Ezra Levant interviews the always-fascinating Sam Solomon, ex-imam, and now a Christian and advisor on Islam to Western politicians

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.

Shut up, already! Khurrum Awan sues Ezra Levant; comparisons made to Wilders trial and Fort Hood denial

The news going around the Canadian blogs today is that Khurrum Awan is carrying through with his previous threat to sue Ezra Levant. The details of the case are provided by Ezra at the link, along with his reminder of his need for financial donations:

instead of just fighting this lawsuit passively, what if I could use it to go on the offensive, and really root around inside the Canadian Islamic Congress, and expose their anti-Semitic, anti-Canadian ways? The trial will be partly about what I’ve written -- no problem. But it will equally be about Awan’s reputation, and that of the CIC. It will give me a chance to ask Awan questions he’s never been asked before, and to see documents he’s never had to disclose before.

I’ll be able to expose the CIC for the venomous outfit that it is. I can picture spending at least an hour talking with Awan about his organization’s call for the decriminalization of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups.

My friends, I don’t like being sued. But I have to tell you, of all the junk lawsuits thrown at me because of my campaign for free speech – and there have been plenty – this one is in some ways the most important. If I handle this one right, I can expose the true nature of the CIC and the radical Islamist, pro-terrorist groups in Canada with whom Awan has consorted.

Let me quote a Jew now, just because it will irritate Awan. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote nearly 100 years ago, “publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” I'm going to bring some klieg lights to trial on this one.

I believe that nothing will disinfect our public square better than scrutiny and publicity of how illiberal Islamic fascists are waging war against our values. I hope that the lasting impact of this trial will be the complete and final detonation of the CIC’s credibility.

Bring it on.

Can you help me, please?

As I mentioned, this lawsuit will probably cost me $50,000 to fight. And it’s just one of many suits and complaints that the same cabal has hit me with, again and again.

Over the past two years I’ve been hit with three human rights complaints, over twenty complaints to the law society and this is the fifth defamation suit. That's 28 suits and complaints. And they’re all junk lawsuits – SLAPP suits designed to shut me up.

I won the three human rights cases, and the first twenty law society complaints have all been dismissed. So far I have a perfect track record: 23 out of 23. Unfortunately, even if you win these sorts of nuisance complaints, you don’t get your legal costs back, so it’s been expensive.

If you’d like to help me, I’d appreciate it. It's expensive fighting two dozen legal fights, even if they are junk.... And I certainly don’t want this suit to change what I say or do in my life, especially my ability to criticize radical Islam and its politically correct allies.

Again, the details on how to donate are found on Ezra's post.

What links can we draw between what appears to be a lawsuit largely intended to hassle and fetter one of Canada's leading critics of Islamic "lawfare", by making a mountain of the molehill that, included in Ezra's reporting on the Canadian Islamic Congress' attempt to use the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal to punish Maclean's magazine for publishing Mark Steyn's columns denouncing the failure of Europeans to reproduce and to protect Western cultures from "Islamization", was an observation that Khurrum Awan under cross examination appeared to have been caught in a lie?

Phyllis Chesler draws the comparison to what is going on in Europe with Geert Wilders:

I have been privileged to meet and hear Dutch Parliamentarian and possible future Prime Minister, Geert Wilders, speak in New York City. Together, with other invited guests of the Hudson Institute, we watched Wilders’ short film, Fitna, which shows terrorist scenes of devastation around the world — we have all seen them on the nightly news. Fitna also has real mullahs reading aloud from the Qu’ran — reading passages that in all truth are contained there. The film, accompanied by a brilliant musical soundtrack, allows us to connect the dots. It does not preach so much as “show.”

Nevertheless, just as Kurt Westergaard’s “Danish Muhammed cartoons” were hardly offensive by Western standards — that did not stop a global jihad against them which continues to this very day. Yale University Press refused to publish the cartoons in a book they themselves commissioned about the cartoons. And Canadian author Howard Rotberg had to become a publisher himself in order to have his say despite Canada’s political correctness where certain subjects are concerned.

And, “lawfare” (war by legal action) and the lawsuits do not stop coming. The same litigious Muslim-Canadian who sued Mark Steyn for telling the truth and for daring to venture his own witty opinion, (which opinion “offended” certain professional easy-to-offend Muslims), is now suing Ezra Levant. Kathy Shaidle has a good piece about this here. Shaidle quotes Levant himself about Khurrum Awan, the man who is suing him. And, by the way, Awan is a second-generation Canadian Muslim.
[...]
By 2003/2004, I, and a handful of others, had already understood that free speech/truth speech were under siege in the West, and that the first row of attackers were precisely those Western intellectuals who prided themselves on their commitment to free speech but who behaved like totalitarian censors. No, they did not burn books; they simply refused to publish or review them. They “disappeared” certain authors by not interviewing them. Or, these cultural gatekeepers demonized the book, its author, and the ideas presented. They, the censors, labeled anything that ran afoul of the Party Line as a “fascist, racist, Islamophobic” work.

American professors became very careful and exceedingly quiet on campus when the subjects of Israel, American imperialism, or Islam were raised. Many Jewish students cared more about “not offending” the Muslim students than they cared about telling the truth about jihad, or about the war against the Jews.

Those who saw things as I did began publishing samizdat, American-style. The conservative media and the internet became the above-ground venues for our “underground” publishing ventures. I — a radical feminist, an American patriot, and a Zionist — really fell down Alice’s rabbit hole; my mates in the bunker were conservatives with whom I both agreed and disagreed on the burning issues of the day. This was clear: We all knew we were in a war, we all feared the fifth column in our midst, and none of us had any intention of surrendering. The other issues were important, but not as important.

We live in curious times. On the one hand, it is not difficult to find commentary, such as in this interview with sober ex-Muslim scholar Ibn Warraq, pointing out what is becoming obvious to large numbers of people on all sides of the current "clash of civilizations" - Ibn Warraq is speaking to the question of how Western societies can mix the need to tolerate cultural differences with the need of those same societies to remain coherent, orderly, and free:

there has got to be a common core of principles which are accepted by everyone, otherwise you will have chaos. Society cannot exist unless you have agreement on the basic principles; so that would mean Muslims having to shed some of the principles they were brought up on. There is no compatibility between Islam interpreted strictly and liberal democracy; this is obvious; take the position of women; they are considered inferior; men have the right to beat them; they have less rights in inheritance and so on.

And yet at the same time, we live in a world where official parlance cannot make any such simple statement. For example, Diana West is reporting how, in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti and the spectacular result in the recent Massachusetts Senate election, the official Pentagon report on the Fort Hood mass murder is being relatively ignored. The report - on the murderer, Nidal M. Hasan who, as a vast array of evidence has shown, was clearly motivated by his not-uncommon understanding of Islam, an understanding and the violent dilemmas it posed for him that he himself outlined logically in a Power Point presentation to fellow service people - is

86 pages long and doesn't mention the words "Muslim," "Islam," "jihad," "Sharia" (Islamic law), "Koran" -- despite the fact that we know, among other things, that the killer, who initiated his massacre with a cry of "Allahu Akbar," was a Muslim inspired by Islam to perform an act of jihad as sanctioned by Sharia derived from the Koran.

These facts, however, rate official silence. So what else is new? From the Bush years to the present, see-no-Islam denial has turned U.S. government attempts to assess and discuss national security issues into Kabuki gibberish, a perpetual exercise in make-believe that the core doctrines and traditional institutions of Islam -- not "radical Islam," not "Islamism," not other aliases -- pose no threat to the core doctrines and traditional institutions of the non-Islamic Free World. Naturally, mum's the Pentagon word over jihad at Fort Hood. Or, rather, "self-radicalization" is the word. It is mentioned more than a dozen times in the report.

I can't imagine a greater dereliction of duty than this failure of U.S. government leaders to recognize, articulate and defend against what in military parlance is known as the "enemy threat doctrine." But this dereliction, this failure will trigger no investigations or court proceedings on how and why our leaders consistently mask, soft-soap and otherwise fail to assess and repel the existential threat posed by the imposition or accommodation of these same Islamic doctrines.

Talk about irony: Within days of the report's release, one of the few politicians in the world who understands, articulates and fights the imposition and accommodation of these same Islamic doctrines went on trial in the Netherlands for doing exactly that.

I refer again to Geert Wilders...

I am of the view that most things that can be explained by the deeply human traits of laziness and the need for deferral of conflict should be so simply explained. I rather doubt there are many people in the Pentagon who actually think that the Fort Hood massacre was anything other than an Islamically-inspired, Jihadi attack, however much they would admit the possibility of multiple interpretations of Islam and however much we must acknowledge that Islam is a political religion that mitigates against Western forms of "corporate personhood"(Western capacity to create all kinds of associations and representative figures) and so its responsible or representative actors are as much lonely individuals as corporate entities (see Roger Scruton's discussions of Malise Ruthven, here and here). But there are many who will go along with not saying so publicly, lest their careers suffer the arbitrary and irrational sanctions of political correctness.

It is the essence of the human to want to defer conflict. But proper knowledge of this fact requires we also know when we are becoming cowardly and foolish in following one imperative and not another. Sometimes a little conflict is necessary to defer potential for larger conflict. We are living in dangerous times. I think we need to heed Ibn Warraq's words above and see that we need to give up the liberal ideology that thinks if only we are nice and appeasing to Muslims, in the name of their alleged victimization, especially to Muslims who insist on outlawing any criticism of Islam according to the dictates of Sharia law, then we will have peace, forgetting that "peace" is what Islam calls "submission". Rather, we need to assert that any successful integration of Islam in our now global civilization, with its single global economy, will require Muslims giving up certain Koranic imperatives, indeed whatever makes Islam more of a totalitarian political ideology than the kind of private religion that could find a place in the highly-differentiated structures of our shared modern civilization. Of course it is just the assumed impossibility of this "giving up" that lead some, like Nidal Hasan, to violence and self-destruction. Their dilemma must be named for what it is; we must give it the respect it's due, that we push Muslims, others, and ourselves to think through what we really believe when faced with the need to make choices between a Western-led modernity and Sharia. To this end, we might start by offering support, as we can, to Ezra Levant for daring to criticize what he chooses to call "radical Islam" and its attempted enforcement of an orthodox, Sharia-informed ban against criticizing Islam.

Ezra Levant in Vancouver

Ezra came into town for a whirlwind stop at Vancouver's Cherie Smith Jewish Book Festival Wednesday night. Someone won a book for knowing the four Canadian cities in which Ezra would find himself over twenty-four hours today/tomorrow. Ezra was introduced by bee man, Mark Winston, who admitted to growing up in Cleveland, where all the Jews were Democrats and all the WASPs Republicans. Winston hadn't met a Republican 'till he was about twenty-five, and thought it novel that we could now be blessed with the company of conservative Jews.

Ezra recounted his story, which I assume is well-known to readers of this blog, of his 900-day Orwellian dance with the Alberta "Human Rights" Commission. He also gave us a brief history lesson on the 1960s-70s campaign to silence an elderly Nazi kook, John Ross Taylor, and his antisemitic telephone answering machine, that led to the provisions in Canada's "human rights" act that allow for the prosecution of telecommunications "likely" to expose someone to hatred or contempt. In doing so, Ezra condemned the Jewish lineage of Canada's "hate speech" censorship laws. "The Jews," he despaired, "so smart as individuals, so dumb as a group". Now, if only someone took that to the Human Rights Commission, how many days of investigations...?

Ezra has mastered the telling of his story and figured out the considerable joke potential in its absurdities, yet like a great jazz musician each time you give him the floor he makes the standard into something fresh and newly embodied; his every gesture and word spins forth in sarcasm and anger that this is how he has come to his public moment in a country whose greatness is/was its freedom. But at the end of the day, Ezra seems to truly believe that the "hate speech" mandate of the "human rights" commissions will in future be abolished.

But I wonder if his attraction to the argument that "censorship is not a Jewish thing", that the Jewish intelligentsia does not support it (except for neurotic Woody Allen types, and the hate law-invested Canadian Jewish Congress) is not really as much an unspoken campaign to change ordinary Jewish minds as it is a confident description or present Canadian reality.

When I asked Ezra where the political opposition to abolishing Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act was really coming from, he suggested there is a fear within the Harper government (and perhaps the Liberals?), of the damage that sundry demagogues of the left might do, given their taste for self-righteous caricatures of PM Harper as some kind of dangerous man with a semi-secret agenda that threatens our rights. Indeed, since the left has few other kinds of arguments today, one can appreciate that they must be desperate for new material. And, in the present political environment, a few votes in a few ridings could make the difference in an election outcome.

Furthermore, as the recent news makes clear, the Conservative Party has its eye on winning a lot of the Jewish vote away from the Liberal Party of Canada, especially in certain swing ridings. And so I wonder if this is not a good part of the source of politician fears of being condemned for putting "Nazi" hunters out of business. Ezra made fun of Jews who wanted to get even with the Nazis in the 1960s by lobbying for "hate speech" laws, thus empowering themselves with government sticks to have a few whacks at some pathetic representative of the enemy. The real Jew, he suggested, has confidence and fights off his indolence so that he can publicly debate and call out the hateful for all to see and shun, while working at the never-ending task of telling the truth of the Holocaust to each new generation of confused Canadian youth.

I overheard two things of interest as the crowd left the talk: 1) A man said to his apparent wife, in mid-conversation, that something had to have been done about Jim Keegstra teaching hate to the schoolchildren in Alberta. She replied, well maybe we don't need the "human rights" act, but just the criminal code. (While Keegstra was tried under the criminal code, I nonetheless took this as a sign that Ezra had an effect on challenging someone's fear that "Nazis" must be suppressed by bureaucratic censors.) 2) A couple of middle-aged women were made a little gaga by the super-charged talk/performance: "he must have an IQ of... 145!"

The more I think about it, maybe the path to getting rid of Section 13 is to keep Ezra talking and to have the CJC taken over by Jewish mothers...


It must be hell being a public speaker with cameras constantly flashing at you. So I only took one shot of Ezra, not the best I'm afraid (pre-talk, before the arms were flailing).

Richard Warman threatens Walker Morrow

Richard Warman is threatening to sue Walker Morrow. Must read.

http://walkersunknownthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-newspaper-caved-in-to-richard-warman.html

No one blasphemes Canada's state religion like Kathy Shaidle

It's great to see that 600 people paid five bucks a piece to hear her. The other well-known speakers might have been part of the attraction, but something tells me it was the heretic Shaidle - previously denounced by a local hack and various righteous bores in attempts to shut this event down - who was the star of the night.

Blazing Cat Fur: Packed house for Levant, Shaidle, Mansur talk in London. Shaidle:

But then again, the Left draws most of its motivating energy from imaginary problems, like global warming, DDT, backalley coathanger abortions, and the chronic boredome of American housewives in 1950s suburbia. The Left is very concerned about something they like to call “social justice”, which I define as the stubborn application of unworkable solutions to imaginary problems.

Like Spinal Tap’s second drummer, who famously “choked to death on someone ELSE’s vomit,” Canadian leftists have always resented their neighbors in the United States for having a romantic, large scale Civil Rights Movement during the 60s and 70s.

So the HRCs became the Canadian Left’s state-sponsored version of the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit ins but, without the stirring LIFE magazine photos and crappy folk music soundtrack.
[...]
The problem with the HRCs is most commonly presented as an issue of freedom of speech. However, I’d like to raise two additional aspects that don’t get as much play.

First, the HRCs are engaged in class warfare. The majority of “hate speech” cases are brought by highly educated, highly privileged white liberals -- against less educated, working class, blue collar “reactionary” whites, who insist on speaking to each other about topics like immigration, using old fashioned, politically incorrect language.

Therefore, the enforcement of Section 13 is an expensive exercise in state sponsored snobbery, in which people’s own hard earned tax dollars are used by their “betters” to scold and shame them. Worse, the process silences people who already feel linguistically, politically and educationally disenfranchised, angry and powerless. We often compare the tribunals to 1984, but to me they’re more like Pygmalion.

As British writer, Brendan O’Neill wrote:

Today’s Top-down ‘anti-racism’ has nothing whatsoever to do with ensuring equality of opportunity for all); rather it is about policing people’s behaviour and etiquette, especially amongst the lower classes. Accusations of ‘racism’ are no longer about indicting someone for their views on ethnic minorities but rather have become a snobbish judgment on their lack of breeding. ‘Racist’ has largely become code for ‘underclass’: uneducated, uncouth, thick, fat, ‘not one of us’.

Thus, the impact of official ‘anti-racism’ is not to make society more free and equal, but more authoritarian and censorious.

Ezra Levant rages beautifully on Michael Coren show

Ezra Levant may portray himself, as an Alberta conservative, as someone not part of Canada's government-trusting Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor, mid-twentieth century, liberal welfare-state mainstream. Yet his manner of speaking is something distinctively Canadian; you only find quite this kind of impassioned, enraged, civility, this quaint diction, in Canada. So, it's compelling when he assures us that the parasitic federal and provincial "human rights" commissions that have inveigled their ways into policing our freedom of expression are Un-Canadian, the fruit no doubt of some kind of ill-considered heresy. Ezra, a somewhat identifiably-ethnic Canadian, reminds us, through his tv performance, that our much celebrated multiculturalism is actually dependent on some prior basis of unity, that our diversity is only ratified or truly recognizable (as a shared national political reality) to the extent it provides new bases, new ways of teaching us what unites us.

Ezra was just interviewed by Michael Coren, for the launch of Ezra's new book, Shakedown; it's an hour-long interview, an exercise in renewing our nation's covenant, and SDAmatt has posted five youtube videos to cover the whole. You can watch them in succession, here: Shakedown - Ezra Levant

Moon report

The bottom line is that the Canadian Human Rights Commission's hand-picked investigator, law professor Richard Moon, is recommending repeal of s.13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. His argument is mostly pragmatic, mostly in dialogue with the wording of past legal decisions and existing legislation and international "human rights" codes. While seeing various practical limits to existing law, the Moon report, not surprisingly, does not provide any kind of serious challenge to the reigning orthodoxies of postmodern thought, what some of us call the "human rights" world view.

While recommending repeal, Moon also recognizes that Jenniffer Lynch and the rest of the gang at the CHRC need not promote his recommendations to government, and so he has provided them with a variety of alternative arguments, such as changing s. 13 so that "hate speech" cases under the Human Rights Act will be dealt with more like criminal prosecutions, and encouraging Internet Service Providers and Press Councils to do more on their own to police and silence what they deem to be hate speech. The impracticalities of such suggestions are already being noted.

I want to finish reading the report before commenting further. Many other bloggers are already providing good first reactions to the report. If I can add anything it will be after a leisurely read and an analysis of Moon's way of thinking through the human problem of "hate" and the reasons why humans need freedom of expression.

You can find the report here (pdf), summarized by the CHRC here.

Deborah Gyapong has many useful posts up, including response from Ottawa politicians, as does Jay Currie. Looking at the impractical side of Moon's recommendations is Mark Steyn.  Meanwhile, Ezra Levant is analyzing Jennifer Lynch's response as an attempt to throw Moon's report under the bus.

Sadly for this blog, Blazing Cat Fur sees this to be a moment of apparent victory and thus time for a blogging hiatus. She has worked with amazing energy to provide us daily coverage of the "human rights" and free speech debate, often attracting the unwanted attention of disparate traders in hate and victimhood, and my best wishes go out to her.
-------------
On the other side of this debate, Bnai Brith has issued a press release (via email):

TORONTO, November 24, 2008 – B’nai Brith Canada has reacted with mixed reviews to the release today of the Report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission Concerning Section 13 of the Canadian Human Right Act and the Regulation of Hate Speech on the Internet prepared by University of Windsor law Prof. Richard Moon.

“Doing away with section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act governing hate speech, a key suggestion put forth by Prof. Moon in his Report, would be a step in the wrong direction,” said Marvin Kurz, National Legal Counsel to B’nai Brith Canada. “However, we do favour in principle the type of middle approach also outlined by Moon, which opens the door to necessary reform of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

“The Moon Report proposes amendments to both section 13 and the Criminal Code that have the potential to dramatically alter existing standards for combating hatred. A careful review of the recommendations of the Report and their potential public policy implications is essential before any action is taken.

Ezra: still holding the line for the rest of us

Ezra Levant has been hit by yet another lawsuit. Read all the pathetic details at: Disgraced Liberal lobbyist Warren Kinsella tries to destroy me - Ezra Levant

I think this is lawsuit number 19, or something like that, counting all the "human rights" and Law Society complaints against Ezra, along with the libel suits from "human rights" industry people. He sounded a little worn out when I heard him interviewed the other day at Brass Balls Radio. I mean Ezra is still full of faith in the fight and the rightness of our cause, but what keeps him going is the knowledge that people will donate money to fight his various suits, and no one likes to have to ask repeatedly for money, even when we have to do it.

But this is what those who would limit free speech in the name of "human rights" know, and they know Ezra Levant is a key figure to wear out. Ezra is exceptionally pugnacious for a Canadian in our post-Trudeaupian age. So read up on the latest SLAPP suit by a blogger who doesn't seem to agree that the Canadian Islamic Congress has an approach to Islam, Sharia, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, Mark Steyn, Barbara Amiel, etc. that may well be considered "anti-Semitic", or Judeophobic. It will be very interesting, if this suit proceeds to trial, to see how the courts come to understand what is reasonably entailed by claims that someone is helping out "anti-Semites", in this day and age when apparently mainstream political parties run Islamist candidates, well-known politicians attend what are, essentially, Hezbollah rallies, and even Kinsella's Liberal party's last leadership race was influenced by an intramural campaign defaming a leading candidate for having a Jewish wife. Will Mohammed Elmasry's CIC be, effectively, labelled "anti-Semitic" by a Canadian court? Perhaps Kinsella is betting no judge in PC Canada will have the nerve or intellectual disposition. In any case, we need the ugly truth revealed as we move forward in the fight to renew a free society.

At the end of the day, consider how much unpaid work Ezra has done for the cause of free speech in Canada. Remember how he stood up to and revealed the evil that was at work in the Alberta Human Rights Commission when he was all alone and didn't know if others would come to share in his fight (as he mentions in the Brass Balls interview, he went into the AHRC interrogation telling his wife he didn't know how they were going to pay the $5000 lawyer bill). And send him some cash.

Jay Currie has further speculation on what might be motivating Kinsella: Panic Stations.

Ezra Rocks

Do we need more evidence that the "human rights" world view is an ill-considered intellectual scam, based on a taken-for-granted, incurious, worship of much-sought-after victims, a religious desire that corrupts the rule of law?

No, but apparently that is not the case at Canadian Human Rights Commission HQ. There are still fools there who are trying to justify their rather arbitrary scapegoatings of Canadian citizens (they prefer to go after that tribe known by its enemies as Poor, White, Christian T----; and they seem deferential to the tribe known as lEgalistic jewZZZ, Righteous and Articulate). When you scapegoat someone, and then forever after the event, you should NOT have to "justify" the bloody action. It should be taken for granted as a necessary sacred and unquestionable act, the road to peace, order, and good government, in conformity with the divine commands recognized in your culture's daily lived myth and ritual. The hate mongers MUST be punished or all hell will come to the country.

When the Aztecs slaughtered and consumed annually their tens of thousands of sacrificial victims they didn't have to pretend to advance sophisticated legal arguments to justify the act. No, everyone simply "knew" it was what the gods demanded (though no doubt there were codes to insure proper respect for due process, such as how to skin and process the victims for the feast). And no doubt some of the victims were convinced to believe their deaths were divinely required. It was necessary that some should die for the good of the cosmic order. And being drugged and dressed ceremonially before having your chest ripped open before an adoring crowd was arguably a better fate than being surprised by a war party, refusing to be taken prisoner, and so being quickly bashed to death, most unceremoniously, by an Aztec battle club fixed with numerous obsidian blades.

For some reason, I am reminded of what David Bowie said after viewing film of the Nazis' Nuremberg rallies: Hitler was the first rock star!

So what the heck does the Canadian Human Rights Commission think it is doing? You can't live half-assed in the world of arbitrary sacrifice (the choice of victim, admittedly , is never purely random since one must always be able to claim the victim gives off some sign of sacred import) AND in a world of rule of law according to a carefully-evolved constitution, centuries old, that has had good reason to claim it respects the individual and his rights, and to insure that "justice" is not arbitrary.

No you have to make a choice. Apparently they don't get this. They think they can be modern and Aztec at the same time. Chief of "Human Rights", Jennifer Lynch, has told Parliament: "When I arrived as the new chief commissioner 10 months ago, I was pleased to join a modern organization well structured to undertake its mandate and supported by an enormously talented and dedicated staff." That's almost mythic, and that's why Ezra rocks, in his latest blog:

Ignore for a moment the double jeopardy here – that Rev. Boissoin was prosecuted by the Alberta HRC, and then again by the CHRC, something that would never happen to, say, an accused murderer, but happened to an accused pastor. Look at what the CHRC’s investigator and political commissioners recommended: that Wells’s complaint against Rev. Boissoin be prosecuted by the CHRC.

Stop.

Think about that. The CHRC’s investigator has recommended that I be let go for the exact same act of hate speech that Rev. Boissoin committed – and he wasn’t let go.

Just in case the double standard wasn’t clear enough, as paragraph 21 notes, I even declared that I was willfully committing a hate crime.

How does the CHRC justify this double standard? In a single, vacuous sentence. See paragraph 28: “In [the Boissoin] complaint, the letter appeared in a different context”.

Boissoin’s column appeared in the Red Deer Advocate – a mild and mainstream newspaper, as part of a broader debate. It was the heartfelt view of a Christian pastor. I simply reprinted it as an act of defiance. Yet Boissoin was the one sent on for prosecution?

Paragraph 31 says I was let go because my publication of the column wasn’t in a “forum which espouses extreme views of hatred”. Right. Neither is the Red Deer Advocate.

Paragraph 32 indicates that I knew the column was a “hate crime”, and Rev. Boissoin didn’t. Right – so I willfully promoted “hatred”, as opposed to Rev. Boissoin.

But for sheer creative writing, look at paragraph 33: Dagenais invents a new test for section 13 hate speech cases. She says my publication was “more likely” to promote a debate than to promote hatred. Is that the new test? Something can promote hate, but if it also promotes debate, then it’s not hate speech? They’re making this stuff up as they go along, and it’s not hard to guess why: Rev. Boissoin was poor, powerless and easy prey for them. I’m a noisy troublemaker, and Rob Wells is forcing them to deal with me. Still, exactly the same excuse could be used for Rev. Boissoin – we know for a fact his column led to a great debate.

Let’s do it again, with gusto

I’m disgusted with Rob Wells – he’s just as despicable as Fred Phelps. But he’s just an individual bigot, and he's got the freedom to utter his filthy speech. What’s truly appalling, though, is how he’s turned the CHRC into his personal anti-Christian inquisition – going after the Christian Heritage Party, Rev. Boissoin and Fr. de Valk. Without the CHRC’s aid and comfort, Wells would still be driving around Edmonton in his hatemobile, a pitiful, angry, junior Fred Phelps. But, thanks to Jennifer Lynch and the rest of the team at the CHRC, the taxpayers of Canada and the laws of Canada have been hijacked, yet again.

So let me publish the same illegal words again. And let me do it for a different reason.

I’m not publishing these words as part of any “debate”. I am publishing them for the express purpose of promoting contempt – contempt for Rob Wells, and contempt for his gophers at the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

I’m publishing it to promote contempt for Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissioner of the CHRC who presides over an anti-Christian inquisition, and for all of the other commissioners – David Langtry, Robin Baird, Roch Fournier, Sandi Bell and Yvonne Boyer – who have joined forces with the real bigots of this country, people like Rob Wells, and even the corrupt thugs working at the commission who gaily join neo-Nazi groups like Stormfront, with the commissioners’ full approval.

I have contempt for them, and I wish to spread it to all of my fellow Canadians.

Jennifer Lynch: like most bullies, you are a coward who picks on penniless pastors like Rev. Boissoin. Why don't you come and get me?

And let there me no doubt: Ezra's contempt is rightly and successfully communicated. Pick up your obsidian clubs, Jennifer and crew, because we're not going to be your willing victims in the name of "human rights".

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.

Ezra threatened with another suit, needs help!

CHRC lawyer threatens me with another lawsuit. (I'm still "serene") - Ezra Levant

It would seem to me that a government lawyer criticized for his work as part of a scandalous government operation shouldn't have quite the same status in a defamation case as would a person not in the public employ. Of course it is the responsible minister of the crown, and the government more generally, who should be held ultimately accountable for the CHRC fiasco; still, I don't see how Vigna has much of a case (but I know I'm not a lawyer). Anyone who prosecutes under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act is enabling an evil law. But I doubt if Canadian courts will allow such an understanding of the facts when it comes to considering if a reputation has been unfairly lost. We are a people too keen to defer to government- and legally-constituted authority, even when it's morally wrong.

This is just more evidence that Barbara Kay is right that we need more protection in Canada against SLAPP suits:

...A billionaire Saudi sheik threatened a libel suit in Britain, where truth is no defence and libel laws are plaintiff-friendly. Ehrenfeld hadn’t the funds to contest, and lost the suit. The decision has hurt her career. Since the British market is now closed to them and they fear future liability, publishers shun her work.

Exactly the same thing could happen to Levant and Steyn if a negative HRC decision chills Canadian publishers and distributors. Steyn is presently poised to defend America Alone in its French translation if an HRC-type fatwa emerges in France — “And I’ll do that in every Western jurisdiction where bullies who can’t withstand free, open debate decide instead to use the legal system to shut the debate down.”

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.

So help out Ezra if you can, financially. He alludes to many other legal attacks against him. I have some inkling of why he can't talk about them, given the ethics of professional organizations. The lawyer bills for his fight for our shared freedom must be considerable. Follow the link above to his paypal.

Redmonton rules

Ezra Levant has of course been writing a lot of good stuff on the "human rights" scandal that is revealing how far from a democracy Canada has drifted. Today he says something that is especially noteworthy, in reference to the Alberta government's active promotion, via a pamphlet sent to immigrants, of the victimary cult. Instead of encouraging people to negotiate and settle their differences locally, as people would in a self-ruling democracy, the Alberta government is actively encouraging people to make complaints to the government, to use the bureaucracy and kangaroo courts as the arbiter of "human rights". Ezra, on the Minister of Culture and Community Spirit:

It's grotesque that Lindsay Blackett is hijacking ESL classes to foist his "human rights" propaganda on new immigrants. It's despicable that newcomers are being taught to see themselves as victims, as complainers, as ingrates, and taught to view their new home as a hostile, racist place. But it is completely predictable that the corrupt "human rights" industry, and its government enablers, lie about their tactics, and claim to be merely neutral.

They're not neutral. They are destroyers of inter-ethnic harmony, and underminers of the rule of law. They are not protectors of human rights. They are destroyers.

Yes, it's an age old story: the natural instinct of a politician, once he has come to see himself as an imperial figure in a multicultural setting, is to play divide and conquer. Empires don't survive relatively long in history; only great nations do.

Too bloody angry to post

I don't like writing when I'm full of anger. If we write to defer our resentment, as I think we do, we perhaps write meaningfully (at least for others) when we have already deferred anger sufficiently to come to some kind of lucid observation on what it is we need our language to transcend. That, of course, is something we often fail to live up to. But it is no reason to silence a man for life.

Anyway, what has me royally steamed these last few days is the humiliating order of an anti-individual, neo-Maoist in Alberta by the name of Lori Andreachuck (if you don't know the story, see Ezra Levant's comments here and here and here) who would effectively silence and ruin the life of a Christian pastor, banning him from speaking on one of the central concerns of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and of deep personal concern to this pastor.

For writing this letter in 2002, Stephen Boissoin has been passed with a legally binding order (ignoring which could lead to his imprisonment) that is entirely unconscionable in a free and democratic society. In other words, there is no way this is constitutional if Canadian law is still in the hands of sane people, since according to our Charter all laws must be consonant with the needs of a "free and democratic society."

As I wrote in the comments at the National Post, I think it is time for Canadians to start thinking seriously about organizing civil disobedience in opposition to the kangaroo courts of the "human rights" tribunals:

Whatever you may think of Boissoin's righteous certainty about the wrongness of homosexuality and the degree of tolerance in the Christian's "love the sinner but hate the sin" (personally, I think there is a lot of tolerance in that, since loving ourselves but hating what we sometimes do is how most people understand their own humanity), there can be no doubt that Andreachuck and Lund have demonstrated a far greater degree of self-righteousness and intolerance than Boissoin.

As Ezra says, to pass this order on a Christian pastor is effectively to ruin his life, permanently. And this for a passionate letter to the local paper.

But to effectively ban all discussion of the possible consequences of different sexual and familial practises (the future of which is something no one can know: we are all making more or less educated guesses in the laboratory of history, and no one, despite the arrogance of Gnostics like Andreachuck and Lund, has special knowledge of what will prove successful and what not, whatever the very real historical lessons remembered in the Bible's conflict with the widespread pederasty and polygamy of the ancient world) is outrageous to a whole other level. It is positive madness for a once free and open society to try and close off huge and fundamental topics of conversation. It is a sign of a society that has become too scared of itself to go on, too frightened of our shared freedom, as if it is unthinkable that we might never have to stop thinking about and defending what we hold dear, as if it is too outrageous that we can never live in certainty about our life choices and must have constant maternal affirmation from the Andreachuck's of this beastly realm. What kind of pansies does she think we Canadians are?

There really aren't words to express the sickness and the complete lack of justice or common sense in the action of the Alberta (and other) Human Rights Fascists. This kind of public humiliation is exactly what they did in Mao's China and the stories of ruined lives are now all about us here in Canada for anyone with the real empathy to look, listen, and learn.

I am utterly disgusted that this is happening in my country. Let there me no doubt that I am ready and willing to engage in civil disobedience alongside anyone targeted by these "human rights" fascists. And I suspect there are every day more and more who feel the same. Any politician who thinks this outrage will just fade away with time had better think again.

Act now or live in the shame of history. As it presently stands, Ed Stelmach is a &$#*@ Maoist, as is Gordon Campbell, Harper, and most of the so-called "conservative" leaders in this country.

I will be at the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library tomorrow night, like every Thursday, 7-9 pm in front of Blenz Coffee (look for the guys with the blue scarves), and open for discussions on the logic of civil disobedience, as an occasionally necessary activity in a free and democratic society.

We might also talk about the kind of organizations we need to see emerging in Canada to focus the fight against the "human rights" world view. We might begin asking, for example, who will join us in setting up picket teams to blockade the entrance to buildings where our deeply evil kangaroo courts will meet in future? Whatever you think of my or Boissoin's views on sexuality, none of us is free in a society where we can be given gag orders for life for offending the sensibility of some bureaucrats and activists. No one is free in a society where people are forced to make public apologies, against their will, for the views they hold. Mao killed and ruined tens of millions of lives in China where just such forced rituals of "apology" and public humiliation were a central tool of the most oppressive mental domination; how many will our Canadian Maoists kill and ruin before we stop them? Among my Chinese-Canadian friends who have recently immigrated, there is a high frequency of stories about families ripped apart, members killed, by the Maoist/police state evil... will the nightmare continue?

I will have more to say on all of this when I get my bearrings. We really do need a way to better understand why those who claim to be fighting for love and tolerance can be so deeply intolerant and hateful. Christians have a right to their Biblical and patriarchal religion. No one has a right to feel their way of living is beyond public criticism. No one is wise enough to judge when language is too passionate that it might expose someone else to hate. Language, even violent language, acts to defer our violence, even when it doesn't succeed for long. Those who would silence in the name of keeping the peace can only take us to the dead (and usually very violent) end that all tyrannies eventually reach. Andreachuck and her many comrades in genteel Canadian authoritarian stupidity need to talk to some Ukrainians about Stalin.

Thankfully, Boissoin is not caving in to these tyrants and so we will all have a chance to stand with him against the law that is clearly indefensible to people who know what freedom is:

In regards to the recent absurd ruling by the AHRC, let me be clear, I will never apologize regardless of the consequences and I will not pay fines unless failing to do so prevents my ability to appeal. I stand by my right to have an opinion and to equally express that opinon in private and in the public square. I will exercise that God given right as long as I live.

Rob Nicholson and the Conservative government start to stand for real human rights

The Minister of Justice is backing a proposed Parliamentary inquiry into the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Kudos to Ezra Levant, and many other bloggers, who have done so much on this issue:
Government to launch inquiry into CHRC "investigative techniques", section 13 - Ezra Levant

Ezra and a moment of revelation into the "human rights" cult

Ezra Levant recounts his debate with Ian Fine, Senior Counsel for the Canadian Human Rights Association:

...At another point in the debate, I tried to show the absurdity of banning any hateful words through a law that doesn't permit legal defences like truth, fair comment or even common sense. I pointed out that Fine himself had given an interview with the National Post in which he read out a bigoted remark, namely: "a n*gger will try to kill you just for a slice of pizza or a piece of chicken ... By Aryan standards, negroes are dangerous animals".

Fine read that to show the kind of hate the CHRC wants to fight. But that explanation, which is reasonable, is not a legal defence. I jokingly said to Fine that, since he uttered a comment that is "likely" to expose someone to "hatred or contempt", I should file a section 13 complaint against him. I said it unseriously -- I was pointing out the ridiculously arbitrary and overreaching nature of the law. But -- and I'll want to check this again on CPAC -- he actually looked ashen when I said it, as if he agreed with me that he had broken the law, and was ashamed of it.

I think in that moment, I glimpsed what made Ian Fine tick: he has drunk the anti-hate industry's Kool Aid without a drop of skepticism. I think he genuinely thought, just for a moment, that I was serious when I said he was a bad man for having said the word n*gger, even in the context of anti-racism. I think he's been immersed in a groupthink environment, with zealots, where diversity of opinion, let alone criticism, is non-existent. I think he genuinely believes that his little anti-hate squad is saving Canada from turning into an Arctic version of Rwanda.

I think that's why he froze up when I pressed him on Richard Warman's online bigotry -- it just didn't compute for him; it doesn't make sense in his unified theory of the world. I think it's why he's in denial about the hacking charges. I think it's why he was silent when I pointed out that, without Warman's serial complaints, section 13 would fall into disuse -- surely a sign that Canada is not beset with the problems for which he offers himself as the solution.

I think it's a bit of a cult over there, and for thirty years no-one has dared to question them -- and the past four months has been terrible.

I'm not the only one to call the CHRC's self-image and world view "bizarre" -- Joseph Brean of the National Post used that exact same word in his story about Fine's first attempt to explain the CHRC's behaviour. In that interview, as in today's debate, Fine simply asserts that his critics are armed with "misinformation". Mere assertions don't pass for arguments, though -- except, of course, in the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, which has given Fine a 100% conviction rate. I think Fine's wiring overheats when he is presented with dissonant information.

There was a stunning moment at the end of the debate. It caused groans in the audience, and both Martin and I quickly jotted it down to make sure we got it right: one journalist in the audience asked Fine not just to give the "official" line, but to tell the crowd what he personally thought about section 13 and other censorship. His answer: "there can't be enough laws against hate."

If Ian Fine had his way, section 13 wouldn't be abolished. It wouldn't even be maintained. It would be expanded. He said he wouldn't rest until there was "no hate" left.

Wow -- legislating an end to hate. Why not legislate an end to war, hunger and broken hearts, while you're at it?

That's nutty utopianism. Which is fine for old Marxists in universities. But it doesn't work so well when it's married to the power of the state -- the power to exact large fines, to issue lifetime publication bans and gag orders, and to grind respondents through years of abusive hearings.

It's shocking how blind people can become by dint of their need for Utopian promises. They should pass a law against human self-hatred, to institutionalize fully the tail chasing these "human rights" dogs are all about. Then we will have to love ourselves for what we are: fallen resentful beings who can't get back up by trying to outlaw our nature. To overcome our resentments we have to know what we are and work through them honestly, and sometimes publicly (some things we can only see and learn through interaction with and honest feedback from others), without help of fanciful legal prohibitions.

Imagine if Ian Fine actually had to go out and debate, lead, and teach, in face of hatred, instead of just going out and trying to round up the haters for prosecution. By Ezra's account, it seems he'd not be capable of doing the job. In becoming part of the CHRC mindset, he's trying to take a short cut, the easy way out of this world and into a Utopia that can only be imagined, not realized here on earth. The rest of Canada should not kid themselves into faith in legal magic, however widely it is practiced in this fallen and deluded world. Canadians should learn to go out and do the job the bureaucrats won't and can't do.

Warman!

I've always gotten a chuckle out of the Seinfeld sit com's portrayal and naming of the Jewish?, sometimes showily anti-Nazi, but procedurally neo-Nazi, character, Newman, the fallen bureaucrat. Whenever frustrated by the dastardly machinations of his arch enemy Newman, Jerry Seinfeld is left stymied, knowing any further words will only get him deeper into the hole with the man who has his own black code of political correctness. Jerry is left to spout the refrain, "Newman!", with a twisted face that says "foiled again". Ultimately the thought policeman's due in conversation is nothing more than an ironic return to the most primitive form of language, the ostensive gesture, the naming of (a) God: "Newman!"

If Richard Warman can't satisfactorily counter a stunning claim in the statement of defense just filed by the Free Dominion team of Connie and Mark Fournier, I know how I will act should I ever encounter the man on the streets of Canada. Ezra Levant frames it thus:

My co-defendant, Kathy Shaidle, examines paragraph 42, which I shouldn't have skipped:

42. Under the false identity "Axetogrind," the plaintiff [Richard Warman] posted in 2004 a copy of a confidential letter sent to the CHRC by a young woman, [name omitted by CZ] in settlement of a complaint the plaintiff made against her and in which she expressed her shame and denounced her previous beliefs. The plaintiff posted the letter on the neo-Nazi VNN with the preface "With friends like these..." He did so without any regard for her safety or consequences she might suffer.

Stop to think about that for a moment. If I understand that right, a young woman does the right thing -- she recants her bigoted views and apologizes. (That she does so under the duress of a government prosecution, rather than through a debate, gives it the feeling of a jail-house confession; that's the nature of government censorship.) But it's an incredible story: someone shows contrition and humility, and grasps for enlightenment. She does so in a confidential letter.

Warman takes that letter, and uses it against her, in his online persona of a neo-Nazi.

If Warman and the CHRC really think that neo-Nazi websites are inhabited by people who are dangerous -- people who are violent, not just people who talk tough -- then Warman deliberately placed this woman's safety in jeopardy. Why?

Was it because he was denied the thrill of crushing her, as he had done with so many others, in a full hearing? Was it because he was denied his payday of tax-free money from a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order? Or was it simply his cruel streak, the streak that manifested itself when he counselled a physical assault on his nemesis, David Icke, the same streak he exhibited when he bragged about hauling his enemies before the CHRC just for "fun"?

That is astounding conduct. It is so deeply malicious, so deeply unethical, so deeply corrupt, it can only be called evil. There is no bona fide collateral purpose to it; there couldn't be; [Jane Doe] had already surrendered. It was sheer malice.

This is the man who claims his reputation was undone by us. To which I'd say: what reputation?

Free Dominion files its defence against Richard Warman's lawsuit - Ezra Levant

The entire statement of defence is worth reading for those following the sad saga of "human rights" commissions in Canada.

Our dirty linen

I welcome the news that the RCMP may be investigating the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as Marc Lemire has every reason to suggest that it seems he has been pursued by that organization by methods illegal. Ezra suggests (see also: Catfur and Steyn) that the investigation is already under way, though I'm not sure exactly what evidence he has for that, other than a note from the Ottawa Police that they have sent the question on to the RCMP. In any case, it's clear that so many questions about corruption at the CHRC have been raised (here's only the latest), that the scandal that has developed cannot be resolved by some discrete police investigation.

It's time for the government to act and to appoint a full and complete investigation into the operations of Canada's "human rights" police. As Jay Currie suggests, Messrs. Harper, Nicholson, and the rest of the federal cabinet could start by taking a tip from the BC Civil Liberties Association.

Of course, i would go on to argue that corruption in any form of thought policing is never to be simply dismissed as a case of bad apples going too far; it is in fact the inevitable outcome of putting anyone in charge of deciding what is and what is not too offensive to be heard in public. To empower self-righteousness in any form is to beg for scandal, though that of course is the oldest story in the book.

As George Jonas noted over the weekend:

A similar story comes from my native town. Many years before TV ads offered remedies for erectile dysfunction, a no-longer-young physician was hauled before the local hospital board for seducing an elderly cleaning lady, regarded as a breach of work discipline in those days. He admitted to his indiscretion and was fined a hefty sum.

"Why did you, for heaven's sake?' someone asked him. "The lady in question is hardly irresistible."

The doctor shrugged. "Anybody can go to bed with Gina Lollobrigida," he replied. "I wanted to test my virility."

All right. Going to bat for Mark Steyn's freedom of expression is like going to bed with Gina Lollobrigida. Anybody can do it. The challenge to liberty's libido is going to bat for a James Keegstra's freedom of expression, or an Ernst Zundel's. Defending the Charter rights of crude racists and Holocaust deniers is a test of liberal virility. It's a test we failed. We failed the political equivalent of the Montreal chanteuse's sexual challenge: Going to bed with nausea.

It takes a village (because an entire country wouldn't stand for it...)

Edward Michael George: The Ministry of Love:

Of all the revelations to have come out of the MacLean's/Steyn/ Levant business, I find this to be the most horrifying by far.

...Well, that's the kind of effect it seems Barbara "human rights commissioner" Hall is having on all kinds of people. The photo of Hall accompanying the National Post story quoting her vile mission statement, was alone enough to set off a spike in passport applications, and inflate real estate prices in the free state of Arkansas by four percent, or so speculates a friend in the know.

But John Pacheco has a contender in the most horrifying revelation contest. After all, Hall is but a provincial boob/exorcist, in the manner of the true Toronto, the once aptly labelled "Belfast of Canada". Hall all too blatantly takes it upon herself to save the country from our racial and religious evils, and she blows extravagantly public about her heroic work. If she had her way, I dare say she'd ban the Loyal Orange Association and the Catholic church. I know it all sounds archaic, of things belonging in another era, but that's our point. Too much publicity will sink this racist ship.



Yet the true banality of evil, so banal and once hidden in bureaucratic backwaters that we're hesitant to remark, lest appearances deceive our somewhat innocent minds, not sure if the damning loss of governmental integrity, well displayed elsewhere amidst this unfolding "human rights" travesty, this historical shame on Canadian public life, is really all there in the strings of evidence Pacheco weaves together . The evidence is quite suggestive, but in need of proper questioning by a duly established commission of investigation, with subpoena powers. Nonetheless, I fear the shagginess of our "human rights" emperor's dress is clarified by Ezra Levant's re-presentation of the evidence.



It is now for Canadians to decide the hue of the shag. To this end, I commend your attention to Mark Steyn's fundraiser for the Freedom Five. Only in courts of law, with all sides duly lawyered, might our need for greater truth be served. God knows our politicians have so far proven largely too cowardly to stand up and openly investigate the "human rights" empire, this string of Potemkin villages standing in for a lost but yet salvageable civilization.

Atlas has the news on NYC conference

Freedom of Speech in the Age of Jihad:

Mark STEYN NYC FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE AGE JIHAD: Imam says Islam is against homosexuality; he's investigated for homophobia. Gay group says Islam is homophobic, it's investigated for Islamophobia. Steyn is phobophobic: the lamps of free speech are going out when the state becomes the arbiter of what is acceptable speech in a "multicultural" society. This new phobia appears at about the six minute mark.

Meanwhile, eat your heart out Shirlene: only a free speech lover can do this to Ezra