http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/008981.html
"Joke's On You"
If you wrote a story about this stuff, and tried to sell it, you be laughed out of every publishing house in the country...
Posted on 11/23/2007 3:43:25 AM PST by backhoe
Edited on 11/23/2007 1:22:32 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
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****UPDATE****
More information has come up, here:
| Court Papers from Richard Warman [ 1, 2, 3 ] |
We've talked about Pearl Eliadis before. She's a member of the human rights jet-set -- a former director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, a woman who has seen the world on our dime, fighting against what she calls hatemongererers. Here's my introduction to Eliadis.
As I mentioned recently, she gave a rant at the luxurious HRC get-away the other weekend at beautiful Niagara-on-the Lake.
A friend has sent me a copy of her PowerPoint presentation, which you can view here.
It's the kind of thing that human rights grantrepreneurs love to do -- give a self-serving PowerPoint presentation to other human rights workers, in a five-star hotel, on the government's tab. I'd like to know how many thousands of dollars Eliadis got paid for that, on top of a lovely weekend by the lake, but I'll likely never find out.
Let me draw your attention to a few things in Eliadis's presentation that offer us a window into the mindset of the HRC industry.
Look at her description of the media response to recent HRCs' attacks on freedom of speech. She calls it "hysteria."
My first thought, of course, was to file a human rights complaint against her. Hysteria is rooted in the Greek word for uterus, and it was considered a women's malady. In other words, Eliadis is engaging in both sexism and able-ism. But I digress. I know what Eliadis means. Media hysteria simply means things she disagrees with. Just like "hate speech", means political ideas she disagrees with, and "discrimination" means Canadians' day to day choices she disagrees with. It's a lot easier to denounce someone as mentally ill (hysteria) or criminal (illegally discriminating) than to argue with them. That's a trick that Bernie "Burny" Farber knows.
But look at what she claims is hysterical: the use of the phrases "thought police", "convictions" and even "prosecutions".
But what else is the order from Alberta's HRC, telling Rev. Stephen Boissoin that he must renounce his religious views, if not the work of thought police?
And what do you call the issuance of such an order, along with thousands of dollars in punitive fines, if not a "conviction"?
And, to take my own case as an example, what is an 850-day, 15-person investigation by the government, if not a "prosecution"?
Is that really evidence of "media hysteria"? Or is Eliadis's name-calling simply her way of avoiding a difficult debate?
On her next page, Eliadis says that this subject has gone from "an interesting debate" to a "storm of controversy". I guess the difference, for her, is that what she called an interesting debate was when no-one was challenging her. Now that her arguments are being demolished by the blogosphere and mainstream media alike, it's mere controversy. Whatever gets you through the night, I guess.
On page 9 of her presentation, Eliadis tries to make the case for strict regulation of speech, claiming that it's "the most powerful human act". I suppose in an intellectual sense it is. But I'd say that murder is a more powerful human act. My point being, speech itself never killed anyone. The Jews of the Holocaust weren't killed by name-calling; the were killed when they were killed by violence. Their "right" not to be hated wasn't a real right. Their right to property, mobility, freedom of association, self-defence and ultimately to life were taken away. Speech couldn't touch them, other than their feelings, until Germany undid the real human rights protecting Jews.
Eliadis calls speech a "powerful weapon". But that is only true metaphorically, just like TV's "Crossfire" is not really a cross-fire, and a media "scrum" is not really a scrum, etc. Eliadis is being deliberately tricky; she is using a metaphor for violence, a metaphor for a true crime, to try to criminalize mere speech. It's a common trick, and you see it often with the mis-use of phrases like "gay bashing", which are used interchangeably to mean mere criticism, and actually physical "bashing". It's a deliberate attempt to blur the lines between words and violence. On page 11, she does this again, claiming that speech "poisoned" the environment. Again, poisoning someone is a real crime, which is why those words are stretched and misused to cover mere rudeness.
On page 13, Eliadis hints at her real agenda: hijacking and commandeering Canada's media, and subjecting them to HRC meddling. She wants "poisonous" -- hell, why not just say "murderous" while you're at it! -- speech in the mainstream media to lose its "immunity" from Eliadis and her group of would-be editors. She loved Rick Salutin's comment that "money controls the media", a Marxist complaint that seems touchingly quaint, in the era of the Internet. Neither Eliadis nor Salutin spring to mind when I think of the word "modern", so they probably don't know much about how the Inter-Webs work, but money is no substitute for good ideas, as the New York Times's shareholders are discovering.
As happens quite often, Eliadis reaches for foreign legal traditions when she wants to supplant our own legal traditions of liberty. Readers will recall that Ian Fine did so in his debate against me on CPAC -- he complained that we're out of synch with the United Nations -- run by such moral exemplars are China and Iran. So, too, Eliadis excuses her soft fascism by appealling to an obsolete, unCanadian foreign treaty, on page 14, claiming that we need to impose "special responsibilities and duties" on our media. Needless to say, those special duties will be in fulfilling Eliadis's world view.
Perhaps the most telling page in Eliadis's PowerPoint is on page 16. She is obviously referring to Mark Steyn, when she talks about Muslim demographics and "controversy entrepreneurs". That's quite a comment coming from a grantrepreneur like herself. Just a reminder: Steyn didn't file the complaints against himself that cause the "controvery"; the Canadian Islamic Congress did, and three human rights commissions humoured them. As a leftist might say, Eliadis is blaming the victim.
(I think the world needs "controversy entrepreneurs". To me, that means someone who helps the public work through controversial issues of the day. That includes scholars, the media, politicians, think tanks -- anyone who deals with spicy matters. The human rights commissions would shut down any meaningful disagreement over controversial matters. If that's the choice, I'm on the side of people who actually plumb disagreements, not paper them over.
But do HRCs actually paper over controversies? These days, HRC positively advertise for controversy -- whether it's Barbara Hall's call to have racial complaints "spike", or Alberta's 60,000 brochures teaching new immigrants how to bitch about life to HRCs. I think the real controversy "entrepreneurs", in the bad sense of the word, were in the hotel with Eliadis.)
But look at what she says then: it's largely irrelevant that Steyn's facts are true. If Steyn uses those true facts to "vilify" someone -- say, radical Muslim terrrorists -- he's still guilty of a human rights crime. Truth is not a defence. Eliadis compares Steyn to Rwandan radio stations exhorting murder. That's an execrable comparison -- Steyn has not been accused of inciting murder; again Eliadis blurs mere speech and violence. But, again, it wasn't a Rwandan radio station that killed people. It was soldiers with machetes.
Let me conclude as Eliadis does, with the quote she wanted to leave her fellow HRC activists with:
"there is no real freedom of speech if the media do not provide an outlet for other viewpoints more nearly equal to the outlet they reserve for their own."
Again, it's a Marxist comment; and it's hopelessly outdated in the era of the Internet. But it shows the lean and hungry eye with which the HRCs look at Canada's media.
I'm glad that every journalist in the country (except Bernie "Burny" Farber's friend, Haroon Siddiqui) gets it: they're coming for Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn today, and for the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star tomorrow.
MUST-READ– Rumoured Changes to CHRC Arbitrations May Result in Further Censorship: “A panel discussion at the recent 30th annual ‘Canadian Association of Journalists National Conference’ revealed motivations and suspected actions by the Canadain Human Rights Tribunal to ’strengthen’ its judgements of hate crimes related decisions”, by Sykos Masters …. (digitaljournal.com)
"It's time for a new batch of letters - this time asking the MPs how much they would appreciate having their communications monitored by an HRC bureaucrat with an unknown and undisclosed political bias. How comfortable would they feel, knowing that it's not just the potentially hateful comments of their constituents they need to worry about, but the potential that their responses will be monitored - and potentially - available to their opposing members."
Each of the authors rejects the authority of government to censor speech. Each condemns the Human Rights Commissions as illegitimate--as, essentially, kangaroo courts ... But each, also, accepts that the accused in the given cases (i.e. Mark Steyn and Stephen Boissoin) have said something "hateful".Now, don't get me wrong: this would be just fine ... except that none of these columnists--as per journalistic convention--spends so much as a sentence demonstrating what, exactly, makes the opinions in question hateful! They are united in their easy posturing to the effect that assholes should be allowed to spout nonsense, but they do not so much as dare to doubt that Steyn and Boissoin are assholes and that theirs is nonsense.
What should concern us is not the political toadying at work here, but the trend of journalistic incompetence.
Oh, wait....
One of my favourite essayist bloggers will be a guest on the Charles Adler show today, scheduled for about 12:30 Saskatchewan time. (You can listen live at the link.) If you're unfamiliar with Bill's work, head over to Eject! Eject! Eject! for a taste of his writing.
There's no pretentiousness about Bill's prose, no self-indulgent vocabulary revving. He simply walks the reader down a path, pointing things out in the language of the average man, as he delivers solid whacks upside the head employing a giant paddle some might call "common sense".
To be Politically Correct these days, you must accept the collectivist belief that words are like weapons, endowed with their own internal, innate power, and this power, like that of a chambered bullet, cannot be trusted to be used responsibly and so must be outlawed and banished from the community.PC advocates have strict rules for what they call Hate Speech, and using such speech essentially makes you a criminal.
So much for the First Amendment. But the Bill of Rights never meant much to these people; indeed, they see it as an impediment to human progress.
Implicit in this belief is that I have the power to harm you by my use of language. Notice that all the responsibility falls on the speaker; the listener, the subject, is completely powerless, and has achieved the highest status with the group: victim. Note also that this worshipping of the victim, is in essence, the elevation of the most powerless and the least responsible to divine status. It is a very basic sleight of hand, that allows the controlling elites to maintain that they are only trying to help the poor and downtrodden, when in reality their actions are clearly nothing more than a naked grab for power that would shame the most ruthless corporate CEO.
Who decides what is hate speech? The group decides. If one person in the group seriously finds something offensive, then that term or phrase or entire concept is added to the list or proscribed terms, and this is how we get to office memo's being critical of the term "brainstorming" as being offensive to epileptic co-workers.
If we buy into this idea of Political Correctness, we do several things, all ruinous: we give other people the power to demean us, we remove any chance at reasoned debate on any issue, and most importantly, in a group of 300 million professionally offended people, we come to a vocabulary of perhaps twenty or thirty words that have been so bleached of potential offensiveness and meaning that language itself becomes worthless.
[...]
How much better, how much stronger and healthier are we, when we dare anyone to use whatever terms they choose, and rather than sitting as powerless victims, rise in angry and righteous indignation to fight the human filth that use words like nigger, spick, gook, mick, kike, dago, and all the rest? How much more secure, how much more inoculated, are we when we can hear these words knowing that those who use them are discredited and terrified infants so out of ideas and argument that they must resort to such childish tactics to reassure themselves? What words can hurt us when we refuse to be hurt by words? What simple and powerful wisdom is bound up in Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me?
(h/t to reader Martin B. whose suggestion was noted in the comments. SDA gets results!)
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday;
... that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.
The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
Nine people complained that Pankiw made discriminatory comments about aboriginals in the pamphlet and the Canadian Human Rights Commission referred the matter to the tribunal.The tribunal ruled it had the right to hear the case and the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal both dismissed Pankiw's appeals.
The Speaker of the House of Commons sided with Pankiw's argument that disagreements over political matters should be settled through the ballot box, not a rights tribunal.
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 didn't he know he was in the People's Republic of British Columbia?
Lorna Pardy, one of the humourless lesbians, filed a complaint against Earle and Zesty's. In B.C., unlike other human rights commissions, it is possible to make a preliminary application to dismiss a complaint.
That application to dismiss was rejected this week. Here is the ruling, that commits the matter to go to trial.
Take a look at who wrote it: Heather MacNaughton, the same tribunal member who chaired Mark Steyn's show trial earlier this month.
In that trial, too, the funny-ness of jokes became an issue. The Canadian Islamic Congress said that some of Mark Steyn's jokes weren't funny, but they also insisted that the CBC's awful "sitcom", Little Mosque on the Prairies, was indeed funny, and if Steyn didn't think so, he was a racist.
So MacNaughton feels comfortable in her self-appointed role as government joke-tester.
Oh, there's a joke here alright.
I lament this further loss of freedom and loss of common sense. I lament the fact that one thin-skinned radical lesbian activist is perpetuating the new stereotype of gays as intolerant of any criticism or dissent. I'm sure that EGALE would oppose this lawsuit, because they know it just looks bad, bad, bad on their community who themselves use trangressive art, including comedy, to deal with difficult issues. What do you think Rosie O'Donnell would have done -- whine to the government, or heckle back?
But, as I've said before, in this battle, the worse the better. Just days after George Carlin died -- the comedian who broke boundaries about what could or couldn't be said in comedy -- we have this stunning example of censorship. Not just censorship, but a clear swipe as the entire theory of comedy, the anything goes realm where society's foibles are mercilessly poked and prodded -- and where connoisseurs of humour freely attend, knowing they'll likely have an ox or two of their own that's gored. If comedians are no longer allowed to offend -- let alone respond to rude hecklers -- then comedy will cease to exist.
I think Heather MacNaughton has just made herself -- and the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal -- a punchline in a thousand jokes to come.
This goes to the theme I've mentioned before: once you start censoring "offensive" ideas, there's no stopping, and no-one is safe, because the word "offensive" is so vague. Once it was neo-Nazis; then it was conservatives and Christians, now it's comedians who pick on drunk hecklers.
Here's a video clip of Earle talking about the case. Is it rude? Sure it is. Is it funny? Funny is in the ear of the beholder. Is this any of the government of British Columbia's business? Hell no.
" How on earth did this get to the point of a HRC Tribunal, it defies all logic and fair comment?
The lesbians were drunk with booze and power and the Human Rights Commission allowed them to "get" their "Guy".
A virtual "Star Chamber" more powerful than the government itself thats completely out of control.
How many more international embarrasements will it take for the federal government to take action?"
It is amazing to me how the CHRC's are now cutting through such a large swath of your society. First, they came for the Pastors, then they came for the Publishers, now they are dragging potty mouth stand ups into the fray.
' Wow! Just when we thought things couldn't get more insane on Canuckistan's [Ultra] Left Coast, we're proved wrong.
We now learn that Lorna Pardy, the woman in the middle here has gained the right to assault & provoke another person and yet if that person defends themselves verbally or physically then Ms. Pardy has the full support of the government to persecute them.
How far into the Twilight Zone has British Columbia traveled?!?'
Maclean's magazine is pleased that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint brought against it by the Canadian Islamic Congress. The decision is in keeping with our long-standing position that the article in question, "The Future Belongs to Islam," an excerpt from Mark Steyn's best-selling book America Alone, was a worthy piece of commentary on important geopolitical issues, entirely within the bounds of normal journalistic practice.
Though gratified by the decision, Maclean's continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation's media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience. We enthusiastically support those parliamentarians who are calling for legislative review of the commissions with regard to speech issues.
What a bunch of shameless totalitarian cowards.'
"I was right. They are going after a comic now:
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=7096c4b6-e48c-46ea-9aeb-7a075a3766e2
Marxists and Fascists have one thing in common, they can't take a joke." Permalink |
AND THAT’S NOT FUNNY! Did You Hear the One About the Lesbians and the Comedian? Heather MacNaughton of the BC HRT is doing all free speechers a big favour by accepting this complaint. The “Comedy Police” is Not Amused. UK News: Throw Daddy Out; He Upsets Lesbians …. (Various)
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.
Read the whole thing-- Permalink |
Congratulations to CHCH TV out of Hamilton. They had me on a show today, along with a comedian, debating the decision by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to put a comedian on trial for unfunny jokes about lesbian hecklers. I say congratulations, because the CHCH editors managed to find someone in Canada who was willing to defend the BCHRT's decision to have the trial. That's impressive.
They found this support in the personage of Susan Cole, the senior entertainment editor of Toronto's NOW Magazine, pictured at left. She's smiling -- I think -- which is odd, because Cole has a very particular definition of what's funny.
She called the remarks by the comedian in question "hate speech" and "discrimination", and said they "weren't funny". That's pretty impressive, given that there hasn't been a trial yet. But I think Cole understands the human rights industry just fine -- everyone's guilty; it's just a matter of who's unlucky enough to be charged.
Until now, HRCs have tried to dress up their political censorship as something else -- not as political hygiene, but as eradicating "hate". That's a neat trick, given that hate, like love, is an innate human emotion, and can't really be eradicated through laws -- though hate can surely be exacerbated by them. But now HRCs -- with Cole's delighted support -- are now taking it upon themselves to determine what is or isn't "funny", even at a comedy night.
Finally, we have some top talent looking into the matter of what is or isn't funny. Forget about Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno; we've got the dour sourpusses at the HRCs on the file. Once they come up with the magic recipe, wannabe comedians around the world will simply have to follow the instructions of the HRCs, and -- presto! -- the laughs will follow. At least that's the logic of a government agency that seeks to be the arbiter of what is or isn't funny.
I was asked by the host how this would affect Vancouver; I said I doubt the Just For Laughs Festival would be visiting anytime soon -- talk about a frenzy of hate crimes! And I asked if Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock, both of whom use the word n*gger the same way you and I use the words "and" and "the", would be allowed into town.
Cole had a quick answer: yes they would. Because they're allowed to make Black jokes, even using the word n*gger. But Whites can't. I'd have to read the transcript to be sure, but I think Cole implied that not only would the same joke told by a White comedian be illegal, it wouldn't even be funny. This, from the "senior entertainment editor" of an arts magazine.
That's nuts, of course. But, from a "human rights" "law" point of view, Cole is actually spot on. Under our "human rights" "jurisprudence", Mark Steyn and Maclean's were subjected to a five-day "hate speech" trial for "Islamophobia" in Vancouver for quoting radical Muslims. The radical Muslims who made the offensive remarks weren't charged (though the BCHRT asserts its jurisdiction not only nationally, but internationally); but Steyn and Maclean's were charged for repeating them. That's actually Cole's logic: a lesbian can crack a joke about lesbians. But a straight woman, or a man, can't. Same joke; but only a special victim group is allowed to tell it.
That's perfect politically correct logic for you -- and it's why, for example, Canada's feminists have been largely silent about the Muslim honour killings, polygamy and even female genital mutilation in Canada. Because Cole is merely a white woman; her poker hand is trumped by women of colour; and nothing beats the full house of a foreign-born, visible minority, Muslim. So traditional liberal values like free speech, the equality of men and women, and non-violence towards women, take a back seat to the politically correct value of not insulting "the other".
Cole was genuinely excited about this comedian being charged with "hate speech" for making fun of lesbians -- all the while acknowledging that the same jokes would be fine if the joke-teller was lesbian. What a horrid world Cole wants us to live in.
It got me thinking, though. What kind of jokes could Barack Obama tell? His mom was White; is he Black enough to tell Black jokes? How about someone who is one quarter Black? One eighth? Are they only allowed to tell gentle Black jokes, but the really tough ones are reserved for very black-skinned Blacks?
Could a straight woman pretend to be a lesbian in order to tell jokes about lesbians? How would Susan Cole propose to check her bona fides? And how about bi-sexuals?
Could a transexual -- a man who "became" a woman -- tell jokes about women? Even if he was still six feet tall, and looked pretty masculine?
Can anyone tell a joke that begins "a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar", or would you need two people to tell that one?
Can you convert to Islam, tell some Muslim jokes, and then convert back when the show is done (provided you're not executed for apostasy)?
If a lesbian tells a joke about lesbians, and it's not funny, do you still have to laugh? If you don't, is that discrimination?
There are so many rules about the "new comedy". All of which are lustily supported by a very angry woman named Susan Cole, and soul mates on the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. I'm sure that the comedians of the world will be hanging on their every word, and following their position papers on what jokes are funny and what jokes aren't.
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning writer, was sentenced by a troika to eight years in a labour camp for writing a joke about Joseph Stalin -- he made fun of Stalin's moustache, calling him "the whiskered one". An estimated 200,000 Russians were sent to the Gulag for making jokes.
It is a mistake to think that freedom only grows; that once achieved, it always remains. The malign human instinct to control one's neighbours, to silence one's foes, is eternal. There are Stalins in every generation; they must be met with Solzhenitsyns in every generation.
Today's decision by the Supreme Court of Canada about defamation law has shifted the balance from plaintiffs to defendants -- in other words, towards greater free speech. The court calls it a modernization, which it is -- phenomena like talk radio shows, partisan TV panels and the Internet were not around when defamation law was developing (it actually goes back 400 years). It also brings us more in synch with the U.S. approach to free speech, and breaks away from the European model of soft censorship.
In other words, it should terrify Canada's human rights commissions. I had no doubt before this decision that Canada's HRCs were conducting themselves in an unconstitutional manner -- exceeding the narrow censorship powers granted to them in the 1990 Taylor decision. Now it's a certainty that section 13 would be batted down by this free speech-loving court.
The facts of this case involved B.C.'s radio legend Rafe Mair, and a conservative activist named Kari Simpson. But the law applies to all cases in Canada going forward, not just theirs.
The decision is written in pretty plain English, unlike some of the 200-pages of opaque gobbledegook the court became known for in the 1990s that were likely the sign of indecision as much as anything. This decision is pretty clear.
Here are some key lines from the ruling:
In my view, with respect, the Court of Appeal unduly favoured protection of Kari Simpson’s reputation in a rancourous public debate in which she had involved herself as a major protagonist...
In the absence of demonstrated malice on his part (which the trial judge concluded was not a dominant motive), his expression of opinion, however exaggerated, was protected by the law. We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones.
...Mair has a reputation for provoking controversy. With controversy has come a measure of commercial success. His listeners expect to hear extravagant opinions and, according to his counsel, discount them accordingly.
...There is concern that matters of public interest go unreported because publishers fear the ballooning cost and disruption of defending a defamation action. Investigative reports get “spiked”, the Media Coalition contends, because, while true, they are based on facts that are difficult to establish according to rules of evidence. When controversies erupt, statements of claim often follow as night follows day, not only in serious claims (as here) but in actions launched simply for the purpose of intimidation. Of course “chilling” false and defamatory speech is not a bad thing in itself, but chilling debate on matters of legitimate public interest raises issues of inappropriate censorship and self-censorship. Public controversy can be a rough trade, and the law needs to accommodate its requirements.
...In much modern media, personalities such as Rafe Mair are as much entertainers as journalists. The media regularly match up assailants who attack each other on a set topic. The audience understands that the combatants, like lawyers or a devil’s advocate, are arguing a brief. What is important in such a debate on matters of public interest is that all sides of an issue are forcefully presented, although the limitation that the opinions must be ones that could be “honestly express[ed] . . . on the proved facts” provides some boundary to the extent to which private reputations can be trashed in public discourse.
The decision doesn't end defamation suits, of course. It merely moves the fulcrum a bit, by widening the scope of what constitutes "fair comment". Fair comment must still be rooted in true facts; but if those facts are clear, and the defamer's comments are clearly his own views, the court will give latitude to even "outrageous" and "ridiculous" opinions.
The rule of thumb for writers -- and bloggers -- remains: get your facts straight. But the good news for free speechniks is that, if your facts are accurate, you can be dramatic, critical and even wrong in your opinions. It's good news for bloggers -- and bad news for censors everywhere.
Here's the CBC's "At Issue" political panel discussing the end of the Parliamentary session. Lots of smart comments throughout, but my favourite (of course) was Rex Murphy's pick for the most under-reported news story of the year: the war against freedom of speech prosecuted by Canada's human rights commissions (scroll forward to 2:30 minutes in). Rex calls the Conservative government's acceptance of the HRCs "very disturbing".
It's true; I still encounter MPs who are oblivious to the situation; and I bet that 90% of severely normal Canadians haven't evern heard of human rights commissions. But six months ago, that number would have been closer to 99%.
With insane decisions like the B.C. prosecution of the "un-funny" comedian, I expect that more and more Canadians will become familiar with these kangaroo courts, and they will continue to be denormalized. Yesterday's decision by the Canadian Human Rights Commission not to prosecute Mark Steyn and Maclean's was not a legal decision, but a P.R. decision by them. Too little, too late -- the denormalization of HRCs is well underway.
A keen-eyed reader sent me more information about Lorna Pardy, the drunk heckler who is now suing a comedian in B.C.'s Human Rights Tribunal for making un-funny jokes about her sexuality. That's her in the middle of the picture, while working as an extra on the set of the TV show The L Word. The's a lesbian thespian.
You'd think someone who is an aspiring actress would have a little bit more composure than Pardy exhibited; that perhaps she might have had a bon mot or two of her own in reply to comedian Guy Earle's admittedly foul rant. Instead, she ran straight to the government. How pitiful. How weak. How un-self-confident. Her attempt at looking cool and composed in the above picture must have mustered the totality of her acting ability. I prophesy she will never rise above an un-credited extra.
I'm pleased to see that at least one of Pardy's tribe gets it: on the website from which I took this picture, she is denounced thusly:
...shame on you for implicating all of us in this shameless dance with the insatiable beast of censorship. I still remember a time not that long ago when books deemed to have explicit gay and lesbian content were not allowed into Canada, and now, thanks to the foolish and shortsighted tantrum of one sadly insecure little lesbian hipster, we can all look forward to another walk down that dark path.
thank you for bringing this distinctly fascist distortion of liberal thought into our community.
And here is a more contemporaneous report on the subject, from the gay magazine Xtra West. Note this cowardly comment:
The couple refused to comment for this article, on advice from legal counsel. "I can't even give you my name [to be] printed," said one of the women, who would only confirm her first name as Lorna.
But look at this interesting tid-bit: Zesty's (the nightclub) has been home to a lesbian comedy show for years:
Accounts of the incident have been making the rounds on the internet, with some calling for a boycott of Zesty's, while others say any action should target the comedian, not the venue which has played long-time host to queer artists like the comedy troupe Laff Riot Girls.
"We're collateral damage," says Lee Ann Keple of the lesbian-run comedy troupe that has held its shows at Zesty's for the past seven years. Keple says she has always had a good relationship with Zesty's management, and does not support the call for a boycott.
No matter to Pardy and her angry friends. They're suing not just Earle, but the restaurant, too. Given that Earle lives in Toronto and, as a comedian, is likely penniless, but Zesty's is stuck in Vancouver and is obviously a going concern, who do you think will foot the bill here in the end?
Pardy is a disgrace. But that's not the problem. The problem is that the Gordon Campbell's government has given that disgrace a powerful legal weapon in the form of the BCHRT.
What a disgusting new chapter in the grostesque book of Stalinism being written by Canada's HRCs.
Fire. Them. All.
The people are still sleeping, but some “blowback” has finally begun to occur. Given its very eccentric inquisitorial practices, which have been documented and publicized on the Internet, the CHRC is now under an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation, and there is a Parliamentary investigation pending. (As a public relations exercise, the CHRC has also hand-picked its own “independent” investigator to do what we can only assume will be a defensive whitewash, as usual at taxpayer expense.)
It is against this background the CHRC decided that the better part of valour is discretion, and that it truly did not need to be prosecuting such high-profile targets as the bestselling author, Mark Steyn, and the mainstream newsweekly, Maclean’s, at the present time. The CHRC can retrench, and return to its bread-and-butter business of destroying little people who command no publicity -- biding their time until circumstances are propitious to “extend their mandate” again.
Vigilance is the price of liberty, and it is crucially important that we not take the heat off Canada’s HRCs when they retreat. Canadians need to know the whole truth about what these vile “human rights” investigators have been doing.
Yes, now is not the time to slack off. I also think it would be a good time for Canadians to flood the HRCs with complaints about racist and sexist speech from Muslim clerics, Womyn's activists, and the like. God knows there's plenty of material to work with.
I read my friend Debbie Gyapong's concerns here and here about the Supreme Court's recent ruling that expands the scope of fair comment in defamation law. As I wrote on Friday, the ruling tilts the law further towards free speech, including "outrageous" and "ridiculous" speech. As someone who is sometimes accused of both, I'm naturally pleased!
Debbie focussed on the fact that in the actual case that led to this decision, the plaintiff, Kari Simpson, was a Christian conservative, who had been likened to Nazis by the defendant, Rafe Mair, on his radio show. The judges said that might be extreme, but it's a fair comment. (That is distinct from a statement of fact. If Mair had said that Simpson was a member of the Nazi Party -- a false statement of fact, not a fair comment on a true fact -- then the defence of fair comment wouldn't apply.)
Debbie's worried that this might mark the start of open season on Christians, in terms of defamation. I have a few thoughts in response.
1. When was the last time a Christian sued an anti-Christian for defamation? I think it's exceedingly rare. So I don't think this SCC decision will suddenly stop Christians from suing in defamation law -- they weren't doing so frequently in the first place.
2. Anti-Christian bigotry was going full tilt before this ruling. I don't think this ruling will increase it. Defamation law, until this point, hadn't really been a barrier to Christophobia.
I was speaking with a friend in the PMO today about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's decision not to take Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn to trial under section 13, the thought crimes section of the Canadian Human Rights Act. (A trial would have meant certain conviction; in its 31-year history, not a single target of section 13 has ever been acquitted.)
My friend was delighted, and saw this as good news.
I suppose, in a very specific sense, it is good news.
I asked him if Father Alphonse de Valk, the editor of Catholic Insight -- another magazine that has been hauled before the CHRC -- will be let go, too.
"Who?" asked my friend.
And that's the problem here, isn't it? Maclean's magazine is enormous -- in size, in strength, in profile, in legal resources. And that is precisely why it was let go. It was such a big fish, it would have pulled the Bad Ship CHRC underwater, rather than be reeled in.
Not so with small fish like Fr. de Valk, so small he is being crushed by legal bills, so small my friend had not even heard of his case.
So small that the CHRC knows it can prosecute him with impunity.
So small that he shall not be afforded the politically-motivated "justice" meted out to Maclean's.
That's the problem here. That's why we can't let up. One of the fundamentals of the rule of law is that no-one is above the law, and no-one is below it.
The Canadian Human Rights Act is a bad law -- unconstitutional in its application, when tested against the Supreme Court's 1990 Taylor decision, that barred its application from political matters.
So Fr. de Valk should not be below the law.
But the CHRC thinks the law is good law, and so far, the Conservative government hasn't said otherwise. If that's the case -- and I submit it isn't -- then Maclean's shouldn't be above the law, by virtue of their wealth and power.
Whether the law is unconstitutional or not (I say it is), the case against Fr. de Valk and Catholic Insight is the same as the case against Mark Steyn and Maclean's. That one was set free, while the other is persecuted, merely highlights the political corruption of the system.
Fire. Them. All.
" Canada Day question for liberty:
May I respectfully ask everyone here how they feel about the new police shakedown powers for roadblocks (i.e. Checkstops, RIDE etc.) regarding impaired driving? It starts on July 2, 2008. Now they will be looking for any and all things: cannabis, alcohol, prescription drugs etc. As usual, there is no presumption of innocnece and the Cops act as judge and jury.
And how about Bill C-26 with it's mandatory minimum sentences and increased efforts at drug prohibition; and with increased penalties?
I do not remember me and my neighbors asking for these things."
I've been reading about the medieval prototypes of today's human rights commissions. Earlier this month, I cited the fascinating case of Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed Witch Finder Generall of Britain. If he was born a few centuries later, I'm sure he'd work for a Canadian HRC.
Today I read about auto-da-fe, literally "act of faith". It was the penultimate step in a trial of the Spanish Inquisition. After conviction, the guilty infidel would declare his faith, as a sort of penance. And then he'd be killed.
Which, other than the gravity of the sentence that followed, is exactly what Lori Andreachuk of the Alberta Human Rights Commission ordered Rev. Stephen Boissoin to do. The Spanish auto-da-fe was an act of Christianity; Andreachuk's order is an anti-Christian auto-da-fe, in which Rev. Boissoin must renounce his faith. That's a 21st century twist.
And then there's the Star Chamber. I was fascinated to learn that, among its other victims, entire juries were tried in the Star Chamber if they didn't render the politically appropriate verdict.
But the most striking analogy was a Star Chamber order of 1632, which is a template for the show trial of Maclean's magazine of 2008.
According to Wikipedia, 1632 is when the Star Chamber:
...banned all "news books" because of complaints from Spanish and Austrian diplomats that coverage of the Thirty Years' War in England was unfair. As a result, newsbooks pertaining to this matter were often printed in Amsterdam and then smuggled into the country, until the ban was lifted six years later.
So foreign trouble-makers who objected to free speech and who insisted on politically correct versions of current events managed to censor the news. Plus ca change.
It's fascinating to me that Canada's human rights commissions defend themselves as progressive and modern and evolved. In fact, they're medieval throw-backs to an age when political and religious terror, censorship, and abuse of process still coloured political life. Those were the dark days; how terrfying that the are being revived now, by those claiming to be angels of light.
Guess who investigated Maclean's magazine on behalf of the Canadian Human Rights Commission? Our old friend Sandy Kozak, the corrupt cop who was drummed out of the Carleton Place Police Department, for dating a criminal who was still under investigation by the force.
You can see her signature on the second page of the confidential internal investigation report in the Maclean's case.
Here are some old news stories about Kozak's ethical spiral down, down, down so far that she was just right for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. She was unethical -- so she was perfect for the human resources standard at the CHRC, who snapped her up.
Question: Is Kozak dating any of the parties in this case -- or even any of the sock puppets, like Khurrum Awan? That would normally be an absurd ethical question to ask, but not with Kozak.
Question: does the CHRC even have a code of ethics?
Answer: they didn't as recently as a few years ago when this internal audit, marked "private and confidential" on every page was done.
Given that the CHRC has been around for thirty years, it's staggering that no-one -- out of a staff of 200 -- thought of drawing up a code of ethics. Sort of tells you the kind of place it is. But we already knew that.
In that secret audit, the CHRC was given a failing grade for ethics -- see, for example, page 7, where the "values and ethics framework" didn't even meet the standard of "good" practise, let alone "advanced" or "best" practises. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 as the worst (no-one gets a zero!), the CHRC got a 2.5. That's a failing grade by any standard. Again, a perfect environment for Sandy Kozak, "investigator"of Maclean's.
Look at page 9 of the audit, and the wonderfully gentle title of that slide: "improvement opportunities to consider". One "opportunity" is listed as:
Develop and promote a formal ethics framework and further develop organizational culture in relation to ethics
Hey, good idea. You'd think a bunch of busy-bodies telling us how we ought to live might have its own rules about how it ought to behave. This audit was written nearly five years ago. How's the remedial ethics work coming along? Let's ask Dean Steacy, part of Kozak's "anti-hate" squad.
As he testified this March, there aren't any rules -- he and his fellow investigators can pretty much do whatever they want -- including becoming members of neo-Nazi organizations, like the U.S.-based Stormfront website (see page 5827 of that transcript). They can also write, in their neo-Nazis personas, directly to CHRC targets to elicit legal information from them, to destroy their legal privilege, through subterfuge (see page 5843 of the transcript). And they regularly request material, like hard drives, seized from their "human rights" targets by police using criminal search warrants -- a violation of the terms of those search warrants (see page 5864 of the transcript). Of course all of these activities would land a real police officer in trouble with Internal Affairs. But, as Kozak knows, there is no Internal Affairs department at the CHRC. It's Lord of the Flies over there.
Take a look at page 54 of the confidential audit, which notes:
The Commission does not have in place a formal ethics framework and does not have a formal structure and designated champion for ethics....
The auditors saw that as a problem. Kozak saw that as a perk. And, as Steacy's testimony shows, it's still business as usual -- ethics free, and loving it.
Back to Maclean's. Kozak's internal report to the CHRC doesn't acquit Maclean's, or even recommend an acquittal. She says the CHRC could go either way -- that the Maclean's article had some of the "hallmarks of hate" -- the CHRC's phrase for things they don't like. Here's how she phrased it: 
That's when Jennifer Lynch, the Chief Commissioner, stepped in and threw the complaint out. Not for legal reasons -- as Kozak showed, they were ready to roll. But for political reasons -- to save the CHRC from more humiliation in the public eye.
Too late for that.
The trouble with lying, as every child knows, is that it's tough to keep your stories straight.
Dean Steacy is a liar. That's fine -- he works at a good place for liars, the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
There's no law against lying.
Unless it's under oath.
Which Steacy was on March 25, 2008, when he testified at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. See page 5864 of the transcript.
MS KULASZKA: Is it a strategy being used by the Commission to simultaneously pursue criminal charges against a respondent while at the same time a complaint is being pursued under section 13, because that has been done several times in many cases.
MR. STEACY: I'm not aware the Commission ever having pursued criminal charges against any individual while we were investigating a complaint.
MS KULASZKA: But Mr. Warman has.
MR. STEACY: But Mr. Warman's not an investigator with the Commission.
MS KULASZKA: But he was, he was an investigator with the Commission.
MR. STEACY: Well, what he did as an individual outside of the Commission is his business. He never did -- he never investigated any hate files when he was at the Commission.
Barbara Kulaszka was asking Dean Steacy about the CHRC's unethical -- and likely illegal -- habit of taking computer hard drives and other material seized in police raids, using criminal search warrants. Steacy didn't deny it -- it's how they roll over there.
Kulaszka asked the obvious: about a deliberate tactic to use brutal police powers -- that Parliament specifically did not give to the CHRC -- to get evidence against their targets that they didn't otherwise have.
I don't know why Steacy didn't just say "yes, and it's obviously working for us, with a 100% conviction rate". He bobbed and weaved a bit, putting it on Richard Warman's head. When Kulaszka pointed out that Warman worked at the CHRC, Steacy said that Warman didn't work on any "hate files".
But that's simply not true. Off the top of my head, I can think of one -- Warman's investigation into constituency mail-outs of then-MP, Jim Pankiw. You can read the story here.
It's not a big point. After all, when you avail yourself of booty from a police raid, what's a little lie under oath? Just another day in the ethical Wonderland of Jennifer Lynch's CHRC.
Dean Steacy is a personification of everything that's wrong at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. (I guess, so is Sandy Kozak. And then there's Richard Warman, too.)
As I indicated in the previous post, Steacy freely confesses his unethical behaviour -- that he joins neo-Nazi organizations; that he uses a neo-Nazi persona to engage his legal targets online to extract information from them that he could not do directly; he receives materials, including computer hard drives from police raids where the search warrants in question do not authorize the CHRC to receive the seized information.
All this, on top of his bald statement that free speech "is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."
But look at what Steacy wrote in reply to a section 13 thought crimes complaint filed by someone Steacy really hates -- a CHRC target, Marc Lemire.
Lemire has been investigated and prosecuted by the CHRC for years. To show the arbitrariness of the thought crimes charges against him, he filed a thought crimes complaint himself, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. The point was to prove -- as if it needed more proving -- that section 13 has become the personal fiefdom of CHRC favourites. They prosecute only who they want to prosecute. (And, in fact, all but one of their Internet prosecutions have been filed by one man, former CHRC employee Richard Warman.)
On page 5731 of the transcript of Steacy's testimony this spring, he is asked about his rejection letter, dismissing Lemire's complaint out of hand. Here's what he had said:
In regards to your complaints against the media organizations and their websites, it would appear that the information on the media websites was a fair and accurate report of events. Therefore, it does not appear that the information on the media websites constitutes the communication of hate messages under the Canadian Human Rights Act as it was merely posted to report the news. In this context, the media organizations which you have cited within your letter could be considered broadcasting undertakings and, therefore, would be exempted pursuant to section 13.2 of the CHRA…
Now compare that to Maclean's magazine's case.
Lemire's complaint against various mainstream media websites was rejected by Steacy because he said the material was a "fair and accurate report of events". But, as the Maclean's case, both in the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, and in the CHRC's own analysis, that is not a defence against "hate speech" charges.
And Steacy simply declares that those media websites aren't websites -- because they're owned by "broadcasting undertakings", and so exempted from the law.
But Maclean's website -- owned by Rogers, a large broadcaster -- had a five-day trial for their website; and the fact that Rogers also happens to be a broadcaster was so irrelevant to the case at hand, that it wasn't even mentioned. Steacy simply "declared" that the websites in Lemire's complaints weren't covered by the law.
Here is a list of every single section 13 hate speech complaint that has gone to the tribunal. It's not a list of all the "hate" in Canada, of course. It's a list of all the hate that Steacy and his clique personally choose to prosecute.
Not a single Muslim jihadi on the list; not a single non-white person, in fact. The list of targets is so poor, only 9% can afford lawyers. It's the barrel of fish that Steacy, Warman and their master, Jennifer Lynch, deem appropriate to persecute. Big fish Maclean's was set free; little fish Fr. Alphonse de Valk was not. Marc Lemire was prosecuted; Marc Lemire's complaint was not. Et cetera.
The CHRC doesn't have a code of ethics. But a fish rots from the head down; Steacy and his wrecking crew that's destroying our civil liberties couldn't get away with it without the support or willful blindness of Chief Commissioner Lynch herself.
And Lynch, herself, couldn't get away with it without the tacit approval of the Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson.
What a disgrace.
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