Thoughts from the road

I've been in transit; Vancouver until this morning, Calgary now, and I'm about to board the overnight flight to Toronto for twelve short hours, to participate in Noah Richler's panel at a magazine conference. I'm flattered to have been invited on such a smart panel, which includes Bronwyn Drainie, in whose magazine I published this foreign policy essay last year.

I gleaned a little bit of info on the road about the kangaroo court in Vancouver -- I regret I couldn't stay to keep blogging; over the last 36 hours I've had 45,000 unique visitors, with close to 100,000 visits. That is very rewarding feedback!

On Andrew's blog, I read about Faiza Hirji, the expert whose studies include Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Much was made about her exciting trip to a conference in Melbourne, where she apparently was allowed to speak for seven minutes.

I spoke today with a senior official at the Department of Canadian Heritage -- the people who sponsored her vacation down under. I was told that, when the minister's office read Ms. Hirji's bubblegum wrapper c.v., they immediately put the kibosh on her trip. The minister's office was advised by the bureaucrats (hello, Yes Minister!) that the invitation to Ms. Hirji had already been issued and, notwithstanding the government's objection to funding her quackery, the invitation could not be rescinded. The senior official was rather incensed that Ms. Hirji was passing herself off as having the imprimatur of the government.

I also learn of the insanity of the complainants: that neither Naiyer Habib or his Ontarian boss, Mohammed Elmasry, will take the stand as witnesses. No more evidence was needed to convict this tribunal of being a farce and waste of taxpayers money, but this is just the latest and most arrogant example.

Yesterday in Vancouver, during one of the tribunal's many "health breaks", Habib approached me, and introduced himself to me. I refused to shake his hand; a crowd soon gathered.

He told me he thought there could be a reconciliation between Jews and Muslims -- at least I think that's what he meant. I'm not sure why Habib thought I was the ambassador of the entire Jewish people, but such modesty doesn't burden him, a member of the confidently named "Canadian Islamic Congress". I told him he was a bigot, and followed a bigoted, Jew-hating boss in Elmasry; he didn't try hard to deny it; the crowd grew.

And then I told him what I really thought.

I'm glad he filed this complaint against Rogers.

Not because I dislike Rogers -- far from it. I'm deeply impressed with them, and grateful to them, for fighting this like hell.

And I'm sorry for the trouble and money it has cost them.

But I'm glad that Canada's Jew-hating Muslim fanatics are led by such awful strategists as Elmasry and Habib, people who thought they could strangle hundreds of years of freedom with a single kangaroo court shakedown. I pointed to the dozens of people around, including every senior media organization in the country, and told Habib that none of them would be there, covering his jihad against free speech, exposing his fascist agenda, were it not for his staggeringly stupid decision to take on Maclean's.

I told him he would be famous, almost as famous as his boss Elmasry.

I meant it. For had Elmasry and Habib and their apprentice, the serial liar Khurrum Awan, not made their move so clumsily, so brutally, so poorly, so half-wittedly, they might have continued on with their soft jihad against Canadian values without arousing suspicion, let alone a defence.

I regret that Elmasry and Habib and Awan have exposed moderate Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt, for their un-Canadian antics. But I am deeply grateful to those anti-Semitic CIC bastards for waking up the nation to the threat of radical Islam, and calling upon a somnolent press corps to rediscover and rededicate themselves to our ancient value of free speech.