SteynOnline

For some reason, the Canadian Bar Association is meeting in Dublin. That's Dublin, Ireland. So naturally Jennifer Lynch, QC, Chief Commissar of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, felt she needed to fly out there at taxpayers' expense, and give another one of her speeches complaining that supporters of censorship feel they're being censored. They no longer feel free enough to speak out in support of not letting people speak out:

Jennifer Lynch, head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission since 2007, told the Canadian Bar Association's annual meeting that opponents of rights bodies have successfully created a "chill" that makes it difficult for anyone to defend those bodies without also becoming a target...

She urged them to write "letters to correct misinformation," encourage other experts to participate in the debate and promote public education of the role of rights commissions and tribunals in the justice system.

Actually, I think Ezra's being doing a pretty good job on the "public education" front, don't you?

She said rights bodies have been under attack since 2007 after the Canadian Islamic Congress filed complaints against Rogers Communications over an essay published in Maclean's magazine, a Rogers publication, by conservative commentator Mark Steyn.

That gets to the heart of it. You picked this fight, lady. Not me. And you expected Ken Whyte and Ezra and me just to lie there and take it.

If I were Commissar Lynch's bosses at the Justice Ministry, I think I would recommend a period of public silence. As I wrote in Maclean's the other week:

Oh, dear, what’s the country coming to? Defenders of state censorship are too cowed to speak out in favour of not letting people speak out? You could hardly ask for a better snapshot of the degradation of “human rights” in contemporary Canada than the chief censor whining to a banqueting suite full of government apparatchiks that the ingrate citizenry are insufficiently respectful of them. The bureaucrats at the top table control hundreds of millions of public dollars. Jennifer Lynch represents state power; Ezra and I represent a bunch of impecunious bloggers. Yet the Dominion of Canada has been reduced to complaining that Blazing Cat Fur is out to get it.

Denyse O'Leary understands the difference:

Jennifer Lynch has the power to destroy peoples’ lives and reputations, with the current collusion of government. I do not.

This whining from Queen Jennifer is unbecoming for the government of a G7 country. Look, her dress-up Nazis Dean Steacy and Richard Warman think that being a Canadian "Human Rights" agent is some super-duper 007-type role involving top-secret undercover work on the Internet. That would put Commissar Lynch in the role of M - or C, as Britain's spymaster is known in real life. And M doesn't go around giving speeches every week complaining that spywatch.blogspot.com is chilling 007's martini. If Jenny Lynch sees herself as Judi Dench to Dean Steacy's Daniel Craig, then her name should not even be made available to the public. The Dominion's rightsmistress should simply be known as X or * or some such. It's a small price to pay for protecting Canada's "most vulnerable".

(More from Deborah Gyapong, the Moose & Squirrel and Jesse Ferreras.)  

[UPDATE: Miss Shaidle ups the antes.] 

Your bust-read of the day.

As you know, on Monday the new Jennifer Lynch anti-"Human Rights" Commission T-shirt was launched, with Right Girl's breasts doing most of the heavy lifting. Alas, a deplorable tone of poitriarchal triumphalism set in. And Josephine over at Lumpy, Grumpy And Frumpy is not happy about it, pointing out that her chest was sticking it to the Canadian censors when Right Girl's was still in a training bra:

No one noticed when I posted a photo of my boobs in the sidebar on my little blog.

"Look," Mark Steyn didn't write, "Josephine is wearing a cool t-shirt and her boobs don't obscure the words at all: why, I can read the entire quote by Kathy Shaidle without getting vertigo! I'm going to tell all my friends to buy one!"

Lumpy is taking her lumps. But, actually, that point about readability is well-taken. When we introduced the SteynOnline lady's shirt, it was explained to me at some length what a precise feat of engineering a woman's tee is: You need to align the design and style so that the words or image don't disappear into the cleavage - like the unfortunate naked protest at the G8 in Calgary in 2002 in which everyone dropped their pants to reveal a letter attached to each bottom collectively spelling out BOYCOTT THE GAP. Unfortunately, the A had slipped into the buttock cleavage so it read BOYCOTT THE G P, which we assumed was some sort of protest against Canadian health care, although many Canadians have a hard job finding a GP to boycott in the first place. In Quebec, the GPs are boycotting everybody else.

Anyway, I digress. In this battle of the busts, I have no wish to get between Wendy and Josephine. Actually, come to think of it, I do, but I'm beginning to lose my train of thought here. The point is we have no wish to see the free-speech campaign degenerate into Beyond The Valley Of The T-Shirted Ultra-Vixens, so please feel free to support it via the Lynch shirt, as modeled by Wendy, or the Shaidle shirt, as modeled by Josephine. You'll look good, and you'll be sending some money to the Freedom Five's legal fund.

[SEE UPDATE BELOW]  

My podcasting pal Wendy Sullivan is launching a new T-shirt today, which is a good way for Canadians to support the Dominion's freespeechers while expressing disdain for Jennifer Lynch, QC (Queen Censor), Chief Commissar of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission.

Five bucks from each T-shirt sale goes direct to the legal defense fund for Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle, Kate McMillan, and Mark and Connie at Free Dominion - Canada's Freedom Five currently being sued by Richard Warman, the Dominion's most famous Internet Nazi and the principal beneficiary of its censorship laws. The slogan - "This T-shirt exposes Jennifer Lynch to hatred and contempt" - is an allusion to the very legally imprecise Section 13 under which Commissar Lynch chastises those who catch her eye. My only regret is that it doesn't read "exposes Jennifer Lynch, QC", since, unusually in my experience, the Chief Commissar includes her honorific post-nominal even in her signature.

As you may recall, this all started with a competition over at Blazing Cat Fur, and I believe Alexander of Hollywood is also making some of the runners-up available for the cause. At any rate, it's a good way both to support the cause and flip your finger - or, at any rate, your embonpoint - at Queen Jennifer. Some sensitive souls have suggested we are being too mean to the Commissar. I was not unsympathetic to this line, and until recently inclined to the view of some mutual acquaintances that she was merely a harmless mediocre patronage appointee who had no idea her sinecure would become a hot potato. But then she gave her ridiculous speech in Montreal, with its intentionally false characterization of my letter to The Gazette, after which I concluded she's unfit for public office. Mocking and ridiculing her is the least we can do. So buy a T-shirt, and do your bit for Ezra & Co.

[UPDATE! Now you can get even more T-shirts, and send even more money to the Freedom Five. Alexander of Hollywood has just announced that, for the next week, he will donate five dollars to the Ezra fund not just from the sale of anti-HRC shirts, but from every shirt in the entire Alexander of Hollywood Collection.

So when you buy your Jennifer Lynch tee, check out the other 60-plus items in the Hollywood Loser catalogue - including the highly popular "Keep Calm And Carry On" shirt, now available in both Traditional and Celebrity Supersized versions. And don't forget the exclusive Shaidle Shirts, featuring Kathy's famous line "You're not smart enough to tell me how to live." If you buy any Hollywood Loser item along with your anti-HRC shirt, you'll be sending another fiver winging its way to the cause of freedom.

And, even if you don't want the Jennifer Lynch shirt or any of the runner-up designs and would prefer an entirely unconnected shirt, just mention SteynOnline, Ezra Levant, Five Feet Of Fury, Small Dead Animals or Free Dominion, and Alexander of Hollywood will donate five bucks from the sale of any Hollywood Loser item to the cause of free speech. Simply say you were referred to the store via this site or any of the others above, and the $5 donation will be made.

So get a great shirt and do your bit - all in one easy click.]

B'nai Brith, one half of what Ezra Levant likes to call the Official Jews, has put out a rather curious press release:

TORONTO, August 7, 2009 – B’nai Brith Canada strongly condemns the Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) - Carleton University for following in the footsteps of other anti-Israel entities in abusing Canada’s Human Rights Tribunals and Commissions with another frivolous complaint. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario recently agreed to mediate between the SAIA chapter and Carleton University over events that took place earlier this year, when the University used its good judgment to insist on the removal of an offensive antisemitic poster. The poster, which the SAIA group had put up as advertisement for Israel Apartheid Week, modernized the medieval blood libel accusing the Jews of murdering innocent children.

“The poster that this SAIA chapter put up was an affront and an offense to every person of goodwill,” said Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President of B’nai Brith Canada. “The university was truly justified in using its good judgment to ensure the poster’s removal.

“It is obvious that this maneuver to involve the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is part of a new strategy being employed by those who wish to create a ‘legal chill.’ This new strategy is being propagated by those groups that cross the line from legitimate criticism of a democratic Israel to promoting propaganda against the Jewish State and, by extension, the Jewish people.

“We have recently seen other cases here in Canada which exemplify this new strategy of intimidation through ‘legal chill’: there was an attempt to muzzle Maclean’s magazine, the Western Standard and Ezra Levant were dragged through tribunal hearings, and B’nai Brith Canada, for a period of five years, had to defend itself against a frivolous charge lodged with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission. In all of these cases, the charges were either withdrawn or the defendants won, but only after an enormous cost in terms of dollars and human resources.

“Serious reform is necessary to ensure the viability of our Human Rights Tribunals and Commissions. Canadians who believe in standing up for human rights should really be concerned that these types of frivolous complaints keep wasting valuable resources that could otherwise be spent fighting genuine human rights violations.”

I suppose I should be grateful that at least some of the Official Jews are jumping on the "reform" bandwagon, albeit 30 years too late. However, as Scaramouche observes:

The way it was supposed to work was that Jews would be able to lodge complaints about “Nazis,” but Jew-haters wouldn’t be to be able to gripe about Jews--in other words, censorship for me, not thee. Not in their wildest dreams did the Official Jews ever imagine that the very system they worked so hard to set up and in which they placed so much stock would end up being used against them by their enemies...

Had the O.J.s resolved to toughen up and back free speech instead of state censorship way back when, these “rights” tribunals wouldn’t be fielding such complaints today. The fact that, despite everything that’s happened, the B’nai Brith still believes the system can be tweaked such that the Islamists’ “frivolous” complaints will be ignored while the Jews’ "valid" complaints will be entertained shows how out absurdly of touch with reality--dare one call it a type of derangement?--Frank Dimant and his posse really are.

Exactly right. Aside from anything else, Mr Dimant's objection to anyone else getting in on their racket tends to validate the whines of Islamists and white "supremacists" alike that the "human rights" commissions are a wholly owned subsidiary of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Students Against Israeli Apartheid is a revolting group and its poster is repellent. But, as a matter of law, it's hard to see why SAIA's complaint is any more "frivolous" than those with which B'nai Brith has been involved. I sat a few feet from the B'nai Brith lawyer at the Marc Lemire hearing in Ottawa, the umpteenth stage in a case that's been dragged out for years. Why is that not "legal chill"?

B'nai Brith weren't the first on the bandwagon, and haven't been as zealous in their pursuit of "frivolities" as the Canadian Jewish Congress and Richard Warman. But they were the plaintiffs on what were only the second and third Section 13 complaints way back in 1989 and 1992, when they went to the CHRC over some no-name "Aryan nations" schlubs and "the Manitoba Knights of the Ku Klux Klan", two groups of "white supremacists" so supremacist they couldn't even afford legal representation. In a real court, impoverished defendants would be provided with a lawyer, but not here. In its rejection of procedural protections, Canada's "human rights" system is, by definition, a form of "legal chill", and B'nai Brith and the CJC have used it to wage "lawfare" against people they perceive as their enemies.

Of course, they weren't their enemies - just a bunch of losers who can't afford the fancypants lawyers B'nai Brith and the CJC fielded at the Lemire hearing. Instead, while the OJs were waging "lawfare" against nobodies, a new, pervasive, virulent Judenhass incubated and metastasized and became eminently respectable throughout North American universities, left-liberal media and virtually the entire European political class.

But Frank Dimant is the go-to guy if you think the real problem Jews face is all three penniless members of "the Manitoba Knights of the Ku Klux Klan".