scaramouche

...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

Food for thought: If one has been immersed for some time in the issues pertaining to censorship and Canada’s parallel totalitarian “justice” system, listening to three gentlemen pontificate on the subject while trying to eat is perhaps not the best idea. Not if you hope to digest both the discussion and your grilled veggie wrap. Yesterday, I endeavoured to do both, as three men, attorneys, with a direct connection to the HRC system—Leo Adler, of the Canadian branch of the Wiesenthal Center; Alan Borovoy, head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; and David Matas, counsel for B’nai Brith Canada—spoke to a group of about 75-80 in the board room (and a mighty roomy room it was) of one of the city’s pish tosh downtown law firms. The topic being tackled: How do we here in Canada “balance” free speech and “human rights”.  A weighty and often indigestible subject,  indeed, one which, on its own, has been known to induce dyspepsia.

First up—Leo Adler. Now, Leo, as we know, is a Very Important Personage and one of the city’s most in-demand attorneys. In fact, as he informed us, he was going to have to leave as soon as he finished speaking because he had been summoned to court.  By a judge. (You know, a real one, who wears robes and has a law degree; not a pretend one, who’s a lefty bureaucrat plugged into identity/victim politics, and whose understanding of “justice” is grounded more in Marxist mumbo jumbo about “hegemony” than in eight centuries of English Common Law.) When last I saw Leo, he was practically foaming at the mouth, trying—and failing miserably—to rebut the words of Ezra Levant, who was deftly making mincemeat out of him. This time an entirely different Leo was on display. Dapper Leo. Unflappable Leo. Calm, cool, not speaking off the cuff (never a good idea if, in doing so, you end up sounding hysterical and/or buffoonish) but reading from a prepared speech. I would summarize his comments as follows: Everything is copacetic, folks. Here in Canada, we have managed to strike a perfect balance between free expression and curbing hate speech (which, as we all know, has been the precursor to every single genocide in the history of mankind, including the Holocaust). And what we have here is not censorship, so put that out of your minds right now. No, what we’ve managed to do is achieve “a balance”. At least when it comes to Section 13, the anti-hate speech provision of the federal human rights code and the body, the CHRC, that investigates and adjudicates violators. (But, to reiterate, this doesn’t constitute censorship because they deal only with “extreme cases of hate”—so no worries there.) There is, however, some problem with the provincial and territorial equivalents of Section 13, which, sad to say, have not achieved the federal code’s level of wonderfulness. Of course, things are always uneasy, shifting, but, at the end of the day, they always return to equilibrium. That seems to be what Canadians want. Americans, on the other hand, have opted for something completely different. Unfettered free speech. The rough and tumble of ugly name-calling.  “Hate speech” galore. (And did I mention that “hate speech” always “incites genocide”?) So un-genteel. So un-Canadian. We must realize that, here in Canada, we mind our “ABCs”—agencies, bureaus and commissions—because that is what Canadians do. So don’t fight it; embrace it. Oh, and don’t worry about your “free speech”.  Section 13 does not allow complainants to go after the owners of media outlets or Internet servers. It only permits them to complain about the users of the those services—the little guy who expresses a “hateful” in a letter to an editor, or on a radio talk show, or on one of those scary white power websites—and by his count, that amounts to a scant 30,000 “haters”. Yup, under the splendiferous edicts of Section 13, Canada, which offers the world “a model of how to deal with hate speech,” has managed to “walk a tightrope” between allowing for free speech and limiting “hate speech” ("hate speech" being a pre-requisite for genocide—did you know, for instance, that in Rwanda the Hutus described the Tutsis as “insects” prior to slaughtering them?) As Leo sees it, Canada has found the correct balance, and there’s no need to fix something that’s working so well.

At that point there was a smattering of polite applause, and Leo, pulling his briefcase-on-wheels behind him, skeddadled out of the room.

Next up—Alan Borovoy. Borovoy, who could be considered the Dr. Frankenstein of the HRC monster, since he was instrumental in setting it up way back when (“I fought like hell” to get it going, he said), contradicted just about everything Leo had to say. It is not, said Borovoy,  that the federal provision, Section 13, is working and the problem lies with the provinces and territories.  They are all equally problematic, since they don’t just silence the whackos (okay, my word, not Alan’s), the fringe “haters”; they end up targeting a much wider swath of the population. That’s because, there is no clear definition of “hate”. Section 13 allows for the prosecution of individuals on the grounds that their expressions will “likely expose people to hatred or contempt.” Pretty fuzzy. There is no need to show that the speaker “intended” to so expose them. It doesn’t matter if the “hate speech” is factual, since “the truth is no defence.”  Under the terms of Section 13, Mark Steyn (which Borovoy mispronounced “Steen”) writing in Maclean’s magazine that some Muslims are “hot for jihad” can be considered “hate speech.” So, too, can Daniel Goldhagen’s book about the complicity of ordinary Germans under Nazi rule, Hitler’s Willing Executioners. The Canadian Jewish Congress and the Canadian Human Rights Commission have claimed that “Steen’s” statements aren’t hate speech because they are “not extreme enough.”  But who gets to decide what’s “extreme”? And do we want to live in a society in which Steyn’s words and Goldhagen’s book, are censored as “hate speech”? The CJC and other Jewish organizations act as though these laws are the only weapon we have. They aren’t. We have the weapon of our free speech—our most “valuable weapon”; the weapon these laws deprive us of. And at a time like this, we need this weapon. No two ways about it: Section 13 and its equivalents have to go.

Hearty applause for those impassioned words—ones which were all the more compelling because they were spoken extemporaneously, from the heart, and not read off a sheet of paper.

Finally, David Matas. I had heard David Matas before, so I knew what to expect—a dry, dull, pedantic review of some of the Section 13 “gotchas”—Ernst Zundel, James Keegstra, Malcolm Ross, David Ahenekew—you know the names. Pipsqueaks aggrandized to Hitlerian levels by Jews obsessed with hate speech; Jews who’ve been told, and accept as gospel, that “hate speech” inevitably ends up in genocide. The gist of the Matas’s remarks: We “accept as a given that we are going to censor hate speech.” We thus need to “reform” Section 13 such that the Jews can still censor Nazis, but those pushing the OIC agenda aren’t permitted to push it in Canada via our anti-hate speech laws (what I describe as “censorship for me, not thee”; our cases against Nazis are valid but cases against the BB are dismissed by Matas as being "frivolous").

I won’t go into the four reforms he’s suggesting, since you can read about them here if you so desire, and since I caught the drift of only three of them. (Several times during Matas’s speech, I had the sense that I was in the middle of one of those colouring book mazes my son used to like: I knew that somewhere amidst all the dead ends and meanderings there was a point, an egress, if only one could manage to locate it. With Matas, however, it seems that a point is more of a journey than an actual destination. Afterwards, several other people told me that they, too, had a tough time following him.)  My point (since I do have one): even though Matas and his organization “get” what’s going on at the international level; even though they understand the threat that the OIC agenda poses to Jews and Western civ.; even though, both nationally and internationally, “human rights” has been hijacked by the enemies of freedom and free speech (which these enemies rightly see as the most “dangerous” freedom of all); even though the B’nai Brith now finds itself on the receiving end of two HRC complaints; despite all that,  poor befuddled Matas remains doggedly, determinately, clueless.

An addendum: Borovoy hung around for a while afterwards (Matas did too, but, poor guy—I believe the word in Yiddish is "shlemiel"—he was largely ignored), and at one stage I was summoned from a conversation I was having at the other end of the room to come participate in the one Borovoy was engaged in. It appears that despite championing the abolition of censorship provisions, Borovoy is still a true believer when it comes to the rest of the cockamamie quasi-judicial system. He was complaining about Ezra Levant. Complaining about Ezra's complaining, that is. Elbowing into the discussion, I said that the reason Ezra was “complaining” was because, for someone who's the subject of a complaint, the process can drag on for years and that, in fact, the process is part of the punishment.  Borovoy  agreed. I then pointed out that the subject of a complaint is on the hook for his own legal fees, which can mount up pretty quickly, especially if, as in Ezra’s case, it takes a full 900 days to wrap up, and that the onerous fees—none of which the complainant are on the hook for, since we the taxpayers pick up his tab—are also part of the punishment. Yes, he admitted, that, too, was valid. I then pointed out that, as someone who was in on the ground floor of getting these commissions up and running, he knew that a large part of the rationale for these "courts" was that they were supposed to deal in a speedy manner with cases that would otherwise be clogging up the regular justice system, something which, obviously, the HRCs have failed (and failed miserably) at. I got a nod of the head at that one—so I was three for three defending Ezra.

I then boldly waded into more treacherous waters, asserting that it wasn’t just “hate speech” sections that were problematic: they entire system was, too. I recounted a number of our ‘roo courts’ zanier rulings but, go figure, he wasn’t familiar with a single one.

My last word on the subject: Borovoy told me and the others involved in the Levant discussion that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is going to be defending Rev. Stephen Boisson’s right to free speech. In other words, the guy who was instrumental in instituting the parallel "justice" system now finds his organization having to defend one of its principal casualties.

There’s a bitter—but rather satisfying—irony in that, don’t you think?

posted by: scaramouche at 11:46 | link | comments (4) |

Comments:

#1  26 September 2008 - 14:25

 

I've heard Borovoy speak on occasion, and have a lot of respect for him. It takes a brave person to admit a past failure, and then publicly move aggressively to remedy it. He could simply have slunk into anonymity to protect his reputation, but chose not to. kudos.

As for Adler?- disgraceful. He's likely bucking for an appointment to the bench, and reckons that adopting the all-so-Canadian multi-culti/PC mantle will help him. Instead, he creates a real absurdity- a Jew, qua "Offical Jew", bringing Canadian Jews into disrepute through advancing an anti-democratic, ahistorical, unsupportable elitist position that Hindy or el-Masry would wholeheartedly support. .

Mo'nonymous

#2  26 September 2008 - 14:31

 

Elbowing into the discussion, I said...

Pas vous? Vraiment?

Back in your burkha, scaramouche! Taisez-vous!

Heh. ;)

Mo'nonymous

#3  26 September 2008 - 16:11

 

I, too, have great respect for Borovoy. It took a lot of courage to stand up and "go against the flow." At the same time, though, I do wish he had a better sense of the enormity of the monster he helped create. Free speech, after all, is only one aspect (albeit, probably the most important one) of a much, much larger problem--our ludicrous, and ludicrously expensive, totalitarian "justice" system and its bizarre rulings.

But maybe that's too much to wish for.

scaramouche

#4  26 September 2008 - 18:31

 

Good report and entertaining writing Scar....uh, hope you don't mind the short hand version. Kept a few of your choice 'discriptions' for future
plagerism.

"Leo, pulling his briefcase-on-wheels behind him, skeddadled out of the room."

Was his brief case really on wheels? You do jest?

Btw, first visit and will be back. Consider using more paras, a little larger font, and different background color. Hard to read excellent writing.

Mo'nonymous

Comments: