SteynOnline

Let’s begin with the bizarre conference call convened by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to respond to the worst four months’ publicity in its entire history:

By way of introduction in an interview this week, Ian Fine, senior general counsel and director-general of dispute resolution at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, wanted to read out loud some of the nastiest material his staff have dealt with, to prove the seriousness of their mission.

"Savage commie Jews hate European beauty and nobility," he said, quoting a prominent violator of Canada's most controversial hate speech law, and disabled people are "parasites," "incognizant primates," "genetic throwbacks" and "lesser beasts that must be culled from the herd."

He quoted another to the effect that "a nigger will try to kill you just for a slice of pizza or a piece of chicken ... By Aryan standards, negroes are dangerous animals" and should be presumed guilty of crimes.

Well. Are those e-mails "hateful"? Certainly – although not as hateful as many of the e-mails I and other fellows in the opinion trade wake up to each morning. My friend Michelle Malkin might have expected that her columns would generate a certain amount of “hate mail” but not that so much of it would portray her as a slitty-eyed Filipina hooker adept at various manoeuvres involving ping-pong balls. There’s a lot of rough stuff out there. So the question is: What should the state do about it?

You could criminalize it and get the CHRC to investigate it and prosecute it. But to do so is bound to result in arbitrary justice. The word “nigger”, for example, can be found on hundreds of CDs in any Canadian record store. A feminist abortion provider who suggested that disabled people are “genetic throwbacks” would be doing no more than indulging in a particularly brutal reformulation of the rationale behind much pregnancy testing. The price of criminalizing certain speech and certain attitudes is that we cede to the state the sole legitimate power to mediate public (and much private) discourse. And that, to many of us, would lead to a far uglier society than letting a few losers in basements mouth off on the Internet. Marni Soupcoff addresses that question in The National Post.

But you know, Ezra Levant makes a good point. Even to discuss the question is to accord Ian Fine and his CHRC colleagues more respect than they deserve. Who’s to say either of these Internet posts (or e-mails or whatever they’re supposed to be) actually exist? And, if they do, who’s to say they weren’t written by Dean Steacy or Richard Warman posting as “jadewarr”? What is now known is that the level of “hate” on the hate sites targeted by Steacy, Warman, Fine & Co was felt to be insufficient, so that the CHRC staff themselves took out memberships on Stormfront et al and began posting under their various secret identities. Perhaps we might generously regard this as a cry for help, a sign of the immense psychological strain of being a “hate” investigator in a peaceable kingdom with insufficient hate to go round the vast number of bureaucrats living high off the hate hog.

But Ezra’s correct that, by this stage, when Ian Fine produces an Internet post with the n-word, we should say, “Golly, that’s shocking! Presumably, though, it's just another one of Richard Warman’s critical covert operations – like the one where he calls Senator Anne Cools an n-word c-word?” Incidentally, n-word-wise, Mr Warman’s post on Senator Cools is far more vehemently “hateful” than the one Ian Fine chose to quote. But at this point the onus is on the CHRC’s “director of dispute resolution” to prove that these posts are, unlike the “jadewarr” fantasies of Messrs Steacy & Co, genuine “hate messages”.

Which brings us to the next question, posed by Kate McMillan:

With each new revelation about the personalities and practices of Warman, Steacy and Co., I've started asking myself "What are the odds that the abuse and incompetence are unique to the section 13 thought police branch?"

My best guess was "zero".

Quite. The systemic “abuse and incompetence” are not some weird aberration but entirely foreseeable. The genius of the English legal system is the balance it strikes between judge, jury and prosecutor. The “human rights” racket muddies the distinctions between not just those roles but also those of “victim” and “witness” – to the point where former employee Richard Warman has turned the CHRC into his own personal score-settling police force, filled with bizarre personages no longer employable by real police forces. And he’s doing all this in the name of the Crown.

Which leads to the most obvious question, again from Ezra Levant:

Where the hell is the Justice Minister?

Rehmat, the Ontario engineer shrewd enough to see the whole Zionist-Jewish domination angle in the Human Rights Commission cases, has now widened his lens in his own comment section:

As for Pope Benedict XVI (called “Nazi Pope” by 70 Jewish websites surveyed in 2004) - is Jewish agent planted in Vatican...

Magdi Allam is nothing but a cheap Zionist ploy like Mark Steyn. His conversion was made a big show because he wrote a book praising Zionazi state of Israel.

Most Muslim scholars don’t expect a goodwill coming from Vatican, which is a Zionist Occupied entity.

No doubt. It would be too much to expect the Canadian Jewish Congress to take time out of its hectic schedule of pursuing the last four neo-Nazis in Saskatchewan to make a complaint to the CHRC about Mr Rehmat's Judeophobia. But Khurrum Awan and his fellow Sock Puppets and the Canadian Islamic Congress might like to consider filing a Section 13 complaint on the grounds that this kind of "offensive" material risks making Muslims look ridiculous.

Deborah Gyapong writes today about that old Jew-hater David Ahenakew, his reinstatement by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, and the objection to said reinstatement by Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl.

In a way, the case nicely illustrates the limitations of "hate" prosecution. It would seem unlikely that Mr Ahenakew has changed his views on the perfidiousness of Jews after being dragged through legal hell by them for five years and having been "stripped of everything he had". Au contraire, he's clearly a sympathetic figure not just to himself but to his fellow Saskatchewan Indians. I would figure Saskatchewan Indian chiefs are on balance rather less fond of Jews than they were before this thing started. So if the object of "hate" prosecutions is to eradicate ill feelings towards certain groups I doubt it did its job in this case.

On the other hand, I'm all in favour of social ostracism of Ahenakew. I don't know why the government stuck him in the Order of Canada in the first place, but it seems unlikely that he'll be enjoying any more of the photo ops with the Queen he once took for granted. Yet, aside from that high-level pursing of lips, he's not suffering any other meaningful ostracism among his own community.

By way of comparison, consider a less stellar victim of the anti-"hate" regime and one who lacks the support of one of the Canadian mosaic's preferred identity groups. Stephen Boissoin is the more or less penniless pastor clobbered by the Alberta "Human Rights" Commission for one letter to the newspaper on the subject of homosexuality. Last Sunday, his story was on CBC TV: They interviewed the plaintiff, Darren Lund, but not Mr Boissoin. A couple of weeks before that, The Globe And Mail ran a column by Mr Lund, but rejected one by Mr Boissoin. Before that, The Red Deer Advocate ran a front-page profile of Mr Lund about Mr Boissoin's "hateful" speech, but declined to run a letter by Mr Boissoin.

And so it will go, forever and ever. The thought police have declared him a non-person. For years to come, "human rights" crusaders like Mr Lund will make reference to the importance of "the Boissoin case" and of taking a stand against "Boissoin's hateful speech", but Boissoin the person will have no right of reply, even in the local newspaper, which will have no desire to attract the attentions of Lund and his enforcers.

Go back to the Sock Puppet Three, still fraudulently claiming to be the "complainants" in the cases against Maclean's. They piously insist that they went to the “human rights” enforcers because they were only trying to “start a debate”, and mean old Maclean’s was preventing their voices from being heard. They have repeated this mournful plea in TV appearances on the CBC, CTV, TVO plus in lengthy editorials they’ve written for, at last count, The Globe And Mail, The National Post, The Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, The Calgary Herald, the Montreal Gazette, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, The London Free Press, and no doubt a few other publications. That’s the reality of Canada’s “Islamophobic” media: They’ve been given acres of op-ed real estate to yell at full volume that their voices are being silenced and all they want to do is start a debate – even though, in none of their many columns, do they actually start it.

Mr Boissoin, by contrast, has been entirely silenced. This is the real punishment of the "human rights" racket, and, unlike a regular jail term from a proper court, it's a sentence without end.     

That's how Margot Blight, counsel for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, described it at last Tuesday's hearing whenever the most notorious pseudonymous posting by a CHRCer threatened to raise its ugly head. You can understand why she'd want the Tribunal to steer clear of the subject. The defendant Marc Lemire alleges that on September 5th 2003 the plaintiff Richard Warman, under a pseudonym, posted the following message at Lemire's Freedom Site:

Cools don't belong in our Senate

Not only is Canadian Senator Anne Cools a Negro, she is also an immigrant! And she is also one helluva preachy c*nt. She does NOT belong in my Canada. My Anglo-Germanic people were here before there was a Canada and her kind have jumped in, polluted our race, and forced their bull**** down our throats. Time to go back to when the women n**ger imports knew their place…And that place was NOT in public!

This message was then used as part of the complaint Richard Warman filed with the CHRC against Marc Lemire, at least until Lemire began inquiring into its provenance, at which point the CHRC mysteriously dropped it from the indictment.

Senator Cools, the first black female member of Canada's Upper House, is something of a political eccentricity, a Liberal Party social worker who over the years drifted right on many issues and eventually became a Conservative. She is, though, a fairly peripheral figure to be singled out for the ire of the average Freedom Site poster. So what had she done in the weeks before September 5th 2003 to attract attention? Well, in August she was in the news all but exclusively for her opposition to legalization of same-sex marriage. See, for example, the following stories:

Liberal Senator Against Gay Marriage
(The Edmonton Journal, August 30th 2003)

Mr. Gallaway and Ms. Cools oppose allowing homosexuals to marry and say they believe Canadian sentiment is running their way. "As far as I'm concerned, the opposition to this has just begun," declared Ms. Cools, a former social worker appointed to the Senate in 1984.
(The Ottawa Citizen, August 15th 2003)

Liberal Senator Anne Cools travelled to the tiny community, about 25 kilometres south of Edmonton, on Friday for the start of the rally. A vocal opponent of the proposed legislation, she said the country is in ''a state of shock and uneasiness,'' and wanted to help people voice their own opinions.
(Canadian Press, August 31st 2003)

The cornerstone of Pierre Trudeau's legacy is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which exists precisely to serve as a shield against Parliament's excesses and a battering ram against its complacency. Nonetheless, Cools and Gallaway have asked for a chance to argue their point when the Supreme Court considers the government's bill on gay marriage.
(my colleague Paul Wells in Maclean's, August 25th 2003)

It seems curious that Senator Cools should become a preoccupation of Freedom Site at the very moment when she'd become one of the leading parliamentary opponents of gay marriage. Freedom Site is not exactly renowned as a pro-gay website. But Richard Warman happens to be a member of EGALE (Equality for Gays And Lesbians Everywhere), which supports same-sex marriage, and his former colleagues at the Canadian Human Rights Commission eventually intervened in the Supreme Court reference on the side of gay marriage rights. Meanwhile, as Paul Wells mentions, at the end of August, Senator Cools announced her intention of intervening before the Supreme Court on the question. A few days later, Mr Warman, under his pseudonym, apparently posts a vicious attack on Senator Cools as a "n**ger import" and "preachy c**t".

The justification for current and former CHRC investigators posting "hate messages" on websites they're targeting is that it's sometimes necessary to their investigation. To the rest of us, it looks like entrapment. But does it in fact go beyond mere entrapment to old-fashioned score-settling? One thing that was very clear in Tuesday's hearing was the sheer pettiness of the CHRC gang. When Marc Lemire's complaint was turned down by Dean Steacy (for being on the world's first double-sided fax) and Mr Lemire then had the impertinence to post something about it, Mr Steacy immediately put on his "jadewarr" alias and started posting disinformation at the site. When Free Dominion merely mentioned Mr Steacy this last January, he promptly climbed into his psychological phone booth, changed into his "jadewarr" underwear and logged on to the site. Whatever its high-minded origins, Section 13 seems to have decayed into a crappy little racket for Steacy and Warman to torment whoever crosses them.

So look at the timing. Late August: Anne Cools becomes the most prominent Senate opponent of gay marriage. Early September: Richard Warman files his "hate message". So was Mr Warman, in his role as gay-rights crusader, steamed at Senator Cools for wandering off the Liberal reservation on the issue?

The reader who drew my attention to the chronology reprises Alberta Human Rights Commission Grand Inquisitor Shirlene McGovern's first question to Ezra Levant at the start of his interrogation: "I always ask people... what was your intent and purpose of your article?"

Steacy and Warman would answer that their "intent" was pure and virtous because they're only posting hate messages to entrap the real haters. So they should get a pass. The CHRC's equivalent of 007, they're licensed to hate. Yet in the extraordinarily ugly message about Senator Cools a far more personal animus seems to be in play.