April 2008 Archives
I wonder if it will work: Mohamed Elmasry and his Canadian Islamic Congress are trying to become the Canadian version of Al Sharpton, the U.S. shake-down artist and race hustler.
Sharpton, and his competitor, Jesse Jackson, trump up grievances or outright manufacture stories to stoke racial anger, and then set themselves up as the mediators of those same grievances -- often with a hefty financial payment to them as part of the solution.
When Elmasry, the Jew-hating president-for-life of the CIC, first complained about Maclean's magazine's book excerpt from Mark Steyn's America Alone, a tidy cash payment was part of their proposed solution.
Of course, Elmasry lacks Sharpton's media savvy, so in his Maclean's shake-down effort, he sent out three Muslim students and a Gentile to do his bidding (the Gentile has since left the team). It made sense: even Elmasry knows that it's a bit hard to square his own "human rights" complaint with his public statements justifying the murder of Jews.
(It will be interesting to see if media coverage of Elmasry's sock-puppets press conference today note that they are not, in fact, the complainants against Maclean's -- Elmasry the Jew-hater is.)
But that's what we've got here: an ethnic shake-down racket. In the U.S., racial grievances are trumped up and then "solved" when the natural currents of political correctness -- usually in the form of companies' aversion to calls for boycotts -- outweigh the shakedown victim's sense of outrage at being conned. There are no human rights commissions enforcing the media and corporate surrender in the U.S.; it's all about risk management and image management by those companies. That's why Sharpton and Jackson cultivate their media celebrity status: it's their sole leverage to get the cash.
Canada doesn't have the same heritage of racial division that the U.S. does, for obvious reasons, and so we lack much of the deeply ingrained liberal guilt -- the same sort of guilt that has rocketed a clearly unready Barack Obama to the lead of the Democratic Party. And most Muslims have only arrived in Canada in the past twenty years -- Canadians really haven't had a chance to become politically deferential to their claims of being victims, and the tepid reaction of most of Canada's Muslim leaders to 9/11 didn't help their claim to victimology, either. But we've been good at mimicking U.S. racial politics, by osmosis.
It will be interesting if Elmasry can pull off a Sharpton -- he'll be one rich anti-Semite if he can.
Elmasry's gambit has failed as a PR effort alone. To be sure, his sock puppets have received an enormous amount of ink and airtime -- which, in itself, proves false their points about being "marginalized" in the media. Nonetheless, despite having had acres of newsprint to argue their points of view, it's clear that not only are they failing to convince people, they're actually stoking up Canada's free speech instincts, and anger towards the CIC. As usual, Peggy Wente's column back in December said it best:
...For grievance-mongers such as these, no insult is too small to whip up into a hate crime. This week's example is supplied by the Canadian Islamic Congress, a grandly named lobby group that, for all I know, consists of six people and a website...
Curiously, the four complainants in the case are all law students or graduates from York University's Osgoode Hall. You might think that law students, of all people, would be very big on stuff like civil liberties, tolerance and free speech. I guess not.
"There is a fine line between freedom of expression and promoting hatred," said Muneeza Sheikh, one of the complainants. "Our feeling was that the article definitely did promote hatred."
Darn those feelings. They can make you feel so bad. If feelings were facts, no one in Canada would be allowed to state a controversial opinion.
...The CIC has lots to say about Islamophobia in Canada, but not a word to say about rape victims being flogged in Saudi Arabia or teddy bear demonstrations in Sudan. Plenty of Muslims wish it would just shut up, and for good reason. If the CIC wants to know who's fuelling prejudice against Muslims, maybe it should look in the mirror.
Wente's view has been nearly universal amongst Canada's commentariat: the CIC is trying to import Saudi or Egyptian values to Canada, and no matter how they try to dress it up, it's still illiberal censorship. I know from speaking with several journalists who have interviewed Elmasry's sock puppets that they are demoralized and truly surprised by the negative reaction they've received.
So the media pressure that Sharpon and Jackson rely on in the U.S. just hasn't materialized. And -- thankfully -- most Canadian Muslims simply ignore the bigoted buffoonery of the CIC, so a mass boycott of Maclean's or other Rogers affiliates just won't happen.
Thus today's gambit by the CIC: use the threat of HRCs as leverage for a shakedown against Rogers. As Debbie Gyapong points out, the CIC has also used the threat of criminal charges as leverage, too. You'd think the three sock-puppets, each being law school grads, would know that trying to pressure someone into doing something by threatening to file charges against them is a crime in itself, called extortion (a threat to file a civil suit is specifically exempted, but not a criminal complaint.)
I wonder what Maclean's will do. They've been immune to public pressure from Elmasry. If anything, the battle in the court of public opinion is going overwhelmingly in their favour. The only leverage Elmasry has is the near-certainty of a conviction by the HRCs.
Will Maclean's blink? Will they pay off Canada's Al Sharpton wannabe -- the Jew-hater Mohamed Elmasry and his PR front of law students?
I don't know Ted Rogers but I know Ken Whyte. I think he'll say the same thing he said when Elmasry's agents came to shake them down the first time: he'd rather go bankrupt than to be a party to their extortion.
Commenter "Kriilin" points me to this website, that has a YouTube clip of me on last week's CTV pundit's panel. I like partisans, and Don Boudria is as loyal a Liberal as they come, but every once in a while there is a news item that just can't be jammed into a "blame the other party" message. The strange case of Brenda Martin is clearly one of them.
Here's the clip.
I was on Mike Duffy's partisan panel again today. I don't think I was particularly strong, but it was still fun to hold up the Conservative end of the argument. I was on the show last week and it was a lot spicier -- I'm going to try to find that clip and post it, too. In the meantime, here's today's.
I've been talking with friends in the PMO for months, and they are genuinely surprised that Stephane Dion hasn't pulled the plug on the government yet. Well, surprised probably isn't the word for it -- Dion's indecision no longer surprises them. A more accurate way of phrasing it would be that the Conservatives were fully engrossed in planning an election -- first for April, then for June. I've joked before that if the government hadn't passed a law setting a fixed election date, Stephen Harper's minority government would last forever.
And, in a way, why should Dion bring down the government? Because Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae want him to do so?
On what issue would he run? Afghanistan has been neutralized as a campaign issue; the Liberals have consented to Conservative criminal justice reforms; with economic worries growing, costly Kyoto proposals are less resonant than ever with the public. So what would it be? One of the inside-the-beltway mini-scandals of the week -- from Karlheinz Schrieber to Cadscam to Elections Canada -- each of which falls apart under scrutiny, and none of which has animated anyone off of Parliament Hill?
And then there's the buzz around Ottawa that more criminal charges are set to follow those filed against Benoit Corbeil, the head of the Liberal Party's Quebec wing. I understand that a number of quite senior Liberals have been "invited" to meet with the RCMP in the past week; I wonder if Corbeil has cut some sort of deal. Triggering an election -- only to have charges announced against another half-dozen Liberal bosses in the midst of a campaign -- is not a risk that Dion wants to take, nor should Ignatieff or Rae for that matter.
No, I think being the aimless captain of a drifting ship with a slow-burning mutiny is a preferable scenario for Dion than going to the polls. Let's watch Rick Mercer's beautiful song and dance on the subject one more time.
Ed Driscoll links to my post about human rights commissions trampling on the property rights of a gay bar. Today the complainant is a straight woman who wanted to stop in for a drink. But who might the complainants be taking on gay bars in a few years time?
Driscoll has a premonition, from England:
Two primary schools have withdrawn storybooks about same-sex relationships after objections from Muslim parents.
Up to 90 gathered at the schools to complain about the books which are aimed at pupils as young as five.
Driscoll's right. For if there is a new "human right" not to be offended -- a brave new trail blazed often in the name of gay rights -- can't that phony "right" be used against gays?
The only reason I emphasize this is because some people still have trouble condemning the counterfeit "right not to be offended" when it's in the abstract, or especially when the offensive party is a neo-Nazi or other bigot. But they're missing the whole point: the precedent is being set. Even if they don't believe in free speech or property rights for their opponents, liberals should protect the concepts for themselves.
The thing about human rights commissions, the thing that worries me so much about them, is that when you create a government organism that can violate real rights -- like property rights, and the sanctity of contract, and freedom of association -- everyone is at risk. We see that with free speech: neo-Nazis are the official reason why Canada has thought crime laws, such as section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. But once you accept the fact that some thoughts are illegal, well then everyone's at risk. That's the folly of the Canadian Jewish Congress: they think they'll always be riding the back of the tiger, not being mauled by it.
Pete Vere sends me this interesting case study of the wild animal biting madly. A Montreal gay bar, Bar Le Stud, told a woman named Audrey Vachon that she wasn't allowed in -- it was a men-only establishment, and had been happily operating that way for eleven years. Then the human rights commissions got involved, and Bar Le Stud has copped a plea bargain. We don't know the details of how much money Vachon got paid or -- and you know this was part of the deal, it usually is -- the kind of "sensitivity training" that Bar Le Stud's staff have to undergo.
A gay bar -- like a straight bar, like a Christian church -- has age-old rights that long pre-date our fads of "human rights". Bar Le Stud has property rights, which include the right to exclude people. They have freedom of association. They have contractual rights. Strangers have no "right not to be offended" by them. They have no "right" to come onto their property, to change the purpose of Bar Le Stud, and to interfere with its peaceful practices. But now they do.
Misguided gay rights activists -- like Darren Lund, and even Richard Warman -- have used the bludgeon of human rights commissions to batter down the real rights of others. But they have laid down precedents that, in this case at least, are being used against gays.
It doesn't happen often, because conservatives, and straights, and Christians, aren't as active as their opponents in the grievance culture that Canada's HRCs foment. And, of course, even if they were, the grievance-activist bias of HRC staff would probably dismiss those complaints.
But that can only last so long. As Mark Steyn pointed out in his last Maclean's column, Adolf Hitler didn't invent Germany's censorship laws, nor did he write the emergency powers provisions that the Nazis abused. They were all written by the liberal Weimar Republic.
Leftist and ethnic-identity activists have loved the HRCs because they have usually picked on those groups' enemies. But the dangerous precedents have been set, and everyone's rights are at risk, as Bar Le Stud has found out.
ADDENDA: I know what real "gay rights" are. They're the same as real "Jewish rights". The right to private property. The right to self-defence. The right to free speech, sanctity of contract. The right to be free of violence, etc. Those were the rights that were stripped away from Jews by the Nazis; those were the reasons the Jews were killed -- not because of words, but because of deeds. Gay rights means property rights of a gay bar. But human rights commissions don't care about such real gay rights, any more than they would for anyone else. They're about feelings, and because Bar Le Stud hurt someone's feelings, real gay rights were trumped.
Question: if Bar Let Stud can't keep out Audrey Vachon because she's a woman, can they keep out an anti-gay protester? Can they keep out a skinhead?
Mark Steyn comments on Giacomo Vigna's libel notice against me. Steyn makes some good arguments, but my favourite part is a song Steyn wrote for Vigna. Here it is:
I think for his next courtroom acting gig Mr Vigna should try a musical:
I feel dizzy
Oh, so dizzy
I feel dizzy, not fizzy and gay
In a tizzy
I can't handle any brief today!
(Twirls around, flouncing barristerial robe)
I feel worried
Oh, so worried
I'm so worried I hurried to say
That I really can't proceed today
(Climbs up on witness stand and surveys himself in CHRT mirrored ceiling)
See the barrister in that mirror there:
What's that strangely anxious look mean?
Couldn't really say
Haven't seen a doc
Can't elaborate
But I'm not serene!
(Leaps from witness stand and embraces Judge Hadjis)
I'm not fluey
I'm not screwy
It's just hooey I knew he would buy
For I'm judged
By a pretty wonderful guy!
That last couplet is so precious -- and I really can see it as a Broadway musical number. I picture someone bouncy and a little cherubic, like Nathan Lane, playing Giacomo "Jackie" Vigna. And when he grabs the startled tribunal judge, I picture that role played by someone crotchety and slightly deaf, like Wilford Brimley or maybe even Fred Thompson who's back to acting now. I would have suggested Fred Gwynne, who played the straight-laced southern judge opposite Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny, but Gwynne has passed away, and I wouldn't want Vigna filing a human rights complaint against me, alleging that I was comparing him to, well, Vinny.
That said, I think there could be some wonderful elements in a Vigna musical borrowed from My Cousin Vinny. I'll never stop loving this clip, no matter what the Canadian Human Rights Commission says:
It’s hard to believe, but I’ve received yet another threat of a lawsuit from a member of the human rights set. This one is from Giacomo “Serenity now!” Vigna, a lawyer for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Cherniaky in its logic and Kinsellian in its command of the law.
Vigna’s letter is a classic case of why lawyers should not represent themselves, even if they think they’re saving a few bucks: their judgment is clouded by their emotions.
I mean, seriously, look at why Vigna says he’s going to sue me. On page three of his threat, he’s underlined what he says makes him really mad at me. He complains that I made fun of his courtroom antics, when he told a tribunal chairman that the whole hearing had to stop because Vigna didn’t “feel in a serene state of mind”. I compared Vigna’s lame series of excuses – a discussion that went on for twenty pages of court transcripts! – to a student who pulled the fire alarm to get out of writing an exam.
You’d think that Vigna would want to forget about that awful, awful day when he turned the tribunal hearing into his own therapy session. But not Vigna – he says he’s going to sue me for calling his drama audition a “farce”.
Alright, readers, skip the next few paragraphs. They’re a private message from me to Vigna, barrister to barrister, and friend to friend.
Pssst. Giacomo. If you’re embarrassed by me poking fun at you on my little blog, how are you going to handle a whole trial about your Dr. Phil moment? There was nobody paying attention to your hearing last year – certainly not Richard Warman, the nominal plaintiff, who didn’t even bother to show up that day. Nobody really cared that you had an “episode”. Do you really want to have a full-blown trial, in a real court, about your statement that:
“I don’t feel very well. I feel dizzy, I feel anxiety, and I am not in a serene state of mind to proceed with this file today. I have a lot of things worrying me right now and I don’t want to elaborate… I am not dying, Mr. Chair, I don’t have the flu, but I am not mentally capable of proceeding under these circumstances.”
Don’t you see that, if you want to get even with the fellow who made you look like a fool, you would have to – geez, how do I put this gently – sue yourself?
Giacomo: Don’t. Aim. The. Gun. At. Your. Own. Foot.
OK, everybody else, you can start reading again.
Vigna’s demand letter continues in the same vein for quite some time. On page four and five, he again underlines what really made him mad – the video montage of George Costanza’s dad shouting “Serenity now!” on Seinfeld. I’m not sure what legal defence I’d use on that one – truth or fair comment. I think the judge would be too busy laughing to even listen. Again, I can’t believe that anyone would actually want to have a trial on the important legal question of whether or not his whimpering merits a comparison to a Seinfeld character. Maybe we can call in some expert witness to testify about just how badly Vigna embarrassed himself that day. Was it a Seinfeldian humiliation? Or did it reach South Park levels of self-degradation? I could talk about that for a week at trial, but I don’t know if Vigna could, without – you know what’s coming – losing his serenity.
But page eleven of his threat gets interesting. That’s where Vigna moves from merely beclowning himself to actually endangering himself.
Last week I blogged about revelations uncovered by John Pacheco showing that Vigna and Warman switched a key piece of evidence at a tribunal hearing, and didn’t tell the tribunal chairman why they were doing it. I called that unethical, and I stand by it. It’s a lawyer’s duty to tell a tribunal the whole truth – to bring even damaging information to the tribunal’s attention, especially when asked. Vigna was asked by the chairman why he was switching a piece of evidence, and he didn’t explain the real reason why. He led the chairman to believe there was no substantive reason, when there was. That’s unethical.
Look, I’m not the type to lodge a complaint against Vigna with the Law Society of Upper Canada about it. But for Vigna himself to voluntarily bring on a full-blown trial over that matter? I’d call that professional suicide. It’s one thing for a defamation court to laugh about Vigna for a week, deciding whether or not he’s a fool like Seinfeld's Kramer. But it’s more serious when the subject at hand is his unethical conduct. The man should really get a lawyer to give him cool-headed advice.
I suppose my favourite part of Vigna’s libel notice is the very last page, page 13. I’m not just talking about Vigna’s use of the royal “we” to describe himself. (We all do that. Sometimes when I’m at Tim Hortons and I order two donuts, I say “we” want two donuts, because I don’t want the cashier to think I’m eating them both myself). And I’m not just talking about Vigna’s suggestion that I hire a lawyer to get good advice – this from a fellow who has clearly not shown his own letter to anyone who will talk him down from his ledge.
No, my favourite line is his last sentence. After 13 pages of threats, 13 pages of trying to strike terror into my heart, what is Vigna’s coup de grace? What is his “or else”?
Vigna threatens to have the trial… in French!
Whatever turns his crank, I guess. The French do have a theatrical tradition of farces – I pick up a real Jerry Lewis vibe from Vigna, though his serenity monologue was a little bit more Three Stooges.
(It's not surprising that Vigna threatens to use Canada's official bilingualism as a weapon against me. It's similar to his use of "human rights" law as a weapon of censorship. Official bilingualism and human rights commissions were supposed to make Canada better, to protect minorities -- at least that's how they were sold to us. That they are now used cynically and abusively by people like Vigna tells you that even government bureaucrats don't believe the propaganda of Trudeaupian idealism. Those policies are just one more weapon with which to attack their political opponents.)
Vigna’s threatened lawsuit is so obviously frivolous and vexatious, it’s laughable. I hope it goes no further. But, unfortunately, if he really does proceed with a suit, I won’t just be able to laugh – I’ll have to run a defence, and that costs money. And even if I beat Vigna in court – in a year or two – I’ll still have to shell out money for lawyers along the way. I really don’t see how even a quick trial would cost less than $30,000. And remember, that’s on top of Richard Warman’s lawsuit against me and my fellow bloggers, and that’s on top of the human rights commission complaint against me, which still continues.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Vigna has piled on. Other bloggers have written about Vigna’s tomfoolery but, as far as I can tell, I’m the only one he’s threatening to sue. And I don’t doubt there will be more suits on top of those.
There’s a term for this: SLAPP, or strategic lawsuit against public participation. It’s Richard Warman’s specialty, and now Vigna’s getting in on the game. And, I’ll be candid: if it weren’t for the support of the blogosphere, I’d probably crumble under the pressure of it.
But so far, so great: I’ve been able to fight these bullies. As I’ve said before, I’m up for the fight, and I believe in it. I actually think I’m suited for it. The only thing I’m missing is financial strength.
I hate to ask again, so soon after asking for help to fend off Warman’s suit, but if you want to chip in to help me fight off Vigna, please do. Even a bare-bones defence is going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars – and I’ll have to come out to Ontario for the trial, too.
I didn’t ask for this suit. But it’s clear to me that the human rights industry can’t win through arguments, so they’re going to try to bludgeon me (and others) into submission.
Well, I’m not rattled – I’m still serene. I’m going to fight them as long as it takes. Please help me if you can.
Yours gratefully,
Ezra "Tranquility" Levant
Nelly Hechme is the innocent bystander whose Internet connection was hacked by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, so their investigators could cover their tracks when they went online under their secret codenames to surf white supremacist websites.
(I know. That entire sentence is insane. But it's true.)
Hechme has now done another interview with the Canadian Press, and the story is even worse than previously reported. According to Hechme, her Internet connection was secure -- it was actively hacked by the CHRC. Here are some other excerpts from her interview:
"It's horrible," Hechme said. "You never want something like that attached to your name."
...Hechme, 26, who lives close to the commission's offices in Ottawa, said she was "completely shocked" when a reporter contacted her about the disclosure.
"It was like the "Twilight Zone." I didn't know what the heck was going on," said Hechme, an administrative assistant with Bell Canada.
"I don't like the fact that my information was just put out all over, including my age, where I live, pictures of where I live. It's very disturbing."
So far, the commission has not explained why or how its investigators might have commandeered Hechme's connection or offered any alternative explanation for how Hechme and "Jadewarr" became linked.
That's a lot calmer than I'd be if I had my Internet connection hijacked by rogue operatives of a government bureaucracy. But the best part of the interview isn't Hechme's information. It's Ian Fine's stunning statement that they did nothing wrong.
Ian Fine, senior general counsel with the rights commission, said he was unable to comment on the specifics of the case in light of ongoing investigations but denied any wrongdoing.
"We are quite confident that, at the end of the day, it will be established that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has done nothing untoward, nothing wrong, in this whole scenario," Fine said.
Is there anything that's out of bounds over there? More to the point, is there anyone over there who will take responsibility? What about Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissioner? Does she share Fine's view that there's nothing wrong with illegally hacking a private citizen's Internet account? Of how about Rob Nicholson, the Justice Minister? Is there some special exemption from the Criminal Code for his "human rights" vigilantes? Just how bad does it have to get before he utters a word besides "no comment"?
Hechme, meanwhile, is pondering civil action, saying it's not fair she's been caught up in the murky web.
She's particularly distressed at finding her name associated with white supremacists and wonders whether that link - now firmly forged through the reach of the Internet - might come back to haunt her.
"This is the part that bothers me the most. I don't know if my name is going to be flagged if I want to cross the border, if I apply for a job," she said.
"I don't even want anyone questioning my name. Ever."
Good idea. I think Hechme should sue for an enormous sum -- I think the CHRC would pay just about anything to avoid having to reveal the truth about their vigilante activities in a real court, with real rules of disclosure -- not a human rights tribunal that's in the CHRC's pocket.
And besides grotesque revelations about the Hechme case, how many other private citizens have had their Internet accounts hacked? What else would come out if the CHRC was ever held to normal standards of accountability?
Sue, Nelly, sue!
h/t Dave P
Mark Steyn links to Pundita, and draws attention to her comment that:
the weakness of the Free Speech movement is that it's not coordinated and there is no war council. That weakness is easily exploited by the movement's opponents.
I usually agree with her analyses, but not here. (I thought her use of the phrase "pre-crime" to describe the "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred" wording of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act was brilliant -- it showed the abnormalcy of criminalizing something that might or might not happen in the future.) But on her call for a war council, I politely disagree.
One of the advantages of freedom loving people -- as opposed to the centrally-planned groupthinkers who constantly beset us -- is that we think of ourselves as individuals. To use a leftist phrase, we "celebrate diversity" -- intellectual diversity, that is. A centrally-planned, command-and-control "war council" doesn't quite fit with our way of thinking. More to the point, it often doesn't work. I think it's a case where spontaneous order beats planned chaos. I think it's the nature of the Internet, too, and the nature of free speech itself: a messy cacophony that just happens to work better than the alternative.
Let me give you a practical example. Should we free speechers use the tactic of filing section 13 complaints against our opponents?
There are plenty of reasons why we should. It would be free, first of all. It would cause our opponents to waste time and money, and possibly demoralize them. It would tie up the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and the Tribunal, with busy work -- so they could do less harm to others. Carefully chosen complaints could demonstrate the absurdity of trying to outlaw hurt feelings. (I think of Steyn's observation that every music store in North America that has a "rap" section would surely violate the prohibition against the word n*gger.) It would be especially fascinating to tag supporters of HRCs with complaints themselves -- even to tag HRC staffers (and there are plenty of bigoted HRC staffers out there).
On the other hand (and this is my view) to file such complaints would legitimize an illiberal, unconstitutional, unfair process. It would further entrench precedents of political censorship. It would concede that HRCs are valid. And -- God forbid -- if the idea was to overwhelm and overwork the HRCs, there's always the chance that such an increased workload could lead to bigger budgets and staffs!
A central war council would have to choose one of these two approaches. I rather prefer the ability for me to decline to do so, but for Jay Currie to do so with gusto.
Another example is whether or not to fight this fight in court, and if so, how hard. The National Post has tried to avoid getting bogged down in court with Richard Warman, even going so far as to issue an apology to him (that didn't save them from a lawsuit from him, though -- in fact, it probably encouraged it.) I, on the other hand, look forward to squaring off with Warman in a real court, with real rules of procedure and disclosure, and with real laws interpreted by actual judges.
Who's right? We both are. The National Post has written more about the abuses of HRCs than any other Canadian medium. Why should they spend money on lawyers and spend time in court, instead of writing more great reports and editorials?
There are a hundred ways to fight HRCs. Some free speechers have more time than money -- they can do research, and even blog. Others have more money than time -- they can donate to the fights. Some have political connections -- they can press their MPs for change. Others have a facility with public speaking and writing -- they can call talk shows, or write letters to the editor. Still others are professional journalists themselves. I don't think that such a range of people could be "co-ordinated" even if one tried to do so.
I like the "multi-polar" approach that free speechers have achieved in the past four months. It wasn't too long ago that only a handful of voices were speaking out against HRCs. Now there are literally hundreds. There is a momentum, a synergy, that could not have been planned. From Binky and his excellent daily aggregation of news, to Old Jed's great songs (and awful voice), to the comedy of The Nose on Your Face and Iowahawk to the deep research of John Pacheco and the "rantings" of Rick Mercer, this couldn't be planned -- to plan it would be to limit the fight to the imagination and experience of a few "experts", rather than to invite the whole world to fight back in their own way.
It is exceedingly satisfying to me to behold the daily battle -- uncoordinated, unplanned, but enormously effective -- that is being fought by amateurs and volunteers. It truly has been a grassroots effort in every way -- fighting against 14 well-funded HRCs and their retinue of high-priced help. We are winning, and winning more and faster than anyone could have predicted.
Of course, there are de facto leaders of this fight -- people who write or think or do more about it than others. Steyn is an obvious example of such; I am too, in my own way; the others in the Freedom Five are, whether they like it or not (I don't think anyone likes being sued, but I think they're all going to fight like hell).
Keith Martin is an important leader; those Tory MPs and staffers who are trying, behind the scenes, to get the federal government to make changes, are silent leaders. Every talk show host and op-ed writers is a leader, too -- in the sense that denormalizing the commissions is the first step to building a public demand for change.
I'm not arguing against co-operation -- we saw a splended and generous example of that, with Steyn's day-long fundraiser. But I think that what we're building here is a grassroots revolt, a taking back of Canada's laws, a reassertion of Canadian values over alien values of censorship and political correctness. It is populist by nature, it is instinctive. Like many others -- like Pundita -- I'll continue to offer up my own ideas of strategy for this fight, on my blog. I'm sure Kate and Kathy and Connie and Mark and Debbie and Blazing Catfur and a dozen others will, too. We'll find our way to victory, probably by many paths, but all converging on the goal together. We're already well on our way, don't you think?
Not surprisingly, the best column yet on human rights commissions comes from Mark Steyn, in this week's Maclean's. I think it's the best for several reasons, but mainly because it refuses to give any credit to human rights mumbo-jumbo, and actually analyzes what passes for arguments from the HRCs. The comparison between Marxist and Nazi totalitarianism is brilliant; the reminder of the impotence -- indeed, the counter-productivity -- of "hate speech" laws in 1930's Germany is persuasive. And the absurdity of privileged white women, like Barbara Hall and Jennifer Lynch, condeming "white hegemony" is hilarious. As I've argued before, there is nothing so devastating in politics as truly funny ridicule. That's what makes Jon Stewart's show so powerful -- not that he's particularly bright, but that he makes his viewers laugh at (mainly) Republicans. Steyn is both funny and bright, and that combination is unbeatable. Other than the unwittingly discrediting utterances of Hall herself, I think there is no better advocate for the reform that Steyn. Some excerpts:
It's true that "hurtful actions that undermine freedom" and lead to "unspeakable crimes" usually have some fig leaf of intellectual justification. For example, the ideology first articulated by Karl Marx has led to the deaths of millions of people around the planet on an unprecedented scale. Yet oddly enough, no matter how many folks are murdered in the name of Marxism-Leninism, you're still free to propound its principles at every college in Canada.
Ah, but that's the Good Totalitarianism. What about the Bad Totalitarianism? You know, the one everybody disapproves of: Nazism. Isn't it obvious that in the case of Adolf Hitler, "hateful words" led to "unspeakable crimes"? This argument is offered routinely: if only there'd been "reasonable limits on the expression of hatred" 70 years ago, the Holocaust might have been prevented.
There's just one teensy-weensy problem with it: pre-Nazi Germany had such "reasonable limits." Indeed, the Weimar Republic was a veritable proto-Trudeaupia. As Alan Borovoy, Canada's leading civil libertarian, put it:
"Remarkably, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti-hate law. Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech. And, in the opinion of the leading Jewish organization of that era, no more than 10 per cent of the cases were mishandled by the authorities. As subsequent history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it."
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The problem the Jews found themselves up against in Germany and elsewhere was not the lack of hate-speech laws but the lack of protection of the common or garden laws — against vandalism and property appropriation and suchlike. One notes, by the way, that property rights are absent from Canada's modish Charter of Rights. The reductio ad Hitlerum is the laziest form of argument, so it's no surprise to find the defenders of the ever-more-intrusive "human rights" enforcers taking refuge in it. But it stands history on its head. Most of us have a vague understanding that Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 as a pretext to "seize" dictatorial powers. But, in fact, he didn't "seize" anything because he didn't need to. He merely invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Republic's constitution, allowing the state, in the interests of the greater good, to set — what's the phrase? — "reasonable limits" on freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom from unlawful search and seizure and surveillance of postal and electronic communications. The Nazis didn't invent a dictatorship out of whole cloth. They merely took advantage of the illiberal provisions of a supposedly liberal constitution.
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Happily, beginning on July 1, under Ontario's "human rights" reforms, Commissar Hall will have far greater powers to initiate prosecutions against all and sundry. Under the new proposals, " 'hate incident' means any act or omission, whether criminal or not, that expresses bias, prejudice, bigotry or contempt toward a vulnerable or disadvantaged community or its members." "Act or omission"? Of course. The act of not acting in an insufficiently non-hateful way can itself be hateful. Whether or not the incident is a non-incident is incidental. I quote from "Concepts Of Race And Racism And Implications For OHRC Policy" as published on the OHRC website:
"The denial of racism used by so many whites in positions of authority ranging from the supervisor in a work place to the chief of Police and ministers of government must be understood for what it is: an example of White hegemonic power over those considered 'other.' "
Got that? Your denial of racism merely confirms your racism — because simply by being a "White hegemon" (like Barbara Hall or Jennifer Lynch) you wield racist power.
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It's not a left/right thing. It's not a gay/straight thing. It's not a Jew/Muslim thing. It's not a hateful Steyn/nice fluffy caring compassionate Canadian thing. It's a free/unfree thing. And the commissars are on the wrong side.
Canada's human rights commissions are a manifestation of the "nanny state" -- where the government treats citizens like children in need of nannying. That's what most HRC cases are about these days: salving hurt feelings, throwing a few extra dollars (or a few extra tens of thousands of dollars) to people who can frame life's normal ups and downs as some sort of political grievance.
Mark Steyn isn't just a fellow victim of Canada's human rights commissions and a great advocate for their reform. He's also a good friend to me, and to the other writers who have criticized those human rights commissions, and have thus been sued by Richard Warman, Canada's most prolific human rights complainant.
Mark has generously offered to support our legal defence through the sales of his books and other merchandise. Until midnight tonight, he is donating his entire profit -- 50% -- from all sales from his website.
Mark's books and other merchandise (including the great Viva Steyn! shirt we first commissioned at the late Western Standard!) are well worth buying at any time. But until tonight, all of the profits go to help Kathy, Kate, Connie, Mark and me.
So please stop by his site and load up. Thank you -- and thanks, Mark!
If you want to contribute to my legal defence fund directly, feel free to do so through my PayPal account. Besides fending off Warman's suit, I'm also still fighting the Alberta human rights commission, which has been prosecuting me for two years now for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Judging by their snail's pace, that case might actually outlast Warman's SLAPP suit against us.
You can also contribute to my fellow defendants, here, here and here.
Thank you -- and thanks, Mark. I promise to keep fighting!
I got a few laughs from the audience out of my speech in New York a couple of weeks ago. The biggest laugh, though, was nothing that I had written. It was when I simply read aloud section 3 of Alberta's human rights law in which I have become tangled for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.
Section 3(1) is what I'm charged under. Its wording is thus:
3(1) No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed before the public any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that
(a) indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a class of persons, or
(b) is likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt
because of the race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income or family status of that person or class of persons.
In other words, it's the Alberta version of the section 13 thought crimes provision of the federal Canadian Human Rights Act, under which Maclean's magazine and others are charged (and under which not a single defendant has ever been acquitted).
But that's not what got them laughing in New York. Section 3(2) of the Alberta law did:
3(2) Nothing in this section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject.
Stop and read that again, this time slowly.
The law doesn't guarantee "the free expression of opinion on any subject". It doesn't say that section 3(1) operates only until it threatens the free expression of opinion, at which point the free expression of opinion trumps the censors. It doesn't say, "notwithstanding section 3(1), every Albertan has the freedom of expression", etc.
No, section 3(2) simply "deems" any section 3(1) censorship as not to have happened. Section 3(2) creates a legal fiction. A plain reading of section 3(1) allows censorship. A plain reading of my case, or Rev. Boissoin's (see para. 357 here), would show that's its effect. But section 3(2) simply declares that censorship not to have happened.
Section 3(2) is legal pixie dust, declaring that if any freedom of expression is infringed, the law will just "deem" that it never happened. Keep moving, nothing to see here. After all, who are you going to believe -- section 3(2), or your lying eyes?
The government just told you, in advance, that whatever it does with section 3(1) won't be "deemed" to interfere with freedom of thought. It doesn't quite say who is supposed to believe that fiction, or how that fiction is to be enforced, or whether it is a crime not to believe that fiction.
Clearly, my interrogator, Shirlene McGovern, believes that fiction. She grilled me for 90 minutes about my decision to publish the Danish cartoons. She evidently believed she had a license to censor -- section 3(2) told her so.
John Pacheco attended last month’s Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing in the Warman v. Lemire case. That was where Canadian Human Rights Commission staff were grilled about their practice of going onto the Internet under fake identities, and posting bigoted comments.
Pacheco recorded that hearing himself (the tribunal bizarrely dismissed its court reporter for that one day) and compared his recording with testimony from the December, 2006, hearing in another one of Richard Warman’s complaints, against Jessica Beaumont. Besides having the same complainant (Warman) and the same tribunal chairman (Athanasios Hadjis), the two cases had something else in common: both involved the CHRC’s secret online identity “Jadewarr”. That’s the alias CHRC investigator Dean Steacy used to sign up as a member to the white supremacist group, Stormfront, a scandal in itself.
Pacheco’s comparison found a lot of ugly things about how the CHRC does business. But the most striking fact he discovered was that Warman hid his knowledge of Jadewarr from the tribunal, despite being asked about it several times under oath.
Pacheco’s site has all the details. But here’s a summary:
One of the pieces of evidence against Jessica Beaumont was this print-out from the Stormfront website that the CHRC submitted to the tribunal. But after the CHRC disclosed that print-out, they realized that it said “Welcome, Jadewarr” on the corner of it – giving away the fact that the CHRC had logged in as a member of Stormfront. That blew Steacy’s secret cover. To hide his tracks, the CHRC switched the “Welcome, Jadewarr” print-out with a generic print-out of the same page from the Stormfront website, without the words “Welcome, Jadewarr” on it.
On December 12, 2006, the tribunal chairman, Hadjis, was trying to figure out the difference between the two versions of the Stormfront document, to understand why the CHRC wanted to switch the original evidence with a new version. Here’s what Warman, and the CHRC lawyer, Giacomo Vigna, said when asked about the documents:
THE CHAIRPERSON: I’m sorry, I’m a little confused here...
MR. VIGNA: The layout, when you look at it, it might seem different, but if you look at the contents it’s pretty much the same.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Right.
That’s a scandal in itself – Vigna knew the difference between the two documents, and he knew why he wanted to switch them, but instead of revealing what he knew, he glossed over the difference between the two documents, calling them “pretty much the same”. That’s unethical. But what about Warman?
MR. VIGNA: Perhaps, Mr. Warman, you can explain it.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, perhaps you can explain it.
MR. WARMAN: Sure.
THE CHAIRPERSON: I do see that the content is similar. It’s got the poem in it, but how come the layout is different, as Mr. Vigna has indicated?
MR. WARMAN: Sure. I will happily explain. The first one is a Commission document. The second one is a document that was printed off in my presence on Friday.
THE CHAIRPERSON: So, the second document was available on the Internet and printed off?
MR. WARMAN: Yes, on Friday.
THE CHAIRPERSON: On Friday.
MR. WARMAN: So, if it’s more appropriate, we can withdraw the first one and simply tender the second one.
Warman does the same as Vigna – he doesn’t disclose the difference between the documents, other than when they were each printed. But that’s not the real difference, was it? That’s not why they switched it -- a switch that Warman himself suggests.
Later on, Warman was asked about the “Welcome, Jadewarr” print-out again:
MR. FROMM: …what’s the origin of it?
MR. WARMAN: I don’t know.
THE CHAIRPERSON: You don’t know now but you mentioned earlier that it was from the Commission. That’s what I heard you say.
MR. WARMAN: It originates in the broadest sense with the Commission.
THE CHAIRPERSON: So the Commission had produced this photocopy?
MR. WARMAN: Yes, but in terms of its specific origins, I have no idea.
That must have sounded a little bit strange: how could Warman have “no idea” about its specific origins, even though he said the generic replica of it was printed off in his presence the previous Friday? Hadjis, impatient as usual, let it pass.
Warman was asked again about the “Welcome, Jadewarr” version:
MR. FROMM: Can you explain what that is, “Welcome, Jadewarr?
MR. WARMAN: It appears to be a name that was logged in under.
MR. FROMM: By whom?
MR. WARMAN: I’m sorry, I don’t know.
Warman’s testimony is pretty clear: he swore he didn’t know who logged in as Jadewarr on the original print-out, and he didn’t know its “specific origins”.
The Beaumont hearing slouched onwards, and the strange matter of the switched evidence was forgotten. But Warman’s next case was against Marc Lemire, the webmaster of Stormfront. Lemire suspected something, and made a much bigger fuss about Jadewarr. In December, 2007, a year after Warman’s testimony in the Beaumont case, Steacy finally admitted he was Jadewarr in the Lemire case.
But it wasn’t until the March, 2008 hearing, when Steacy was cross-examined, that the whole truth came out – and that Warman’s testimony was exposed as misleading.
Steacy testified that Warman knew exactly who Jadewarr was, and he knew it well before the Beaumont hearing. Here’s Pacheco’s audio clip of Steacy testifying to that effect:
Since Steacy admitted he was Jadewarr, it’s not surprising to learn that Warman knew about it. Warman and Steacy had worked together, not just as colleagues at the CHRC where they were both “hate” investigators, but as “client” and “service provider”, when Warman filed a complaint and Steacy investigated it (a conflict of interest and another scandal). The two men were pretty cosy. In fact, Steacy told the March, 2008 hearing that everyone who knew who Jadewarr was knew the password, too – presumably, that included Warman.
But compare Steacy’s testimony in 2008 to what Pacheco dug up from Warman’s testimony in December, 2006:
MR. FROMM: Can you explain what that is, “Welcome, Jadewarr?
MR. WARMAN: It appears to be a name that was logged in under.
MR. FROMM: By whom?
MR. WARMAN: I’m sorry, I don’t know.
Warman swore he didn’t know who logged in as Jadewarr. But Steacy testified that Warman indeed knew who Jadewarr was.
Details about the group print-out of second, generic version of the document were discussed in the March, 2008, hearing too.
Steacy told the tribunal that he, Warman and CHRC lawyer Giacomo Vigna all got together. They logged in under Steacy’s Stormfront membership, Jadewarr, because, as Steacy testified, they had trouble finding the page otherwise. Here’s a record of that log-in by Steacy. Note the date: December 8, 2006, the date Warman said the document was printed out in his presence.
We don’t even need Steacy’s corroboration – Warman himself admitted that it was a group print-out. But from Steacy we learn who the group was, why the group was assembled and what they were trying to do.
Back in December, 2006, Warman’s vague answers were confusing. But in the light of the March, 2008 hearing, we see it was more than confusing, it was misleading. They were trying to keep Jadewarr’s identity a secret – even though they had an obligation to disclose that information to both Lemire and the tribunal, and another obligation to answer questions about it honestly.
“I have no idea” said Warman. “I don’t know.” But he did know.
The truth – as revealed 15 months later – was that Warman did “have an idea”. He “did know”. But instead of answering honestly under oath, he misled the tribunal.
I just can’t get that Johnny Cash song out of my mind – “as sure as God made black and white, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light.”