By: Ezra Levant
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Cost: $28.99
Canadians owe a lot to Ezra Levant. He has almost single-handedly exposed the monstrosity that our Human Rights Commissions have become. He has made them a top political issue, at last.
REAL Women was aware of the problems with our Human Rights Commissions twenty years ago, as far back as February 1989 (See REALity, Summer, 1989). This occurred when a panel set up by the federal Human Rights Commission concluded, in all its limited wisdom, that it was only “female stereotyping” that prevented women from serving in combat duty in the Canadian military. This, despite extensive studies by both the U.S. and Canadian Armed Forces that surprise, surprise, indicated that women were different from men, both physiologically (smaller hearts to pump blood and smaller lung capacity), as well as psychologically. These carefully controlled studies were contemptuously dismissed by the human rights panel, in its obvious enthusiasm to further the feminist revolution. In doing so, the commission ignored the serious matter of the consequences to our national security as well as to women combatants.
This incredibly obtuse decision motivated REAL Women to further investigate Canada’s human rights commissions. We exposed the fact that they followed no legal procedures, provided no protection for the accused, who have to pay their own legal expenses (whereas the complainant’s entire costs were covered by the Commission), and were, for the most part, operated by non-lawyers who were representing their own special interest biases.
Over the decades, REAL Women has continuously written about these outrageous tribunals. However, our statements about these tribunals never reached the mainstream media. As a result, these commissions continued to work their mischief, undeterred and undetected. This all changed, however, in 2006 when Syed Soharwardy, head of a small mosque in Calgary, laid a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission against Ezra Levant, the publisher of a magazine called Western Standard (now published on-line). Ezra had published the infamous Danish cartoons which depicted Mohammed in various innocuous situations and which led to numerous organized riots – and even deaths - around the world. Mr. Levant stated that he had published the cartoons, not as a political statement, but rather, as news, believing that his readers would want to see what had caused these riots.
On the basis of Mr. Soharwardy’s complaint, Ezra was ordered to appear, on January 11, 2008, nearly two years after the cartoons were published, before an Alberta human rights officer, Shirlene McGovern. The latter barred the media from the room, but did allow Ezra to videotape the proceedings. That was her big mistake. When asked by Ms McGovern what was the intent of his publishing the cartoons, Ezra vented his views on freedom of speech, starting with a reference to the Magna Carta of 1215 and going right through to the Charter of Rights, 1982.
After the interrogation on January 11, by Ms McGovern, Ezra loaded clips of his interrogation onto the Internet, using the video site YouTube. He thought the clips would get 1000 viewers but, as the days passed, the hit count grew. Within 10 days, 400,000 had watched the videos. Bloggers then got to work. With new Internet technology, Ezra also raised funds to pay for his $100,000 legal fees, caused not only by the human rights complaint against him, but also by b the subsequent defamation suits and law society complaints, placed by both radicals and the human rights industry in order to intimidate him. In short, the Internet saved Ezra and spread information far and wide about the horrendous human rights commissions: this information was eventually covered in the mainstream media. As a result, the human rights commissions have become a hated symbol of government censorship – well deserved.
In short, the politically correct accuser, Soharwardy, and the 15 “human rights” bureaucrats, working on Ezra’s case, became widely perceived as the enemy of free speech, rather than Ezra as a promoter of hatred.
In his book, Ezra also gives examples of other incredible decisions of human rights tribunals across the country. Heretofore, these commissions were able to carry out their absurd mission in secret to intimidate Canadians with politically incorrect thoughts. But thanks to Ezra, these star chambers have been exposed.
As Ezra points out in his book, Human Rights Commissions were established in the 1960’s and 1970’s to assist disadvantaged minorities in areas of employment, accommodations, services (e.g., in a restaurant) and membership in an organization. Seldom today, however, does such discrimination occur. Therefore, the human rights industry has had to branch out to find new work to justify its existence. As a result, it has dressed up any desire, entitlement or grievance as a “human right”: usually the right is being claimed by representatives of politically correct groups in order to further their agenda, but rarely by individual citizens.
The book Shake Down is a must read for anyone who values justice and freedom in Canada.
|
