Ezra Levant: July 2008 Archives

See update, below.

Here is that Maclean's article from 1966, about how the Canadian Jewish Congress sent an "agent" to pitch in to organize the Canadian Nazi Party. Just like Grant Bristow twenty years later, and Richard Warman forty years later, it was a case of the "cure" becoming worse than the disease. The scans are about 30 MB; I've put a 12 MB version here:

John Garrity, the CJC agent who helped out the rag-tag band of wannabes, didn't do as much as Grant Bristow did, in terms of organizing neo-Nazis, and he didn't do as much as Warman did, in terms of spreading anti-Semitic and racist hate. But the fact remains, the Canadian Jewish Congress pitched in, helping to prop up the haters they were publicly fighting against. And -- surprise! -- in a self-serving article, Garrity wrote that his work was extremely important, and that the rag-tag nobodies he helped out were a real menace. The only thing missing was the pitch for readers to donate money to the CJC and the rest of the anti-hate industry.

Let's get serious. Barely 20 years after Nazi Germany was crushed into powder by the Allies, with Canada taking an oversized role in the battle, when the streets of Canada were teeming with war veterans who hated Nazism with every cell of their body, when Nazism had been utterly discredited in the public mind, when there was no possible chance of that ideology finding intellectual purchase in Canada, let alone actual power, the CJC was trumping up the menace -- led by a vain, 24-year-old nobody.

Why?

Because that's the moral hazard of the being in the anti-hate business. If there's not enough hate, you have to change your line of work. Or: as the CJC did in 1966, and as they're doing today through the human rights commissions, they drum up a fake danger, manufacture a menace, help them out even, and then expose the whole thing and posit themselves as the remedy.

I just don't know what's wrong with the Jews sometimes. We have enough real enemies out there -- even in 1966, before the West turned against Israel after the Six Day War ended the Jews' status as the world's underdogs, and with it ended the pity honeymoon that had existed since the Holocaust. Even then, the Jews had enough real enemies, and there were real enough Jewish issues. Today it's far worse, with radical Islamists planning the next Holocaust.

I just don't get it. But Bernie "Burny" Farber and the rest of his industry know a good gig when they see one. They're just running the Garrity-Bristow-Warman game one more time. It makes them heroes in their own mind, and it gets them lots of press. But it's dishonest. And today, with militant Islam on the rise, there are enough real fights to fight without making up fake ones.

UPDATE: A commenter writes to say that he was there in Toronto when Beattie, the 24-year-old leader of the rag-tag Canadian Nazi Party had its rally in Toronto -- with 20 people in tow. The commenter's point was to suggest that I have overstated the CJC's role in assisting the Nazi Party. Maybe -- though any support is bizarre. But what I actually glean from the commenter's report was the opposite message: that Beattie and his "party" could only muster 20 followers in a city of millions. This was a national threat? Of course not. But with a little finessing, it could be built up into a menace that would terrify Jews and Gentiles alike.

Brought to you by the CJC.

I am sympethetic to CSIS these days. They have an enormously challenging job to keep Canada safe from real threats -- such as those being plotted continuously by foreign jihadis and their domestic agents. It is partly to CSIS's credit that the acts of terrorism Canada has endured in recent years have been low-level activities, difficult to detect in advance -- such as the fire-bombing of a Jewish synagogue by a Muslim radical in Edmonton; or the fire-bombing of the Jewish school library by Muslim radicals in Montreal; or the assault on a Jewish teenager by a Muslim radical in Calgary.

Perhaps it's precisely because CSIS is now engaged in a real battle against real threats that it no longer -- as far as we know publicly -- spends government time and money building up neo-Nazi organizations like the Heritage Front.

During the 1980s and 1990s, CSIS -- that is, the taxpayers of Canada -- helped organize and build Canada's leading group of white supremacists. Funding, strategy, organization support -- all of it came from the government.

Their point man was Grant Bristow. He was one of Canada's neo-Nazi leaders, who worked as an agent for CSIS. Without Bristow, Canada's neo-Nazis would have been less-organized, less prominent and more poorly led. Thanks, CSIS.

Now, I understand the need for undercover police work to stop some tough-to-fight crimes. And there might even have been a few cases where the other neo-Nazis that Bristow met were genuine threats of violence. They probably were. But there's an important moral and practical difference between sending in some infiltrator and building up the biggest neo-Nazi group in the country. At what point is the cure worse than the disease?

CSIS and Bristow didn't just track potentially violent criminals. They engaged in political dirty tricks. They attempted to take over the Reform Party when it was in its formative years. The "discovery" -- funny how that leaked out, eh? -- that CSIS's front organization was trying to take over the Reform Party was a political embarrassment for that party, and the unfair legacy of that accusation continues even to this day. That wasn't crime-fighting; that wasn't even the more nebulous "hate-fighting". That was using a government agent and a government front to smear a political opponent that both the Tories and the Liberals of the day hated. No wonder CSIS got the green light. (The fact that Warren Kinsella's "definitive" "history" of Canada's "hate organizations" strategically omitted mention of Bristow, adding him in only to later editions once Bristow was outed, is simply more proof of the partisan infection of Bristow's mission.)

I mention all of this because that key CSIS neo-Nazi organizer, Grant Bristow, had an Op-Ed in yesterday's National Post, defending... the Canadian Human Rights Commission, its patron the Canadian Jewish Congress and even Bernie "Burny" Farber. Besides a modest recitation of how brave he was, and how brave Burny is, Bristow gave his opinion that:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has been at the forefront of the war against hate in this country for decades. I personally believe it played a key role in eviscerating Canadian hate groups in the 1980s and 1990s.

But that's simply not true. The CHRC didn't have the mandate to go after real criminals. And it certainly didn't shut down the Heritage Front -- that would have meant arresting Bristow, a CSIS agent himself. The Heritage Front unwound party because of its own incompetence, and largely because Bristow abandoned his leadership role there when his cover was blown. The CHRC really had nothing to do with it.

That's an obvious point to anyone who looks at the Canadian Human Rights Act itself. It doesn't deal with real acts of violence -- such as street fights, or death threats. It deals with "hate speech" on telephone lines and the Internet. That wasn't the problem with the Heritage Front -- indeed, it has never been the real "hate" problem in Canada, but a placebo for the human rights industry to noisily and showily deal with, while ignoring real threats.

Bristow knows nothing about the CHRC -- he was never a complainant under its sections; he never worked for it; in fact, the only possible relationship he has with it is as an offender of its thought crimes provision, he himself having generated an enormous amount of "hate", while undercover.

Bristow's Op-Ed -- besides being a self-serving piece of revisionist history (revisionism being something that the Heritage Front was always good at) -- conflates real crimes, crimes of violence, with "thought crimes" that the CHRC seeks to police. Whatever grains of truth lie at the bottom of Bristow's autohagiography apply to matters for real police to solve. The CHRC has no role in stopping violence. Bristow can marshall whatever "authority" he has towards discussions about policework, but his experiences in thought crimes policing are nil. If Bristow has any credibility, it's in regard to street crime, of which he has plenty of experience, not thought crimes.

But Bristow popping his head up now -- in a clearly ghost-written Op-Ed -- serves to remind us of some of the lessons of that awful CSIS experiment in neo-Nazism. Even with CSIS's police oversight, in the form of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, Bristow got out of control, and the Heritage Front started to engage in political adventures. Imagine how much worse it is at the CHRC, which has no oversight committee.

No need to imagine, actually -- you can see how contorted the CHRC has become, how self-righteous, how it violates its own laws constantly, how it has become a political weapon. Like CSIS creating Canada's biggest neo-Nazi group -- creating it, instead of fighting it! -- the CHRC has become Canada's largest disseminator of hate speech itself -- creating it, instead of fighting it. Richard Warman himself has admitted, under oath, to posting hundreds of messages on neo-Nazi websites, and other CHRC staff have also admitted to joining those neo-Nazi groups, under codenames like "Jadewarr". That's one of the reasons why the B'nai Brith renounced HRCs today -- the cure has become worse than the disease.

CSIS created Canada's biggest neo-Nazi group. The CHRC has generated more neo-Nazi hate than any other entity in Canada. You can even see examples of one "covert" neo-Nazi talking to another, each "investigating" the other. Anytime I see a conveniently-timed outburst from some racist group, especially if it's online, I immediately think of Bristow and Warman and the rest of them. (Example: the white pride "rally" of two dozen misfits in Calgary on the eve of the spectacularly embarrassing March 25th human rights tribunal hearing in Ottawa. Frankly, even Fred Phelps' looming visit to Red Deer smacks of an act of an agent provocateur.)

And Burny? He's at the heart of it. Because he need hate groups to be big and strong, if his anti-hate obsession is going to remain valid and important. (Correction: He needs impotent "hate groups", like the Heritage Front to be big and strong. There really are big and strong hate groups out there, like the Canadian Islamic Congress, but they're a little bit too big and strong for Burny to, well, do anything. When was the last time the CJC filed a "hate speech" complaint against a Jew-hating Muslim?)

There is a grotesque symbiosis between the Canadian Jewish Congress and the hate groups; they need each other, actually. The hate groups need a Jewish demon, who lives down to their worst stereotypes and prejudices. The CJC needs Nazi caricatures, to play on old wounds about the Holocaust -- not troublesome threats of a Muslim jihad.

I have copies of an old Maclean's magazine article from the 1960s in which the Grant Bristow of that day was hired by the Canadian Jewish Congress to help build the Canadian Nazi Party. Jewish money was actually used by the CJC to start a Nazi party. I'll get those scans in a useable form and try to upload them shortly. It's 40 years later, and Burny is still doing the same thing -- except that CSIS is paying the freight today.

I believe that going undercover to fight real criminals is sometimes appropriate -- subject to proper internal controls, to make sure the cure isn't worse than the disease. Those checks and balances weren't strong in Bristow's case, which is why he was able to smear the Reform Party politically. And the fact that CSIS actually built up the biggest neo-Nazi group in the country is another ethical problem. But at least SIRC, CSIS's Internal Affairs oversight committee, realized that (here's their report).

The CHRC doesn't have an internal affairs department, and as I've written before, it doesn't even have a code of ethics. That's the problem -- or one of them at least. The fact that a long-time neo-Nazi organizer like Bristow speaks out in the CHRC's defence isn't persuasive. Rather, it only points out the problems with government provocateurs like the CHRC. 

This is definitely a two-siren blog post.

The B'nai Brith, historically one of the most partisan supporters of Canada's human rights commissions, has made a dramatic break from the human rights industry, "urgently" calling for a "major overhaul" of Canada's human rights commissions. You can read the full text of their press release on the subject here.

The B'nai Brith is Canada's oldest and largest Jewish service club, dating back to 1875.

Frank Dimant, the Executive Vice-President of BB, said "we have to ensure that commissions do not become abusers of the very human rights they are charged with protecting" -- a clear shot at the HRCs' continuous violation of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, as well as their well-documented procedural abuses and corruption. The Canadian Human Rights Commission, for example, is now under four different investigations, including by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

David Matas, BB's senior legal counsel, was also quoted in their press release, pointing to several illegal and abusive traits of HRCs, including that the same complaints can be filed with multiple HRCs, as was done by the anti-Semitic Canadian Islamic Congress in their complaints against Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn. According to Matas, "Commissions cannot become avenues of harassment in which complaints are simultaneously made in several jurisdictions. The remedy is to introduce rules that will allow for one jurisdiction only."

Matas also suggested deep re-education for the HRCs' corrupt censors, accusing them of ignorance and anachronism. “The remedy for ignorance is education and training. Investigators must be required to undertake compulsory in-house courses that meet these needs. They must always be able to distinguish between hate and protected political speech," he added. That's a pretty clear shot at political censors like Richard Warman and Dean Steacy, the latter of whom actually testified that free speech is not a Canadian value -- despite its entrenchment as a "fundamental freedom" in our Charter of Rights, our Bill of Rights, and our inherited unwritten U.K. constitutional corpus. 

Finally, Matas called for costs to be awarded against clear nuisance litigants, like the CIC and the Jew-bashing imam Syed Soharwardy, who simply walked away from his Alberta HRC complaint about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, after saddling taxpayers with $500,000 in costs, and me with nearly $100,000 in costs (another, identical complaint, continues against me.)

Matas said: “Costs must be levied against those whose clear aim is to abuse the system by launching attacks designed to harass bona fide respondents. This would be a deterrent against those who deliberately seek to hijack and corrupt the human rights system in pursuit of their own ideological bent.”

Again, you can see the entire release here.

This is enormous, because it ends the false unanimity amongst Canada's "Official Jews" in support of HRCs. As I've written here, most real Jews are not for censorship; it's just the personal obsession of a few "Professional Jews", like Bernie "Burny" Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and Leo Adler of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

It's not surprising to me that B'nai Brith was the first to bolt the troika of Jewish groups that has turned a blind eye to the HRCs' corruption. As I wrote several months ago, as the HRCs continue to beclown themselves in the public square, those who are allied with them will start to incur political damage, especially with this Conservative government. (The CJC, with its impeccable Liberal connections, doesn't much care.) But I don't think the B'nai Brith's about-face was done to please the government; I think it was done in response to the B'nai Brith's own constituency: grassroots, severely normal, Canadian Jews.

Unlike the CJC, and certainly the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the B'nai Brith actually has active members, and local branches across the country, made up of volunteers. They're like the Jewish Rotary Club -- normal. They're not a hot-house of professional political lobbyists like Burny, who has his own political agenda, and is using the CJC's name and reputation to prosecute his own hobby-horses. Grassroots Jews know that the real threat in 2008 isn't a handful of teenaged kids talking tough about being Nazis in some website fantasy -- really, the political equivalent to an online fantasy role playing video game. The real threat is a wave of radical Islam both internationally and here in Canada -- including the CJC's new ally, the Canadian Islamic Congress. The B'nai Brith understands -- as David Matas makes crystal clear -- that the Canadian Islamic Congress is an illiberal, abusive, human rights-violating enemy of Canada and enemy of the Jews. The CJC? Well, the CJC's newest legal committee member, Warren Kinsella, actually gave help and advice to the Canadian Islamic Congress. I'm guessing that if a B'nai Brith officer tried that, he'd be fired the next day.

I am excited that the B'nai Brith has so publicly broken ranks with the rest of the Professional Jews, and has clearly accused not only the Canadian Islamic Congress of harrassment, but has taken pretty dead aim at the CHRC and its investigators, too.

But, even amidst my enthusiasm, I must still acknowledge some depressing realities:

1. The B'nai Brith remains an intervenor against Mark Lemire in the Warman v. Lemire nuisance suits\ that is clearly as abusive as anything the Canadian Islamic Congress has filed;

2. In that Lemire case, the B'nai Brith's lawyers have conducted themselves in lock-step with the CJC and the CHRC, including supporting the section 13 thought crimes provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

3. The B'nai Brith has stopped short of calling for the abolition of section 13. In other words, they have not taken that final step of realizing that censorship is not a Jewish value, it's not healthy for a liberal democracy, and it has only served to discredit the B'nai Brith -- and make anti-Semitic nobodies into glamourous international celebrities.

Still, this is a huge step -- the first and hardest step. The B'nai Brith has announced today that they no longer drink the human rights industry kool-aid. They're not going to continue turning a blind eye to the corruption and abuse that's rampant in the industry.

I expect two things will happen:

1. The human rights industry will respond with execration, demonizing B'nai Brith and Dimant and -- as Kinsella usually does -- accusing them of being supporters of Holocaust deniers and white supremacists. I know that sounds nuts, but ad hominem attacks are really all the intellectually bankrupt HRC industry has left.

2. I also expect that real Jews, normal Jews, grassroots Jews, Jews who lead normal lives -- as opposed to the Official Jews, the Jews Who are Jews for a Living -- will respond with enthusiasm, and that the B'nai Brith will attract both money and people away from the CJC.

I hope that the B'nai Brith will find its new path so rewarding -- intellectually, morally and politically -- that it will, in time, take the final step and acknowledge that the section 13 "thought crimes" law is unsalvageable, and should be abolished altogether.

Why don't you take a moment and send Frank Dimant, BB's boss, a letter of encouragement. Understand how hard it must have been for him to repudiate decades of collusion with the human rights industry. Wish him well in the weeks ahead, when he'll be abused by his spurned lovers in the HRCs, and the dhimmis in the CJC. And tell him that he speaks for Canadians -- Jewish and Gentile -- and for Canadian (and Jewish) values of true civil rights much more than the corrupt poseurs at the HRCs.

You can e-mail Dimant here.

(UPDATE: I have re-filed and re-served a slightly revised Statement of Defence. It is identical in all substantive regards; the changes are clerical. The old version has been replaced by the new version in the links below.)

Today my Toronto lawyers served my Statement of Defence in response to Richard Warman’s lawsuit against me and six other defendants. You can see my defence here.

Warman’s lawsuit itself is here, and here are the defences of my co-defendants Connie and Mark Fournier, Kate McMillan and Kathy Shaidle and the National Post and Jonathan Kay. I’m the last to file.

My approach is a bit different than the others -- it's a little more fact-packed. Warman's suit is political, and it's part of what he calls his campaign of "maximum disruption". In other words, it's a nuisance suit. It's part of the "lawfare" being waged against me by the human rights industry in response to my criticisms of it. And that, in turn, began when I decided not to surrender to the two radical Muslim complaints against me at the Alberta Human Rights Commission, for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed back in 2006.

In many ways, the lawsuits filed against me by Richard Warman and Giacomo Vigna, and the one threatened by Warren Kinsella, are distractions from the main fight: radical Islam, and its use of our Western legal tools to censor criticism of Islamic fascism. Those three antagonists certainly don't seem, at first blush, to have anything to do with my publication of the Danish cartoons 900 days ago.

But in another sense, their nuisance suits -- and the Canadian human rights industry from which they emanate -- are the necessary domestic partners in the foreign jihad against Canada. They're what Lenin called the "useful idiots of the West". Warman, Vigna and Kinsella probably don't even agree with radical Islam -- though Kinsella has dabbled in it, by giving advice and help to the anti-Semitic Canadian Islamic Congress. But they are defenders of (and in Warman's case, a leading participant in) Canada's abusive, corrupt human rights system that has been so effectively hijacked by radical Islam.

Of course, many others have hijacked Canada's HRCs, too -- radical jihadists are merely the latest and most dangerous. HRCs have been censoring, fining, gagging and even jailing their critics for 30 years. They are no longer a shield protecting our rights, they're a sword to abuse our rights, especially our freedom of speech and thought. 

Read the defence for yourself. Some of the material will be old news to regular readers of this blog; some of it will be new.

My defence refers to many of Warman's bigoted posts that he made as a member of neo-Nazi websites. You can see dozens of those posts here. I also refer to Warman's involvement with the violent ARA. You can see photos of one of the events referred to in my defence here.

There are several ways to fight a defamation claim, and I'm using many of them. Truth, fair comment, etc. are all defences. I've also pointed out that Warman has let hundreds of criticisms similar to mine go unchecked on the Internet and even in mainstream publications like Maclean's, to focus on his prefered targets for "maximum disruption" -- me and other leading conservative bloggers.

But I've also looked at Warman's reputation and said, essentially: you're suing me because I reported that you wrote an anti-Black comment on a website, using a false name? But you've already admitted, under oath, to writing hundreds of anti-Black, anti-Semitic and anti-gay comments on neo-Nazi websites under false names!

I've also pointed out that Warman has issued or threatened literally dozens of defamation lawsuits over the years -- including some since he sued me and my co-defendants. Again, how can you go to court claiming that your reputation was damaged, when you've written -- in your own hand! -- that your reputation has been devastated again and again and again, both before and since, by others?

The answer, of course, is that the lawsuit isn't logical, or serious. It's a nuisance suit. I believe he thought the defendants would each crumble -- the National Post because they already apologized to him, and me and the other bloggers because we're not wealthy. I don't think Warman ever counted on the blogosphere -- and not just the conservative blogosphere, but everyone who cares about freedom of speech -- chipping in to help us with the costs of our defence.  

I won't write any more now, because there's plenty of reading in the defence itself. What do you think of it?

It wasn't cheap; if you want to help chip in, please do, by clicking on the PayPal button below.

Thanks again. I promise to keep fighting.

P.S. Thanks to all of the volunteer researchers from around the world! 

"This organization is not a registered non-profit organization.  Donations to this organization are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes."

 

I've just made my 500th blog entry this year. It's been an exciting run; checking out my visitor stats, my biggest single day was June 3 when I live-blogged Mark Steyn's trial, and had 47,000 page loads in 24 hours. I didn't have my stats program in place for the first three days after I uploaded my YouTube videos back in January, and I suspect those were busy days, too.

I forgot to mark the one millionth unique visitor to my site, which happened a couple of months ago. I'm pleased that the site typically gets five to ten thousand unique visitors a day, depending on what I write about -- and who links to me! I find it encouraging that about half of my daily visitors are the "usual suspects" -- according to my stats package, they're return visitors, some of whom have visited my site as many as 300 times.

I think I know why: they want to know how the story is going to end.

Will Canada shuck off its politically correct human rights commissions, and re-embrace our heritage of freedom? Or will we continue to slouch into the soft tyranny of state censorship? I feel optimistic about how things are going in the court of public opinion, but we still haven't seen any meaningful actions from legislators.

What the courts will do is an interesting question -- especially in the wake of a recent liberty-oriented ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada. But that kind of reform is too slow for me.

I decided to pop by my YouTube page to check those stats, too. I haven't uploaded any videos there since January, but the site still has momentum, clocking up to 500 new views a day. YouTube has added a statistics program of its own, which includes demographic information like age, sex and geographical location of my viewers. My typical YouTuber is a 45-year-old male from Canada. That sounds about right.

My blog hasn't just been a way for me to spread my ideas; it's been a great feedback device. According to my comment software, Haloscan, my reader comments have increased from 1,500/month in January to more than 3,000/month in June. I think that's great -- and I try to let as many comments on as I can, though I do delete a few that could cause me unneccesary grief in my various court cases.

Needless to say, without the generous support of my readers, I'd have been roadkill by now. Only through the combination of the blog, YouTube and PayPal have I been able to survive the onslaught of "lawfare" that has been waged against me, first by radical Muslims like Syed Soharwardy and the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities, and then by the permanent human rights commission industry. I imagine that I'd have been crushed by now by their many legal actions had this all happened to me ten or even five years ago. George Orwell wondered if technology would enslave us or liberate us; in my case, it's saved me from would-be tyrants. So far, at least!

This is a good time for me to acknowledge with thanks my volunteer webmaster, who has helped me these past six months with everything from providing the camera which shot those now famous videos, to helping me upload them to YouTube, to setting up my Google Adsense and generally fixing what sometimes goes wrong in a busy blog. Stephen Taylor, the co-founder of the Blogging Tories, has helped me out since January without any compensation -- or even any public thanks. His knowledge and expertise have helped immensely with taking this content and using the social media tools of the Internet to find a huge audience. Stephen's the kind of guy I can contact at 3 a.m., and he's always happy to help. Here’s how to get in touch with Stephen if you have some PR work that needs doing in a smart, Web 2.0 way. I’m sure he'd make a killing if he ever went into the PR business – I just hope he keeps doing his work for "the cause", too!

Luiza Ch. Savage has a large story about Islamic "lawfare" in the new Maclean's magazine, pegged to the meeting of the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus that I attended earlier this month.

She starts with an anecdote from that briefing that is startling, even more now that I read it, as opposed to when I was right there:

Asma Fatima, a petite, bespectacled Pakistani diplomat in Washington, sat at the front of a crowded Capitol Hill hearing room on July 18, carefully considering whether a man seated a few places to her left on the panel should be jailed. The occasion was a panel discussion convened by a group of congressmen to educate their colleagues on the issue of religious freedom, and the man was Canadian Ezra Levant, who in February 2006 republished Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in his now-defunct magazine the Western Standard, which resulted in, among other things, two complaints of “discrimination” before the Alberta human rights commission. One complaint was withdrawn, but the other continues. If it is upheld, Levant could face a large fine, a lifetime order not to talk about “radical Islam” disparagingly, and be forced to issue an apology. If Levant does not comply with these orders, he could be imprisoned for contempt of court.

Fatima tried to find the right words to explain the depth of the emotions at stake. "The cartoon issue really, really hurt Muslims around the world," she told an audience that included congressional staffers as well as officials from the departments of State, Justice, and the media, and various human rights advocates, including a pair of Buddhist monks in bright robes. "There are certain things that should not be said." Ultimately, though, Fatima concluded that a journalist should be, as she put it "off the hook." Her government has not been so generous.

Pakistan and the other nations that have banded together in the Organization of the Islamic Conference have been leading a remarkably successful campaign through the United Nations to enshrine in international law prohibitions against "defamation of religions," particularly Islam. Their aim is to empower governments around the world to punish anyone who commits the "heinous act" of defaming Islam. Critics say it is an attempt to globalize laws against blasphemy that exist in some Muslim countries — and that the movement has already succeeded in suppressing open discussion in international forums of issues such as female genital mutilation, honour killings and gay rights.

...The fact that the resolutions keep passing, and that UN officials now monitor countries' compliance, could help the concept of "defamation of religions" become an international legal norm, said Livingstone, noting that when the International Court of Justice at The Hague decides what rises to the level of an "international customary law," it looks not to unanimity among countries but to "general adherence." "That's why these UN resolutions are so troubling," she said. "They've been passed for 10 years."

The anti-defamation campaign is itself part of a larger agenda to reshape the understanding of human rights being advanced by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of more than 50 states promoting Muslim solidarity and co-operation in economic, social, and political affairs. The organization was founded and is largely funded by Saudi Arabia, a monarchy ruled under strict religious laws, where women, religious minorities and gay people are subject to various forms of discrimination and human rights abuses.

...The religious defamation laws urged by the resolutions rely on subjective emotional reactions and are therefore easy to abuse. "We don't want a jurisprudence of hurt feelings," said Wu. Levant calls the anti-defamation campaign a "soft jihad" — an attempt to advance Islamic law around the world, not through violence but through Western legal channels. "If an army came to our shores saying give up equal rights for women and your freedom of speech, we would defend ourselves," Levant told Maclean's after the briefing. "But when lawyers and lobbyists come, we are confused."

I commend the entire article to you. In a country like Canada, which too often glamourizes foreign court rulings, it's particularly dangerous. Our laws are increasingly being written at the U.N. -- and in Riyadh. 

Who do you think wrote the following criticism of the CBC's coverage of Canada's human rights commissions censoring free speech?

...it does strike me as a significant gap in coverage that, first, the Levant proceedings were not mentioned, at a minimum, by CBC.ca and were not covered by the national radio and television services. Similarly, there was little coverage of the Steyn complaint [on the CBC] before Mr. Murphy’s opinion piece. Whatever one may think of Mr. Murphy’s opinion, the item clearly highlighted the clash between free expression and the society’s perceived need to protect its citizens from harm.

...Whatever one’s opinion, it strikes me that coverage of these two cases would have enhanced our knowledge of the issues in play."

The author of this criticism, to my surprise, is the CBC's ombudsman, Vince Carlin. You can read the full text here.

Carlin wrote this in reply to a complaint by the anti-Semitic Canadian Arab Federation, which had complained about "Islamophobia" at the CBC. Even al Jazeera doesn't believe that -- they use the CBC as their farm team, hiring away such top CBC talent as Avi Lewis and Tony Burman.

Carlin's reply was written at the end of March, more than two months after the HRC story went big on the Internet, and more than a month after it really broke through into the mainstream media. He points out that the CBC's silence on such an interesting and important subject was strange indeed, and that the CBC had plans to remedy it.

They certainly have, in my opinion. CBC Sunday did a large segment on the matter, which aired twice. The National did at least one story on the subject. And Rex Murphy raised the issue on the year-end edition of The National's "At Issue" panel as the most under-reported story of the year. I think they've made up for their slow start.

I should say that CTV has been excellent on the subject, too, particularly Mike Duffy, who has had Mark Steyn (and me) on his show on several occasions, and Robert Fife did some good digging on the Internet hacking story, too.

To my surprise, Global hasn't done a lot on the issue, and I'm not sure why.

It's summer now, so most political journalists are on a break. But when fall comes and the country's political class goes back to work, I'm sure we'll see plenty more news on the subject -- especially if the Alberta Human Rights Commission announces that they're finally going to take me to trial (after nearly 900 days of investigating and interrogating me.)

h/t LH

See update, below.

Parliament is on its extended summer holiday but news comes nonetheless of two government MPs who are opposed to the Canadian Human Rights Commission's abuses and corruption.

The first news is from John Williams, the Conservative Member of Parliament from Edmonton-St. Albert. Williams served with distinction as the chair of the Public Accounts Committee in opposition, on which he still sits as a member. Interestingly, he also chairs the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption. You can see their English website here. Williams is a mild-mannered man, self-effacing, and certainly no media hound. But he is deadly serious about uncovering waste and corruption. If I were the CHRC, I would be terrified that I had caught Williams' attention.

Earlier this month, here is what Williams wrote to a constituent:

From: "Williams, John - Riding 2" <WilliJ2@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 4:23 pm
Subject: FW: Canadian Human Rights Commission
To: [redacted]

Reply to constituency offrice
  
July 8, 2008
  
Sent via email:  [redacted]
Ms. [redacted]
  
Dear Ms. [redacted],
  
Thank you very much for your email and I apologize for the tardiness of my reply.

Like you, I do not have great appreciation of the Canada Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and their tactics.  I have attached a column by Mr. Jonathan Kay which appeared in the National Post which pretty well says it all.

The CHRC have a role to play in our society but there is no doubt that they have gone beyond their mandate.

Thank you again for writing to me.

Yours truly,
  
John G. Williams
Member of Parliament

The article Williams attached to his e-mail was this one, by Jonathan Kay, pointing out the CHRC's abusive tactics.

Rick Casson is the Conservative MP from Lethbridge. He is the chair of the Commons National Defence Committee, and is an associate member of the Justice and Human Rights Committee, amongst others. He sent this memo to constituents who were upset about the CHRC, mentioning the government's motion to convene a Justice Committee investigation into the abuses of the CHRC, and asking constituents to contact the rest of the committee to support that investigation. He writes:

Personally, I am in support of Mr. Dykstra's motion, and I ask that you forward your comments to the members of the Justice Committee, who will be voting on this motion.

Neither Williams nor Casson could be described as "wild-eyed" MPs. Words like "deliberate" and "understated" and "considered" come to mind. The fact that each of them has seen fit to criticize the CHRC, that Williams has favourably reviewed Kay's dramatic Op-Ed, and that Casson is actually directed voters to lobby the Justice Committee, is all the more encouraging.

Reforming -- or even abolishing -- the CHRC is no longer a radical idea when men like Williams and Casson say what they've said this month.

Summer is a slow time in politics. But the CHRC's infamy is well-enough publicized that it's now become conventional wisdom.

UPDATE: I forgot to invite you to send a note of encouragement and support to these two men. You can e-mail John Williams here, and e-mail Rick Casson here. And if your MP hasn't weighed in on this matter yet, you can reach him or her using this directory.

 

Yesterday I wrote about the conviction of a Muslim supremacist named Mustafa Taj, who attacked a 16-year-old Jewish girl in Calgary, violently beating her and her friends, and even throwing one of them onto the train tracks.

Taj was sentenced two days ago in Calgary.

The Canadian Jewish Congress had nothing to say about this real act of violence -- it prefers tackling Internet websites that say rude things, rather than genuine street thugs who actually hurt Jews.

One of my blog's readers sent this note to the CJC's spin doctor:

UPDATE: see news here.

In 1979, John Taylor was the first Canadian convicted of "hate speech" offences under section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Taylor, a kooky Nazi sympathizer, set up a phone answering machine with anti-Semitic messages on it, and handed out pamphlets telling people to call. He was convicted, and when he refused to change his answering machine message, he was sentenced to a year in jail. Taylor -- then in his seventies -- served nine months. Here's the Wikipedia entry on him, which is more or less accurate.

So nine months in the clink for... having a rude answering machine message.

Fast forward to 2006. A Muslim immigrant named Mustafa Taj approached four teenagers at a subway station in Calgary. He demanded of them, "who's Jewish?" When sixteen-year-old Nichola Cordata said "me", Taj said "I'm Muslim and hate Jews" and slapped her face and pulled her hair. Cordata's friends tried to help, and they were beaten, and one was thrown on the train tracks. Taj called Cordata a "Jewish piece of crap".

This week, Taj was sentenced to a year in jail, but he'll get credit for "double time served" because he has been held in remand. So he has just three months left.

I'm not sure if statutory release applies to such a short sentence; if so, he'll get out even earlier as a matter of course. And if regular parole provisions apply (I'm rusty on those), he'll be out on full parole in a month, and on day parole in just a few weeks. (If there are experienced criminal lawyers reading this, please correct me in the comments section.)

So, let's recap.

A cranky old coot sets up a phone answering machine that says anti-Semitic things. He's a harmless fool. And he serves nine months in jail.

A Muslim serial criminal beats up a Jewish girl and her friends because she's Jewish. He gets a three month sentence, on top of a few months in remand. He'll be out in a month.

If only John Taylor was a "Muslim youth", instead of a cranky Nazi wannabe! Then the Canadian Jewish Congress and the rest of the "human rights" establishment would have ignored him.

I clicked on the CJC's website today, to see what they have to say about this. Cue crickets chirping. [See update here.] I'm sure the CJC's Bernie "Burny" Farber and Warren Kinsella will have something to say when they get back from their romantic lunch with the Canadian Islamic Congress. 

You see, it's hard to take on violent Muslims. It's politically incorrect. It actually takes work -- not just sitting in front of a computer screen. And it's dangerous -- look what happened to Theo van Gogh.

Better to chase after some ageing, impotent Nazis denying the last Holocaust, than the young, violent Muslim radicals planning the next one.

Here's Barbara Kay's excellent Op-Ed from today's National Post, about the soft jihad of lawfare. Lawfare, of course, is the hijacking of Western legal processes by Islamic radicals. It's no accident that the human rights complainants against Maclean's magazine, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and the Western Standard and me were all filed by foreign-born jihadis.

Lawfare doesn't work without collusion of what Vladimir Lenin called "the useful idiots of the West". In Lenin's day, those were Western "intellectuals" who willingly, even eagerly, engaged in anti-Western propaganda, espionage and sabotage for the Soviet Union, usually without compensation except for their own misguided feelings of moral righteousness. In today's lawfare, the foreign-born jihadis are aided by domestic leftist busybodies, usually in the "human rights" industry.

It's a bizarre combination: secular leftists -- for whom, for example, sexual liberty is their political signature issue -- teaming up with the kind of medieval brutes. Radical Islam would ban abortion, put women in personality-obliterating niqabs, and kill homosexuals -- in other words, they're everything the Left abhors. The radical leftists who inhabit Canada's human rights commissions would never do the bidding of any other religion -- they love to persecute Christians. But when a second-rate imam issues a fatwa, they hop to it, using our tax dollars and government bureaucracies. Just read this crap, filed against me by Pakistani-born imam Syed Soharwardy. If such a semi-literate piece of theocracy were to be filed by any other group, it would be laughed at. In Soharwardy's case, it has been prosecuted for 900 days by 15 Alberta bureaucrats. Soharwardy abandoned his complaint this spring, but his jihadi allies in Edmonton have picked up where he left off with their own complaint.

Here are some excerpts from Kay's article:

...Ayatollah-prescribed fatwas are so pre-9/11. Nowadays, as liberal elites rush prophylactically to ward off charges of tolerating "Islamophobia," the fatwas (in all but name) against damn good books like Mark Steyn's America Alone aren't bruited in mosques; they issue forth from human rights commissioners.

An unintended but all-too-predictable danger inherent in the prosecution of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn (the latter via Maclean's magazine) was the encouraging message it would send to more fevered imaginations. As reported on his blog on Monday morning, Ezra Levant has received an anonymous e-mail death threat: "Ezra, you will be killed by my hands."

Although this is doubtless a hollow menace (real killers rarely serve notice), the sender's wish to sow fear in Levant, and by extension all journalists, is merely a cruder version of the impulse behind the human rights complaints.

...The soft jihad is gradualistic and law-abiding, but no less desirous of Islamic domination of the West than its violent counterpart. Soft jihad strategy exploits liberal discourse and weaknesses in our legal system to induce guilt about a largely mythical "Islamophobia."

The list of complaint-triggering speech offences is long in all Western countries, and ranges from the trivial to the politically existential: A decoration on a lid of ice cream distributed by Burger King offends because it resembles Allah in Arabic script; Fox Entertainment's drama 24 portrays South Americans, Bosnians, Germans and Muslims as terrorists, but only Muslims complain; a Turkish lawyer sues an Italian soccer team because the red cross on their jerseys reminds him of the Crusades.

...One way or another we must stop the fatwa industry in its tracks. Begin with removal of speech-regulation from the HRCs' legal mandate. Build on that with legislation that imposes costs and damages on litigious third parties who seek to chill journalists.

Canada should also pass legislation imitative of the U. S. Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) law, presently active in 24 U. S. states, which disallows harassment of those writing on matters of "public concern," as well as the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, a New York state initiative that will combat libel tourism.

The HRC crisis is not a tempest in a teapot. Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, says: "I don't think it's too strong to say that the [HRC] complaint against Mark Steyn is a totalitarian document."

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that Levant and Steyn are fighting for the defining ideal of Western civilization which, once lost, would spell the beginning of the end of all our other freedoms.

If Pat Condell was a Canadian, I think he'd have more human rights complaints and lawsuits than me. (It sounds like he gets more death threats than I do.) But he'd be twice as devastating to the human rights commissions. He mentions the CHRC about five minutes into the video editorial, below.

I went to Condell's YouTube homepage -- I'm frankly surprised that YouTube hasn't censored him, given their timidity -- and his videos have had literally millions of views collectively.

I don't agree with every word the man says. But that's not the point, of course. The point is that it's bracing to see a man speak so confidently and masterfully about freedom, and Western culture. The fact that millions listen to him is a sign of hope -- we're not all politically correct zombies.

 

h/t SDA and others

See update below.

An employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission has threatened me with another lawsuit, because I criticized his conduct at the CHRC.

So now the government is suing its political critics. Sorry – are we in Russia or Canada?

The CHRC staffer is Giacomo Vigna, one of the CHRC lawyers who prosecutes section 13 "hate speech" cases. And he’s also a bit of a buffoon. One day last year, he stopped an entire tribunal hearing because he said he wasn’t feeling “serene”.

Nobody could understand what he was talking about, but they stopped the trial anyways, at enormous cost to the taxpayer – the government had to pay for all of the other lawyers' costs for travelling across the country to be there. The tribunal chairman demanded a doctor’s note, which Vigna gave his solemn professional undertaking to provide. The CHRC had to drop him from the case and hire a new lawyer at great expense, because the trial couldn’t continue until Vigna kept his promise. How embarrassing.

I learned all of the above from reading a transcript of the trial. You can see the details here, for yourself, starting at page 4867. I’m not quite sure what Vigna's legal argument is. Is he disputing the facts, as captured by the court stenographer?

Just to keep track, this is the second lawsuit threatened by Vigna. And it's on top of the lawsuit already filed by Richard Warman, the former CHRC employee who remains the heaviest user of the CHRC's section 13 "hate speech" law. Out of 13 Internet cases to have gone to a full hearing, 12 of them have been Warman's. Vigna and Warman were a team at the CHRC, in fact -- Vigna was the CHRC's lawyer prosecuting Warman's complaint against Marc Lemire.

And then there's the defamation threat against me by Warren Kinsella. Kinsella has been the CHRC's lonely defender in the public square. He's friends with Warman -- they even share the same defamation lawyer against me. Kinsella is also part of the "human rights" industry himself, if marginally, having written a loving book about it. And he once gave a keynote speech to the "human rights" industry's luxurious annual convention in Banff. Nice gig.

So that's four defamation suits, all filed or threatened by members of the "human rights" industry. And then there's the two "human rights" complaints themselves (one of which was abandoned, one of which continues against me). And then there are other legal assaults (twelve of them, actually) that have been thrown at me, which I’ll describe another day.

And then there’s the odd death threat.

If that sounds excessive, you're getting the picture. It's a strategy. It's called "lawfare", and it's an attempt to smother me under so many hassles and costs that I abandon my criticism of Canada's HRCs and their abuse of real human rights, like freedom of speech.

They're not even subtle about it. Warman calls his strategy "maximum disruption". He boasts he files legal actions against his enemies just to cause them a hassle. Kinsella calls it “Kicking Ass”. Now you'll understand why I'm putting "human rights" in quotation marks when talking about them.

Instead of rebutting my criticisms, these folks think that if they just throw enough nuisance suits at me I'll pack up and leave.

Not bloody likely.

And not as long as I have the support of the blogosphere to cover my legal fees. I know that support frustrates my antagonists. See, this is the part in their fantasy where I'm supposed to crumple under the weight of their lawsuits, and beg for their forgiveness -- like so many of their previous targets have done. This isn't where I'm supposed to say "not bloody likely.”

Enough preamble. Let me show you Vigna's new legal threat. You can find it here. It was served on one of my lawyers in Toronto.

You will see that it is written entirely in French. My translation of it is here.

Vigna speaks perfect English. My lawyer is unilingually English. The words I wrote that he complained about are in English. The fact that Vigna chose to write his demand to my lawyer in French tells you that he is trying to do a little "maximum disruption" of his own. I don't dispute that Vigna technically has the legal right to file a lawsuit in Ontario in French -- though that will add some cost and hassle to my defence, which is clearly his intended effect.

But he is going much beyond that. He is writing his general correspondence – not his court pleadings, but his day-to-day communications with my lawyers – in French. He's using bilingualism as a weapon. He probably thinks he's pretty tricky. I'd say it proves my point -- he's a little off balance and a lot unprofessional, the very things he's denying in his suits. And it shows a larger sickness in the CHRC: instead of using laws like “human rights” legislation and “bilingualism” as shields to protect people, they’re being used as weapons, to battle people. They’re being abused – especially by activist-bureaucrats.

I’m not going to fisk the whole demand. I think it’s pretty clear that Vigna ought to get himself a lawyer other than himself. He’s not particularly experienced at civil litigation – he’s more used to the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel practice of prosecuting hate speech cases, where a 100% conviction rate suggests that the work isn’t particularly challenging. I’m not sure how he’ll do in a real court – where, unlike section 13 hate speech cases, truth and fair comment are defences. But even if Vigna had experience and expertise in defamation law, it’s clear that he’s -- uh, how can I phrase this – not serene enough to use good judgment in his own case.

I don’t propose to go through all of Vigna’s minutiae. But there are a few points I’d like to address.

Vigna – like so many people in the “human rights” industry – characterizes people who disagree with him as law-breakers. Either you agree with him, or you're an outlaw. In particular, he’s mad about this blog entry I made about the harassment that Vigna’s private investigator subjected my parents to. It takes an extra helping of chutzpah to harass my parents, and then threaten to sue me for complaining about that harassment, and even call my complaint itself harassment.

(I note that his private investigator, one Gaby Saliba, has sworn a false affidavit. Saliba swears that my father told him that I still live at my parents’ house. It’s hilarious in a way; I haven’t lived there since I was a teenager, and my parents kept telling the trespassing Saliba this. Saliba’s perjury makes it a little less funny. But the CHRC isn’t exactly known for its ethics.)

Vigna also complains that his antics – first his antics in the courtroom, and then his ham-fisted antics on my parents’ property – were reported elsewhere on the Internet. He says I’m acting in concert with other websites to intimidate him. Apparently, he thinks there should be some sort of publication ban when he wants to sue people. (I note that Kinsella, too, demanded that I not publicize his legal threats against me. Sorry -- I'm not interested in being threatened in secret.)

I note that one of the websites cited by Vigna is the white supremacist site, VNN. I’m a Jew. I’m not a member of white supremacist Internet communities. I don’t have any dealings with them.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear about some shocking “news” on Stormfront or VNN that just happens to justify the latest CHRC tyranny, my first thoughts are “the CHRC planted it themselves.” That’s because the secret accounts that Warman and others at the CHRC had access to were in fact used to plant hundreds of hateful messages online, and were used to entrap the CHRC’s targets. I’ve never had the access codes to a neo-Nazi website. Vigna has. It’s just creepy that he’d try to tag that on me.

I’m not going to dignify Vigna’s response with any more time. I’m going to put a top defamation lawyer on the case, and tell him to fight Vigna hard.

I'm going to make sure we subpoena all the CHRC's own records that touch on the case. Vigna is Jennifer Lynch's man. Let's get her on the record about his conduct. Let's get their internal files about why Vigna was sacked from the case. And what the whole "serenity" nonsense was really about. Vigna's direct boss, the great Ian Fine, was part of the whole "serenity now" business, too. I've debated against him. Prediction: not a strong witness.

I'm going to fight hard. Not just because it’s so obviously a nuisance suit from Vigna (two, now). Not just because it’s my right as a Canadian to criticize the government, and the on-the-job conduct of government employees like Vigna (and when they harass my parents in retaliation).

But because Vigna is part of a larger pathology: an out-of-control “human rights” industry that feels it can squash criticism, rather than have to answer to it.

Dear reader, I know you’re probably growing tired of helping me out. I’m a little tired of spending my time fighting back against such suits, too. But I know that I can’t back down. I have to fight these fights all the way to the end.

Not just to win them for my own sake, but to send a message to the HRCs that the way they bully their opponents is not acceptable. That message will be sent by the trial judge to Vigna. But I want that message to go to Vigna’s boss, Jennifer Lynch, the Chief Commissioner of the CHRC, too. She presides over a corrupt, ethically-challenged swamp, that is under investigation by the RCMP, the Privacy Commissioner, Parliament, and even an internal review. Lynch smiles for the media, and pretends she’s fine with it all – but the fact is, her own staff and former staff are her attack dogs, suing and harassing her political critics. I blame Lynch as much as I blame Vigna and Warman, for Lynch has created a corrupt corporate culture where abuse of process and vindictive lawsuits against political critics are just a normal day at the office.

My legal fights are about beating Vigna, Kinsella, Warman, etc. But they’re also about standing up to the poetically named Ms. Lynch and her petty tyranny.

If you agree with me, please click on my PayPal button. If you can help me bear my legal costs, as God is my witness I’ll keep fighting these antagonists as hard and as smart as I can.

Thanks for your help.

UPDATE: I've been asked if there is a way to contribute to my legal defence fund by snail mail, instead of by PayPal. There is -- thank you. Please send cheques marked to "May Jensen Shawa & Solomon in Trust", care of Robert Hawkes, at:

May Jensen Shawa Solomon LLP
The Lancaster Building
800, 304 - 8 Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta T2P 1C2

Thanks again.

"This organization is not a registered non-profit organization.  Donations to this organization are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes."

 

Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals and Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury have filed their defence against Richard Warman's nuisance suit. You can see their defence, drafted by Toronto lawyer Chris Ashby, here.

(Ashby's defamation work has made headlines before. Here's a story about his successful lawsuit against the CBC. Taking on the CBC with its in-house stable of lawyers is a bit of a David and Goliath exercise. I understand that, during that 5 1/2 week trial, it was just Ashby and his client on one side of the court, and six lawyers and CBC managers on the other side. Ashby won $200,000 plus costs for his client.)

But back to the case at hand. Warman's suit can be seen here, and my commentary on it at the time can be seen here.

The National Post and Jonathan Kay filed their defence, which you can see here. My commentary on it is here.

Connie and Mark Fournier of Free Dominion filed their defence here. My commentary on it is here.

I am now the only defendant who has not filed his statement of defence. I expect to do so this week.

Ashby's defence is written in pretty plain English, but allow me to point out some interesting parts.

I liked paragraph 4. Warman had sued not only Kate and Kathy, but their website addresses, too. That makes about as much sense as suing a phone number. A URL is simply a place in cyberspace. It's not a legal entity. It's just plain old weird that Warman was suing those electrons, and Ashby pointed that out.

Paragraphs 7 and 8 are good points: the nature of the blogosphere is that people can rebut and respond immediately, and blogs incorporate those changes in real time. There is a rough and tumble -- even rude -- nature to the Internet, but netiquette (and common sense) suggests that if someone complains with merit, those complaints are often incorporated. It's the whole Web 2.0 thing -- interactive. Warman knows that as well as anyone -- what with his extensive experience as a member of the Stormfront online community. When Warman went online in his various neo-Nazi personas, he interacted with other members of Stormfront, correcting them, insulting them, rebutting them, agreeing with them, plotting with them, dissing Jews and gays with them.

See here, here, here and here. Warman knew his way around the Net. But while he was comfortable chatting on neo-Nazi websites, and chastising people for not being white enough, or Nazi enough, for some reason he didn't deign to write the Internet equivalent to a "letter to the editor" to Kate or Kathy's sites correcting what he thought were their errors. Why's that?  

Paragraphs 11-15 are weird, too. Warman has sued Kathy for things she didn't write. If I'm not mistaken, our friend Jay Currie wrote some of those words, but Warman hasn't sued him. I'm not encouraging anyone to sue Jay, but it's a little bit odd that Warman has sued Kathy for Jay's remarks.

Paragraph 16 is a pretty important point, and it goes to a much larger issue than the substance of Warman's suit. Warman seeks to establish new defamation law, in the realm of the Internet. In his statement of claim, he wants the courts to hold websites legally responsible not only for what they publish, but for what they link to. By that theory, anyone on the Internet is liable for everyone on the Internet. For you are liable for everyone you link to, and they're liable for everyone they link to (and so are you, too), and so on and so on. It sets up a cascading series of infinite liability.

Fortunately, such a punitive approach to defamation and censorship is not Canadian law. Yet.

The heart of Kate and Kathy's defence is paragraphs 17 to 22. That's where they plead that what they wrote was based on true facts, and their fair comments on those facts, as part of a bona fide public debate.

Paragraph 24 is deceptively small. It claims that Warman's poor reputation isn't because of Kathy and Kate, but because of Warman's repeated postings of bigoted material. That's just a sentence in the statement of defence. I expect it will turn into a week at trial.

There's not much for me to add by way of commentary here that I didn't say when the previous four defendants filed their statements of defence. Ashby's style is efficient -- just pleading the key points. He'll be interesting to watch at trial.

I'll wait until it's filed before discussing my approach to my statement of defence. Let's just say I'm going to be a little bit more loquacious about the reputation that the plaintiff claims has been damaged.

See update, below.

I received another report from a free speechnik who attended Guy Earle's comedy benefit last night.

As regular readers will know, Earle is the comedian who has been ordered to stand trial in British Columbia for sparring with two lesbians who heckled him during a show last year. The chair of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, Heather MacNaughton -- who also chaired Mark Steyn's five-day show trial last month -- ruled that Earle and Zesty's (the nightclub he performed in) must stand trial for "discrimination" because their jokes hurt the hecklers' feelings.

Here's the report I received from last night's event, emphasis in the original:

I was at the benefit last night. I’m going to tell you what I thought, but I ask that you keep my identity strictly confidential...

 

I see [Jason Kenney's] attendance is on record: great.

  

I arrived with a donation for Mr. Earle at about 8:00. I was sorry to see there was no line up. The building was totally non-descript and one entered the basement venue via a glass door, covered with brown paper. Various comics were milling around. I had a nice chat with Guy and one other comic: I mentioned both you and Mark Steyn and they both seemed to have very little idea of your importance in all of this. E.g., I said to Guy what an honour it is to be linked to your and Steyn’s blogs where thousands of people have been made aware of his plight. He was polite but not at all excited: I honestly felt, including my discussion with him, that he doesn’t really get it. I explained that, as an observant Christian, I’d been unhappily aware of the HRCs for a couple of decades. I noted that we’re unlikely allies but that it was good that we’re fighting the illegitimate power of the state together. He was very grateful for the support, but I feel, in talking to him, another comic, at length, and watching the show, that these people don’t understand who the enemy is or how deadly serious this issue is.

 

When I had an extended conversation with one of the comics, while sipping my wine in a plastic cup, he became more and more interested. He had no clue about who you and Mark are: I said, “Get over to Ezra Levant’s blog and read ALL OF IT!” He had no clue what’s at stake—the end of democracy, period! After we talked, he said, “Now I have a much better idea about how serious this is.” And the fact that there were only about 100 people at the benefit—I was really disappointed at the puny turn out—displayed, I thought, the typical Canadian apathy to what’s really important.

 

Guy was very pleasant, very grateful for the support, interested to hear I was a Christian and that this kind of thing had been happening to Christians for some time. He was also solicitous that some of the show might offend me (nice of him!): I told him not to worry, “Christians have big shoulders about these things;-)”

 

The show, itself? Unimpressive, I’m afraid. Almost no dealing with the topic of the gulag. There was loads of smut and very unsavoury references to various bodily parts, orifices, and fluids, in the bluntest language. I found it juvenile and unfunny. I wasn’t offended, per se. It’s just that a golden opportunity to educate people—but one has to know what the ISSUE is—and to ridicule our political masters was almost entirely squandered.

 

There were all kinds of nasty, sexually explicit jabs at lesbians—lots of laughs, from lesbians too, I think!—as if they’re the enemy. Judging by the potty language and grossness of nearly every performance—for its own sake, IMO—the level of political knowledge and sophistication seemed extremely low. And at the beginning, when, Earle made a few a propos comments about freedom of speech—sorry, I can’t recall his words—[my friends and I] clapped like mad and cheered: about the only three to show any enthusiasm about this at all.

 

The crowd seemed under informed and uninvolved. They often didn’t even bother to clap for the performers: perhaps that was discernment, as most of the routines were really quite dreadful! Not witty or intelligent political commentary, which is what was needed, IMO: just juvenile, sexual filth. I altogether support their right to make fools of themselves—their T-shirts say, “It’s not illegal to be an asshole”—but I don’t see that the benefit educated anyone about what’s really going on or made fun of the HRC assholes who so richly deserve it.

 

The crowd seemed to be a group of isolates. Except for being generally friendly to the comics—the audience was probably mainly made up of their friends/relatives (but not many!)—I didn’t discern any momentum or community spirit. In general, the audience response was relatively flat and I’m quite sure that most were there for a lark. There was no feeling that we were all there with a serious purpose and a serious enemy that needs to be defeated. That (and to leave my donation) was why I’d left home last evening to visit an underground dive and listen to substandard comedy!

 

I found the experience disheartening: the usual Canadian ignorance and apathy, even as the HRC tentacles are wrapped around one’s body! These people seem to be fiddling while Canada burns. Just WHAT does it take for Canadians to wake up and fight back?  This group of threatened Canadians are still sleepwalking. They, including Guy Earle, who has obviously not been following your blog, are not informed: some soldiers they are! Very disappointing.

 

Ezra, you’re a bright light in the gathering gloom. Maybe these people will see the light: at this point, though, it seems they need to spend some time at boot camp!

 

I thought it was an interesting report. I replied:

 

It's a little bit depressing. But recall how you were when you first heard about human rights commissions -- like me, you probably didn't have any idea of the depth of the problem. I remember, clearly, that I thought the HRCs critics were nutty, and that their accusations were conspiracy theories or madness. It took me months of immersion to realize they were the sane ones!

 

So don't be too tough on these folks, who are closer to "severely normal" Canadians, in terms of political activity, than you and I are!

 

My correspondent made some good points about the apathy of the crowd. But as I mentioned in reply, most Canadians are closer to those fellow comedians than to the revved up blogosphere. My estimate is that, seven months ago, 99% of Canadians hadn't even heard of human rights commissions, and that now the figure was down to 90%. That's a spectacular success, by the way, since most people don't care about politics of any sort, even during an election campaign. The key is getting normal people to care, not just the political die-hards.

 

That's why, though I sympathize with the hassle he is going through personally, I am glad that Earle has been persecuted. Again, what is being done to him is immoral; evil, even. And I don't wish such a persecution on anyone. But if Canadians are to be targeted by these HRCs, it is better that they should target comedians like Earle, and political cartoonists, like Bruce MacKinnon at the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. That is, people who are mainstream. For decades, the HRCs were strategically smart enough only to target politically marginal people -- neo-Nazis, then Christians, and now conservatives. But going after Maclean's, and Earle, and the Herald -- that's hubris, and it will generate a backlash that would not come to the defence of more marginalized targets.

 

My correspondent's report is somewhat depressing for its description of apathy. But I'm not too alarmed. If only one or two people out of that theatre -- including Earle himself -- decides to become well-briefed and political as a result, that's a good start.

 

Earle filled a room with 100 people, mere weeks after he was ordered to stand trial. I'm not sure if my case -- which is now a cause celebre -- could have filled a room with 100 people when it first began.

 

Last night was a baby step in the right direction.

 

UPDATE: A commenter points out that Earle's rant in response to the lesbian hecklers was quite rude, and it was for these very rude remarks that he's being sued. This doesn't weaken my point at all. The phrase "free" speech means that speech is free from other factors that would limit it -- including other values or dogmas that may also be worthwhile. It means that speech can trump politeness, or correctness. That's the whole point here. Earle wouldn't have been charged with "discrimination" if he hadn't offended some other value -- in this case, someone else's standard of politeness in the face of two very rude women (who threw drinks at him). That he chose to pick on them for their sexuality may be offensive; but it does not erode his right to free speech.

 

We have to stand up for the hard cases, for they set the precedent for the rest of us. We didn't stand up strongly enough for the "neo-Nazis" who were charged with hate speech, so now we have 30 years of jurisprudence being used against Maclean's, and me, and Earle, etc.

 

Canadians understand the importance of giving rights to everyone, including odious people, when it's in the context of violent criminals. We all knew that Paul Bernardo was guilty. But we gave him all the rights of our constitution anyways. We didn't void those rights because we hate what he had done. I don't know why there is a disconnect for the rights of political criminals.

 

My correspondent who was at the benefit made it clear that she didn't find the evening particularly funny. (My other correspondent last night mentioned one funny skit.) If we only believe in free speech for comedians we think are funny, then we're not really for free speech at all. It's frustrating how often this has to be clarified for Canadians, who think that other values -- like "compromise" or "niceness" -- trump free speech. But then it's not free speech.

See updates, below.

Tonight at 10:30 p.m. MT I received this comment posted to my blog:

ezra you will be killed by my hands

The IP address from which the comment was made is 72.137.199.43

I'm not a good Internet sleuth; I think that's a Rogers account. That's all I know. But I'd like to know more.

Who is he? Or she?

Is it a serious threat? It's anonymous. Is it the rant of a timid do-nothing? Or is it a warning from someone who is serious -- and would move from threats to actions?

What's his beef? Is it my opposition to human rights commissions -- maybe even written by someone who works for them? Is it my opposition to radical Islam -- written by some jihadi?

I'm not sure. But instead of being afraid, I think I'm going to turn it into a win-win situation for all of us.

Be the first to answer the above questions, and I'll give you $1,000 in prize money.

I think it will be an adventure -- I just hope it ends well!

P.S. For a moment, I thought the threat was an allusion to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal's order that McDonald's employees in Vancouver no longer have to wash their hands when preparing food. But I don't think that's what my correspondent meant by "killed by my hands". (That's an attempt at humour.)

UPDATE: Here are some more clues for you. I searched for the above IP address within my blog's statistics program, and I came up with the information here. The user is in Toronto, the host name is "CPE001217af1113-CM00195eebd328.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com" and the ISP is called "Rogers Cable Inc. Wlfdle" I don't know what Wlfdle means -- do you?

UPDATE 2: Thanks to everyone for your interesting comments! I've learned a little bit about how the Internet works. Fewer pipes and tubes than I had thought; more switches.

Seriously, though, I'm grateful for the information and advice. I have communicated with Rogers in some detail, as well as with two police forces -- one out there, and one over here. I think we've probably gleaned everything we can from the existing information. Everything else will have to come from Rogers itself.

I had thought that, perhaps, the perpetrator would have left other footprints -- namely, the same IP address in an e-mail to someone else, or in a comment to someone else's blog.

We'll have to wait to learn the final facts from Rogers and the police. You can be assured that I'll keep you posted.

I imagine the perp is one of two species: a foolish blowhard, who didn't think he could be traced; or a more serious activist from whom violence is more of a likelihood. Either species ought to be exposed. When I learn more, I'll make a proper decision about what to do -- as will, I'm sure, the police, and Rogers, too. 

I just received an e-mail from the Guy Earle comedy benefit, on right now in Toronto. Jason Kenney, the federal cabinet minister and Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, is there, along with his Director of Communications, Alykhan Velshi.

I have no information about the event itself -- whether the comics are funny; how political they are; what Earle himself said by way of introduction, etc. Those will be interesting details, and I'll publish them as I get them.

But the fact that a federal cabinet minister has attended this dissident event, in support of free speech and in solidarity with a Canadian who has been targeted by the illiberal human rights racket, is impressive to me.

I remain optimistic that the government will move from symbolic gestures, such as Kenney's appearance tonight, to substantive actions, such as gutting the Canadian Human Rights Act's section 13 -- the political censorship provision. It was the B.C. analog of that section that has trapped Guy Earle, and trapped me, too, in Alberta, for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed nearly three years ago.

UPDATE 1: I'm reminded somewhat roughly by a commenter that the actual complaint proceeding against Earle is not for "discrimination" in his communication, but "discrimination" in his "provision of a service". That's even nuttier. The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will have a hearing about whether Earle's "service" -- how he responds to hecklers -- meets their standards of non-discrimination. It's actually more absurd than a section 13 "hate speech" case, if that's possible. Will will now have "jurisprudence" about the right and wrong way for comedians to reply to heckles.

Fire. Them. All.

UPDATE 2: I'm told the event was full to capacity. I inquired about the political nature of the jokes -- because entertainers often show their political bravery by attacking, oh, George W. Bush, rather than anyone who might actually hurt them, Theo van Gogh-style. I'm told the comedians were not in that cliched rut at all.

There were quite a few lesbian jokes -- not surprising, given that Earle's persecutors are lesbians.

There was a hilarious routine about a Chinese guy named... Raymond Chan who loved playing World of Warcraft and whose pet peeves included... women with opinions. I don't know if that comic knows about the Liberal politician Raymond Chan, but I'm told it was the funniest segment of the night, either way.

I'm told the feeling in the room was pretty laid back -- and there was even a heckler, though he wasn't part of any official victim's group, so it's unlikely he'll file a human rights complaint about how he was handled.

Earle himself was the last comic standing, and he delivered a slightly longer routine than the rest. The event ended with him receiving a standing ovation.

It sounds like a great evening -- some good laughs, a little bit of bad behaviour and dissident comedy, and some encouragement and financial support for a comedian who is just the lastest victim of Canada's politically correct HRCs. It sounds like I missed a great night.

I hope that the 40 comedians who participated go forth and add a few jokes about human rights commissions to their schtick. They'd reach a whole group of Canadians who probably haven't heard about HRCs before -- and I'd be those 40 would be as persuasive advocates as any Op-Ed writer or politican.

Let the denormalization of the HRCs continue. 

If any reader was there, feel free to expand on this report in the comments section.

Rex Murphy fires another broadside at British Columbia's laughable Human Rights Tribunal, and its decision to have a full-blown hearing into the case of comedian Guy Earle, and his response to two drunk hecklers. Rex also mentions the cartoon complaint being prosecuted by Alberta's human rights commissions against me, a 900-day, 15-bureaucrat investigation that continues with no end in sight.

Some excerpts:

...Human-rights commissions are good on cartoons. The one in Alberta, for example, has been savaging Ezra Levant's peace of mind for almost three years because his now-departed magazine published the famous Mohammed cartoons. Chewing on his bank account too. The still unfinished quarry into whether the genial and courageous Mr. Levant is an Islamaphobic hate-monger has so far cost him almost $100,000. Cost to the two complainants so far: zilch.

Incidentally, one of them, Syed Soharwardy, withdrew his complaint 21/2 years in. Did he get a tap on the wrist for instigating so costly and disturbing a process and then – on a whim? on a soul-awakening? out of boredom? – cancelling it? Of course not.

This is one of the less-noticed glories of the Canadian human-rights insanity. Complainants float unburdened like puffballs in a summer breeze – blowing whither they list. Targets – Catholic bishops, Catholic magazines, fundamentalist pastors, genital surgeons, heckled comedians, school boards, fast-food joints, school-prom nights, Maclean's magazine – empty bank machines and call in lawyers while the “leisurely” process unfurls in an eerie, Kafkaesque slow motion.

...And out in B.C., the Case of the Heckled Comic and the Drink-Tossing Lesbians has intervened and obviously offers a more diverting stew. From national newsmagazines to amateur night at the local comedy store, there is nowhere your fearless human-rights commission does not tread.

Incidentally, what are the human-rights protocols governing stand-up comedians in their delicate dance with drink-lubricated hecklers – whether said hecklers be lesbians, heterosexuals or, as is increasingly the case, of indeterminate orientation? Has the International Criminal Court had time to give this explosive area a once-over? Will Don Rickles – finally – be arrested on some international warrant? Is Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on some human-rights watch list?

...the comedian in the heckling lesbian case is holding a fundraiser in Toronto tonight [Saturday night].

...They should also avoid any jokes involving sex, religion, politics or global warming. Outside those boundaries, I think they're safe. Chicken crossing the road jokes are safe. Assuming, of course, the fowl pedestrian is free-range and it doesn't meet a vegetarian halfway over. Absent those elements and I fear cries of chickenphobia will rear their squawking heads.

The really funny joke in all of this, however, is not going to come of out the mouth of any comedian. It is the dreary fact that comedians are the latest targets of Canada's human-rights commissions. Did you ever in your wildest dreams see heckling as the subject of a human-rights inquiry?

The mirthless sitting in adjudication over the mirth-makers, telling Canadians what they're allowed to laugh at.

Fire. Them. All.

see update, below

Lindsay Blackett, the freshman Alberta MLA who is the Minister for Culture and Community Spirit (I'm not kidding), has finally responded to the avalanche of mail he received when his government sentenced Rev. Stephen Boissoin to a lifetime ban on preaching his Christianity. He supports the ban.

More than two months ago, Blackett's fellow Tory, Lori Andreachuk, was the human rights commissioner who issued a Stalinist order telling Rev. Boissoin that he not only was banned -- for life -- from criticizing homosexuality, even in sermons or private e-mails, but that he had to positively renounce his faith in the local newspaper.

(You can read my analysis of that ruling, here.)

Andreachuk's unconstitutional ruling wasn't some independent decision, at arms length from Blackett's government. The Government of Alberta positively sent in a lawyer to argue in favour of convicting Rev. Boissoin. It's the only case I've ever read where the government sent in a lawyer to tell the human rights commission what to do. And they did it, with gusto. You can read my analysis here.

After thinking very hard about all this, Blackett's office sent out its replies today. Here it is. I've highlighted a few parts:

-----Original Message-----
From: CCS Minister [mailto:CCS.Minister@gov.ab.ca]
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 2:17 PM
To: [redacted]
Subject: Reply from the Minister of Culture and Community Spirit [redacted]

Dear Mr. [redacted]:
 
Thank you for your recent e-mail regarding the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission.  

Every Albertan has the right to live free from discrimination. The Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission has a two-fold mandate: to foster equality and reduce discrimination.  It fulfills this mandate through public education initiatives and the resolution and settlement of complaints of discrimination.

If Albertans feel that their rights are not being respected, they can discuss their concerns with the Commission. The Commission is required to accept all complaints that fall within its jurisdiction.  A large number of these complaints are resolved by meeting with the two parties and trying to mediate a solution.  For others that can't be resolved, there is an established process in place to address the concerns raised that provides an opportunity for both parties to be heard.

The Albertans Human Rights and Citizenship Commission operates independently of government and its work is guided by the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act.  As an elected official, I do not become involved in the day-to-day activities of the Commission, nor do I comment on individual cases.  The Act protects people from discrimination in a number of areas including publications and notices, employment, services and tenancy. Within these areas, Albertans are protected on grounds such as race, colour, ancestry, disability, gender and religious belief.  The Act includes a variety of appeal provisions to ensure that the best decision is made in each case.  

Government recognizes the importance of reviewing all legislation from time to time to ensure that it is meeting its intended purpose.  We will be taking your views into account as we examine Alberta's human rights policies and legislative framework to ensure it supports all Albertans.

Thank you again for writing and sharing your ideas. 

Sincerely, 

Lindsay Blackett
Minister of Culture and Community Spirit
MLA, Calgary-North West

I despise letters like that. They're what the Brits call bumf. They don't answer the question -- they seek to distract, daze and confuse. But they're never effective. I can sum up the above letter more succinctly: "We don't care what you think, and don't respect you enough to say so honestly. So we'll give you a bucket full of cliches and buzzwords. Go pound sand."

The letter claims that religious views are protected in Alberta. But that's clearly not true. Rev. Boissoin is specifically ordered not to preach sermons about homosexuality. He's been ordered to publicly renounce his faith. To say that his religious views are protected is a falsehood.

The letter also claims that the government doesn't interfere with particular cases. Again, that is not true. The government sent in a lawyer, named David Kamal, to argue not only in support of the law, but its application against Rev. Boissoin. Kamal argued -- on behalf of the Tory cabinet -- that Rev. Boissoin's real religious rights should be trumped by the fake "right" not to be offended. Blackett's letter is a lie.

I'm sure that the censors at the Alberta human rights commission are delighted with Blackett's letter. It's carte blanche for them to continue their anti-Christian persecution. Remember, only a few years ago, they pursued Bishop Fred Henry for daring to write a letter to his diocese about same-sex marriage.

Given Kamal's intervention against Rev. Boissoin, I suppose Blackett's letter was never really in much doubt. Still, there was an intervening fact: the HRC's Stalinist order gagging Rev. Boissoin received international attention. I suppose the Alberta Tories just don't care -- with a big majority in the Legislature, and the next election probably not until 2012, why should they care?

I was starting to think that Alberta's HRC would drop the charges against me, because of the negative publicity they would receive if they took me to a full-blown hearing. Like the Canadian Human Rights Commission making the strategic decision to drop their case against Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn, I thought the Alberta HRC would let me go, so they could focus their abuse on smaller, quieter targets than me.

Blackett's whitewash of the HRC -- his effective endorsement of their persecution of Rev. Boissoin -- has caused me to think again. Sure, taking me to a full-blown trial would make the government of Alberta even more of an international laughingstock. But Blackett's letter suggests they don't care about being a laughingstock, and they certainly don't care about being anti-Christian. Again, I'm only pointing out the obvious -- for they did send in a special lawyer to argue for Rev. Boissoin's conviction.

It's starting to feel more and more like the old, arrogant, bullying Press Act of 1938 -- one of Alberta's most embarrassing moments.

Normally, I'd suggest sending an e-mail to Blackett, here. But really, what's the point?

UPDATE: Another reader sends me his letter from Blackett, containing an extra paragraph:

You asked why the Attorney General intervened in the Lund v. Boissoin human rights case. When a constitutional issue is raised by one of the parties to a case being heard by a court or by a tribunal, such as a human rights panel, the party raising the issue is required to notify the Attorney General. In the Lund v. Boissoin case, Reverend Boissoin raised a constitutional issue, notified the Attorney General as required, and the Attorney General appeared to address that issue.

That last sentence, again, is a falsehood. True, the government's lawyer, David Kamal, did attend to defend the constitutionality of the law. But he did much, much more than that. He made specific arguments about Rev. Boissoin's case, condemning him as guilty. Kamal could have ignored Rev. Boissoin altogether, if he really was sent there just to support the existence of the law. He could have not mentioned a word about Rev. Boission. But he actually argued that Rev. Boissoin's religious speech was illegal. Kamal spent much of his time rebutting Rev. Boissoin's personal defences -- not just his constitutional challenge.

Another lie by Blackett and the Stelmach government. But that's how it goes, doesn't it? On Monday you're convicting Christian pastors for being Christian; on Tuesday you're sentencing them to lifetime bans on preaching; on Wednesday you're ordering them to falsely renounce their faith. By the time the end of the week rolls around, merely lying to voters doesn't seem like a big deal, now does it?  

I've seen two news items written by U.S. journalists who attended the Congressional Human Rights Caucus meeting where I spoke about Canada's human rights commissions, and how they've been hijacked by a coalition of radical foreign jihadis and domestic politically correct busybodies.

Jack Langer, an editor with Regnery, wrote this item, calling our HRCs the "sensitivity police".

By now, many conservatives have heard of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions thanks to the decision by three CHRCs to investigate hate crimes complaints against Maclean’s magazine for printing -- among other things -- excerpts from conservative writer Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone.

...Many Americans can only shake their heads at the nutty excesses of multiculturalism in Canada. Government investigations for insulting people? That kind of thing could never happen here . . . Right?

Wrong, probably. Multiculturalism may not be as advanced in America as it is in Canada, but it’s on the same path.

...The infrastructure for this sort of action is already in place in many American cities which, though largely unknown to the public, have their own human rights commissions.

Take Philadelphia, for example. Although I am a native Philadelphian, I had never heard of the city’s “Commission on Human Relations” until 2006 when it began investigating Geno’s, the quintessential Philly steak joint, for hanging a sign asking customers to order in English. After spending nearly two years and untold amounts of taxpayer dollars investigating what some apparently regarded as a major hate crime, commissioners voted 2-1 to dismiss the complaint.

..Philadelphia now has the highest poverty rate of any major U.S. city, with a murder rate that skyrocketed by over one-third between 2002 and 2007, even as the city’s police force was reduced by 500 officers in roughly that period. But for the mayor, those issues will be addressed “at some point in time,” after enough resources are allocated to pressing matters like the Geno’s “speak English” sign.  

And Nutter meant business. After the Geno’s complaint ended in ignominious dismissal, he cleaned house at the CHR. To head the commission, he appointed Rue Landau, a radical activist who had formerly co-chaired the Liberty City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Democratic Club. Landau quickly got to work replacing eight of the nine appointed commissioners with more politically reliable people. Her stated goals include raising the commission’s fines and forcing employees of every city agency to undergo diversity training, especially for issues related to the “transgendered.”

...And Landau has learned from past mistakes. By investigating Geno’s, the Philadelphia CHR made the same mistake that its Canadian equivalents made when it took on Maclean’s and Mark Steyn -- if you’re going to prosecute some outrageous case of political correctness, it has to be against a nobody, who doesn’t have the resources to fight back or marshal public attention. The Philadelphia and the Canadian sensitivity police had no choice but to dismiss these cases because everyone was watching.

Landau knows this -- she insists the HRC should not have taken the Geno’s case, even though she argues that the “speak English” sign violated Philadelphia’s Fair Practices Act, which was the basis of the complaint in the first place.  

...Where is this mania for multiculturalism heading? Again, Canada points the way. As Ezra Levant notes, Canadian authorities recently disciplined an alleged white supremacist for sending her child to school with a swastika drawn on her arm. The penalty? The government took her kid away.

Such an extreme case is unlikely to occur in America for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the oppressive enforcement of multiculturalist diktats in Canada highlights the creepy, logical endpoint of this ideology when it receives state sanction.

America’s would-be sensitivity police certainly have their sights set higher than a mere cheesesteak restaurant in Philadelphia. The Geno’s case should serve as a warning.

And here's Julia Duin in today's Washington Times:

Late last week, I attended a Capitol Hill briefing about an obscure United Nations resolution on "defamation of religions" that some call the "soft jihad."

Lined up in front of a hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building were six panelists including David Harris, a Canadian who was sued for libel in 2004 by the Canadian branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for remarks he made on a radio show.

Also there was Ezra Levant, the publisher of a Canadian magazine who in 2006 got in hot water - and is the target of several lawsuits - for reprinting the Danish cartoons of prophet Muhammad as part of a news story. "Foreign-born jihadis," he says, "have teamed up with politically correct busybodies to use our own laws to undermine our freedoms, especially our freedom to criticize them."

The chief topic of discussion was a U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolution, backed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that addresses "the campaign to defame religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities" since Sept. 11, 2001.

Freedom of expression, the resolution says, would be "subject to limitations" to guard the "respect of the rights and reputations of others; protection of national security or of public order, public health or morals and respect for religions and beliefs."

...Angela Wu, a panelist from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, pointed out the burning of Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran and the torturing of religious minorities in Pakistan - especially those who convert from Islam - hurt plenty of feelings as well.

In the West, one has to prove that one has been harmed physically, mentally or materially in order to win a court judgment. With the kind of worldwide blasphemy laws suggested by this resolution, anybody anywhere could sue for merely having hurt feelings.

"When we talk of injuring religious feelings, what is that?" said a lawyer on the panel. "Is saying 'God has no son' on the Dome of the Rock an excuse to riot? Or dipping a crucifix in urine?"

Maybe it is, said the Pakistani representative.

"The ideal of freedom of speech is precious to you, but it's not value-neutral," she said. "You don't have to hurt peoples' sentiments and bring them to the point where they have to react in strange ways."

Congress has introduced three bills to protect America's interpretation of the First Amendment and protect citizens from being sued in a foreign court if their speech or writings do not constitute defamation under U.S. law. For the moment, those bills are in committee.

hat tip: Free Mark Steyn

My travails with Canada's human rights commissions all started when I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, apparently known in Denmark as the danske Muhammedtegninger.

That sounds a little bit terrifying, I know. But it's nothing compared to the villainy of the canadiske menneskeretsråd.

Here's a Danish blog that summarizes the threat to Western democracies posed by radical Islamic censorship. If you've chipped your teeth on those words, you can see an automatic translation here. Google doesn't know how to translate menneskeretsråd, but I'm guessing it's not good.

I enjoy signing off of the occasional blog post with the subtle call to arms, "Fire. Them. All." I usually reserve it for stories of particularly egregious conduct on the part of HRCs -- so, basically, a few times a week.

Well, I noticed that John Martin's CanWest Op-Ed signs off with the same slogan! It's a great piece -- one of several that John has written on the subject of HRCs -- and I think that, like me and so many others, he's run out of patience for excuses offered by those who think Canada's HRCs are salvageable.

His latest column focuses on the absurdity of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal's decision to try comedian Guy Earle for the thought crime of uttering un-funny come-backs to some hecklers at a B.C. night club last year.

Here are some excerpts:

...Most commentators have rightly pointed out that hecklers voluntarily insert themselves into the show and should expect a rough ride; even a rude one. It's also been correctly noted that something has gone terribly wrong for the state to even think it has the moral authority to scrutinize a comedian's act.

...Now, in an ideal world no one would ever be disrespectful to or about anyone. But that's not how it works. Some may applaud that the reverend can never be critical of gays. But a similar ruling could be made in the not too distant future that prohibits criticism of Christians or Americans. The CBC would sure have a tough job filling up its airtime under such a prohibition.

It sounds insane, but at the end of the day it's completely conceivable that Guy Earle could be banned for life from ever making a joke not pre-approved by the Human Rights Tribunal. Many people think they can ignore a tribunal's sentence because it's not a real court. But tribunals register their decision with a real court and they become fully enforceable, just like any court order. A person can be fined into compliance or even jailed.

This is the type of power available to the thugs on the tribunal panels who police our thoughts and words. Mercifully though, there's a simple solution available to Gordon Campbell that could put an end to the disgraceful conduct and abuses of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal that has become a rallying cry for those opposed to these kangaroo courts.

Fire them all.

I love it!

 

Regular readers will know that Guy Earle is the Toronto comedian who must now face a trial at the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, because of his response to hecklers. A drunk woman in the audience claimed that his rough reply to her disruption -- pretty much standard operating procedure for any comedian whose work is being interrupted by drunks -- was illegal discrimination, and the BCHRT agreed enough to schedule a hearing, as opposed to summarily dismiss the matter as a nuisance suit without legal basis.

The kangaroo judge in that kangaroo hearing? None other than Heather MacNaughton, the same one who chaired the five-day trial in to Mark Steyn and Maclean's alleged "discrimination" last month.

I've written about Earle here and here.

Earle must now pay for a lawyer, to defend his jokes as funny. The fact that preceding sentence is a true news report, and not a line from a science fiction story, is depressing.

Earle is having a comedy night, the proceeds of which will benefit his legal defence fund. It's scheduled for this Saturday night in Toronto at the Comedy Bar on Bloor Street West. Tickets are $20. I like the concept: 40 comedians, each giving their best one minute of work. Sounds like a great show -- and a good way to raise Earle's legal costs. I won't be in Toronto, but for readers who are, please consider attending.

 

 

Asma Fatima is the Second Secretary of the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, D.C. She was on the panel with me at the U.S. Congress's human rights caucus meeting yesterday.

Though I disagreed with every word she said, including "and" and "the", I'm very glad that she was there, because she spoke on behalf of her government and, given that she is a diplomat, she spoke startlingly plainly. 400 years ago it was quipped that diplomats are honest men who lie abroad for their country. I don't think that Fatima got the memo, for she spoke freely about her country's goals, and those of other countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and indeed the dozens of Muslim countries at the United Nations.

She wants Western countries to ban critical comments about Islam -- and she mentioned the Danish cartoons of Mohammed in particular. It was well pointed out by others on the panel that Western defamation law deals with the vindication of improperly besmirched reputations using the truth, as determined by courts of law -- but when it comes to clashing religions, the truth of any faith is in the heart of the beholder. The only legal system that would hold the Koran to be "the truth", and subordinate every other faith beneath the Koranic truth, would be a sharia legal system, such as that in Saudi Arabia. In other words, she wants to replace our secular legal systems with a Muslim legal system. I appreciated the honesty.

Western defamation law is also about vindication of an individual's reputation -- the individual must be indentified; he must have suffered measurable damage. Defamation is not about hurt feelings -- it is about the unjustified destruction of one's reputation in the eyes of another. It has nothing to do with tender feelings, though that was the grievance cited most often by Fatima.

Fatima's demands for an end to the "defamation" of "Islam" was undone masterfully by two of my fellow panellists. The first was Zia Meral, of Turkey, who pointed out that the real "hurt" we ought to be looking at was not Fatima's hurt feelings, but the real physical hurt suffered by Islam's dissidents and he described, in gruesome detail, how non-Muslims -- and worse, apostates -- are dealt with in Muslim countries from Sudan to Malaysia to Saudi Arabia. I will not recount the horrific details.

Meral's strongest point, though, was to note that the gambit of Islamic countries to twist Western law to stop criticism of Islamic human rights abuses is merely the latest fashion in smoke screens deployed over the years. Earlier tropes hurled at the West have included charges of "Orientalism"; "Interventionism"; "Colonialism", etc. Whatever will momentarily put Islam's critics off balance, by appealling to the West's own lack of confidence.

But the single most revealing comment I heard all day about this matter was from a State Department lawyer on the panel (whose name I wish to confirm before publishing it.) She has done meticulous research on the Muslim campaign to ban criticism of Islam, and has helped develop the U.S. response to the idea in international legal forums.

She went deep into the issue: she looked at the Arabic word used by Muslim diplomats when describing the "defamation of Islam" that they sought to illegalize. She consulted scholars of Arabic who confirmed for her that the particular legal phrase had been coined very recently, especially for the international diplomatic campaign -- and that, when discussed domestically, Muslim countries used the real Arabic words they mean: the traditional words for blasphemy.

So, I suppose, Fatima was following the old diplomat's dictum after all. She was very honest about her goals -- stopping people (especially other, moderate, Muslims) from criticizing Islam. But her dark art was to re-classify her censorship in the Western legal term of "defamation", instead of the more honest classification of "blasphemy".

If Muslim diplomats the world over were to lobby for international and Western laws against blasphemy, that would likely trigger a reaction -- not just from those who believe in Christianity, Judaism, etc., but from atheists, too, who might not go quietly into a merger of mosque and state. But calling blasphemy by the word "defamation" (and making up a special new word to mislead the proposed law's targets), makes sure that fewer alarm bells in the West will ring. It transforms an attempt to Islamicize our entire legal system into merely another lawsuit amongst countless others. That's the diplomatic sleight-of-hand that Fatima was peddling.

I want to do more research on this subject, and I'll surely write about it again. Those who have been following the story of the Canadian Islamic Congress vs. Maclean's magazine will surely recall that one of the front-men for that Islamic SLAPP suit, Khurrum Awan, has used almost identical language in his threats against Canadian media.

It is not a coincidence. 

 

I had the pleasure of making a presentation as an expert witness to the U.S. Congress's bi-partisan human rights caucus today.

I didn't count, but I'd estimate that there were over 100 people there. I met quite a few readers of my blog, and even a donor to my legal defence fund -- what a warm welcome in a far away city! There were a surprising number of journalists, including Luiza Savage, Maclean's magazine's Washington Bureau Chief. And there were a lot of religious liberty NGOs, including those from the Bahai, Hindu and Buddhist communities -- including several in bright orange monk's robes.

As a Canadian, I had forgotten that, in the U.S., every Congressman (and certainly every Senator) has their own foreign policy staff. Many such advisors were present, as well as lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice, the House Justice Committee, and the State Department.

My fellow panellists were impressive, especially the Turkish scholar whose specialty was documenting the treatment of apostates in Muslim countries, and the State Department lawyer who is the point-person in response to the international diplomatic campaign to have criticism of Islam criminalized. And -- very usefully -- the second secretary of the Pakistani Embassy was there. It was very striking to hear, directly from the source, the plans that Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world have when it comes to censoring their critics through the twisting of Western legal apparatuses. It was like getting a glimpse at the other team's playbook -- and having our worst fears confirmed. Frankly, I was surprised that she showed up.

I'll get into more details in a later post; it was a fascinating discussion, and the question-and-answer session was particularly clarifying. But for now, allow me to post my prepared comments. I've put in bold a few of my favourite comments. If I had to think of my most important suggestion, it would be for the U.S. Congress to add Canada to its watch list of countries that abuse human rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion. What do you think?

Thank you for that kind introduction, and for the invitation to be here today. It’s an honour to be asked to give a briefing at the U.S. Congress, and especially to the Human Rights Caucus. Your work is very important.

My expertise in the subject matter of today’s session was not acquired voluntarily, but by unhappy experience: I have been the subject of government persecution for my political and religious views for nearly 900 days. Unfortunately, stories like mine are not uncommon in the world. But they’re not supposed to happen in Canada, one of the freest countries.

In February of 2006, I was the publisher of a Canadian magazine called the Western Standard. We published a news story about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and the riots in the Muslim world that followed. To illustrate what all the fuss was about, we accompanied the story with pictures of several of those cartoons. It was a news story in a news magazine.

Before our magazine even hit the streets, a radical imam named Syed Soharwardy asked the police to arrest me – for blaspheming against Islam. The police didn’t, of course. But the Alberta “human rights commission”, a government agency, accepted Soharwardy’s complaint, and then an identical one from the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities. The government has been investigating me ever since, including summoning me to a 90-minute interrogation. According to access to information documents, no fewer than 15 bureaucrats are working on my case. I’m a major crime scene!

Since then, Canada’s largest news magazine, called Maclean’s – our equivalent to Time magazine – was sued in three different human rights commissions for writing about the demographic growth of Islam in the West. And the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the largest newspaper in Atlantic Canada, is being pursued by Nova Scotia’s human rights commission for printing an editorial cartoon depicting a local Muslim activist in a niqab – even though that is how she dresses.

In other words, Canadian human rights commissions -- secular government organizations -- are prosecuting religious fatwas. It’s a soft jihad against any criticism of radical Islam. It’s called “lawfare”, and it’s a greater danger to our western values of freedom, religious pluralism and the separation of church and state than the hard jihad of terrorism is. Even if targets like Maclean’s eventually “win”, they lose; the process is the punishment – and the chill affects everyone else.

Canadian human rights commissions, however, are not respectful of the sensitivities of all religions. Less politically correct faiths are regularly prosecuted by them. This May, an Alberta pastor named Stephen Boissoin was given a lifetime gag order, never to say anything critical of homosexuality – not in a church sermon, not even in private e-mails. As well, in what can only be called a Maoist verdict, he has been ordered to renounce his religious beliefs, and to publish a self-denunciation in the local newspaper.

This is Canada we’re talking about. Not Iran, not China, not Cuba.

How did this happen? How did Canadians lose their rights, on the one hand, to criticize radical Islam, and on the other hand, lose their rights to practice Christianity?

The answer is a combination of good intentions and bad intentions.

The good intentions came from do-gooders who, thirty or forty years ago, set up these human rights commissions with the noble ideal of promoting harmony amongst different religions and races. But those good intentions came with the power of the law to censor people who said rude, even racist things. So it became illegal in Canada to say anything that was regarded as hateful, even if it was non-violent. We invented “thought crimes”.

The actual wording of the laws is to ban anything that is quote, “likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt”. Note the word “likely” – you don’t actually have to do anything wrong. You can be convicted for a “pre-crime”, something that hasn’t happened yet. And look at what’s illegal: causing emotions. Not real harm or damages. Just exposing someone to feelings. By the way, the truth of what you say is not a defence. And at the Maclean’s magazine trial last month, half a day was spent determining whether their jokes were funny. They even had a joke expert.

Don’t laugh – literally. Just three weeks ago, a comedian was ordered to stand trial for telling off-colour jokes in a night club. Warning to Chris Rock: don’t bother coming to Canada.

According to Alan Borovoy, of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, even a documentary about the Holocaust is against the law, since it could, possibly, cause people to have feelings of contempt for Germans.

At first, these thought crimes were targeted at people so odious, no-one spoke out in their defence. Neo-Nazis mainly – including an 80-year-old man named John Taylor who served 9 months in jail for having an anti-Semitic phone message.

We don’t like anti-Semitism or other bigotry; I certainly don’t. But instead of the traditional answer to offensive speech – more speech, better speech, truer speech – Canada took the easy way, and simply outlawed hurt feelings. Instead of doing the hard work of building a truly tolerant society, we thought we could wave a magic wand, and legislate bad feelings out of existence.

But legal precedents cut both ways. So, after thirty years of prosecuting people who were critical of Jews, now Canada’s human rights commissions are being used by radical Muslims to prosecute people who criticize radical Islam – and being used by gay rights activists to prosecute pastors like Reverend Boissoin, religious newspapers like Catholic Insight, and even the Bishop of Calgary, Fred Henry, for a letter to his diocese against same-sex marriage.

To paraphrase Father Martin Niemoller, first the human rights commissions went for the neo-Nazis, but I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a neo-Nazi. Then the human rights commissions went for the fundamentalist Christians, but I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a fundamentalist Christian.

Because we didn’t fight for freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for people who were hard to like, now we’re having to fight for those fundamental freedoms for ourselves. It’s always better to fight in the first ditch rather than the last one.

The legal onslaught against freedom of speech and religious pluralism continues. There are 14 human rights commission in Canada, employing 1,000 people, and with an annual budget of $200-million. It’s an industry, and it needs social strife to stay in business. So it positively drums up discontent. This spring in Alberta, 60,000 new immigrants were taught English as a Second Language using a workbook all about how to file grievances, including against un-funny jokes.

I’m pleased that a political backlash is growing in Canada. Across the political spectrum, from both the Liberal and Conservative parties, from newspaper editorials on the left and the right, and from NGOs ranging from EGALE, Canada’s largest gay right lobby, to the Canadian Association of Journalists, to the liberal Muslim Canadian Congress, public opinion is waking up to the dangers of these human rights commissions and their thought crime laws. The public is starting to revolt.

So why should Americans care? I can think of three reasons. And what should Americans do? I can think of two things.

1. Americans should care because Americans have always cared about liberty around the world, especially political and religious liberty. It is one of America’s greatest characteristics: a love for the well-being of other countries. Being a Good Samaritan is in your nature, and the world is freer because of it.

2. America should care because what happens in Europe and Canada soon comes – or tries to come – to the U.S. When it comes to censorship, we’re a laboratory for bad ideas. And the coalition between foreign trouble-makers and domestic busy-bodies is an idea that is spreading here, too.

3. Despite your First Amendment, human rights commissions are popping up all over the U.S. 

The city of Philadelphia’ s “human relations” commission has a staff of 33, and a multi-million dollar budget. Last year, they prosecuted Geno’s Steak House because they put up a sign asking customers to order their Philly Cheese Steaks in English. We might agree with Geno’s sign or disagree. But to have a government agency prosecute them is a threat to the First Amendment. And, if it’s a steak house today, it could be a news magazine tomorrow. And if it’s do-gooders today, I can assure you it won’t be for long.

So what can Americans do? 

1. The first thing you can do is what you always do: continue to monitor the erosion of freedom around the world, including through Congressional committees like this one. Publish annual reports shaming foreign countries for their abuses of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Put Canada on that list, to let our government know what they’re doing isn’t acceptable.

2. And rededicate yourselves to your First Amendment. Understand that the erosion of freedom doesn’t always happen with a bang – it can happen with a whimper. And that, when it comes to free speech, it’s usually unpopular people who are censored first. But if they can go for a neo-Nazi yesterday, it’s Geno’s Steak House today, and then a Christian pastor or a news magazine tomorrow.

I believe in a pluralist society where I can be Jewish, he can be Christian, she can be Muslim, and we all get along peacefully – we can agree to disagree about political or religious matters. The use of our own Western laws to crush such disagreement, and end healthy debate, is a threat to all of us, and the U.S. Congress should be on guard.

Thank you. 

 

Tomorrow morning I'm making my presentation to a bi-partisan committee of the U.S. Congress. My topic is how the soft jihad of "lawfare" is undermining our Western values of freedom. It's particularly pronounced in Europe, and it's come to Canada in a big way in recent years, though our human rights commissions.

So why would Americans care? After my presentation tomorrow, I'll share with you what I told Congress. But let me show you how even in the land of the First Amendment, political correctness can start to creep into daily life with the force of law behind it. As always, it starts out benignly enough; but once the precedents are set, more malign purposes can use those same vehicles. That's why it's important that we fight for freedom in the first ditch, not the last ditch.

Five minutes on Google can find the early stages of Canadian-style political correctness in the U.S., including through various "human rights commissions" cropping up below the 49th parallel.

Here's a recent case from Alexandria, Virginia, where a local restaurant was found guilty of discrimination:

While the commission's authority is limited with respect to recommending compensatory damages, it is possible that it will recommend other specific remedies, including the levying of civil penalties...

The news story didn't say what T.G.I. Friday's did to be found guilty. But this news story says it: they fired an employee who had AIDS. That's similar to Alberta's ruling in favour of a restaurant manager who was fired for having Hepatitis, and a B.C. ruling in favour of a McDonald's employee who didn't want to wash her hands.

America's HRCs are catching up quickly to Canada's.

And then there's Philadelphia's "human relations" commission, with its $2.1-million budget and staff of 33 -- similar in size to the entire Alberta Human Rights Commission, but just for one city. Here's a story, written as a hagiography, but which I read with terrible premonition: the Philly HRC's boss, a radical activist named Rue Landau, sounds like Ontario's Barbara Hall, but with less self-control:

"Government bureaucracy is slow. It's inefficient. The law department is overwhelmed. There are a lot of things the agency can do that it's not doing now."

Naming new commissioners is a start. The current members "aren't active in the community and don't take the job seriously," Landau says. "My people will."

...Landau will "strongly suggest" that every city agency undergo diversity training, particularly involving transgender people. Philadelphia is one of only 13 municipalities in the state to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Landau estimates that 90 percent of complaints filed with the commission involve employment discrimination. Of 336 cases in 2007, only one - Geno's, in December - made it to a public hearing.

Thus far this year, it's zero. Landau's goal is to hold more hearings, possibly every three months. Commissioners, appointed by the mayor to open-ended terms, receive $100 per meeting. Landau attends meetings but cannot vote.

Landau also plans to lobby City Council for an increase in the commission's penalties and fines. Now it can only issue a cease-and-desist order and/or levy a $300 fine per violation.

At left is a picture of Geno's -- quite a landmark. And below, left, is the anodyne sign that hauled Geno's before Philly's HRC, telling customers to order in English. It's a political point of view, and a fairly mainstream one, if mildly offensive to some. But it was one that the government tried to chill with an abusive prosecution.

The proper answer, of course, is for offended customers to complain to management; or go elsewhere; or tell their friends to boycott Geno's; or publicly criticize it. But not to call in the government to punish it, or re-educate it.

Based on my personal experience with the Alberta HRC, and my observations of the other Canadian HRCs, I think it's inevitable that, before long, Commissar Landau will soon be prosecuting politically incorrect ideas as "hate speech", despite her disavowal of the Geno's case.

Alan Borovoy, the grandfather of Canada's HRCs, said that when they were setting up the laws in the 1960s and '70s, they never thought political speech would be targetted, either. But that's the nature of bureaucracies; and that's the nature of tyrannies, too. The creep larger, inexorably.

I don't think the U.S. Congress will care much about Geno's -- or at least not this committee. But the legal precedents that are being set today by busy-bodies like Landau will be used tomorrow by much more serious operators, using her not to censor independent-spirited restaurateurs, but to censor critics of radical Islam.

That's what's going on in Europe and Canada. I hope it doesn't come to America, too.

This Friday at 10 a.m. I have been invited to make a presentation to caucus on the use of "lawfare" by foreign Islamic radicals and their domestic enablers.

My thesis is simple: foreign-born jihadis have teamed up with politically-correct busy-bodies to use our own laws to undermine our freedoms -- especially our freedom to criticize them. It's a "soft jihad", and it's been a more effective strategy than the "hard jihad" of terrorism, in terms of undermining our way of life. I've been invited as an expert witness in the subject -- an expertise I regret having earned the hard way, as the target of a half-dozen such nuisance suits, both in defamation and "human rights" law.

The caucus I'm speaking to, however, isn't the Conserative Parliamentary caucus in Ottawa. It's the bi-partisan Congressional Human Rights Caucus in Washington, D.C. The office of Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) has invited me to make a presentation to that caucus's Task Force on International Religious Freedom. Rep. Franks co-chairs the caucus with Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO).

I'll be appearing with several other experts from around the world -- Zia Meral, a Turkish expert on apostasy laws in Muslim countries; Angela Wu, an international expert in freedom of speech, with experience in battles ranging from the United Nations to Malaysia; and there will be another Canadian on the panel, David Harris, formerly of CSIS, who was the target of a libel chill action by CAIR-CAN several years ago.

The briefing is "off the record" and its intended audience is Congressmen and their staffers. However, I'm told by Rep. Franks' staff that there will be a number of seats available to the general public. For those in the Washington area this Friday, feel free to join us at 10 a.m. in the Rayburn Building. I'm sure those public seats are very limited, so please contact Rep. Franks' office to RSVP. 

I’ve been invited to speak at the Canadian Cartoonists Convention this year in Banff. My subject, not surprisingly, is the phenomenon, unthinkable just a few years ago, that cartoonists are under attack. They're under legal attack in Canada, and physical attack in wilder parts of the world. Like Europe.

I refer in the first case to Bruce MacKinnon, the award-winning political cartoonist of Atlantic Canada’s largest newspaper, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. MacKinnon drew the cartoon, at left, depicting Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, a Gentile convert to radical Islam, whose husband had been arrested, and then let go, on suspicion of terrorist activities. Jamal demanded "millions" of dollars in compensation. She's perfectly combined the Canadian trait of entitlemania with her newer jihadi tastes for belligerent "demands". What a perfect personification of the new phenomenon of Islamic "lawfare".

Jamal didn’t sue MacKinnon or the Chronicle-Herald for defamation. Such a suit would surely fail; the cartoon was fair comment in every way. Local imam Ziaullah Khan -- an officious intermeddler, a busy-body, a trouble-maker, a complainer of opportunity, a man with no legal standing, a vexatious and frivolous litigant, a man who, in a saner time would be himself sued for the tort of champerty -- has taken the Chronicle-Herald to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, thereby committing the taxpayers' funds and the government's bureaucrats and lawyers to the prosecution of a religious fatwa. So much for the separation of mosque and state.

(The fact that police were initially involved in the investigation is outrageous. It was clearly a political act of intimidation, and a deviation from the required neutrality of officers of the state. It was, in essence, the first toe-hold of the return of Canada's old blasphemy laws. Not to prosecute anti-Christian blasphemy -- but to enforce sharia law. Internal Affairs should investigate this vulgar flexing of police muscles, and the police chief should issue a statement re-committing his force to the neutral application of Queen Elizabeth's laws, not Mohammed's.) 

Khan's complaint is legally incoherent -- but that's never been an obstacle to human rights commissions before. He argues that the cartoon discriminates against Jamal because it depicts her as a Muslim, and therefore implies that Mulims are terrorists. Well, some of them are -- but truth is not a defence in human rights "courts". More to the point, look at the photo of Jamal, at left, and ask yourself how else MacKinnon could have rendered her image, other than as he had done. When you walk around in a one-woman prison -- distinguishable only because of your blue eyes and skewed 1980's wire-frame glasses -- that's pretty much all you've left a cartoonist to work with.

The trial of a cartoonist is a hybrid of some of the Islamic lawfare we've seen in Canada to date. Like the Canadian Islamic Congress's three human rights complaints against Mark Steyn and Maclean's, it attempts to silence political criticism of radical Islam, and even of specific radical Muslims in the news. But, like the upcoming B.C. trial of Guy Earle, the comedian charged with making unfunny jokes about lesbians at an open-mike night, it seeks to have the state as arbiter of what satire is allowed or not. It is the beginning of the criminalization of jokes themselves. That would be fine with Ayatollah Khomanei, who said:

Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.

That just doesn't work. It's contrary to human nature. And it's also contrary to our cultural traditions, least amongst them our laws. We're allowed to make fun of people in Canada -- especially public figures, especially odious ones like Jamal and her husband. Human rights commissions now seek to tell us not to laugh at funny jokes (as in MacKinnon's cartoon) or positively to laugh at unfunny ones (the CIC complaint against Maclean's included the grievance that Steyn thought the CBC's sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairies, wasn't funny).

Sorry, that's just stupid.

I'm looking forward to this speech very much. Who doesn't like cartoonists? Not only do they have to have the wits to come up with a political comment every day -- that's a heavier workload than most newspaper column-writers bear -- they have to do so in a single image, not 1,000 words. And they've got to be funny. That's a tough job.

I think we like cartoonists because they're allowed to -- they're supposed to -- retain a youthful insouciance and irreverence towards heavy political subjects. They're allowed to be silly; to poke fun at things that we're not supposed to do in other venues -- like emphasizing physical eccentricities of newsmakers. They get to have fun for a living.

I can hardly wait to hang out with them for an evening -- I bet they're a fun, and funny, crowd. The fact that they are now being targetted by Canada's human rights commissions tells you just how far off the rails the HRCs have gone. I hate that MacKinnon and others must go through the legal abuses I've suffered at the hands of Alberta's HRC for the past 875 days. But, in a selfish way, I'm glad they've been conscripted into the battle against such illiberal censorship.

If there was one group in the world I wouldn't want to mess with politically, it would be Canada's political cartoonists. The fools at the HRCs couldn't have picked more influential -- or better loved -- victims.

 

 

I was in transit for most of the day, briefly stopping in Ottawa, arriving in St. John's, Newfoundland a few hours ago.

It has been far too long since I was here last -- the moment you start talking to people you realize why Newfoundlanders love their province so much, and those who leave hate to do so. If I hadn't been born in Alberta, I'd want to be a Newfoundlander. As my friends will testify, I have tried to import Newfoundland phrases to Alberta, my favourite, of course, being "Lord t'underin'", which I use several times a day, but never on the Sabbath. (While I'm here I'll have to pick up a copy of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English, with a foreword by Rex Murphy.)

When I wasn't airborne today, I did have a chance to read some of the many e-mails I received in response to my blog entry about Warren Kinsella's threat to sue me. I appreciate those, and I'm grateful for both the financial and moral support.

There were many people who had already contributed to my legal fights, some for the fourth or fifth time -- thank you again for that.

What was striking to me, however, was how many new people wrote to me -- people who aren't usually on my side of a debate.

I received e-mails from two separate machers at the Canadian Jewish Congress in Toronto. I didn't know either of them well, and hadn't spoken to one of them in years. It was startling to hear their support for me, given that Kinsella is a CJC committee member (and that I frequently lambaste the CJC on this blog). One of the machers even made a PayPal contribution, too. I called him back, and he lamented the CJC's overly-amorous dalliance with radical Muslim groups in Canada. It seems that there is a disconnect between some of the CJC's supporters and directors, and the direction of Bernie "Burny" Farber. I told my newfound supporter that Kinsella's lawsuit against me was a symptom of the problem -- the problem itself was the CJC's affection for censorship, and its kid glove treatment of radical groups like the Canadian Islamic Congress. He didn't disagree.

But if you think getting a donation for my legal defence fund from the CJC is weird, how about this: I received a letter of support from someone who works at Daisy Consulting Group -- Kinsella's own lobby firm! It was a brief note, but it was a note of support, sent from the company e-mail, with the corporate signature block on it.

I couldn't believe it. My first reaction was that it might be some sort of trick, but that was just me thinking like, well, Kinsella. It was sincere -- and I appreciated it.

I won't catalogue everyone who wrote to me today. Suffice it to say that, from the Liberal Party of Canada, to McMillan Binch, to the Canadian Jewish Congress to Kinsella's own staff, I have a lot of suprising new allies now that Kinsella is threatening me.

Another week, another nuisance lawsuit from someone in the “human rights” industry who would rather sue me than debate me. This time it’s Warren Kinsella, the Liberal lobbyist whose greatest claim to fame was mocking the Christian faith of Stockwell Day on national TV. It’s a badge of honour to be threatened by him.

Kinsella is upset by the following words that I wrote at the end of a lengthy blog post about the Canadian Jewish Congress and its unfortunate penchant for censorship:

Farber's newest recruit to the CJC, Warren Kinsella, has provided political and media advice to the CIC's young bigots-in-training, the "sock puppets". Farber just verbally supports Elmasry. Kinsella -- on the CJC's legal affairs committee -- actually rolls up his sleeve and helps the anti-Semites out a bit.

This is the Canadian Jewish Congress in 2008. How repulsive.

Kinsella is threatening to sue me over those words, and he warns me not to even mention his threatening letter on my blog. Well, you can read that letter here in its entirety.

Frankly, I’m very surprised that Kinsella would threaten to sue over these words – and that his lawyer wouldn’t try to talk him out of it, especially in the wake of the recent Supreme Court case that vastly expanded the defence of “fair comment”.

I wrote that Kinsella “provided political and media advice” to the Canadian Islamic Congress. My source for that? Kinsella’s own website. You can see the page, archived here. He wrote that he met with the CIC’s sock puppets – the young law students fronting for the CIC’s president, Mohamed Elmasry, in their human rights complaint against Maclean's magazine. He wrote that he gave them advice on how to handle Maclean’s. Then he proceeded to argue their case sympathetically, and concluded by publicizing their press release for them, verbatim. That’s what Kinsella does for his clients. And he did it for the CIC.

So if he admitted that he advised and helped the CIC, then what exactly does he take issue with? There’s really only one more contention left in the few words he’s complaining about: my statement that the CIC is anti-Semitic.

Gentle reader, I invite you to explore the anti-Semitic cornucopia of the Canadian Islamic Congress’s website. Or take a moment to read this summary of the CIC that I wrote for the National Post a couple of years ago. This is an organization that cheers on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his threats to destroy Israel. This is an organization that talks about the Jewish conspiracy to control Canada’s media. This is an organization led by a man who went on national TV to declare that any adult in Israel is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack. The CIC is so anti-Semitic that the Prime Minister’s Office refuses to meet with them, as does the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism – and they only blacklist the worst of the worst. Is that the part of my blog that Kinsella is going to dispute?

If so, it will be a fascinating trial indeed. Kinsella is on a Canadian Jewish Congress committee. Will an officer of the CJC really testify that the Canadian Islamic Congress, led by the infamous Jew-hater Elmasry, is not an anti-Semitic organization? Will a CJC officer swear under oath that, in his view, Elmasry is kosher? This I’ve got to see.

That’s going to be half the trial: what I wrote. But the other half of the trial is about something completely different: Kinsella’s own reputation. That’s part of what defamation trials are about – measuring the plaintiff’s reputation, to see if it has been unfairly besmirched. It will be fascinating to see how a court assesses the value of Kinsella’s reputation given that, just to pick one example out of a hat, he was cited more than a dozen times in a judicial inquiry into government corruption for his “highly inappropriate” conduct.

This whole thing is still a little bit strange to me; Kinsella and I used to be friendly enough towards each other, despite his vicious personal attacks on my friends – I thought it was all just part of the game of politics for him, and though he played that game roughly, I thought there was some separation between Kinsella the public figure who loved to “Kick Ass”, to quote the title of one of his books, and a normal man behind the bravado. I even enjoyed the fact that I had a chum on the other side of the political spectrum – when I published the Western Standard magazine, I invited him to write a guest column in it about the 2004 election (quick, free registration required).

But then, last December, I started criticizing the human rights industry, and its corruption – including that of Kinsella’s friend, Richard Warman. That’s when Kinsella went into "War Room" mode (to quote another one of his books), he called me a “fraud” on the National Post’s website and pretty much went over the top. I shrugged off his insults, but Kinsella’s increasingly abusive tone was one of the reasons he had to leave that newspaper.

I offered to debate Kinsella about Canada’s HRCs, especially the section 13 “hate speech” section that he supports. The prestigious Public Policy Forum invited us to have such a debate under their auspices, in Ottawa. I immediately accepted; Kinsella said he would debate anyone but me. I think that says a lot, doesn’t it?

Kinsella threatened me with a lawsuit earlier this year, but never took any steps. This time, he has, by filing his Libel Notice. I'm not sure if he's going to go all the way; we'll find out soon enough. I suspect that it is part of the "maximum disruption" strategy espoused by his friend, Richard Warman. (Look at how the Libel Notice to me is signed -- "Solicitors for Richard Warman". Warman and Kinsella are not only using the same lawyer, they're using the same letters and not remembering to change their names in it!)

Between the human rights complaints against me, and the filed or threatened defamation suits, I'm up to four or five lawsuits now. There's simply no way I could withstand this combined attack from the human rights industry if it weren't for the support of the blogosphere.

I think Kinsella's threatened suit is doomed to fail. My statements are clearly covered by truth and fair comment, and perhaps other defences too. But that's the thing about nuisance suits: they're designed to be a nuisance -- to take my time, and to take my money. I estimate that to fight Kinsella's suit would cost at least $30,000 -- plus the cost of shlepping out to Toronto, where it's being filed.

What do you think of Kinsella's legal threat? If you share my view that it's just the latest manifestation of the "maximum disruption" approach by the human rights industry to its foes; if you think, as I do, that my comments are legitimate and his complaints are outlandish; if you think that his support for the Canadian Islamic Congress is gross, especially considering his position with the Canadian Jewish Congress; and if you're generally upset at the use of SLAPP lawsuits against bona fide criticism of the human rights commissions, then please help me out.

If it weren't for the generous support of the blogosphere, I'd have crumpled under my legal bills already. So if you think I ought to fight back -- and fight back hard -- then please contribute. I promise that, in return, I'll continue fighting this fight as energetically as I can, both in the court of law and the court of public opinion. To me, this is about freedom -- freedom of speech and freedom of thought. And it's also about fighting against the strange collusion between domestic leftists and foreign-based jihadists. It's about fighting back at this leftist/Islamist use of "lawfare" to attack their Western critics. On a smaller scale, it's the same fight that Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders and others are fighting over in Europe. And now the soft jihad has come to North America.

To which I say: not on my watch.

Please help me through my PayPal site, using the button below.

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There's a lot of interesting comments on my debate with Jonathan Rosenthal. (And I accept the advice that I need a haircut.)

Winston was down at Dundas Square in Toronto and he snapped a few pictures that illustrate the hypocrisy of the Rosenthals of the world. Take a look at this one: a 9/11 conspiracy nut taking his daughter out for an afternoon of family moonbat fun -- not coincidentally next to the permanent Islamic conversion booth.

Is a T-shirt claiming that "9/11 was an inside job" any less offensive than a 7-year-old girl with a swastika drawn on her arm? To me, they're both odious -- though Nazi fascism was obliterated more than 60 years ago, except for a few wannabes playing dress-up on the Internet. Islamic fascism, by contrast, continues to kill people almost daily, and threatens credibly to do much more.

There's no way that fashionable leftists like Rosenthal would try to seize Junior Moobat. Because she's a leftist kook, not a right-wing kook. And that's what it's about: politics, not "child abuse".

How about kids wearing the ubiquitous T-shirts of the murderer Che Guevara? Or even listening to the fading shock star, Marilyn Manson, named after a murderer?

And those are just my own political dislikes -- I'm sure some politically correct social worker will one day soon declare that wearing a cross is an "emblem of hate", and seize kids from Christian parents. And I bet the folks down at Dundas Square think Rosenthal's Star of David is an "emblem of hate", too,

The point here is that once we start to criminalize mere ideas - instead of real acts (or threats) of violence, it comes down to subjective politics -- and thus we're all vulnerable.

In that regard, Rosenthal is making the exact same error as Bernie "Burny" Farber and the Canadian Jewish Congress. They're tearing down our civil liberties to get at their enemies. But they're so short-sighted that they don't see that they're setting precedents for their own kids to be seized. We're starting to see the Islamo-fascists mimic the CJC in the human rights commissions, targetting their Zionist enemies like Mark Steyn and me. It won't be long before the CIC tries to mimic Rosenthal ("thanks for setting the precedent -- we'll take it from here!") to take kids away from Zionist parents.

By the way, swastikas didn't kill a single Jew in the Holocaust. The destruction of real civil rights did -- oh, like taking kids from their parents. Seizing children from society's dissidents is something Nazis would do -- just like book burning. Shame on Rosenthal and Burny for acting like those they claim to despise. 

Today I was invited on CTV's Newsnet to debate a startling story about a Winnipeg mom who had her child seized by the government, because she went to school with a swastika drawn on her arm.

I was asked to speak to the freedom of speech/parents' rights point of view; Jonathan Rosenthal was asked to promote the state's right to seize the child.

I thought we started off okay; I gave a minute-long argument, in which I said I disagree with white supremacists, but having odious political views is neither a crime in itself, nor a legal reason to break up families.

Rosenthal came back with a denunciation of white supremacism. Sure -- no disagreement from me, there. But then Rosenthal went a little screwy -- bringing my own family into it. Weird.

He said he thought my wife ought to recommend that I take "counselling". For disagreeing with him!

I admit I was surprised. I had Googled Rosenthal, and read his vanity entry on Wikipedia -- I thought I'd be up against a thoughtful debater. But besides showing his moral righteousness by denouncing swastikas ("an emblem of hate") he had nothing but ad hominem attacks. Telling me I was unfit to be a parent, and needed counselling, because I disgreed with him?

And then I remembered his Wikipedia entry: he lectures at Osgoode Hall Law School, home of Khurrum Awan and the other anti-free-speech sock puppets who have fronted Mohamed Elmasry's censorship suit against Maclean's magazine. Rosenthal's paucity of arguments all makes sense to me now.

I shot back a bit myself, saying that in Canada, everyone has the right to have children, we don't need a license -- even pompous, arrogant, liberal Toronto lawyers have the right to be dads! It wasn't my prettiest debate. But my point stands: if we have a political test for the state to break up parents, no-one is safe.

Rosenthal ranted a bit about the meaning of a swastika. I agree, it is a powerful symbol of an evil ideology. But so is the hammer and sickle, under whose flag many times more people have been murdered, in Russia, China and elsewhere. And the crescent moon, flown by radical Islamists in governments and terrorist groups -- has been used as a symbol of oppression, too. Is it only Rosenthal's enemies who will be punished? He doesn't much like white supremacists -- no arguments here. But how about Black power parents? Or radical Islamists? (I admit I used the example of pompous liberal Toronto lawyers one or two times too often. So often, in fact, Rosenthal repeated the words himself.)

Oh well. It was just awful. I admit I was caught off guard a bit -- without provocation, the little twerp laid into my family. I responded by calling him disgusting. I should have just let him collapse under his own weight.

It felt worse than it looked, though; watching the show, I actually made more points than I recalled immediately after doing the show, when all I could think about was what an intellectually shallow man I had met, and how he got under my skin a bit more than I ought to have let him do.

Still, I thought I cleaned his clock. But I should watch out -- any lawyer who believes in censorship and punishing his political opponents with state-sanctioned kidnapping is a perfect candidate for a human rights commission. I'm sure we haven't heard the last from this little tyrant.

If Rosenthal lost, I didn't exactly win. The prize -- for keeping her professionalism and composure between two blowhards -- goes to Jacqueline Milczarek.

What do you think -- of the issue, and of the debate itself?

P.S. That's a cowboy shirt, by the way, for Stampede.

I've been asked about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's 100% conviction rate, and if the rejection of the complaints against Maclean's and Catholic Insight mean they're no longer batting 1000.

The answer is: they've never lost a case they've prosecuted. They simply chose to drop the aforementioned two cases because of political heat.

The CHRC is a pseudo-police and prosecution; the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is a pseudo-court. Of course, neither have the training, experience, oversight or competence of real police, prosecutors and courts, but that's another problem.

Every single section 13 thought crimes case the CHRC has taken to the CHRT "court" has resulted in a conviction. In other words, if the CHRC takes you to "court", there's really no point in showing up -- you'll be found guilty.

The one case that didn't result in a conviction was the absurd case of beachesboy@aol.com vs. drumsaremybeat@aol.com. That's really what the case was called -- two obviously fake e-mail addresses duking it out. (The defendants were later named. But the complaint was actually filed and accepted as two imaginary people.)

The CHRC spent thousands of dollars finding out who drumsaremybeat@aol.com was. That's because he was the "target" of the CHRC. They kept the identity of beachesboy@aol.com a secret.

Imagine that -- in the 21st century, in a free country, a trial where the defendant isn't even allowed to know the identity of his accuser. And both the CHRC and the CHRT were fine with that. That ruling -- surprise! -- was from Athanasios Hadjis, who is chairing the Warman v. Lemire hearing in such a biased manner. Here's what Hadjis wrote:

When the complaint was referred to the Tribunal for inquiry, the Commission provided the Tribunal with the Complainant's name and contact information. However, the Commission also requested that these details not be revealed publicly, citing "safety" concerns. The Tribunal has, accordingly, to this date, not disclosed the Complainant's name and contact information to Mr.  and Ms. Fleming, nor anyone else...

The Complainant has pointed out that he has filed several more s. 13 complaints against other individuals. A number of these complaints have already been referred to the Tribunal. The Complainant claims that on at least one occasion in the past, when some statements by him condemning discriminatory conduct were reported in the media, he received a number of threats at his home.

Gee -- a serial complainant who cries wolf about his personal safety. I wonder if he knows Richard Warman? 

beachesboy@aol.com could have been anyone -- a publicity-shy politicians settling a score; a convicted criminal with no credibility; a CHRC staff member; a relative of the CHRT "judge"; anyone. That's the problem when you have secret trials -- there's no telling what could be hidden, and why.

In the end, the CHRT convened a hearing by conference call. But no-one showed up -- not even beachesboy@aol.com, the secret accuser who was allowed to keep his secrecy. By that point in time, a hundred thousand taxpayers' dollars had been spent. And the nominal plaintiff -- even with his outrageous secrecy -- didn't even bother to attend.

No complainant. No target. It was just the CHRT "judge" on the phone, like a fool. What could she do, but acquit.

That is the only section 13 thought crimes case in the history of the CHRC and CHRT where someone who was referred to a hearing got off. Not because he was acquitted -- just because of the incompetence of the prosecution, and the unreliability of the complainant.

I'm trying to get a better copy of Sandy Kozak's "Investigation Report" that she filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in the Catholic Insight case. When I do, I'll post it. In the meantime, I'll just quote from it. Not even a whole sentence -- just a phrase:

"Notwithstanding the offensive nature of certain aspects of this material..."

Catholic Insight promulgates the teachings of the Catholic church.

So a crooked ex-cop "rules" that Catholic Insight was "offensive" because it taught Catholicism.

We all know that Sandy Kozak has problems with moral concepts like "right" and "wrong". It's why no police force in North America would touch her, and she has to slum it at the CHRC.

But for Kozak to summarily judge Catholic doctrine as "offensive" is beyond grotesque.

Jennifer Lynch, the Chief Commissioner of the CHRC, knows about Kozak. Lynch has presided over the CHRC for long enough that the Fr. de Valk persecution is on her hands.

Fire. Them. All.

The eighteen month nightmare imposed by the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission on Catholic Insight and its editor, Fr. Alophnse de Valk, is finally over. Like the CHRC's dismissal of the Canadian Islamic Congress's "Islamophobia" case against Maclean's magazine last week -- after dragging them through a slow and costly process too -- the CHRC's decision to abandon the "homophobia" charges against Catholic Insight must be seen for what it is: an attempt by the corrupt CHRC to get out of the media spotlight, and reduce the political pressure that is mounting for its abolition.

The CHRC is already being squeezed by three independent investigations, including including a criminal investigation by RCMP into the CHRC's conduct. The negative press they have been receiving for their anti-Catholic bigotry was simply too much for them to bear. So Fr. de Valk can go.

Is it a victory for him? Only if a $20,000 legal bill and eighteen months of abuse of process can be called a victory. Their nominal tormenter, Rob Wells, isn't out a dime -- not for his costs (paid for by taxpayers) or Fr. de Valk's costs (paid for by Fr. de Valk). But Wells is only the informer who fingered Fr. de Valk; were it not for the abusive CHRC, Wells couldn't do anything other than be a lone, powerless anti-Catholic bigot -- reduced to literally driving his vehicle in circles around churches, emblazoned with hate messages comparing Catholics to Nazis. That's actually what he does. That's stupendously vile; but it shouldn't be illegal. For such a bigot to be given access to the power of the state, via the CHRC, to legally prosecute his anti-Christian vendetta for a year and a half against Fr. de Valk is not just repulsive, it's a political scandal for which Jennifer Lynch's head should roll.

And what of the lesson that the CHRC's anti-Chritian bullies have taught the rest of the nation? Even if you do nothing illegal, you can still be effectively fined $20,000 by the bullies of the CHRC.

Oh, and speaking of lawless bullies, wouldn't you know it: The CHRC's investigation into Fr. de Valk and Catholic Insight was done by none other than Sandy Kozak, the rogue cop drummed out of the Carleton Place Police force for dating a criminal who was under investigation by that same police force.

"Irony" is not a strong enough word to describe the absurd situation of Kozak, a crooked cop who violated the public trust, "investigating" Fr. de Valk, by all accounts a saintly senior citizen with no crimes to his name other than having a strong Catholic faith. And Wells, the demonizer of Christians, was the seed crystal for all of it. Disgusting.

Here is a copy of the CHRC's terse letter telling Fr. de Valk that he was free to go -- $20,000 lighter.

Fire. Them. All.

P.S. I just noticed an additional layer of incompetence, like icing on a cake of corruption: in the CHRC's letter to Fr. de Valk, they named his tormentor as "Paul Wells", not Rob Wells. I guess they just have Maclean's magazine on their mind down in the CHRC's bunker.

Last month

I got a really weird letter from a jihadi out in Ontario who uses the nom de guerre "Fixhist".

He claimed to have copyrighted the image of Mohammed. Of course, he's welcome to copyright any image that he himself makes -- go to it, start drawing. But the idea of copyrighting any and all depictions of Mohammed whatsoever - including those drawn by others, like the one at left, drawn by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard -- doesn't make sense given the legal definition of the word copyright.

But that's not the point, of course. The point is to harass and intimidate people into submission to Islam. It's not the "hard jihad" of terrorist bombs, it's the "soft jihad" of intimidation. No-one will get killed -- at least not yet. But lawyers will need to be retained; time and money will need to be spent. It will be a hassle.

It's called lawfare, and it's the official policy of The Organisation of The Islamic Conference, a Saudi-funded mini-UN for people who think the current UN is too tough on terror and too soft on America, Israel and the Jews.

Well, today I got another letter from Fixhist. Instead of fisking it as I usually do, I tried out some of the features on Adobe Acrobat. I'm not very good at Acrobat yet, but I hope to get better. Here's my take:

The demand letter is a laugh – so far. And my Internet Service Provider is being great – so far. Fixhist has no legal case, and comes across as a bit of a nutty troll – which is magnified by his rough command of English.

He’s a crank.

But what if that crank, all of a sudden, had $100,000 from Saudi Arabia to spend on hiring a crack team of patent  and trademark lawyers, and a PR man to write his letters, typo-free? How funny would that be, then?

Sure, he’d lose in the end. But so what – that’s only a second or two worth of oil money to the Saudis. Bit it would probably cause me to burn up $20,000 to fight back. I’d “win” in the end – just like Maclean’s magazine will “win” its battle with the Canadian Islamic Congress’s lawfare exercise in Canada’s human rights commissions. But too many more of such win’s – at $150,000 in legal bills and counting – and Maclean’s will be done for. That’s precisely what the CIC is trying to do. It’s not about intimidating Maclean’s – they’re pretty tough. It’s about using Maclean’s as an example, a warning, to everyone else in the country: don’t even think about fighting against the soft jihad.

If you want a sneak preview of what that sort of laughable but dangerous censorship looks like when it’s backed up with real lawyers with fat budgets and fewer typos, look at Richard Warman and the Canadian Jewish Congress, and their illiberal attempt to get the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to start banning foreign websites that Warman and the CJC just didn’t like. They came within a whisker of getting such censorship powers – ex parte, no less. Again, those fools at the CJC are paving the way for the soft jihad by setting up the legal precedents for the Fixhists and OIC’s of the world to follow. Thanks, Burny.

The idea of a Muslim “copyright” on the image of Mohammed is nuts – today. But how nuts will it look tomorrow, with Burny and friends having softened up our fundamental freedoms, and then some litigious bully, backed with Saudi oil money, comes in to bat clean-up?

The answer to the question in the title of this post is: funny today, dangerous tomorrow.

I almost missed this letter in the Globe and Mail. Zijad Delic, writing on behalf of the Canadian Islamic Congress, says that the Canadian Human Rights Commission's decision not to prosecute the CIC's complaint against Maclean's "will soon be appealed to the Federal Court."

CIC vs. CHRC -- can they both lose?

  

Several readers have brought to my attention this stunning Op-Ed column printed in the Montreal Gazette, written by none other than Mohamed "kill all the adult Jews in Israel" Elmasry, president-for-life of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

This, I take it, is his PR campaign to shore up his bona fides after his disastrous attempt to shake down Maclean's magazine.

If this is a thoughtful strategy of reputation management, I'd hate to see what Elmasry says when he's off the cuff. Come to think of it, I guess we do know what he says off the cuff.

Here are some of Elmasry's deepest thoughts:

Western media seldom report that Mugabe was and still is popular especially in the rural areas; his land reform has won him support among his own people.

Those lying, Western reporters! They're controlled by the zhoos, you know! That's what's wrong -- Western media, not Mugabe's Stalinist/Maoist seizure of farms, with predictably similar results.

Mugabe decided to hold a run-off election last month. But Tsvangirai pulled out and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy, which to some observers is a proof that he is a stooge of Western powers.

Again with the conspiracy theories. Funny, Tsvangirai doesn't look zhooish.

But thanks to Western sanctions the country's economy is in ruins. High inflation, high fuel costs and high unemployment are crippling the economy.

Yes, that's what's cause the farms to fall into delapidation, murder and torture of Mugabe's opponents, and a mass refugee problem -- because Western countries have curtailed diplomatic niceties and put restrictions on Zimbabwean air travel.

Etc. It might strike some readers as odd that Elmasry, self-appointed King of the Muslims, is defending Mugabe. What's his angle?

It's pretty simple. Mugabe is a cruel dictator who justifies his brutality by blaming "outside forces". Why, that's straight out of the handbook, Muslim Dictatorships 101. The fact that Mugabe is anti-Western just clinches it. Any enemy of America and Canada is a friend of Elmasry's.

I deeply regret this nutbar did not take the stand at the kangaroo hearing that bore his name in Vancouver.

The trouble with lying, as every child knows, is that it's tough to keep your stories straight.

Dean Steacy is a liar. That's fine -- he works at a good place for liars, the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

There's no law against lying.

Unless it's under oath.

Which Steacy was on March 25, 2008, when he testified at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. See page 5864 of the transcript.

MS KULASZKA: Is it a strategy being used by the Commission to simultaneously pursue criminal charges against a respondent while at the same time a complaint is being pursued under section 13, because that has been done several times in many cases.

MR. STEACY: I'm not aware the Commission ever having pursued criminal charges against any individual while we were investigating a complaint.

MS KULASZKA: But Mr. Warman has.

MR. STEACY: But Mr. Warman's not an investigator with the Commission.

MS KULASZKA: But he was, he was an investigator with the Commission.

MR. STEACY: Well, what he did as an individual outside of the Commission is his business. He never did -- he never investigated any hate files when he was at the Commission.

 

Barbara Kulaszka was asking Dean Steacy about the CHRC's unethical -- and likely illegal -- habit of taking computer hard drives and other material seized in police raids, using criminal search warrants. Steacy didn't deny it -- it's how they roll over there.

 

Kulaszka asked the obvious: about a deliberate tactic to use brutal police powers -- that Parliament specifically did not give to the CHRC -- to get evidence against their targets that they didn't otherwise have.

 

I don't know why Steacy didn't just say "yes, and it's obviously working for us, with a 100% conviction rate". He bobbed and weaved a bit, putting it on Richard Warman's head. When Kulaszka pointed out that Warman worked at the CHRC, Steacy said that Warman didn't work on any "hate files".

 

But that's simply not true. Off the top of my head, I can think of one -- Warman's investigation into constituency mail-outs of then-MP, Jim Pankiw. You can read the story here.

 

It's not a big point. After all, when you avail yourself of booty from a police raid, what's a little lie under oath? Just another day in the ethical Wonderland of Jennifer Lynch's CHRC.

Dean Steacy is a personification of everything that's wrong at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. (I guess, so is Sandy Kozak. And then there's Richard Warman, too.)

As I indicated in the previous post, Steacy freely confesses his unethical behaviour -- that he joins neo-Nazi organizations; that he uses a neo-Nazi persona to engage his legal targets online to extract information from them that he could not do directly; he receives materials, including computer hard drives from police raids where the search warrants in question do not authorize the CHRC to receive the seized information.

All this, on top of his bald statement that free speech "is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."

But look at what Steacy wrote in reply to a section 13 thought crimes complaint filed by someone Steacy really hates -- a CHRC target, Marc Lemire.

Lemire has been investigated and prosecuted by the CHRC for years. To show the arbitrariness of the thought crimes charges against him, he filed a thought crimes complaint himself, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. The point was to prove -- as if it needed more proving -- that section 13 has become the personal fiefdom of CHRC favourites. They prosecute only who they want to prosecute. (And, in fact, all but one of their Internet prosecutions have been filed by one man, former CHRC employee Richard Warman.)

On page 5731 of the transcript of Steacy's testimony this spring, he is asked about his rejection letter, dismissing Lemire's complaint out of hand. Here's what he had said:

In regards to your complaints against the media organizations and their websites, it would appear that the information on the media websites was a fair and accurate report of events. Therefore, it does not appear that the information on the media websites constitutes the communication of hate messages under the Canadian Human Rights Act as it was merely posted to report the news. In this context, the media organizations which you have cited within your letter could be considered broadcasting undertakings and, therefore, would be exempted pursuant to section 13.2 of the CHRA…

 

Now compare that to Maclean's magazine's case.

Lemire's complaint against various mainstream media websites was rejected by Steacy because he said the material was a "fair and accurate report of events". But, as the Maclean's case, both in the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, and in the CHRC's own analysis, that is not a defence against "hate speech" charges.

And Steacy simply declares that those media websites aren't websites -- because they're owned by "broadcasting undertakings", and so exempted from the law.

But Maclean's website -- owned by Rogers, a large broadcaster -- had a five-day trial for their website; and the fact that Rogers also happens to be a broadcaster was so irrelevant to the case at hand, that it wasn't even mentioned. Steacy simply "declared" that the websites in Lemire's complaints weren't covered by the law.

Here is a list of every single section 13 hate speech complaint that has gone to the tribunal. It's not a list of all the "hate" in Canada, of course. It's a list of all the hate that Steacy and his clique personally choose to prosecute.

Not a single Muslim jihadi on the list; not a single non-white person, in fact. The list of targets is so poor, only 9% can afford lawyers. It's the barrel of fish that Steacy, Warman and their master, Jennifer Lynch, deem appropriate to persecute. Big fish Maclean's was set free; little fish Fr. Alphonse de Valk was not. Marc Lemire was prosecuted; Marc Lemire's complaint was not. Et cetera.

The CHRC doesn't have a code of ethics. But a fish rots from the head down; Steacy and his wrecking crew that's destroying our civil liberties couldn't get away with it without the support or willful blindness of Chief Commissioner Lynch herself.

And Lynch, herself, couldn't get away with it without the tacit approval of the Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson.

What a disgrace.

Guess who investigated Maclean's magazine on behalf of the Canadian Human Rights Commission? Our old friend Sandy Kozak, the corrupt cop who was drummed out of the Carleton Place Police Department, for dating a criminal who was still under investigation by the force.

You can see her signature on the second page of the

confidential internal investigation report in the Maclean's case.

Here are some old news stories about Kozak's ethical spiral down, down, down so far that she was just right for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. She was unethical -- so she was perfect for the human resources standard at the CHRC, who snapped her up.

Question: Is Kozak dating any of the parties in this case -- or even any of the sock puppets, like Khurrum Awan? That would normally be an absurd ethical question to ask, but not with Kozak.

Question: does the CHRC even have a code of ethics?

Answer: they didn't as recently as a few years ago when this internal audit, marked "private and confidential" on every page was done.

Given that the CHRC has been around for thirty years, it's staggering that no-one -- out of a staff of 200 -- thought of drawing up a code of ethics. Sort of tells you the kind of place it is. But we already knew that.

In that secret audit, the CHRC was given a failing grade for ethics -- see, for example, page 7, where the "values and ethics framework" didn't even meet the standard of "good" practise, let alone "advanced" or "best" practises. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 as the worst (no-one gets a zero!), the CHRC got a 2.5. That's a failing grade by any standard. Again, a perfect environment for Sandy Kozak, "investigator"of Maclean's.

Look at page 9 of the audit, and the wonderfully gentle title of that slide: "improvement opportunities to consider". One "opportunity" is listed as:

Develop and promote a formal ethics framework and further develop organizational culture in relation to ethics

Hey, good idea. You'd think a bunch of busy-bodies telling us how we ought to live might have its own rules about how it ought to behave. This audit was written nearly five years ago. How's the remedial ethics work coming along? Let's ask Dean Steacy, part of Kozak's "anti-hate" squad.

As he testified this March, there aren't any rules -- he and his fellow investigators can pretty much do whatever they want -- including becoming members of neo-Nazi organizations, like the U.S.-based Stormfront website (see page 5827 of that transcript). They can also write, in their neo-Nazis personas, directly to CHRC targets to elicit legal information from them, to destroy their legal privilege, through subterfuge (see page 5843 of the transcript). And they regularly request material, like hard drives, seized from their "human rights" targets by police using criminal search warrants -- a violation of the terms of those search warrants (see page 5864 of the transcript). Of course all of these activities would land a real police officer in trouble with Internal Affairs. But, as Kozak knows, there is no Internal Affairs department at the CHRC. It's Lord of the Flies over there.

Take a look at page 54 of the confidential audit, which notes:

The Commission does not have in place a formal ethics framework and does not have a formal structure and designated champion for ethics....

The auditors saw that as a problem. Kozak saw that as a perk. And, as Steacy's testimony shows, it's still business as usual -- ethics free, and loving it.

Back to Maclean's. Kozak's internal report to the CHRC doesn't acquit Maclean's, or even recommend an acquittal. She says the CHRC could go either way -- that the Maclean's article had some of the "hallmarks of hate" -- the CHRC's phrase for things they don't like. Here's how she phrased it:

Kozak sounded pretty excited about chasing the "bad guys" again -- and, no, that's not a joke about her romantic style. She was ready and willing to go after Maclean's -- she only needed the Commissioners' sign-off.

That's when Jennifer Lynch, the Chief Commissioner, stepped in and threw the complaint out. Not for legal reasons -- as Kozak showed, they were ready to roll. But for political reasons -- to save the CHRC from more humiliation in the public eye.

Too late for that.

As readers will know, Guy Earle is the Toronto-based comedian who has been charged with the legal offence of making un-funny jokes in Vancouver. The charges of un-funniness -- which the B.C. Human Rights Code calls "discriminatory publication" "discrimination in service" -- came after Earle's rough response to some drunk, rude hecklers in a Vancouver night club last year. The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruled that there was enough substance to the charges that Earle must stand trial.

As I've mentioned before, it will be fascinating to hear the government's rules about which jokes are funny, and which aren't. For example: if a rude joke is funny, does that make it legal? If a heckler is illegally rude, can the comedian be illegally rude back? Will the government send out joke-testers to night clubs, with big red stop signs? Or giant hooks? There's so much we're going to learn from the humourless prudes who preside over the BCHRT.

But let it not be said that I lack objectivity when it comes to Canada's kangaroo courts. Let not my name be put on the list -- and you know there's a list -- of people who are always against the human rights commissions. For today, I shall come to their aid.

I have found a legal precedent that the BCHRT can use to convict Earle even if his jokes were funny. Especially if his jokes were funny!

I spent some time today reading a book I found on Google Books. (It's an amazing resources; not only has Google scanned countless books, included old and rare books, but they've made those books text-searchable.) I was reading a book called The Star Chamber, published in 1880, that contained hundreds of decisions of that court. It also has a very interesting preface, that describes that court's descent from a well-intentioned idea -- a court big and tough enough to take on law-breaking bishops and sherriffs who would be impervious to justice of regular courts -- into a corrupt political tool used to destroy the kings enemies, and confiscate their wealth.

The book has a readable summary of hundreds of cases. In it, I read a footnote about someone fined "severlie", not for telling an offensive joke -- but for laughing at it.

I couldn't find the case of the illegal laugher, but I found a reference to it in a defamation judgment in another old book of Star Chamber cases. It starts on page 149, and the reference to the laugher is on page 152:

 

Interestingly, most defamation cases in the 17th century were for spoken slander -- partly because of illiteracy, and partly because of the difficulty in getting things printed. Defamation often took the form of clever rhymes, even songs, the funnier the better to aid in their dissemination. I don't doubt that the defamation in question was foul indeed -- I've read a few Star Chamber defamation cases, and medieval slanderers could be pretty cruel and creative at the same time. But to try and convict a man for merely laughing? And to punish him "severelie"? That's the kind of abusive exercise of power that soon brought the Star Chamber into disrepute, and helped to feed the anger that led to King Charles' overthrow and execution.

The Star Chamber was shut down shortly after these most abusive and capricious rulings. But it is "case law". Human rights tribunals aren't run by judges, and often not even by lawyers; their grasp of the concept of precedent, let alone constitutional protections for our fundamental freedoms, is weak.

If I were one of the angry hecklers who is suing Earle, I'd bring in this case from the Star Chamber as a precedent that the BCHRT should follow. Sure, it was written by dead white men. But I think the more the BCHRT learns about the Star Chamber, the more they'll see their spiritual ancestors: prudish bullies with a vicious streak. I don't doubt they'd like to punish Earle "severelie". For his sake, let's not let the BCHRT know about some of the Star Chambers' other orders -- like the cutting off of ears, and slitting of noses.   

In this month's independent ranking of Canada's political blogs, mine is again ranked fourth biggest in terms of traffic. I'm thrilled -- given that I only fired this thing up in January.

I think it means that Canadians of all stripes truly care about freedom, and the threat posed to it by human rights commissions -- since that's about 90% of what I write about. I note, as well, that the number one blog, Mark Steyn's, has been big on that subject, too, as have a number of the others in the top ten.

I'll try to keep it up -- and I hope you keep coming back!