A of Coughlin’s Ottawa talk (How I wish I was there!), Coughlin expressed his own dismay when he was still working at the Pentagon, when he and his coworkers were completely bemused by the decisions being taken at the political level. The problem is systemic and very likely organized. The question, as always, is “Cui bono?” Stefan Molyneux offered an interesting answer on a recent posting on his YouTube site (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHnuIlzgGZ4). However, as plausible as his explanation is, I think that there may yet be some details missing.

    We live in interesting times, all right!