Oh, Happy Day

Pass the Kool-Aid and keep the business booming, baby.

[Expositor, Letter to the Editor] Of course, actions speak louder than mere words, and I’m proud that our Conservative government has made significant progress in enhancing the well-being of aboriginal women, children and families. We passed legislation that will allow people living on reserves to launch human rights complaints…

Canadian Ex-Pat: Thank God I’m Back In Australia

More international bad press for Canadian human rights commissions.

[The Australian] You see, these mickey-mouse pseudo-judges have now moved on to prosecuting a fellow named Guy Earle, a stand-up comedian. Apparently during the course of his act he offended a couple of lesbians. They complained that he responded to their heckling of him in a hateful manner.

So endeth the update of the wonderful state of free speech in my native Canada. I think I need a drink, or I’d have to cry.

Horses More Cute Than Cows

[Associated Press] One menu item could soon disappear from foreign dinner tables: meat from slaughtered American horses.

Animal rights advocates are urging lawmakers to pass a bill banning the slaughter of U.S. horses for consumption abroad, arguing the practice is inhumane. Opponents of the proposal say it would actually increase cruelty in the form of abandonment, abuse and neglect.

Former Spy: If Not For My Incredible Heroism, Regular Canadians Would Have Become Nazis

From the Arrogant Has-Beens file.

[National Post] In the 1980s, I became embroiled in the feculent world of Canada’s neo-Nazi movement in an undercover capacity for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

I did this because I believe in Canada’s values of tolerance and respect. I did it so I could support the efforts of CSIS to stop purveyors of hate from infecting Canadians of goodwill.

Worked for free, did you? Nice try, Captain Canada: you did it because you were paid to do it.

If It Doesn’t Start With “G” And End With “Mo,” You’re Out Of Luck

[Globe and Mail] Six years after the Maher Arar affair began to cast a spotlight on Syria’s detentions of Arab Canadians, a citizen remains secretly jailed in the police state.

Bahaeddine Succarie, a 41-year-old Canadian of Lebanese descent, has been jailed in Syria since April, 2007. He was picked up in Damascus, which he had frequently visited since returning to Tripoli, Lebanon, in the early 1990s.

His imprisonment has received no public attention. However, his sister contacted The Globe and Mail this month to express frustration with Canadian diplomats involved in the case.

The Human Right To Be Free Of Cartoons

[Globe and Mail] Should cartoonists get danger pay? Maybe it’s time. Canada’s own Barry Blitt has gone to ground after his infamous, satirical New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas as gun-toting Islamic militants. Obama fans hated it. Other cartoonists hated it. But Muslim groups hated it even more. The Council on American-Islamic Relations declared it “inflammatory.” A commentator for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram called it “racist” and Islamophobic.

Fortunately Mr. Blitt works in the United States, where the worst they can do is denounce you. Here in Canada, they can take you to a human rights commission. That’s what happened in April when Halifax’s Chronicle-Herald ran a political cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon.

The rest.

Criminals Will Turn In Their Guns, And Everyone Will Live Happily Ever After

[Edmonton Sun] Sometimes it takes a near tragedy to induce people to rally together and root out the malignant forces ravaging a community.

In crime-plagued Hobbema, south of Edmonton, where a 2-year-old girl was injured in a drive-by shooting, the latest plan to combat the mayhem on the four native reserves in the area is a gun amnesty.

For four months beginning Aug. 1, Hobbema residents will be able to hand in their illegal or unwanted firearms without being charged with possession of an unlicensed or unregistered weapon.

The rest.

McCain Should Call New York’s Human Rights Commission

[Media Research Center] “It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”
— New York Times op-ed editor David Shipley, a former Clinton speechwriter, on July 21 explaining why he rejected an Iraq op-ed from McCain after running a piece on July 14 from Obama about his Iraq plans.

The rest.

Meet The Next Failure

[Radio Netherlands] The United Nations has named South Africa’s Navanethem Pillay as the world body’s new human rights chief. The 67-year-old lawyer and judge has worked for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Rwanda Tribunal, as well as sitting on the bench of South Africa’s High Court. She succeeds Canada’s Louise Arbour.

The rest.

Flash: Short-Order Cooks Goof Off And Swear In The Kitchen! (Woman Wins $3500)

[Northern News Service] In her decision handed down June 13, adjudicator Shannon Gullberg stated that while she couldn’t find any evidence that the termination of Sherman’s kitchen job was discriminatory, she found the pranks with the stool and the continuous playing of offensive music during Sherman’s employment at Boston Pizza was discriminatory under the NWT Human Rights Act.

“It is absolutely unconscionable that Sherman was subjected to sexually explicit music for a year and a half, and had to suffer the humiliation of having to search for a stool that was hidden from her,” Gullberg stated in her ruling.

Gullberg ordered that the company that owns Yellowknife’s Boston Pizza franchise, Mbotloxo Investments, pay Sherman $1,000 for the injury caused to her “dignity, feelings, and self-respect,” plus $2,500 in punitive damages.

The rest.

Grenade Fall Down Go Boom

[Winnipeg Sun] Senator Romeo Dallaire makes a compelling case for Khadr’s status as a “child soldier” in the sense that his age affects his ability to understand the implications of his actions and he was obviously under the influence of a terrorist-supporting family.

The rest.

Lawyer Asks Lawyers To Consider Law

[Vancouver Sun] Lawyers retained by troubled employees too often issue lawsuits without analyzing whether any legal wrong was committed by the employer.

Increasingly, we are seeing claims issued by the more left-wing members of my bar based on disability, gender and other forms of purported discrimination, which should be more vigorously defended than they are now. A sympathetic employee and real damages do not equate to a successful lawsuit, and employers should be rigorous in analyzing their legal liability.

The rest.

Canadian Human Rights Commission To Spies: You’re Next

Yes, the human rights commissions were started to make sure people could get a roof over their heads without discrimination. And yes, they now investigate and prosecute every public or private sector of the country, including national security.

Enjoy it, you pay for it.

[Calgary Herald] Current laws do not effectively protect against human rights violations by Canada’s security intelligence agencies, concludes a study undertaken for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The commission asked four Toronto human rights lawyers to examine the extent to which the RCMP, CSIS, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the bodies that monitor them are legally obliged to consider human rights issues when discharging their duties.

It commissioned the study because of concern that laws enacted in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks might unfairly target certain groups based on their race, religion or ethnic origin.

The rest.

Don’t Invite Them To The Next Kegger

[London Free Press] The thought police on campus, as in Canada’s so-called human rights tribunals, are bent on stifling the expression of all opinions that they deem liable to expose women, homosexuals, Palestinians or some other favoured group to hatred or contempt. Holmes decried such censorship. He warned: “I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.”

The rest.

And If A Father Wants The Abortion, Can He Say He’s Not A Sperm Dildo?

[Toronto  Star] Religious advocates simply cannot pick and choose what constitutes a human right in this country. Those who advocate against abortion for all Canadians do not see women as having the same rights as any other Canadian person. Women are not vessels. And they are definitely not objects for and about whom decisions should be made.

The rest.

On Second Thought, Just Keep Your Mouth Shut

[Canadian Press] A Muslim man of Arab descent has been awarded $11,000 by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal as a result of his co-workers’ paranoia that he helped organize the 9-11 attacks.

Ghassan Asad, who moved to Canada from Saudi Arabia, was questioned by RCMP after co-workers at a high-tech firm reported that he’d visited New York and Washington a few weeks before the terrorist attacks.

vs.

[Canadian Foreign Affairs website] The public is encouraged to use this toll-free number to report any information regarding terrorism, criminal extremism or suspicious activities which could pose a threat to national safety and security. The number is…

Like China Cares

They got the Olympics. Mission accomplished. The rest is details.

[Concord Monitor] Isolation only hardens totalitarian regimes, so the gamble the International Olympic Committee took when it awarded the Games to China was worthwhile. But it’s a gamble that the committee, the athletes and China will lose if the story of the Games becomes not one of athletic accomplishments and international brotherhood but repression, censorship and violence.

The rest.

We’re All Broken Up To See Someone Ripping Off The Ripper

[Spectator] Ten billion contraband cigarettes are smoked in Canada every year, depriving governments of taxation income of up to $4 million a day.

vs.

[National Anthems] The survey found that the average price of five mid-range cars was, on average, 19 per cent higher in Canada. Discounted books were still 21 per cent more expensive.

A sample of eight point-and-shoot digital cameras found a 26 per cent price gap between the two countries ($374 in Canada versus $297 US south of the border.)

A Maytag washer and dryer was 21 per cent more expensive in Canada than in the U.S., while a Nintendo Wii was 12 per cent more expensive here.

The only good news in BMO’s sample survey was in the cost of the Grand Theft Auto video game. It cost $59.99 in both countries.

[And then they tax you].

That Pesky “Public” Again

[Standard Freeholder, Peter Worthington] Since then a campaign has been mobilized on Omar’s behalf — a support team consisting of couple of Edmonton lawyers, military defence lawyers, opposition MPs (led by Bob Rae who sounds more than Liberal), Amnesty International and human rights groups, the CBC, Globe and Mail and Toronto Star.

The only ones unimpressed with the “free” Khadr movement, or at least the “bring him home” campaign, are the Canadian public.

The rest.

Iran To Stone 8 Women To Death For Adultery

Just the type of guys we’d want to be seen negotiating with, preconditions be damned.

[Telegraph] Eight women and one man convicted of adultery are set to be stoned to death in Iran, according to activists and lawyers.

…

A man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her neck. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the condemned dies.

Stoning was widely imposed in the early years after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. But in recent years, it has seldom been applied, though the government rarely confirms when it carries out stoning sentences. The last stoning death confirmed by the government was in July last year.

The rest.

UK Human Rights Chief: TV Companies Must Change Their “Hideously White” Ways

[BBC] TV soaps EastEnders and Coronation Street stereotype ethnic minorities, according to a report.

But talent shows like The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing represented the UK’s diverse ethnic mix, it said.

The report’s leader, Trevor Phillips – head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission – said TV companies remained “hideously white”.

…

Mr Phillips, who wrote the report in a private capacity, said its findings highlighted the need to “change and to embrace diversity”.

“Everyone knows that if we don’t we are headed for oblivion,” he said.

DWE didn’t have to wait long for the real reason Phillips was making static. Never forget that “education” means “lots of cash.”

[BBC, same article] Mr Phillips, presenting his findings to a meeting of television executives at Channel 4’s London headquarters on Wednesday night, called for a levy on all major productions to establish a diversity fund.

The fund would be used to finance schemes to improve diversity.

“These might include training, content development, shadowing schemes, or any other programme that would encourage and deliver greater diversity,” Mr Phillips said.

Human Rights Commission Opens A New Revenue Stream

From the Keep The Business Booming file.

[Holiday Lettings] New EU legislation has been introduced to give disabled travellers more rights. Disabled air passengers will receive more help when using EU airports.

…

A recent survey by the charity revealed that 61 per cent of respondents had experienced difficulties when boarding a plane. Disabled passengers will now be able to voice their concerns with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure that the new legislation is properly enforced.

The rest.

Mugabe A Fiend, West To Blame

[Huffington Post, Allan Miller] We have seen the volume rise steadily recently for intervention of various kinds in Zimbabwe, however if one looks back over the past recent history it becomes apparent that many of the issues at the forefront currently are because of western interference in some fashion.

The rest.

The Winning Strategy Of Speaking Softly While Carrying No Stick

[IOL] Durban-born Navanethem Pillay has been notified of her nomination as the new UN Human Rights Commissioner, despite American reservations.

…

Arbour put pressure on the US State Department and the White House to close down Guantanamo Bay prison camp. But when she did not get results, Arbour spoke out against the UN’s most powerful member. She also implicitly criticised Israel’s conduct in its 2007 war against Lebanon.

Pillay, on the other hand, is seen to favour a quieter approach to put pressure on governments to end human rights violations.

The rest.

They Were Probably Singing Camp Songs While Drafting A Human Rights Petition

[AOL] An archeological dig at the site of the future Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg has unearthed a rare find: a footprint estimated to be 800 years old.

…

It’s not clear if the footprint was made by a man or a woman, but it was probably left in the mud around 1200 A.D., Kroeker said. Pieces of pottery and fish remains were found underneath it, he said.

The area appears to have been a popular campsite around the time the footprint was left, he said.

“Somebody was camped there, a group of people. By the style of pottery, they were from eastern Manitoba. But they were also being visited by another style of pottery, people from western Manitoba,” he said.

“The two groups were sitting there, probably fishing because bison and venison are very lean meats so you need the fat from catfish to round out your diet.”

The rest.