“God, you’re an dimwit.”
The Toronto Star’s gift to English letters, Haroon Siddiqui, with the help of professional scold Bernie Farber, writes a particularly idiotic column on the HRC/free speech mess. Kathy Shaidle responds at some length and demonstrates why she should have a column and Siddiqui should be turned out to pasture.
June 15th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I see your point, Jay. Because if there’s one thing that the Star is short of, it’s intellectually dishonest bigots who have both a hate on for Muslims and an embarrassing crush on Mark Steyn.
Like her hero Steyn, Shaidle mistakes her gift for invective for critical thinking and a stubborn refusal to correct her frequent factual errors for principle and courage. And like Steyn, she’s a stranger to journalistic ethics.
In this case, she rewrites Siddiqui to suggest that he was springing to the defence of radical Muslims. He wasn’t. But for Shaidle, the “radical” is just window dressing in any case. She hates ‘em all, as she has repeatedly demonstrated.
BTW, any particular reason you chose to disable comments from users of Internet Explorer?
June 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
tw, on the explorer front…sheer incompetence. I am trying to fix it.
June 15th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Please elaborate on my “frequent factual errors” , oh anonymous coward truewest.
I’m not a journalist and have never claimed to be, so journalistic ethics don’t apply to me. I’m a polemicist and proud of it.
You’d be surprised at how many people have crushes on Mark Steyn (embarrassing and otherwise). Male and female, around the world. Because he is a genius and you are a petty (anonymous coward) hack. Jealous much? Next question.
I don’t hate Muslims (necessarily) but I do hate Islam. Why is this a bad thing? Do explain.
I didn’t rewrite Siddiqui. He trotted out the relatively new canard that people are saying the same thing about Muslims that they used to say about Jews, and I prove him wrong in a couple of paragraphs, because his brain is only the size of a hazelnut.
Had I simply written “Muslims” rather than “radical Muslims” you would have complained about that too. Because there is simply no pleasing kneejerk, toe tag leftists like yourself, I no longer bother trying much.
June 15th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Siddiqui makes vacant non equivelaent arguments to back a unsupportable position…the wisest thing Kathy has said is he has chosen an errant ideology which will put him on the wrong side of history….which he’ll share with the the CJC soviets.
June 15th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Shorter Shaidle:
Facts are stupid things
June 16th, 2008 at 4:29 am
“Please elaborate on my ‘frequent factual errors’”
Good grief. I feel like a mosquito in a nudist camp. I hardly know where to begin. This is so risibly blatant that I’ve started a thread over at my place.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“I feel like a mosquito in a nudist camp.”
Yeh, I imagine people slap YOU a lot too.
BTW, Kathy, that should be “a dimit”, not “an dimwit”. Last I checked D wasn’t a vowel. Pretty much the only error I can find in the whole rant, however. :-)
June 16th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Haroon Siddiqui IS NOTHING BUT A PASTEBOARD EDITORIAL FRAUD. Anybody who has read his greasy rationalizations over the years knows it and feels the same way. One wouldn’t want Haroon left in the company of one’s children with serious supervision, that’s for sure. His oleaginous personality bleeds from between the lines of his slippery rationalizations and slimy innuendos.
I scrape better than Haroon Siddiqui off the soles of my shoes after walking the dog.
June 17th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Siddiqui may not actually be on side with Islamic Extremists but he certainly is silent on their acts, he finds more outrage over Israeli actions, and the writing of Steyn than the suicide bombers in Pakistan,Iraq and elsewhere killing his fellow Muslims, .
June 17th, 2008 at 4:03 am
“That’s the law” – that’s the best that idiot can come up with?!
And it used to be law that women couldn’t vote. Maybe that’s a law he wishes we’d kept.
You’re right, Kathy. The “law” will be changed, because we won’t shut our traps until it is. And Siddiqui is a dimwit.
And other dimwits, like truewest and dawg, just don’t get it. Tarek Fatah does. I’ve heard him say he doesn’t agree with Steyn on a lot of things in America Alone, yet he stands with Macleans and Steyn.
But the dimwits can’t get past their dislike of someone and what a person says to stand up and say the truth: Free speech and freedom of the press is more important and of more value than somebody’s hurt feelings.
Really pathetic.
June 17th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Kathy, that should be “a dimit”, not “an dimwit”.
Whoops. Hoist on your own petard. It’s a law of nature, so don’t feel bad. Any time someone writes a letter to the editor complaining about a grammatical error on the part of someone else, you just know that you’ll find a howler in the complaint.
Careful, though. Kathy takes these things very seriously:
Speaking of “riddled with errors”: did you know that the great journalism professor Miller accused Steyn of not “arguing in food [sic] faith”? (Have someone else in the newsroom explain his mistake to you…)
I haven’t seen a spelling flame since I left Usenet. Bravo to Kathy for keeping the tradition alive.
June 17th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Sheila,
I think it’s generally accepted, by all but the complainants in the case, that Macleans and Steyn did not cross the line into hate speech and deserve to have the complaint against them dismissed. Certainly, that’s been my position for sometime. It is also recognized by all but the most intellectually dishonest (a category that, sadly, does include Steyn, his petite groupie Shaidle and you) that the prohibition is not against hurting someone’s feelings, but against promoting hate against a group of people.
If you want to get worked up about a case in which someone seeks retribution because his feelings are hurt, I suggest that you offer your shoulder to Merle Terlesky, who is being sued by his former employer, Big Daddy Speecher Ezra Levant, for suggesting in a letter to the editor that a) Ezra likes to poke Muslims in the eye and b)that the Western Standard might not have flopped if Ezra hadn’t spent so much time swanning around the world and stuck to his knitting.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Dawg, next time you’re seeing your doctor hit him up for some lithium. Seriously.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Further to the previous comment, about the only thing I can pick apart in Kathy’s post is the odd grammatical boo-boo. Other than that it makes perfect sense.
Which is something Dawg should aspire to.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:01 am
Sean:
Oh, goody, the old “get back on your meds” Usenet snappy comeback! You and Kathy are playing in the same leagues, that’s for sure.
Except in you case it happens to be applicable, if I remember correctly. Schizophrenia, right?
June 18th, 2008 at 3:15 am
“the prohibition is not against hurting someone’s feelings, but against promoting hate against a group of people.”
Actually…
Section 13-1 of the 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act:
applies to “telecommunication” of any material “that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt,” based on 11 specific grounds such as race, gender or religion.
So it’s not actually against promoting hate; it just tries to control material that “is likely to expose someone to hate.” – a precrime
And how do the ‘roos determine if something is likely to expose someone to hate? They ask questions of the complainants to find out how a particular item (i.e. the cartoons or Steyn’s article) made them feel.
The Mohammed cartoons did NOT expose Muslims to hatred. It was the insane and violent reactions from the Muslim community – over something trivial – that exposed Muslims to hatred and contempt.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:42 am
“your case,” just to avoid the inevitable cheap shot.
June 18th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
If you want to get worked up about a case in which someone seeks retribution…
Much as it pains me to agree with Truewest, he is absolutely right. Despite the fact that I agree with Ezra’s actions and position with regard to the Mohammed cartoons and the HRCs does not mean that he is not an asshole. He is, for better or worse, a public figure – a publisher, a media commentator, a former (high profile) political candidate – noting that he seems to like to provoke certain ethnic or religious groups falls squarely in the realm of fair comment. Similarly, it is an observable fact that Western Standard failed as a print publication, and ditto that while at the helm Ezra spent a certain amount of time and effort on unrelated causes; speculating as to the connection between the two should be considered defamatory. Were there justice in the world, Judges could award double the amount claimed plus costs to the defendant in an unsuccessful defamation action if they felt the claim was vexatious – and it seems to me that this one fits the bill.
June 19th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
And yet, dcardno, we both know that in this case at least, no costs will be awarded and Ezra will succeed in using the law to shut up his critics, if only because his former employee is unlikely to have the means to mount a defence. (BTW I assume you meant to write “speculating on the connection between the two should NOT be considered defamatory”)
As long as defamation law allows deep-pocketed individuals to use litigation to silence critics, it seems odd that groups who are targeted by hate speech should have no recourse against those who would defame them, simply because the common law of defamation has developed in such a way that identifiable groups cannot sustain a claim.
We could, of course, change the libel statutes to allow group defamation claims, but that might cause more problems than it solved. Perhaps the solution is to amend the speech provisions of human rights codes to more closely mirror defamation law – by allowing defences of truth and fair comment, for example. (Although I note that in Quebec truth is not an absolute defence to a defamation claim; as the SCC noted in Prudhomme, in civil law, conveying true information may sometimes be a wrongful act). That wouldn’t prevent marginal claims, but it might make them easier to dismiss summarily.
Sheila,
I see you’ve been cribbing from the other amateur lawyers of the right wing remedial reading class. Here’s a suggestion—go count how often the work “likely” is used in relation to offnces in Canadian statues and THEN come piss in my ear about “precrime”.
Let me get you started with some federal statutes:
s. 247 of the Criminal Code makes it an indictable offence to set a trap that is LIKELY to cause death or bodily harm.
s.247.1 of the Canada Labour Code defines sexual harrassment as ” any conduct, comment, gesture or contact of a sexual nature
(a) that is LIKELY to cause offence or humiliation to any employee”
Now run along, dimwit.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
BTW I assume you meant to write “speculating on the connection between the two should NOT be considered defamatory”
‘Zactly – I think the “not” took off with my ‘close italics’ tag…
June 19th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
“LIKELY” tends to be read as “foreseeably” rather than “might” or “possibly”. It is, in fact, a potentially fairly high bar. Sadly, it is not treated as such by the HRC’s who, bereft of a binding jurisprudence, can twist “likely” to fit the circumstances.
Frankly I would prefer “will” or “certainly” or even, “might reasonably” as each directly implies a test to be met.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Jay,
The HRCs are hardly “bereft of binding jurisprudence”, even on rarely used sections such as those governing publications. And the jurisprudence on s.13 and its equivalents holds that “likely to expose” is a balance of probabilities test – i.e. is it more likely than not. See, for example, Kane v. Alberta Report, 2001 ABQB 570.
BTW, do you read the case law before you opine on these issues or are you just pulling this stuff out of a hat?
June 19th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I occasionally read the cases. And, I suppose to be accurate, one would say “not bound by” rather than “bereft”.
Were the Commissions “bound by” the jurisprudence they would, on Taylor grounds, toss crap like the Socks without a hearing.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Well, actually, they are bound by the decisions. That’s why they cite them in their reasons. And if they don’t follow the decisions, they’ll be overturned.
It is, however, a rare case that any tribunal will toss without investigation or hearing argument.
In BC, there is no investigating body—all complaint go to hearing—and Macleans’ lawyers did not bring a preliminary application to dismiss, which, since such applications are fairly common, suggests that they were strangers to the process (entirely possible since they had limited experience before HRTs) or they thought that there was enough to the complaint that a motion to dismiss would fail. The federal scheme, like that in Alberta, does include an investigative arm that has the power to dismiss a claim before a hearing. Last I heard, there was no hearing set before the CHRT.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
To a degree, tw; in the sense that if they stray too far they are inviting judicial review.
That said, I was surprised that there was no preliminary motion to dismiss: tactically that would have made sense. And I was surprised that Porter goaded the Mighty Mohammedan legal titan into putting on his last witness. Again, tactically, shutting up and taking the position apart on the basis of no evidence might have made more sense. Which leads me to believe that there is a basic strategy of trying to get this before a real Court and gutting s. 7 is the actual agenda.
I certainly hope so.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
You’re suggesting that two lawyers, who between them are billing north of $1000/hr, took a dive so they could bring a judicial review? Not sure I see the point. They get the decision overturned at the next level, the CIC takes its legal briefs and goes home. And that’s assuming the BCHRT rules against them, which seems unlikely.
As I may have said before, it seems to me you’re barking up the wrong tree if you expect the courts to come to your aid. The SCC has ruled on this and seems unlikely to revisit it. (And since you guys on the right whine about judicial activism all the time, don’t you think that approach is a little, well, hypocritical?) If you want to change the law, you’ll have to persuade Stevie Harper (and his provincial counterparts) to spend the political capital needed to change the law so that Steyn—and assorted Nazis, anti-gay bigots and others—may spew freely in print and on the internet.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
If you are referring to Taylor there are a couple of points: first, the tests in Taylor have largely been ignored by the various commissions, second, Taylor was running an answering machine rather than a press. Freedom of the press is expressly guaranteed in the Charter but what meaning that guarantee has has not been examined by the Court within the context of the HRCs and s. 7/13.
I’m not sure counsel took a dive; but winning at the BCHRC level is not what (I hear) $3000 an hour billed is supposed to get you.
It will be interesting to see how far the ‘roos are willing to follow the pomo lunacy of the Collins decisions. Ideally, right to the circular file; but that is a lot to ask of ‘roos cause then they would have to give serious reasons and, well, acknowledge what a terribly decided case Collins actually was.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Actually, I would think you would be quite disappointed if you paid counsel $3000 (!!) an hour and didn’t win at the BCHRC.
As for Taylor, your attempt to distinguish the case because it didn’t involve a “press” is misguided. As s.2(b) of the Charter makes clear, freedom of the press is a subset of freedom of expression, which means that the fact that Macleans is published between glossy covers gives it no greater scope of expression than some knuckledragger with a blog.
In any case, the chances of the SCC revisiting it are remote. But since you seem to believe that this should (and will) happen, perhaps you can take me, court by court, how you anticipate this issue ending up before the SCC?
June 20th, 2008 at 7:43 am
I am interest tw in the idea that s. 2b only enumerates a free press as a subset of the right to free expression. I was not aware that a Court had come to any conclusion on that question but must admit that I have not followed the question terribly closely.
As to marching through the Courts – the BC Supreme Court and the BC Court of Appeal, at least based on their performance in Collins, are likely, on admin law grounds to defer to any decision of the BCHRC which is grounded in found fact. As to the Constitutional end, because of Taylor, I don’t see the lower Courts finding the section itself unconstitutional. Procedural irregularity before a tribunal tends not to attract much scrutiny. So the legal stunts and incompetence of the Mohammedan legal titan will go unremarked. So the basic arguments, largely because of the porly written and poorly understood reasons in Taylor, are really out of Macleans reach until they are at the SCC.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:07 am
truewest:
s. 247 of the Criminal Code makes it an indictable offence to set a trap that is LIKELY to cause death or bodily harm.
Death or bodily harm are actual physical realities.
Hate is nothing more than an intangible emotion and very subjective at that. Apparently, you’re ok allowing kangaroo courts, with no rules of evidence and no presumption of innocence, to decide what constitutes hate.
That is the difference between the HRC inquisitions and REAL courts of law: the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff.
In the cases of Macleans/Steyn and Ezra Levant/Western Standard, the complainants brought hatred and contempt on themselves by their frivolous HRC complaints.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Apparently, you’re ok allowing kangaroo courts, with no rules of evidence and no presumption of innocence, to decide what constitutes hate.
truewest, it’s simply a waste of time dealing with these people. We both know what the BC Administrative Tribunals Act has to say about common law rules of procedural fairness and natural justice. We know that the BC HRA has no privative clause, allowing broad review by a court. And the presumption of innocence applies to criminal, not civil matters.
But these egregious axe-grinders won’t read and they won’t listen. They’ll simply go on retailing these falsehoods until the BCHRT disappoints them by dismissing the complaints, and then they’ll claim victory.
I admire your patience, but this isn’t the place to exercise it.