....almost as rigidly as Iran's revolutionary tribunals enforce their
version of Islam.'
Citeret efter canadafirst.net:
I've known columnist George Jonas (National Post, Toronto Sun) since
the late 1970s. A Hungarian Jew who fled to Canada in 1956, he's one
of the very few Jewish civil libertarians who "get it"; that is,
free speech is across the board and for everybody.
A good many who pay lip service to free speech like Alan Borovoy of the
Canadian Civil Liberties Association are AWOL when the free speech of
the right or Ernst Zundel is under attack. Indeed, the obnoxious
Borovoy encouraged the forces of censorship against fellow teacher
Malcolm Ross and me in the mid 1990s by writing that, while we
shouldn't face criminal charges for our political views, we should
also, having expressed our views, not be allowed to teach. So, in Mr.
Civil Liberties' world, the price of traditionalist views on religion
(Ross) or immigration (myself) is unemployment and poverty.
Jonas has been more consistent in his defence of free speech.
It's interesting now that a fellow Jew, Israel Firster Ezra Levant
and his Western Standard are under attack by the human rights crowd for
having published the Danish cartoons critical of Islam, we suddenly
hear the long silent Borovoy moaning about free speech. He says in
helping to set up human rights commissions he never intended them to
silence free speech. Why, then, was Sec. 13.1 inserted, in 1978, into
the Canadian Human Rights Code. I was told in the early 1980s by a CHRC
employee that it was inserted specifically to "get" Toronto Social
Crediter John Ross Taylor for his telephone answering messages. All
through the late '80s and early '90s, a series of small dissident
right-of-centre message machines were shut down. Tony McAleer of
Vancouver was even flung into prison. Where was Borovoy?
Then, in the name of fighting terrorism (terrorism is an immigration
matter, stupid) the government turned control of the Internet over to
the censors at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, where truth is no
defence. Where was Alan Borovoy?
When WW II war hero and journalist Doug Collins was twice dragged
before the B.C. Human Rights Commission for columns he'd written in
the late 1990s, where was Borovoy?
Borovoy's sudden discovery that human rights commissions are grinding
down free speech is unbelievable, unless he's been brain dead for the
past quarter century. Human rights commissions are the mortal enemies
of individual rights and especially of free speech. They were set up
for social engineering. Silencing dissent is what it's all about. If
Borovoy truly doesn't know that - and isn't just feigning
surprise now that the victim is not a rightwinger - then he's truly
dumber than a bagel.
As George Jonas says: "The modern liberal state has its dogmas and
taboos. It guards and enforces them almost as rigidly as Iran's
revolutionary tribunals enforce their version of Islam. Canada still
has a distance to go before it becomes anything like Iran, but it's
edging closer to a kind of secular theocracy, genuflecting to political
correctness, a long way from the free country it once used to be.
Ironically, the march towards the new dark ages started with the
introduction of human rights legislation some thirty years ago. By now
the Human Rights Commissions have become our Iran-style revolutionary
tribunals."
Human rights watchdogs muzzling free speech
by George Jonas
CanWest Publications
April 6, 2006
The modern liberal state has its dogmas and taboos. It guards and
enforces them almost as rigidly as Iran's revolutionary tribunals
enforce their version of Islam. Canada still has a distance to go
before it becomes anything like Iran, but it's edging closer to a kind
of secular theocracy, genuflecting to political correctness, a long way
from the free country it once used to be.
Ironically, the march towards the new dark ages started with the
introduction of human rights legislation some thirty years ago. By now
the Human Rights Commissions have become our Iran-style revolutionary
tribunals. In Canada we've ways of dealing with people who think
they've a constitutional guarantee of free expression. As Muslim
activists haven't failed to notice, the way around the Charter leads
through a thicket called human rights.
The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada -- yes, that's what it's called
-- has recently requested the Alberta Human Rights Commission to deal
with the Western Standard for its editorial decision to re-print some
Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed. For readers who have
had better things to do than keep up with the minutiae of Muslim
sensitivities, last fall a newspaper in Denmark published a series of
cartoons of Mohammed. This sent Muslim mobs, incited by their mullahs,
on murderous rampages in various parts of the globe. The riots having
made the cartoons a legitimate news story, some papers, including Ezra
Levant's Western Standard, decided to re-print them so people could
judge for themselves what the bloody fuss was all about.
If Syed Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada,
felt offended by the Western Standard's exercise of its editorial
discretion, he had an excellent remedy, available to any person in a
free country. He could say so. He could denounce Levant's decision in
speeches, in print, in letters to the editor, in peaceful protest
marches or in public meetings. He could persuade Canadians -- or try to
-- that reprinting the Danish cartoons was somehow wrong.
But Soharwardy and colleagues, in line with the authoritarian nature of
their creed, preferred a top-down solution. They tried persuading no
one except the authorities. Believing that disagreeing with them ought
to be a police matter, they started with the Crown's office. Then, when
told that running a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed wasn't a criminal
offence in Canada, at least not yet, they went to the Human Rights
Commission.
I suppose Alberta's Muslim leaders could have done worse. Like imams in
other places, they could have tried inciting riots. To their credit,
they made no attempt to do so. But neither did they consider that in a
secular democracy people trade freely in a marketplace of ideas,
opinions, and beliefs. Instead of debating Levant, they first tried to
have him arrested, then turned to our society's nearest kin to
theocratic repression, the Holy Inquisition of the shibboleths of
super-liberalism, the politburo of Canada's
multiculturalist-collectivist-feminist-environmentalist axis, where
they struck gold. The Orwellian commissars of Alberta's human rights
directorate, instead of advising Soharwardy & Co, to go soak their
heads in cold water, started processing their complaint.
Can anything good come from such a "human rights" complaint? Can a
pressure group's assault on fundamental freedoms make this country a
better place? Yes, perhaps. Soharwardy's attack may, just may, cause
Canadians to finally re-examine the concept of Human Rights
Commissions.
Even a chief architect of the concept, Alan Borovoy, general counsel of
the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, is beginning to notice the
hideous chickens coming home to roost in his barnyard. "During the
years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such
commissions," he wrote last month in the Calgary Herald, "we never
imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech."
Borovoy should have imagined it, partly because it was self-evident,
and partly because I told him so during our discussions of the subject
some twenty years ago. We argued about it nearly every Saturday in the
late 1980s, sitting with friends in a Toronto cafe. It seemed to me
then, as it seems to me now, that Borovoy's crowd of left-leaning
liberals could imagine all right how the "human rights" laws they
promoted could be used against somebody else's freedom of speech --
some conservative fuddy-duddy's, for instance. What Borovoy's brand of
"progressive" cosmopolitans couldn't imagine was that their laws might
one day be used by conservative fuddy-duddies -- even veritable
clerical-fascist imams -- against their own freedom of speech.
Well, hallelujah. The day is here.
--
>.)
Unter blinden ist der einäugige könig.
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