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.

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.