Just another proud part of the New Trudeaupia;
While everyone is busy humming “Let’s Not Be Beastly to the Muslims,” it is worth noting the word “Islamophobia” is a misnomer. A phobia describes an irrational fear, and it is axiomatic that fearing the effects of radical Islam is not irrational, but on the contrary very well-founded indeed, so that if you want to speak of a legitimate phobia-it’s a phobia I experience frequently-we should speak instead of Islamophobia-phobia, the fear of and revulsion towards Islamophobia.
More reaction here;
Consider the implications: By the logic of the CIC’s attack on Maclean’s magazine, the owners and operators of Canadian libraries and bookstores could also be charged with violating the human rights of Muslims by making not just Steyn’s article but also his entire book widely available to Canadians throughout the country.
In attacking Maclean’s magazine, the CIC is not acting alone. It has the support of the Ontario Federation of Labour. In a statement backing the CIC, OFL executive vice-president Terry Downey said: “We want to make sure there’s dignity and respect for all individuals in the province.”
[…]
the restrictions on speech in the codes were intended to apply only to communications that fostered discrimination on such bases as employment or housing. Instead, human rights tribunals have adopted such expansive interpretations of these speech restrictions that a newspaper or magazine could get into trouble for publishing even a truthful article about conflict in the Middle East, Bosnia, Rwanda or elsewhere that is likely to expose at least one of the parties to contempt.
Canada’s power-grabbing human rights commissioners evidently have scant regard for the freedoms they suppress or for the original understanding of the codes they are supposed to uphold. Otherwise, the British Columbia tribunal and the Canadian and Ontario human rights commissions would have promptly dismissed the CIC’s complaints against Maclean’s as entirely without merit.
That’s from the London Free Press. Now that Macleans has been targeted, they get interested. Better late than never, I suppose. But here’s the better CHRC story, if only one of those big budget investigative journalists could be bothered;
To date, Richard Warman has filed 26 complaints against named respondents with his former employer – the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Related – a “racist douchebag” imam gets mistaken for Mark Steyn.
By what legal authority can the HRC render a legal judgment against Macleans?
The HRC is an actual part of our ‘justice’ system in Canada.
Check out the Canadian Human Rights Act. Go to:
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/
and type in Canadian Human Rights Act
These are appointed people who make these essentially arbitrary decisions about what Canadians may say, write, etc. This is in violation of the Charter’s Section 2 on freedom of expression.
As noted in the post above, this is an important case. Do these HRC actually have the right to censor our opinions?
After all, what these Muslim activists are doing, is removing their religion and sociopolitical structure from any possibility of being debated, discussed, analyzed. By anyone, non-Muslim or Muslim.
The degenerate section in the HR Act is Section 13.1, which discusses ‘hate messages’.
“It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
The key problem is that this section actually moves the situation outside of any requirement for actual evidence of ‘hatred or contempt’. None need be expressed by anyone for the HRC to convict YOU of writing something that MIGHT ‘expose’ someone to ‘hatred or contempt’.
It might expose someone. Not actually HAS resulted in actual situations of hatred or contempt. This means that the description of a potential, future situation is completely and totally in the minds of the HRC members. They speculate, they imagine, they dream…what ‘might’ happen. Not was has actually happened.
If that isn’t a horrifying, Kafkaesque scenario, what is?
Are these people appointed, and by whom. What is their political, religious, moral, background to be making decisions. How long are they appointed for. Can we get names and addresses of them.
Or are they chosen from applications that appear in papers for positions on various boards.
One should apply for every position advertised by the govt, and get an interview. At least you would see who makes decisions for us.
After reading the comments, I realized that the alternative-energy greenies may very well get some unexpected allies. Joe Sixpack may very well connect the current chilling of free speech with “Arab money” and put the alt-en greenies up on the patriots’ bandwagon. Subsidies for alternative energy may become a national-defense matter.
He’s right, Islamophobia isn’t a good word. I’m not afraid of the skinny little pig-hatin’ bastiges, they just torque me off. We need a new word.
Islamonausea?
Islamorexia?
Islamitis?
Yer submissions are welcome, eh?
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Muslims
For we’d hate it if they ever came to harm
And though some folk think that Allah may be like the Christian God
Some of their forms of worship seem, well, really rather odd
Let’s ignore how they
Don’t let their girls see light of day
For those little veils have a quixotic charm
Give them religious parity
Now ain’t *that* Christian charity
But don’t let’s be beastly to Islam
We must be kind
And with an open mind
We must endeavour to find
A way –
To let all Muslims know that this new War on Terror
Is really not about the way you pray
We must be sweet
And if we offer them meat
Ensure that the beastie’s throat was sleet
We mustn’t let
Them feel upset
Or ever get
The feeling that we’re cross with them or hate them,
Our future policy must be to integrate them.
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Muslims
When they follow some illiterate Imam
And though we may not want the chap as our own near relation
We could at least point out the benefits of education
Let’s be sweet to them
And day by day repeat to them
That suicide bombing’s simply rather dumb
Let’s tell ’em that they’re swell again
Come blow us all to hell again
No, don’t let’s be beastly to Islam
We must be just
Try not to show disgust
At those traditions they must
Obey
If we don’t understand just which hand wipes the bottom
Does Allah care about that anyway?
And when they pray
They always point one way
Because it’s to Mecca that they
Belong, you know – they long to go
Attend the Hajj
Defend the Hajj
Pretend the Hajj’s a great ‘un
Even if they’re being squashed to death while stoning Satan
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Muslims
Even if you think it’s all a sham
Though the prophet shaved his armpits and other unseen hair
I’m sure Allah has got better things to do than look down there
And a fatwah for them
Is nothing quite so bizarre for them
It certainly put old Rushdie in a jam
Let’s hope no Muslim’s damned to hell
For breaking the rule on alcohol
No, don’t let’s be beastly to Islam
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Muslims
Even if we couldn’t give a damn:
Though Islamic extremists made the World Trade Centre fall
I don’t suppose the Americans minded very much at all
Live our lives like them
Quickly divorce our wives like them
Their treatment of women’s a male-ficent scam
For that does not sound right to me
It sounds more like Shi’ite to me
But don’t let’s be beastly to Islam
Islamoversion?
The people are appointed by the govt, each has a term of at least 5-7 years and can be reappointed. That would mean that the current set has been appointed during the Chretien era. They would all be Liberals, and thinking in the Trudeaupian centralist, topdown govt-knows-what-is-best-for-you mode.
It interesting, that these HRC appointees are primarily Liberals, and the Liberals are supposed to ‘own’ the Charter. Yet, I maintain that the section 13 in the HRC is in violation of Section 2 of the Charter.
How’s this for qualifications? Section 48.1.2
Persons appointed as members of the Tribunal must have experience, expertise and interest in, and sensitivity to, human rights.”
Can anyone kindly explain what the evidence for the above requirements could possibly consist of?
The Chair and Vice Chair of the 15 member commission must be lawyers for at least ten years, and at least two other members of the Comm. must be the same.
These HRC commissions were originally set up to deal with workplace and housing issues, but long ago moved out of the paucity of cases in those areas and into the ambiguous, amorphous and entirely subjective area of ‘hate messages’ – an area that exists completely outside of substantiation, exists within individual subjective interpretation, requires no hard evidence, no events or situations of actual experiences of hatred or contempt.
They are a violation of justice, an aberration of our democratic rights.
It’s fairly well known that people can only track so many statements, opposition to statements, counter-arguments, spin, re-evaluation of the original statements, published opinions on the above, etc. ad infinitum.
Spinners are quite aware of this fact and use it to their advantage. Then the pure volume of “information” becomes overwhelming, people give up due to the mental gymnastics required and decide one way or another based on emotion. This is why religion exists.
Never before in history has there been such a media assault on citizens.
Those who “stick to their guns” are branded as unenlightened, luddites or throwbacks to the old days.
Because, you know, truth, integrity and honesty is different these days.
“Islamophobia” is nothing more than a tactic used in the attempt to silence freedom of speech with regards to criticism of Islam.
It also assists creeping sharia and helps position Muslims as distinctly special, elevating Islam to superior status. In other words, supremacism.
These libel and hate charges should rightfully be viewed as acts of war, as they are all weapons of jihad.
They know all too well that Islam cannot possibly survive the application of critical thought and reason. Furthermore, they cannot risk anybody exposing parts of the Islamic triology as being in direct violation of our laws and constitution.
In fact, in Islam it is a punishable sin to question the Quran.
“The Canadian Islamic Congress’s war on Mark Steyn and Maclean’s is an attack on all of us. …
The tiff over the excerpt from America Alone is only the tip of the iceberg… .
Connect the dots and you will see that the attack on Mark Steyn in Canada is part and parcel of a world-wide assault on free speech that has already reached well into America.”
“In the face of such death-embracing fanaticism our only option is unremitting combat.”
Quite right.
Thrilled to see him point out the fallacy of the term “islamophobia” in that fear of Islamism is not a phobia but a very rational one. I’ve been trying to tell people I know exactly this. As well, one should never use the language of the enemy propagandists — that gives ’em half of the victory. For this reason, I never use “first nations”, “Palestinians” [except in scare quotes, but preferably Arabs of Palestine vs. Jews of Palestine.
must have experience, expertise and interest in, and sensitivity to, human rights
Which of course, is, er, everybody. All humans, every day of their lives, exercise their rights in some fashion, and are quite “sensitive” about them.
BTW, re: that suit against her book in the UK, Ehrenfeld mentioned that the whacky English judge, after hearing that former CIA director Woolsley wrote the forward to her book, said something along the lines of oh well in that case …[meaning: Guilty].
I’m thrilled to see Macleans hoist by their own loony-left petard. The Islamists have made a huge tactical error [the complainants are young lawyers]: they’re gonna lose this one, and the HRC is on its last legs.
MaryT: Your query re: qualifications: I believe the propective candidate must have a pulse and be breathing without mechanical aid.
How can ‘an irrational fear’ be criminal?
Is a ‘fear of guns’, which is often irrational, a crime?
Is an irrational fear of the Christian faith a crime? (in some circles if one is NOT afraid of Christians then that is likely a crime.)
That dreary old political hack with the grating voice, former Toronto mayor Barbara Hall, is part of the Ontario HRC.
Islamists are free speech-a-phobic.
“We need a new word.”
Wideawake.
Thanks for the Steyn/racist douchebag imam link, Kate.
What a hoot! Very much like that turd who misunderstood your dinosaur media post a few months back.
WOW, the Steyn response. Racism in quotation marks from the Muslim imam himself!
BTW, that imam is the one who Denmark (?) has given up trying to deport, right? Walking around scot-free and continuing to spill his infidelophobic bile.
And this cat seems to agree with Steyn’s demographophobia too …
Al-Qaddafi: There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe
My favourite comment so far:
“Recently I heard comedian George Carlin on a radio show dispensing his yawn-inducing brand of scorned hippie pop-nihilism. In talking about how the world had ‘jumped off the cliff’ and was now in ‘freefall,’ he said he was always on the lookout for censorship coming from the right, but had never expected the PC variety to overtake us from the left.
“Funny that Mr. Seven-Words-You-Can’t-Say was blindsided, because quite a number of fussy right-wing thinkers saw it coming ages in advance. Allan Bloom wrote about it twenty years ago. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz wrote about it decades earlier.”
http://www.jewcy.com/cabal/toothless_canada_borrows_crescent_fangs
from one of the links:
“..It wasn’t so long ago, for example, that I read in a London paper that “Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet” because the presence of images of our porcine friends offended Muslims. A councilor called Mahbubur Rahman told the paper that he backed the ban because it represented “tolerance of people’s beliefs.” In other words, Piglet really did meet a Heffalump, and it turns out he was wearing a kaffiyeh.”
Did I read that accurately and think the Mudslumists are at the level of childmolesters?
[deleted – tone it down. Ed]
How can insisting that Europeans hide pictures of Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet, remove porcelein piglets, etc, be defined, by anyone, Muslim or not, as “tolerance of people’s beliefs’?
Doesn’t it instead show, on the part of the Muslims, a profound INTOLERANCE of European beliefs? After all, the nursery tales of Piglet, The Three Little Pigs, the habit of a piggybank, etc, are all well-established cultural icons among Europeans.
My money is on Mark Steyn in this fight.
The curious part is how will Canadian MSM handle this attack?
I am not confident they will engage very enthusiastically if at all.
They are too far left along with the leftist union twits who are already siding with the CIC.
Steyn??? Sounds jewish to me. Off with his infidel head! /sarc off/
Wow! actually a reason to (maybe) read Macleans again… maybe. The real question is will Canada’s MSM cave in or actually stand up to this crap now that it has gone beyond pick on the right fight..
btw, I actually enjoyed George Carlin before he turned into a political buffoon. His early work was legendary, but now…
Richard Warman, a former CHRC employee, with purportedly a still active email acount…26 complaints…
Light begins to dawn. Statistics suggest collusion. Yah, yah – correlation is not causation…simmer down, ET.
Alberta Human Rights Commission
Appointments are made by the AB Lt. Governor on recommendation of the Minister in Charge.
Appointments are for 3 years
One head – 6 panelists (3 north and 3 south)
Offices in both Edmonton and Calgary (staff of about 10 it seems in Calgary
Qualifications …. hmmmmmm
One of the Calgary-based panelists in the City of Calgary started a second HR term beginning in May/2007. Apparently this was simply a re-appointment – no job postings, no competition, basically a rubber stamping.
As well, this alderman was acclaimed to another alderman’s term in Oct/07.
The first term as an HR panelist was also while concurrently a sitting alderman. Responses to letters last year to the minister in charge/local MLA of the Progressive Conservative (emphasis on the “Progressive”) gov’t were basically – thanks for the input, not a problem here.
The appointments were made under two different ministers ( 2nd one subsequent to a cabinet shakeup). Letters this year have also gone to the new minister/the same sitting MLA with the same response.
Soooo… here we are with the WS issue apparently coming up in January and who knows what else in the future.
Human rights commissions were created by the very people that don’t care and are actually opposed to human rights, excepted in the case of designated victims.
The first to be upheld is the children, thanks goodness, for the victims, it is a kind of salvation that the HRC do not take into an account, though it is not long off before they hook up with that. And then of course it goes down the list of the designated victims.
The first to be held in disregard is a man in general and if you want to add an exponential reason, then you have the pale face in particular. There can be no worse kind of scum than a pale face male; they are the lowest of the bottom; not really, it is just that this is the easiest target because a pale face male does not really care what others think, being generous and magnanimous, which is the way it should be.
Lev.
The first to be held in disregard is a man in general…..There can be no wose kind of scum than a pale face in particular.
Just about to call it quits and leave the driveway until tommorrow. I saw your post. This is not the crying towel. I was a rehabilitation councillor in training in 1975. I was told I had a good chance for a permanent position with a well known charity. A gentleman of some import, dropped by the office and casually told me not to even bother. The job was already sown up. He was a director of the Charity.
Later the local paper put out as per requirement, the application requests for open competition.
I went to the local Human Rights Commission. A female took my complaint (spurious advertising). The female said this. “Weeell er’ you are sort of British arn’t you? Er….. nothing I can do for you. If you were a woman or black……”
I will back up this any time.
Correction. All too hasty here.
Quoting you correctly.
The first to be held in disregard is a man in general and if you want to add an exponential reason,then you have to have a pale face in particular.
“Ah true, how very, very true”- quoting the late Peter Sellars.
“The first to be held in disregard is a man in general and if you want to add an exponential reason, then you have the pale face in particular. There can be no worse kind of scum than a pale face male; they are the lowest of the bottom; not really, it is just that this is the easiest target because a pale face male does not really care what others think, being generous and magnanimous, which is the way it should be.”
Posted by: Lev at December 8, 2007 11:48 PM
This pretty much proves that these Commissions are very much needed in Canada.
Related: Jihadis in the classroom:
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YjRhZjYwMjU4MGY5ODJmM2MzNGNhNzljMzk4ZDFiYmQ=
Anyone know whether this sort of thing is happening in Canada?
islam cannot be debated. the words of the koran are final. that is why muslims keep pushing us. can you spell caliphate?
The CIC assault on Macleans has nothing to do with Racism or the hurt feelings of thin skinned special interest zealots…this is a raw power play by the CHRC to extend their tyranny of freedom cleansing to some mainstream institutions instead of beating up on little people with no resources.
The CHRC itself is very vulnerable as it sits on the needle edge on constitutional illegitimacy…so it strives to make its liability invisible with bully-boy witch hunting and draconian verdicts…now they want us to believe they have the authority to censure Canada’s largest news mag of its conservative writers.
..you see it’s always conservative publishers and websites they attack because only right of center activists seems to have the civil indignation to challenge soviet-styled politically installed social thought control…for which the CHRC is an enforcement tool…an Orwellian institution, aptly named in Orwellian double-speak, as a “Human rights” commission when it is in fact a witch hunting star chamber which abridges charter civil rights under its own arcane formulas.
There is no hiding from the fact that a quasi judicial tribunal exercising its authority under section 54 of the CHRA is setting limits on the exercise of our charter freedom of expression under section 2(b) and that the tribunal’s function violates charter sections 7, 11 (c)(d)(g)(h)of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The outstanding question is whether these limits and violations can be justified under section 1 of the Charter…can the crown justify in a free and civil society, removing the fundamental legal protections of burden of proof, mens rea, evidence law and provable injury, to justify the victimless crimes the CHRC ajudacates?
Under breech of charter section 2,7, 11 the CHRC punishes people who have committed no crime defined by any traditional definition of a crime, they do so on hearsay, and on presumed guilt and in absence of proving intent…it is now possible to be a criminal and punished as such for what a partisan tribunal says you were thinking/intending without being able to prove this…there need not be a criminal act or a victim with provable damages…it is the presumed intent (or thought) behind an arcane list of banned words which is the crime…Orwell would say “I told you so” if he could see the CHRC in operation.
I don’t think so and the first time they ever come after someone with sand they will be brought to the mat in this accounting
In My opinion the CHRC is illegitimately changing the scope of charter section 1 with procedings and judgements which do not fulfill the judicial test of section 1 validity…section 1 can never be interpreted to justify open contradiction of fundamental justice….if it can, we may as well lock and load because the jureaucracy has just declared war on the most basic tenet of civil society.
“islam cannot be debated. the words of the koran are final. that is why muslims keep pushing us. can you spell caliphate?”
If you look closely at the CHRC trials record the Muslim special interests have filed but one complaint while Jewish lobbies filed 9.
Perhaps this is a contest of “catch up” between rival overzealous special interest groups?
I’m sure the B’nai Brith or CJC no more speaks for all Jews any more than the CIC can presume to represent the thinking of all Mulsims.
The CHRC system is a play ground for special interest axe grinders and these socially disruptive single interest busybodies come in all kinds of wrappers.
Each CHRC special interest “conviction” is another piece of charter freedom eroded…look at the CHRC complainants list, these are the antagonists of broad based civil liberty…these are people and organizations who put their own narrow personal agendas ahead of equitable charter protection for ALL Canadians.
An ‘Islamic censhorship commission’ should be established by the federal government immediately. Saudi Arabia has them, Iran has them and if Canadians are to respect multiculturalism we must have them too.
Thanks WLMR for the 10:08 post: well said.
I believe another category of law abiding Canadians who are being targeted by the HRCs are Christians.
I just hope that the HRC going after Macleans and making this–I HOPE–front page news, Canadians will abandon their complacency and start to pay attention to the “clear and present danger” our regulators pose to all of us. E.g., I have many intelligent friends, who not only have no clue about the injustices of the HRCs, but blithely live thier lives as if these star chambers didn’t exist. Furthermore, as criticizing the HRCs is considered controversial and “not nice”, most Canadians, it seems, don’t WANT to know, but prefer to live within the confines of their own little comfort zones.
Canadians need to wake up and smarten up or . . . well, they’ll get what they deserve. And, being Canadians, they’ll whimper, “How did THIS happen?”
Being all too willing to tolerate the intolerable, I think the people of this country have some rude awakenings coming up.