Yesterday I promised you that I would ship you an excellent and courageous
article, just bristling with anger at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal
throwing its politically correct weight around in the now blessedly "postponed"
Zundelsite hearings - where it was pompously declared that "Truth is
not a defense" and "Truth is irrelevant!"
(This bizarre ruling bears repeating, and it shall be repeated at every opportunity right on the Zundelsite - until it sinks in what this MEANS to freedom-loving Canadians!)
My comments to this Leishman editorial will follow wherever appropriate. Wherever the "Kick Zundel Reflex" shows up, again I shall say "Bless you!" in time-honored Skinnerian fashion in fervent hopes, as I have said before, of diminishing that one blind spot in otherwise perfectly clear-eyed and critically observing journalists . . . )
Here is Rory Leishman, of the Canadian based London Free Press, who took his pen in fist in righteous journalistic wrath and wrote the following on June 15, 1998:
RORY LEISHMAN: Freedom of speech, if it means anything at all, must include freedom to speak the truth. What, though, about us Canadians: do we still have a virtually uninhibited right to speak the truth?
No, we do not. In a ruling on May 25, a three-person Canadian Human Rights Tribunal chaired by Claude Pensa has made clear that upholding the truth in Canada is no longer permissible if the truth is liable to expose a person or group of persons to "hatred or contempt" contrary to the "Canadian Human Rights Act."
INGRID RIMLAND: Mr. Pensa is the Chairman of this particular Tribunal, and he happens to live in London, Ontario where, I am told, he is an upstanding member of the community, enjoying a sterling professional reputation. All the more gutsy of the London Free Press to allow this editorial to be published!
RORY LEISHMAN: Specifically, Section 13(1) of the act bans communications by telephone or over the Internet that express hatred or contempt based on "race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability (or) conviction for which a pardon has been granted."
INGRID RIMLAND: This tactic, to declare the global Internet to be a "telephone" has almost been lost by now in the vastly broadened charge of "anti-semitism" and "hate" supposedly found on the Zundelsite. Remember the mayor of Toronto, Barbara Hall, who started saying "hate" was there, somewhere - but couldn't find it even with a magnifying glass when asked to point to it?
The charge of the Internet to be a "telephone" is paper thin, and everybody knows it. What this tribunal has revealed is plenty of claws to protect special interest groups who self-righteously "feel" demeaned by a challenge to their favorite cash cow, the so-called "Holocaust" - and never mind the truth!
RORY LEISHMAN: The tribunal headed by Pensa is currently hearing a case involving Ernst Zundel, the notorious anti-Semite . . "
INGRID RIMLAND: "Bless you!"
RORY LEISHMAN: ". . . who has been charged with having run afoul of this section by using his site on the Internet to promote anti-Semitic propaganda."
INGRID RIMLAND: It isn't Mr. Zundel's site. It is Ingrid Rimland's site - which is the bone of contention.
RORY LEISHMAN: Zundel's lawyer, Douglas Christie, has undertaken the impossible task of proving that the anti-Semitic comments in the Zundel site are true.
INGRID RIMLAND: That's right, and that task is not impossible unless evidence is disallowed on grounds that "truth is no defense". More than that, Doug Christie has introduced strong evidence that what is found on the Zundelsite ***is backed up*** a hundred times over by other writers, including Jewish writers.
That's where the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, headed by Mr. Pensa, decided to bring in the club, swing it over Freedom and Speech and declare that "Truth is not a defense!" and "Truth is irrelevant!"
Here's how the brilliant argument goes: If Jews say what the Zundelsite claims - it's called an "intra-familial squabble." If a Revisionist like Mr. Zundel says repeats it, it's called "hate" and "anti-semitism."
RORY LEISHMAN: However, Pensa and his tribunal colleagues have prohibited Christie from even attempting such a defence on the grounds that the sole question at issue is whether the content of Zundel's site (sic) serves to bring Jews into hatred or contempt.
"The truth in some absolute sense really plays no role," states the panel. "Rather, it is the social context in which the message is delivered and heard which will determine the effect that the communication will have on the listener. It is not the truth or falsity per se that will evoke the emotion but rather how it is understood by the recipient."
INGRID RIMLAND: Let's say, for the sake of some abstract illustration, that a bunch of Pakistanis are running a drug ring in a motel chain. You cannot say it's Pakistanis - for that would surely hurt their feelings. Let's say a homosexual cabal is advocating pedophelia. You cannot say the gays are advocating it - you would be attacking their "sexual choice". Let's say another Jim Jones, he of the Guayana (sp?) fame, is ripping off the faithful - CHRC will protect him, according to their definition of who and what needs protection.
Let's say the Chosenites have falsely ripped off Germany in so-called :reparations" amounting to billions of dollars by claiming genocidal gassings - you cannot challenge them to come up with the murder weapon. Not hair. Not teeth. Not shoes. Not doctored photographs. Not wailing "survivor's" testimony. The murder weapon! Or, at the very least, an autopsy that PROVES that anybody has been gassed! If you ask them to come up with the murder weapon - why, goodness gracious, then you would put their noses out of joint! Their feelings would be hurt!
RORY LEISHMAN: While few people will waste much sympathy on Zundel . . . "
INGRID RIMLAND: "Bless you!"
RORY LEISHMAN: ". . . all Canadians should ponder the alarming implications of this ruling. In effect, it provides that truth is no longer a defence against an accusation of having expressed contempt for a person by reason of the fact that he or she is a member of any of the groups singled out for protection in the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Such a drastic curtailment of freedom of speech threatens every citizen.
With not even truth available as a defence, how can anyone be sure that he or she will not inadvertently transgress the Canadian Human Rights Act by expressing contempt for Jews or Arabs in the course of a vigorous debate over who is responsible for injustice and violence in the Middle East?
Surely, it might be supposed, the unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech in section 13(1) would never stand up to judicial scrutiny under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, in a 1990 case involving another anti-Semite, John Ross Taylor, former chief justice Brian Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada explicitly stated: "I am of the view that the Charter does not mandate an exception for truthful statements in the context of section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act."
INGRID RIMLAND: The John Ross Taylor case was meant to be a precedent. The Lifestyle Tyrants passing as "nannies" picked out on old, poor, and let's say, a tad intellectually challenged fool who put some silly and offensive racial messages on a hotline telephone. For that stupid act, the old man was sent for a year in the slammer because his message contravened the Canadian hate laws already on the books.
THAT is the basis for the idiotic claim that the global Internet is really just a "telephone" that falls under the jurisdiction of the censor-happy CHR Tribunal headed by Mr. Claude Pensa.
RORY LEISHMAN: Dissent Justice Beverly McLachlin vigorously disagreed. Together with former justices Gerald La Forest and John Sopinka, she admonished in dissent that: "Section 13(1), catches speech which is neither intended nor calculated to foster discrimination. It catches speech which may be entirely accurate and truthful; speech which merely seeks to air legitimate group grievances; speech which merely exposes to ridicule; speech which merely communicates the information by telephone to a single person who has the power to hang up the phone if he or she does not like the message; private speech between consenting participants.
"In short," warned McLachlin, "Section 13(1) seriously overshoots the mark, going beyond what can be defended as a reasonable limit on free speech justified by the need to combat discrimination against members of particular groups."
INGRID RIMLAND: It was Justice McLachlin who wrote the majority opinion that gave Ernst Zundel the freedom to say what he says. This happened on August 27, 1992, and the CHRT would do well to remember it. Because of that ruling, what Mr. Zundel says is perfectly legal in print. It merely becomes "illegal" if it is coded and put on the Internet where people can access it electronically.
How's THAT for paper-thin!
RORY LEISHMAN: There is only one sufficient remedy for this frontal attack on freedom of speech: repeal of the Canadian Human Rights Act. The best safeguard for Canadians against defamatory speech is the time-honored rules of the common law, which prohibit only false statements that bring anyone into hatred or contempt.
Why are our federal and provincial legislators so reluctant to abolish the alien, oppressive and unnecessary human rights codes that have sprung up over the past 30 years? Part of the explanation is the huge political clout of the thousands of lawyers who now make a lucrative living out of advancing, defending and adjudicating cases before human rights tribunals."
INGRID RIMLAND: To wit: The unholy threesome that just claimed, to the disgrace of all of Canada, that in their country, "Truth is not a defense" and "Truth is irrelevant!"
Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail letters@lfpress.com. Thank him for a courageous, manly stand against the professional predators parading in the guise of "Human Rights"!
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"Each dollar paid to the shysters is a dollar subtracted from the people."
(A ZGram reader)