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

Get out (of) your pens!

Blazing Cat Fur (Arnie) reminds us:

The CHRC has mounted a Kamikaze effort [in appealing the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision in Warman v. Lemire, which declared Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act unconstitutional] to defend the odious Section 13 (1). It is imperative that we ask those organizations who support 13 (1)'s repeal to seek Intervenor Status in the upcoming judicial review of Warman v. Lemire .

Do your bit, write the organizations listed below, where appropriate ask if they plan to seek official status at the judicial review, offer to assist if at all possible with a donation. Nag Harper, nag Nicholson nag your MP, nag the members of the Justice Committee. Send a letter to the editor of your local daily, or write your favourite columnist.

This is your fight, take a swing and make it count for Free Speech. Let our opponents know that we will not negotiate and we will not beg for what is rightfully ours.

Blazing Cat Fur: Rally the Troops for Free Speech - A campaign for intervenor status in the Judicial Review of Warman v. Lemire

Now Marc Lemire, for all his work in uncovering the outrageous police-state-cum-loony-tunes conduct at the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission may not, on his own dime and lawyer's mind, be able to put forth the best, or most complete, of legal briefs as to the inherently unconstitutional nature of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. (I say inherently because if taken to heart, no people could actively covenant, in the basic human logic of constitutionalism, with a law over their heads saying they could be legally accountable - fined or banned for life from discussing certain topics - for merely saying something that in future might be construed as making some group look bad...) What's more, Lemire's personal history, his involvement in white nationalism, does not make him the best poster boy for convincing liberals that our "Human Rights" act is not itself a tool in the fight against totalitarianism but is rather an example of what Charles Taylor calls "nomolatry" or "code fetishism", an idolatry that becomes itself a form of scapegoating violence through a lust to identify and punish various social losers/code breakers whose words in some far corner of the internet are built up into horrendous thought crimes to serve the desire for a righteous war against black-hatted evildoers.

So, there is a need for other parties to intervene in the CHRC appeal of Warman v. Lemire. And to that end, we need to be encouraging, with letters and potentially dollars, those organizations to which the court might grant intervenor status. Cat Fur has addresses; he even suggests we write the fans of Section 13 to tell them politely to give it up! Faith in our constitution of citizen self-rule Cat Fur has; let's catch and iterate his sign. Put your name to a letter.

Blazing Cat Fur: Rally the Troops for Free Speech - A campaign for intervenor status in the Judicial Review of Warman v. Lemire

Canadian "Human Rights" Commission to appeal Warman v. Lemire

However, what the courts think of Section 13 is less and less important. Canadian public opinion, as reflected in the MSM and on the internet is heavily opposed to Section 13. As such, the law cannot stand in a free society and representative democracy, as long as the political parties continue to hide from the debate and refuse to make a public and election issue out of what is only a political hot potato if you are among those who fear you must pay the moral blackmail of the institutionally-entrenched, but not representative or responsible, victimary left.

It remains to be seen, however, which agents of the state will recognize that they live in a free society and representative democracy. If the government has had any role in encouraging the CHRC to appeal the Warman v. Lemire decision, it needs to be denounced for its inability to make a public stand and/or take responsibility for changing what is widely and rightly perceived to be an atrocious law. If the CHRC is appealing on its own initiative, it's time these power-hungry bureaucrats were shut down.

Canadian Human Rights Commission :: Resources :: What's New

PuOrwell

Even a genius like Orwell could not have imagined Canada in the age of the "Human Rights" Act. The latest news is that the Canadian Human Rights Commission, in an apparent purification ritual, is now investigating their erstwhile crusader, Richard Warman, for hate speech, not apparently moved by the recent decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that the hate speech section of the Canadian Human Rights Act is unconstitutional. Instead of turning on themselves, questioning their own self-righteous conduct, disbanding, and seeking redemption for their years of working with those who post hate in order to better prosecute the websites they have targetted, the CHRC crowd now seems to want to investigate the long-persecuted Marc Lemire's claim that Warman posted hate speech on Lemire's white nationalist site. It looks like Warman, the logical outcome of a law that allows busy bodies to police speech that might one day promote "hate", must become the regime's scapegoat. How ludicrous does this all have to get before the government has the courage to take a stand and shut all this nonsense down?
CHRC investigates Richard Warman for hate speech - Ezra Levant
Blazing Cat Fur: I love the irony but I really don't want to see Section 13 (1) rehabilitated

Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Refuses to Apply the Law

While the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has no authority to make constitutional rulings, Athanasios D. Hadjis has nevertheless ruled, in Warman v. Lemire, that he will refuse to uphold that part of the law, Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, that deals with "hate speech" given the Tribunal Member's own personal understanding of the Charter of Rights and of the Supreme Court's Section 13-affirming Taylor decision. Hadjis is washing his hands (not only of the bad law but perhaps of his own previous involvement in the invidious "human rights" game) and kicking the can to the politicians and, possibly, the higher courts. Will freedom of speech in Canada be served by the ultra-cautious PM Stephen Harper (Mackenzie King the II) or by the power-hungry Michael Ignatieff (the wannabe Trudeau the II). Now that Ignatieff is stating a blanket refusal to vote with the minority government in Parliament, Canadians may have to pick their Prime Ministerial poison in a fall election.

Canadian Human Rights Tribunal

[290] In my view, it is clear that Taylor's confidence that the human rights process under the Act merely serves to prevent discrimination and compensate victims hinged on the absence of any penal provision akin to the one now found at s. 54(1)(c), as well as on the belief that the process itself was not only structured, but actually functioned in as conciliatory a manner as possible. The evidence before me demonstrates that the situation is not as the Court contemplated in both respects. Thus, following the reasoning of Justice Dickson, at 933,one can no longer say that the absence of intent in s. 13(1) "raises no problem of minimal impairment" and "does not impinge so deleteriously upon the s. 2(b) freedom of expression so as to make intolerable" the provision's existence in a free and democratic society. On this basis, I find that the Oakes minimum impairment test has not been satisfied, and that s. 13(1) goes beyond what can be defended as a reasonable limit on free expression under s. 1 of the Charter.
[...]
V. Conclusion
I have determined that Mr. Lemire contravened s. 13 of the Act in only one of the instances alleged by Mr. Warman, namely the AIDS Secrets article. However, I have also concluded that s. 13(1) in conjunction with ss. 54(1) and (1.1) are inconsistent with s. 2(b) of the Charter, which guarantees the freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression. The restriction imposed by these provisions is not a reasonable limit within the meaning of s. 1 of the Charter. Since a formal declaration of invalidity is not a remedy available to the Tribunal (see Cuddy Chicks Ltd. V. Ontario (Labour Relations Board), [1991] 2 S.C.R. 5), I will simply refuse to apply these provisions for the purposes of the complaint against Mr. Lemire and I will not issue any remedial order against him (see Nova Scotia (Workers' Compensation Board) v. Martin, 2003 SCC 54 at paras. 26-7).
"Signed by"
Athanasios D. Hadjis

He "simply refuses"; that has the nice ring of civil disobedience, doesn't it? But will anyone in government try very hard to notice? In any case, I think a tentative "congratulations" to all those who have been fighting Section 13 is in order.

Blazing Cat Fur of course is keeping track of all the relevant links

Canadian Human Rights Tribunal castigates Human Rights Commission and Richard Warman

And yet still finds that whatever discredible things those bodies do in performing their dubious roles, Section 13 remains the law. Ruling here. Anti-Section 13 discussion here: Blazing Cat Fur: Lucy ruled to have lost credibilty by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal; and here: Lucy gets spanked | Jay Currie; and here: five feet of fury: slanted eyes greet a new sunrise/ a race of bodies small in size; and here:SteynOnline - Richard Warman's arse (cont)

Everything old is tired again

Some good ideas have their day and then fade away. And then sometimes everything old gets tried again.

Censoring Nazis was a terrific idea.

I'm all for it. I think Nazis should be fought till they're defeated and the ones responsible for major crimes should be hanged. I'm a tad liberal when it comes to defining major crimes, but there is the legal system to even out my attitude. So we might see daylight while walking down the street after all. Courts are a moderating influence on folks like me. Except when folks like me are in charge. Then they're more like kangaroo courts with a strong bent toward revenge rather than sense and justice. Even worse than that, though, would be a court with a mission to seek out and destroy all hints of crime, even if those crimes haven't yet been committed. Thought Crimes. Crimes hunted down and expunged before they happen. Hunters in offices seething with righteous rage and moral fury. Clerks with fire in the eye and a determination to-- git 'em.

We got them already. Nazis are done. We got them years before I was even born, and I'm an old guy. They got got when Dietrich was one of the hottest babes on the planet. Getting Nazis was a great idea then. We got them. We hanged some. Not enough, but we hanged some and made a point. I like it. We got 'em. And then we moved on.

But now, way too many years later, we have people still hunting Nazis. There are lots of folks in the world who are bad enough to feel good enough about hanging, to feel some enthusiasm for it. But mostly we don't go after folks who deserve hanging. We find instead we have heresy hunters, creepy little clerks in offices who are so wrapped up in their little dramas of the mind that they've completely lost sight of the world the rest of us live in. We get the same drama with a whole new cast and a whole new set, and the plot doesn't make any sense at all.

Deitrich against Hitler. Yeah!

Cheri Blair against "discrimination"? Uh....

The BC Human Rights Tribunal Against Mark Steyn?

You get the picture.

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.

Richard Warman Sues to Shut Up Conservative Bloggers

If you would like to be able to continue reading conservative blogs, especially their accounts of the outrageous conduct at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but more generally whatever free-spirited bloggers choose to write about without undue fear of being financially ruined by law suits, or their mere threat, now is the time to just stop your reading routine and consider seriously sending some financial help to the bloggers being sued by Richard Warman. If you want a fair trial, if you want the truth to out, the bloggers being sued have to know they will be supported in going to trial. As any honest lawyer will tell you, under the very expensive (because otherwise fair and careful) Canadian legal system, once you are sued for libel and have to face the huge costs of lawyers, time, and personal energy - costs that you will be very unlikely fully to recover even if you win the suit and win "full" costs - you have already lost, even if eventually the court takes your side in the dispute. Consequently, an ethical lawyer will be telling the bloggers who are being sued, consider settling out of court, even if you think what you have written is true. A well-paid civil litigation lawyer of my acquaintance likes to joke that even he could not afford to employ his own services.

The most complete write-up on the story so far can be found at the blog of one of the defendant's, Ezra Levant. Also being sued are Free Dominion, Kathy Shaidle, five feet of fury, Kate Mcmillan of small dead animals, and Jonathan Kay of The National Post.

As Ezra notes:

Take a look at the language Warman’s lawsuit uses to smear Free Dominion. At paragraph 17, Warman calls them an “extreme right-wing discussion forum”. Look at that language – hardly distinguishable from the CHRC’s and CJC’s boilerplate insults reserved for neo-Nazis. That’s what this lawsuit is about: an attempt by the CHRC’s biggest star to try to marginalize Canadian conservatism. And why not? The CHRC has moved from targeting white supremacists to targeting mainstream conservatives like Mark Steyn; the Alberta HRC has already gagged Christian pastors and taken a run at Calgary’s bishop, and two years ago they charged me with publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Surely attempting to criminalize conservatism is just the next, natural step for these congenital censors.

Ezra is being a little hyperbolic here: an individual suing to protect his reputation is not the equivalent of state censorship even when the individual has been intimately related with state censorship in the guise of "human rights" activity. But calling Free Dominion "extreme right wing" is indicative of political motivations. We shouldn't allow our sense of Ezra's showmanship to detract from the fact that law suits, or their mere threat, can be used as an effective silencing weapon against those with relatively unpopular opinions and little money to defend themselves, which is the situation of most conservative bloggers in Canada today. In such a situation it behooves every one who values a free society to insure that those whose speech is under attack be given the financial support to mount a full and vigorous defense, if one thinks their political attacks on a public political figure have been in any way reasonable and justifiable in a free and democratic society.

Ezra continues

... there are two other defendants in this suit: the National Post and its editor, Jonathan Kay. Six weeks ago, Kay briefly – maybe for an hour or two – posted a column about Warman’s Sen. Cools comments on the National Post’s website. But as soon as Warman complained, Kay took it down, and the Post later published an apology both in print and online. I obviously disagreed with that decision, but I’m not the one responsible for putting out a newspaper every day on a tight budget. Kay and the Post are in the business of publishing, not suing. They made the decision to cut bait, and move on to other, more important fights – as they have done with their outstanding coverage of the CHRC ever since.

But that act of over-generous magnanimity – legally unnecessary in my view, but probably a smart business decision – did not exempt them from Warman’s litigious nature. He’s suing them nonetheless. I’m not sure what Warman hopes to get from them – they’ve already apologized in a disproportionate way. It will be interesting to see how the Post responds. Will they try to cut bait again? If so, how? Or have they reached a point with Warman where they realize he is using this lawsuit as a punishment to them – maximum disruption-style – for their excellent reporting on Warman and the CHRC?

Warman will never sue Rogers

Speaking of big, corporate defendants, where is Maclean’s magazine and Mark Steyn on the list of defendants? I would never wish a Warmansuit on Maclean’s or Steyn, of course. But next to the Post, nobody’s been tougher on Warman and his bigoted, anonymous online comments then them. Could it be – perhaps? – that Warman doesn’t want to sue Maclean’s, which is owned by Rogers – which just happens to be the ISP through which the Cools comments were posted? Is Warman afraid that they will prove what he doesn't want them to prove -- that it was he who posted those bigoted remarks? I don’t know, but I’m curious. And I think a judge will be curious as to why comments in Maclean’s magazine, with its 2.8 million readers, weren’t regarded as actionable, whereas a few bloggers were. In a lawsuit that already reeks of politics, not serious legal matters, it’s just one more reason for judges to raise an eyebrow.

That’s because what any defamation suit is about is how much the plaintiff’s reputation has been reduced, and whether that reduction was fair. Warman and the CHRC have taken a shellacking in the press for three months, based on the true facts of Warman’s hyper-litigiousness, his confessed anonymous bigotry and other malfeasance. Warman has let the vast majority of these publications go (though he has tried to pick on a McGill university student). Just what is his reputation worth these days, what with all the revelations? What is he implying by ignoring Maclean’s pounding of him, month after month? And, regardless of what Maclean’s says or does, when a self-described human rights hero admits to posting anti-gay, neo-Nazi bigotry, as Warman does, what’s left of that reputation to defend?

Warman will avoid examinations for discovery

There is one more matter of interest in this lawsuit: the dollar amount at stake. Warman is suing for $50,000 plus costs and interest. From one point of view, that’s small potatoes – though I’d imagine that each of the defendants will spend close to that in legal fees. But it’s unlikely that Warman is suing for that sum out of modesty, or out of recognition that he has damaged his reputation through his own misconduct. The reason is more likely Rule 76 of Ontario’s court procedure, which permits a streamlined trial for claims of that size. In other words, by limiting his claim, Warman can avoid an examination for discovery – the extended pre-trial questioning, under oath, that parties have to submit to in normal trials. Under the expedited rules, Warman can escape such an interrogation until the trial itself – which will likely mean less questioning, less follow-ups, and a lot of “I can’t remembers”. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – like the rest of the CHRC apparatus, Warman prefers to avoid scrutiny of his actions.

As notable American blogger Ed Morrissey says:

It doesn’t matter if Warman’s case has little merit or hope of succeeding. The costs involved in fighting these kinds of lawsuits will drive people into silence, intimidated by financial ruin. If bloggers won’t stand up against these kinds of tactics, then who will?

So, please visit the sites under attack. Consider their arguments and, if you sympathize, consider seriously how much you can afford to send them when you hit their PayPal buttons.

Here's how one student journalist responded to the threat of a Warman lawsuit. We all need to learn from his courage.