Damn Canadian Judges Dig This “Free Expression” Thing

Ontario Superior Court Of Justice, May 3, 2010. Click to read full ruling.

Huffington Post Writer Bummed About The Hope And Change

Huffington Post – On Tuesday, April 27, 2010, a judge takes a seat on the bench and gavels court to order … in a military commission convened at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Nearly 18 months after believers’ elected Barack Obama president and more than 15 months after he raised his hand and took the oath of office, that which he promised to stop continues. Maybe the Obama 2012 re-election slogan should be “Believe it when you see it.”

Gyapong: Get Off Your Asses

Deborah Gyapong – Political correctness, media feeding frenzies charging “raaaaacism!,” ‘human rights’ commissions undermining fundamental rights, have also played their role in hamstringing the police departments. Who is to blame? We are for not demanding political accountability and for not insisting on free speech and association rights without the threat of violence or bullying tactics to shut it down.

Blogger Psyched About Job Prospect

Scaramouche – Love power? Looking for employment? Willing to relocate to beautiful British Columbia? Well, then, do I have the job for you–a spot on the B.C. Roobunal…

Good call:

Heather MacNaughton, Chair, BC Human Rights Tribunal. 2008 salary: $172, 101.

Blogger Calls For Total Internet Anarchy

FFoF – Now, I think petitions are a waste of time, and would simply encourage all of you to violate Section 13 and thereby render this law unenforceable and obsolete.

Blogger Bummed At Living In The Gutter

SoCon or Bust – Here.  This is a petition that has the backing of MPs…so it is going to be presented in the Commons.

What a gutter Canada has become that we have to ask our own Parliament to protect the right to speak freely.

National Post: With All Of These Human Rights Convictions Going Into The Toilet, Let’s Try To Regulate Speech Better

National Post – As ever more prominent human rights hate speech convictions fail on judicial review, the credibility of human rights commissions is not the only thing at stake. The contradictory rulings suggest Canada is overdue for a comprehensive analysis of its approach to hate speech, to resolve the Supreme Court’s own disagreement about how to regulate the darkest emotion.

Like, Say, Mars

Now - Q: If we can only conserve one of these, should it be water, energy or paper?

A: This is sort of like asking a mother to decide which child she’ll rescue from a burning building. My gut reaction is “Save all of them!’’

The long answer is a little more nuanced and depends on where you live.

Better Late Than Never: MPs Look At Human Rights Commission Abuses

Montreal Gazette – Senator Doug Finley led a call Tuesday to scrap a section of Canada’s Human Rights Act that he and other Conservative senators say is being used to stifle free speech in Canada…

“Despite our 400-year tradition of free speech, the tyrannical instinct to censor still exists,” Finley said. “We saw it on a university campus last week. And we see it every week in Canada’s misleadingly named human rights commissions.”

Tsk, Tsk. Don’t Bring Up America

Calgary Herald – American comedian Lenny Bruce showed long ago that anyone who walks into the arena of a comedy club leaves the polite confines of normal society behind.

vs.

Dean Steacy, Canadian Human Rights Commission investigator, quoted in the National Post, 2008 – “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.”

Insensitive Blogger Dares To Question PTSD

National Post, Hugh MacIntyre – Plus I find her assertion that she is suffering post-traumatic stress from being called bad names a little over the top. Does she wake up screaming every night because some comedian insulted her? I somehow doubt it.

Blogger Set To Steno The Guy Earle “Trial”

TGET – Comedian Guy Earle faces a hearing before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) for responding to Lorna Pardy’s heckling with lesbian-based jokes that she claims were “discriminatory and harassing.”

The trial takes place on March 29, 2010 at 605 Robson street in Vancouver BC Canada. The public is welcome to attend.

CHRC Rep: Silly Bloggers And Reporters Still Don’t Get That We Answer To Nobody

Vancouver Sun – A decision by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to close offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax is not an attack on human rights, nor is it being done on orders from the Conservative government, says a top official with the commission…

Mosher rejected the charges and said there was no government involvement. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s office also issued a statement saying it had no input into the “internal reorganization” by the independent agency.

Bloggers Celebrate. But Not So Fast.

Five Feet of Fury – Yep, this is an amazing coincidence, but let’s have fun with it anyway: the government is finally closing down three Canadian Human Rights Commission offices!…

vs.

DWE – Great News. Justice Minister Says Human Rights Commission Answers To No One

…And We Can’t Have That

CBS – The website Encyclopedia Dramatica has been targeted by the Australian Human Rights Commission, a government agency, for containing racist content.

In January, Google Australia pulled down links to an article on Australian Aborigines contained on the site at the government’s request, and now the commission may file charges against the site’s American owner.

For the unfamiliar, Encyclopedia Dramatica is like Wikipedia, except instead of striving for a neutral point-of-view, contributors aim for an offensive and adolescent one.

No Rights Trump The Others? Blogger Ruled Out As Human Rights Commissioner

Say Anything – So whose rights are more important in this case?  The WBC’s free speech rights?  Or the family’s right to peacefully assemble?

Though I’m certainly more sympathetic to the family, my answer would be that neither group’s rights trump the others.  So how should SCOTUS rule?

I’d like to see the matter left up to the individual states.  I think that the states (or political subdivisions thereof) can pass laws that limit, but do not prohibit, protests at military funerals so that the right of the WBC idiots to protest is not prohibited, but neither is the right of the family to assemble and mourn the loss of their loved one in accordance with their religious beliefs.

Yeah, That Facebook Protest Was Pretty Intimidating

Rabble – On Jan. 23, 2010, thousands of Canadians in over 60 towns and cities demonstrated their anger over the shutting down of Canada’s Parliament by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. At the same time, over 220,000 Canadians also joined a Facebook protest called Canadians Against the Prorogation of Parliament….

Something happened with this latest expression of disdain for democracy. It was the last straw. If it is true that Canadians are slow to anger then the outpouring of rage at Harper’s move demonstrated that they finally had enough.

National Post: Shutting People Up OK, As Long As There’s Safeguards

National Post – As such, the authorities don’t need a human rights commission to go after Mr. Hossain. They can simply apply Sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code, which target, respectively, anyone “who advocates or promotes genocide” or who “promotes hatred against any identifiable group.”

We have our reservations about Sections 318 and 319. But at least they contain a lot more safeguards to prevent procedural abuse than do human rights codes. Moreover, as the facts of Mr. Hossain’s case show, they are well tailored for prosecuting the very worst hatemongers our society has to offer.

Baby, You Can Drive My Blog

Telegraph (Via Free Canuckistan) – The American blogosphere is going increasingly “viral” about a proposal advanced at the recent meeting of the Davos Economic Forum by Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, that an equivalent of a “driver’s licence” should be introduced for access to the web. This totalitarian call has been backed by articles and blogs in Time magazine and the New York Times.

Bloggers Beware The Pre-Dooce

[San Diego Reader] Solana Beach, summer 2002. A job interview. “So you like to post on the Internet a lot,” said the human resources person. “Yeah,” I said. “How do you know?”

“Did some online investigating.” The term “to google” was not yet widely used. “I came across your two blogs and some posts you made on news groups, and there was a listserv. And something about you posting under a pseudonym at UCSD.”

“Do you always do this?” I asked.

“We do now. A lot of companies are running Net checks during prescreen.”

…

“Have you ever blogged about previous jobs?”

“You tell me,” I said jokingly. “You read my blogs.”

My interviewer’s face was stone-cold straight.

I had, but that blog no longer existed. “No,” I responded. I knew the interview wasn’t going any further. I was told they would call me within 48 hours. The call never came.

Was I pre-dooced?

Steyn Can Take It, But HRCs Are Sacred

[Media Monitors, Greg Felton] The human rights case against Maclean’s magazine, discussed in my last column, has significance beyond the anti-Muslim defamation that writer Mark Steyn is charged with committing. Of much greater importance is the smear campaign being launched against the country’s human rights tribunals in the mainstream media and by unhinged bloggers.

Steyn’s apologists have concocted a revisionist reality in which po’ li’l Marky is not the bloviating windbag of anti-Muslim paranoia that his writing would seem to suggest;  rather, he is a victim of government censorship and a poster boy for free speech.

…

My book The Host and the Parasite–How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America is available exclusively from GregFelton.com until I can find an honest publisher.

All Right, So They’re Oppressive. Now On With The Fun Stuff

Another blogger checks his morality at the door to enjoy a couple of weeks of swimming and trampoline.

[Face Off] In the end, the Chinese will do as they choose. They are too powerful to be diverted. Perhaps, as Pound and the IOC fondly hope, the dazzling Opening Ceremony will foreshadow a new, more liberal age in China itself.

Whatever, the focus now is where it should be: on the athletes. And perhaps, before it is all over, Canada will actually win a medal or two.

Blogger Spoofs Harper: “I Wholeheartedly Support The Torture Of Canadian Children By The US.”

[The Spoof] Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has strongly voiced his support of the torture and prosecution of Canadian children at Guantanamo Bay by the US military.

“I wholeheartedly support the torture of Canadian children by the US,” Harper told a packed Ottawa news conference. “As the senior degenerate in our government and a faithful stooge of George Bush, I couldn’t care less about human rights, international law, civil liberties or our constitution.”

The rest.

Where’s The Humanity?

Perhaps steak dinners, a queen size bed, and HBO would make it look less like a prison, huh, Andy? 

[Anti-War.com] Clearly, these requirements have not been fulfilled in Omar’s case, and the Canadians’ complicity in Omar’s detention and interrogation also, of course, make a mockery of the Canadian government’s insistent mantra – that it would not intervene in Omar’s case since it had received assurances from the United States that Omar was being treated humanely – which, as Whitling notes, “has now been proven to have been an attempt to misinform the Canadian public.”

The rest.

US Blogger Looks North, Chews Nails

[Human Events] Many Americans can only shake their heads at the nutty excesses of multiculturalism in Canada. Government investigations for insulting people? That kind of thing could never happen here . . . Right?

Wrong, probably. Multiculturalism may not be as advanced in America as it is in Canada, but it’s on the same path. The U.S. already has a number of federal multicultural policies, most notably the annual Diversity Visa Lottery. However, as the sorry lesson of Canada demonstrates, the key to pushing multiculturalist laws from the level of the mildly ridiculous into the rarified realm of the monumentally stupid is to advance them first on the local level, where action attracts little public scrutiny. 

The rest.