Richard Moon: liar for hire
That's not quite J.K. Rowlings money or Dan Brown money, but it's probably more than Margaret Atwood makes.
Moon is one of the CHRC's only defenders in Canada, along with Pearl "hatermongererer" Eliadis and, well, that's about it. I find it remarkable that, in a country of thousands of professors and tens of thousands of lawyers, the only people who will defend the CHRC and its censorship are those who are paid big bucks to do so, like Moon, or those who have worked for the industry directly, like Eliadis, or those who are clients of it, like Bernie "Burny" Farber. Economists call these kind of people "rent-seekers". Ayn Rand called them "looters and moochers". I just call them human rights violators, since they all support a law that is unconstitutional and illiberal.
I see on the National Post's website that Moon is still dining out on his defence of the CHRC, this time in the form of a speech to the University of Saskatchewan. It should be noted, of course, that Moon agrees with me that section 13, the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, should be abolished. And here's where his Saskatoon speech (and, indeed everything he's uttered publicly since issuing his brochure) gets weird. In the past year, instead of elaborating on his belief that section 13 should be abolished, he has spent his energies in a feeble attempt to defend the CHRC, and to attempt to discredit my own criticisms of them.
It's a little odd, don't you think? For a sixty-something professor in the sunset of his career to spend so much energy taking on a thirty-something blogger is a little bit unseemly. But Moon blew through unseemly long ago, when he took $52,500 from the CHRC to write a brochure for them -- and agreed, in his contract, to let them see his work in progress, and revise it. That kind of conflict of interest would get him hauled before the University of Windsor's Ethic Board if he tried that stunt there.
I see that Moon, along with Burny, the new Canadian Jewish Congress president Mark Freiman (himself a former section 13 prosecutor) and Lynch and her deputy Philip Dufresne are scheduled to testify before the Justice Committee on Monday. If it's televised, I'll try to watch it and give you my thoughts.
But right now, I think it's safe to say that Moon's presentation will be along the lines of his Saskatoon speech. Which is why I think I ought to do a fact check on him right now, before he repeats the falsehoods therein to Parliament.
Falsehood: Moon claims the CHRC does not have a 100% conviction rate for censorship prosecutions. He weasels around this point a bit, but that's what he means.
Fact: Until the Warman v. Lemire case last month, no-one had beat a prosecution. You can see the list of all prosecutions here. You can read all of the judgments here. Let me save you some time: until Marc Lemire, nobody was ever acquitted. Moon counters by saying that people who weren't prosecuted weren't convicted. Is that some zen thing?
Falsehood: Moon claims that the convictions listed above are not really "convictions", because the censorship charge is not criminal in nature.
Fact: This is Moon trying to play word games, but he's wrong anyways. The reason why section 13 was declared unconstitutional last month in the Warman v. Lemire case was precisely because section 13 had become like a criminal charge. Moon's probably too busy rolling around in Lynch's hundred dollar bills to have read the ruling in that case, so let me point him to the money quote in paragraph 279 (there are other relevant paragraphs, too):
...when assessed against the characteristics of the penalty provisions enumerated in these decisions, it is evident that s. 13(1) has become more penal in nature.
Falsehood: Moon claims that "there is no evidence whatsoever" that CHRC staffer Dean Steacy made bigoted comments on neo-Nazi websites.
Fact: On page 5735 of this transcript, you can see Steacy's admission that he's a neo-Nazi member. And here is an example of the kind of thing that Steacy wrote using those neo-Nazi memberships. He praised white supremacists; gave them encouragement and even offered to help them.
Falsehood: Moon claims that Richard Warman, the serial complainant-of-fortune in almost all section 13 cases, didn't work on censorship investigations.
Fact: Oh yes he did. In fact, he even trained others in how to do it, like censorship investigator Hannya Rizk. See page 4438 and a half dozen other similar passages in this transcript:
Ms Kulaszka: ...who gave you that training?
Ms. Rizk: The training was given to me by Richard Warman.
Just to be clear, Warman's censorship investigation training for Rizk was training her on how to prosecute Marc Lemire -- the target in one of Warman's own censorship complaints. Warman was not just working on censorship complaints. He was training others on how to handle his own censorship complaints. At page 4512, Rizk admits that, in fact, other than Warman, no-one trained her on how to do censorship work.
There are so many gems in Rizk's testimony -- probably because she had by then left the rotting CHRC carcass, and was able to speak freely without fear of reprisals from Lynch and her mob. It really is a fascinating case study in corruption -- and Rizk was clearly embarrassed that she had gone along with it. I've written a whole blog post about it, here.
Falsehood: Moon claims that Richard Warman's neo-Nazi comments were all published by him after he left the CHRC in March of 2004. Moon specifically says that Warman's comments that Jews are "scum", gays are a "cancer" and white police should be loyal to "their race" were made after he left the CHRC.
Fact: In his major interview with Warman, Charlie Gillis of Maclean's revealed that Warman was not laid off until July of 2004. And while Warman is no longer officially an employee, he has continued to have all of his expenses paid for by the CHRC, and even a modest honorarium -- the only citizen in Canada who is paid by the CHRC to file complaints. Even worse, he continued to have access to confidential CHRC files -- including his own complaints -- and, as the Rizk testimony shows, managed to corrupt that investigation.
Warman's Jews are "scum" comment was made in his final month at work (scroll down to page three); his white police should be loyal to "their race" comment was made a month before he left (scroll down to page 4). You can see the dates of those comments in the left side of the screen. His gays are a cancer comment was made in March of 2005 (scroll down to page 4), after he left, but using a neo-Nazi membership account he created while at the CHRC in September 2003. It was this last comment that caught the eye of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal this March, who ruled Warman's behaviour "disturbing and disappointing".
The fact is, Warman wrote literally hundreds of anti-Semitic rants, both while he worked at the CHRC, and after. Often he just quoted other Nazi comments favourably. Sometime he added his own bon mots. Like a gem he wrote in May of 2004, two months before he left the CHRC, praising Canadian Nazi Adrien Arcand (scroll down to page 2). Is this really the best defence Moon has for the CHRC -- admitting that Warman is a serial bigot online, but that "most" of that was done after he no longer had a permanent office at the CHRC? And what of the CHRC's remaining staff and managers, who knew of his continued neo-Nazi activities, yet continued to pay him and to prosecute his cases for him, using CHRC lawyers, for five years after he left the CHRC?
Falsehood: Moon claims that my citations of Warman's anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-gay comments are "taken out of context" by me.
Fact: Wow. Is there a context where calling a Jew "scum" is acceptable? The subject line of Warman's post is "Re: Irwin Cotier (Jewish) as Minister of Justice in Canada". Warman is referring to Irwin Cotler, of course. His comment started by repeating a lengthy anti-Semitic rant about Cotler written by someone else, and then adding this, himself: "We still have scum in government but we have to wait and see which scum goes where."
What context am I missing here? What context did the Tribunal miss when they condemned that comment in March? Perhaps when Moon is in Parliament on Monday, he can explain to Mr. Cotler in person the context in which he is appropriately called Jewish "scum". Maybe he can tell Burny, too. They can all have a good laugh together.
Falsehood: Moon says my charges of "corruption" are unfounded.
Fact: Tell that to the Carleton Place Municipal Police force, who fired their first-ever female cop, Sandy Kozak, and charged her with corruption. She made a plea bargain with them and left the force... to be hired by the CHRC. Too corrupt for the real cops, just right for the CHRC.
And then there's the Internet hacking scandal, in which the RCMP's months-long criminal investigation lists the CHRC as their only suspect, and calls the case "unsolved".
Nutty: Let me add one final point. It's not a case of falsehoods vs. facts; it's just a measure of how skewed Moon's judgment is. He actually defends the crazy case of the McDonald's employee who won the human right not to have to wash her hands -- plus $50,000 tax-free for her troubles. You can read my take on that case here.
Moon quotes the Tribunal ruling favourably, when they said: "I am at a loss to understand why McDonald's did not take more steps to try to accommodate [her]". Hilarious: from January 21, 2002 until November 8, 2004, McDonald's kept paying this woman, even though she stopped working (except for a few very brief "attempts" to wash her hands again). They sent her to every doctor imaginable (except a psychiatrist).
Are you with me, still? Here's a burger-flipper who refused to wash her hands. McDonald's said there was no job in the restaurant -- not even the manager -- that didn't require hand-washing. For nearly three full years they paid her to do nothing. A better woman would have found a new job; but why would she do that, if McDonald's would give her a three-year paid vacation? In the end, they let her go. But Moon says they didn't accommodate her.
Crack. Pot.
My favourite line from the Tribunal ruling is this one, at paragraph 240: "...there was no evidence about the relationship between food contamination and hand-washing frequency." That's not just dumb, that's gross. But it's good law, according to Moon.
Richard Moon is a middling professor at a low-profile law school. He hit the jackpot with his $52,500 brochure, and he was embarrassed that I publicized that dollar amount. Well, he should be.
But in his anger at me for embarrassing him, he has become a clown. I mean, seriously: was his Saskatchewan speech really appropriate for the occasion? A blog post, maybe; a debate panel, sure. But, invited to talk about human rights commissions, he spends a half hour ranting about me and Mark Steyn, and nitpicking my blog entries (and not accurately). Is that really what he wants to do in the winter of his life? How sad. But his falsehoods in defence of the CHRC are becoming even more embarrassing than his stratospheric invoices to the taxpayer. He's making it worse. Just reading his speech sounds like he's screaming.
On Monday, at his appearance before Parliament's Justice Committee, let's see if he repeats the lies in his speech -- especially about Steacy never having written anything bigoted, or Warman never having written anything bigoted while at the CHRC, or Warman never having worked on censorship files. I know he reads this blog obsessively, so he'll now know that his facts are wrong.
Do you think he'll lie to Parliament?
We'll find out on Monday.
Blogrolls
