Special thanks to Richard Evans for putting this together. The original, full length version is here.
95 Replies to “We Invite You To Form Your Own Judgement”
Fire. Them. All.
I hear Richard Warmen is now employed at Canada’s DND as the chief of human rights investigations,
scary stuff.
Ezra. The one man wrecking crew.
How can this unbelievable farce be allowed to continue another single day? It’s not good enough to fire them all. They must be fully prosecuted, publicly humiliated and incarcerated for a good long time.
Ezra is highly entertaining when he goes ballistic. You could feel the glee in his live blogging, the man was having the time of his life.
Good grief Fine is not a very good liar, it was disclosed at the hearing that the person who logged onto the forum was using an Account SetUP by and used by said HRC’s employee and it was he/she/it who signed on to the forum using a hyjacked wifi. Ezra should of kept repeating that the person who stole the signal was using a HRC moniker. Now the chances of it being oh say Joe Blow are at best marginal and in reality ziltch.
Thanks that was awesome, I bet they hate Ezra at the CHRC?
What an utter,lying slimeball that Ian Fine is.
To think that this guy gets paid OVER $100,000 a year by the taxpayers to rob Canadians of their free speech rights is beyond belief!
Nothing like a pony tail and a suit to make me take someone seriously….meh, I must be getting old.
Would it be safe to assume that Ezra is no longer on Mr. Fines Christm—er–holiday card list?
Horny Toad
Ezra Ezra Ezra Ezra Ezra!!!!
A champion for us all!
How many of us say, “There is nothing I could do about it anyway”? Well here is a man that does do something about it. The very least we could do is support his efforts financially (in any way big or small) and in turn be apart of doing something instead of bellyaching and playing armchair quarter backs.
Thanks big-time, Richard.
You can see so very clearly in Fine the craven detestable back-room unaccountability of the high-priests of of LPC holier-than-thou bureaucratism. You can see that to him the *truth* — i.e. that which is undeniably true — is variously beside the point, ignorable, and deniable because of his position. He treats each utterance of the facts as an apparently self-evident insult to such high priests as himself.
It’s classic passive-aggressive behaviour: in response to facts, he falls back on an “I don’t have to sit here and be insulted like this” defense. It’s all about him; if the truth discomfits him, and questions his priestly station, then the truth is an eye-rolling outrage.
What an absolute p***y.
You gotta love Ezra Levant, though. He’s the best.
Mr. Fine has the temerity to deny facts from his own transcript!!
This suit is a complete and utter farce.
This man is incapable of truth, he may as well be spouting Pontius Pilate tripe:
“What is truth?”
In LIEberaldom there is only the preservation and retention of power for its own sake.
Unfortunately, this man’s political leprosy is so ingrained he is incapable of identifying truth even if it kicks him in the backside.
It is in short, a wilful blindness, a Philistine pig ignorance only worthy of rolling around in his own offal.
For a human rights commissioner responsible for the charges actions under his authority, his only explanation is that he is trying to save his hide by outright denial.
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht
Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
To me the guy came across as clueless. This man does not seem to have a firm grasp of what is going on with the HRC scandals. He holds on to the Noble Goal of eradicating hate as a shield that will protect him from all of the slimy tactics of his henchmen.
He appears to think that this current situation are confined to just differences of opinion regarding the limits of free speech. It is that but it also the way in which the HRCs have expanded beyond their intended mandate, the unfairness of their structure and their corruption from within.
To me the most important observation from this session (I’ve watched the full session twice) is that not a single journalist asked a question which favoured Mr. Fine’s perspective.
He truly was all alone out there.
The tide is turning.
Sorry, another observation.
Ezra (and I’m his biggest fan and a very substantial donor so far) comes off too strongly sometimes. Not for us, who are into the battle with four limbs and our hearts, but for the average calm non-engaged Canadian for whom this is not a big issue. But those are the people we need to influence. We don’t need to sell this to other Blogging Tories.
We need that kind of “in your face” guy, and without Ezra we’d have nothing. But having a calm statesmanlike person work together with Ezra, like Keith Martin, is absolutely essential too.
You can be correct in your argument, but if you rub things in people’s face or express things in a mean way that belittles your opponent, you run the risk of diminishing your victory because your opponent will with sympathy.
I’ve seen the same thing with his blog posts on Awan, the law student that testified yesterday at the HRC. Awan is misguided or worse, no doubt, but Ezra’s blog is the world’s gateway to this pathetic HRC tribunal, and we are trying to influence public opinion. We have to keep our end of the debate civil. The comments on that blog are often excessive, and Ezra’s own words can be as well. At other times, the blog is incredibly eloquent.
This is a war for public opinion and public perception. Our demeanor counts. Just like we teach our children about making good impressions on people they have just met, we need to do the same on those who are tuning into the debate for the first time.
Thanks Richard and Kate. It certainly explains why the CHRC/CHRT is in such a Fine mess.
Fine completely lied about his knowledge of the testimony from the Bell Rep.
Ezra has 100,000 reasons to attack Fine like that, and as strongly as he does. Especially so is the neet to do it in front of the journalistically politically correct.
Paul Schneidereit (spelling?) hit the nail on the head about cost and Fine admits that the system is flawed.
This video needs to be viewed by the Minister of Justice if only for that reason.
May every village on the planet be blessed with an Ezra Levant, The Righteous Man, who won’t be cowered. It’s breathtaking watching tribunal toady Ian Fine wither under the avalanche of damning facts. He’s got a whimpering demeanor.
We are doomed as a free society if we don’t shut down as we find it all manner of USSR style state thuggery, and, there is nothing operating in North America as smarmy and totalitarian as the CHRC’s. This is not just a Canadian problem. That idiot Bill Richardson set up one of these kanagaroo courts in my old state. It’s new, but, there will be a similar body count of innocent victims given time. The parallels with Putin’s courts are uncanny. Find the man, we’ll fit the crime.
Anyone else guessing that Richard Warman must have dragged that little wimp around by the nose? It never crossed his tiny mind the absurdity and suspicious impropriety of Warman as purveyor of all of their cases?
And that weasel probably gets paid over $200K.
Not worth 200 cents.
Close them all down . . . worse than a waste of money. they are a waste of time.
Lori: With all due respect I disagree with your take on Ezra’s delivery.
If he would have stood up and turned the table over after he read Richard Warman’s racist slur, while shouting “and these are the people that would censor us” two or three times, while pointing at Ian Fine, I believe his testimony would have been more compelling and forceful, as seen by the typical disinterested Canadian.
He is a breath of fresh air, I find his emotion infectious.
More please!
Lori: With all due respect I disagree with your take on Ezra’s delivery.
If he would have stood up and turned the table over after he read Richard Warman’s racist slur, while shouting “and these are the people that would censor us” two or three times, while pointing at Ian Fine, I believe his testimony would have been more compelling and forceful, as seen by the typical disinterested Canadian.
He is a breath of fresh air, I find his emotion infectious.
More please!
Fire. Them. All.
Never give up your guns, you will need them. The enemy is among us.
Lori–
I agree. We are in the business of persuasion here, and the vast majority of Canadians will never get upset about this. But their opinions may still change in our direction, if they’re made aware of it in a calm manner.
I love Ezra, and I think his posts yesterday were really a thing of genius. But we need Keith Martin to start speaking up more. We need Jason Kenney to say something. We need Rex Murphy to say it again and again. And we all need to just talk about the issues to our friends.
I wouldn’t necessarily calm Ezra down, though. He gets the rest of us pumped (I mean seriously, this week has been a blast because of these liveblogs), and he’s doing a great service. The rest of us just need to continue it in a calm and respectful manner. So we need to find a respectful way to call Mr. Fine a weasel. I think liar can still be respectful, since it is true. What do you think?
The high energy, in your face, Ezra type is very necessary. He forces the opposition to be on the defensive and out of their comfort zone. For too long these bureaucrats have been way to comfortable with the game played the Canadian way – polite, calm, respectful. They need to be shaken up a bit.
Lori: I agree–I love Ezra and god knows we need more people like him who actually say it like it is…but he does have a bit of that Morton Downey Junior in him and he needs to pull that back in.
That said,he is very pointed in the facts and wants us all to be as disgusted with the HRC as he is. We are.
SheilaG – I am uneasy calling a “respected” public official a “liar”. I personally don’t respect Mr. Fine. I think I know his true colours. I do think he is a liar. Very much so. His misguided ideas are a greater threat to my children’s future liberty than the evil intentions of any Jihadist.
But, for better or worse, he is a public official and has a mantle of respectability, however ill deserved. My concern is that reasonable people who enter the debate unbiased one way or the other, and not familiar with the history, are likely to see repeated name-calling as a sign of weakness of argument, not strength.
At least that’s what I teach my kids.
Its the same with blog discussions. First one to use namecalling has lost the debate. We often quote that rule. We should adhere to it.
Look, I despise the HRCs, the lawyers, the unethical left-wingers “on a mission” who worm their way into government positions and influence the nation’s direction from within. I view them as a greater threat to this country than Islam, or Communism, or phoney climate change pushers.
It has been relatively easy to marginalize the activity on the right wing blogosphere by calling us various names. We won’t prove them wrong by calling names back. We will simply lose the interest of the all important 98% of the population that is not as engaged as the 1% libs and 1% cons.
I would prefer to tell Mr. Fine that he may not be in possession of all the facts, and that I would like to present them to him… can he offer any comments?
Not fired. Jailed.
Sorry folks. Strictly speaking Mr Fine did not lie. I was parsing his words closely. Ezra spent a good amount of time connecting dots that were not in the actual transcript. Mr Fine simply indicated that nowhere were the dots “proven” to be connected.
What do you expect him (Fine) to do? Admit bad behaviour on the account of his people. Not gonna happen. Yes, we don’t like him as he is in a position of ultimate power (THE CENSOR).
The ultimate problem here is our politicians. They apparently agree with the CHRC (and their provincial counterparts) being the censors of the people as they have taken no real action on this. How about legislating some things into the act like defences (fair comment, journalism, truth, etc). How about legislating the same level of conduct of a real tribuneral subject to Charter rules, and the requirement to keep logs of activities as they pertain to enforcement.
Attacking individual members of the HRCs is not useful. Attacking the products of their law-abiding work in higher courts, in committees of our various Parliamentarians is the action to take.
Ezra’s plan is a good one. Quit the feeding frenzy of the pre-ordained outcome. Get to your computer and email your MPs, and MPPs. Stop donating to parties who support the continued business as usual of the HRCs.
Anyone know who this Ben guy is !?
Sounds like just an ordinary citizen. He sure makes sense with his YouTube ‘Freedom Of Speech in Canada’ vid.
He calls for Canadians to support MP Keith Martin’s bid to scrap the “police state” section. (his words) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5DM7DtxREY
This entire outfit has to be shut down, charges laid and every Office they used be fumigated.
Thanks to Ezra for taking them on. The rest is in the hands of the provincial and federal governments.
This crap has no place in this or any democracy.
This is the stuff of Commie States.
is Ian Fine from the HRC related to Larry Fine of the Three Stooges?
just wondering
Larry Fine “pretended” he was stooge.
I tried to file a complaint and was ignored. Can you guys use my case?
mr. fine would kill those who don’t agree with him if he had the chance. the man is dangerous and i just am amazed that this person and his ilk are in positions of power in this country. keep you guns. it’s too damn bad we don’t have a second amendment to our constitution. we are going to need it long before the u.s..
I have a question. I think it has been established that War man is gay. After watching this clip, I would guess, based on his use and color of language that Mr, Fine is gay as well.
If I am right, is being gay a prerequisite for having a job on the commission?
I am just asking because I am used to talking to men who don’t talk like women and those guys do talk like women.
I hope that asking this question, I have not subject to hurting anyone’s feeling. I am aware that such a thing could bankrupt me.
Well well well, is this the barrel of a gun issue I have been referring to these past years? Maybe? Will this be the push reason? It very well could be.
My personal view is that this government had better take this issue a bit more serious than they are. They had better start acting like a Conservative government because those of us that voted for them have nowhere to turn if they let us down. What happens when you’re cornered?
Wake up you gutless bastards that call yourself a Conservative government.
With greatest respect, I disagree strongly with the views of Lori and Sheila G regarding Ezra’s putative over-the-top aggression. Personally, I am sick of the Canadian and very catholic notion of tolerance and respect that took us to this revolting process in Vancouver, this politeness that insists that being respectful to anyone who wears the robes of officialdom is more important than protecting ourselves and our children and our neighbours.
Politeness is essential in the realm of common grace, but not in any absolute sense; not 100% of the time. When it comes to the point where a group of people are taking away something ineffably valuable — in this case, freedom of speech and thought, although it could be your relatives, in a cattle car — those people do not deserve respect, they deserve vilification, regardless of how mundane and bureaucratically composed they are.
Ezra wasn’t emotionally incontinent, he wasn’t firing off ad hominems, he was exasperated, laughing, and delighted to have a chance to show the rest of the world what sort of big-state crimes against conscience are occurring behind the polite evasions o polite-sounding bureaucrat.
(BTW, I’m as respectful a person as you’ll ever meet, in my day to day dealings with people of any race, nationality, religion, etc etc.)
I’d even go so far as to suggest that if people are turned off by Ezra, they are not parsing the significance of events. If his excitement and his truth-telling makes people turns people off, then they should join the LPC.
To me, criticizing Ezra’s communications at that press conference is a bit like saying to the guys in the Danzig Post Office in 1939 “You know, you’re on the side of right and everything, but you’re just turning people off when you discharge weapons.”
Go Ezra. What I saw there is a great Canadian moment, perhaps a pivotal one.
Lori:
One cannot have respect for a politician who is a lying sack of utter and complete excrement.
Ezra Levant was right in his forcefulness, and is much better than anyone else in regards to this issue.
Mr I-ain’t fine, thank you but, but, but….
you’re testimony is sooooo untrue…. hopefully, I’ll see ya in your next job, dude!
John V – listen to the full-length version. Your question will be answered. It’s worth it to get the full picture of this man.
Ezra and Steyn with their personalities are exactly what Canadians need. Our rights have been taken away from us by the smiling two-faced left-lib socialist. Every word we speak, now has to be passed through some censorship gauntlet that is the creation of the left. We were fools to let this spawn of the Stalinist push us around, and turn right into wrong. Give it all you got boys, the thinking people in Canada are cheering for you.
“..The ultimate problem here is our politicians.”
maybe Orwell was referring to Canadian gunnimints.
Re: Lori’s comments on Ezra’s style.
We are embroiled in a fight against a great evil, evil that would strike at the fundamental rights of man — rights which separate Western nations from the non-Western, rights which separate man from beast. Whenever and wherever such evil is identified and the argument has been made, it is not only moral to call it evil in the strongest possible terms, it is *absolutely necessary.* Morality – life – demands it.
There are no terms strong enough to excoriate the evil that Fine and the HRCs represent.
Reasoned argument does not necessarily mean calm. All reason requires is that the irrefutable logical argument first be made, and it has been. Yet, the HRC evil soldiers on. We are past the time of civility. Anyone who would find Ezra uncivil at this stage does not understand how serious the concept of rights are. Such a person is not worth appealing to.
And this is the Canadian problem: unlike the US, the Canadian culture is not properly primed to resist the growth of government power. Government exists to serve the people, not the other way round.
If a man finds himself charge of a body that wields as much power as the HRCs do, a power which can wreck not just careers, but flesh-and-blood lives and societies, the onus is on him to know every fact in his domain. That creature named Fine failed to exhibit such a grasp.
Soviet Canuckistan… Where have I heard that before?
…until the HRC has been proven to be guilty of ‘hacking’ or charged with anything, it is all speculation.
While I wholly support Ezra, two wrongs don’t make a right. Accusations, name calling and belittling your opponent pretty well deflates any seriousness of his stand.
Ezra would do good hiring a speech coach to win a majority over to his side.
A good example would be the tone and mannerism displayed by the Montreal CHA questioning Mr. Fine on ‘Canadian consensus’ did more in challenging the HRC than the 10 minutes of hand waving and ranting by Ezra.
Likewise the president of the Alberta Press Council commentary did well in hitting hard that Mr. Fine couldn’t answer.
Same with the second question series by the Halifax editor of where does the CHR fit in when we already have hate laws did more in putting the CHR on the spot than all of Ezra’s rants and finger pointing (a bad action to do).
Questions and actions like those generate more questions and more more doubt towards the HRC than someone ranting away – no matter how right they were.
Guys like Mr. Fine are the -real- reason we have a gun registry. If you have a list of all the law abiding armed citizens you can run out and DIS-arm them just before you do something really revolting.
Like nationalize the internet and MSM, just ferinstance. He’d looooove to do that, I can tell just by looking at him.
Or give 12 miles on both sides of the Grand River to the Mohawk Smuggler Society. Don’t think some Queen’s Park schmuck in a cheap suit like Fine isn’t thinking about that today.
God loves you Ezra and your rightous indignation I know I do, keep kicking weasel ass these people are too slimey to be Canadians, send em all to whateverstan, they will fit right in. Unbelievable weasels, apointed by Lieberals,in Canada FIRE THEM ALL!!
cheers Bubba
Fire. Them. All.
I hear Richard Warmen is now employed at Canada’s DND as the chief of human rights investigations,
scary stuff.
Ezra. The one man wrecking crew.
How can this unbelievable farce be allowed to continue another single day? It’s not good enough to fire them all. They must be fully prosecuted, publicly humiliated and incarcerated for a good long time.
Ezra is highly entertaining when he goes ballistic. You could feel the glee in his live blogging, the man was having the time of his life.
Good grief Fine is not a very good liar, it was disclosed at the hearing that the person who logged onto the forum was using an Account SetUP by and used by said HRC’s employee and it was he/she/it who signed on to the forum using a hyjacked wifi. Ezra should of kept repeating that the person who stole the signal was using a HRC moniker. Now the chances of it being oh say Joe Blow are at best marginal and in reality ziltch.
Thanks that was awesome, I bet they hate Ezra at the CHRC?
What an utter,lying slimeball that Ian Fine is.
To think that this guy gets paid OVER $100,000 a year by the taxpayers to rob Canadians of their free speech rights is beyond belief!
Nothing like a pony tail and a suit to make me take someone seriously….meh, I must be getting old.
Would it be safe to assume that Ezra is no longer on Mr. Fines Christm—er–holiday card list?
Horny Toad
Ezra Ezra Ezra Ezra Ezra!!!!
A champion for us all!
How many of us say, “There is nothing I could do about it anyway”? Well here is a man that does do something about it. The very least we could do is support his efforts financially (in any way big or small) and in turn be apart of doing something instead of bellyaching and playing armchair quarter backs.
Thanks big-time, Richard.
You can see so very clearly in Fine the craven detestable back-room unaccountability of the high-priests of of LPC holier-than-thou bureaucratism. You can see that to him the *truth* — i.e. that which is undeniably true — is variously beside the point, ignorable, and deniable because of his position. He treats each utterance of the facts as an apparently self-evident insult to such high priests as himself.
It’s classic passive-aggressive behaviour: in response to facts, he falls back on an “I don’t have to sit here and be insulted like this” defense. It’s all about him; if the truth discomfits him, and questions his priestly station, then the truth is an eye-rolling outrage.
What an absolute p***y.
You gotta love Ezra Levant, though. He’s the best.
Mr. Fine has the temerity to deny facts from his own transcript!!
This suit is a complete and utter farce.
This man is incapable of truth, he may as well be spouting Pontius Pilate tripe:
“What is truth?”
In LIEberaldom there is only the preservation and retention of power for its own sake.
Unfortunately, this man’s political leprosy is so ingrained he is incapable of identifying truth even if it kicks him in the backside.
It is in short, a wilful blindness, a Philistine pig ignorance only worthy of rolling around in his own offal.
For a human rights commissioner responsible for the charges actions under his authority, his only explanation is that he is trying to save his hide by outright denial.
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht
Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
To me the guy came across as clueless. This man does not seem to have a firm grasp of what is going on with the HRC scandals. He holds on to the Noble Goal of eradicating hate as a shield that will protect him from all of the slimy tactics of his henchmen.
He appears to think that this current situation are confined to just differences of opinion regarding the limits of free speech. It is that but it also the way in which the HRCs have expanded beyond their intended mandate, the unfairness of their structure and their corruption from within.
To me the most important observation from this session (I’ve watched the full session twice) is that not a single journalist asked a question which favoured Mr. Fine’s perspective.
He truly was all alone out there.
The tide is turning.
Sorry, another observation.
Ezra (and I’m his biggest fan and a very substantial donor so far) comes off too strongly sometimes. Not for us, who are into the battle with four limbs and our hearts, but for the average calm non-engaged Canadian for whom this is not a big issue. But those are the people we need to influence. We don’t need to sell this to other Blogging Tories.
We need that kind of “in your face” guy, and without Ezra we’d have nothing. But having a calm statesmanlike person work together with Ezra, like Keith Martin, is absolutely essential too.
You can be correct in your argument, but if you rub things in people’s face or express things in a mean way that belittles your opponent, you run the risk of diminishing your victory because your opponent will with sympathy.
I’ve seen the same thing with his blog posts on Awan, the law student that testified yesterday at the HRC. Awan is misguided or worse, no doubt, but Ezra’s blog is the world’s gateway to this pathetic HRC tribunal, and we are trying to influence public opinion. We have to keep our end of the debate civil. The comments on that blog are often excessive, and Ezra’s own words can be as well. At other times, the blog is incredibly eloquent.
This is a war for public opinion and public perception. Our demeanor counts. Just like we teach our children about making good impressions on people they have just met, we need to do the same on those who are tuning into the debate for the first time.
Thanks Richard and Kate. It certainly explains why the CHRC/CHRT is in such a Fine mess.
Fine completely lied about his knowledge of the testimony from the Bell Rep.
Ezra has 100,000 reasons to attack Fine like that, and as strongly as he does. Especially so is the neet to do it in front of the journalistically politically correct.
Paul Schneidereit (spelling?) hit the nail on the head about cost and Fine admits that the system is flawed.
This video needs to be viewed by the Minister of Justice if only for that reason.
EZRAHU AKBAR!!!
lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu ….
May every village on the planet be blessed with an Ezra Levant, The Righteous Man, who won’t be cowered. It’s breathtaking watching tribunal toady Ian Fine wither under the avalanche of damning facts. He’s got a whimpering demeanor.
We are doomed as a free society if we don’t shut down as we find it all manner of USSR style state thuggery, and, there is nothing operating in North America as smarmy and totalitarian as the CHRC’s. This is not just a Canadian problem. That idiot Bill Richardson set up one of these kanagaroo courts in my old state. It’s new, but, there will be a similar body count of innocent victims given time. The parallels with Putin’s courts are uncanny. Find the man, we’ll fit the crime.
Anyone else guessing that Richard Warman must have dragged that little wimp around by the nose? It never crossed his tiny mind the absurdity and suspicious impropriety of Warman as purveyor of all of their cases?
I think this is the guy running it.
http://www.larryfine.com/
And that weasel probably gets paid over $200K.
Not worth 200 cents.
Close them all down . . . worse than a waste of money. they are a waste of time.
Lori: With all due respect I disagree with your take on Ezra’s delivery.
If he would have stood up and turned the table over after he read Richard Warman’s racist slur, while shouting “and these are the people that would censor us” two or three times, while pointing at Ian Fine, I believe his testimony would have been more compelling and forceful, as seen by the typical disinterested Canadian.
He is a breath of fresh air, I find his emotion infectious.
More please!
Lori: With all due respect I disagree with your take on Ezra’s delivery.
If he would have stood up and turned the table over after he read Richard Warman’s racist slur, while shouting “and these are the people that would censor us” two or three times, while pointing at Ian Fine, I believe his testimony would have been more compelling and forceful, as seen by the typical disinterested Canadian.
He is a breath of fresh air, I find his emotion infectious.
More please!
Fire. Them. All.
Never give up your guns, you will need them. The enemy is among us.
Lori–
I agree. We are in the business of persuasion here, and the vast majority of Canadians will never get upset about this. But their opinions may still change in our direction, if they’re made aware of it in a calm manner.
I love Ezra, and I think his posts yesterday were really a thing of genius. But we need Keith Martin to start speaking up more. We need Jason Kenney to say something. We need Rex Murphy to say it again and again. And we all need to just talk about the issues to our friends.
I wouldn’t necessarily calm Ezra down, though. He gets the rest of us pumped (I mean seriously, this week has been a blast because of these liveblogs), and he’s doing a great service. The rest of us just need to continue it in a calm and respectful manner. So we need to find a respectful way to call Mr. Fine a weasel. I think liar can still be respectful, since it is true. What do you think?
The high energy, in your face, Ezra type is very necessary. He forces the opposition to be on the defensive and out of their comfort zone. For too long these bureaucrats have been way to comfortable with the game played the Canadian way – polite, calm, respectful. They need to be shaken up a bit.
Lori: I agree–I love Ezra and god knows we need more people like him who actually say it like it is…but he does have a bit of that Morton Downey Junior in him and he needs to pull that back in.
That said,he is very pointed in the facts and wants us all to be as disgusted with the HRC as he is. We are.
SheilaG – I am uneasy calling a “respected” public official a “liar”. I personally don’t respect Mr. Fine. I think I know his true colours. I do think he is a liar. Very much so. His misguided ideas are a greater threat to my children’s future liberty than the evil intentions of any Jihadist.
But, for better or worse, he is a public official and has a mantle of respectability, however ill deserved. My concern is that reasonable people who enter the debate unbiased one way or the other, and not familiar with the history, are likely to see repeated name-calling as a sign of weakness of argument, not strength.
At least that’s what I teach my kids.
Its the same with blog discussions. First one to use namecalling has lost the debate. We often quote that rule. We should adhere to it.
Look, I despise the HRCs, the lawyers, the unethical left-wingers “on a mission” who worm their way into government positions and influence the nation’s direction from within. I view them as a greater threat to this country than Islam, or Communism, or phoney climate change pushers.
It has been relatively easy to marginalize the activity on the right wing blogosphere by calling us various names. We won’t prove them wrong by calling names back. We will simply lose the interest of the all important 98% of the population that is not as engaged as the 1% libs and 1% cons.
I would prefer to tell Mr. Fine that he may not be in possession of all the facts, and that I would like to present them to him… can he offer any comments?
Not fired. Jailed.
Sorry folks. Strictly speaking Mr Fine did not lie. I was parsing his words closely. Ezra spent a good amount of time connecting dots that were not in the actual transcript. Mr Fine simply indicated that nowhere were the dots “proven” to be connected.
What do you expect him (Fine) to do? Admit bad behaviour on the account of his people. Not gonna happen. Yes, we don’t like him as he is in a position of ultimate power (THE CENSOR).
The ultimate problem here is our politicians. They apparently agree with the CHRC (and their provincial counterparts) being the censors of the people as they have taken no real action on this. How about legislating some things into the act like defences (fair comment, journalism, truth, etc). How about legislating the same level of conduct of a real tribuneral subject to Charter rules, and the requirement to keep logs of activities as they pertain to enforcement.
Attacking individual members of the HRCs is not useful. Attacking the products of their law-abiding work in higher courts, in committees of our various Parliamentarians is the action to take.
Ezra’s plan is a good one. Quit the feeding frenzy of the pre-ordained outcome. Get to your computer and email your MPs, and MPPs. Stop donating to parties who support the continued business as usual of the HRCs.
Anyone know who this Ben guy is !?
Sounds like just an ordinary citizen. He sure makes sense with his YouTube ‘Freedom Of Speech in Canada’ vid.
He calls for Canadians to support MP Keith Martin’s bid to scrap the “police state” section. (his words)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5DM7DtxREY
This entire outfit has to be shut down, charges laid and every Office they used be fumigated.
Thanks to Ezra for taking them on. The rest is in the hands of the provincial and federal governments.
This crap has no place in this or any democracy.
This is the stuff of Commie States.
is Ian Fine from the HRC related to Larry Fine of the Three Stooges?
just wondering
Larry Fine “pretended” he was stooge.
I tried to file a complaint and was ignored. Can you guys use my case?
mr. fine would kill those who don’t agree with him if he had the chance. the man is dangerous and i just am amazed that this person and his ilk are in positions of power in this country. keep you guns. it’s too damn bad we don’t have a second amendment to our constitution. we are going to need it long before the u.s..
I have a question. I think it has been established that War man is gay. After watching this clip, I would guess, based on his use and color of language that Mr, Fine is gay as well.
If I am right, is being gay a prerequisite for having a job on the commission?
I am just asking because I am used to talking to men who don’t talk like women and those guys do talk like women.
I hope that asking this question, I have not subject to hurting anyone’s feeling. I am aware that such a thing could bankrupt me.
cal 2 — I think this is the guy running it.
http://www.larryfine.com/
Right-on!
Well well well, is this the barrel of a gun issue I have been referring to these past years? Maybe? Will this be the push reason? It very well could be.
My personal view is that this government had better take this issue a bit more serious than they are. They had better start acting like a Conservative government because those of us that voted for them have nowhere to turn if they let us down. What happens when you’re cornered?
Wake up you gutless bastards that call yourself a Conservative government.
With greatest respect, I disagree strongly with the views of Lori and Sheila G regarding Ezra’s putative over-the-top aggression. Personally, I am sick of the Canadian and very catholic notion of tolerance and respect that took us to this revolting process in Vancouver, this politeness that insists that being respectful to anyone who wears the robes of officialdom is more important than protecting ourselves and our children and our neighbours.
Politeness is essential in the realm of common grace, but not in any absolute sense; not 100% of the time. When it comes to the point where a group of people are taking away something ineffably valuable — in this case, freedom of speech and thought, although it could be your relatives, in a cattle car — those people do not deserve respect, they deserve vilification, regardless of how mundane and bureaucratically composed they are.
Ezra wasn’t emotionally incontinent, he wasn’t firing off ad hominems, he was exasperated, laughing, and delighted to have a chance to show the rest of the world what sort of big-state crimes against conscience are occurring behind the polite evasions o polite-sounding bureaucrat.
(BTW, I’m as respectful a person as you’ll ever meet, in my day to day dealings with people of any race, nationality, religion, etc etc.)
I’d even go so far as to suggest that if people are turned off by Ezra, they are not parsing the significance of events. If his excitement and his truth-telling makes people turns people off, then they should join the LPC.
To me, criticizing Ezra’s communications at that press conference is a bit like saying to the guys in the Danzig Post Office in 1939 “You know, you’re on the side of right and everything, but you’re just turning people off when you discharge weapons.”
Go Ezra. What I saw there is a great Canadian moment, perhaps a pivotal one.
Lori:
One cannot have respect for a politician who is a lying sack of utter and complete excrement.
Ezra Levant was right in his forcefulness, and is much better than anyone else in regards to this issue.
Mr I-ain’t fine, thank you but, but, but….
you’re testimony is sooooo untrue….
hopefully, I’ll see ya in your next job, dude!
John V – listen to the full-length version. Your question will be answered. It’s worth it to get the full picture of this man.
Ezra and Steyn with their personalities are exactly what Canadians need. Our rights have been taken away from us by the smiling two-faced left-lib socialist. Every word we speak, now has to be passed through some censorship gauntlet that is the creation of the left. We were fools to let this spawn of the Stalinist push us around, and turn right into wrong. Give it all you got boys, the thinking people in Canada are cheering for you.
“..The ultimate problem here is our politicians.”
maybe Orwell was referring to Canadian gunnimints.
The Reverend Sister Mary Nelson would like to say a few words to the HRC-ers, including Ian Fine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSx1XToYOlU
Re: Lori’s comments on Ezra’s style.
We are embroiled in a fight against a great evil, evil that would strike at the fundamental rights of man — rights which separate Western nations from the non-Western, rights which separate man from beast. Whenever and wherever such evil is identified and the argument has been made, it is not only moral to call it evil in the strongest possible terms, it is *absolutely necessary.* Morality – life – demands it.
There are no terms strong enough to excoriate the evil that Fine and the HRCs represent.
Reasoned argument does not necessarily mean calm. All reason requires is that the irrefutable logical argument first be made, and it has been. Yet, the HRC evil soldiers on. We are past the time of civility. Anyone who would find Ezra uncivil at this stage does not understand how serious the concept of rights are. Such a person is not worth appealing to.
And this is the Canadian problem: unlike the US, the Canadian culture is not properly primed to resist the growth of government power. Government exists to serve the people, not the other way round.
If a man finds himself charge of a body that wields as much power as the HRCs do, a power which can wreck not just careers, but flesh-and-blood lives and societies, the onus is on him to know every fact in his domain. That creature named Fine failed to exhibit such a grasp.
Soviet Canuckistan… Where have I heard that before?
…until the HRC has been proven to be guilty of ‘hacking’ or charged with anything, it is all speculation.
While I wholly support Ezra, two wrongs don’t make a right. Accusations, name calling and belittling your opponent pretty well deflates any seriousness of his stand.
Ezra would do good hiring a speech coach to win a majority over to his side.
A good example would be the tone and mannerism displayed by the Montreal CHA questioning Mr. Fine on ‘Canadian consensus’ did more in challenging the HRC than the 10 minutes of hand waving and ranting by Ezra.
Likewise the president of the Alberta Press Council commentary did well in hitting hard that Mr. Fine couldn’t answer.
Same with the second question series by the Halifax editor of where does the CHR fit in when we already have hate laws did more in putting the CHR on the spot than all of Ezra’s rants and finger pointing (a bad action to do).
Questions and actions like those generate more questions and more more doubt towards the HRC than someone ranting away – no matter how right they were.
Guys like Mr. Fine are the -real- reason we have a gun registry. If you have a list of all the law abiding armed citizens you can run out and DIS-arm them just before you do something really revolting.
Like nationalize the internet and MSM, just ferinstance. He’d looooove to do that, I can tell just by looking at him.
Or give 12 miles on both sides of the Grand River to the Mohawk Smuggler Society. Don’t think some Queen’s Park schmuck in a cheap suit like Fine isn’t thinking about that today.
God loves you Ezra and your rightous indignation I know I do, keep kicking weasel ass these people are too slimey to be Canadians, send em all to whateverstan, they will fit right in. Unbelievable weasels, apointed by Lieberals,in Canada FIRE THEM ALL!!
cheers Bubba