timeimmortal

This is alarmingly relevant to the current situation in Canada:

…white people, blessed with both time and energy, are not these kind of people. In fact there are few things white people love more than being offended.

Naturally, white people do not get offended by statements directed at white people. In fact, they don’t even have a problem making offensive statements about other white people (ask a white person about “flyover states”). As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people.

It is also valuable to know that white people spend a significant portion of their time preparing for the moment when they will be offended. They read magazines, books, and watch documentaries all in hopes that one day they will encounter a person who will say something offensive. When this happens, they can leap into action with quotes, statistics, and historical examples. Once they have finished lecturing another white person about how it’s wrong to use the term “black” instead of “African-American,” they can sit back and relax in the knowledge that they have made a difference.

White people also get excited at the opportunity to be offended at things that are sexist and/or homophobic. Both cases offering ample opportunities for lectures, complaints, graduate classes, lengthy discussions and workshops. All of which do an excellent job of raising awareness among white people who hope to change their status from “not racist” to “super not racist.”

Grace has a slightly darker skin complexion than most people apparently expect she should have (I don’t know how that works, but there it is…), and she gets asked about it a fair bit. This frustrates her to no end.

My last suggestion to her was to respond to each inquiry with an inquiry of her own: “Is that a racial statement?” I figure that should send most questioners scampering for the door. ;)

Ian Fine, Director General and Senior General Counsel for the Dispute Resolution Branch of the Canadian Human Rights Commission has posted his opening remarks to a panel discussion put on by the Canadian Association of Journalists.

The panel topic? Human Rights and Free Speech: Where are the Limits?

Mr. Fine’s statement is lengthy, and I don’t have much time for analysis myself (I see I am not alone in this), but I wanted to remark on one thing that struck me as odd.

Mr. Fine opens with this observation:

Free speech is also a cornerstone of human rights.

He finishes thusly:

The Commission acknowledges that human rights are not static. They evolve and change with changes in society and the law.

A free and inclusive society must draw a line between free expression and hatred. They are not one in the same.

Free expression is the foundation of a free, open and inclusive society.

Hatred is the poison that erodes the tolerance and open-mindedness that must flourish in a multicultural society committed to the idea of equality.

I am tempted to sing “one of these things is not like the others,” but…instead, let’s take the closing remarks point by point.

1) Firstly, it is the opinion of the CHRC that human rights “are not static” — that is, they can be granted or revoked at the whim of those who have established themselves as overseers of human rights in Canada. Fine attempts to hide this understanding behind the acknowledgement that rights “evolve and change” as society and law change, but this is really nothing more than an artful untruth: the HRCs operate — as Ezra Levant continues to chronicle — well outside of Canadian law, and regard themselves as unaccountable to any court or investigative body.

What is even more damning about Fine’s rhetorical dodge, though, is the way it also abdicates human rights entirely. Should “changes in in society and the law” result, after successive generations of increasingly radicalized Islamic immigrants, in Canada becoming a Sharia state, by his own statement Mr. Fine has no grounds to object to the sudden and dramatic shift in human rights that such a change would effect…even as the burqas are being passed out.

In essence, this is a totalitarian sentiment wrapped in a puffy outer coating of pseudo-tolerant rhetoric. And the orator of such an irrational statement is a twit.

2) It is also the opinion of the CHRC that free people “must draw a line between free expression and hatred,” because the two are not the same. This is false: hateful or bigoted speech and non-hateful or non-bigoted speech are both forms of freedom of expression, and in fact both must be allowed if freedom of expression means anything. If people are only free to express views deemed “acceptable” in public discourse, those people do not have freedom of expression at all.

It’s Henry Ford’s car colours applied to speech, really: you can say anything you like, as long as it’s nice/happy/whatever.

Mr. Fine is ultimately confused: free societies do not need to draw a line between free expression and hatred, but between free expression and incitement to violence. Saying hateful things must be permissible, if distasteful, up to (but not including) the point where that hateful speech crosses the line to incitement to violence and other acts of racial hatred.

In other words: it has to be okay to say that e.g. Jews are reponsible for all the wars in the world. It must not be okay to say that all Jews over the age of 18 are legitimate targets. The former is an ignorant and bigoted statement, but ultimately harmless statement (apart from its potential to cause a few hurt feelings…but it is only a very deluded person who believes that he or she can save people from ever having to experience a hurt feeling). The latter is incitement to violence against a specific category of person.

3) “Free expression is the foundation of a free, open and inclusive society.” This is exactly correct (and hearkens back to Mr. Fine’s opening remark) — it’s just a pity that in the statement before, and the statement after, Mr. Fine undermines the very idea of freedom of expression in Canada. If we are truly an open, free, and inclusive society, then we even have to “include” those whose opinions we find contemptible — we have to be open to everyone, including the Zundels of the world, if in fact we value the freedom to speak that we ostensibly have.

4) Mr. Fine dismisses hatred as “a poison that erodes the tolerance and open-mindedness that must flourish in a multicultural society.” This is exactly backward: if a society is truly tolerant and open-minded, it must (by definition) allow for hatred to be expressed (within the reasonable limits imposed by laws prohibiting incitement) alongside all other viewpoints. “We don’t tolerate intolerance” is not a worldview; it is a nihilism. We must tolerate to hear expressed even those things that are intolerant, or else we must concede that what “freedom” we have to express ideas is ultimately meaningless, since we are all just following a script anyhow.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Shaukat Khawja is blogging, I think, about how he proud to be an Islamic radical. Oh, he doesn’t really mention himself, per sé, but he does attempt to deflect the typical stigma that is attached to the term “radical” when it is used in reference to the false religion of Muhammad.

One famous biblical “radical” was Jesus (as), who challenged and opposed the evil power of Rabbinical class, and condemned them for distorting the Laws of Moses. For that Jesus was projected as “radical” and a grave threat to Roman colonial empire. Another famous “radical” was Lord Buddha, who challenged the repressive hegemony of Brahmin upper-caste minority. Nelson Mandela was another “radical”, because he upset the status quo - and challenged the racist Afrikan regime. When Senator Cheney called him “radical”, the western world and Zionist entity rejoiced - including his supporters, though, for him being “honoured” as a freedom-fighter.

Same goes for Malcolm X and Rev. Martin Luther King. Both were dubbed “radicals” because they sought to subvert and overturn the racist political culture that had been institutionalized in the US for the benefit of a small minority of elites - most of whom take orders from Israel Lobbying groups (AIPAC, ADL, AJC, etc.).

The best and living example of progressive, emancipatory radicalism can be found in the Seerah of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) - who, like Moses and Jesus - challenged the existing religious and political doctrine of his time. Islamic message too, can be called “radical” because it conclusively rejects all forms of caste, Racism, class oppression, usury, exploitation, abuse of the law and dehumanization of human beings.

Shaukat is something of a fan of the Iranian Ayatollahs, and so we can presume from his having said the above that Islam’s rejection of the dehumanization of human beings is, in part, predicated on the assumption that women are not human beings, since women in Iran do suffer no small degree of dehumanization, exploitation, and abuse. The same can be said for women in many Islamic nations, and perhaps we ought to be thankful that the blogger at RehmatPedia is being honest in what he has omitted from his article.

As to his sense of history, I observe that with typical flair, Shaukat has infused his lesson with no small measure of anti-Jewish sentiments, as is his custom. As to whether Jesus opposed the evil power of the Rabbinical class, I can’t say (having not been there personally) — most accounts of Jesus’ life suggest, however, that the Pharisees weren’t evil so much as they were hypocritical and wrong-thinking. Nobody could honestly deny the ardent faith of the rabbis — Jesus’ issue with them was that the way they lorded their faith over others was also the antithesis of the faith that they held.
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…you know, for the hopefully small number of people left in Canada who can’t understand what a grave threat to our freedoms and rights the human rights commissions are.

Isn’t it obvious that in the case of Adolf Hitler, “hateful words” led to “unspeakable crimes”? This argument is offered routinely: if only there’d been “reasonable limits on the expression of hatred” 70 years ago, the Holocaust might have been prevented.

There’s just one teensy-weensy problem with it: pre-Nazi Germany had such “reasonable limits.” Indeed, the Weimar Republic was a veritable proto-Trudeaupia. As Alan Borovoy, Canada’s leading civil libertarian, put it:

“Remarkably, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti-hate law. Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech. And, in the opinion of the leading Jewish organization of that era, no more than 10 per cent of the cases were mishandled by the authorities. As subsequent history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it.”

…

The problem the Jews found themselves up against in Germany and elsewhere was not the lack of hate-speech laws but the lack of protection of the common or garden laws — against vandalism and property appropriation and suchlike. One notes, by the way, that property rights are absent from Canada’s modish Charter of Rights. The reductio ad Hitlerum is the laziest form of argument, so it’s no surprise to find the defenders of the ever-more-intrusive “human rights” enforcers taking refuge in it. But it stands history on its head. Most of us have a vague understanding that Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 as a pretext to “seize” dictatorial powers. But, in fact, he didn’t “seize” anything because he didn’t need to. He merely invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Republic’s constitution, allowing the state, in the interests of the greater good, to set ? what’s the phrase? — “reasonable limits” on freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom from unlawful search and seizure and surveillance of postal and electronic communications. The Nazis didn’t invent a dictatorship out of whole cloth. They merely took advantage of the illiberal provisions of a supposedly liberal constitution.

Oh, and by the way, almost all those powers the Nazis “seized” the morning after the Reichstag fire, the “human rights” commissions already have. In the name of cracking down on “hate,” Canada’s “human rights” apparatchiks can enter your premises without a warrant and remove any relevant “document or thing” (as the relevant Ontario legislation puts it) for as long as they want it. And without anybody burning the House of Commons or even the Senate.

…

Happily, beginning on July 1, under Ontario’s “human rights” reforms, Commissar Hall will have far greater powers to initiate prosecutions against all and sundry. Under the new proposals, ” ‘hate incident’ means any act or omission, whether criminal or not, that expresses bias, prejudice, bigotry or contempt toward a vulnerable or disadvantaged community or its members.” “Act or omission”? Of course. The act of not acting in an insufficiently non-hateful way can itself be hateful. Whether or not the incident is a non-incident is incidental. I quote from “Concepts Of Race And Racism And Implications For OHRC Policy” as published on the OHRC website:

“The denial of racism used by so many whites in positions of authority ranging from the supervisor in a work place to the chief of Police and ministers of government must be understood for what it is: an example of White hegemonic power over those considered ‘other.’ “

Got that? Your denial of racism merely confirms your racism — because simply by being a “White hegemon” (like Barbara Hall or Jennifer Lynch) you wield racist power. The author, Frances Henry, cites the thinking of “modern neo-Marxist theorists” as if these are serious views that persons of influence in Canada’s “human rights” establishment ought to be taking into account, rather than just the latest variant of an ideology that’s led to the deaths of millions in Russia, China and everywhere else it’s been put into practice. Yet, underneath the blather about “omissions” and “denial” of racism is the bleak acknowledgement that, alas, Canadians just aren’t hateful enough to justify the cozy sinecure of taxpayer-funded hate police. “I would say that for a province as large and as diverse as Ontario, to have 2,500 formal complaints a year, that that’s a very low level,” Commissar Hall said. C’mon, you Ontario deadbeats, can’t you hate a little more?

Some feel that free speech in Canada is dead already, and perhaps it is. Perhaps, in due time, this and every other blog that articulates a dissenting opinion against the received wisdom of our progressive “betters” will be shut down for the greater good of society. Perhaps, in due time, people like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant will not be allowed to publish articles within, if not from within, the Great White North that articulate the same sort of dissenting opinions.

Then, too, perhaps in due time Sharia will become the law of the land. Once one’s freedoms have died, does it really matter whom one’s restrictions and privileges are bestowed by? Is there that much difference between a human rights commissar who can fine you into homelessness and bankruptcy for saying something anti-Islamic, and a pseudo-caliph or imam who can exhort “the faithful” to burn your house to the ground for doing same?

Myself, I remain somewhat hopeful that freedom will prevail, and I am not alone in thinking so. But at the same time, I think pretty much everyone on the “freespeecher” side of the debate can recognize that there’s still a tough slog ahead.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Not directly, at least. Fortunately, Wordpress keeps an accurate list of inbound links. He has his own blog, and has decided to issue his response to my latest reply to him there. That’s just as well; he wasn’t doing all that well via the contact form.

He seems to be clinging to insisting that all Religions are basically the same (a common fallacy among atheists, I have learned). To which I can only say, again, what I said to him before: “While you see a distinction between various sports, as an non-sports fan I simply don’t see those as significant. Honestly, the difference in rules and methods between almost any two sports is virtually meaningless to me. I don’t see a massive difference, in many ways, between playing golf and playing football…”

(All I’m doing in the above quote, O Reader, is repeating a statement Joel made about religions, re-dressed to cover an alternative topic; the absurdity of Joel’s stance is pretty clear.)

Joel posits thusly:

Once you believe in an all-powerful supernatural entity that controls the universe and his divine son that was killed and then rose from the dead, any distinctions between particular interpretations of these beings and stories really does fall by the wayside**.

For example, lets suppose I’m schitzophrenic. And I believe that the dog is talking to me telepathically. Would you see any real difference between me and the other schitzophrenic that believes the dog is talking to him vocally?

Of course not.

Once again, Joel’s ignorance shows through: there could be any number of differences between two schizophrenics talking to the dog. The question of the magnitude of symptoms comes up — of what duration, and what severity, are each person’s episodes? The question of medication comes up — is either person medicated? What kind of medication, and in what strength, is each person on? Is it perhaps time to adjust each person’s medication? The question of response comes up — should we let each person continue talking to the dog? Should we inform someone? Should we call the police? We might even ask what kind of dog is being addressed. Are the two schizophrenics speaking to the same dog? Is the dog (or “are the dogs”) responding, in any way, to either schizophrenic?

The point is that there is more to the scene than just what the eye glimpses at first. There is not only room for, but a need for, greater inquiry, because we cannot understand the situation until we ask some follow-up questions. And I might also point out, since Joel seems of a mind that atheists should “do something” about the pervasiveness of religion in America (”the battle we fight,” he termed it), the only way to properly respond to any situation is to dig a little deeper in order to better compose your response in a manner that is specifically tailored to the person being dealt with.

In other words, the proper response to schizophrenic #1 might be wholly different than the proper response to schizophrenic #2 — if we treat them both the same, there is a risk of doing unnecessary damage to at least one of them, until and unless we allow our actions and responses to them to be informed by additional inquiry. Dismissing them as just another couple of schizos is simply unacceptable, in addition to being dishonest.

Not that Joel seems to care all that much: he flogs the death of a single child as an indictment against all religion, even though the parents of the child were members of a cult widely derided and disavowed by mainstream Christianity. Had Madeline Kara Neumann been born to Catholic parents, she’d probably still be alive — whither Joel’s big issue* then? Moreover, whither Joel’s point that all religions are the same — there are religions out there in which young Madeline would have easily survived, grown up in, and thrived in.

But Joel has no interest in digging any deeper than he has to, and cares not for the fact that even though he himself is not a member of anything he would recognize as a religion, the vast differences that exist between the different religions are not a side point in the debate; they are the debate. Because what is atheism, if not a rather odd — and somewhat counter-intuitive — form of religion (in that it is a philosophical conjecture, a belief in a universal negative)? Funnily, I’m pretty sure that Joel would be offended if I called him a racist, and would rush to disprove the charge. At least, I would hope he would.

But if one thinks about it, O Reader, how is what he has said any different from the sort of bigotry that necessarily informs Racism? His basic contention, at least as regards Madeline Kara Neumann, seems to be that if a religion has at any point caused the death of a person, all religions are to be held accountable. Applying similar logic, we could argue that we should jail all black people the next time a Jamaican gang banger guns someone down on Jane Street in Toronto.

Hmmn…and here I thought it was us theists who were supposed to be closed-minded and bigoted (not to mention uninquisitive).

Joel also asks:

Its sort of like trying to talk with someoine who believes magic runs every little bit of the world. How could you talk physics?

Numerous science fiction authours demonstrate a rather handy fusion of physics and magic in their works, O Reader. Not that I believe in magic, of course — I merely observe that several works of speculative fiction nicely bridge the two concepts. But then, realizing that would require a person to have an inquiring mind, wouldn’t it?

Amusingly, one of the people commenting on Joel’s article added this nugget of “wisdom”:

To the point where they can’t actually understand anyone who might find their beliefs to be, well, insane.

Their very identity and that religion are so intertwined as to be inseperable.
Therefor, no significant dissent is really allowable.
(oh, you might allow it, but you treat it as if it were spoken by children)

What moleboy doesn’t realize, of course, is that much the same can be said both about atheism and those who follow that particular philosophical conjecture, and about the way many Catholics — including, more than occasionally, myself — wind up having to speak to them because of it.

But then, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. There is no such thing as someone who does not believe, after all. The great question is not whether we shall believe, but what we shall believe, and atheism is just one more entrant in list of beliefs that can be found the world over. And everyone who believes — every human being, then — is rather strongly wedded to their beliefs. Joel and moleboy’s identities are strongly intertwined with their atheism, and I’ve already had to speak to Joel…well…if not like a child, than at least like an intellectual inferior. I don’t really enjoy doing so, preferring discussions to be between equals whenever possible. But that hasn’t been possible in this case.

* ten blog posts in the last month and change; easily one of his most talked-about subjects

** I’m sure Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Wiccans, and various other religions would have something to say about this, since they do not acknowledge one or both of a) God and b) Christ. But hey, what do I know, being a deluded theist? Fortunately, I have atheists nearby to correct my thinking.

Robert Ferrigno turns in a rather heartbreaking piece of creative writing concerning the fate of Bill Clinton in a world in which Barrack Hussein Obama has won the presidential election.

I realize that as a Canadian, any thoughts I have about the coming American election are worth less than a pitcher of warm spit, but I’d still like to note that I’m really not that impressed with Obama. That’s not to say that I’m impressed with John McCain or Hillary Rodham Clinton, either…but Obama just grates on my nerves. And not just because he has only ever voted in support of abortion (even partial birth abortion) when the subject has come up in the House.

He seems more or less totally disconnected from the majority of the American people — fretting about the price of arugula at Whole Foods (the American version of Planet Organic, if I understand it correctly) doesn’t exactly relate one to the run-of-the-mill Yank who is worrying about the fact that Rice Krispies cost more than they did a week ago. In fact, the disconnect is so great (his wife is on record fretting about how hard it is to make ends meet on a combined income of nearly $400,000 a year!) that it almost seems plausible that he would appoint someone like Clinton as an “Ambassador to the Heartland”, as per Ferrigno’s fiction piece. As Mark Steyn notes, for Obama, the American Heartland might as well be a different country.

(The Nose on Your Face has a great parody up concerning this.)

Then, of course, there’s the race issue. This has been an interesting presidential primary to watch, given that the three candidates are a white male, a white female, and a black male; identity politics has played a huge role in the progress of the primaries, and especially in Obama’s campaign. And that, I think, is perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of his campaign to date. As others have noted, if a person votes for Obama in part because he is black, that person is a racist. And Obama’s own approach to the issue has been…strange; I read through the speech he gave in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright affair and felt vaguely offended by it.

And then there’s the hagiography and secular messianism that seem to follow Obama’s campaign wherever it goes. Many pundits have taken to calling him the “Son of God,” and for good reason — based on the way many of his supporters depict him, you’d think he was.

Anyone else get a sense of impending disaster at the thought of an Obama presidency?

Brigitte Bardot? Well…yes, it seems.

Aside from [Muslim] sheep-slaughtering, Mlle Bardot is also opposed to Canadian seal-culling. But when she denounces seal-clubbing, nobody prosecutes her for Racism. Islam is everything but a race. It’s a Religion, an ideology, a politico-legal system, a set of cultural practices — and there’s something disquieting about the zeal with which the French state is pursuing her under the catch-all of “racism”. In the last decade, she’s been convicted and fined on four occasions for “inciting racial hatred”. The first was for some remarks about the number of mosques in France, and the most recent was for some observations about “the Islamization of France”. She is not a lady of moderate disposition, but it would hardly seem to be in the public interest to give the impression that these subjects are now beyond discussion.

Mlle. Bardot’s specific “crime” in this regard was her opposition, as an animal rights activist, to the practice of slaughtering sheep according to the Islamic “halal” requirements, which she deemed as cruel. Apparently, it is “racist” to say that now.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

The Muslim Canadian Congress, though pleased that the decided not to pursue the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine, is nevertheless concerned that members of the OHRC may in fact be closet supporters of sharia law.

In a statement, the Vice President of the MCC, Salma Siddiqui said, the OHRC decision had the finger prints of its pro-Islamist commissioners who have close association with the Canadian Islamic Congress. It is not just the commissioners, but we have reason to believe that there are staff on the OHRC that support Sharia law and endorse the CIC’s positions.

Had the OHRC restricted itself to the legality of the issue, the MCC would have no problem with its decision. But in editorializing and coming out to bat for Canada’s Islamists, the OHRC is sending a very dangerous message to moderate Muslims who reject Sharia and do not take inspiration from overseas Islamic countries or groups.

…

The OHRC decision must be cause for celebration in Osama Bin Laden’s cave and among the soldiers of the world Jihadi movement that love to spread the falsehood that Canada is at war with Islam and that Muslims in Canada live under a cloud of Racism and persecution. Nothing can be further from the truth.

That’s a serious allegation, although in a sense it is not that surprising. Modern liberals and progressives, with their inherent fear of seeming judgemental or condemnatory, have provided a curious weakness in the structure of Canadian law that Islamists of a very intolerant bent are only too quick to exploit.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

…and in the course of an investigation, as well! Imagine that!

It’s a strange story of how a Chinese restaurant got hauled before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal by a serial plaintiff on fraudluent charges of sexism. Apparently, said plaintiff was targeting small Asian restaurants (”mom and pop shops”) that posted job advertisments for waitresses (said plaintiff’s complaint, then, was that the restaurants were sexist and biased against him, a male).

And yes, the B.C. HRC went along with the sham, at least for a while.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

One of the more amusing — and yet tragic — revelations of Marc Lemire’s cross-examination of Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) staffer Dean Steacy (among other people) in regard to the exact identities of the authors of certain racially-charged statements at the white supremacist forum that Mr. Lemire oversees has to be the tactics employed by Dean Steacy. Essentially, Mr. Steacy (and former HRC employee and current serial plaintiff thereof Richard Warman) engaged in tactics that would be called “entrapment” had bona-fide police officers committed them — dissatisfied with the quantity (or lack thereof) or specifically racist material to be found on Mr. Lemire’s forums, they created aliases for themselves, logged in to the forums, and posted their own racist statements. Those statements then were used to form the basis of Mr. Warman’s human rights complaint against Mr. Lemire.

This is all old news by now; I reiterate it here for the benefit of those readers who may have forgotten some of the finer points since last it came up for discussion on this blog.

What is new — and both comic and tragic — is exactly how Mr. Steacy went about “covering his tracks” when posting the aforementioned racist content.

When Mr. Steacy began posting messages on hate sites as “jadewarr,” he was sufficiently internet savvy not to leave any ISP information that could be traced back to the CHRC. He didn’t want Marc Lemire looking at his server logs and noticing any unusual interest from anything ending in “gc.ca.” So Mr. Steacy disconnected himself from the office Internet, and looked around for alternative wireless connections. He found one belonging to a young lady whose apartment is a block away from CHRC headquarters in Ottawa. Without obtaining a warrant, he connected to her server, and in effect used her as his cover for his “jadewarr” postings. Last week, a representative from Bell Canada named the lady in open court, since when her name has been reported in the newspapers. Let’s say in 10 years’ time, this woman applies for a job in, oh, Sarnia or Moose Jaw or Des Moines, and her prospective employer decides to Google her name, and what comes up is all very complicated and hard to follow but she seems to have something to do with some white supremacist investigation back in 2008.

Dean Steacy is on record as dismissing the right to freedom of speech as “an American concept” that he doesn’t put much stock in. Evidently, his attitude toward the right to private property is similar. And yes, I know that the lady whose wireless internet access he made use of should have done more to protect herself against his invasion of her privacy and usurpation of her identity. Wireless routers should be secured, preferably using the WPA security scheme, and any person intenting to use a wireless router in his or her home should both be made aware of this fact and, if necessary, taught how to do it.

But even though her wireless was unsecured, Mr. Steacy’s use of it to pursue — by way of entrapment-like tactics — the CHRC’s case against Mr. Lemire is unconscionable, and may have tarnished this lady’s reputation for years to come. Not that one expects the human rights kommisars to demonstrate the least bit of care toward the well-being of Canadian citizens, not while more pressing concerns — like the pursuit of the fictional Canadian Nazi Party, or the defence of a Newfoundlander’s right to act in a manner that lines up with ‘Newfie’ stereotypes, thus resulting in the termination of his employment for being a lazy slacker — are out there to be found.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!