Pearls of foolishness

Joseph Brean's report from the human rights commission conference in luxurious Niagara-on-the-Lake is fascinating for other reasons than his recounting of the Canadian Islamic Congress's defamation of Mark Steyn. Such conferences, invariably paid for by taxpayers, are one of the perks for those working in the $200-million/year human rights industry.

(Take a moment to see how hard Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, works. She jets off to Africa, at a cost of $5,800; then Geneva, for a mere $8,300, Australia, for a bargain of $7,500. I can't remember the last time I spent $90 on breakfast, but then again I don't work for the CHRC. Maybe the reason she goes overseas so often is she can't handle the CHRC's "organizational conflicts" -- though a $150 lunch on the subject must have made her feel better. My favourite expense of hers has to be the $1,300 to get from Ottawa to... Toronto. Let me guess: it's a "human right" to have a chauffered limousine.)

Conferences and expensed meals are certainly a perk for Pearl Eliadis, who was a guest speaker at the Niagara conference, and who, like Lynch, has travelled the world on the public dime. Readers of this blog will remember Eliadis for her semi-literate Op-Ed in the Montreal Gazette back in February. In that creative column, she had moved the Danish cartoons to Holland and introduced the English language to the word hatemongererer. But more seriously, she simply decided to do away with the 800-year-old priniciple that a man is innocent until proven guilty. See my take-down of her tripe here.

Well, Eliadis is back -- and she's angry!

According to Brean's report,

...Ms. Eliadis had harsh words for the growing contingent of bloggers who lambaste the commissions, and have been invigorated by the prominence of the Maclean's complaints.

Ms. Eliadis singled out one in particular, blazingcatfur.blogspot.com, as "poisonous" for referring to her panel at the conference as a "Texas cage match."

She said it was evidence of the "appalling tone" that is "illustrative of how badly this debate has gone."

My thoughts about this, in no particular order are:

1. It's a delight to know that the grassroots campaign for freedom of speech, started on the blogosphere, irritates the professional "human rights" industry so much. I take that as incredible encouragement to keep it up.

2. I'm enormously jealous of Blazing Cat Fur. Good heavens, what do I have to do to get notice by Eliadis? I've been charged with the hate crime of publishing cartoons. What has BCF, that whippersnapper, ever done?

3. Look at Eliadis's complaint against BCF, what Eliadis calls "poisonous" and "appalling": BCF called Eliadis's debate with the great Alan Borovoy at "cage match". Besides a troubling glimpse into the fragility of Eliadis's own self-esteem, it's an insight into just what these HRC workers consider to be "hateful". Because, really, what's the big difference between "hate speech" and speech that is "poisonous and appalling"? It's actually quite a revelation: Eliadis's own words show us that she's about political censorship, about squelching criticism, about muzzling her opponents. She's not even pretending that it's about real human rights. She doesn't want her world view to be criticized, and so she wants to criminalize dissident views.

I said it before, back in February when I first heard of Eliadis: we are lucky to have such thick-skulled, thin-skinned, politically tone-deaf opponents. 

But I'm still jealous of Blazing Cat Fur.