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.
Today is the anniversary of “George Orwell”’s death, btw.
Modeled closely after communist Chinese "self-criticism sessions."
Public apology and humiliation are very instructive to the other peasants.
Thank YOU for the excellent links! Just a couple days ago that poor fellow in Belarus was sentenced to three years in prison for printing the same cartoon.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1956475/posts
No matter what it is called (PC)or how it is disguised (smiles, moral superiority), appeasement is fear. Fear of fighting evil. Just be nice to it and it will go away. Look what Spain did when the muzzl’ems blew up the train. They kicked out their president and replaced him with a wimp so they wouldn’t have to fight. Just my opinion.
Here's a typical example: After Germany surrendered in May of 1945, a group of German POWs approached the Canadian POW camp commander.
"Sir we need to borrow some rifles and bullets to execute deserters", they said.
"Okay", said the Canadian.
"Oh kind sire, could you lend us an armed escort so the Dutch civilians won't interfere?", they asked.
(The deserters had lived amongst the Dutch until the war was over. Naturally once the Germans were defanged everyone in Holland became a 'resistance fighter' and rounded up German deserters.)
Totally illegal and immoral by both international and Canadian law, but that's Canada ......
The Canada Army was unaware that we (the Allies) had dropped about 140,000,000 leaflets promising safe conduct and return home if soldiers would desert.
Always, there's somebody that don't get the memo.
Thanks for the ping.
You are correct we soon will not be able to remember the meaning of “Free Speech”.
I don’t think your post is true.
My Grandmother and Great-Grandmother were called “dirty Canuck”... what an abhorrent way to refer to a person.. someone you do not know... someone who could be the greatest defender of all the conservative beliefs you may have...
and indeed they both were....
Care to make a small wager?
Okay...send me your terms and then your proof.
There are a number of sites I can send you too, but Google Bruno Dorfer and Reiner(sp?) Beck.
And say a prayer the souls of those men who wouldn't fight for the Nazis?
Gulp...ok...no crackpot sites for your proof though.
“All I have to do to know Canada is weird is to look at their coins. The queen on one side; a beaver on the other.”
- Gallagher, back in his Showtime comedy special days.
Your choice: Just google those names. Or ask the Seaforth Highlanders. They are now a reserve unit of the CDF.
I know what you mean.
I know I was horribly appalled and felt a sense of surreal disbelief the first time I read the words “hate crime” as in a reference to something that could actually be proven and punished.
The grim parallel to Gorge Orwell’s “thought crime” seemed so blatantly obvious that I really couldn’t believe that anyone would take it seriously.
Obviously I was wrong. Very very wrong.
It seems like George was off by a few years, but terrifyingly accurate about what’s in store for the world — and that staffer who put together the Hillary “1984” spoof may have been a prophet as well.
Please , could you document your story?
You’re referring to the German military court that executed the two German deserters, Dorfer and Beck , a week after the war ended ?
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