Deeper and deeper into the doodoo - that is the direction in which the Canadian hate "equity industry" called "Human Rights Commission" is heading!
Rejoice in the newest, my friends!
Soon the Toronto Star - known as the "Red Star" in Canadian patriot circles - may be quaking in its boots and having to fight for its freedom of speech. This is a ***major*** story!
In an incisive and brave editorial in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen, titled "No truth in Pravda" we read the following:
OC: Forget 1984. The threat to liberty in 1998 isn't, as in George Orwell's classic, the sudden kick of a jackboot. The threat is the quiet but steady theft of private and independent decision-making by bureaucrats.
For instance, the Ontario Human Rights Commission has quietly decided that it gets to control what gets printed on the pages of Canada's newspapers. The OHRC, naturally, would never phrase it that way -- as Orwell also noted, manipulation of language is a key component of the attack on liberty -- but it's the outcome of a complaint that has dogged the Toronto Star for several years.
Ingrid: Now - had we only known! And here we thought that the Toronto Star was happily sitting on the fence as a silent spectator, watching the Human Rights attempt to shut up Mr. Zundel but never once showing up in the courtroom or commenting on the grotesque hearings ***after*** these hearings officially got underway!
To my knowledge, the Star never reported on the Zundel-Internet related controversy. Odd for an electronic communications dependent outlet - all the while claiming for itself the principle of Freedom of Speech! (They did show up while I was there at the preliminaries!) This puts a brand new spin on what is going to be happening in the attempted Zundelsite cyber stake-out - equivalent to what we fondly call the "electronic shoot-out at the Zundelsite OK Corral."
OC: In 1995, the president of the Canadian Polish Congress, Hannah Sokoloski, sought to have a correction and three letters to the editor published by the Star after that newspaper ran a feature story about the Holocaust. The Star refused. So Ms. Sokoloski complained to the Ontario Press Council, a voluntary association of newspapers that reviews concerns about its members. The Council followed its ordinary procedures and decided against formally hearing Ms. Sokoloski's complaint. There is no appeal procedure from that determination.
Ms. Sokoloski then turned to the OHRC. She complained that both the Press Council and the Star refused her requests because of racist animosity toward Polish-Canadians. This, she claimed, violated the Ontario Human Rights Code by denying Polish-Canadians equal access to a "service."
Ingrid: Brand new word - and useful for the Human Rights aka Hate Industry to muscle in!
OC: It was a novel view of "service" - though the Star, having long argued that private establishments like restaurants are "public" when it comes to smoking, should not be surprised to find itself declared one too. The OHRC certainly loves a novel view, so it decided that both of letters to the editor and a hearing before the Press Council were "services," so it will now formally hear the complaint.
Ingrid: A Hallelujah is called for here. Maybe we will now net ourselves (no pun intended here) a brand new ally - the mighty Star itself in the hot seat before the Grand Inquisitors. :)
And over the Holocaust yet - albeit it one of the "lesser ones", as the Jewish Holocaust Promotion Lobby never fails to stress, always eager to reserve for itself top "Holocaust" billing as Numero Uno spot on the Victimhood List.
OC: The OHRC is trying hard to minimize the fact that it has given itself jurisdiction over which letters a newspaper prints and who a voluntary association chooses to listen to. It points to a subsection of the Human Rights Code that protects the free expression of opinion and says that the Star will likely be able to make a successful defence before the OHRC.
Ingrid: Now this is highly useful to know. So there exists right in the Human Rights Code, at least in the Ontario provincial version, a protection for free expression of opinion? Is that not what Ernst Zundel has claimed all along? Does he not live and work in Toronto, the capital of Ontario?
OC: But the availability of a defence, even if it succeeds, doesn't change the principle involved: The OHRC has claimed legal authority to scrutinize what goes on the letters page of a newspaper and to judge the procedure used by a private, voluntary association to hear complaints. Two Rubicons have been crossed.
Ingrid: Make that three - and trumpets to the sky! Count in the US based website called the Zundelsite where no Canadian Human Right busybodies, be they provincial or federal, have any business whatsoever sticking in their noses.
OC: It's not hard to see how this jurisdictional precedent could expand. If publishing letters to the editor is a service, surely news coverage of events is too. That could put an enormous range of editorial decisions under the OHRC's microscope. If a newspaper covers a Shriners parade but not a Gay Pride parade, is its service discriminatory toward gays? Will the OHRC call the editors on the carpet, demand that they explain their decision -- and order them to cover certain events, and favourably, on pain of fines or jail?
Ingrid: Well, hasn't that already happened? The Star has never given a hoot when the rights of people like Malcolm Ross, Jim Keegstra, Paul Fromm or Ernst Zundel were trampled on. After all, they were people who could be called names with impunity!
OC: Even if the "free expression of opinion" provision acts as a defence -- and it may not since news coverage may not be "opinion" -- the precedent is set: The OHRC has power over some newspaper content. And precedents are tricky things. Where they lead, what future decisions they influence, is anyone's guess.
Ingrid: I couldn't have said it better myself. How about a decision we anticipate by a CHRT ruling that will restrict the rights and freedoms of 30 million Canadians to read what people will be posting on the Net? The Zundelsite precedent is serious!
But keep on reading. Now it gets ***really interesting***:
OC: Appalling as this decision may be, it's not surprising. For three decades, the equity industry has used self-interested interpretation and public apathy to extend its reach, inch by inch, precedent by precedent.
Ingrid: A public apathy in Toronto and Ontario largely ***created*** by the Toronto Star's complicity in not alerting the public to bureaucratic outrage after outrage - such as the "truth is no defense!" outrage - committed by these selfsame bodies and so-called "human rights activists" who are, in fact, agenda-driven toadies subservient to a protected group's self-interest.
OC: In 1995, the OHRC decided that "service" included the proclamation by mayors of days of honour. So the refusal of Mayor Dianne Haskett of London, Ontario, to proclaim a Gay Pride Week when asked, netted her and her council a $10,000 fine and an order to make a "statement of recognition" honouring the "gay, lesbian and bisexual communities."
Ingrid: Why didn't the Toronto Star ring the alarm bells in its columns or editorials, when these outrages took place? Why doesn't it do an expose on how much the Zundelsite struggle is costing Ernst Zundel? Why doesn't it investigate why a judicial review is long overdue and being stone-walled by the Death Cult Lobby lawyers, at taxpayers' expense?
OC: The OHRC is now considering whether advertising in a newspaper is a service, thus falling within its purview and allowing it to ban ads. Let us boldly predict that the OHRC will indeed decide it is a service.
Ingrid: The Toronto Star has for years had a stringent policy of suppressing paid ads for dissidents such as Paul Fromm and Ernst Zundel. The chickens coming home to roost?
OC: Nor is the aggressive expansion of human rights law limited to elastic definitions of "service". The OHRC has used the Human Rights Code's ban on discriminatory hiring practices to demand that the Toronto Fire Department discriminate against white male applicants by preferentially hiring minorities and women -- all in the name of "equal opportunity."
Ingrid: Does not the Red Star sound like David Duke?
OC: It has also campaigned against landlords' "30-per-cent rule:" If the rent is more than 30 per cent of a prospective tenant's income, he can't afford it. The Human Rights Code does not, despite the fondest wishes of activists, ban discrimination on the basis of poverty. The OHRC has done a neat end-run around this limitation by complaining that the rule disproportionately affects the young, women and immigrants -- and discrimination on these bases is prohibited. The OHRC has set up a board of inquiry, which is expected to rule this year. A positive result should lead to the next logical target: Banks that demand collateral for loans.
Ingrid: The sky is the limit - verdad? Who will be the next victim? Your guess is as good as my guess. I say: The more victims these "human rights" Torquemadas will go after, the better it will be for us. The sooner those who fund political parties - let's say, big corporations such as banks - will have their oxen gored, the sooner the plug will be pulled on those parasitic persecutors in non-elected positions of power.
OC: These, and many other similar cases, follow a pattern. Human rights laws are twisted and extended in ways their drafters could never have imagined, let alone intended. Private, personal and professional discretion shrinks, replaced by the fiats of activists-turned-bureaucrats. It never shrinks, it only grows. And it happens without public mandate, public debate or public awareness.
This is how liberty is lost in 1998. There is no Big Brother, only many big bureaucrats. So enjoy a free press while you still can.
Ingrid: Could have come straight out of a Zundelsite press release! I suggest that one fine way to enjoy that last bit of fresh air before the "free press" is a memory in Canada would be to cover the Zundelsite Kangaroo Kourt in a professional manner. The Torquemadas will reconvene November 9, 1998 - right under the Toronto Star's nose. In case the Star has missed it, there is a man in Canada who bravely and courageously has led the fight for freedom of expression - against the greatest of all odds. And paid for it himself.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"Think of (Holocaust) revisionism this way: A stone named The Leuchter Report struck and cracked the windshield of a vehicle belonging to Holocaust Inc. The windshield remained intact, while radiating out from the dent are scores of tiny, hairline cracks networking every which way. One day, a strong gust of wind will cause it to cave in--leaving the blinded, disoriented driver to crash
his vehicle."
(Letter to the Zundelsite)