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.
I’m tired of hearing about government-enforced Islamist PC bullcrap.
Just let me know when it’s time to lock and load. My bullets are dipped in pig grease.
):^(
Hate crime legislation is wrong. Give the government the power to prosecute something and eventually they will prosecute to the limit of their budgets and ask for more.
At this point I really wonder if this is much more about intimidation than it is "taking offense."
“Al Qanada”..
No need to wonder. It is. & when these types of people demand apologies, what they're really demanding is a surrender.
God this scary!
Live free, or die chained.
“It may appear that way, but they are actually terrified of it. “
I think you are wrong on this. They are showing how much more open and accepting they are of muslims than their American neighbors. They aren’t terrified. They are PC sheep.
Seriously, BL? Hard to believe this is happening in our lifetime? This kind of stuff has always been going on, in most of the world, for most people. Used to be primarily religious in nature, burning heretics, Star Chamber inquisitions, witch trials, pogroms, and the like, but French liberty, equality and fraternity, enlightened skepticism, and Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao all got the bit in their teeth & bolted. Our House Un-American Activities Committee got its start under Roosevelt, before the war, and once war came, even the most open-minded among us clearly saw that all those Americans of Japanese descent just had to be camped up because we just couldn’t trust ‘em, hayna? This kind of stuff has always been going on; I’ve just mentioned a few examples that popped into my head. The beat goes on.
Do you guys have a reset button on your constitution.
It might be labled as “The 2nd amendment”
I don’t know what you would call it up there.
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This is my own personal version of the Mad Mo cartoon. Guess I’ll be getting my hearing soon.
“Ms. McGovern” is that her REAL name or do they give you a new one when you become part of the facist thought police?
*<:(
Can’t decide which one is a better resemblance to the real guy.
I’d have thrown the bitch out on her ear. End of discussion.
Canada opens itself to being taunted as “McCarthyite”.
Ping on free speech death in the West.
Ballets dont fix this kind of a problem only bullets will.
Thank you for the ping 444Flyer.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1947527/posts?page=834#834
http://www.truthusa.com/MoreThanCartoons.html
Thank You. That is the only way it should be.
The good 'ol USA has always been dear to my heart, because:
1) It's one of the greatest countries on the planet.
2) My grand parents were American's.
3) My dad was born in America.
4) My sibling(s) have worked or are still working in America. The has worked sibling was transferred by Nortel from Calgary, AB., Canada to Dallas, TX., USA; the still working is enjoying his twentieth year, along with his American better half, in the health care profession. Both siblings went through the arduous process of gaining their Green Card.
5) I have a gazillion American relatives.
6) I worked for an American that had a company in Canada. (The trade show circuit in the USA was always a blast. Oh, the good old days!)
7) I could go on, but I'll stop here.
You have a great country, but be ever so vigilant not to loose all your freedoms, which, I'm afraid my beloved Canada has.
Cheers. Your are a great American.
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