Free Republic

TORONTO, July 4, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dropped a complaint by a homosexual activist against Catholic Insight a Toronto-based national Catholic news magazine. A year and a half - and many thousands of dollars in legal fees - after a nine-point human rights complaint was filed by Edmonton-based homosexual activist Rob Wells, Catholic Insight has been informed that the case has been dropped. However, a judicial review before the Federal Court is still possible should the complainant pursue that avenue. In a letter the Commission noted that it decided "to dismiss the complaint because the...

Welcome to Guantanamo Bay by: Emily Miller, July 02, 2008 Guantanamo Bay prison is coming to a city near you, courtesy of the Cell Tour, an offshoot project of Amnesty International. The Cell Tour is transporting a replica of a Guantanamo Bay prison cell across the USA, and set up shop in the Nation’s Capitol last week, demanding that the U.S. government shut down the controversial prison due to alleged human-rights violations. The bright orange cell was plopped down a mile or two from the Washington Monument and a block away from the Washington Folk Festival, attracting over 1,000 curious...

TORONTO - The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean's magazine. The Congress claimed an article written by Mark Steyn, entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam" and posted on the Maclean's website in October 2006, made a number of statements and assertions that were likely to expose Muslims to hatred or contempt. In its ruling, posted on Maclean's website, the commission acknowledges "the writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike." But the commission also says that,...

<p>A Canadian stand-up comedian will face a human rights tribunal hearing after a woman complained she and her friends faced a "tirade of homophobic and sexist comments" while attending one of his shows.</p> <p>In a decision released this week, the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal ruled there is enough evidence to hear the case of Vancouver woman Lorna Pardy against Toronto comedian Guy Earle. Zesty's Restaurant in Vancouver, where the May 22, 2007, show took place, has also been named in the complaint.</p>

Free speech obviously does not rank very high on the list of human rights for this group. From Israel Matzav: The UN 'Human Rights Council' decided this week that it is forbidden to criticize Islam because "religious issues can be "very complex, very sensitive and very intense...This council is not prepared to discuss religious matters in depth, consequently we should not do it." From now on, only religious scholars would be permitted to broach 'religious matters' before the Council.

News reports from the past few months has turned the phrase "human rights" into something of a joke. On the one hand, a group of Muslim activists has gone before four separate human rights commissions in a high-profile bid to censor critics of militant Islam -- realizing the worst fears of critics who, years ago, predicted that "human rights" would become an instrument of thought control. On the other hand, the places in Canada where real human rights are most at risk -- dysfunctional native reserves controlled by self-serving clans -- have long been explicitly exempted from the provisions of...

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a hate speech complaint against Maclean's magazine. Brought by Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the complaint was the centrepiece of a three-pronged offense against what he sees as Islamophobia in the national newsweekly, with columnists Mark Steyn and Barbara Amiel the main offenders. An identical complaint, brought with the help of three Muslim law students who became the public faces of the complaint, was rejected in Ontario on jurisdictional grounds. The third was heard this month by a British Columbia tribunal, which is now deliberating. Announcing the decision (the...

Guy Earle, a Toronto comedian, must now stand trial before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal on the charge of telling unfunny jokes. That sounds like a joke itself, but it's not. In May, 2007, Earle was hosting a comedy night at Zesty's restaurant in Vancouver. He says a couple of lesbians came in, got drunk and starting making out right in front of the stage. He said they also heckled him and other comedians. In other words, like anyone else -- gay, straight or otherwise -- they set themselves up for some wise-cracks. And crack wise Earle did. But...

Almost 60 House liberals, along with prominent lawyers, journalists, and retired officials and military officers, are lobbing an inflammatory charge--"war crimes"--toward a large number of the Bush administration's most senior current and former officials and lawyers. These critics accuse them of approving torture and other illegal interrogation methods. We are likely to hear a growing clamor for appointment of a special prosecutor, presumably by the next administration. And human-rights activists are already suggesting that their friends abroad should snatch and prosecute any former members of what they call the Bush "torture team" who dare visit Europe. These critics are right...

 Human rights complaint over comic's lesbian remarksUpdated Thu. Jun. 26 2008 11:13 PM ETCTV.ca News StaffA Toronto comedian facing a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing says offensive comments he made to two Vancouver lesbians were simply an attempt to stop them from heckling him on stage."I don't hate anybody based on their sexual orientation, or whatever, but I do hate hecklers and sometimes I get a little vehement," Guy Earle says in a radio interview posted on YouTube.Earle said he was hosting a weekly open-mic night in a restaurant on March 22, 2007 when the two women moved up...

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, like any petty tyranny, has a strong instinct for survival. As I predicted last week on the Michael Coren Show, that instinct would cause them to drop the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean's. And so they did. With an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation and a pending Parliamentary investigation, they're already fighting a multi-front P.R. war, and losing badly. Not a day goes by when the CHRC isn't pummelled in the media. Holding a show trial of Maclean's and Steyn, like the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal did earlier this month, would be writing...

There's been plenty of discussion lately about the harmful consequences of censorship -- the extra publicity that hate speech gets when prosecuted, the chilling of legitimate debate and the dangers of slippery slopes. However, I think a case can be made that allowing the publication of repugnant remarks about minority groups might actually have positive benefits for society. When the Supreme Court of Canada pronounced Canada's censorship laws constitutional in 1990, they argued that hate speech "contributes little to the aspirations of Canadians or Canada in the quest for truth, the promotion of individual self-development or the protection and fostering...

A Canadian stand-up comedian will face a human rights tribunal hearing after a woman complained she and her friends faced a "tirade of homophobic and sexist comments" while attending one of his shows. In a decision released this week, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruled there is enough evidence to hear the case of Vancouver woman Lorna Pardy against Toronto comedian Guy Earle. Zesty's Restaurant in Vancouver, where the May 22, 2007, show took place, was also named in the complaint. The restaurant has since closed.

A U.S. federal appeals court has struck down the U.S. military's classification of a Guantanamo Bay detainee as an enemy combatant. This is the first time the U.S. court system has overruled the Bush administration's designation of a detainee since the Guantanamo facility began operations in early 2002. The court ruled in favor of a Chinese Muslim, Huzaifa Parhat, who has spent the last six years in detention and is one of more than 100 detainees to challenge their enemy combatant status in the U.S. judicial system. The court directed the U.S. military to release Parhat, transfer him out of...

Toddlers are to be taught about human rights and respecting different cultures in a scheme condemned as an "absurd" waste of time. Nurseries across the country are adopting the project, which will see teachers explaining to children as young as three that people across the world live different lives but everyone has a right to food, water and shelter. Staff will also be expected to ensure that children are treated as independent human beings, and have the "right" to choose their toys or have a drink of water whenever they want. It is an extension of a Unicef scheme already...

GENEVA: Muslim countries have won a battle to prevent Islam from being criticised during debates by the UN Human Rights Council. Religions deserve special protection because any debate about faith is bound to be “very complex, very sensitive and very intense” council President Doru-Romulus Costea said on Wednesday. Only religious scholars should be allowed to discuss matters of faith, he told journalists in Geneva.While Costea’s ban applies to all religions, it was prompted by Muslim countries complaining about references to Islam. Costea issued his “presidential ruling” Monday during the eighth meeting of the council’s 47 members, which do not include...

ARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Thursday to stop selling oil to European countries if they apply a new ruling on illegal immigrants that has been condemned by human rights groups.

<p>A dissident Iranian labour leader who is serving a five-year jail sentence has been hospitalised with a heart problem, a source close to him said yesterday. Mansoor Osanloo, leader of a union grouping bus drivers, was detained in July last year for "distributing statements against the system" and a judiciary official was in October quoted as saying he had been sentenced to jail.</p>

This is fully in accord with Mark Steyn’s precise observation that “so-called hate speech laws” are “not about facts,” but rather, “they’re about feelings.” Yet facts are really all that should concern us; the rocks Mahmoud Alkhazeh threw at the driver he confronted did not hurt more because they were accompanied by stinging words. Hate speech laws are an assault on truth telling, at precisely the moment when so few dare to tell the truth, and it is for that reason all the more urgently needed.

Re. June 7 Advocate news story Human rights ruling disputed: The story is about the Alberta human rights commission ruling that orders me to offer Darren Lund a written public apology. It quotes Lund saying, “I certainly didn’t request an apology, so that was a bit of a surprise.” “I don’t see the value in an insincere apology.” Lund’s response fails to surprise me. What’s interesting is that an apology is precisely what he sought for almost six years. Lund’s original complaint to the rights commission asked that I pay thousands of dollars in fines to him and to Egale...

Mark Steyn, the author of “America Alone,” is on trial in Canada for inciting hatred against Muslims in an article adapted from that book. Pakistan just asked the European Union to restrict freedom of expression so as to curb “offenses to Islam.” Finland recently gave a blogger 2 1/2 years in prison for “insulting Islam.” When Dutch police arrested the cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot, Amsterdam’s public prosecutor explained: “We suspect him of insulting people on the basis of their race or belief, and possibly also of inciting hate.” Against Muslims, of course.

Christian Photographer Hauled before Commission for Refusing Same-Sex Job By John Jalsevac New Mexico, January 30, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The case of a Christian photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex "commitment ceremony", was heard before the New Mexico Human Rights Division on Monday. A same-sex couple asked Elaine Huguenin, co-owner with her husband of Elane Photography, to photograph a "commitment ceremony" that the two women wanted to hold. Huguenin declined because her Christian beliefs are in conflict with the message communicated by the ceremony. The same-sex couple filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Division, which is...

Amnesty International recently released its annual human rights report and, like past years, the international human rights organization has decided to focus its aim at the world's most troubling human rights abuser: The United States of America. "As the world's most powerful state, the USA sets the standard for government behavior globally," the introduction reads. "With breathtaking legal obfuscation, the U.S. administration has continued its efforts to weaken the absolute prohibition against torture and other ill-treatment." The report's introduction – in which the United States is both the first country called out by name and the country to which the...

Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America's mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia's Human Rights Tribunal. His crime? Spreading "hatred." The...

Tarek Fatah: Islamists who have a problem with free speech should leave June 10, 2008 Tarek Fatah When Mohamed Elmasry declared a few years ago that there was more press freedom in Egypt than in Canada, it took me some time and effort to lift my jaw up from the floor. However, since then I have become accustomed to the outlandish statements and claims of the good science professor from Egypt. Now, he has managed to pass on his rare talents to his political apprentice Khurrum Awan. An Islamist law student, known for his exaggerated and forced sense of victimhood,...

The UN Human Rights Council said the UK must "consider holding a referendum on the desirability or otherwise of a written constitution, preferably republican". The council has 29 members including Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Sri Lanka. It was the Sri Lankan envoy who raised concerns over the British monarchy. The resulting report said Britain should have a referendum on the monarchy and the need for a written constitution with a bill of rights.

The New York Times (NYT) is in the business of changing the American culture, especially what it perceives as really bad American habits. One of them is free speech. In an article (Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech) the NYT tried to address the issue of the different approach that American judicial system takes on the important issue of free speech. The article is a marvelous study in the architecture of deceit. What is omitted and what is included create a much distorted picture of the issue at hand. It all starts in the first paragraph: “A...

The pen is reputed to be mightier than the sword -- and probably is, over the longer stretches of history. Over the shorter stretches, the sword is definitive; or, as that great Leftist sage, Mao Tse-Tung, expressed it: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." With its monopoly on power, the State is equipped to suppress the truth. And yet the truth will not die, no matter how many people are punished for expressing it. They may die -- or be imprisoned, fined, compelled to publicly recant, or otherwise silenced and humiliated -- but the truth will...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia: A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States did not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. Things are different here. The magazine is on trial. Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things,...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal will soon rule on whether the cover story of the October 23, 2006, issue of Maclean’s magazine violated a provincial hate speech law. Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial...

AT its best, Western civilization has fostered freedom of speech and of thought. But Canada has a better idea. Last week, a Human Rights Tribunal in British Columbia considered a complaint brought against journalist Mark Steyn for a piece in the Canadian newsweekly Maclean's. The excerpt from Steyn's best-selling book "America Alone" argued that high Muslim birthrates mean Europeans will feel pressure to reach "an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots." The piece was obviously within respectable journalistic bounds. In fact, combining hilarity and profound social analysis, the article could be considered a sparkling model of the polemical art -...

Look at his insistence that "you're not going to allow us" — Muslim Canadians — to have access to national media. Who's stopping him? Indeed, through his vexatious complaints against Maclean's, Mr. Awan has garnered for himself, his cause and the CIC more press coverage than any other articling student in the country. Were he truly being denied freedom of the press and of speech, his name and views would have been suppressed. Nor is anyone attempting to stop him from starting his own magazine or newspaper or taking advantage of low-cost Internet alternatives such as blogs and podcasts to...

OTTAWA, June 9, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On Friday, the Alberta Human Rights Commission ordered Alberta pastor Stephen Boissoin to desist from expressing his views on homosexuality in any sort of public forum. He was also commanded to pay damages equivalent to $7,000 as a result of the tribunal's November decision to side with complainant and homosexual activist Dr. Darren Lund. The tribunal has also called for Boissoin to personally apologize to Lund via a public statement in the local newspaper. The remedy order demands the pastor to pay $5,000 to Lund personally for the "time and energy" he has expended...

What could Mark Steyn's punishment look like, if he's convicted by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal? It could look like this order, issued just last week by Alberta's human rights commission, against a Christian pastor named Rev. Stephen Boission. (The substantive ruling against Rev. Boissoin can be found here. See paragraph 357 where the right not to be offended "trumps the freedom of speech afforded in the Charter." And see a thoughtful response by the former executive director of the gay rights lobby, EGALE, here.) The kangaroo court judge in this case is a Tory patronage appointee, a divorce lawyer...

I accuse. The various federal and provincial human rights commissions of discrimination. Against me. Because for years now I have spoken out against same-sex marriage, the excesses of the gay community and Muslim extremism in my column as well as on my radio and television shows. A total of 250,000 people watch the latter and the radio program is on the largest station in Canada. Good Lord, I've even made speeches on these issues, addressing thousands of people. I know that some people have complained about me to certain commissions, but I also know that the commissions in question have...

The United States has quietly informed Western allies of its intention to walk away from the U.N. Human Rights Council, diplomatic sources said on Friday. The U.S. delegation has observer status, with the right to speak, in the 47-member state forum, which meets in Geneva, and has never stood for election to the Council since it was set up two years ago. Diplomatic sources and rights activists said that U.S. officials had informed the European Union on Friday morning of its intention to halt its involvement in the Council. "They said they were going to disengage totally," said one representative...

US walking away from U.N. rights forum -diplomats 06 Jun 2008 15:50:07 GMT Source: Reuters GENEVA, June 6 (Reuters) - The United States has quietly informed Western allies of its intention to walk away from the U.N. Human Rights Council, diplomatic sources said on Friday. The U.S. delegation has observer status, with the right to speak, in the 47-member state forum, which meets in Geneva, and has never stood for election to the Council since it was set up two years ago. Diplomatic sources and rights activists said that U.S. officials had informed the European Union on Friday morning of...

Sources: US to halt its involvement in oft-criticized body, controlled by Islamic bloc The United States has quietly informed Western allies of its intention to walk away from the United Nations Human Rights Council, diplomatic sources said on Friday The US delegation has observer status, with the right to speak, in the 47-member state forum, which meets in Geneva, and has never stood for election to the Council since it was set up two years ago. Diplomatic sources and rights activists said that US officials had informed the European Union on Friday morning of its intention to halt its involvement...

At issue is a cover story National Review’s own Mark Steyn wrote for the Canadian newsweekly Maclean’s, titled “The Future Belongs to Islam.” An excerpt from Steyn’s bestselling book America Alone, the article highlighted the fact that demographic trends suggest that Muslims may well become a majority in much of Europe and that this obviously represents a threat to Europe as we know it. A few Muslim law students objected to the article and filed multiple complaints with Canada’s national and provincial “human rights” tribunals and presto! Steyn’s opinion and Maclean’s right to print it have now been effectively criminalized....

Labour's policies on human rights have become a threat to freedom, the Archbishop of York said yesterday. Dr John Sentamu suggested that the Government was ' sacrificing liberty in favour of an abused form of equality'. The Archbishop said human rights did not work without a moral foundation, yet morality had been replaced by consumer desires. He also warned against the growth of 'diktat and bureaucracy' which he said interfered with personal beliefs.

“If one, because of one’s sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered ‘hate’?�The question was not rhetorical. Nor was it theoretical. Fr. Alphonse de Valk, a Basilian priest and pro-life activist known throughout Canada for his orthodoxy, is currently being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) — a quasi-judicial investigative body with the power of the Canadian government behind it. The CHRC is using section 13 of Canada’s Human Rights Act to investigate the priest. This is a section under which no defendant...

OTTAWA, May 30, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A spokesman for the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) has refused to say whether Christian moral opposition to homosexual activity constitutes a “hate crime”. Pete Vere, a Catholic writer who has been working on the clashes between the Human Rights Commissions and Christians, asked Mark van Dusen, a media spokesman for the CHRC, “If one, because of one’s sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered ‘hate’?” van Dusen replied, “We investigate complaints, Mr. Vere, we don’t set public policy...

Bands of soldiers, war veterans and Zanu-PF activists have been terrorising outlying rural areas which voted against the party and Mr Mugabe in the first round. They have razed villages and beaten, tortured, abducted and murdered MDC activists. The body of one was found this week with his eyes gouged and his tongue cut out. At least 50 people have been killed, 1,600 treated in hospital and 50,000 forced from their homes.

Washington, DC — When the so-called mainstream media doesn’t want you to know something they simply spike the story – meaning they just don’t cover it. That’s what’s happened to the good news from Iraq. American Heroes in flak jackets and helmets and their Iraqi counterparts are asserting rule of law for millions of grateful Iraqi civilians once tyrannized by Al Qaeda terrorists and Shiite militias. In short, we are winning. That’s the good news that isn’t news. Then there is the bad news that isn’t news. This includes stories about the United Nations interfering in U.S. domestic politics; Iranian...

The United Nation's Human Rights Council has launched a witch-hunt against the United States.  The charge is racism against Muslims.  And the United Nations' so-called Human Rights Council has put its top attack dog on the case. His name is Doudou Diène.  He's from Senegal -- a country that is no stranger to legitimate accusations of human rights violations -- and he's in the United States right now, as you read this alert, building a venomous case to present America as a human rights violator to the entire world! But Doudou Diène's mission likely has a purpose infinitely more sinister,...

Canada's laws prohibiting possession and trafficking of drugs were struck down as unconstitutional Tuesday by the B.C. Supreme Court, in a case focusing on the plague of drug addiction in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. But Justice Ian Pitfield gave Ottawa until June 30, 2009, to fix the law and bring it in line with the Constitutional principle of fundamental justice. The ruling, in a case challenging the federal government's jurisdiction over Vancouver's controversial safe-injection site, goes well beyond the site itself. The case was launched by the non-profit organization that runs Insite and a group of addicts, who argued the site...

In the world of U.N. flim-flam, some might call it a junket, some might call it a farce, some might call it a political hit job in an election year - and they'd all have a good case. Here comes Doudou Dienne of Senagal, dispatched to America as a special investigator by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (yes, the outfit where the delegates of China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia et al. meet regularly to define human rights right down into the sewer, slam Israel, and then repair to the Mercedes and BMW's waiting to ferry them off to dinner.) Diene is...

Six translations of Qur'an 4:34: "Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God has gifted the one above the other, and on account of the outlay they make from their substance for them. Virtuous women are obedient, careful, during the husband's absence, because God has of them been careful. But chide those for whose refractoriness you have cause to fear; remove them into beds apart, and scourge them: but if they are obedient to you, then seek not occasion against them: verily, God is High, Great!" (Rodwell's version of the Koran, Quran, 4:34) "Men have...

Well, we did the TVO show and I doubt it was Must-See TV, even by the standards of Canadian public broadcasting. I succeeded in bouncing the Sock Puppets into agreeing to a face-to-face discussion, though it wasn't my finest hour or theirs. I believe the final words of the show were me saying, "Do you wanna go to dinner?", and Khurrum Awan yelling back, "No." We didn't go for dinner, but we did have a relatively pleasant conversation after the broadcast that I thought was much more productive than the show. Khurrum was a bit chippy but the two ladies,...