Posted on 01/21/2008 6:42:22 PM PST by forkinsocket
A few days ago, I was interrogated for 90 minutes by Shirlene McGovern, an officer of the government of Alberta. I have been accused of hurting people's feelings because, two years ago, I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed in the Western Standard magazine.
Ms. McGovern's business card said she was a "Human Rights Officer." What a perfectly Orwellian title.
Early in her interrogation, she said "I always ask people … what was your intent and purpose of your article?"
It wasn't even a question about what we had published in the magazine. It was a question about my private thoughts. I asked her why my private feelings were of interest to the government. She said, very calmly, that they would be a factor taken into account by the government in determining whether or not I was guilty.
Officer McGovern said it as calmly as if I had asked her what time it was.
When she's doing government interrogations, she always asks people about their thoughts.
It was so banal, so routine. When she walked in, she seemed happy. With a smile, she reached out her hand to shake mine. I refused — to me, nothing could have been more incongruous. Would I warmly greet a police officer who arrested me as a suspect in a crime? Then why should I do so for a thought crime? This was not normal; I would not normalize it with the pleasantries of polite society.
This was not a high-school debating tournament where Human Rights Officer McGovern and I were equals, enjoying a shared interest in politics and publishing. I was there because I was compelled to be there by the government, and if I answered Officer McGovern's political questions unsatisfactorily, the government could fine me thousands of dollars and order me to publicly apologize for holding the wrong views.
I told her that the complaint process itself was a punishment. Even if I was eventually acquitted, I would still lose — hundreds of hours, and tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills. That's not an accident, that's one of the tools of these commissions. Every journalist in the country has been taught a lesson: Censor yourself now, or be put through a costly wringer. I said all this and then Officer McGovern replied, "You're entitled to your opinions, that's for sure."
But that's not for sure, is it? We're only entitled to our opinions now if they don't offend some very easily offended people.
One of the complainants against me is someone I would describe as a radical Muslim imam, Syed Soharwardy. He grew up in the madrassas of Pakistan and he lectures on the Saudi circuit. He advocates sharia law for all countries, including Canada. His website is rife with Islamic supremacism — offensive to many Canadian Jews, gentiles, women and gays. But his sensitivities — his Saudi-Pakistani values — have been offended by me.
And so now the secular government of Alberta is enforcing his fatwa against the cartoons.
It's the same for Mohamed Elmasry, the complainant against Maclean's magazine for publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book, America Alone. Egyptian-born Elmasry has publicly said that any adult Jew in Israel is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack, a grossly offensive statement.
Both the Canadian and B.C. Human Rights Commissions are now hearing his complaints against Maclean's.
How did it come to be that rough and, I would say, bigoted men such as Mr. Soharwardy and Mr. Elmasry could, by simply claiming that their tender feelings were hurt, sic a government bureaucracy on a magazine, or anyone for that matter?
On this point, I agree with Mr. Soharwardy and Mr. Elmasry: I blame the Jews.
A generation ago, illiberal elements in the "official" Jewish community pressed Canadian governments to introduce laws limiting free speech. The targets of those laws were invariably poor, unorganized, harmless neo-Nazi cranks and conspiracy theorists such as Ernst Zundel and Jim Keegstra — nobodies who were turned into international celebrities when they were prosecuted for their thought crimes.
But now come Mr. Elmasry and Mr. Soharwardy and their ilk, using the very precedents set by the Canadian Jewish Congress.
Before Mr. Soharwardy went to the Alberta Human Rights Commission, he went to the Calgary Police Service and demanded that they arrest me. He's done that three times now, and they've rejected him every time. But he only had to ask the willing enforcers of the human rights commission once.
What a strange place Canada is in 2008, where the police care more about human rights than the human rights commissions do, where fundamentalist Muslims use hate-speech laws drafted by secular Jews, and where a government bureaucrat can interrogate a publisher for 90 minutes, and be shocked when he won't shake her hand in greeting.
Ezra Levant, an Alberta lawyer and author, was publisher of the now-defunct Western Standard magazine from 2004 to 2007.
Hard to believe this is happening in our lifetimes.
tick tick tick...
scary stuff...good thing that border doesn’t bleed canucks to the U.S. or we’d have even more thought police to deal with...screw the border to the south, secure our northern borders!!! /sarc
WOW
1984 is literally only a decade away...watch the movie minority report and decide for yourself if the stuff in that move will NOT happen in our lifetime...I’m betting the farm that it will...
ping
Thoughts, feelings, hate crimes, political correctness. Freedom bleeds away every day, yet no one (apart from this forum) seems to care.
Government Censorship in Canada began with Pierre Elliot Trudeau. He and his socialist running dogs did not want politicians publicly criticized because they were " Francophone."
"Maise, Non! You deeed nawt zay zat, You said me, I ham wrong habout I want biligualizm? Me, High complin a dat Commission dere!" And Canada stood for THAT.
Now Canada reaps what they have sown, a wholesale loss of freedom.
Lesson: Freedom requires eternal vigilance.
We in the USA should never forget that.
The Hispanics march as we speak.
And Big Brother is ready to help them.
At that exact point, I would have been sorely tempted to look her in the eye, thank her and start packing up my papers to go.
What? what are you doing?
Aren't we done here? Didn't you just say I was "entitled to my opinions, that's for sure"???
That means you've just cleared me, doesn't it?
Unless, of course, you were LYING to me, And if you were LYING to me, that means I can't depend on you to NOT LIE to a judge and jury too, doesn't it?
I chose to believe that you are an honorable and truthful woman, and take you at you word...
bttt
scary stuff...good thing that border doesn’t bleed canucks to the U.S. or we’d have even more thought police to deal with...screw the border to the south, secure our northern borders!!! /sarc
I would welcome Freedom Loving Canadian refugees as long as they entered openly and declared themselves.
The comments being made are amazing. The Canadians seem to welcome muslim domination.
The comments with the article... not the comments here of course.
Natch!
BTTT! Thanks Ezra Levant. Good thread. Thanks to all.
It may appear that way, but they are actually terrified of it. People often take the side of those who scare them the most. They think being nice to the bullies will make them their friends. Typical liberal stupidity.
Remember, they will use you until they are in charge, then they will kill you last.
2. As horrible as this seems, does anyone seriously doubt that the Dems have this in the works for conservative speech?
3. Why do so many people, with an air of superiority, scoff at the idea of a "slippery slope" argument, then wail when the next truncheon bops their collective noses?
4. Republicans are labeled fascists by the left, yet Pubbies would never dream of, and have never been proponents of hate crime legislation. Democrats, on the other hand, vote for these laws consistently. Have we really come to that time in America when 43% of the electorate supports these communist proposals and votes for the candidates that enact them?
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