« Terrorized | Main | The Usual Suspects »

March 31, 2006

Kartoonnacht

Credit: Seraphic Friend, Jeremiah Duboff for the brilliant title of this post.

This letter just in from another splendid Seraphic Friend, Antoine Clark:

The Western Standard, among other things, the only regular media
outlet for free-market views in Canada, is being sued by the Alberta
Human Rights Commission following what looks like a bogus complaint
about publishing the Danish cartoons.

Some of you can afford to donate money to the WS's defence fund. Some
of you have blogs that could expose the machinations of the AHRC. All
of you can email.

The best way to kill intimidation is for a lot of people to contact
the Alberta authorities and raise hell about press censorship,
intimidation by pursuing frivolous complaints etc. The
local police refused to take up the complaint on the grounds that
gagging the press is not its job.

I shall be posting something about this as soon as I get home this
evening. In the meantime, all of us could send an email to:
humanrights@gov.ab.ca and call the Canadian embassy (this tends to get
more attention than emails).
in the UK telephone Canadian High Commission: 020 7258 6600
in the USA telephone Candian Embassy: 202-682-1740
in France: 01.44.43.29.00

I suggest something along these lines:
You've heard that a complaint has been made. The police refused to
consider it on the grounds that it was frivolous. You understand that
the Western Standard will have to spend 75.000 Canadian dollars
defending themselves from what is obviously a bogus complaint. Why is
this agency advancing the cause of media intimidation and censorship?
This will reflect very badly on the reputation of the Alberta Human
Rights Commission, if it is seen to be an agency for crushing free
speech.

Best wishes,

Antoine Clarke

P.S. Here's the email I got from the Western Standard.

Dear Western Standard reader,

Our magazine has been sued for publishing the Danish cartoons, and I
need your help to fight back!
As you know, the Western Standard was the only mainstream media
organ in Canada to publish the Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim
prophet Mohammed.
We did so for a simple reason: the cartoons were the central fact in
one of the largest news stories of the year, and we're a news
magazine. We publish the facts and we let our readers make up their
minds.
Advertisers stood with us. Readers loved the fact that we treated
them like grown-ups. And we earned the respect of many other
journalists in Canada who envied our independence. In fact, according
to a COMPAS poll last month, fully 70% of Canada's working journalists
supported our decision to publish the cartoons.
But not Syed Soharwardy, a radical Calgary Muslim imam.
He asked the police to arrest me for publishing the cartoons. They
calmly explained to him that's not what police in Canada do.
So then he went to a far less liberal institution than the police:
the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Unlike the Calgary Police
Service, they didn't have the common sense to show him the door.
Earlier this month, I received a copy of Soharwardy's rambling,
hand-scrawled complaint. It is truly an embarrassing document. He
briefly complains that we published the Danish cartoons. But the bulk
of his complaint is that we dared to try to justify it - that we dared
to disagree with him.
Think about that: In Soharwardy's view, not only should the Canadian
media be banned from publishing the cartoons, but we should be banned
from defending our right to publish them. Perhaps the Charter of
Rights that guarantees our freedom of the press should be banned, too.
Soharwardy's complaint goes further than just the cartoons. It
refers to news articles we published about Hamas, a group labelled a
terrorist organization by the Canadian government. By including those
other articles, he shows his real agenda: censoring any criticism of
Muslim extremists.
Perhaps the most embarrassing thing about Soharwardy's complaint is
that he claims our cartoons caused him to receive hate mail. Indeed,
his complaint includes copies of a few e-mails from strangers to him.
Some of those e-mails even go so far as to call him "humourless" and
tell him to "lighten up". Perhaps that's hateful. But all of those
e-mails were sent to him before our magazine even published the
cartoons. Soharwardy isn't even pretending that this is a legitimate
complaint. He's not even trying to hide that this is a nuisance suit.
Soharwardy's complaint should have been thrown out immediately by
the Alberta Human Rights Commission, just like the police did. But it
wasn't. Which is why I'm writing to you today.
According to our lawyers, we will win this case. It's an infantile
complaint, without basis in facts or law. Frankly, it's an
embarrassment to the government of Alberta that their tribunal is open
to abuse like this.
Our lawyers tell us we're going to win. But not before we have to
spend hundreds of hours and up to $75,000 fighting this thing, at our
own expense. Soharwardy doesn't have to spend a dime - now that his
complaint has been filed, Alberta tax dollars will pay for the
prosecution of his complaint. We have to pay for this on our own.
Look, $75,000 isn't going to bankrupt us. But it will sting. We're a
small, independent magazine, not a huge company with deep pockets. All
of our money is needed to produce the best possible editorial product,
not to fight legal battles. This is clearly an abuse of process
designed to punish us and deter other media from daring to cross that
angry imam in the future.
One of the leaders in Canadian human rights law, Alan Borovoy, was
so disturbed by Soharwardy's abuse of the human rights commission that
he wrote a public letter about it in the Calgary Herald on March 16th.
"During the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create
such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used
against freedom of speech," wrote Borovoy, who is general counsel for
the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Censorship was "hardly the
role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There should be
no question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons," he wrote.
Borovoy went even further - he said that the human rights laws
should be changed to avoid this sort of abuse in the future. "It would
be best, therefore, to change the provisions of the Human Rights Act
to remove any such ambiguities of interpretation," he wrote. That's an
amazing statement, coming from one of the fathers of the Canadian
human rights movement.
I agree with Borovoy: the law should be changed to stop future
abuses. But those changes will come too late for us - we're already
under attack. The human rights laws, designed as a shield, are being
used against us as a sword.
We will file our legal response to Soharwardy's shakedown this week.
And we will fight this battle to the end - not just for our own sake,
but to defend freedom of the press for all Canadians.
Do you believe that's important? If so, I'd ask you to help us
defray our costs. We're accepting donations through our website. It's
fast, easy and secure. Just click on
http://www.westernstandard.ca/freedom
You can donate any amount from $10 to $10,000. Please help the
Western Standard today - and protect freedom for all Canadians for
years to come.

Yours gratefully,
Ezra Levant
Publisher

P.S. Remember, Soharwardy's complaint will be prosecuted using tax
dollars and government lawyers. We have to rely on our own funds - and
the generous support of readers like you.

P.P.S. Please help us now, at Western Standard Legal Defence Fund.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at March 31, 2006 06:44 AM

Comments

Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.

1. No profanity.

2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism.

That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.

Posted by: Jake at March 31, 2006 08:43 AM

Posted by: Robert Avrech at March 31, 2006 08:55 AM

Posted by: Lance at March 31, 2006 09:50 AM

Posted by: Jake at March 31, 2006 10:06 AM

Posted by: Lance at March 31, 2006 10:15 AM

Posted by: Randi(cruisin-mom) at March 31, 2006 10:18 AM

Posted by: Sona at March 31, 2006 10:23 AM

Posted by: Sona at March 31, 2006 10:28 AM

Posted by: Jake at March 31, 2006 10:34 AM

Posted by: Randi(cruisin-mom) at March 31, 2006 10:42 AM

Posted by: Lance at March 31, 2006 11:43 AM

Posted by: Lance at March 31, 2006 11:44 AM

Posted by: Jake at March 31, 2006 12:34 PM

Posted by: Lisa at March 31, 2006 02:15 PM

Posted by: Muslims Against Sharia at January 15, 2008 07:25 PM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

Security Code:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)