Have a banana, Justice Minister Nicholson

For readers who saw yesterday's Warning to Americans about Section 13 early on, at 9:00 PM I added this update to the post:

"The blogger Blazing Catfur has just sent the following link with the comment that Anuj C. Desai does a good job of refuting [Alexander] Tsesis's thesis.

It turns out Tsesis published a book in 2002 that is obviously the inspiration for the thinking behind Sen. Kennedy's hate legislation and the argument posed by Canada's Justice Ministry against striking Section 13.

The book is titled, Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paves the Way for Harmful Social Movements, which from Google seems to be only available now in Japan but which has made the rounds at many American university law departments.

In his overview of the book Desai writes:

Alexander Tsesis sets forth a thesis about the relationship between what he refers to as “hate speech” and action that follows from it. His broad claim about the relationship is simple and straightforward: When systematically developed over long periods of time, “hate speech” lays the foundation for harmful social movements that ultimately result in the oppression and persecution of “outgroups.”

From this premise he argues that United States courts should abandon the rule that advocacy or incitement must be likely to result in imminent harm before it can be constitutionally proscribed,7 and that legislatures should criminalize “hate speech.” He then concludes the book with a proposed statute to do just that. [...]

Here is the PDF of Desai's discussion, which is titled, Attacking Brandenburg with History: Does the Long-Term Harm of Biased Speech Justify a Criminal Statute Suppressing It?"

As I highlighted in yesterday's post Ezra Levant took a stab at exposing the flaws in Tsesis's arguments and also termed Tsesis a nut.

I think that last is somewhat unkind because Mr Tsesis is not insane. This is obviously his first incarnation outside an isolated tribe. So it all makes perfect sense from Mr Tsesis's point of view: if we don't utter Taboo words we'll never anger the Goddess of Floods and Famine.

The real issue, which I have spent years on this blog explaining, is that the way is forward, not back. This means that if you've spent, say, 500,000 years clawing your way out of the trees and into modern life, the idea is not to return to the trees.

Again and again, I've had to explain this point to British readers who still don't understand that if they don't walk into those no-go zones, if they don't engage and debate with immigrants practicing ancient tribal beliefs, the British themselves will end up much farther back than the immigrants; they'll end up where their own ancestors started, which was painting themselves blue and wearing feathers.

This is such a simple, obvious point that a failure to grasp it explains my occasional flashes of temper.

Humans are not born stupid but they can be made stupid if no one ever challenges them, if not no one ever troubles to point out flaws in reasoning and never insists that they think things through for themselves. If the British don't do these things, it's not just a matter of losing their civilization; it's a matter of returning to a diet of bananas.

Yet to ensure we don't return to the trees, freedom of speech is a prerequisite.

Anuj Desai is striving to help Mr Tsesis orient his brain to a more forgiving universe, but here we come to a snag. The biggest problem is not Mr Tsesis and his primitive understanding of the role of language, nor is it even Canada's Justice Ministry or Senator Edward Kennedy. The problem is clearly evident in this passage from Desai's paper:

To American lawyers steeped in the modern First Amendment, Tsesis’s thesis is bold, indeed radical. It is, however, little more than an importation of the theoretical underpinnings of an approach to regulating racist ideologies that much of the rest of the world -- Europe, in particular -- has relied upon and one that Americans will increasingly have to grapple with as changes in communication technologies impose pressure to harmonize laws regulating information and expression.

With that, finally we arrive at bedrock. What we find there is not the Muslim Brotherhood or Canadian Jewish Congress but an accounting team working for a globalized corporation.

In the days of European Colonial rule the standard operating principle was, "Don't rile the natives." The new principle is, "Don't rile the consumer."

Because the consumer resides in vastly different cultures around the globe, transnational corporations don't want to run into the kind of nightmare that Coca-cola faced several weeks ago:

Chinese university students in Germany became enraged when a picture was posted on the internet of a German store that had a Coca-cola poster in the window. The poster showed happy Tibetan monks on a roller coaster -- which the students darkly interpreted to mean "freedom." The students used the internet to call for a boycott of Coca-cola.

The terror was that the call for boycott might spread to China's consumers. So you may trust the poster was quickly removed and that Coca-cola brass apologized all over themselves for anyone assuming they were making a political statement.

So this is not simply a matter of restricting hateful speech; this is a demand from the engines of global commerce to restrict any kind of speech that any consumer in any culture might possibly find offensive.

Where will this lead? To great difficulty conducting business through the exchange of bananas and uttering, "Uga uga."

True, no one's speech will possibly offend when things reach that stage, which means we'll return to how we settled things before the George Bernard Shaw's of the world arose: by bashing out each other's brains to elucidate the point.
*******************************
Blazing Catfur has also weighed in on Desai's analysis of Tsesis's thesis.

The lights are going out

Found at FreeDominion website:

"The Australian Government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet."

Read the rest at Tech Crunch.

Warning to Americans about Canada's Section 13

Think it can't happen here? Last week VDare published a report by Canadian FreeSpeecher Kathy Shaidle titled First they came for ... Canadian "Hate Speech" Totalitarianism.

Kathy's piece is a great summary of the Section 13 issue and provides important background on spectacular earlier cases related to Section 13, including Paul Fromm's.

At the end of the report VDare inserts a note about Senator Edward Kennedy's most recent attempt to pass U.S. federal "hate" legislation that is a blatant attempt to link freedom of speech with crime at the federal enforcement level. See this 2007 World Net Daily article on the issue.

Kennedy relies on a man named Alexander Tsesis for the rationale underpinning the hate crime legislation.

The name Tsesis will ring a bell for readers who looked through the list of expert witnesses called in Marc Lemire's Section 13 hearing. The Attorney General of Canada called Tsesis to bring his opinion to bear against Lemire's constitutional challenge to Section 13.

Mr Tsesis's opinion also plays a role in the arguments that Canada's Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has deployed in defense of Section 13.

Nicholson filed a brief on behalf of the Justice Ministry to further contest Lemire's challenge to Section 13. Today, Ezra Levant dissected some of the "junk history" that Nicholson invokes and adds this observation:

So who is this nut the government keeps quoting?

His name is Alexander Tsesis, a professor at a middling U.S. law school. Tsesis has two political clients: the Canadian Justice Department, and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachussets, tied with Barack Obama as the most left-wing senator in America. Tsesis is a left wing kook -- but the Canadian government hangs on his every word.

Why should Tsesis's views be supported by Canada's Conservative government? Ezra explains:

... the decision by the Justice Department to intervene was made before Rob Nicholson was the minister -- even before the Conservatives were the government. It was made when Irwin Cotler, the Liberal, was minister, if I'm not mistaken. Ever since then, federal lawyers have been beavering away in support of section 13, along with other tax-paid lawyers from the CHRC (and the gaggle of Jewish censors from the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith and the Simon Wiesenthal Center).

Putting aside politics, if a previous Justice Minister instructed his lawyers to intervene in support of censorship, it's those lawyers' duty to do so until their instructions change. And, since the Conservatives have not yet changed course on section 13 -- or any other aspect of the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- it should not be surprising that Justice Department lawyers are still serving up the kind of junk history and psychobabble that is evident in this memorandum.

Now read the psychobabble and junk history, and realize it's only a matter of time, which will approach fast if Obama takes the White House, before an American version of Section 13 goes into effect.
*************************************************
9:00 PM Update:
The blogger Blazing Catfur has just sent me the following link with the comment that Anuj C. Desai does a good job of refuting Tsesis's thesis.

It turns out that Tsesis published a book in 2002 that is obviously the inspiration for the thinking behind Sen. Kennedy's hate legislation and the argument posed by Canada's Justice Ministry against striking Section 13.

The 2002 book is titled, Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paves the Way for Harmful Social Movements.

In his overview of the book Desai writes:

Alexander Tsesis sets forth a thesis about the relationship between what he refers to as “hate speech” and
action that follows from it. His broad claim about the relationship is simple and straightforward: When systematically developed over long periods of time, “hate speech” lays the foundation for harmful social movements that ultimately result in the oppression and persecution of “outgroups.”

From this premise he argues that United States courts should abandon the rule that advocacy or incitement must be likely to result in imminent harm before it can be constitutionally proscribed,7 and that legislatures should criminalize “hate speech.” He then concludes the book with a proposed statute to do just that. [...]

Here is the PDF of Desai's discussion, which is titled, Attacking Brandenburg with History: Does the Long-Term Harm of Biased Speech Justify a Criminal Statute Suppressing It?

Marc Lemire thanks those who have written in defense of free speech in Canada. Pundita proudly squeezes into the group photo.

"Pundita:
Thanks very much for your latest write up on my Section 13 case.

Unlike the enemies of free speech who want to shut down all dialogue, you have shown to be open minded, fair and honest.

Many thanks. You are part of the fight against thought control in Canada.

We will win in the end. Believe me.

And we will win because we struck at the root, not the branches. To borrow the famous quote.

My attorney and a true expert witness brought forward testimony to discredit the Cohen Committee findings. That got the censors' attention big time.

Prior to that they laughed at us and gave me no chance. A year later, every major newspaper have written against Section 13. Now that's not due to me only. I just provided factual background on my case.

The writers and thinkers of Canada and the United States took on the fight.

I am a horrible writer, and public speaker. I was forced into doing it since for a while no one else did. But times have changed. And believe me for the better.

I'm more at home fixing the IOS of a Cisco Catalyst switch. Than putting my thoughts down on paper.

That's why I thank you. I thank Barbara Kulaszka. I thank Paul Fromm. I thank Douglas Christie. I also thank Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, FreeDominion, the blogosphere and all others who care about freedom of speech.
Marc Lemire
FreedomSite "

There the CHRC goes again, making fascist totalitarian rat bastards look like champions of liberty

Blazing Catfur has caught the CHRC trying to portray Americans as a bunch of cross-burners because we don't have Section 13 in the USA. (H/T Free Mark Steyn!) So, the CHRC wants to fiddle around with weasel words, do they? Two can play that game.

CHRC violates "the ancient principle of natural justice"

Ezra Levant (an attorney) writes with passion and clarity about the latest revelation of injustice done to citizen Marc Lemire by Canada's federal human rights commission.

Roses for CNN and Christiane Amanpour's North Korea film

Tonight at 8:00 PM CNN will be airing Christiane Amanpour's report on the New York Philharmonic's history-making performance in North Korea in February and her experiences in the country. She had been trying for a decade to get into the country so she jumped at the chance to be part of the press corps that accompanied the Philharmonic's visit to Pyongyang.

She was the only member of the visiting press invited to interview North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, about the status of Korea's nuclear program. Click here for the text of the interview.

The film was also aired last night. I caught 40 minutes of it, and on Friday saw a clip from the film that CNN aired. Christiane said that although her visit was very controlled at every step, she thought that any view of North Korea was better than none. I agree.

The clip showed an exchange she had with one of her NK Minders. The guy told her that she could only walk in front of what looked like a giant sculpture or low freestanding wall, but not behind it.(See Sunday update for my correction.)

When she coaxingly asked why she couldn't walk behind the wall, the Minder was absolutely stumped. The body language, and the look on their faces as the Minder realized there was probably no earthly reason why she couldn't step behind the structure, are priceless.

The exchange convinced me to watch the film. Christiane has a way about her that is impossible to fake; it's not exactly childlike but it conveys someone who has never forgotten what it was like to be a child. So she is often able to get away with asking the kind of questions that the more determinedly grownup among the journalism profession can't.

I am very glad I saw the film, and I can't wait to see the rest of it tonight. There are moments that are so overwhelming I can't speak about them because there is no way I can do justice to them with words.

Even if you have seen footage of the symphony performance, you will see it through new eyes when you see Christiane's film. This doesn't mean that she looked at the situation through gauze; quite the opposite, which is what makes the film so powerful.

Was the symphony performance a breakthrough in US-North Korean relations? I think it was a profound breakthrough. Will it move off the dime? We wait now, and watch for the answer.

Was it a PR stunt by the North Korean government? When you understand how carefully the government controls music in North Korea, which you will learn by watching the film, it's wrong to dismiss it as a mere stunt. It was a gesture that took courage.

Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, told Christiane that when the Philharmonic left, the widespread hunger, power shortages and political abuses would continue in North Korea. Of course he is absolutely right. And the film ends with grim news about a round of harsh language between North and South Korea, and concern about another round of food shortages in North Korea.

Yet when one measures the symphony performance against 60 years of cold war, when one considers the extreme nationalism of the North Korean people, when one sees them standing in a gesture of respect while the Star-Bangled Banner is played, one can only -- I have no words.

Don't short yourself; please make an effort to see Christiane Amanpour's film; you will never forget it.

Bravo, Christiane, bravo! And bravo to your crew!

I suppose I should mind my manners and also thank CNN, North Korea's government, the New York Philharmonic, and -- awk -- and -- awk -- c'mon, you can do this -- and, and thank you Christopher Hill.

********************************************
Sunday Update
I did to get to see most of what I missed and the clip I mentioned above was included, although it seems CNN edited out a few seconds of Christiane's exchange with the Minder. But it was a sculpture -- a huge one -- and the instruction was not that she couldn't walk behind it but that she couldn't photograph it from behind, which prompted her ask why not.

Brickbats for CNN and John Roberts's Rev. Wright-Free Zone

John Roberts might want to read what Stanley Kurtz has to say about Barack Obama's involvement with Jeremiah Wright's church and the "black theology" that Wright teaches before he declares another CNN interview with Obama to be a "Rev. Wright-Free Zone."

After reading Kurtz's analysis, one would have to be willfully blind to insist that Barack Obama was telling the truth when he said he was only recently aware of Wright's racism and virulent anti-Americanism.

RezkoWatch has an overview of Kurtz's analysis and links to his report for National Review and the companion piece at The Weekly Standard.

Really, really, really bad news from Mexico and a few words about McMafia, Chinese Snakeheads, Canada as crime capital of the world

Thanks to ZenPundit Mark Safranski for picking up this important story and pointing out the military implications, which apply to both sides of the US southern border:

[ ...] the drug cartels of Mexico are hobbled neither by antiquated Marxist ideology nor old-time, rustic, crime family traditions. They are adaptive, professional, transnational in outlook and far better equipped than state police forces on either side of the border.[...]

Read the rest here.

Readers who do war-gaming for a living, and those who are simply good at doing addition fast in their head (which applies to most Pundita readers), will not need to be told why I'm tying Mark's post to Misha Glenny's McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld.

If you weren't lucky enough to catch John Batchelor's interview with Glenny, this New York Times book review conveys the importance of Glenny's report.

(Aside to Mark Steyn readers: note Glenny's comment, "The European Union has a labor shortage and an aging population that is not being replenished because of low birthrates." So what was once criticized as 'Steyn fiction' is now accepted as self-evident fact.)
****************************
7:15 PM ET Update
Also, I think the Glenny interview was aired on KFI 640-AM on 4/20. Here is the link to the archive podcast; I am pretty sure the interview started 1:40 minutes into broadcast. When you hear the interview, you'll realize the NYT reviewer took Glenny's remarks about Snakeheads somewhat out of context. From my hastily typed notes during the broadcast:

"Snakehead chinese gang leaders who organize transfer of chinese workers.
whole villages form a club pay to get one person into brooklyn or LA
we're getting illegal migrations in the millions this way.

villagers go 10s of thousands of debt for person, if their person killed their families still have to pay off debt. meanwhile chinese illegal working in indentured servitude to pay off debt.

yet villagers in china the snakeheads are heros, because it is so bad in villages."

So while the snakeheads are seen by the villagers as performing a useful function, the system is an indictment of conditions in China's rural areas.

Also, while I'm on the subject of Batchelor's interview, here are my scribbles about Glenny's mention of Canada:
"North America
Human trafficking
and whole of western canada british columbia home to largest numbger of criminal syndicates in world. vietnamese produce cannabis large amount comes south. they make about 80K yr frm transshipment into US."

So it's not just a southern border security situation the US must deal with 'yesterday.' What's wrong with smoking a little pot? The problem is that it's not a little; the millions in hard currency that Vietnamese crooks send home or direct to additional criminal enterprises help prop up crooks and worse in Vietnam and in places such as Burma. That's so for the entire global network of McMafia enterprises; it leaps borders and is more efficient than the governments fighting it.

So drink a beer instead.

And no -- legalizing pot won't help; in fact it will make the situation much worse because it will just increase the amount of remittances that those Vietnamese pot growers send home and increase the protection rackets.

All this does is the same thing it's done in Mexico: allow the elite that controls government spending to keep putting off critically needed programs.

Not to mention setting up millions of the poorest for starvation when a sharp economic downtown in the rich country cancels the gardener, the cook, and the pot parties, which means remittances dry up.

I warned about this in 2005 but only a couple bloggers picked up on my point and nobody in Washington's development community wanted to listen.

Yet the vast majority of Mexicans who have become dependent on remittances are using the money to buy the most basic necessities, such as food. What the hell happens, then, when the remittances abruptly stop?

Yes, the worst is already happening in Mexico, although to my knowledge only one news report has surfaced about it. The Mexican and US governments -- not to mention the World Bank and the British and China governments, which pushed institutionalizing remittances at the government level -- don't want to talk about this little glitch.

Drink beer, okay? Or grow the stuff yourself.

As for the NYT reviewer's statement that, "... restrictive immigration policies remain in force. The result? An open invitation to far-reaching criminal enterprises."

I have not yet read McMafia, and Batchelor's interview with Glenny focused on the history of the globalized crime phenomenon and a region-by-region rundown, rather than Glenny's conclusions. So I don't know what Glenny has concluded from his investigations, and I am unwilling to take the word of a NYT reviewer.

But if Glenny is indeed pitching unrestricted immigration, there is the little problem of assimilation to deal with, if rich countries don't want to be a magnet for Fifth Columns overseen by gangsters who prey on the poorest immigrants.

Or should I say, they don't want to be any more of a magnet than they are today.

Marc Lemire discusses the Cohen Commission

For readers who have already seen Friday's Mad Kingdom post, around 2:00 PM ET today I added an update to it, which I have copied here. (For readers who haven't yet the read the MK post, Marc's laughter in the following letter is to acknowledge my irritation with his habit of belatedly sending me important information and prefacing it with, "By the way...")

"Pundita:
Thanks for your Mad Kingdom post. An interesting read. BY THE WAY (LOL), did you know I called an expert witness to directly challenge the claims you quote from the Cohen Commission?

The Cohen Commission gave the justification for "hate laws" in Canada based on the 'findings' of Harry Kaufmann, who was an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. After he presented his crazy findings, he left Canada and set up shop in New York.

In response I called one of the top neuroscientists in Canada, Dr. Michael Persinger. The enemies of free speech sat in silence while he demolished Kaufman's garbage All the 'interested parties' refused to cross-examine Dr. Persinger; there was nothing they could say.

Let me send you the stuff. It will blow your mind and make you question the very basis of "hate laws, and the absurd claim that speech can cause mental issues in people.
Marc"

Marc:
For once I'm not taken by surprise. Remember? Back in February, when you first wrote me, it was to dispute some points I made in my Jurassic Park post, which mentioned the Cohen Commission. You told me about Persinger. When I published our discussion, I linked to your file on expert witnesses, which contains a link to his report.

To refresh your memory the post is titled Marc Lemire gives Pundita a tour of the Section 13 maze, and that was followed by more of our discussion on Section 13 issues.

You really must try to escape from the Mad Kingdom for a few hours, to give yourself a break. But I'm glad you brought up Persinger again. This would be a good place to link directly to his report, which is titled The Anachronism of Policies and Laws for Hate Speech in Modern Canada: The Current Negative Cultural Impact of Legal Punishment upon Extreme Verbal Behaviour. And here again is the link to the expert witnesses.

Hang in there, Marc; the calvary is on the way. The CHRC Department 13 has been abusing their power for so long they forgot where the line was. Now they've been caught red-handed in an incident external to a Section 13 hearing. For readers who are not aware of what happened, last night Ezra Levant blew the lid off. He has detailed the incident and publicly accused the CHRC of corruption.

Deborah Gyapong called for a Royal Commission in February and she's so appalled by Ezra's revelations that she's calling for it again. This time, I think people will heed her call.

Inside the Mad Kingdom of the Canadian Human Rights Commission's Section 13 department

(Note: Please see Saturday Update, which is posted after the footnotes.)

On April 2 I asked Marc Lemire to tell me when he removed the postings that Richard Warman cited in his 2003 Section 13 complaint against Marc's website, Freedomsite.

Marc's reply was that he shut down the website's message board on January 1, 2004 and added "I received the complaint in I think April or May, 2004. So everything was removed PRIOR to me even receiving or knowing about the complaint."

Marc was aware that my question had not been posed idly. He knew I was trying to help him make a public appeal to Canadians to support his appeal on behalf of his constitutional challenge to the Section 13 complaint against him

He also had to know that he was making the appeal to a public that was prejudiced against him as a person even though there was sympathy among 'FreeSpeechers' for his fight.

So it would be difficult to argue to the general public that he had shut down the message board without prodding from the Section 13 complaint -- particularly because he was asking people to believe that he didn't receive the complaint until about five months after it had been filed with CHRC.

Nonetheless I would not omit his reply when I published our email exchanges, which would form my appeal to the public on Marc's behalf. Readers who have seen my appeal know how I handled the time sequence. I did the best I could to address head-on a questionable point.

I published my appeal on Sunday at 6:20 AM, ET and immediately sent Marc notification. At 10:00 PM on Sunday I received an email from Marc, in which he corrected how my post had handled the question about the time sequence and supplied precise dates for when the CHRC had initially contacted him.(1)

The dates Marc provided showed that the CHRC had indeed waited months to notify him of the complaint -- and suggest that the CHRC had not sent him a copy of the actual complaint until 16 days after the date they had earlier told him he must respond to their questions about the complaint!

Marc's correction highlighted the irresponsible way the CHRC processes Section 13 complaints and mooted the question of his veracity with regard to the time-sequence issue. His reply also invalidated the argument I'd published with regard to the question of Marc's veracity; in other words, Marc's correction made me look like a fool in front of my readers.

I did not know, and wasn't sure I wanted to know, why Marc's memory of precise dates hadn't been jogged earlier. Perhaps I was the first person to have challenged him on the question of when he'd received notice from the CHRC, and maybe it had taken him all day to track down all the dates relating to the question after he read my post.

Yet given the importance of his appeal to the public, I found it disturbing that he hadn't troubled himself to give a precise answer to my question when I first posed it.

I controlled my irritation and replied to Marc that I would immediately update the post by publishing his correction, which I did. That would still leave the problem of alerting readers who had seen the post prior to the correction, which I told Marc I would deal with in a subsequent post.

An hour later, ping! another email from Lemire:

"Pundita: By the way, I thought you'd be interested in seeing a chronology of events prior to Richard Warman's complaint against me ...
Marc"

The chronology suggests that all of Marc Lemire's troubles with the Canadian Human Rights Commission were set in motion on November 11, 2003. That was the same day that a man named Paul Fromm lodged a formal complaint with CHRC to demand an investigation of the activities of a CHRC employee named Richard Warman.

As to how Marc Lemire was involved with Paul Fromm's complaint, thereby hangs a tale.(2) But right now I want to continue talking about me in a bad mood.

The second "By the Way" email further irritated me. I had been in contact with Marc since February, and with his agreement I'd published most of those email exchanges. Yet it had never once occurred to him to recount the chronology he'd just sent me, which was vital information.

When a family member asked why I was fuming I replied, "It's just someone who would have been a disaster as a forward observer. 'No general, I see no enemy activity outside the front gates. By the way, an hour ago I did notice siege machines being wheeled toward the back gates.'"

With that off my chest I replied to Marc's email: "HOLY COW MARC I WISH YOU WOULDN'T DRIBBLE ALL THIS STUFF OUT BIT BY BIT"

A few minutes later:

"Pundita:
It's funny that strikes a cord with you. By the way, the CHRC has done that with so many people now, it's just their standard MO. In FreeDominion's case, they received the letter and had one day to meet the imposed reply date by the CHRC.
Marc"

"Funny?" In all his exchanges with me Marc had seemed lucid but now I was beginning to wonder if there wasn't something a little strange about him. While pondering this I idly clicked on the link that accompanied the chronology he sent.

The link opened to Marc Lemire's "statement of particulars" in his defense to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The statement contained not only the chronology he'd sent but also a numbered list of all the details of how his case had come about.

The statement had been on his website for years, although somewhat lost in the thicket of posts about his Section 13 case that had grown up over the years. Nothing was dribbled out in the statement of particulars; it was all there, methodically and lucidly set down.

The particulars reveal situations that would test the sanity of anyone who had to spend even a short time dealing with the CHRC Section 13 department. Marc had been forced to deal with the department for more than four years.

Suddenly the light dawned. The wording of Section 13 of Canada's Human Rights Act is insane -- a point I underscored in Canada's version of the Minority Report: precrime and presumption of guilt ... Yet when people first read the wording of the section they tend to assume it can't mean what it says because a literal interpretation would be insane. But Section 13 is interpreted literally under Canadian law.

This places those who administer the code, and those who are charged with a violation of it, roughly in the position of people who live in a kingdom ruled by an insane person. Such subjects find ways to adjust to the mad edicts of a mad king.

To an outsider, the adjustments might seem incomprehensible but they're just the way sane people learn to live with the whims of madness. The worst part is that after a time the sane get used to insanity.

It struck me that there was indeed something strange about Marc Lemire: he had been at the mercy of the CHRC's Section 13 department for so long that he'd adjusted to situations an outsider would find remarkable.

That could explain why it hadn't occurred to him on his own to provide me with exact dates regarding CHRC notices. Probably he'd assumed that everyone knew it could take the CHRC months to forward necessary data. It could also explain why he hadn't thought before to send me his statement of particulars.

Marc would agree that Section 13 was insane. But did he realize he'd gotten so used to the way it was administered that he no longer saw the extent of the madness?

I didn't know whether I should be the one to put the question but I didn't want any more "By the Way" emails. He needed to wrack his brain and tell me if there was anything else terribly strange about the way his Section 13 case was being handled, aside from all he'd posted at his website.

Moments after I delicately put the question came the reply:

"Pundita
Funny you mention that. I had a conversation with someone about 6 months ago, and they said the same thing. I am so used to dealing with this nutty situation, I don’t see anything as overtly odd about it.

Wait till you see what I am writing about now. How Section 13 is supposedly absolutely needed for the “psychological” well-being of Canadian Jews.

Welcome to the asylum.
Marc"

I knew enough about arguments in the Taylor Supreme Court case to realize that he wasn't joking about the psychological well-being angle.(3) But it wasn't until an hour later, when Marc sent me what he'd written, that the full import of the situation was revealed:

In April a member of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie Farber, had gone on the public record to call for changes to Section 13. What the public did not know was that the CJC applied for "interested party" status in Marc's constitutional challenge to Section 13 -- and was arguing that the present version of Section 13 be upheld partly on the basis of an argument about psychological well-being.

I left the computer, threw on a sweater and stepped into the night. I looked at the dark sky and whispered, "There were human rights commissions in Nazi Germany."

Surely, every Jew involved with Canada's human rights commissions knows about those infamous Nazi commissions. And surely they know that all those commissions accomplished was to engender even greater prejudice in Germany against the country's Jews.

Marc Lemire spoke to the central issue in his constitutional challenge to Section 13:

Hate laws are the end of dialogue, a repudiation of communication, the exchange of ideas and the responsibility to try to understand the other, which is the basis of democracy. Such laws only instill fear, anger and hatred through their coercive measures. Hate is totally subjective as it is an emotion. It cannot be controlled through law.

When I returned to the computer I saw that another email had arrived from Lemire. It forwarded a copy of a May 5 motion by his phlegmatic attorney, Barbara Kulaszka, in which she patiently explained to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that it really wasn't very nice for the CHRC to pile her with 400 pages plus 2 CDs and additional faxed information of critically important documents that should have been turned over two years before, and which contained so many blacked-out and whited-out passages that the documents were unreadable in many cases.

Given that the tribunal expected Ms Kulaszka to make closing written arguments this May one can see her point. Especially because the tardy delivery of documents meant, among other things, that she had been unable to properly question CHRC employee Dean Steacy about his use of the "Jadewarr" screen name.

At that point I said, "I can't take anymore," and went to bed. Lucky me; I can walk away from CHRC Department 13; Marc Lemire can't.
************************
This morning Marc Lemire forwarded news of the latest doings in the mad kingdom regarding his case, and also some good news.
************************

1) Marc Lemire's correction:

"The CRHC not forwarding the complaint to me for months is a typical thing they do. They did a similar thing to Freedominion. Here are the dates:

November 24, 2003
Initial Complaint laid by Warman against Marc Lemire and “The Freedomsite”

February 13, 2004
CHRC (from Suzanne Best) sends a letter to me informing me of complaint against Marc Lemire and “The Freedomsite”. Assigned Hannya Rizk as the investigator. Gives me until March 9, 2004 to respond.

March 24, 2004
I receive the registered letter from CHRC.

March 26, 2004
Call the CHRC and get an extension to April 26, 2004 to retain a lawyer to respond to their letter."

1) Chronology of Events prior to Richard Warman filing Section 13 complaint against Marc Lemire, from Marc Lemire's Statement of Particulars in his defense before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. (The "A" and "@" symbols enclosing certain words show up throughout the entire statement, and are clearly meant to be quotation marks.)

53. In September of 2003, several messages were posted on freedomsite.org written by Paul Fromm, Director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression, which set out the activities of Mr. Warman in laying a complaint against a London man named T. Winnicki and Bell Canada and his libel action against a group called Northern Alliance. These messages and the others detailed in the paragraphs following also were sent out on the Freedomsite mailing list, of which Mr. Warman was a subscriber.

54. In October of 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org announcing a protest which was being organized by the Canadian Association of Free Expression against the government funding of ACensorship Advocates@, in Victoria, British Columbia. A second message was posted on October 28, 2003 giving an account of the protest where Mr. Warman and Mr. Adler of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre spoke about the Internet.

55. On October 29, 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org which announced that CAFÉ would be holding a protest of the actions of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, including one of its employees, Richard Warman, in “suppressing free speech on the Internet.”

56. On October 31, 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org which provided a summary of a press conference given in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa by Paul Fromm regarding the what it termed the Aextensive campaign of harassment against dissident websites by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and by one of its lawyers, Richard Warman...@ Two men, Tom Kennedy and Jason Oewendyk, appeared with Mr. Fromm at the press conference and were described in the summary as Avictims of Richard Warman.@ The message outlined various activities of Mr. Warman in attempting to shut down meetings and websites.

57. On Nov. 2, 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org entitled AWarman on the Warpath - Threatens CAFÉ@ which stated that Richard Warman had served Paul Fromm and CAFÉ with a Notice under the Libel and Slander Act of Ontario alleging that words defamatory of Mr. Warman had been posted on the freedomsite.org. The notice demanded that a retraction be published on the freedomsite.org and on the freedomsite email announcement list.

58. On Nov. 2, 2003, a message was posted on the freedomsite.org which was the text of the CAFÉ press conference in Ottawa in the Parliamentary Press Gallery on Internet censorship.

59. On Nov. 12, 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org entitled ACAFÉ complaint against CHRC lawyer Richard Warman.@ The message set out a letter which Paul Fromm, director of CAFÉ, had sent to Chief Commissioner Mary Gusella by fax on Nov. 11, 2003 in which Mr. Fromm lodged a formal complaint against Mr. Warman who worked as a lawyer for the Commission. The complaint alleged that Mr. Warman was abusing his position at the Commission to carry on an ideological vendetta against people whose views he disagrees with...@ Mr. Fromm listed Mr. Warman=s recent activities and demanded an investigation of his behaviour which he stated harmed the integrity of the Commission.

60. On Nov. 11, 2003, the same day Mr. Fromm faxed his letter of complaint to the Commission, Mr. Warman visited the Freedomsite website message board, looking for and finding messages which he would include in the present complaint. He returned to the site on November 15 and 23, 2003 to find further matters to include in the complaint. He filed the [...] complaint on November 24, 2003.

3) From the Taylor Supreme Court Case regarding psychological well-being:

Parliament's concern that the dissemination of hate propaganda is antithetical to the general aim of the Canadian Human Rights Act is not misplaced. The serious harm caused by messages of hatred was identified by the Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada, commonly known as the Cohen Committee, in 1966.

The Cohen Committee noted that individuals subjected to racial or religious hatred may suffer substantial psychological distress, the damaging consequences including a loss of self-esteem, feelings of anger and outrage and strong pressure to renounce cultural differences that mark them as distinct.

This intensely painful reaction undoubtedly detracts from an individual's ability to, in the words of s. 2 of the Act, "make for himself or herself the life that he or she is able and wishes to have."

******************************************************
SATURDAY UPDATE
"Pundita:
Thanks for your Mad Kingdom post. An interesting read. BY THE WAY (LOL), did you know I called an expert witness to directly challenge the claims you quote from the Cohen Commission?

The Cohen Commission gave the justification for "hate laws" in Canada based on the 'findings' of Harry Kaufmann, who was an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. After he presented his crazy findings, he left Canada and set up shop in New York.

In response I called one of the top neuroscientists in Canada, Dr. Michael Persinger. The enemies of free speech sat in silence while he demolished Kaufman's garbage All the 'interested parties' refused to cross-examine Dr. Persinger; there was nothing they could say.

Let me send you the stuff. It will blow your mind and make you question the very basis of "hate laws, and the absurd claim that speech can cause mental issues in people.
Marc"

Marc:
For once I'm not taken by surprise. Remember? Back in February, when you first wrote me, it was to dispute some points I made in my Jurassic Park post, which mentioned the Cohen Commission. You told me about Persinger. When I published our discussion, I linked to your file on expert witnesses, which contains a link to his report.

To refresh your memory, the post is titled Marc Lemire gives Pundita a tour of the Section 13 maze, and that was followed by more of our discussion on Section 13 issues.

You really must try to escape from the Mad Kingdom for a few hours, to give yourself a break. But I'm glad you brought up Persinger again. This would be a good place to link directly to his report, which is titled The Anachronism of Policies and Laws for Hate Speech in Modern Canada: The Current Negative Cultural Impact of Legal Punishment upon Extreme Verbal Behaviour. And here again is the link to the expert witnesses.

Hang in there, Marc; the calvary is on the way. The CHRC Department 13 has been abusing their power for so long they forgot where the line was. Now they've been caught red-handed in an incident external to a Section 13 hearing. For readers who are not aware of what happened, last night Ezra Levant blew the lid off. He has detailed the incident and publicly accused the CHRC of corruption.

Deborah Gyapong called for a Royal Commission in February and she's so appalled by Ezra's revelations that she's calling for it again. This time, I think people will heed her call.

Happy 60th Birthday, Israel

"Assuredly in the day of victory the Jew's suffering and his part in the struggle will not be forgotten. Once again, at the appointed time, he will see vindicated those principles of righteousness which it was the glory of his fathers to proclaim to the world."
-- Winston Churchill, 1941

Abrupt end for Tony Rezko trial

Ed Morrissey has the lowdown and speculations about why the defense rested its case without calling any witnesses. H/T Rezkorama.

Great resource on William Ayers and the Ayers-Obama connection

Merry at Rezko Watch has tweaked an old post and made it a resource list of articles related to domestic terrorists William ("Bill") C. Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, leaders in the 1960s Weather Underground. Articles are classified by year (starting in 2001) and for 2008 by month. Great reference tool.

The truth about Barack Obama's association with William Ayers slowly emerges, but will the news media have the courage to examine it?

"You know when folks are reaching when the big attack on me is I’m not wearing a flag pin or that I served on a board with a guy who was a member of the Weathermen back in the 1960's, they're reaching, you know that was the best they could do."
-- Barack Obama, May 2008

"[T]he debate emerging now about the relationship between Ayers, Dohrn and Obama is not just about the activities of Ayers and Dohrn when Obama was a child. It is about the authoritarian politics that Ayers and Dohrn still espouse today. Ayers, for example, travels regularly to Venezuela, most recently speaking in front of an audience that included Hugo Chavez in late 2006 where he proclaimed that "education is revolution."
[...]
"Ayers - today - advocates what I consider to be an authoritarian and sectarian approach to education. His work with Obama stretches back to their joint efforts in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in 1994 and 1995, which was an effort to support the problematic "local schools council" reforms under siege there.
[...]
"The people linked to Senator Obama grew to political maturity in the extreme wings of the late 60s student and antiwar movements. They adopted some of the worst forms of sectarian and authoritarian politics. They helped undermine the emergence of a healthy relationship between students and others in American society who were becoming interested in alternative views of social, political and economic organization.

"In fact, at the time, some far more constructive activists had a hard time comprehending groups like the Weather Underground. Their tactics were so damaging that some on the left thought that government or right wing elements helped create them.
[...]
"Today, however, many of these individuals continue to hold political views that hardened in that period. Many of them have joined up with other wings of the late 60s and 70s movements, in particular the pro-China Maoist elements of that era and are now playing a role in the labor movement and elsewhere. And yet this question of Obama's links to people from this milieu has not been thoroughly explored by any of the many thousands of journalists, bloggers and political operatives looking so closely at Obama."
-- Steve Diamond, April 22, May 4

On May 2 the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial on Barack Obama's relationship with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. The writer, Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel, concluded her magical mystery review of US radical 1960s politics by observing

By all accounts, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers are unfathomably charming, brilliant and comely people, absolutely irresistible. Everybody who meets them is taken and forgets what they should know. Mr. Obama expects us all to understand this, because we understand everything else. He is doing something most unusual: He's acting as if the American people are thinking with their brains. He's giving all of us a lot of credit. Could it be that we deserve it?

Steve Diamond -- native Chicagoan, law professor, political scientist, and international labor movement specialist -- begged to disagree. His reply to Wurtzel exposed her naivete about Leftist politics, 1960s activism, and Senator Obama:

[I]n spite of what Ms. Wurtzel might have heard in the 80s, Ayers and Dohrn were not representative of the activist politics of the 60s, only of the most destructive, sectarian and authoritarian dimensions of the antiwar movement.

Their activities did more damage to the antiwar movement than is widely understood today. Contrast the effect of their violent actions on American politics with the relationship that emerged in Poland in the same period between left wing intellectuals and students and a democratic labor movement - it led to the downfall of the Stalinist regime.

There were, of course, many thousands of non-authoritarian left wing activists in the 60s and 70s who had to work under the impact of attempts by the right to smear the entire left and antiwar movement with the criminal, desperate and pathetic actions of the Weather Underground.

Diamond's reply, coupled with his explanation of why Chicago mayor Richard Daley fawned over William Ayers and his examination of Obama's close ties with Ayers and Dohrn going back to the 1980s, also reads like a primer on the failings of the media to properly examine Barack Obama.

By the time you're finished studying all that Steve Diamond has to say on the matter of Barack Obama, it will be clear that Obama has been betting on just the opposite of Elizabeth Wurtzel's assumption. He's been acting as if the American public does not have the brains to figure out what he stands for.

However, intelligence is not quite the issue. You cannot read Diamond's analyses without realizing that truth has taken an awful beating in the media coverage of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Diamond's analyses throw light on why this happened. A close examination of Barack Obama's associations means opening a window on the American Left and observing the deep divisions in the movement.

So far, no one in the American media has been willing to engaqe in this discussion during a presidential campaign because both the Left and the Right lose from the discussion. Barack Obama has bet his campaign on this cynical political decision and the US media's extreme politicization.

Yet looking beyond his connections to an entire network of hard-core Maoists -- looking to his connection to a Kenyan warlord, to a pastor who as much advocates the violent overthrow of the US government, to a Chicago political fixer with ties to the Baathists -- the true picture of Barack Obama slowly emerges.

Throughout his adult life, Obama has been drawn to people who are essentially fascist in their outlook, people who find the democratic process too messy and slow to bring about change, people who believe in manipulating the system of democracy to undermine its principles in order to grab power.

To call this "guilt by association" is to ignore that the associations were Barack Obama's choices, and that the choices guided his career as both a political organizer and politician.

A correction: my May 4 post assumed that Larry Johnson's No Quarter blog hadn't discussed until May 3 the details of Obama's work for William Ayers. I was wrong; on April 26 Larry published an extensive discussion on the topic. And it's from the discussion that I learned about Steve Diamond's writings. So I owe Larry not only an apology but also a big thanks.
*********************************************
3:15 PM ET Update
B Merry's entry today at Rezko Watch makes a good companion read to this post.
**********************************************
10:00 PM Update
Attention reseachers: Merry at Rezko Watch has tweaked an old post and made it a resource list of articles related to domestic terrorists William ("Bill") C. Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, leaders in the 1960s Weather Underground. Articles are classified by year (starting in 2001) and for 2008, by month. Great reference tool.

Larry Johnson exposes Barack Obama's work for terrorist William Ayers, plus Ali Ata testimony at Rezko trial gives Obama camp nightmares

Somehow in the tumult I missed Larry Johnson's May 3 entry. Several days ago I saw that he mentioned on his blog No Quarter that Obama had worked for Ayers; since then I'd been patiently waiting for Larry to explain himself. He has. (H/T Rezko Watch) I hope someone thought to email the news to Sean Hannity, although it may have already picked it up.

Hannity and Johnson. Now there's a combo. Obama is actually turning out to be the Great Unifier, but not in the way his campaign strategists could have imagined.

I myself, having spent years sticking pins in my Ambassador Joseph Wilson doll (it's a long story having to do with Nigerian yellowcake), am urging you to read what B'rer Joe has to say about Obama's qualifications in the area of foreign policy. I never thought I would see myself writing these words but Wilson's analysis is dead on target.

As for the contribution of the Rezko prosecution's final star witness, read on. (H/T Rezkorama)

Yes indeed, the Democratic National Convention should be more fun than a barrel of monkeys, except for the auto de fé part. Don't worry; after being boiled in oil and drawn and quartered Dean won't feel a thing.

For the sadists asking, 'Where's our fun?' Well, you could always go to Rezko Watch and read the latest Fact Checker, which could be subtitled "Watch Superdelegates chew their fingernails up to the elbow."
**********************************
"Pundita
Kudos on intellectual honesty. No matter what you think of Joe Wilson and me, we are loyal Americans and committed to the truth. That's why I'm pushing to get the story out on Obama's ties to extreme leftists who hate America.
Larry Johnson
No Quarter "
***********************************
May 6 Update
Here is more -- much more -- about the connection between Ayers and Obama.

Revelations about Richard Warman's Section 13 complaint against Marc Lemire

NOTE: Please see the three updates at the end of this post.
***********************************************
(Warning to both sides: if you're on blood pressure medication be sure to take it before reading further.)

On April 30 I received a blast email from Marc Lemire asking for help from 'FreeSpeech' bloggers in appealing to civil liberties associations for their intervention in closing arguments in the Section 13 case launched against him by Richard Warman.

I hesitated. Warman's complaint is devastating in the examples it uses to shore the argument that Marc's website repeatedly posted hate speech. So while it was one thing to voice my support for Marc's case (through a series of email exchanges in February I'd been satisfied that I'd vetted Marc sufficiently to defend him on my blog), it was quite another for me to argue to Canadians such as Alan Borovoy that they should put their reputations on the line in the matter.

I decided to ask Marc about the specifics of Warman's complaint. Parts of his reply struck me as so damaging to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that I urged he check with his attorney about the wisdom of my publishing his remarks at such a crucial juncture.

Once I received Marc's permission to publish his reply, I determined that our email exchange would be my argument to Canada's civil liberties associations to support Marc's constitutional challenge to Section 13. I interject that in the interim one association, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, has responded to Marc's request.

Without further introduction, here is my letter to Marc and his reply, which I follow with closing comments.

(Because Marc answers point by point, I have placed in quotes and italicized the phrases that are mine in his email. Also, I reproduced his reply without any editing, not even for spelling errors.)

April 2, 2008
"Marc:
Before I post an appeal to Borovoy et al., as you requested, I'd like some clarifications.

In one of your published (February) conversations with me you state:

Section 13 is being used to punish people. Consider that in my case the material under consideration was removed PRIOR to my learning about the complaint. But five years later [the CHRC still] couldn't care less. There are quite a few Section 13 cases relating to published material that had not been available on the Internet for years, but the writers were still hauled before a tribunal. The material was gone, thus the case should have ended. Punishment, not 'remedy,' can be the ONLY conclusion drawn about the CHRC actions in such cases.

Can you:

1) Provide further detail about when you removed the postings that Warman cites in his 2003 CHRC complaint; i.e., was it your policy to routinely remove hate speech/bigoted comments?

2) Inform me as to whether Warman ever posted a reply to the hate/bigoted messages he cited; e.g. did he post messages that disputed the bigotry and hate messaging? (I assume the answer to this is "no" but just to clarify.)

Thanks if you can spare the time for a comprehensive reply.

I am requesting the clarification because of statements made in Richard Warman's Section 13 complaint dated November 23, 2003 (which I already understand had to be reworded because the original filing did not name a person as the respondent).

The complaint lists several examples of bigoted speech (e.g., Jewish, Black jokes, etc.) and some comments posted on the Freedomsite message board that should be characterized as "hate speech," i.e., words that carry an incitement to murder (e.g., "we have to kill the french forigners from quebec," and "we all need to rise up and kill non whites because that's gods solution amen.")

Warman also cites that in February 2003 you posted to Freedomsite a Holocaust denial article written by Ian Macdonald.

The comments cited by Warman would invoke in any decent person reactions ranging from disgust to fear. So I think it's very important to nail down Freedomsite's policy toward such messaging prior to the CHRC complaint.

Thanks again,
Pundita"

"April 2, 2008
Pundita:

Just a quick FYI. This Constitutional Challenge is about the validity of the law, and not about Warmans “case” against me.

""1) Provide further detail about when you removed the postings that Warman cites in his 2003 CHRC complaint; i.e., was it your policy to routinely remove hate speech/bigoted comments?"

All the comments Warman mentions in his 2003 complaint were anonymous and/or posts by someone named Craig Harrison, made to the Freedomsite Message Board. The Freedomsite Message Board was totally shut down January 1, 2004. I received the complaint in I think April or May, 2004. So everything was removed PRIOR to me even receiving or knowing about the complaint.

The policy of the message board was not to remove any posts, unless they were specifically pointed out to me, and if I felt they might be a violation of the law.

The posts that Warman complained about, I had never seen before, did not know about them, nor did I post them. Warman chose NOT to tell me about them or complain, and instead brought me to the Star Chamber.

"2) Inform me as to whether Warman ever posted a reply to the hate/bigoted messages he cited; e.g. did he post messages that disputed the bigotry and hate messaging? (I assume the answer to this is "no" but just to clarify.)

Not that I am aware of.

"I am requesting the clarification because of statements made in Richard Warman's Section 13 complaint dated November 23, 2003 (which I already understand had to be reworded because the original filing did not name a person as the respondent)."

That’s not actually correct. The original complaint named me personally AND as a totally separate respondent it named “The Freedomsite www.freedomsite.org”. Both me and “the Freedomsite” has separate complaint numbers and were indeed separate, independent complaints. The CHRC can fine up to $10,000 per named respondent. So by naming the “The Freedomsite” they in theory wanted to double the fine against me.

Through my legal counsel Barbara Kulaszka – I made a lengthy motion to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that the domain name “www.freedomsite.org” is not a valid respondent, as it is not a person, organization, entity, etc. I won that, when Richard Warman withdrew his complaint against “www.freedomsite.org” on the day he had to answer my motion.

Funny in the first few months of my case before the Tribunal I won half of it. (because Richard Warman withdrew the complaint)

"The complaint lists several examples of bigoted speech (e.g., Jewish, Black jokes, etc.) and some comments posted on the Freedomsite message board that should be characterized as "hate speech," i.e., words that carry an incitement to murder (e.g., "we have to kill the french forigners from quebec," and "we all need to rise up and kill non whites because that's gods solution amen."

I looked through some of the material and can’t find those specific quotes, but some of the abusive message board posts, were of a similar vain.

Also, keep in mind that Section 13 does not cover alleged incitement to murder, the criminal code of Canada does. Warman freely admitted he went to the Toronto Police Service with those claims, and the police never even bother to contact me over his allegations. I assume because as a webmaster of an interactive message board, I am given “Common Carrier” Status, similar to something like the AOL message board or Usenet news groups. If there was a criminal issue, they could have contacted me and then I could have taken some form of action.

Like any other offense, there is a notice requirement, so that people who were in a position like myself, would be aware of what was there and then could have taken action. Say for instance, someone posted on my message board that “lets kill PUNDITA, and she lives at XXX and she has three children that go to XXX school, etc”

The notice requirement is required so that the owner is made aware. As part of our example, say I said I want to leave that online – screw PUNDITA! Then YES… I am liable for something. But that’s not the case with Section 13.

Also lets take it one step further. What if an old boyfriend of your felt slighted by the way in which the relationship ended, and decided to start posting on websites (including my message board) that you were generally bad, you were a whore, etc etc. They use my message board to go after you, WITHOUT the message board owners knowledge.

Who is the guilty party? The ex-boyfriend who targeted you, or the message board owner who had no idea? Section 13 makes it the message board owner.

Or how about this scenario, which has much basis in truth. Say a CHRC officer by the name of Dean Steacy, logged onto the Freedomsite Message Board, using a pseudonym, and pretended to be a “white nationalist” and posted (without my knowledge or approval) that Blacks are sick people and that Muslims should be shot due to the Sept 11 attacks?

Then a third party come along, and for the sake of argument lets pretend he is a co-worker of the CHRC employee that posted those comments, and he in turns complains about what the other CHRC employee posted. Take a guess under Section 13 who would be responsible? The message board owner….! Dean Steacy himself admitted to it, when my counsel cross-examined him.

Because Intent to discriminate as the Supreme Court of Canada ruled “is not a factor”. This means the mere fact it might hurt someone feels is all that matters. That’s the heart of the constitutional challenge of Section 13. It is not about me. But about the validity of the law.

In terms of the comments above, let me be crystal clear -- I do not support those comments, never have supported them, I did not post those comments, and of course being of French heritage myself, I certainly don’t support in any form the killing of French people (or anyone else for that matter)

But I do believe in free speech, and many many people went onto my message board, called me the nastiest of names, and I did NOT delete those posts. I believe in debate and open dialog. I really do wonder why open dialog really scares those that seek to repress ideas and control the free flow of information (like the CHRC) If their arguments were indeed so persuasive, they would much rather rent out Toronto’s SkyDome and debate me in public. But instead they use the immense power of the state to crush me into the ground. That alone speaks volumes about these people.

"He also cites that in February 2003 you posted to Freedomsite a Holocaust denial article written by Ian Macdonald."

The material written by Ian MacDonald is not holocaust denial at all. It seems to be to be a dry look at a few claims. But the most important fact isn’t what Macdonald wrote (and I 100% disagree with a few points he makes) – the most important point is:

directly below what Macdonald wrote, was a 100% opposing viewpoint to what Macdonald wrote. Isn’t that what free speech is? Macdonald takes a position and with the same prominence and effect, someone else can post a rebuttal?

The rebuttal in this case I think started with something like “your crazy, but…” then the poster went on to explain her position.

"The comments cited by Warman would invoke in any decent person reactions ranging from disgust to fear. So I think it's very important to nail down Freedomsite's policy toward such messaging prior to the CHRC complaint."

Message Boards, comment sections, guest books, interactive web content, “Web 2.0”, social networking sites, etc, they are all apparently “valid” targets of people who seek to repress ideas and information.

In my case, I had a message board for people to discuss the issues of the day. In order to join my site you had to agree you would not post anything in violation of Canadian law. And to get my site shut down (which is what Warman and the CHRC wanted as a remedy on the Section 13 case) suddenly posts started to appear that would lead to this long fight.

None were written by me. None were approved by me, Most I didn’t even know about. And WITH NO WARNING (unlike Libel/defamation, which is a requirement) under the Kangaroo Court, I am guilty simply for the fact they appeared in a webspace that I owned. This is wrong, and that’s why I chose to fight so hard.

It’s like writer Deborah Gyapong wrote recently. If I were really such a bad guy, why did so many set me [up] and need to entrap me?
Marc Lemire

I think the toughest-minded readers will ask whether it's plausible that the CHRC did not forward Warman's complaint to Marc until about five months after receiving it.

I think it's plausible, which doesn't necessarily mean Marc is telling the truth or that his memory on the point is clear.

Yet one might also ask whether it's plausible that a French Canadian would knowingly keep posted on his site bigoted and threatening remarks about French Canadians.

Ironically, I chose the hate message against French Canadians almost at random for inclusion in my email; I was just looking for a few examples from Warman's complaint that specifically contained a death threat at Marc's site.

Before I clicked the 'send' button on my email to Marc, I recalled his mentioning to me months before that he was of French ancestry. I thought, 'That's odd; why would he knowingly keep such a threat on his site?'

Indeed.

However, Richard Warman didn't pick Marc's website out of a hat; the site and its message board were controversial enough to have attracted his attention. Many bloggers have learned the hard way that the more controversial their topic, the more carefully they have to monitor their comment section. This can be a huge problem when daily comments can run into the hundreds. The problem vastly increases when it comes to managing message boards.

Yet the largest truth is that Marc Lemire kept his site within the letter of the law -- without fully realizing that there was a shadow justice system in effect in Canada, a system that could circumvent virtually all laws on the books. In his discussion of the Canadian Constitution Federation decision to intervene in his case, Marc observes:

One of their key arguments is that Section 13 is nothing more than a quasi-criminal statute without any of the protections of criminal legislation.

Truer words were never spoken, and it's on the basis of that truth that I defend Marc Lemire's position and give him the benefit of the doubt at every turn. Everyone who respects the rule of law must do the same.

Readers who want to respond to Marc's request for help in appealing to civil liberties associations to intervene in his case should visit his website at the link in the first sentence of this post, or click here. The link provides the names, addresses and emails for the associations.
*********************************
10:15 PM ET UPDATE
Just received this from Marc Lemire, in response to my question about the plausibility of his claim that the CHRC did not forward him Lemire's Section 13 complaint for about five months:

"The CRHC not forwarding the complaint to me for months is a typical thing they do. They did a similar thing to freedominion. Here are the dates:

November 24, 2003
Initial Complaint laid by Warman against Marc Lemire and “The Freedomsite”

February 13, 2004
CHRC (from Suzanne Best) sends a letter to me informing me of complaint against Marc Lemire and “The Freedomsite”. Assigned Hannya Rizk as the investigator. Gives me until March 9, 2004 to respond.

March 24, 2004
I receive the registered letter from CHRC.

March 26, 2004
Call the CHRC and get an extension to April 26, 2004 to retain a lawyer to respond to their letter."
*******************************
10:55 PM ET Update
Just received yet more vital information from Marc Lemire which I REALLY wish he'd sent me earlier today. I will put up a post tomorrow on the latest revelation.
May 5 11:25 PM Update
Obviously there has been in delay in my putting up the second post; frankly at this point I don't know whether I'll post it tomorrow or Wednesday.

SMOG ALERT: Are you a dumb-ass Democrat? Then of course you'll vote for Hillary Clinton!

Since I began writing about Barack Obama, I managed to hold onto my sense of humor about members of the news media who are in the tank for Barack Obama. But my patience has just run out.

The final straw is the May 5 Newsweek cover, which features arugula (representing the intelligent, well-educated Democrat) and a stein of beer (representing Democrat cretins who sport NASCAR stickers on their pick-up trucks).

Just in case the symbolism escapes the well-educated Democrat voter in North Carolina and Indiana, Newsweek pounds home the point with the blurb Obama's Bubba Gap.

The accompanying article, authored by Evan Thomas, Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe, takes the Democrat voter by the hand and carefully signifies why no intelligent person should be caught dead voting for Hillary Clinton:

[...] Obama might win [NYT columnist David] Brooks back if he returned to his high-mindedness and stopped pandering. But winning over the great mass of American voters is tricky.

Obama has stood for change, and when it comes to changing politics, many Americans are with him. But change, more broadly imagined, is threatening to a lot of people, and not just high-school dropouts who own guns and live in rust-belt states.

McCain, too, is out preaching change—attacking the political arena of Washington, where he has worked for more than two decades. But McCain drapes himself in red, white and blue; he is a thoroughly familiar figure, the war hero.

Obama represents something newer and stranger in presidential politics, a black man with a Harvard degree who reads Niebuhr but is perfectly at home shooting hoops on a Chicago playground. To get the Democratic nomination, and to win the presidency, Obama has to show that he is not just a rock-star speechifier -- or a worn-down pol trying to limp over the goal line without saying something that could possibly be used against him. He has to show voters who he really is. Most of them still don't know.[...]

Of course nowhere do the authors actually say that only a Democrat who can't spell 'cat' would vote for Hillary Clinton, but I will not insult weasels by comparing their behavior to that of the Newsweek editorial board. The article is simply an example of how sneaky humans act when confronted with a huge problem of their own making.

True, even at this late stage, many voters do not know who Barack Obama is. Yet no small part of the blame for the knowledge deficit goes to the mainstream news media.

The upshot was evident recently, when Jack Cafferty asked over and over again, with no attempt to hide his panic, whether anybody understood what would happen if Obama didn't get the nomination. Translation: Blacks and Code Pink will riot against the Democrat party.

CNN should have thought of that while they used air time to crank out puff pieces on Obama.

Barack Obama is not suffering from a Bubba Gap. He's suffering from something called "human memory," as in people remembering that this is the fourth or fifth time they've had to defend Obama by saying that he shouldn't be judged by his associations.

People -- even PhDs who eat arugula -- tend to notice a pattern after its sucker-punched them. The pattern here is that Barack Obama has dangerous liaisons; how dangerous, the vast majority of voters have yet to discover.

Yet Newsweek studiously avoids mentioning that a public figure can only get away with saying, "I didn't know, I wasn't aware," so many times before people notice he's always in the neighborhood and only driving the getaway car.

Obama does indeed represent something strange in US presidential politics, but being a black man with a Harvard degree who reads Reinhold Niebuhr does not describe it.

"Strange" is Barack Obama throwing himself into Kenyan politics on the side of a cousin, Raila Odinga, who is drenched in human blood.

"Strange" is Dick Morris going on Fox News to announce that while he wouldn't vote for Obama, Hillary Clinton's presidential run is a "national emergency" -- yet not informing the Fox audience that he was hired to oversee Odinga's election strategy. And also forgetting to mention that he had to know, and that he knew Obama had to know, that Odinga had signed a memorandum of understanding with Kenya's hardline Islamists.

"Strange" is Barack Obama's close association with Jeremiah Wright, even while he knew of Wright's close association with Louis Farrakhan -- and even after he knew that Farrakhan had not denounced al Qaeda's public invitation to the Nation of Islam.

"Strange" is Barack Obama hooking his political rise in Chicago to Tony Rezko, a fixer with business ties to one of the richest men in the world, who has ties with the Baathist party.

There is indeed a national emergency in this country, but Hillary Clinton's candidacy didn't create it, and neither did the cadre that pushed Obama as a presidential candidate. The emergency was created by Americans on both sides of the political aisle who are too clever by half.

It was created by Americans such as Dick Morris who have a grudge to settle with the Clintons.

It was created by members of the news media who are willing to play Russian Roulette with this nation's security in their determination to bring a Democrat into the White House.

It was created by Republicans who decided it would be harder for the GOP to beat Clinton, so they sat on unpleasant information about Obama -- until they realized they may have sat too long.

Well now it's a little late in the day, isn't it, to attempt to explain to Obama's most ardent devotees that they are lambs to the slaughter.

Yet it may not be too late to point out to Democrats who have not made up their mind that the only "change" Obama stands for is one that does not bode well for the United States of America.
*****************************************
Cross-posted at Rezko Watch.

China apologists and lobbies, meet the blogosphere's Madame Defarge

Do you hear a rumbling sound accompanied by squeals and squeaks? That's the sound of world opinion against China getting set to blow, as high-ranking CCP officials, CEOs of major corporations doing business in China, thousands of foreign office employees around the world, and legions of CCP flunkies try to stop a volcanic eruption by throwing disinformation at it.

Events have been moving very fast since the Lhasa riots erupted on March 14. Governments and corporations doing big trade with China are learning the hard way that for decades every intelligent, well-informed person on the planet has been listening with growing anger as China's brutal communist system has been marketed as the wave of the future.

So the riots didn't start a trend; they were only the match to dry tinder. China's government still hasn't gotten that part right:

'B-b-b-but the Han and Hui Chinese were the victims of Tibetan cruelty in Lhasa, so why are we cast as the villain by the mainstream media?'

Because China's government has been caught so many times telling whoppers that today if a CCP officials says, "Hello," the knee-jerk reaction is, "That's a lie!"

This is just why China's disinformation campaign isn't working this time; for such campaigns to work the target population must be willing to believe something of what you say. If the mere fact of your speaking is considered a trick, propagandists and influence agents have a hard time getting their message across.

So the panic in boardrooms and officialdom is not so much over negative press about the Olympics as over the rabble's obstinate refusal to swallow another fish tale.

This hasn't stopped the smoke blowers from trying to match wits with the rabble. Where are my knitting needles?

Attention American journalists! Do you suffer from Obama Brain Necrosis? Medical science may soon offer help!

[A lab technician in a contamination suit wheels in a very elderly man wearing a bib]

PUNDITA: Good -- [whump screeeeeeeeeeeeee]

[The technician adjusts the microphone on Pundita's contamination suit]

PUNDITA: Good evening to our audience. I am speaking to you from Level D at Grape Island, a super-secret bioterror research facility located somewhere near the coast of the United States. With me is noted bioterrorism researcher Dr. Yuri Shaha -- Shash -- Shashak --

DR YURI SHASHIKOVITCH: You may call me Dr. Yuri. Remember the Battle of Stalingrad!

PUNDITA: Yes, I will. Dr. Yuri, I notice you are not wearing a contamination suit.

DR YURI: No need. I've already had every disease known to man.

PUNDITA: When did it first come to your attention that certain American journalists were suffering from a supervirus that causes brain necrosis?

DR YURI: We noticed they are all exhibiting symptoms of the early stage of infection. Glassy eyes, tingling in the extremities, degradation of higher cognitive functions including inability to recognize simple patterns of behavior in Barack Obama, memory loss -- inability to remember simple details about Obama's past -- and bouts of euphoria followed by paranoia when hearing criticism of Barack Obama.

PUNDITA: That sounds awful! What are the symptoms of the advanced stage of the disease?

DR YURI: Basically, the brain melts and oozes through the eyeballs.

PUNDITA: Then the disease is fatal!

DR YURI: For American journalists, no, not necessarily. Remember the Siege of Leningrad!

PUNDITA: Yes, Dr Yuri, I will. Why do you think the virus is only attacking certain journalists covering Obama's campaign? Why not those covering the other presidential contenders?

DR YURI: This disease is a variation of Tribal Chieftain Brain Necrosis, which peculiarly strikes halfwits with totemic impulses. There could be a genetic predisposition but we are still trying to isolate the primary site of infection. Right now we suspect the Hamptons during mosquito season and an ingredient used by a certain national coffee shop chain.

PUNDITA: I hope you're not suggesting that an occasional latte or cappuccino might cause Obama Brain Necrosis!

DR YURI: It wouldn't necessarily be the latte itself, but possibly an ingredient contaminated by rat droppings if the rat had been bitten by a mosquito that we theorize carries the virus. Remember the Battle of Khalkhin Gol!

PUNDITA: Yes, Dr Yuri, I will. Now we arrive at the delicate question. Do you find any indication this virus is man-made?

DR YURI: It was originally a naturally occurring virus that was tweaked by the Japanese Imperial Army after they discovered it wiped out half a brigade in Burma. Then it was stolen and tweaked by the Red Chinese army, which sold it to a rouge KGB agent, who sold it to Idi Amin, who sold it a terror outfit in the Caucasus, which sold it to Pakistan, which sold it to another group in the Caucasus. We lost track of it after it was bartered for light arms to a Bosnian group, until it popped up in the Hamptons.

PUNDITA: This sounds like a very frightening virus!

DR YURI: Not if you only have half a brain to begin with and won't miss the other half. Remember the Battle of Moscow!

PUNDITA: Yes, Dr Yuri, I will. Is there medical help for Obama Brain Necrosis?

DR YURI: We're trying to scare up funding for vaccine research.
************************************************
Cross-posted, with pix, at Rezko Watch.

Human rights tribunals and velvet totalitarianism

"What emerged from the Mahmoodi-Dutton tribunal hearing was a disturbing truth. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is a parallel court system out of control."

My evil twin, who is obsessed with details, happened to be looking over my shoulder yesterday when I studied the 90 day British Columbia Tribunal Hearing Schedule. The schedule reveals that the complaint filed by Mohamed Elmasry and Naiyer Habib is no longer against Maclean's and Ken MacQueen but against "Rogers Publishing, Ltd." and MacQueen.

The schedule also shows that the complaint is not filed under the Human Rights Act Section 13(1) code, which I tentatively assume can only be reviewed by the CHRC (Canadian Human Rights Commission). The BC complaint is being heard under Section 7 of the British Columbia human rights code:

Discriminatory publication

7 (1) A person must not publish, issue or display, or cause to be published, issued or displayed, any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that

(a) indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a group or class of persons, or

(b) is likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt because of the race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or that group or class of persons.

[...]

Do I hear a collective groan from M-446 supporters? Yes; getting rid of Section 13 won't be much help if every Canadian province has a human rights code that contains wording similar to (b), which is virtually the same used in the key phrase in Section 13.(*)

(The hearing schedule notes that the Section 7 complaint addresses "religion" as the specific area of discrimination in the Elmasry/Habib complaint.)

This might partly explain the great confidence displayed by Canadian Islamic Congress lawyer Faisal Joseph at Wednesday's press conference.

"If Maclean's is ready to consider an opportunity for the Muslim population to have its say, we are ready for reasonable conciliation ... One way or another it's going to be dealt with, either by agreement or by an imposed decision."

Joseph may not be bluffing. He may figure that even if his clients lose the Section 7 complaint in BC, there is a good chance that the CHRC tribunal will hear a version of the BC complaint under Section 13.

Another part of Faisal's confidence may stem from the BC Tribunal's approach to discrimination complaints. Months ago I read speculation that the Maclean's respondents might get something akin to a fair hearing because the BC tribunal was now loaded with attorneys.

The question is whether the tribunal's basic approach has changed since a sensational discrimination case several years ago; during that hearing the tribunal acted overtly as a prosecutor -- and a criminally unethical one, by the standards of a fair code of justice.

It would be instructive to review the case because whether or not the tribunal has changed their procedure somewhat in the intervening years, the underlying situation has not changed.

The details of the Mahmoodi-Dutton hearing are so horrifying that I think the tendency is to assume it represents an extreme case of a miscarriage of justice. But the miscarriage is built into the system of the human rights tribunals.

I venture this is something that Alan Borovoy and other leading civil rights defenders are having a hard time fully confronting. I think they'd prefer to narrow the issue to one of free speech, and by such means satisfy themselves that tinkering with the wording in various codes will be enough to restore justice.

There can be no restoration of justice in Canada; not until the society acknowledges that a nation can't have a shadow justice system and remain under the rule of law.

OUT OF BALANCE: BC HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL

by Professor James Steiger,
University of British Columbia
2000

In a decision that prompted outraged responses from many private citizens and media figures, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruled in favor of complainant Fariba Mahmoodi in her sexual harassment case against Professor Don Dutton.

Dutton, a full professor in UBC's (University of British Columbia) Department of Psychology, is an internationally-known expert on domestic violence.

The basic facts of the case are these. In the late fall of 1994, Mahmoodi approached Dutton about enrolling in a directed studies course. On December 30, she went to his apartment in the evening to discuss research. Subsequently, she sent him a letter threatening to destroy his career if he did not get her into graduate school. Dutton took the letter to UBC’'s Equity Office and complained that he was being blackmailed. They did nothing.

Mahmoodi filed a complaint that Dutton had tried to seduce her while she was in his apartment. Upon receiving Mahmoodi's complaint, the Equity Office immediately launched an extensive investigation of Dutton.

Mahmoodi produced a murky tape recording that included sounds of music being played and snippets of conversation between her and Dutton. Exactly how this recording was made was never determined, although the method of production would seem to be of central importance in assessing the motivation of Mahmoodi. Dutton claimed he never made the recording. Mahmoodi claimed the voice recording accidentally occurred while Dutton was recording music for her. Yet the ability of the tape recorder to actually perform this feat without a microphone was never proven. A definite possibility is that Mahmoodi produced the recording herself.

Ultimately, the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal decided that there was no evidence Dutton had physically seduced Mahmoodi, but found him guilty anyway of "creating a sexualized environment." He was fined $13,000. His legal expenses are already in six figures.

Numerous aspects of the BC Human Rights Tribunals procedures give grave cause for concern. The most serious problems are the following:

1) Vague, ill-defined procedures controlled by a single individual (the tribunal chair, a political appointee) who serves as judge and jury.

2) Incredibly slow processing of cases, resulting in unnecessary stress and financial hardship to all involved, especially the defendant. The claimant's legal bills are paid for by the Tribunal, while the defendant has to pay for legal expenses.

3) Selective filtering at information at several stages of the hearing process. The tribunal "chair" can rule evidence inadmissible, and the evidence then disappears permanently from the record. For example, the Tribunal took several years to process the case, and yet ruled some key testimony as "inadmissible."

Professor James Steiger testified that Mahmoodi approached him about a failing mark around the same time she visited Dutton’s apartment, and threatened (in the presence of a witness) to charge Steiger with racial discrimination if he failed to pass her. The court ruled this testimony "inadmissible," on the grounds that the probative value of the testimony was inadequate to compensate for its potential damage to the reputation of the complainant.

The probative value of the testimony was considered limited because of many alleged differences between the circumstances under which Mahmoodi approached Steiger and Dutton. The fact that she approached two professors, in the same department, in the same time frame, and allegedly threatened each in order to achieve an academic objective seemed lost on Frances Gordon, the Tribunal chair.

All record of this testimony has now disappeared. There is no mention of it in the extensive notice of decision (available at the HRT's website, http://www.bchrt.gov.bc.ca/mahmoodi3.htm) [link no longer available] with one notable exception. A letter from Dutton to Steiger was entered into the record, because the tribunal chair felt that it reflected negatively on Dutton's credibility.

A careful reading of the decision reveals just how selective Frances Gordon was in processing and compiling information. For example, in a key section of the her report, Gordon intersperses actual elements from the tape recording with Mahmoodi's allegations, creating a seamless narrative strictly from Mahmoodi's point of view. It is very easy for a casual reader to lose sight of the fact that much of this material is uncorroborated conjecture, and almost all damaging "facts" in the narrative are unproven allegations by Mahmoodi.

On the other hand, Gordon presents only a small snippet of the blackmail letter Mahmoodi sent to Don Dutton, blunting the impact of the very negative piece of evidence.

4) Failure to control the tribunal proceedings. Numerous times during the proceedings, Mahmoodi disrupted testimony with a hysterical emotional outbursts. Each time, the hearings were delayed. Frances Gordon not only failed to control Mahmoodi’s outbursts, each of which caused substantial delays and which frightened and disturbed the witnesses, but she also continued to allow her to return to the proceedings and perform the same acts over and over again.

One must recall that the complainant in these cases has legal bills paid by the government, while the defendant is paying by the minute for legal advice. Under these conditions, failure to establish expeditious procedures and failure to control outbursts from the complainant are both prejudicial to the interests of the defendant, and can contribute to financial hardship.

During the tribunal proceedings, numerous facts were presented that reflected very negatively on the complainant's credibility. Besides the matter of the forged letters of recommendation and Mahmoodi's initial blackmail letter to Dutton, there were discussions of falsified immigration records, falsified educational transcripts, recordings of obscene phone calls Mahmoodi made to staff members working in Dutton's lab, and details of Mahmoodi's physical harassment of Dutton and other UBC staff members. Ultimately, Frances Gordon found Dutton to be less credible than Mahmoodi!

(In an interesting postscript to these matters, Mahmoodi was recently arrested at Vancouver International Airport and charged with a criminal offense.)

What emerged from the Mahmoodi-Dutton tribunal hearing was a disturbing truth. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is a parallel court system out of control. Originally, the system was weighted heavily on the side of the complainant because it was designed to aid individuals whose rights were compromised by large organizations with overwhelming financial and legal resources to maintain violations of a complainant’s rights. The quixotic notion was that the system would provide balance for righting serious wrongs in the society.

What exists in fact is something else: a system which places immense power in the hands of a political bureaucracy, with an obvious agenda -- to use selected complainants to establish new legal precedents. Say the wrong thing, be charged with a Human Rights violation, and you may end up spending several years defending yourself under indeterminate conditions.

The court will decide what evidence to admit, how the tribunal will proceed, and answers to no one after deciding your fate. The power of such a system to repress freedom of speech is disturbing, and similarities to certain totalitarian societies are frightening.

John Furedy has described the Human Rights Tribunal system as "velvet totalitarianism." This is entirely accurate.

*) "Section 13. (1) 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."