Ezra Levant: September 2010 Archives

James Cameron gassing up for change

It is comforting to know that one of America’s leading industrialists is jetting in from Los Angeles, America’s smoggiest city, to lecture Canada about the environment.

Filmmaker James Cameron was born in Ontario, but moved to Hollywood as a teenager. He made it big there, with box office hits like Titanic, Aliens and The Terminator. Cameron is expected to personally net $350 million from Avatar alone.

As Esquire magazine points out, that’s almost as big as the GDP of the Caribbean country of Dominica, population 72,500.

But pay no attention to his lifestyle, or his extravagant projects with their vast energy consumption. Do not be distracted by his deeds. Listen to the man’s words. He is a prophet.

Ours “will be a dying world if we don’t make some fundamental changes about how we view ourselves and how we view wealth,” he said this year. “We’re going to have to live with less.”

The man is an artist, so he is entitled to use sophisticated techniques like irony and metaphor. So when he says “we” should live with less, he means “you” should. Cameron’s press tour to promote Avatar took him to 107 cities. Perhaps he’ll “live with less” for Avatar II, by flying to just 100 cities.

You know, set an example for the little people.

Oh, don’t make that face. What, aren’t you more grateful for his advice? Who are you to judge that a tycoon living in an 8,000-square-foot house, with an adjacent 6,000-square-foot house for staff, can’t also be an expert on modest living?

Cameron is coming here because he called Canada’s oilsands an environmental “black eye,” and now he wants to see them for himself. Ordinary people get the facts first, before denouncing something. But Cameron isn’t ordinary. He’s special.

There is a chance that Cameron will change his mind. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is going to meet with Cameron to make Canada’s case. But Cameron has a track record when it comes to people he disagrees with politically.

Last month, he called people who are skeptical of the theory of man-made global warming “swine.”

That’s an improvement from this spring, when he said he wants to “call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out” calling one skeptic a “f------ a------” and saying “I believe in ecoterrorism.”

Stelmach should prepare for his meeting with this deep thinker by listening to some gangsta rap.

In a brief moment of common courtesy and intellectual open-mindedness, Cameron once agreed to debate global-warming skeptics, including another filmmaker named Ann McElhinney. Cameron soon started demanding various changes to the terms — that it be switched from a debate to a roundtable discussion, that only Cameron be allowed to film it, that all media be kept out, etc.

McElhinney’s group accepted all the changes. But literally a day before the debate, Cameron cancelled. So much for wanting a shoot-out at high noon.

Canada should be open to anyone visiting our oilsands — it’s one of the differences between us and OPEC countries where political critics are routinely murdered. Our respect for human rights — including our protection of political dissent — is what makes us different from other oil producers.

There is a possibility, however small, that Cameron might be convinced. But I doubt it.

So once Stelmach is done answering Cameron’s questions, perhaps the premier might ask a few of his own. I’d start with an easy one: If Cameron swears off oilsand oil because it doesn’t meet his ethical standards, where does he buy his jet fuel from? What ethical standards meet the Cameron morality test? Terrorist Saudi Arabia? Nuke-building Iran? Toxic Nigeria?

Or is that one of the things he didn’t want the media to ask about at his cancelled debate?

...If country-of-origin labelling applied to oil the way it does to food and clothes, Levant says, American motorists would ignore the gas pump marked “Saudi Arabia” and line up at one marked “Canada.”

...“How does Iran’s treatment of women compare to Fort McMurray’s?” Levant asks rhetorically of Alberta’s main oilsands town. As a single mother living with her fiancé, the town’s top politician, Mayor Melissa Blake, “would be stoned to death in Iran,” he says.

...In his sweeping study, Levant finds hypocrisy in ethical funds, misinformation in a cancer scare, blindness toward China’s environmental scandals, untallied carbon emissions in supertanker shipping and an unbalanced perception of the oilsands’ risk to birds, after 1,600 birds drowned in a tailings pond when the scarecrow system failed.

...Fort McMurray might not be utopia, he says at his publisher’s office.

“But the air,” he says, “is fresher than in Toronto.”

In an interview with the Calgary Herald, David Suzuki, the fruit fly geneticist and professional fundraiser, has replied to my book, Ethical Oil.

It is an absolutely devastating reply, showing Suzuki's mastery of science, logic and persuasive arts:

I know there are apologists like Ezra Levant saying it's the most ethical oil... That's bulls**t.

There you have it, folks! I have to say, it's a step up from this hazy disquisition: 

Suzuki tells the Herald that "clearly, the conclusion is get off carbon-based energy."

Hey, good idea. Except that nobody is doing that -- not in the U.S., where we're selling our oilsands oil, not in China, India, Brazil or anywhere else. And certainly not Suzuki himself, with his three homes and his jet-set lifestyle.

One of my favourite news stories we did at the Western Standard was sending reporters out to one of Suzuki's speeches in Calgary. The old man arrived in a diesel-burning tour bus, and the bus was left to idle for the entire duration of Suzuki's speech. He came back out afterwards and got back on his bus which drove him the few blocks back to his hotel.

Like Al Gore and James Cameron, Suzuki is good at preaching restraint, but not so good in living it himself.

He's become what he called a "ninth level maggot" back in 1972.

As former National Post editorial board member Ezra Levant points out in his new book, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands, while environmentalists like to insist the three major oil sands projects together cover an area the size of Florida (or England, take your pick), in truth just 2.2% of that area is slated to be strip-mined. In the rest, the oil will be separated from the sand using such processes as steam injection. And even the mined bits are required, by law, to be reseeded and replanted when the companies are done.

Oil sands' carbon emissions, too, are tiny when put into perspective. Of all manmade emissions, Canada is responsible for just 2% of the world total, and the oil sands for just 5% of those. That means just one-tenth of 1% of all manmade emission in the world are from the oil sands.

Mr. Levant has certainly already raised the ire of his opponents. Police had to be called to a book signing in Saskatoon. Matt Price, policy director of Environmental Defence, wrote to The Globe and Mail: ‘So Ezra Levant thinks it’s somehow more ethical to replace dictator-supporting, planet-cooking oil with dictator-free tar sands oil that cooks the planet even faster?”

Last week the CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi held a “debate” between Mr. Levant and Mr. Nikiforuk. Mr. Levant steamrollered both of them (it inevitably turned out to be two against one). I could almost have felt sorry for Mr. Nikiforuk if he hadn’t started out by suggesting that oil was either “The Devil’s tears” or “The Devil’s Excrement.” With imagery like that, you know that objectivity has already gone out the window. Ethical Oil provides some desperately needed perspective.

My new book, Ethical Oil, went on sale last Tuesday, and within three days no fewer than five different corporate lobbyists debated me on TV and radio.

They told me I’m being too judgmental of oil companies, and that my attempts to measure the ethics of oil were a distraction from more important issues.

And they ignored me when I asked them about their carbon footprint — jet-setting around the world.

To be clear, these five spin doctors weren’t working for any oil company themselves — they work for Greenpeace, the multi-national entity headquartered in Europe.

And the ethical track record they were trying to get me to ignore was that of Saudi Arabia and Iran, not Canada.

I wanted them to admit Canada’s oil ethics are superior to those of OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Nigeria. They refused to do so — in fact, it was like pulling teeth even to get them to admit that those other countries had moral failings.

None of the five — including Greenpeace Canada’s executive director, and Greenpeace International’s global warming campaigner — would even admit Canada is a morally superior country to Saudi Arabia, a theocratic dictatorship where women have no rights, foreign migrants do the dirty work, and that finances terrorists.

What’s going on here?

Greenpeace is great at marshalling the language of moral disgust when dealing with Canada. They call our oil “dirty oil,” actually claim our oil “kills” people, and they’ve branded Canada a “climate criminal.”

That’s over the top — standard operating procedure for Greenpeace, which is second only to PETA for outrageous stunts that erode their credibility but enhance their PR.

My book has a simple premise: If we shut down the oilsands, Americans are going to fill up their cars with gas from somewhere else. And if it isn’t Canadian gas, it’s pretty obvious where it’s going to come from: OPEC. Before the oilsands came on line, Saudi Arabia was the number one source of U.S. crude. Not anymore.

Boy, they’d like their market share back. How many royal palaces have gone unbuilt because Americans have been buying oil from us instead?

That’s the thing. The alternative to Canadian oil isn’t some fantasy fuel of the future, with no pollution or other side effects. That’s the stuff of science fiction. Until that fantasy comes true, it’s our oil or someone else’s.

Saudi Arabia knows it can’t lobby against Canada, their chief competitor. That would cause a backlash, and increase demand for our oil by consumers. But Saudi Arabia doesn’t have to say a word, with groups like Greenpeace out and about. They’ll do all the oilsands-bashing for them.

Greenpeace is good at bashing oil — but only in very safe countries. They’ve never had a protest, or even a press conference, in Riyadh or Tehran.

The idea of Greenpeace activists breaking into a Saudi or Iranian refinery and shutting it down, like they regularly do in Canada, is unthinkable — they’d be shot dead by those bully regimes.

I’ve outflanked Greenpeace on the left, and they know it. I’m telling them to care about human rights, and women, and workers. I’m calling on them to remember the “peace” in Greenpeace.

The old Greenpeace would never have excused Saudi Arabia or Iran. Too bad - because we sure could use someone like that right now.

I had a fully day in Calgary doing media in person and by phone, but there's no rest for me -- I'm on the night flight to Toronto for the Economic Club of Canada lunch tomorrow, sponsored by the National Citizens Coalition. It's probably not too late to attend, if you want to hear the Ethical Oil message in person, and get a book signed, too!

Then it's right back on a plane to Calgary, where I'll be doing a book signing at the Signal Hill Indigo store at 7 p.m. I visited a few Chapters/Indigo stores today, and was delighted to hear that the books were moving well. That confirms the good news earlier today, when Ethical Oil hit #1 on Amazon.ca's non-fiction best-seller list (as I write this, I've dipped to #3, but the rankings change hourly!)

I keep promising to update this blog with links to various radio and TV hits I've done, and I will once I have a chance to sit down for more than twenty minutes! I'll also update the list of events to reflect new events confirmed for places like Victoria, Halifax, St. John's, Calgary and elsewhere. Until then, here's the partial list.

Thanks again for your support -- you're the reason Ethical Oil hit number one today.

Tuesday, September 21, Toronto

11:45 a.m. Economic Club of Canada, Marriott Toronto Eaton Centre, Details here.

Tuesday, September 21, Calgary

7 p.m. Indigo Signal Hill, Details here.

Tuesday, October 19, Edmonton

12 noon Edmonton Lit Fest, (debate with Satya Das), City Centre Mall. Details here.

Wednesday, October 20, Calgary

5:30 p.m. Calgary Enterprise Forum panel, Calgary Petroleum Club. Details to come.

Saturday, October 23, Ottawa

4 p.m. Ottawa Writers Festival. Details to come.

Saturday, October 30, Ottawa

7 p.m. Crowne Plaza Hotel, tribute dinner with Mark Steyn (non-book tour event). Details here.

Sunday, November 7, Calgary

11 a.m. Pages at the Plaza, The Plaza Theatre (debate with Andrew Nikiforuk). Details here.

Saturday, November 13, Ottawa

Free Thinking Festival. Details to come.

Sorry I haven't had time to update the blog. It's 5:15 a.m. and I've got to get ready for some early morning TV shows about Ethical Oil.

But if you're in Toronto, join me for lunch tomorrow (Tuesday), at the Economic Club of Canada at the Marriott Eaton Centre. Here are the details. Better register today!

And if you're in Calgary, come to the Indigo bookstores in Signal Hill at 7 p.m. tomorrow (also Tuesday!). Here are the details. No need to register -- just come by.

I'll be signing books at both events. See you there!

A few quick book reviews before I run:

Here's a great one in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.

Here's a mixed review by a labour activist in the Winnipeg Free Press (he calls it witty, but remains unconvinced.)

Here's an article from the Fort McMurray newspaper, in which a leading Alberta politician declares the city the Ethical Oil capital of the world!

And here's an interview with CTV.ca, which is pretty positive.

Gotta run now. I'll Tweet some of my Calgary events today, then the night flight to Toronto. Talk to you soon!

I got back to Calgary yesterday after a week on the road promoting Ethical Oil. I'm thrilled with how it's been received. As I write this, the book remains at #4 on Amazon.ca's non-fiction best-seller list.

I'll write an update on my book tour, either tonight if I'm not too tired, or tomorrow for sure, including a bunch of links to some TV and radio debates I've had.

Here's a fun story out of Saskatoon, where two professional protesters crashed my book signing event at McNally Robinson yesterday, shouting at the (all-female) staff and disrupting things so badly that police had to come. The event went ahead, and we sold a good number of books. I think it proved my point, though: anti-oilsands protesters are pretty brave in a liberal democracy like Canada. Try pulling that stunt in Saudi Arabia or Iran, and they wouldn't be professional protesters anymore, or anything else for that matter.

I thought the Star-Phoenix article was well-reported, but it left out my counter-heckle that got a few laughs: I asked one of the protesters (named Cody wearing a ski toque during the summer, you know the type) if he bought carbon credits to offset all the marijuana he burns in any given week.

(He did not. Cody, why do you hate the polar bears so?)

Anyways, more on my book tour later. Here's my latest Sun column about the constitutional right to burn Korans (the Sun apparently prefers the spelling Qur'an).

Cherished American right under fire

Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose greatest accomplishment until last month was growing a Hulk Hogan moustache, did not go through with his reality-TV threat to burn a stack of Qur’ans on the anniversary of 9/11.

It took a phone call from the U.S. Secretary of Defense to talk him out of it. Even David Petraeus, the four-star general charged with leading the war on terror on a day-to-day basis, cleared everything less important from his schedule to do a TV interview on the subject.

Speaking of the Pentagon, they’re not averse to a little book-burning themselves. Last spring, they confiscated a stash of Bibles sent to the U.S. base in Bagram. The Bibles were written in the Afghan languages of Pashto and Dari.

It’s illegal for U.S. soldiers to evangelize religion, and the brass guessed that was the purpose of the books. So they were confiscated them and, like all trash, the Bibles were burned.

Book burning should give us the creeps, for good reason. Historically, to burn books was to try to burn ideas themselves, such as the Nazi bonfires of “degenerate” books, or China’s Cultural Revolution. Cambodia’s Communists, the Khmer Rouge, went one step further: They killed anyone who wore glasses.

But burning books today isn’t always about censorship — in the age of the Internet it’s harder to physically destroy an idea. Burning books — your own books, that is — is like burning the American flag or an effigy of George W. Bush. It’s shorthand for dissent, designed for a reality-TV world. That’s what Jones was planning to do: Symbolically burn Islam.

It’s crude. But it’s a step up from burning people. In the month of February 2006 alone, more than 200 people were murdered by Muslim radicals protesting Danish cartoons of Muhammads.

American liberals have a long tradition of burning things they don’t like, from draft cards to brassieres to the American flag. It’s peaceful but provocative. In other words, it’s very American.

At least that’s what we’re told. But then Derek Fenton tried it. He’s a New Jersey transit worker who protested against the proposed Ground Zero mosque by burning a Qur’an.

He was fired by his company — a government agency.

But surely our western, liberal tradition will save him from political correctness masquerading as tolerance — political correctness that is really nothing more than fear of angry protests and even violence.

So let’s ask Stephen Breyer, a judge on the U.S. Supreme Court who was asked about Qur’an burning and free speech on TV last week.

“It doesn’t mean you can shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre,” he said. “Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And what is the crowded theatre today? What is the being trampled to death?”

But the judge got the quote wrong. In a 1919 case, the U.S. Supreme Court compared peacefully handing out anti-war leaflets to “falsely” shouting fire. It was an awful decision, and it was thrown out by the court in the 1960s, in favour of more expansive liberty. But even that 1919 case criticized “false” alarms.

Whether or not there’s a fire in a theatre is a matter of fact. Whether or not there’s a political crisis is a matter of opinion. Jones and Fenton think there’s a crisis. That’s their right.

When a judge says the violent reaction of foreign terrorists might be enough to take away our free-speech rights, it’s time to worry.

Today Ethical Oil went on sale at bookstores across the country. And by the afternoon, it had hit #4 on Amazon.ca's non-fiction best-seller list. That list is constantly updated, so it will jump up and down a bit, but it's still pretty exciting to do so well so quickly, before any book reviews have even come out.

You can buy the book online at Amazon or Chapters.

I've done a whack of interviews now, and I think people find the thesis interesting, and even surprising. Mainly, it's because I'm known as a political conservative, and this isn't a conservative book -- in fact, it could be called liberal or progressive.

For example, I note that global warming is a scientific theory that is not universally accepted, but I do not spend any time challenging that theory. The opposite: I make the case to liberals that if they believe global warming is an issue, then oilsands oil is superior to other sources of oil, such as California or Venezuela, which both have heavy oil that requires a lot of energy to refine. I also show that in a full life-cycle analysis -- for example, taking into account things like the tankers to ship OPEC oil to the U.S. -- oilsands oil is comparable in greenhouse gas emissions to most other oil in the world.

That's the thing: to get support for Canadian oil, I'm not challenging the left's values. I'm counting on their values. Because I know that Canada's oilsands best meets the test of those values -- environmentally sustainable, peaceful, economically just and respectful of minorities. I try to prove that in the book, and even try to quantify some of those measurements.

Anyways, here are a few TV clips that I did today:

Here's BNN clip 1 and clip 2, wherein I debate a foreign Greenpeace lobbyist.

Here's CBC Newsworld (fast forward to 1:22:30). When I'm done talking about the book, I talk a bit about Peg Atwood.

Tomorrow's going to be a great day too, when I'll be debating Greenpeace journalist Andrew Nikiforuk on CBC Radio's show Q, moderated by Jian Ghomeshi, and then taping a segment on CBC's "Day 6". Then it's off to Winnipeg for events on Thursday.

I've had a great response to my invitation for people to suggest book events in their town. I will be in a position to update my tour schedule shortly, with new visits to Victoria, Halifax, St. John's, Fort McMurray and Montreal planned. Until then, here's the confirmed schedule of public events so far:

Thursday, September 16, Winnipeg

7 p.m. Indigo Kenaston Common. Details here.

Friday, September 17, Saskatoon

12 noon McNally Robinson, Details here.

Tuesday, September 21, Toronto

11:45 a.m. Economic Club of Canada, Marriott Toronto Eaton Centre, Details here.

Tuesday, September 21, Calgary

7 p.m. Indigo Signal Hill, Details here.

Thursday, September 23, Edmonton

7 p.m. Indigo South Edmonton, Details here.

Friday, September 24, Vancouver

11:45 a.m. Vancouver Club, Details here.

Tuesday, October 19, Edmonton

12 noon Edmonton Lit Fest, (debate with Satya Das), City Centre Mall. Details here.

Wednesday, October 20, Calgary

5:30 p.m. Calgary Enterprise Forum panel, Calgary Petroleum Club. Details to come.

Saturday, October 23, Ottawa

4 p.m. Ottawa Writers Festival. Details to come.

Saturday, October 30, Ottawa

7 p.m. Crowne Plaza Hotel, tribute dinner with Mark Steyn (non-book tour event). Details here.

Sunday, November 7, Calgary

11 a.m. Pages at the Plaza, The Plaza Theatre (debate with Andrew Nikiforuk). Details here.

Saturday, November 13, Ottawa

Free Thinking Festival. Details to come.

Here's a radio clip I did with The Mark (fast forward about 22 minutes into the segment).

Here's a video clip I did on Toronto's Sun TV.

And here's the Globe and Mail's first take on things:

...according to Ezra Levant, Canada’s oil sands are the most ethical hydrocarbon alternative on Earth. It’s a view the author, former magazine publisher and Sun Media columnist presents in a new book whose title, Ethical Oil, doubles as his recommendation for a new energy-industry slogan. On four fundamental criteria – the environment, peace and conflict, economic justice and treatment of minorities, the industry operating in Canada is heads above other crude producers like Saudi Arabia, Libya, Nigeria and Venezuela, Mr. Levant argues.

“If we actually want to make the world a better place, a more moral place, the ethical thing to do is to pump as much oil as we possibly can out of the oil sands, knowing that every barrel we produce in Canada displaces a fascist barrel from Saudi Arabia, a misogynist barrel from Iran and a dictatorial barrel from Venezuela,” he said in an interview.

...Mr. Levant has this suggestion for industry: “Realize you’re not fighting with guys that play fair. You to make your case more forcefully and start going on the offensive.”

Even if that means talking about blood spilled on the other side of the planet.

I think it's a great start!

And if you're in Toronto, remember to pop by the Bloor Street Indigo tonight at 7 p.m. -- see you there!

Atwood's free-speech flop

Canadian author Margaret Atwood is a free-speech activist. She is the vice-president of International PEN, the advocacy group for imprisoned writers.

As a civil libertarian, Atwood defends freedom, even for odious people. Like Al Jazeera, the satellite network owned by an Arab sheik. Al Jazeera helps publicize terrorists like al-Qaida, who send snuff videos to the channel, knowing they will be obediently aired as propaganda.

Al Jazeera doesn’t just broadcast terrorism. Sometimes the channel goes further. Two years ago Israel released Samir Kuntar, a convicted terrorist serving time for mass murder. One of Kuntar’s murder victims was a four-year-old Jewish girl he smashed with a rock. When Kuntar was released to Lebanon, Al Jazeera televised the welcome-home party. Then Al Jazeera threw him a party themselves. Al Jazeera’s Beirut chief, Ghassan bin Jeddo, praised the child-killer as a “pan-Arab hero.”

Atwood loves free speech so much, she doesn’t just support Al Jazeera from arm’s-length. She appears on the network to promote her books.

Like Al Jazeera, Atwood vigorously opposed the war in Iraq. But lest you think she is anti-Israel, this spring she visited Tel Aviv to accept a book prize. Arab students demanded that she refuse the award, but she was true to her principles: “We don’t do cultural boycotts,” she announced.

The fact that the prize came with a $500,000 cheque never even entered her mind.

There is no journalist too odious for her to defend, and no controversy that would cause her to boycott a cultural event. As she told a gala in her honour this April, “once the censoring begins, who shall be in control of it, and where will it stop?”

Amen!

So imagine how bad the Sun must be — I’m talking about this newspaper, dear reader! — for Atwood to sign a petition demanding that a TV news channel proposed by Sun Media be stopped by the Canadian government.

Al Jazeera is fine by her. But Atwood demands that Sun TV News be banned.

She even signed a petition to that effect, to be delivered to the CRTC, the regulatory agency for Canadian television.

And then she boasted about what she’d done on her Twitter website, telling her 82,000 followers to “Join me!”

What is that, if not a cultural boycott and a celebration of censorship?

Atwood is not alone. Jim Travers of the Toronto Star declared that if Sun TV can’t prove it will be critical of the government, “it certainly shouldn’t have that licence.” His colleague Susan Delacourt wrote that the Sun must answer for its “blend of politics and journalism ... before it gets a licence.” Don Newman, the former CBC anchor, wrote Sun TV is “the absolute last thing this country needs.”

What’s going on here? Why are journalists calling for the censorship of other journalists?

The licence Sun TV is asking for would have cable companies offer the channel to Canadians, but not force anyone to pay for it. By comparison, everyone must pay for CBC and CTV news channels whether they want them or not.

So why do Atwood, Travers, Delacourt and Newman hate the Sun so passionately?

Is it fear of business competition? Not likely. Atwood is a millionaire author, Newman is retired, and Travers and Delacourt are on salaries — Sun TV won’t hurt their pocketbooks. So what is it?

It’s intellectual competition.

For decades, the only political opinion allowed on TV news has been liberal: Anti-American, anti-Christian, soft-on-crime, soft-on-terrorists, radical environmentalism, big government mush.

Sun TV will be like the Sun newspapers: Independent, conservative, populist, patriotic — and fun.

Sun TV will break the left-wing mainstream media consensus. That’s why the most left-wing journalists in the country despise it.

And that’s why Peg Atwood violated everything she stands for, by asking the government to censor it

.

Could it be true? That a human rights complaint has been filed against none other than Richard Moon, law professor at the University of Windsor and hired gun for the Canadian Human Rights Commission?

Could it really be that the good professor is accused of both racism and sexism, based on his campaign to scupper the career of a woman of colour -- a campaign spurred on by Moon's wife?

What a nightmare for him. Even if he wins, he loses. Mind you, unlike me, I'm sure his (and his wife's) legal bills will be paid for by the university. Still, he's about to learn, first-hand, what a show trial is like from the inside.

Gentle reader, do not gloat. It might be tempting to smile at the fact that Moon, who has tried so hard to defend the legitimacy of human rights commissions, is now getting the kangaroo treatment himself, and at the hands of Barbara Hall, no less. But schadenfreude is unbecoming. Just because Moon believes politically correct hunter-killer bureaucrats should be sicced on you and me, doesn't mean we should descend to that level and cheer that they are now being sicced on him.

And, let us remember, that although Moon pocketed his $50,000 to write a brochure for the CHRC, and although he vigorously defends the CHRC's bullies, including Richard Warman, Moon also publicly recommended that the CHRC's censorship powers (also known as section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act) be repealed. So there is a little bit of gold in that heart of stone.

I'm not happy that he's being dragged into the dungeon that he himself defended. I admit that my own sense of mercy and forgiveness is tempered by the fact that he is surely making special pleading with his university, not only to pay his legal fees, but to pay off the accuser, too, to make her go away.

So I guess, after all, he won't go through the financial ruin and personal stress that other victims of the HRCs do.

Still, I'll say it: Free Richard Moon!

I bet you didn't know that (I didn't). I wrote my Sun column about it today:

Tamils on the rebound

Great news: There is a country in Asia willing to take Sri Lankan Tamil refugees by the thousand — with the United Nations’ seal of approval.

And they’re already doing it. In the first six months of 2010, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says the generous country accepted 1,857 Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, who had been staying temporarily in India.

UN refugee spokesman Michael Zwack says these Tamils are now “rebuilding their lives.” The UN quoted one Tamil refugee, a 39-year-old woman, who said she was pleased with her new home for a pretty good reason: “Peace.”

So where is this wonderful place that Sri Lankan refugees are going to by the thousand?

Sri Lanka.

That’s right. Thousands of Tamil refugees are returning to Sri Lanka — because it’s safe. Within Sri Lanka itself, internal refugee camps for displaced Tamils are winding down, as Tamils go back home.

For example, the Menik Farm refugee camp in Sri Lanka once had 228,000 Tamils in it. It’s down to less than 35,000 now, with 3,000 people going home every week.

It’s an amazing success story, and it’s because the 30-year civil war with the Tamil Tigers terrorist group is over. The terrorists lost. The war ended last spring. Everyone can go home.

Including the 492 gatecrashers who showed up on Vancouver Island last month.

This isn’t Sri Lankan government propaganda. It’s Tamil refugees telling the story, not with words but with deeds. They’re leaving some of the friendliest places on earth to go home.

For example, the 1,857 refugees mentioned above had been staying in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It’s a huge state, with more than 66 million people, overwhelmingly Tamil, as its name implies. Even from that Tamil paradise, Tamil refugees are going home to Sri Lanka.

We already knew 71% of Tamil refugees in Canada go home to Sri Lanka for holidays, too, according to a survey done by Canadian immigration officials, and reported by QMI Agency.

Question: If thousands of Tamil refugees from around the world are going home to Sri Lanka, and 71% of Canadian Tamil refugees go back there for holidays, why are we still going through the motions with the 492 Tamils on Vancouver Island, as if they are legitimate? And why are more Tamil ships steaming our way?

That’s easy. Criminal smugglers made an estimated $20 million profit from the voyage. Why wouldn’t they keep doing it?

Canadian immigration lawyers love it. It’s lucrative work — they’re paid by legal aid. Which is another way of saying “paid by your taxes.”

Politicians love it. With more than 200,000 Tamils living in Toronto, there are plenty of votes to be had by pandering.

And liberal, white journalists love it, because it’s a chance to prove how sensitive they are, to polish their politically correct credentials.

That just leaves the rest of us — chumps paying the bills, and watching helplessly while 492 queue-jumpers butt in to the front of the line. Not just queue-jumpers, but queue-jumpers fleeing a “peaceful” place.

So are we going to change our laws to keep out these shysters, like Australia has done? Or is being the world’s sucker the new Canadian identity?