Barrel Strength

Jennifer Lynch, QC, Chairman of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, writes as follows in the 2007 Annual Report of the Commission.

“In addition to its role in processing complaints, the Commission has represented the public interest by intervening in hate case hearings before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT). To date, the Tribunal has issued more than 15 decisions in complaints against Canadians connected to hate websites or materials. In all instances the Tribunal has ruled against the respondents and ordered them to close down their websites and pay damages - sending a powerful message of social solidarity to all those targeted by hatred and contempt.

“As effective as section 13 has been, the Commission recognizes that complaints are only one tool of many that must be used to combat hatred in Canadian society. The Commission is continuing to work with civil society organizations and governments towards developing a comprehensive strategy to combat hatred in all its aspects.”

All of which demonstrates that, once the law has created a category of crime, and set up an agency to deal with it, it must seek a broader mandate, because the crime problem is so much vaster than was previously imagined. Parkinson’s Laws are universal. Work expands to fill the time allowed it.

Notes from the HRC Tribunal Hearing of Warman vs. Lemire

Background

The hearing in Ottawa on Tuesday was the last in a five week-long process concerning a prosecution of Marc Lemire under section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, titled Richard Warman, complainant, and CHRC versus Lemire, respondent. Most of the hearings had occurred in 2007.

The Human Rights Commission had previously sought to exclude its staff from being questioned about their investigative techniques, or to be identified at all, on the grounds that they would be subject to real and substantial risk. The presiding judge of the Human Rights Tribunal, Athanasios Hadjis, had previously ruled that these employees might be questioned, but without third parties present. The respondent Marc Lemire had also gone to the Federal Court to compel the production of evidence, which the Human Rights Commission subsequently allowed him to have. The fact that the Commission was seeking in court to prevent the disclosure of information that it had already given to Marc Lemire weighed heavily in Judge Hadjis’ revoking his own decision.

Judge Hadjis changed his mind, rescinded his previous order, and allowed questioning to go ahead. This resulted in the proceedings of Tuesday March 26^th in Ottawa.

Read the rest…

Sometimes I feel my contributions to this blog are nothing but a commentary on the National Post. On the other hand, most of the relevant debate is occurring in its pages, and not elsewhere.

 Yesterday a frequent letter writer to the Post, Mindy Alter, asked the relevant question of the Canadian Jewish Congress in relation to the hate speech provisions of the various Human Rights Acts of Canada and its provinces:

“In other words, it often feels better to do something rather than nothing, even if, in the long run, that something — for example, establishing yourself as the cheerleader for Canada’s thought cops — ends up making the situation much worse. One wonders if the CJC will be able to shake off the effects of this debilitating syndrome before it’s too late.”

Well, today the CJC reveals that it will not be able to. Read the rest…

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks/

Because sloth and now avarice apparently aren’t sufficiently satisfying.

Meanwhile, as the Chief Wiggum of Nazi-hunters salivates over Lucy Warman’s latest get-rich-quick scheme, Mark Steyn compares the latest rosters of Team elMo and the forces of freedom. One doubts that even Lucy’s putative jackpot wad will help bring in any new stars in the transfer window.

The current leftie line on the Ezra Levant/Mark Steyn versus Human Rights Commissions and the power of Islam controversy goes roughly as follows. 

1. Right wingers support limitations on the right of Human Rights Commissions to suppress speech.
2. Right wingers are evil people, as we all know. (Conservative liberals  in the style of George Jonas must be conflated with national socialists to make this desperate analogy work).
3. Therefore the attempt by Keith Martin, MP, to rein in the Canadian Human Rights Commission is itself unwarranted and possibly evil.

Nothing in Joan Bryden’s piece (linked above) spoke of  the suppression of free speech,  for the sake of Islam.

Nothing about the establishment of religion in a secular state.

Nothing about the unfairness that gives the HRCs every procedural, evidentiary, and cost-imposing advantage.

Nothing about the proper role, if any, of Human Rights Commissions in a liberal democratic society. Just: “Some racialists support Keith Martin.” I quote:

“Victoria MP Keith Martin was praised Friday on stormfront.org, a website that proudly displays the logo “White pride world wide” and links to radio addresses by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

“Martin earned the dubious distinction after giving notice that he plans to introduce a private member’s motion calling on the government to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

“The controversial section prohibits electronic communication of anything deemed “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.” It is at the heart of investigations by human rights tribunals into complaints against former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant and Maclean’s magazine for publishing material some Muslim groups found offensive.

“The cases of Levant and Maclean’s writer Mark Steyn have sparked much furious debate, nowhere more so than among right-wing bloggers.”

 It reminds me of the time I was debating capital punishment with a then  NDP Member of Parliament, Simon de Jong (a very decent chap and wrong about a huge number of things).

1. They hang people in South Africa.
2. We oppose apartheid in South Africa.
3. Therefore capital punishment is morally wrong. 

 Are the Left really that stupid? Do they think we ought to believe them? Do they believe this stuff themselves?

Joan, I know you have to write stuff for a living every day, but you have got yourself on the wrong side of this transcendently important issue. The Human Rights Commission issue is not about striking the right cocktail party attitudes, it is about your right not wear a hijab and also to express rude thoughts, in private and public, about right wingers (you can fill in the blank for the appropriate group whose thoughts, feelings and attitudes you wish to disparage), without living in fear.

As the replicant Combat Team Leader, Roy Batty, said at the end of Blade Runner:

Now you know what it’s like to be a slave: always living in fear.

I do not want to live that way, and the right wingers’ fight against HRCs, as you label it,  Joan, is yours too.

“I am big. It’s the ideas that got small.”

 An Egyptian court rejected a request by a man who converted to Christianity from Islam to have his new religion written on his identity card.

Egyptian judges ruled as follows 

‘ Judges said Mohammed Higazi, 25, had not followed the proper legal procedures and in any case people cannot convert “to an older religion.”

“Monotheistic religions were sent by God in chronological order…As a result, it is unusual to go from the latest religion to the one that preceded it.

“The person who has such an attitude is straying from the right path and threatening the principles, values and precepts of Islam and of Egyptian traditions.”

The article continues:

‘Mr. Higazi, who says he converted at the age of 16, hit the headlines in August of last year after going into hiding saying he feared for his life after Islamists said he committed apostasy. ’

National Post, January 30, 2008, page A-15 electronic version

Once again we find the Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury pursuing relentlessly his seeming plan to drive the established church into oblivion:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has called for new laws to protect religious sensibilities that would punish “thoughtless and cruel” styles of speaking.

Dr Williams, who has seen his own Anglican Communion riven by fierce invective over homosexuality, said the current blasphemy law was “unworkable” and he had no objection to its repeal.

But whatever replaces it should “send a signal” about what was acceptable.

This should be done by “stigmatising and punishing extreme behaviours” that have the effect of silencing argument.

[...] 

“The legal provision should keep before our eyes the general risks of debasing public controversy by thoughtless and, even if unintentionally, cruel styles of speaking and acting,” he said.

The article notes that the last conviction under Britain’s blasphemy law was 1979. It is not so much an unworkable law as one blithely unenforced. As for Dr. Williams, his intellectual rigour is exemplified in his abortive attempt to denounce Freemasonry as a secret anti-Christian society… just as he was being inducted as a Welsh White Druid.

 The archbishop’s own style: cruel? A tad. Thoughtless? QED.

What is regarded by many as the world’s most famous debating society has slipped the surly bonds of reason to punch the face of God:

Oxford University’s debating society is being accused of childishness and sensationalism by Jewish groups after inviting participants with alleged anti-Israel backgrounds to support a motion questioning Israel’s right to exist in a debate on Thursday.

[...]

Proposing the motion are Norman Finkelstein, formally of De Paul University in Chicago, and Ted Honderich, professor of philosophy at University College London.

[...]

Finkelstein is speaking at a number of campuses in the UK this week. His “UK tour,” entitled “Palestine’s occupation: Roots of conflict and prospects for peace,” is organized by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, which support a “one-state” solution, and supported by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and Action on Palestine.

At a rally in New York opposing the 2006 Lebanon war, Finkelstein said: “Every victory for Hizbullah over Israel is… a victory for liberty and a victory for freedom…”

For his part, Honderich, in his book After the Terror, published in 2003, wrote: “All of us should take part in all forms of boycott against retail stores and other businesses dealing with neo-Zionist Israel, divestment, civil disobedience, non-cooperation, not voting, picketing, ostracism, naming, symbolic public acts, strikes and whatever else is rational against neo-Zionism.”

I’m prepared to venture that the topic remains within the boundary of the debatable: the UN has certainly expended much time and oxygen on the matter. And from experience I know that in competitive collegiate debate one is sometimes required to defend propositions that may not tally with one’s personal beliefs: that’s the challenge in learning expert argumentation.

But staging a public debate in which the proposition side speakers are akin to a defrocked priest uttering a faithless benediction beggars credibility. How much genuine clash can one foresee in a match-up more fitting of an in-house round at a madrassah?

If this is a benchmark of the coming ruling elite, God help Brittania. 

If you have not watched the Ezra videos on Youtube, they are necessary background for this.

The four who filed the Maclean’s complaint had an article on the Globe’s web pages today. Tarek Fatah posted this response.

The four law students in the CHRC complaint against Mark Steyn shift gears by adopting the trusty legal defence of, “Do as we say and nobody gets hurt.”

Censorship: the new poverty law. Well, intellectual poverty, I suppose.

Would restricting free speech lead to increased safety, as some would argue either blatantly or implicitly? After the riots and threats of terror that emerged after the publication of the Danish cartoons, some of the chattering and governing classes have concluded that silence is a price worth paying for the “social peace”. They are content to believe that the causality flows in only one direction.

And dovetailing with this presumption is the shibboleth that Islamist terrorism is driven by grievances. Not so, says Melvin Lee, a US naval captain who serves as special operations officer for the commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, and commander, U.S. 6^th Fleet. Capt. Lee takes a long, hard and well-researched look at the origins of today’s jihadi violence.

 h/t to Michael Rubin, National Review Online

Use the federal government’s online pre-budget consultation process to tell them to cease funding the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The deadline for input is February 11, 2008.

h/t to SDA