timeimmortal

As I predicted, the kangaroo court blinked.

Mark Steyn writes:

Their Marsupial Majesties at the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal have dismissed El-Mo’s complaint against Maclean’s and voted unanimously to acquit the hatemongers:

The panel has concluded that the complaints are not justified because the complainants have not established that the Article is likely to expose them to hatred or contempt on the basis of their religion. Therefore, pursuant to s. 37(1) the complaints are dismissed.

We’ll post the full ruling as soon as we can (the piece of wet string holding together New Hampshire’s Third World Internet service fell down down during the night so we have a few technical problems). I’ll be discussing the verdict later today after 6.30pm Mountain Time with Rob Breakenridge on 770 CHQR Calgary.

So the BCHRT opted to bury their dismissal of the “charges” against Maclean’s magazine — the central facet of which was Steyn’s article about the growth and spread of Islam in the world — in the hopes that the Thanksgiving weekend and the coming federal election would help keep the acquittal under the radar. And to be sure, most media outlets probably won’t carry the story, or will carry it only as an afterthought.

But that’s why we have blogs, isn’t it?

If thus can be publicized to a sufficient degree, it will make for a victory for human rights in Canada because of how it shames the BCHRT. If the story gets buried, it’s a victory for the other side; they’ll have gotten away with it.

…and the reality of the internet, it seems, is beginning to sink in to the skull of Athansios Hadjis, the big cheese over at the Canadian Human Rights Commission:

The Human Rights Act provision permits anyone who objects to even a borderline case of alleged hate speech to expose the author to a costly, cumbersome human rights adjudication process, said Athansios Hadjis - who is presiding over a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal against Internet webmaster Marc Lemire.

Citing a recent case in which Maclean’s magazine columnist Mark Steyn defended himself against a complaint from a Muslim group, Mr. Hadjis said it may be all too easy for an individual to be “dragged through the process.”

Mr. Hadjis said that the controversial provision created to combat hate messages left on telephone machines operated by member of the far right — made sense in the past. However, he said that its usefulness may be in the past.

…

Hate messages on telephone message machines tended to be overt, he said, whereas the ocean of opinions on the Internet include many that are borderline cases of hate.

“Maybe the scale is tipping the other way,” Mr. Hadjis interjected during closing submissions at the Lemire hearing. “There is so much grey zone here that it may tip the scale back the other way.”

“Suddenly, the chilling effect catches not only individuals who set up telephone messages…but just about everyone who posts anything on the Internet,” Mr. Hadjis said. “What we have is the reality of the Internet — open to all; everyone participates…” he said.

Common sense at the CHRC? I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

And we have the HRCs to thank for it.

…Bradley Watson, professor of American and Western political thought at Pennsylvania’s St. Vincent College, said he will present a petition calling for the American Political Science Association (APSA) to re-evaluate its selection of Toronto for its 2009 conference at this year’s annual meeting, taking place over the Labour Day weekend in Boston.

His protest has garnered support from dozens of professors across the United States, including prominent scholars such as Princeton University legal philosopher Robert P. George and Harvard University’s Harvey Mansfield.

…Mr. Watson said that professors signing the petition are concerned that recent human rights commission investigations into Maclean’s and Western Standard magazines over articles concerning Islam, and the conviction of pastor Stephen Boisson, who was ordered by Alberta’s human rights tribunal in May to cease publicizing criticisms of homosexuality, suggest that professors risk being chilled from discussing important academic subjects, or ending up in legal trouble. Mr. Watson said he plans to distribute hundreds of buttons to attendees at the Boston conference reading “Toronto 2009, Non!”

What a right mess, yet no more than Canada deserves for allowing the travesty of the HRCs to continue, unimpeded, within its borders.

It should be noted, too, that these professors are not exactly likely to be raving right-wing nutbags; most are very notable for their left-wing views. But that’s how absurd the situation here has really become: American liberals, even the very liberal sorts who teach in places like Harvard and Princeton, want nothing at all to do with Canada because of our lack of respect for the concept of freedom of expression.

God help us, eh?

Easy to see where Jonathan Kay gets his skill with the written word from:

Ayatollah-prescribed fatwas are so pre-9/11. Nowadays, as liberal elites rush prophylactically to ward off charges of tolerating “Islamophobia,” the fatwas (in all but name) against damn good books like Mark Steyn’s America Alone aren’t bruited in mosques; they issue forth from human rights commissioners.

…

Many Canadians believe the nation’s human rights commissions (HRCs) are motivated by high ideals and good intentions. But in conspiring to silence what a handful of Muslims deem “hate speech,” these good intentions are paving the way for the hell of global “soft jihad.”

The soft jihad is gradualistic and law-abiding, but no less desirous of Islamic domination of the West than its violent counterpart. Soft jihad strategy exploits liberal discourse and weaknesses in our legal system to induce guilt about a largely mythical “Islamophobia.”

The list of complaint-triggering speech offences is long in all Western countries, and ranges from the trivial to the politically existential: A decoration on a lid of ice cream distributed by Burger King offends because it resembles Allah in Arabic script; Fox Entertainment’s drama 24 portrays South Americans, Bosnians, Germans and Muslims as terrorists, but only Muslims complain; a Turkish lawyer sues an Italian soccer team because the red cross on their jerseys reminds him of the Crusades.

…

One way or another we must stop the fatwa industry in its tracks. Begin with removal of speech-regulation from the HRCs’ legal mandate. Build on that with legislation that imposes costs and damages on litigious third parties who seek to chill journalists.

Canada should also pass legislation imitative of the U.S. Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) law, presently active in 24 U.S. states, which disallows harassment of those writing on matters of “public concern,” as well as the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, a New York state initiative that will combat libel tourism.

The HRC crisis is not a tempest in a teapot. Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, says: “I don’t think it’s too strong to say that the [HRC] complaint against Mark Steyn is a totalitarian document.”

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that Levant and Steyn are fighting for the defining ideal of Western civilization which, once lost, would spell the beginning of the end of all our other freedoms.

Freedom of speech/expression is the cornerstone human right in truly free societies — without it, all the other rights we enjoy will crumble. And in their zeal to protect the smaller rights, the HRCs will destroy this most important right unless we are able, somehow, to reverse their course or cast them down.

Ezra Levant was apparently invited to speak at a human rights caucus meeting at the U.S. Congress yesterday. That’s pretty cool, and certainly a much-deserved honour for one of the men who has been at the forefront of the human rights/freedom of expression debate in Canada, and who has himself been made to appear before one of the many HRCs that operate within this once-proud country.

In particular, it is interesting to read his interpretations of the words of the Second Secretary of the Embassy of Pakistan, one Asma Fatima by name, on the nature of the thrust by Islamic elements world-wide to see criminalized any form of “defamation of Islam”…which, as Mr. Levant goes on to explain, basically amounts to an effort to criminalize blasphemy against Islam.

But the single most revealing comment I heard all day about this matter was from a State Department lawyer on the panel (whose name I wish to confirm before publishing it.) She has done meticulous research on the Muslim campaign to ban criticism of Islam, and has helped develop the U.S. response to the idea in international legal forums.

She went deep into the issue: she looked at the Arabic word used by Muslim diplomats when describing the “defamation of Islam” that they sought to illegalize. She consulted scholars of Arabic who confirmed for her that the particular legal phrase had been coined very recently, especially for the international diplomatic campaign — and that, when discussed domestically, Muslim countries used the real Arabic words they mean: the traditional words for blasphemy.

So, I suppose, Fatima was following the old diplomat’s dictum after all. She was very honest about her goals — stopping people (especially other, moderate, Muslims) from criticizing Islam. But her dark art was to re-classify her censorship in the Western legal term of “defamation”, instead of the more honest classification of “blasphemy“.

If Muslim diplomats the world over were to lobby for international and Western laws against blasphemy, that would likely trigger a reaction — not just from those who believe in Christianity, Judaism, etc., but from atheists, too, who might not go quietly into a merger of mosque and state. But calling blasphemy by the word “defamation” (and making up a special new word to mislead the proposed law’s targets), makes sure that fewer alarm bells in the West will ring. It transforms an attempt to Islamicize our entire legal system into merely another lawsuit amongst countless others. That’s the diplomatic sleight-of-hand that Fatima was peddling.

Which is basically what most of us freespeechers have been observing all along: the thrust of e.g. the human rights complaints against Maclean’s, and against Mr. Levant, as well as silly contrivances such as the enterprising individual who claims to hold the copyright on any and all graphical depictions of the (false) prophet Muhammad, are all part of a larger scheme. And that scheme, methinks, is to work within the legal frameworks of Western nations — nations that in the past have resisted the spread of the Ummah — to make any and all criticism of Islam, or of the actions of Muslims, criminal.

I’m reminded of a Ron White joke when I read this. Talking about some reform to death penalty law in Texas, White quipped: “Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty. My states’ puttin’ in an express lane.”

*sigh*

Learning that the is going to skip the vetting process for complaints entirely, which means that all complaints will now be referred directly to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal instead, is not happy news to hear in the wake of Canada’s 141st year.

Until now, the Ontario Human Rights Commission acted as a gatekeeper. It would vet complaints, and decide whether or not to send them on for a hearing at the Human Rights Tribunal.

The commission only dismissed about 7 per cent of complaints, referring 93 per cent for a hearing. That was a rather low bar to jump, but somehow this arrangement caused delays. With the processing of cases through the commission bureaucracy and a shortage of adjudicators, a large backlog accumulated. A typical case took about five years to be heard and decided.

Henceforth, the commission will have nothing to do with specific complaints. It will be “proactive,” that is, it will be rather like a free-floating royal commission or public inquiry, choosing its own assignments, armed with daunting powers of search and seizure. Earlier this year, the commission anticipated this role in two separate episodes, showing itself too ready to attribute racism both to rural Ontarian anglers and to Maclean’s magazine (and its contributor Mark Steyn), without evidence that went through the test of a hearing.

Complaints will now go directly to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. The government is adding to the number of adjudicators. Moreover, where once the commission’s staff shepherded complaints, in their stead the new legislation has established the Human Rights Legal Support Centre. Though the estimable Raj Anand (a former head of the commission) will be its chair, this amounts to a firm of lawyers provided free to human rights complainants by the public purse.

Yeah, I’m sure that will improve things.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!