WAR OF PERCEPTION

Canadian hate speech law unconstitutional: rights tribunal

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on Wednesday ruled that Section 13, Canada's much maligned human rights hate speech law, violates the Charter right to free expression because it carries the threat of punitive fines.

The shocking decision by Tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis leaves several hate speech cases in limbo, and appears to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its controversial legal mandate to pursue hate on the Internet, which it has strenuously defended against complaints of censorship.

It also marks the first major failure of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone hotlines, then expanded in 2001 to the include the entire Internet, and for the last decade used almost exclusively by one complainant, activist Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman.

Mr. Warman's first big loss is a victory for the respondent Marc Lemire, webmaster of freeedomsite.org and a prominent figure in the Canadian far right.

Typically for the messy state of Canada's perennial hate speech debate, public reaction to the ruling yesterday was polarized, running the spectrum from glowing praise for the "bold" Mr. Hadjis, to criticism that his "outrageous" conclusion is "vulnerable on judicial review."

All sides seem to agree, however, that the stage is set for pitched battle in federal court, where CHRT rulings can be appealed. Another less likely outcome is for Parliament itself to repeal or amend Section 13, a law that even supporters say needs updating in the age of the Internet.

Neither the CHRC nor Mr. Warman would comment.

"No matter what happens, this decision is going to federal court," Mr. Lemire said. "This is the beginning of the end for Section 13 now. This law is 32 years old. Not a single person has ever won until today. But did I really win? I have given up six years of my life. The process is the punishment."

Mr. Warman, a former investigator for the CHRC, brought a complaint against Mr. Lemire in 2003, after monitoring his website for almost a year. He alleged that postings on the discussion forum, mostly written by others, contravened Section 13 in that they were "likely to expose" identifiable groups to "hatred or contempt." Mr. Warman later urged the CHRC investigators to expand their investigation to other websites he believed Mr. Lemire was involved with, but to "hold off on informing" Mr. Lemire "until the police take a good look at it." No criminal charges were ever filed.

In all but one case, Mr. Hadjis decided that these postings either did not contravene Section 13(1), or that Mr. Lemire cannot be held responsible for what others posted on his website.

Mr. Hadjis found Mr. Lemire violated the law in one case, by posting an article called "AIDS Secrets", written by an American neo-Nazi, which Mr. Hadjis found was "rife with hyperbole and moral condemnation. Homosexuals, and Blacks to a lesser extent, are denigrated as purveyors of a "killer" that is on the loose, agonizingly destroying the lives of American children and adults alike."

Even with this finding, however, Mr. Hadjis declined to make any order against Mr. Lemire. As a statutory tribunal, Mr. Hadjis does not have the legal authority to officially declare a law unconstitutional. But if he finds it would be unconstitutional to enforce it, he can do as he has done, which is to "simply refuse to apply these provisions."

Part of his motivation was that virtually all the offending material was removed either before or shortly after Mr. Lemire received word of the complaint against him.

"Mr. Lemire had not only "amended" his conduct by removing the impugned material, but sought conciliation and mediation as soon as he learned of the complaint against him," Mr. Hadjis wrote. "The problem had thus already been eliminated, yet the complaint continued to be processed."

Section 13(1) remains valid Canadian law, despite this ruling. Its constitutionality was last upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in a 1990 split decision, before the Internet age.

That decision, about neo-Nazi John Ross Taylor, upheld the law as a justifiable limit on free expression largely because of its remedial, non-punitive purpose. But Mr. Hadjis found that that, today, the law "has become more penal in nature," and this renders it an unjustifiable limit on freedom of expression.

Ever since a 1998 amendment to allow the Tribunal to levy fines up to $10,000 -- payable to the government -- the pursuit of Section 13(1) cases "can no longer be considered exclusively remedial, preventative and conciliatory in nature," he wrote.

He cited Mr. Warman's request for a $7500 penalty against Mr. Lemire. Mr. Warman has won over a dozen other Section 13(1) cases, many leading to similar fines, payments to himself, and legal restrictions on Internet activity.

This criticism about a punitive law masquerading as a remedial one echoes that of Richard Moon, a law professor hired by the CHRC last year to provide an expert analysis of their online hate speech mandate. In essence, his advice was that it could not be done fairly, and so should not be done at all.

Prof. Moon said Wednesday's decision is "obviously a significant moment in the history of Section 13, but it seems like it is in some important sense inconclusive."

He said the ruling has no weight as legal precedent, and could theoretically be ignored by future tribunals, but in practice it is impossible to ignore, and it hints at a fundamental problem with the law.

"As soon as the Supreme Court confirmed that the scope of Section 13 was narrow, and confined to extremely hateful messages, then it was highly unlikely that we were going to have a kind of regular human rights process that involves conciliation between the parties," he said. "That was always something that we could have foreseen."

"We still believe Section 13 is constitutional. There seems to be some major difference of opinion within the Tribunal itself," said Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, referring to previous constitutional challenges of Section 13 that went the other way.

Marvin Kurz, legal counsel to B'nai Brith, which was an intervenor in this case along with the CJC and others, echoed Mr. Farber's question about why Mr. Hadjis did not simply "read out" the penalty section -- that is, ignore it, but allow the actual hate speech section to stand.

"Not only did he not do it, but he failed to explain why he did not consider the alternative," Mr. Kurz said. "It's like if the police act wrongly in a criminal case, you don't throw out the criminal law. That's what he's done here, and that doesn't make sense to me."

Ezra Levant, a blogger who has led the campaign against human rights hate speech law, said the ruling "shows that the CHRC has been acting illegally for many years," and it forces the Conservative government to make a "new kind of decision" about whether to appeal.

"If they launch an appeal, they are casting their lot with the censors," he said.

Pearl Eliadis, a human rights lawyer and a defender of Section 13, played down the importance of the ruling, and said Mr. Hadjis "just got it wrong. With respect, it's constitutionally not within the normal way that these provisions are dealt with." She said he should have simply ignored the offending penalty section and upheld the law.

Bruce Ryder, a constitutional law professor at York University, said Mr. Hadjis was correct to find that the penalty provision "exacerbated the chilling effect" on freedom of expression. But he said Mr. Hadjis' reasoning "broke down at the end," and he should have simply rejected the penalty provision.

He also wondered how Mr. Lemire was acquitted over the posting of an article that explicitly denied the Holocaust, which he called "outrageous and inconsistent with jurisprudence," and makes the entire ruling "vulnerable on judicial review."

Mark Steyn, a conservative author who was the target of a prominent hate speech complaint over his writing in Maclean's, said Mr. Hadjis' realized "that there is no future for Section 13 because of the damage done to it by the dress-up Nazis of the CHRC and and the sordid racket of Richard Warman."

"It makes explicit that section 13 has no friends," he said.

Joseph Brean / National Post

Google Makes Bid To Become World's Librarian

The proposed settlement between Google and US publishers must be resisted, argues Bill Thompson

Google is in the middle of a massive project to scan and digitise every book it can get its hands on, whether old or new, and if it gets its way then the US courts will soon endorse an agreement between the search engine giant and the US book industry that will allow it to do this without fear of prosecution for copyright infringement.

Authors and publishers will get some money in return, and we will all benefit from the improved access to digitised books that Google will provide.

The deal sounds like a good one, but not everyone is happy with it. The Department of Justice in the US has begun an investigation to see if it is anti-competitive, and last month a number of library associations got together with Amazon, Yahoo! and Microsoft to form the Open Book Alliance which argues that it should not go forward.

The details of the settlement are complex, and it is almost impossible to be sure what would emerge from it because many of the provisions involve setting up things like a Book Rights Registry, and we don't yet know what they will look like.

World's librarian

But whatever the detail there remains a fundamental problem. It is not that the settlement will give Google indemnity from prosecution should it be found to have scanned books that are in copyright without the copyright owner's position, nor even that it gives Google freedom to exploit scanned content commercially.

It is, rather, that the settlement gives only Google these privileges, and places one company in a prime position to become the world's de facto librarian instead of encouraging open access, open standards and a plurality of services and service providers.

Neither Google nor any other company should be entrusted with that responsibility, and nothing in the detail of the agreement or the funds that will be made available to authors as a consequence can change this.

If Google is given a monopoly, either explicitly in the settlement or implicitly because any other scanning project would be forced to negotiate its own multi-million dollar agreement, then the deal must be rejected.

The proposed settlement came about after Google began a project to scan and index millions of books, including many that are still in copyright.

It was sued by groups representing authors and publishers who felt that scanning books, even if the text was only used to create a searchable index which then pointed readers to the relevant text, was an unlicensed use and therefore illegal.

The book trade was also worried that Google might scan the books under the pretext of creating an index and then start offering them online or even selling them, even though it was always absolutely clear that such behaviour would be a breach of copyright.

Instead of fighting the case through the US courts and winning a great victory for those of us who believe that three hundred year-old notions of copyright should not be used arbitrarily to limit new ways of making use of creative works, Google announced in October 2008 that it had reached a settlement with the US Authors' Guild and the Association of American Publishers that would allow it to continue scanning with permission.

At the moment the settlement hangs in the balance, waiting for what is quaintly termed a 'fairness hearing' in US District Court on October 7.

At this hearing of the questions raised since the settlement was announced will be debated, including the question of how the relatively small Authors Guild came to speak for all published writers in the US, living and dead, in negotiating with Google.

One of the arguments being made in favour of Google, most clearly by US industry analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, is that Google deserves to benefit from having taken the risk of digitising books when the project's legal status was uncertain and that Google, unlike Microsoft and Yahoo!, has invested millions of dollars in the project and is committed to pushing forward.

Microsoft did indeed abandon its own book scanning project, Live Search Books, in 2008, largely on cost grounds but also because the legal uncertainties clearly exposed the company to potential liability in what was never a core area of its activity.

Tribal lands

But Lindsay's view seems hard to accept. Pretending that the world's libraries are some unexplored continent to be opened up and claimed by the adventurers from Mountain View may appeal to the frontier mentality of US commentators, but it is not a metaphor likely to have much appeal elsewhere.

For one thing the bookshelves of the worlds are already inhabited, just like the territory of the United States, and those of us who remember the fate of the Native Americans may not be happy to see Google build its railroad tracks over our tribal lands.

Even without the dodgy analogy, the project of digitising the information held in the world's printed books is too important to be dealt with purely as a commercial venture between rights holders and a potential supplier of services.

We are at an inflection point in world history, and the transition we are making from analogue to digital is happening so quickly and offers so many delights that there is a temptation to let the past moulder in archive boxes and concentrate solely on the new and digital.

For those who take that view then letting Google pay to digitise books is an uncontroversial decision, one that can deliver more digital stuff to search through without apparently costing anything.

George Santayana wrote 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it', but it may also be true that those who do not care to digitise their own past will end up paying a high price to regain what they give up so thoughtlessly.

If we let Google have its settlement we will all be the poorer. Not for a while, perhaps, but one day we will need more from this new library of Alexandria than Google is willing to offer, and find that the price it demands is more than we can pay.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

Eric Hufschmid: A Deceiver Exposed

 

Eric Hufschmid is a member of the Jewish criminal network that he claims to expose.

Most of his information is accurate but if you examine it closely it seems to be mixed with lies.

His main purpose seems to be to cause arguments and mistrust among people who are critically examining the Jewish problem as a whole or various aspects of it. His claim that 99.5% of “truthseekers” are actually “zionists agents” is a deception coming from a man who is working for the Jews himself. He may even be a Jew. Although I have no solid evidence that Hufschmid is a Jew, I see no reason not to slander him in the way that He has slandered so man others. Perhaps he is a Jew and perhaps he is not but he is definitely working for Jews.

Ernst Zundel

Ernst Zundel is one of many people who Eric Hufschmid has accused of being “Zionist agents.”

Ernst Zundel, a towering figure in the worldwide Holocaust revisionist movement, was born in 1939 in a small town in the Black Forest region of southwestern Germany. He emigrated to Canada at the age of 19, where he soon married and became the father of two sons. Years later setting aside a thriving graphic artist career, he resolved to dedicate himself to the great task, as he sees it, of redeeming the sullied reputation of his fellow Germans. Through his Samisdat publishing house he distributed worldwide a prodigious quantity of books, booklets, leaflets, newsletters, & audio & video cassettes. Zundel is probably best known for his central role in the “Holocaust Trials” of 1985 & 1988.

He was brought to court in Toronto on a charge of “publishing false news,” and specifically for publishing a reprint edition of a booklet entitled Did Six Million Really Die? Zundel’s two lengthy trials — the 1985 trial lasted two months, and the 1988 trial lasted four months — have been the closest thing anywhere to full scale debates on the Holocaust issue. For the first time ever, “Holocaust survivors” and Holocaust historians were closely and critically questioned under oath about their claims and views. As a result of the two trials, an enormous quantity of compelling evidence refuting the Holocaust extermination story was presented to the court and thereby was made part of the permanent public record. The most important of this evidence was the historic testimony of American gas chamber expert Fred Leuchter about his on-site forensic examination of the alleged extermination gas chambers in Poland. Zundel was found guilty in the 1985 trial, but the verdict was set aside by the provincial appeals court. It ruled that the judge in that trial had, among other things, given improper instructions to the jury, and had improperly excluded defense evidence. In May 1988, at the conclusion of the second Zundel trial, the jury declared him guilty. A few days later, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment. On appeal, Canada’s Supreme Court threw out the conviction, declaring on August 27, 1992, that the archaic “false news” law under which he had been convicted was a violation of the country’s Charter of Rights. This was not only a personal vindication by Canada’s highest court, but also Ernst Zundel had secured an important victory for the rights of all Canadians. After four decades in Canada, including a failed or denied effort to acquire Canadian citizenship, he moved to the United States, where he married Ingrid Rimland in January 2000. For 2 years they lived quietly in eastern Tennessee. Ernst Zundel was then arrested on February 5, 2003, at his home in Tennessee.

He was seized on the pretext that he had missed an interview date with US immigration authorities, even though he had entered the US legally, was married to a US citizen, had no criminal record, and was acting diligently, and in full accord with the law, to secure status as a permanent legal resident. After being held for two weeks, he was deported to Canada. For two years — from mid-February 2003 to March 2005 — he was held in solitary confinement as a supposed threat to “national security.” On March 1, 2005, Zundel was deported to Germany, where he languished in Mannheim prison. He was finally charged with inciting “hatred” by having written or distributed texts that “approve, deny or play down” genocidal actions carried out by Germany’s wartime regime, and which “denigrate the memory of the [Jewish] dead.”

The first and foremost of the writings cited in the indictment are texts posted on the “Zundelsite” web-site, which is registered and maintained by his wife in the United States, where all such writings are entirely legal. Zundel’s trial in Germany began on November 8 2005. Fifteen months later, 67 year old Ernst Zundel was then found guilty and sentenced to 5 years in prison on Monday February 19th, 2007. The Canadian Jewish Congress applauded the conviction & sentence as did many Zionist groups around the world. Germany’s imprisonment of this dissident is a disgrace.

Do you believe that Mr. Zundel is a “Zionist agent.” I don’t.

News From The West

RFK Jr.: Hog farmers worse than bin Laden

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he thinks hog farmers are a greater threat to Americans than Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Kennedy, son of the slain Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is an environmental law attorney who was testifying before a House Judiciary subcommittee when Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, asked him whether a quotation attributed to him in 2002 about hog farmers representing a greater threat than the leader of al Qaeda was accurate.

"I don't know if that [quotation] is accurate, but I believe it and I support it," said Mr. Kennedy, who has been involved in a vigorous legal effort against the meat industry for years, arguing that manure and other products associated with large livestock producers emit toxic wastes that threaten the environment.

Mr. Kennedy also has said that a single hog consignment can put out more pollution than a city of a million people.

He has also said that every public official in North Carolina has been corrupted by the pork industry. He cited as evidence an editorial in a Raleigh newspaper, although he also said there may be some exceptions.

Mr. Kennedy pleaded guilty to possession of heroin in 1984 and was sentenced to 800 hours of community service. He fulfilled that sentence by doing volunteer work for an environmental foundation and later became a vociferous critic of the meat industry and large meat producers.

Mr. Kennedy has said that he plans to go after all large farms in the country, not just pork producers. He has also said that the "right" lawsuit against livestock producers can bring damage awards of up to $13 billion.

By Ralph Z. Hallow / Washington Times

Is Your Mouth A Little Weak?

By Patrick Grimm

'Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?'

(My Funny Valentine / Rogers and Hart)

We have no free speech in any meaningful sense. Any academic can boast of the fact that he is a Marxist/Leninist or a Communist ideologue. But let one professor claim himself a National Socialist or an adherent to an ideology of nationalism in any meaningful sense, and he will be driven into oblivion.

The Communist Left controls the institutions, the government and the think tanks. This is due to the Jewish onslaught. The radical Jews, along with their minions in the socialist media now grip America by the hairs of her collective head. Any nationalism, and for that matter, any racialism that dares to upset the Jewish apple cart (if you can imagine the shiftless Jews growing produce) is squelched, is quelled with a vehemence rivaling Stalin’s most extreme excesses.

The Jews want to destroy whiteness. They desire more than anything else, for the white race to voluntarily extinguish itself, without guns, without war, with tumult, to choose, out of guilt and self-flagellation, to bring about its own expiration date.

Our free speech is null and void. Though it may be a few more months before the swine flu hysteria wears off and Jews turn America into a FEMA camp totalitarian society worthy of Trotsky and Lenin’s wet dreams, we are done. We are a country betrothed with the legacy of a Hidden Tyranny we dare not identify, much less fight openly. Dare I say I am pessimistic about our prognosis thus far. We don’t have the intestinal fortitude to shake ourselves free of our Marxist/Leninist overlords and yes, Zionist Jewish masters, who dictate what our proper behavior should be.

Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak? Of course it is. You have been conditioned, lulled into a love of the soft tyranny of Jewish demands. The valentine has been ripped from out your chest. The love of your people has been jettisoned from your beating breast. You would rather become a prisoner of your own fear than dare to stand against the anti-freedomist Jews who now threaten to tear your cowardly heart from out your rib cage.

Stand, dear white soul, stand. Or would you rather be yanked into the maelstrom of a Jewish-induced insanity? Recall the three most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Athwart the last one hundred years stand three intellectuals. They are Marx, Freud and Darwin. The first two are Jewish hacks. The third is the only “survivalist” worthy of still citing as much as a footnote in the history of ideas.

Our free speech has been ripped from the moorings of the Magna Carta and the Constitution. Why? Because the Jew believes in neither of these documents. He believes in nothing, nay not self-sacrifice, nay not logic or reason. He believes in egotism writ large and nothing more than the nationalism that is his own. Every other nation must be crushed beneath the boot of Talmudic totalitarian tyranny. Is this enough to elicit your righteous anger and your white European fury? I doubt it. For it has been smothered like a candle in a windstorm. It has been silenced amidst the vortex of pragmatism and practicality worthy of a Puritanical Jewish wannabe Self-Chosenist.

We have no free speech. We have politeness and apologies and self-loathing. What we don’t have are the stuff that will save us. What we have in excess are the traits that guarantee that the internationalist, Marxist/Leninist/Zionist Jew can play upon both our sympathies and our hubris, bending our future to his will, his way and his wickedness.