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stephanie
01-15-2008, 04:12 AM
Mark Steyn Is Not Alone
By Brooke M. Goldstein
Published 1/15/2008 1:08:45 AM
Award-winning author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian Human Rights Commissions on vague allegations of "subject[ing] Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt" and being "flagrantly Islamophobic" after Maclean's magazine published an excerpt from his book, America Alone.

The public inquisition of Steyn has triggered outrage among Canadians and Americans who value free speech, but it should not come as a surprise. Steyn's predicament is just the latest salvo in a campaign of legal actions designed to punish and silence the voices of anyone who speaks out against Islamist, Islamic terrorism, or its sources of financing.

The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), which initiated the complaint against Steyn, has previously tried unsuccessfully to sue publications it disagrees with, including Canada's National Post. The not-for-profit organization's president, Mohamed Elmasry, once labeled every adult Jew in Israel a legitimate target for terrorists and is in the habit of accusing his opponents of anti-Islamism -- a charge that is now apparently an actionable claim in Canada. In 2006, after Elmasry publicly accused a spokesman for the Muslim Canadian Congress of being anti-Islamic, the spokesman reportedly resigned amidst fears for his personal safety.

The Islamist movement has two wings -- one violent and one lawful -- which operate apart but often reinforce each other. While the violent arm attempts to silence speech by burning cars when cartoons of Mohammed are published, the lawful arm is maneuvering within Western legal systems.

Islamists with financial means have launched a legal jihad, manipulating democratic court systems to suppress freedom of expression, abolish public discourse critical of Islam, and establish principles of Sharia law. The practice, called "lawfare," is often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning and undertaken as a means to intimidate and bankrupt defendants.

Forum shopping, whereby plaintiffs bring actions in jurisdictions most likely to rule in their favor, has enabled a wave of "libel tourism" that has resulted in foreign judgments against European and now American authors mandating the destruction of American-authored literary material.

At the time of her death in 2006, noted Italian author Oriana Fallaci was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland, and other jurisdictions, by groups dedicated to preventing the dissemination of her work. With its "human rights" commissions, Canada joins the list of countries, including France and the United Kingdom, whose laws are being used to attack the free speech rights and due process protections afforded American citizens.


A MAJOR PLAYER on this front is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a wealthy Egyptian who resides in Saudi Arabia. Mahfouz has sued or threatened to sue more than 30 publishers and authors in British courts, including several Americans, whose written works have linked him to terrorist entities. A notable libel tourist, Mahfouz has taken advantage of the UK's plaintiff-friendly libel laws to restrict the dissemination of written material that draws attention to Saudi-funded terrorism.

Faced with the prospect of protracted and expensive litigation, and regardless of the merit of the works, most authors and publishers targeted have issued apologies and retractions, while some have paid fines and "contributions" to Mahfouz's charities. When Mahfouz threatened Cambridge Press with a lawsuit for publishing Alms for Jihad by American authors Robert Collins and J. Millard Burr, the publisher immediately capitulated, offered a public apology to Mahfouz, pulped the unsold copies of the book, and took it out of print.

Shortly after the publication of Funding Evil in the United States, Mahfouz sued its author, anti-terrorism analyst and director of the American Center for Democracy, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, for alleging financial ties between wealthy Saudis, including Mahfouz, and terrorist entities such as al Qaeda. The allegations against Ehrenfeld were heard by the UK court despite the fact that neither Mahfouz nor Ehrenfeld resides in England and merely because approximately 23 copies of Funding Evil were sold online to UK buyers via Amazon.com.

Unwilling to travel to England or acknowledge the authority of English libel laws over herself and her work, Ehrenfeld lost on default and was ordered to pay heavy fines, apologize, and destroy her books -- all of which she has refused to do. Instead, Ehrenfeld counter-sued Mahfouz in a New York State court seeking to have the foreign judgment declared unenforceable in the United States.

Ironically, Ehrenfeld lost her case against Mahfouz, because the New York court ruled it lacked jurisdiction over the Saudi resident who, the court said, did not have sufficient connections to the state. Shortly afterwards the Association of American Publishers released a statement that criticized the ruling as a blow to intellectual freedom and "a deep disappointment for publishers and other First Amendment advocates."

The litany of American publishers, television stations, authors, journalists, experts, activists, political figures, and citizens targeted for censorship is long and merits brief mention. There is an obvious pattern to these suits that can only be ignored at great peril. And we must expect future litigation along these lines:

* Joe Kaufman, chairman of Americans Against Hate, was served with a temporary restraining order and sued for leading a peaceful and lawful ten person protest against the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) outside an event the group sponsored at a Six Flags theme park in Texas. According to ICNA's website, the group is dedicated to "working for the establishment of Islam in all spheres of life," and to "reforming society at large." The complaint included seven Dallas-area plaintiffs who had never been previously mentioned by Kaufman, nor been present at the theme park. Litigation is ongoing.

* The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) sued Andrew Whitehead, an American activist, for $1.3 million for founding and maintaining the website Anti-CAIR-net.org, on which he lists CAIR as an Islamist organization with ties to terrorist groups. After CAIR refused Whitehead's discovery requests, seemingly afraid of what internal documents the legal process it had initiated would reveal, the lawsuit was dismissed by the court with prejudice.

* CAIR also sued Cass Ballenger for $2 million after the then-U.S. Congressman said in a 2003 interview with the Charlotte Observer that the group was a "fundraising arm for Hezbollah" that he had reported as such to the FBI and CIA. Fortunately, the judge ruled that Ballengers statements were made in the scope of his public duties and were protected speech.

* A Muslim police officer is suing former CIA official and counterterrorism consultant Bruce Tefft and the New York Police Department for workplace harassment merely because Tefft sent emails with relevant news stories about Islamic terrorism to a voluntary list of recipients that included police officers.

read the rest..
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12567

Hugh Lincoln
01-16-2008, 09:28 PM
One leader of all this in Canada is one Richard Warman, a Jewish "human rights" lawyer whose favorite targets are white advocates.

Kathianne
02-18-2008, 06:11 PM
There are enough links to catch the problem, let's let it start with the PBUH cartoons.


http://ezralevant.com/2008/02/shire-network-news.html


Shire Network News
By Ezra Levant on February 18, 2008 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | Trackback

Here's my interview. I mentioned that Shirlene McGovern, the "human rights officer" who interrogated me, has resigned from my case. The human rights commission advised my lawyer that McGovern quit because of the public backlash against the commission -- and against her in particular. In other words, she didn't like being called a censor in the blogosphere.

I'm not sympathetic. I believe that any government bureaucrat who makes a living interrogating citizens about their political beliefs ought to be held in public contempt. McGovern truly doesn't get it -- she thinks what she does for a living is perfectly bland, just like her.

As I wrote in the Globe last month, at my interrogation, McGovern wanted to make small talk and shake my hand. I upset her by not being complicit in my own prosecution.

In the future, I suggest that, if asked at cocktail parties, McGovern tell people she has a less disreputable job -- say, tax collector, or parking ticket issuer.

This is what denormalization means. Human rights commissions are bullies, even if their officer of the day is a spacey, middle-aged drone. Surely McGovern can find a less destructive career elsewhere in government or -- heaven forbid, in the private sector.

UPDATE: Here's the kind of coverage that drove Shirlene to quit.

5stringJeff
02-18-2008, 06:20 PM
If I was Mark Steyn, I'd give the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Islamic Congress a big :fu:

Kathianne
02-18-2008, 06:24 PM
If I was Mark Steyn, I'd give the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Islamic Congress a big :fu:

Yep, for Levant it's already cost him over $100k and his dead tree magazine. All for publishing those cartoons, in Canada. What happened to freedom of speech? Liberty?

Gaffer
02-18-2008, 06:31 PM
He needs to correct them. He's not an islamophob, He's an islamobigot, like me. I don't fear them I despise them.

Kathianne
02-18-2008, 10:51 PM
an earlier post, about the fight:

http://ezralevant.com/2008/01/what-can-be-done.html



What can be done?
By Ezra Levant on January 16, 2008 7:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (54) | Trackback

I'm fighting the human rights commissions from inside the belly of the beast. I appreciate the generous help I have received towards my legal bills. (Thank you.) But what can people do besides help with my case?

I can think of two things:

1. Denormalize the commissions; and

2. Press legislators to act.

The first makes the second possible.

By "denormalizing", I mean bringing the public's perception of these commissions in line with the awful facts about them. Denormalizing the commissions means demonstrating how they disrespect Canadian values, showing how they have become a sword, attacking human rights, rather than a shield protecting them.

These commissions aren't normal. It's not normal to haul publishers before the government to ask them about their political thoughts. It's not normal for a secular state to enforce a radical Muslim fatwa against cartoons. These human rights commissions are counterfeits; they improperly benefit from the reputation of real courts, but they also destroy respect for the whole legal system -- that's just what counterfeit currency does amidst real currency.

Denormalizing the commissions is important, especially since most people have never heard of them, and when they do, they hear three positive words: "human rights commissions". It's sort of like the old Communist countries, like the "German Democratic Republic", which was neither Democratic nor a Republic, but it sounded good. Same thing here.

Denormalizing the commissions is something the blogosphere can be particularly good at, by spreading information widely and inexpensively. I think the reason my YouTube videos were so popular (320,000 views so far) is because they contained information the public has never seen before about how a commission actually works, and it was startling. Of the eight videos I've uploaded so far, the most popular has been the one where Officer McGovern asks me about my intentions -- what Orwell called a "thought crime". We should all be encouraged by the public reaction to these videos. Now let's just change that number from 320,000 people to 3 million or more.

Denormalizing the commissions can best be done by highlighting the two central qualities of the commissions:

1. They erode Canadian values such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and diversity of opinion. I'd call this the substance of the commission -- what they're trying to achieve; their mission or purpose. It's unCanadian.

2. They erode Canadian values such as fairness from a government agency. This is not about the purpose of the commissions; it's how the commissions achieve their purpose. It's the means to the end; their internal procedures and rules. Those are unfair -- they reward nuisance suits, violate normal Canadian rules of procedure and evidence, etc.

Over the past few days, I have posted a great deal of evidence demonstrating both the foul substance and foul procedures of these commissions. Other than the videos, I think the best resource is to actually read the crazy decisions these commissions make. Here is a list of the Alberta decisions. This is where you'll find cases like the restaurant that was fined $4,900 for firing a kitchen manager who had Hepatitis-C. Tour through them -- they are bizarrely inconsistent. To me, the worst decision was the one I mentioned in several of the videos, the Boissoin case. That's the case where panellist Lori Andreachuk ruled that the right of busy-body activists not to be offended trumped a Christian pastor's right to write a letter about his religious views. (It's also the first time I have ever encountered the word "trisexual" -- see paragraph 44.)

Here is a list of the federal decisions. Click on the complaints by alphabet; you'll find that nearly 50% of all complaints under the "hate" section of the federal act are filed by one individual complainant, a former staffer of the human rights commission, Richard Warman.

My YouTube videos, and these primary documents, are a good starting point to illustrate the unCanadian purposes of the commissions, and their unfair processes. A great place to get current commentary on these matters is here.

The goal of denormalization is to build a public demand for change -- to make the commissions unacceptable to Canadians.

That's where legislators come in.

There are human rights commissions in every province and federally, so any legislature in Canada could start making changes. B.C.'s Gordon Campbell should get credit for dismantling that province's commission. The tribunal still exists (that's the panel that hears cases) but the commission (the officers, like Officer McGovern, who go out and hunt for cases) has been disbanded. It's a good start. If I had to guess the governments most open-minded to change, I'd list B.C., Saskatchewan and the federal government.

B.C. has already done something bold by eliminating the commission, and B.C.'s civil liberties association -- true libertarians, not leftist censors like the U.S. ACLU -- is the most principled in the country. Saskatchewan would probably be next; they just elected a new, freedom-oriented provincial government, and their commission has made some appalling decisions recently that have hurt their reputation (call it self-denormalization). Finally, the federal Conservatives despise the commissions -- Stephen Harper himself called them totalitarian, before he was Prime Minister -- and they might be open to whatever changes are possible, given their minority government. (Here's a good barometer of the cabinet's feelings on the commissions' recent adventures in censorship.)

I'd list the following items on a legislator's to-do list, starting with the easiest, moving to the hardest to achieve:

....