Dennis Prager Interviews Ezra Levant

Ezra Levant was interviewed Monday morning in the second hour of Dennis Prager’s daily talk show, on the subject of Ezra’s new book, Ethical Oil: The Case For Canada’s Oil Sands.

I didn’t see much mention of their 30-minute talk elsewhere online, including any mention of it at Ezra own site, so I thought I would offer a brief recap, “for the record”.

Ezra’s responds to Dennis’ gracious introduction by reminding the American audience of the tremendous First Amendment rights that they may be taking for granted, citing how his own recent 900-day prosecution for publishing the mohammed cartoons in his magazine would not have been the same problem had it happened in the US.

Dennis' first question addresses how much oil is assumed to be available in Alberta’s oil sands reserves. The answer: 175 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia. Ezra points out that Canada is the only liberal democracy to be found in the listed ten nations possessing the largest oil reserves (defining Iraq as only a “wobbly democracy"). He explains how the technical means to extract the oil from the sand and clay that it’s mixed with are being perfected every day, allowing Canada to keep increasing the amount of oil it can provide to the US. While Nancy Pelosi and Greenpeace have criticized Alberta's “dirty” resource, Ezra points out that when various other liberal criteria, such as environmentalism, fair wages and treatment of workers, are factored into the equation, Canada’s liberal values far surpass those of the other OPEC nations that we could be getting our oil from.

Dennis cuts to the quick: what is stopping America from buying even more oil, all its oil, from Canada? Ezra raises the issues of aesthetics, and how “ugly” the process can appear. However, those who criticize the Canadian source have less to say about Iranian or Saudi refining, because they can’t visit these locations and report on them as readily as they can access the comparable sites in Canada.

Dennis is a bit incredulous that mere aesthetics are the main roadblock to purchasing more oil from Canada. Ezra clarifies that Nancy Pelosi has primarily been critical of the “large carbon footprint” associated with the oil sands oil. He concedes her point that to produce one barrel of oil this way takes more energy than a barrel of light oil from the Saudis, due to the different refining needs of each source. But the comparison does not hold up when stacked up against heavy oil from Venezuela or even California, where Canada has the smaller carbon footprint.

Returning to the issue of ethics, Ezra makes a specific comparison with the Sudan, where the UN estimates about 300,000 people have been killed. The grim statistics are tabulated: how much blood (an eyeball’s worth) are to be associated with a barrel of Sudanese oil, and whether it might be better to have more carbon dioxide, but no blood, by using Canadian oil. Ezra was particularly eloquent and effective here, especially when pointing out that the mayor of the oil sands town of Fort MacMurray is a woman, and how unlikely such a situation would be in oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Ezra brings the segment to a close with a remark on how America, such a strong advocate of consumer rights, offers labels denoting countries of origins for so many goods, yet not for gas. Raising the question, what would people choose to buy if the country of origin for oil was revealed at the gas pump?

Back from the commercial break, Dennis takes a call from an angry listener in Texas. The caller states that he’s from Alberta, has seen the oil sands in Fort MacMurray “hundreds of times”. He tries to shame Ezra by asking how much water is used in the process. By his tone the caller expected to deal a severe wound to Ezra's case with this thrust. Ezra calmly parries the blow by conceding the recipe of three barrels of water that used to be required to produce one barrel of oil, then explains how technological advances see us using 38% less energy today in this process than had been the case 20 years ago. Statistics about the wasteful amount of water tolerated to secure a single cup of coffee or a pair of jeans put the oil sands equation into context, and for good measure we’re invited to wonder whether Iran or Saudi Arabia might be as worried about such environmental concerns as we would be in Canada.

The caller testily proposes that Alberta doesn’t care about the environment either; Ezra reminds him that he is from Alberta and cares about the environment, which prompts the caller to bark that he was from there as well. Having lost his cool, the caller then trips on his next point: Ralph Klein doesn’t care about the environment. Ezra gently suggests that since Klein hasn’t been Premier of Alberta for a few years now [since 2006], that perhaps the caller’s information may be a little out of date.

The third and final segment starts off with Dennis asking Ezra why the United States isn’t developing more of its own domestic oil sources, why is it depending so heavily on Canada’s oil? Ezra suggests that part of the answer could be the consumer doesn’t really have a way to know where the gas they currently buy is coming from. He cites the recent case of CITGO, and how when word got out about its connection with Venezuela, many people chose to drive to another dealer for their gas.

Dennis reframes his question more clearly: does the oil sands deposit not extend into the states neighboring Alberta? Not to the same degree, it seems, but in order to reach what deposits there are to be found in states like Idaho and Montana, the ecological downsides to any source of energy, and the particular ones associated with oil sands oil refining, have to be weighed against the notions of security of supply, as well as whether it’s worth financing our enemies.

Back again to the issue of environmentalism, Ezra asks, rhetorically, whether anyone believes that Nigeria’s oil refining could be more environmentally safer than what would be undertaken domestically in the US. Americans, like Canadians, care much more about the environment than the dictatorships do.

Ezra points out anecdotally to Dennis how the US now spends approximately $50 billion so that the US Navy can keep the Persian Gulf sea lanes open. This results in a $54 a barrel “subsidy” for oil exported from the Saudis, Kuwait and the UAE. “A military tax”, Dennis calls it. The stark comparison is made to the much lower costs associated with procuring oil from Canada, via pipeline.

Dennis concludes the conversation with a mention of Ezra’s previous book, Shakedown. Dennis asks Ezra to provide the “Cliff Notes” version of the story behind it for his listeners. Sadly Ezra's had a lot of practice, I'm sure, recounting the 900-day Human Rights farce of an investigation, and the “counterfeit human right”, the right not to be offended, that was at the heart of the “hate speech” complaint filed against him. He again brings up the point that Americans should not be complacent about their freedom of speech, and not to think that his trial would remain an impossibility in the US. Dennis agrees heartily, referencing the recent Yale University-published book on the mohammed Danish cartoon controversy, where the publisher self-censored themselves, cutting the cartoons from their own book, despite the wishes of author that they be included (naturally enough, since that's what the book was about in the first place!).

All in all a strong appearance by Ezra. I must say that I was a little disappointed with Dennis in this interview; he did a tremendous job summarizing Ezra's case at the start of each segment, for the sake of listeners tuning in late, but a couple of jokes after the first commercial break were extended way too long for my taste. This tragically ate up precious time at the expense of Ezra's advocacy on behalf of this critically important consumer protection movement.

We are all Ezra; and none of us is really yet free!

Yesterday came news that the ethical dinosaurs (i.e. victim worshipers) at the Alberta "Human Rights "Commission, after taking three years, engaging fifteen bureaucrats, spending in excess of $500,000 of taxpayers' money, have declined to prosecute Ezra Levant for publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

Their explanation... the fruit of three years of mental effort. As Ezra fairly frames it (see also his National Post piece):

Pardeep Gundara – a second-rate bureaucrat, a nobody – had to give me his approval for me to be allowed to go back to my business. For 900 days I was in the dock, waiting for this literary giant to pronounce his judgment on me. And I found favour in his eyes – but barely.

Sorry. I don’t give a damn what Gundara or the HRC says. Getting his approval is not a success. I won't legitimize his arrogant "authority" by saying "thank you, master". I'll say: "who the hell are you? Besides a busy-body bureaucrat?"

Look at his rationale for acquitting me: because the Western Standard met Gundara’s home-made tests of reasonableness. We published the cartoons in “context”; we published letters that “criticized” them; and my favourite, the cartoons weren’t “simply stuck in the middle” of the magazine. Gundara must have thought for ten whole minutes to come up with that list of journalistic do’s and don’t’s. And – phew! – he likes me. He really likes me!

Sorry again, I don’t give a damn if he likes me. In fact, it rather creeps me out that a whole squad of teat-sucking bureaucrats spent 900 days inspecting me and the Western Standard. I positively want to offend them. In fact, that’s pretty much the only test of my freedom: can I do exactly what Gundara says I shouldn’t? I’m not interested in publishing recipes or sports scores. I’m interested in bothering the hell out of government.

So, those of us who think we have the right in Canada to publish a cartoon - no less an exemplarily political cartoon - that may be seen by some supposedly educated bureaucrat (keep in mind our universities are hot houses for victimary ideology) as "stereotypical, negative and offensive", who think we have the natural and inalienable right to publish cartoons anywhere and anyhow we damn well please, remain unfree.

Gundara writes "While the cartoons remain offensive, the stereotypical nature of the cartoons is muted by the context of the accompanying article which focuses on free speech." So Ezra, or his company, who has spent about $100,000 on their defense can go without formal penalty, this time. But the fear of next time remains.

Freedom is something we all share or none really has secure. We are all Ezras, in Canada. We must remain worried that the Gundaras of the world could decide we have done wrong at any moment; and they could banish us for life from speaking out on certain issues, as happened recently to Pastor Stephen Boissoin for criticizing pro-homosexual teaching in the schools. And we'd have to be rich to fight them.

In his reasoning in this case, Gundara declares Muslims, since 9/11, a "vulnerable group" - hence to be state protected under the "human rights" code - in transparent obeisance to the worst of victimary ideology, demonstrating how "hate speech" laws can only work to politicize the bureaucracy and judiciary.

Ezra walks, with light pockets. But the evil "human rights" codes remain in this country. It is perhaps time the bloggers involved with this story start discussing the establishment of a more permanent organization, or central clearing house (where information could be permanently recorded), to fight the existence of these laws. We can't expect figureheads like Ezra Levant to do all our fighting for us, forever, notwithstanding that Ezra promises to keep in the fight. It is the very evil of these laws that they can exhaust any one person, sooner or later, almost guranteeing that the victim-worshiping state will always be right, and the lonely individual who wants to be free of human sacrifice, wrong.

There needs to be an organization, more or less formal, that will stand up for and publicize the case of each and every person who is prosecuted for using his God-given freedom of expression. As long as writers in Canada remain fearful of these laws, we don't really have a free culture. We can only sustain the courage to be free by knowing that there will always be people to stand with those accused by the victimary forces ensconced in the bureaucracies and academies and often courthouses of this country, until the latter are overwhelmed by a freer and superior ethic.

We are free as long as we refuse to obey unjust laws. And to have the courage to do that, to perform civil disobedience when and where necessary, we need to move towards more permanent organization and support networks, until these "human rights" laws are scrapped or seriously amended.

Trying to build a network of like-minded people here in Vancouver, the Covenant Zone bloggers meet every Thursday, 7-9pm, in the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library, in front of Blenz Coffee. Look for blue scarves and guys wearing free speech t-shirts.

But I propose other bloggers in Canada start thinking of the kind of organizations we could further develop, in order to keep this fight for our shared freedom permanent. I can only watch your back if you watch mine.

Unbelievable: Alberta "human rights" official endorses Maoist thought policing

Thanks to the Stephen Boissoin case, an American Christian youth worker, who gives seminars promoting sexual abstinence, is worried if some of his portrayals of homosexuality as a sin is going to land him in trouble with the law when he comes to speak at an Edmonton church. Boissoin recounts the story at Free Dominion.

So the American phones up the Alberta Human Rights Commission. And some bureaucrat effectively tells him that he should get participants to sign consent forms. But even then, if one of his audience then goes public with "homophobic" views, say at school, then a teacher could lay a complaint against the youth minister.

Basically, a kid in school doesn't have a right to his opinion. If he questions homosexuality, the teacher can brow beat him until he gives up the name of a preacher, or whomever, who dared to communicate traditional Judeo-Christian views on homosexuality. The preacher can then be hauled in front of a "human rights" tribunal and, like Boissoin, banned from making "disparaging" comments about homosexuality and forced to make a public "apology"

What's more, the American teacher is advised to run his course by the police, to check for "hate crimes".

This is pure Maoism. In Canada, today. Fire. Them. All.

HT: Four Horses

Red Star vs. Mop and Wail: Free Speech, Canadian style

Well, they're coming late to the party, but maybe the tide is turning when even the Toronto (red) Star allows a column to grumble about free speech. But note the title of journalism prof Kelly Toughill's piece: Censorship not the answer. Not the answer to what? Well, I imagine that would be to the fantasized Utopia that is the real driver of left-liberal (Gnostic) thought. Anyway, a few excerpts:

Ezra Levant is a tough guy to defend. In general, he cherishes everything I abhor, and abhors everything I cherish. Still, he is mostly right in his quixotic battle against the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

The guy is completely abhorrent to you? Well, are we really going to take anyone who engages is such apotropaic gestures - casting out demons - seriously on a question of free speech? (That's an interesting question, I think - what does it tell us about the sacrificial rituals that we still seemingly need in order to guarantee our freedom...)

The issue is not whether Levant should have published the cartoons, or whether Maclean's has been fair in depicting Muslims. The issue is who gets to decide what the press can publish and what the public gets to read.

We should not give government that power. Human rights commissions are created by government legislation. Members are appointed by politicians. The criteria and standards they enforce are set by politicians.

Close, but in fact the legislated criteria and standards they enforce have been heavily influenced by judicial and in-house, closed door, "human rights" tribunal decisions. The purpose of all this lawyer busy-bodying, it seems to me, is to enable judges and lawyers to prove that they are great metaphysical gymnasts capable of balancing competing rights and freedoms, even if it means that innovative speech must constantly worry it could be put through the grinder of judicial review, at great expense of time and money. The great balancing the judges dream about, in the fantasy of a perfect judicial weighing (and woe to those who would upset the perfect balance), can only come at the expense of injecting chunks of cholesterol into the networks of exchange on which a free society depends so heavily if it is to find new ways to transcend its ever-grinding, eroding, resentments, and preserve its freedom.

The acts also say they shouldn't interfere with freedom of expression, but they already have. It is time-consuming and expensive to defend yourself against a human rights complaint, even if the complaint is eventually dismissed. All three human rights agencies are still in the preliminary stages of the complaint process. None has been referred for formal hearings.

Canadian Civil Liberties Association founder Alan Borovoy is one of Levant's defenders.

"I was involved in campaigns to create the human rights commissions," he says. "It never occurred to any of us that human rights commissions would be used to muzzle the free expression of ideas."

Levant is wrong to focus his wrath on the human rights commissions themselves. They are simply following their mandate, following the law. The responsibility for fixing this problem lies with their political masters.

Now, at this point, I'm almost in agreement with the writer, after her opening rituals of disassociation, but I think Ezra is quite right to detest anyone who sits on these thought crime tribunals. Pretty much any job in the country is more noble nowadays. And yet, Levant's interrogator still assumed a handshake would be forthcoming to her after "following her mandate". I guess at the Toronto (red) Star, they haven't yet learned that fascism is always about "just following orders" (here's the extreme case) with middle-class sincerity and respectability.

So, that's my casting out for you. Still Toughill is right that after chapter one in Ezra's story we must all move on to the crux of the issue: our freedom to act politically and to tell the politicians to change the thought-crime-engendering legislation.

Now let's turn to another Toronto newspaper, that figures itself the official voice of Canada's liberal and professional elites. I don't often tout the Globe and Mail, it usually being too busy helping to insure that the risks of a free society are always carefully measured and regulated by the mutually-accrediting professional classes. But today, behind their online subscription wall, we find a neat weekly column from one of the few freedom fighters on the payroll, Mr. Rex Murphy. You might want to go out and buy a copy of the print edition. But since maybe you can't, and because we want to make some fair comment, here are some excerpts:

Our esteemed human rights commissions are so busy these days, it worries me.

The number of these gimlet-eyed scrutineers is, after all, finite.

There is, therefore, only a limited store of intellectual.energy and moral fervour for them to call upon. In a brutish world, righteousness is not inexhaustible; virtue, like oil, has its peak moments and, with their current agenda, Canada's HRCs may run out of fuel.
[...]
Alberta's Human Rights Commission, one of the keenest, a noble avatar of those old censor boards that used to guard public libraries from "steamy" literature and "brazen" language, is trying to contain - I think that is the only proper verb here - Ezra Levant.

Mr. Levant has, as the jargon expresses it, "gone before" the commission to answer for the putative crime, offence, tastelessness of his (now defunct) magazine, the Western Standard's publication of the Mohammed cartoons. But even the sturdiest tribunal can summon forces too large for it to manage. And even the deepest probing commissioner, alert as a tuning-fork to the harmonies of political correctness, should have quailed before the thought of putting Ezra Levant under state-mandated interrogation.

His initial hearing is an Internet hit. He videotaped it, you see, and against the urgings of the commission placed in on the World Wide Web.

His performance, a marathon aria to free speech, looks to outpace even Jessica Alba beach footage as a web draw. More than 400,000 visitors have YouTubed Mr. Levant (A Daniel, I say, a Daniel come to judgment on Canadian free speech!). He is as a tidal wave breaking against a lone and solitary craft.
[...]
do they really want - after Ezra's example, mind you - to call Mark Steyn, the Victoria Falls ("The Smoke that Thunders") of prolific columnists - into one of their style-less chambers to "explain himself?" If Mr. Levant contains multitudes, how to describe Mr. Steyn? He is a prodigy of immense resource and industry. Compared to him, Trollope was a slacker, Dickens a wastrel, and Proust a miniaturist. He inundates. Books, columns, blogs and obiter dicta in a thousand venues - If Mr. Steyn goes before one or all of these commissions, he will be firing off columns between questions. He'll write a column on a question while it is being asked. I urge our guardians to consider their own interests:

Stay a while before essaying this profitless and useless venture.
[...]
this is too much at one time for the meticulous and tidy tribunals that alone are our guardians against every stray thought that might fracture our fabulously delicate Canadian sensibilities. While they are preoccupied with Steyn-Levant, overwhelmed, exhausted and undone by Steyn-Levant, battered, borne-down on and befuddled
by Steyn-Levant - who will watch out for us?

Who will there be to read before we read, and tell us what is proper for us? Who will be there to edit the editors, to copy check the copy checkers? Who will shield our vulnerable law-students, and who will tend to the commission's most industrious serial complainant. There is one person, so eggshell brittle that he has drummed up a fierce amount of business for the HRCs. Is so loyal a customer now to be ignored because the Steyn-Levant tsunami is about to rumble mercilessly on shore?

Mostly I fear, If the HRCs are tied up, Canadians will be reading, unguided, what they choose to read, deciding for themselves what they like and what they don't, will discard a book or pass it to a friend, like a column or curse one - lit only by the light of their own reason.

The horror!

Now why can't journalism schools produce more free-minded contempt like that?

What I fear is that this will all somehow blow over - most of those Youtube hits on Ezra's stand came from outside Canada, I have read - and we will go back to being normal good Canadians, people who defer to judges and tribunals to negotiate our differences, because we don't have the courage or energy to realize that it is each of us who owns our vaunted "multicultural" society, that it is we who get to decide, by dint of our aggregated daily interactions, what cultural multiples thrive and what gets marginalized in this country, free to follow its own marginality except for what is a clearly violent threat to others. Let's start phoning the politicians, and see if they know what Rex Murphy is talking about. Serial complainer?

Covenant, or just Shut Up about my religion!

This is a time when even the Pope in Rome has to decline an invitation to speak at a university because a rabble of scientists can't bear to hear free speech on fundamental questions of human existence from a man who surely knows more about the anthropology that requires us to balance reason and faith, than do the dull-headed materialists whom, I find generally, don't give a moment's thought to why or how every word we speak transcends the merely material existence of grouped sounds or letters. So, I feel it is yet again our duty at this week's Covenant Zone meeting to discuss the secular left's current erosion of free speech in all Western countries. I hope some leftists will some day join us, since there is nothing more important at present, it seems to me, than that the left renew itself and its committment to productive debate and dialogue by covenanting with those whom, at present, the left only writes off as "reactionaries" and "fascists", ignoring entirely what conservatives are really about. No one's freedom can be preserved when rational debate and discussion has collapsed before a pervasive desire to appear the victimized group.

We meet every Thursday in the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library, central branch, in front of Blenz Coffee, wearing blue scarves. Please join us if you can.

In any case, there are a host of items in the blogosphere in regard to free speech fights. Here are a few that have come to my attention. Once again, I feel I must highlight Ezra Levant's fight. If you haven't seen his closing statement to the "Human Rights"/Wrongs Commission of Alberta, please don't miss his call for the Commission to find him guilty, that he may engage real courts in the need to reign in the abuses of our fundamental freedoms in these "Human Rights" Star Chambers.


Will the victim-baiting bureaucrats have the nerve to find Levant guilty, after he has professed his desire to be as offensive as possible to them, to assert a Canadian's right to be offensive in public speech? Will they risk a higher court, public opinion, and hopefully Canadian legislators, reigning them in, or will they admit Levant has a right to be offensive? Ezra has some advice for us on how to get more involved in the fight to protect each other's freedom, the responsibility of every covenanter.

At the least, consider signing this petition against the HRCs.
. The petition was initiated by John Pacheco whose blog is keeping abreast of our free speech fights.

Another good web site for material on the present fight that all Canadians need to engage is Free Mark Steyn!

Rex Murphy showed that he is one of the few journalists in the country who understands that the "Human Rights" Tribunals are not just a threat against those nasty conservatives, but against every and anyone who likes to open his mouth. The relative silence in the Main Stream Media on what is going on in this country's "Human Rights" Tribunals, their unwillingness to discuss the issue pro or con, shows that they have largely conceded any moral authority they once claimed to be free-minded informers of the Canadian public. They are cowards unwilling to fight for a right which while fundamental to everyone, arguably impacts more on their line of work, and the health of their business, than anyone's.

David Warren is one of the few other mainstream journalists who is committed to the fight for our shared freedom. Muslims Against Sharia is also taking a lead in defending Levant. I see their comments throughout the blogosphere.

If we don't all get involved in defending each other's freedom, fighting for the covenant that will make us complete human beings, we will be left with self-righteous busy - bodies to tell us what is and is not permissible speech

Proud to be a Canadian!

This is some of the most powerful video you are going to see in a long time.

Ezra Levant calls a government thug, a thug with the power to make him pay, a thug, to her face! He eloquently speaks for himself and rightly notes that we Canadians have allowed the banality of evil, as famously analyzed by Hannah Arendt, to creep into our society.

Ezra says he will be posting many excerpts from his government interrogation over the weekend. Here are his first four videos, now up at Youtube. Follow the links in the titles to go to Ezra's blog and read his introduction to the videos.

Opening statement


What was your intent?


Violence in Alberta


I don't answer to the state

Ashamed to be Canadian!

I have never been so ashamed to be a Canadian, but this is what happens when you first leave the dreamy stupor in which most of us live while ignoring the erosion of our fellow citizens' freedoms by Gnostic bureaucrats enrobed in the mantle of the Crown. I am talking about the widespread ignoring of the attack on a freedom - speech - that is fundamental to a free and humane society, by the so-called "Human Rights" Commissions of Canada. Due to my shame, I am going to leave aside for the moment my own critique of the ethical and moral stupidity of those who think human rights can be protected for anyone, even the most legitimate of victims, by silencing anyone, even the most hateful. Today was Ezra Levant's day in "court" and since the "court" in question is a Star Chamber that doesn't want anyone to know what it is up to, doesn't want you or me or anyone to simply sit and watch them erode Ezra's freedom, I am going to make this post a witness to Ezra's words. I'm pretty sure he won't mind me quoting his blog posts in their entirety. Follow the links to Ezra's blog for the originals.

First:

At today's "human rights" interrogation, I was not permitted to bring anyone other than my lawyer and my wife along -- the "human rights officer" barred others from attending as observers, even other officers of the magazine (such as our former editor). The news media who showed up congregated in the lobby of the law firm and waited until we were done.

But my lawyer and I insisted that we be permitted to record the interrogation, for use when we appeal the commission's decision to a real court. The officer allowed the video camera, but asked that we keep the recording confidential. But, over a year ago, our lawyer served notice on the commission that we reserved the right to publish any communications to or from the commission whatsoever, and that they should govern themselves accordingly. It's not surprising that a censor like the commission would want to do its censorship in the dark.

I'm currently downloading the 90-minute recording. It's too long to upload on YouTube (they limit uploads to ten minutes), and much of the interrogation was repetitive. I will endeavour to upload the most interesting exchanges over the next few days.

In the meantime, here is the first news report that I've seen on the subject, from CanWest News. An excerpt:

"A secular government bureaucracy has essentially been hijacked by a radical Muslim imam," [Levant] said. "It's being used to further his fatwa against these cartoons."

"We have a great tradition of free speech in Canada," he said.

"My freedom to publish a cartoon that some radical Muslim imam doesn't like, well that's the free west for ya."

UPDATE: Here is the local CBC clip on the subject -- fast forward to 30:35 (link is likely not permanent).

Second:

I have just returned home from my session at the kangaroo court, called the Alberta human rights commission. Here is my opening statement that I delivered at the interrogation. I will post more details about the interrogation soon.

Alberta Human Rights Commission Interrogation
Opening remarks by Ezra Levant, January 11, 2008 – Calgary

My name is Ezra Levant. Before this government interrogation begins, I will make a statement.

When the Western Standard magazine printed the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago, I was the publisher. It was the proudest moment of my public life. I would do it again today. In fact, I did do it again today. Though the Western Standard, sadly, no longer publishes a print edition, I posted the cartoons this morning on my website, ezralevant.com.

I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. So I will now call those bureaucrats “the commission” or “the hrc”, since to call the commission a “human rights commission” is to destroy the meaning of those words.

I believe that this commission has no proper authority over me. The commission was meant as a low-level, quasi-judicial body to arbitrate squabbles about housing, employment and other matters, where a complainant felt that their race or sex was the reason they were discriminated against. The commission was meant to deal with deeds, not words or ideas. Now the commission, which is funded by a secular government, from the pockets of taxpayers of all backgrounds, is taking it upon itself to be an enforcer of the views of radical Islam. So much for the separation of mosque and state.

I have read the past few years’ worth of decisions from this commission, and it is clear that it has become a dump for the junk that gets rejected from the real legal system. I read one case where a male hair salon student complained that he was called a “loser” by the girls in the class. The commission actually had a hearing about this. Another case was a kitchen manager with Hepatitis-C, who complained that it was against her rights to be fired. The commission actually agreed with her, and forced the restaurant to pay her $4,900. In other words, the commission is a joke – it’s the Alberta equivalent of a U.S. television pseudo-court like Judge Judy – except that Judge Judy actually was a judge, whereas none of the commission’s panellists are judges, and some aren’t even lawyers. And, unlike the commission, Judge Judy believes in freedom of speech.

It’s bad enough that this sick joke is being wreaked on hair salons and restaurants. But it’s even worse now that the commissions are attacking free speech. That’s my first point: the commissions have leapt out of the small cage they were confined to, and are now attacking our fundamental freedoms. As Alan Borovoy, Canada’s leading civil libertarian, a man who helped form these commissions in the 60’s and 70’s, wrote, in specific reference to our magazine, being a censor is, quote, “hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There should be no question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons.” Unquote. Since the commission is so obviously out of control, he said quote “It would be best, therefore, to change the provisions of the Human Rights Act to remove any such ambiguities of interpretation.” Unquote.

The commission has no legal authority to act as censor. It is not in their statutory authority. They’re just making it up – even Alan Borovoy says so.

But even if the commissions had some statutory fig leaf for their attempts at political and religious censorship, it would still be unlawful and unconstitutional.

We have a heritage of free speech that we inherited from Great Britain that goes back to the year 1215 and the Magna Carta. We have a heritage of eight hundred years of British common law protection for speech, augmented by 250 years of common law in Canada.

That common law has been restated in various fundamental documents, especially since the Second World War.
In 1948, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Canada is a party, declared that, quote:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights guaranteed, quote

1. “ human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,

(c) freedom of religion; (d) freedom of speech; (e) freedom of assembly and association; and (f) freedom of the press.

In 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteed, quote:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;

b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

Those were even called “fundamental freedoms” – to give them extra importance.

For a government bureaucrat to call any publisher or anyone else to an interrogation to be quizzed about his political or religious expression is a violation of 800 years of common law, a Universal Declaration of Rights, a Bill of Rights and a Charter of Rights. This commission is applying Saudi values, not Canadian values.

It is also deeply procedurally one-sided and unjust. The complainant – in this case, a radical Muslim imam, who was trained at an officially anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, and who has called for sharia law to govern Canada – doesn’t have to pay a penny; Alberta taxpayers pay for the prosecution of the complaint against me. The victims of the complaints, like the Western Standard, have to pay for their own lawyers from their own pockets. Even if we win, we lose – the process has become the punishment. (At this point, I’d like to thank the magazine’s many donors who have given their own money to help us fight against the Saudi imam and his enablers in the Alberta government.)

It is procedurally unfair. Unlike real courts, there is no way to apply for a dismissal of nuisance lawsuits. Common law rules of evidence don’t apply. Rules of court don’t apply. It is a system that is part Kafka, and part Stalin. Even this interrogation today – at which I appear under duress – saw the commission tell me who I could or could not bring with me as my counsel and advisors.

I have no faith in this farcical commission. But I do have faith in the justice and good sense of my fellow Albertans and Canadians. I believe that the better they understand this case, the more shocked they will be. I am here under your compulsion to answer the commission’s questions. But it is not I who am on trial: it is the freedom of all Canadians.

You may start your interrogation.

Third: My visit to a kangaroo court - Ezra Levant

Today at 2 p.m. I will appear before an Alberta "human rights officer" for an interrogation. I am being interrogated for the political crime of publishing the Danish cartoons in the Western Standard nearly two years ago.

As a lawyer, I've been in different courts and tribunals, but I've never experienced a kangaroo court first-hand. I will have a more comprehensive report later today. In the meantime, I leave you with three documents:

1. The hand-scrawled complaint filed against the magazine by a radical, Saudi-trained imam who has publicly called for sharia law to be imposed in Canada;

2. My response to that complaint; and

3. A look at those cartoons again.

As they say in Virginia, sic semper tyrannis!

If any "court" in this country finds that Levant did not have the right to publish these cartoons, I will actively encourage every Canadian to engage in civil disobedience to the point where no town or city is not plastered in these images. It's not because I want to show disrespect for real human rights or freedoms, or for Muslims. It's because I know that a truly free person cannot be seriously offended by these cartoons (however ignorant, stupid, or uncharitable they may be); only those enslaved to primitive conceptions of the sacred and sacrificial can be seriously scandalized, which I admit includes an awful lot of Canadians today, since the left-liberal mainstream has become dependent for its understanding of the human (and even natural) world on the presence of victims, real or imagined, on every scene of its political and esthetic consciousness. In short, much of our society is practicing a death cult, a cult dependent on victims. If you find that hard to understand, keep reading this blog.

By the way, let's not forget that even the Danish imams who stirred up the cartoon controversy by sending these cartoons to Egypt, fabricated a couple more Mohammed cartoons of their own, to stoke the fire. They were not sincere about protesting the production of such cartoons, in and of themselves. Their hearts were not crushed by the simple presence of Mohammed cartoons, if these were created for the "right" Islamist reasons. What they were about was encouraging Moslems to be scandalized by the fact that Infidels were making fun of Islam. They were insisting on Islamic supremacism. And so too are those who are fronting the "human rights" campaigns against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn today in Canada. That any official in Canada gives these supremacist hate mongers a moment's notice is the real scandal.

A free society lets anyone say pretty much anything without suffering a penalty, short of personal defamation or incitement to violence. And a free society knows how to ignore all manner of offensive abuse of freedom of speech, since free individuals know a duty, a covenant, to defend each other's freedom, so that no one need fear for their personal security. In any case, the idea that the state can act as the guarantor of our freedoms is ridiculous, since it is the state that is the only serious threat to freedom in a society where individuals are ready to stand up for each other. I reproduce the cartoons in this post, because I believe the only way to insure freedom for all Canadians, including Muslims, is that we become inured to scandal and group resentments. It would be a rather simple matter to argue that the Koran is hate speech against the non-believer who is cursed on almost every page of that book. But I don't think the Koran should be banned and if it were under attack in a Human Rights Commission, I would gladly reproduce it here.

A free society defends individual freedom, and does not make potential martyrs of hate mongers by requiring the state to punish them. Instead, free people freely shun hate mongers, in a very personal, decentralized manner. A free society does not engage in centralized scandal mongering. It is big enough to ignore the merely offensive because someone who is truly free cannot really be offended by scandalizing idiots. Uncharitable words wash off the free back like water on a duck. A free society does not go about trying to decide what religions, or religions/political ideologies, can and cannot be made fun of.

There can be no right in a free society to enforce the primitive sacred on your fellow citizens. If we can't make fun of sacrificial violence, we must engage in civil disobedience, perhaps one day even to the point of civil war if necessary to insure our freedom. But I think that's being hyperbolic. I remain confident that when Canadians step out of their ignorant stupor, and find out what these "Human Rights" commissions have gotten into, going far beyond their original mandate as Ezra Levant eloquently argues above, they will demand our duly elected governments take their share of responsibility for guaranteeing our individual freedoms and will reign in these death cult ideologues running the kangaroo courts. The very presence of these "commissions" is shamefully dehumanizing to anyone who knows what it is to be a free individual.

Hat tip: Mark Steyn who has more on the scandal of our kangaroo courts.