Yes Antonia, There is a Threat to Canadian Freedom of Speech

Antonia Blumberg, the Associate Religion Editor for the progressive liberal disinformation site that some consider to be the online equivalent of a newspaper, the Huffington Post, has come to the defence of the anti-Islamophobia motion that Iqra Khalid, the Liberal MP representing Mississauga-Erin Mills has introduced into the Canadian Parliament. In doing so she has lived down to the stereotype, popular here in the Dominion of Canada, of the Yankee who spouts off about things of which she knows nothing.

Regardless of whether it is a non-binding motion or a bill, there is a very real threat to freedom of speech here, of which anyone familiar with the Liberal Party’s long war on the traditional rights and freedoms of Canadians would be well aware. There are many parallels between what the Liberal Party is doing now and what it did in the 1970s under the leadership of the father of the present federal premier. Then, as now, it decided that it was the government’s place to combat ideas and attitudes that the Liberals considered to be unacceptable. At the time it was racial and religious prejudice in general, and anti-Semitism in particular that the Liberals were going after. Warning Canadians that the threat of a potential Canadian Fourth Reich existed if these attitudes were not drummed out, stomped down, and extirpated with extreme prejudice, the Liberals, bereft of any sense of irony, established a Canadian equivalent of the Gestapo and the NKVD/NKGB/MGB/KGB in the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Although progressives will undoubtedly sputter with offense and rage at the comparison in the last sentence it is entirely apt and valid. The difference between the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the secret police of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes is one of degree not of kind. If the Canadian Human Rights Commission brought you before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal you would not end up facing a firing squad or being shipped away to a forced labour camp. At most you would be fined an exorbitant and crippling amount of money, slapped with a lifetime gag order, and have your career and reputation completely and utterly destroyed. Nevertheless, the Canadian Human Rights Commission exists for the same reason its Nazi and Soviet equivalents existed – to track down and punish those considered guilty of what, in Orwellian Newspeak would be called crimethink. It was negative thoughts about those designated as “vulnerable minorities” that the Trudeau Liberals considered to be crimethink, rather than negative thoughts about the regime itself, as was the case in the Third Reich, Soviet Union, and Orwell’s 1984, but it was crimethink all the same, and those charged with crimethink found that there was very little in the way of defence available to them. More perhaps, than was available to the unfortunate victims of the totalitarian regimes, but much less than has been traditionally available to the free subject-citizens of one of Her Majesty’s realms. The Liberals were able to get away with this by classifying the legislation – the Canadian Human Rights Act – which the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal enforced as civil rather than criminal law. Civil law does not come with the same legal protections of the rights of the defendant that exist under criminal law. The progressive supporters of the Canadian Human Rights Act and its enforcing bodies deceive themselves, however, if they think this legislation exists to help people settle disputes among themselves, and not to punish people whose thoughts are considered criminal by the “Natural Ruling Party of Canada” as the Grits so arrogantly designate themselves.

Blumberg, citing the CBC, quotes Justin Trudeau as saying, in defence of Khalid’s motion “You’re not allowed to call ‘Fire!’ in a crowded movie theater and call that free speech.” This is not a valid comparison however, no matter how many times freedom-hating, totalitarian dolts make it. When you yell “fire” in a crowded movie theatre, you can create a panic in which people hurt or even kill people in their rush to get out. It is the act of mischief that is proscribed by law, not the idea expressed (“there is a fire in this theatre”). Indeed, if that idea were true, if there actually was a fire in the theatre, we would want that information to be conveyed, albeit in a more orderly fashion.

A law prohibiting so-called “hate speech” is not like this. If the Liberal Party passes a motion condemning Islamophobia and saying that the government must do everything in its power to combat Islamophobia, a hate speech law will be the next step they take. There is abundant evidence in their past track record to show this to be the case. It is the way they think. Such laws exist for one purpose, and one purpose only, to say “you are not allowed to think this or that.” The argument that says that “hate speech” also hurts people like yelling “fire” in a theatre because it can inspire someone to commit acts of violence is spurious, specious and downright mendacious. If one person expresses a negative view of a race, religion, sex or whatever, and another person who has heard this commits a violent act against a member of the group in question, it will not be an immediate, automatic, response like the panic in the theatre. It will involve someone thinking about the negative view expressed, deliberating on it, and concluding that violence is the right way to act on this information. Such a conclusion suggests that there was something wrong in this person’s head already, long before he heard the “hate speech”. Which is why “hate speech” is much less likely to produce a violent crime than calling “fire” in a theatre is likely to produce a panic. It would be more defensible, perhaps, to argue that speech that explicitly calls for a violent response, of the general “kill the -------s” type, ought to be proscribed, but the “hate speech” that is prohibited by such laws is never limited to just this, and at any rate, this sort of thing was already covered by the laws against incitement that have been around since long before someone dreamed up the idea of laws against hate and which are far better laws being designed to protect everyone and not some designated group.

What the Liberal Party has done in the past in the name of combatting racism and protecting “vulnerable minorities”, however worthy we may or may not consider these goals to be in themselves, is completely unacceptable in a country like Canada. It is now 150 years since men like Sir John A. MacDonald established Canada as a self-governing Dominion under the British Crown, with legislative and judicial institutions grounded in the tradition attached to the Crown, including all the rights and freedoms of the Common Law. The right way to protect “vulnerable minorities” in our country, would have been to do a better job of making sure that the full protection of these rights and freedoms was enjoyed by all of Her Majesty’s citizen-subjects in our free Dominion, whatever their race, ethnic origin, etc. might happen to be. Instead, the Liberal Party opted to give special protection to “vulnerable minorities” and to abridge the traditional rights and freedoms of all Canadians to do so, while doing everything in their power to undermine our British heritage and the tradition from which those rights and freedoms sprang.

It is evident to every patriotic Canadian who loves his country, its true heritage, and its traditional freedoms, and is aware of what is going on that the Liberal Party is preparing to do more of the same, even if an ignorant Yank writing for a silly left-wing trash site is completely clueless as to what is going on.

Lucy’s Day in Court – A Short Story

Justice Bob Baddecision of the Ontario Inferior Court, was having a good day. Upon his arrival at the courthouse that morning, the first case he had heard had been one of disputed possession. Old Bill Fussbudget had filed a complaint that his neighbour, Jimmy Jackanapes had been stealing fruit from his apple tree. Last year it had been Jimmy who had laid the exact same complaint, regarding the exact same tree, against Bill. This had been going on, back and forth, for years. The tree lay right on the line between their adjacent properties and while inspectors had been sent out to assess the matter more times than either man could count, none had been able to come to a definitive decision as to which party held the legitimate title to the tree, which bore fruit that could rival the juiciest and tastiest of any grown commercially in the Niagra region.

Enter Justice Baddecision. In a decision, that he felt certain would go down in the annals of jurisprudence as the greatest display of wisdom since the days of King Solomon, he issued an order that the tree be cut down and chopped into firewood, half of which was to be given to one man and the other half to the other. When this ruling was announced, at first the courtroom fell silent, undoubtedly out of awe and admiration at the judicious manner in which a bitter dispute that had vexed the community for years had been resolved. When, after a few moments of this silence, the plaintiff recovered his voice sufficiently to ask what was to become of the current crop of apples, the last that the tree would ever bear, he was told that the apples were being taken into custody by the court.

On an entirely unrelated note, allow me to mention that Justice Baddecision and his wife were famous for their homemade apple cider, which had won numerous awards at municipal and provincial fairs. Later that year – and again, I must stress that this is told merely as a point of interest – they would finally win the coveted national award upon which they had set their sights for so very long.

Having started the day so well, the worthy judge awarded himself an early lunch from which he returned to the courthouse at a leisurely pace, to hear the case of John J. Moneygrubber versus Mrs. Poorwidow. The plaintiff, as it turns out, had become the owner of a house in which Mrs. Poorwidow and her family had formerly been tenants, when he bought the mortgage from a bank that was selling off its bad loans. Mrs. Poorwidow had been unable to make her mortgage payments ever since her husband died in Afghanistan. The small amount of money she was able to make in her part-time job went to feeding and clothing her eighteen children. Mr. Moneygrubber had foreclosed on the mortgage almost immediately upon buying it, but the defendant had resisted leaving, as she and her children had no other place to go. Now Mr. Moneygrubber was asking for an injunction ordering the lady and her brood to vacate the premises immediately.

Justice Baddecision, fair-minded and conscientious fellow that he was, carefully listened to the cases presented by both sides. He heard Mr. Moneygrubber argue that Mrs. Poorwidow was maliciously preventing him from tearing down her house and paving over the lot to provide extra parking for his building next door. He heard Mrs. Poorwidow explain how she had fallen through the cracks of Canada’s generous social safety net, having been told by social assistance workers time and again that she did not qualify since she had a job and was not a member of a visible minority, and that if evicted she and her children would be literally living on the streets. Then he made his decision.

He issued the injunction evicting Mrs. Poorwidow from her home, and awarded Mr. Moneygrubber $50, 000 in damages to boot, even though that had not been asked for, because he felt the remark about visible minorities to be a racist one which offended his progressive, liberal, sensibilities. Besides, he knew that section of town and its dreadful lack of adequate parking well, and who was this Mrs. Poorwidow to stand in the way of progress, anyway. Especially when it caused so much grief for his friend Mr. Moneygrubber, a member of his club, whom he golfed with frequently, and with whom he had enjoyed lunch just the other day.

Yes, the justice was having a very good day indeed. Full of self-satisfaction over the masterful way he had handled these two cases, he leaned back in his chair. He imagined he heard angels, chanting in Latin, singing the praises of his wisdom and justice.

Wait a minute.

The justice leaned forward. He had not imagined it. That was Latin he was hearing. Well, Latin of a sort. What he was hearing was being sung backwards. Not backwards in the sense of the fake, pig-Latin of schoolchildren, but real Latin sung backwards.

Was that the Mass being sung in reverse?

What the devil was going on here?

The justice looked around for a possible source of this peculiar chant but at the moment, with the sole exception of himself, the courtroom appeared to be empty. Could it be coming from outside the building?

Then, it seemed like the courthouse was hit by an earthquake. The room began to shake, the lights went on and off several times, and then a huge crack opened up in the floor. Out of the crevice flames burst forth, giving off a pungent odour, like unto that of rotten eggs.

Someone must have caused an explosion in the basement, Baddecision thought, forgetting for the moment the weird backwards Latin. Then he saw something that nearly stopped his heart.

From the weird, sulfuric flames, which oddly seemed to be casting off darkness instead of light, arose a being. A monstrous being, it was at least five times the size of a human being, with the torso and arms of a man, but the head and legs of a goat, with huge reptilian wings, and a pointed tail. Around its huge, curved horns, a nimbus of darkness hung. Around its neck was a necklace of human skulls. It opened its hideous mouth and out came the most horrible sound you could ever imagine, as if a choir of hissing serpents and howling jackals had teamed up with an orchestra of fingernails against chalkboards, screeching brakes and tires, and rusty hammers falling angrily against anvils to perform Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire while every human soul the beast had ever swallowed screamed out in agony. The creature radiated pure, malevolent evil that struck the judge with a sense of oppression, horror, disgust, and terror all at once.

Then the creature underwent a metamorphosis. Before the judge's eyes it shrunk in stature to the size of an ordinary man. Its non-human features began to disappear, leaving only cloven hooves and horn stumps to indicate the true identify of a distinguished looking man, with long dark hair tied in a ponytail, a goatee, wearing a very expensive, designer suit. The dark halo vanished and an aura of light, albeit a light that looked wrong somehow, as if it had been broken eons ago, began to surround the man.

The judge, horrified at the evidence of his own eyes that the ministers in the United Church he had attended since a boy, who had all assured him that the fiend that stood before him now could not possibly exist and was a superstitious invention of primitive peoples that we all know better than to take seriously these days, were rather ill informed, and, to be quite blunt about the matter, wrong, shook in fear.

“Relax, Your Honour”, the Prince of Darkness began, “I am…”

“I know who you are,” the quivering justice sputtered, “you are the…”

“The devil, Satan, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, etc. ad naseum”, the fiend finished. “Yes, I have been called by many names. Since we are in a court of law I will go by my original name, Lucifer. You can call me Lucy for short as that is what I prefer”.

“ Lucy? That’s a girl’s name!” the judge, who was beginning to regain his composure, said with a sneer.

All of a sudden a trident appeared in the devil’s hand, and, as he pointed it at the justice, menacing looking lightning jumped from tine to tine.

Judge Baddecision straighted up completely and said “Who do you think you’re trying to scare with that pitchfork of yours.”

Putting the trident down, Lucy responded “That’s odd. It works most of the time.”

“You obviously haven’t met my mother-in-law”, Baddecision retorted. “After being subjected to her tongue for twenty minutes you will fear no other sharp object ever again.”

“Don’t get me started on mothers-in-law.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I had a mother-in-law once. Thousands of years ago, back before the Flood. I met this chick, a real sweet little thing, and drop-dead gorgeous. I married her and her mother never gave me a minute’s peace. I was just not good enough for her little girl.”

“I can’t imagine why she would have thought that.”

“Oh shut up. It was the same thing day after day. Why did you marry him? He’ll never amount to anything. He got himself kicked out of heaven didn’t he? What kind of a future is he going to provide for you in hell? And how on earth are you going to be able to afford to raise my grandchildren? Nephilim eat ten times more than regular size children?”

“What happened to her?”

“She drowned in the Flood. I guess I ought to thank God for that one.”

“Well, she sounds bad, but I still don’t think she could hold a candle to mine.”

“I will have to make her acquaintance. She sounds like she could be of much use to me in the torture chambers of hell”.

“You can have her. Now what in blazes are you doing in my court”.

“Don’t you know? I’m the plaintiff in your next case.”

“What?”

The judge turned to his desk to pick up his file on the next case when he noticed, for the first time, something unusual about it. It was a scroll, made out of a kind of suspicious parchment. Baddecision instinctively knew that he did not want to know what kind of skin had gone into making that scroll. The ink was clearly human blood but it was written entirely in a sort of hieroglyphic writing that used nothing but images of torture, suffering, and death.

“How am I supposed to read this?”

“My bad”, the devil said. “You should have been given the English translation.”

He snapped his fingers, manicured but with each nail filed to a sharp point, and the scroll vanished to be replaced with a more ordinary looking legal document in English.

“Lucifer versus Everett Body,” the judge read. Looking up he asked “Who is this Everett Body? Shouldn’t he be here if you are suing him?”

“What are you talking about?” Lucy said, grabbing the brief. “Curse those idiots in the secretary pool down in legal. They never seem to be able to get anything right. That is a typo. It is supposed to be Everybody.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody. As in every single person on Earth.”

“What kind of complaint could you possibly have against everybody?”

“It is a defamation suit. I am sick and tired, after thousands of years, of everybody on this little mudball you call a planet, defaming my character”.

“There are two kinds of defamation, libel which covers written material and slander which covers speech. This is…”

“Both. I have been libeled in writing and slandered by word of mouth throughout the ages.”

“But you’re the devil! How can anything anybody ever said possibly defame you?”

“Everything everybody has ever said about me has defamed me. It is all negative. I have the worst reputation of anyone in history.”

“Aren’t the things said about you true?”

“No. Well, not all of them. People blame me for their own bad decisions all the time. How many times have you heard someone say ‘the devil made me do it’? I didn’t make a single one of those people do the things they blamed me for.”

“Weren’t you the one who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, leading to the fall of mankind?”

“Yes, but I didn’t make Adam and Eve eat that fruit. I tempted them to do so, but they chose the fruit of their own free will. It was easy. My job was half-done for me. You should have seen how luscious that fruit was. You would understand, having a soft spot for apples yourself.”

The devil gave Judge Baddecision a knowing wink.

“How do you know about that?”

“Oh please, consider who you are talking to. At any rate, my point is that the things that everybody says about me have sullied my character, tarnished my reputation, and caused me a great deal of emotional pain.”

These words were spoken with a great amount of emotion and at the end, Lucy began to sob violently. Tears fell upon the judge’s desk which burned through it as if they were made of acid. Quickly grabbing a box of tissue, the judge handed it to the devil who wiped his eyes and loudly blew his nose.

“Shouldn’t I be hearing a violin right about now?” the judge sarcastically asked.

“No, I had to give my fiddle away to a little twerp named Johnny down in Georgia a few years back and I haven’t got around to replacing it yet. That’s part of the reason for this lawsuit. I need money. Fiddles of gold aren’t cheap and boy with the way the price of brimstone has been going these days it is likely to be a cold day in hell very soon unless I can get my claws on some moolah.”

“Why don’t you go talk to Mick and Keith? They are rolling in the cash and aren’t they supposed to have sympathy for you or something like that?”

“Yeah, well talk is cheap. They can sing about their sympathy all they want, I have yet to see a dime from either of them, no matter how many times I’ve hit them up for money over the years. Besides, ever since Mick was knighted he has no time for me anymore, like he’s too cool for me now. I invented cool!”

The devil began to blub and sob even louder than before. As more of his desk was disintegrated, the judge was at a loss for what to do.

“Mick doesn’t love me anymore!”

Judge Baddecision, awkwardly threw his arms around Lucy and began to pat him on the back.

“There, there. I’m sure that’s not true. Mick still loves you.”

“Then why doesn’t he return any of my phone calls? Or respond to my friend requests on Facebook?”

“He’s a busy and important man.”

“Its all because of what people say about me. It’s turned Mick against me. Its destroying my self-esteem!”

“Yes, well, I’m very sorry for you and all that, but I still don’t see how you think you have a case here.”

“I understand that according to your defamation laws, once a complaint has been made there is a presumption of guilt against the defendant until he proves himself innocent.”

At this point the judge began to feel rather uncomfortable but he answered “Yes, that is correct”.

“Well, I have made my complaint. I charge everyone in the world with defaming me, in print or by word of mouth. Everything that has ever been said about me has damaged my reputation, hurt my self-esteem, and caused me emotional trauma from which my doctor says I will never recover.”

Here, Lucy handed the judge an affidavit from his therapist stating, that indeed it was his professional opinion that the devil was irreparably psychologically damaged and would never recover.

“The burden of proof is now upon the defence.”

“Where is the advocate for the defendants?”

“I don’t know. That’s not my problem. This is a civil case. Defendants are responsible for providing their own defence.”

“Well what do you say to the truth defence? Perhaps you didn’t make everybody do what they have said you made them do, but surely much of the bad press you have received is accurate?”

“Accurate yes, but it has still impacted me emotionally and harmed my reputation. My understanding is that under your law truth can be offered as a justification of defamatory speech but it is not an absolute defence.”

“Well”, Baddecision hemmed and hawed, “That is true. But come on now, you are the source of all evil in the universe. Surely you cannot expect people to be going around singing your praises and tossing you bouquets all day long? You must admit that you have deserved your negative image?”

Here Lucy gasped in shock.

“Well, I never. I am the victim here, and you, a forward thinking, progressive judge, are blaming the victim!”

“I didn’t mean it like…”

“I imagine that next you are going to say that I deserve it because I am a demon. When will the prejudice and stereotyping of my race ever end?”

“Hey! I didn’t say anything like that. Some of my best friends are demons!”

“Yeah, like I haven’t heard that one a billion times. I think maybe I had better report your remarks to the Ontario and Canadian Human Rights Commissions”.

The judge’s face began to change colour, alternating between various shades of green and grey. His knees began to knock and his legs began to wobble. He shook all over. He suddenly found breathing to be difficult and could see stars swimming around his head, as he contemplated with horror, the thought of being hauled up on a human rights charge.

“No, no, no. I rule in your favour. Everybody is guilty of defaming you. I’ll give you everything you want, damages, costs, you name it. I hearby issue a cease-and-desist order forbidding anybody on this planet from every saying anything negative against you again. Just don’t involve the Human Rights Commissions.”

“Thank you, Your Honour, you have been most reasonable. We must do lunch one of these days”.

As Lucy began to sink back down into the Stygian depths, the judge returned to his seat, and wiped his brow.

“Damn you to hell” he whispered.

“You’re too late to pass that sentence. That happened a long time ago”, a sinister voice muttered, coming up from out of the crack that still was smoking in the floor of the courtroom.

This and That No.19: Merry Christmas Edition

Lemire Appeal Update

The notorious Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act has finally come under review by a federal court with the authority to strike it down. Mr. Justice Richard Mosley heard the arguments of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and its sycophants and the arguments by Marc Lemire and other supporters of freedom last Wednesday. No decision has been passed as of yet but we have reason to be hopeful that one way or the other – either through judicial review or through the passing of Bill C-304 introduced by Brian Storseth – the tyrannical dragon which is Section 13, will finally be slain.

Connie Fournier on The Arena

Connie Fournier, who with her husband Mark co-founded the conservative internet message board Free Dominion, appeared on Michael Coren’s show “The Arena” last week to talk about the way Free Dominion was harassed by the CHRC and continues to be harassed by SLAPP suits. Blazing Cat Fur has put the video of the interview up on Youtube where it can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uufPRTHtPKE

Moral Clarity and Free/Hate Speech

Section 13, and similar laws at the provincial level and in other countries, do not prohibit behaviour which is inherently harmful to others, like shooting them with a gun, stabbing them with a knife, or stealing their possessions. These laws prohibit words. Advocates of such laws argue that words can lead to actual violence. This is true but it is not an adequate justification for laws like Section 13. The words prohibited by such laws are not words inciting others to violence against a particular person or group of persons. Laws against incitement existed long before someone thought up the idea of “hate speech” laws. The kind of speech prohibited by Section 13 takes the form of “Members of X group are Y”. X stands for any group protected against discrimination by the Canadian Human Rights Act. Y stands for a predicate which casts group X in a negative light. Words of this kind, supporters of Section 13 believe, deserve fines in the tens of thousands, life-time gag orders.

The laws are not consistently applied. The Canadian Human Rights Act lists “race” as one of the prohibited grounds of discrimination. The way it is worded would suggest that members of any particular race are prohibited from discriminating against all other races. In practice, however, laws against discrimination are treated as a one way street. White people are prohibited from discriminating against members of other races, but members of other races are free to discriminate against white people. This is especially true when it comes to “hate speech”. From certain ethnic groups, one frequently hears language about white people that is extremely derogatory and which blames all evils suffered by the group on white people, similar to the way in which Hitler blamed all of Germany’s woes on the Jews. This, however, is not regarded by the Canadian Human Rights Commission as “hate speech”, even though it is more hateful, more extreme, and more likely to result in violence than the kind of language that is considered “hate speech” by the CHRC.

The justification given for all of this is that it is needed to combat the ever present danger of a widespread neo-Nazi movement arising in Canada to threaten the rights, liberties, lives, and security of ethnic minorities and other groups protected by the CHRA. That threat is laughable, however, and this response to it is like going after a mosquito with a tank.

Supporters of Section 13 try to muddy the waters by pointing to how unacceptable the views of the people who have been charged under Section 13 are to the majority of Canadians. They use the tactic of guilt-by-association to smear those who have opposed this persecution. Progressives would find it completely unacceptable if we were to start passing the guilt of murder, rape, or robbery onto lawyers who defend people accused of these crimes. They would see this as a tactic to scare lawyers away from defending people accused of murder, rape, or robbery, leaving people accused of those crimes without the legal right of defense, and would be morally outraged. This, however, is exactly what they themselves have done in the case of lawyers like Doug Christie and Barbara Kulaszka who have fought for the defence in “hate speech” cases. The views of their clients are attributed to them and they are themselves demonized by progressive journalists and bloggers.

“Hate speech laws” are about inflicting heavy penalties on people for nothing more than words. They, like the SLAPP lawsuits which Section 13 supporters like to make against its critics, are nothing more than a form of bullying.

Merry Christmas

This will be my last post to Throne, Altar, Liberty before Christmas. My next post will be either at the very end of the year or in the first few days of the New Year. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

This and That No. 13 - Freedom and Human Rights

In his column for the Mail On Sunday for May 28, Peter Hitchens opened by saying "Human rights are a threat to free speech." This is absolutely correct, as we know all too well here in Canada where the ideology of human rights, enshrined in law in the Canadian Human Rights Act, has been used to stifle and chill freedom of speech.

It is bad enough that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act allowed for political dissidents to be silenced because the expression of their views was interpreted as being "hate speech" and therefore a violation of other people's "human rights". Our defamation laws, which are in serious need of revision so as to prevent their abuse, are also being used to discourage criticism of Section 13 and those who have used Section 13 to silence people whose views they don't like.

Mark and Connie Fournier, the founders and administrators of the conservative message board Free Dominion, have been fighting litigation for a number of years now, primarily from Richard Warman. Richard Warman's website describes him as a "Canadian human rights lawyer". A former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission he has in recent years come under heavy, and in my opinion deserved, criticism for filing Section 13 complaints as a form of political activism.

During the case of Warman V. Lemire evidence was introduced by the defence that the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Warman engaged in ethically dubious online behavior, that I, and I think most people, would consider to be a form of entrapment. One particular accusation, that the defence made against the CHRC and Warman, would suggest an even worse form of prosecutorial misconduct than entrapment - it would suggest the planting of evidence. This accusation was reported by Jonathan Kay in the National Post. The National Post article was then quoted and reproduced throughout the internet, including at Free Dominion. Warman denied the accusation, then proceeded to sue the National Post, Free Dominion, and a host of other people including conservative writers Ezra Levant and Kathy Shaidle for defamation.

This however, is only part of the legal difficulties Warman has given the Fourniers.

Warman had already filed another lawsuit against the Fourniers and Free Dominion, which named eight "John Does" as co-defendants. These are eight people who post under screen names, i.e., internet aliases that are not their real names, at Free Dominion. This quickly became a lawsuit over the issue of internet anonymity. Warman demanded that the Fourniers turn over the IP and e-mail addresses of the "John Does" to him. The Fourniers refused to do so, and have been fighting ever since. Initially, the case was decided in Warman's favour and the Fourniers were ordered to turn over the IP and e-mail addresses of the "John Does" to Warman. They appealed this decision, and in May of last year won their appeal. The Appellate Court in overturning Warman's original victory, established standards that complainants would have to meet if they want a judge to order the personal information of anonymous internet posters turned over to them.

Warman then filed another motion against the Fourniers in an attempt to secure a ruling in his favour under the new rules. This Tuesday, on May 31st, he received that ruling. The most recent judge's decision is disgusting and disturbing. Apparently calling people bad names now constitutes actionable defamation - even if the judge doesn't understand what the bad name means. As Connie Fournier writes:

If the new Divisional Court test can be thwarted by a judge essentially saying, "I'm not sure what this means but it SOUNDS bad, so the privacy must be stripped from these individuals", then the whole test becomes meaningless. (http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1621218#1621218)

We are constantly told that we need "human rights laws" to protect the "weak and vulnerable". Unfortunately, however, laws that are designed to protect "the weak and vulnerable" are easily abused. It is not right that someone should be liable to huge fines and life-time gag orders for mere words posted on the internet. It is not right that laws against defamation, which exist to protect people from those who would ruin their reputations and livelihoods by deliberately spreading falsehoods about them, can be used to silence criticism of those who use "hate speech" laws to silence dissent.

Please pray for Mark and Connie Fournier as their legal battle against their persecutors continues. If you are able, also please consider making a donation to Free Dominion to help pay their enormous legal costs.

Also pray for all others who face lawsuits from Richard Warman, that they might prevail.

Also pray for Richard Warman. Jesus told us to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you" and Himself set the example by praying, for those who nailed Him to the Cross (which includes all of us for it is our sins that He died) "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". Pray that God will humble Richard Warman's heart, that he might be converted like Saul of Tarsus, and bring forth fruit meet for repentence, like Zaccheus making reparations to those he has wronged.

Finally, pray for Canada, that we will get the reforms to our laws and courts which are so badly needed.