You have a file eh, coward
Once in a while I refer to the coward Lynch’s little operation as a Cheka after the post revolutionary Russian internal security organization. But now I realize I was inaccurate, the CHRC is much more like the Stasi – the East German internal intelligence operation:
“Please, please, look. We have experienced 16 months of invective hurled at us, and at any time when anybody has tried to speak up and correct misinformation, gross distortions, caricaturizations, then the very next day there’s been some full-frontal assault through the blogs, through mainstream media. I have a file. I’m sure I have 1,200, certainly several hundred of these things,” she said. national post
A few questions for the coward Lynch – under what authority did you compile your file? Who paid for its compilation? How much staff time has been devoted to capturing the names of Canadians exercising their fundamental right to free expression? Who have you shared your little list with? How have you characterized the people on your list?
This is entirely outrageous. The CHRC is not supposed to be in the business of collecting information about Canadians’ political views and yet this coward has a file full of precisely that – political opinion.
This is not the action of a mild little administrative branch – this is the action of someone who does not believe in the fundamental political freedoms of Canadians enshrined in the Charter.
It is the action of the sort of bland little cowards who were so effective spying for the Stasi and keeping a lid on politics in East Germany.
Update: BCF has the addy for Freedom of Information requests here. There are, as well, Privacy concerns and questions going to the possible creation of an unauthorized database.
BCF talks about bloggers using FOI - I would also suggest that anyone who has commented on any blog on any side of this issue needs to know if they are on the coward Lynch’s list. We do not know how widely this list has been shared and how the people on it have been characterized. Has it been shared with the RCMP? Or CSIS? Or the PCO? Have people who have blogged in favour of free speech or commented in that direction been characterized as being of the “far right”?
How dare the coward Lynch and the CHRC engage in a political spying operation in Canada? How dare they?
Update #2: At one point Dr. Dawg – who dismisses the Lynch List in the comments – found the list making activities of the Canada-Israel Committee suspect. Of course the CIC is not a branch of the Canadian government which, from a Dawg wagging perspective probably makes all the difference. (Thanks BCF)
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:35 am
Jenny really has no PR sense whatsoever.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:09 am
Oh, get off your high horse before you fall and break your neck. Every public institution I’ve ever worked in compiles public statements about itself—newspaper clippings, etc.
Blogging is a form of publication. You’re pretending she’s reading your mail, for crying out loud. Give it a rest.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:10 am
The money line, Jay:
“There is an agenda out there, and I’m a public servant responsible for giving effect to the principle that ‘individuals should have the right equal to others to make for themselves a life they are able and wish to have,’ and I’m going to do it. I’m not going to sit by. Others are afraid to speak out because they know they’re going to be attacked. If you Google my name today you’ll see how I’ve been attacked.”
The privileged ones are worried that the blogsphere has picked up on their travel, air miles, hotels, junkets, “frequent complainer rewards program”, buddy-system consulting fees, testify-while-you-work program, etc.
Not a very serene scenario.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:21 am
Team Stazi was quick to reply on your blog ….......
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:42 am
FH; Rapid response is emphasized in Team Stazi’s “maximum disruption” handbook…
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
So, Dawg – then you’re perfectly OK with a governmental institution making lists of what you and your commenters say? Yeah – it’s all available on the internets – but the obvious question after “who are they gathering information on” is “what do they plan to do with that information now that they have it”? To believe that the CHRC plans on using this information for good is, shall we say, naive at best.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Deputy Dawg will no doubt give the RCMP and CSIS a pass on the observation of him by the Black Helicopters and Black Ford Victoria (blackened windows too) parked outside 24/7. People wearing Black Tourques in +30 weather must be obvious even to Dawg.
This does, though explain “visits” to most Right-of Centre Blogger sites by the CHRC. What a good use of taxpayers $$$.
Dawg, Yes “Press Clippings” is one thing – spending hours and hours on individual Bloggers comments is reminisent of the old RCMP Security Service techniques – thick files and little useful intelligence. And besides, who is to know they are not posting on these blogsites themselves and then finding one another? That will get the numbers up eh! A secret sign. ring or greeting? :)
But in other new the Information himself has resigned Information commissioner resigns suddenly
“By David Akin, Canwest News ServiceJune 22, 2009
Information Commissioner Robert Marleau abruptly resigned Monday for “entirely personal and private” reasons, raising doubts about the pace and direction of reforms to Canada’s access to information laws that he was spearheading.
...Information Commissioner Robert Marleau abruptly resigned Monday for “entirely personal and private” reasons, raising doubts about the pace and direction of reforms to Canada’s access to information laws that he was spearheading.
...As an independent office of Parliament, Marleau would have been expected to serve a seven-year term.
In his brief tenure as information commissioner, Marleau set up a ‘triage’ system in his office to help deal with a mountain of complaints about the way access to information requests were being handled by federal government departments.
He also put together a series of recommendations for reform, many of which form the core of some reforms recommended last week by a House of Commons committee studying access to information reform”.
Fire. Them. All.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I’m afraid you are the naive—and paranoid—one. As noted, government insitutions makes files of all published commentary about them, pro and con. It isn’t used to track down individuals and make their lives miserable—it’s a form of feedback, and it’s taken seriously.
The files of press clippings about the SSHRCC, for example (my old stamping grounds) are updated continually. It’s important for the organization to know what the public—and its scholarly constituency—think about its operations, procedures, policies, etc. The material is compiled by the communications division. Sometimes there might be an official response, or a visit to a university, or a letter to the Minister. All business as usual.
Again: we’re talking about published material, not personal correspondence, wiretaps, etc. Published, on the record material. Stop shaking, remove the tinfoil and have a drink. Good grief, you folks are beyond parody.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
“The chances of us striking an iceberg are extremely remote, and even if we do, we have an unsinkable ship under our feet.”
Edward J. Smith, Captain, RMS Titanic
“The water in here is pleasantly warm. There is nothing for us frogs to fear.”
Frog, sitting in pot of water over an open fire.
“There is no slippery slope here. Hate speech is well defnined in the law and in jurisprudence. The bar is high.”
Dr. Dawg
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
No offense, Dawg, but I am arguing for the security of your freedoms, whether you recognize the danger or not.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
the ‘running dawg’ barks but the caravan moves on….
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
“As noted, government insitutions makes files of all published commentary about them, pro and con. It isn’t used to track down individuals and make their lives miserable—it’s a form of feedback, and it’s taken seriously.” How serene that must make you Dawg. What is interesting in this instance is the ongoing record of the agency compiling the file and the use which the coward Lynch has put it to. (That we know about.)
She has taken her file and characterized the exercise of free expression and the free press in terms of “a full frontal assault”. And you think we’re the ones being paranoid.
What her remarks illustrate is that she is incapable of understanding the basic liberties enjoyed by citizens in a democracy. We have a perfect right to criticize her corrupt Commission and the statute under which (loosely) it acts. She does not have any right at all to characterize our remarks as a “full frontal assault”. Nor does she have any right to maintain files on her critics. That, Dawg, as you well know, is what the Stazi did and what police states the world over do.
So let’s see her files and let’s see the resources allocated to their maintenance and let’s see, unredacted, any annotations which may appear on those files.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
As I say—beyond parody.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Dawg says – It’s important for the organization to know what the public—and its scholarly constituency—think about its operations, procedures, policies, etc. The material is compiled by the communications division.”
Just like they really needed to know who might have subscribed as a member to Melissa Guille’s fledgling political movement (however distasteful their political ideals may have been to some), and ordered full disclosure of all names. – yeah, just to know what some people might think of them for their next press release, eh?
BTW - that order for disclosure came from a request submitted by the complainant. What do you think they (all of them) were going to do with that information. Just sort of rounding out the file? Dotting some i’s? Crossing some “t’s perhaps? Christmas card lists?
Dawg says: Woof, woof
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
When is that woman finally going to stop crying us a river? Thanks to her and people like her, this country is quickly becoming something similar to the events of Europe in the 1930s, complete with persecution and witch hunts.
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I don’t think you are quite playing straight with us, Dawg. But at least you are talking with us. That’s better than taking notes, keeping files and ordering us to testify before tribunals. So thanks for that :).
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I’d missed your apples and oranges addendum.
Spying on Canadians, which was the focus of the memo I reproduced, is hardly the same as collecting the electronic equivalent of press clippings.
Monty Python was wrong. Speech Warriors™ really DO expect the Spanish Inquisition. Cardinal Lynch, fetch the soft pillows and the Comfy Chair!
Good grief, what rubes.
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
From the link in update #2: The boorish, semi-literate “shlemazl,” whom I have allowed to post here despite his utter lack of civility, is banned as of now. Enough is enough—this place is for honest folk.
That made me snort beer out of my nose! By “honest folk” what Baglow really meant was “anti-zionist statists hell bent on subjugating the masses by hook or by crook”. Good grief… The gap between Baglow and actual, genuine honesty is so wide you could back a truck between the two with room left over.
Dawggie owes me a new keyboard…
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Dawg:
If Lynch only collected clippings from major newspapers I could perhaps understand it. But we are left wondering how much of her collection are blog entries. From the sounds of it, quite a few – I doubt there have been even close to 1200 (or whatever) MSM articles on the CHRC in the last few years of any substance.
Apart from that, I’ve never heard the head of any Canadian agency sound as paranoid, defensive, and argumentative as Lynch, with so little respect for the views of the public. I expect such stringency from a blog – I don’t expect it from a head of an important federal commission. She has lost it.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Nicholas: how precisely am I not playing straight with you? I’m a lot of things, but reticent about my opinions isn’t one of them.
NAMBLA-Dick: always on topic. I’d give the beer a rest, if I were you.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I would think that if the ‘list’ was being used simply for the purposes of knowing:
what the public—and its scholarly constituency—think about its operations, procedures, policies, etc.
Ms. Lynch would have done a far better job of specifically addressing some of the concerns of the public and scholarly constituents.
Rather than continuing to proclaim that this fair and unbiased system is working while complaining that they have been attacked frontally (frankly, she should be happy it wasn’t a rear guard attack) and mischaracterized, Ms. Lynch should, through her file, to have been well enough informed to respond to the question put to her by Roy Greene about precisely when they made the policy change to discontinue visiting and/or logging onto suspect websites as an investigative technique. Concern surrounding this issue has been at the forefront of the criticism for quite some time.
She might also have provided a more fulsome explanation about this change in policy, i.e. what drove them to conclude that complainants should be the providers of evidence and why after years operating as internet 007’s did they determine to cease this practice.
Ms. Lynch is absolutely convinced that s. 13 is workable. Fortunately, the decision is not hers to make. I, and perhaps 1200 others disagree.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Everyone here is pointing to the sky and declaring it to be blue, but all to no avail. It is unikely the Dawg will be convinced of anything Dawg has not already convinced himself of. That’s got to be okay. The Dawg is not the judge.
For my part, I am very happy to be here among the people that the Dawg considers rubes.
I am for freedom of speech for the people, no matter how silly or misplaced the Dawg considers those concerns to be.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Jan, the coward Lynch either simply does not know when that change was made – in which case she is incompetent and should be fired or she does know and refuses to say in which case she is dishonest and, yup, should be fired.
And, Jan, as a regular commentor you may very well be in the file; but don’t just guess – file an FOI request for the file and its contents.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I doubt that only criticism is collected. The CHRC has been a visitor to my site as well, as I told Arnie when he was clutching his pearls a while ago.
Blogs are publications. But you knew that.
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I agree with Dawg on one point. This situation is beyond parody. Ms. Lynch appears to be suggesting that criticism of the HRCs is one big media conspiracy perpetuated by Ezra Levant, with help from his trusty lieutenants Steyn and Shaidle. And I suppose I, whose grandmother’s maiden name was Zalefski, am part of the alleged conspiracy as well.
Having said that, wasn’t the purpose of the CHRC to rid us of hateful opinions, such as those promoting belief in Jewish conspiracies to control the media?
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Steyn and Shaidle aren’t Jewish, but thanks for playing.
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I’m sure you are right, Dawg, but the way Ms. Lynch characterized the file it would appear that it is the one filed under “NA” (Naughty).
You, I’m sure, would be listed under “NI” (Nice). I suspect though that your volume may be as slim as the one in my office desk headed “Z”. :-)
Jay, that could well be the most entertaining $5.00 I ever spent. I’ll think on it.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:29 pm
> It isn’t used to track down individuals and make their lives miserable
But Dawg, it has been. I’m surprised that you countenance this stuff.
Derek
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I posted about Ms. Lynch and her list over at the Shotgun.
Maybe we could play a game and try to guess what our entry in Lynch’s files probably looks like.
Does she rank people in terms of evil, with Ezra at the top? If Ezra is 100%, would you say you are about 75% evil, Jay?
I’m thinking BCF has to be at least 80%. I’m probably 2% because I get less coverage and don’t often call her mean names even when I do. You big meanies :-).
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:55 pm
28 comments and not one that addresses Dawg’s clear and entirely relevant point: blogs are publications, available to the world at large. More easily and widely available, in fact, than many newspapers.
The CHRC isn’t spying on bloggers—they’re reading them. Which I thought was sort of the point of publishing—which I understand comes from the Latin publicare, “to make public” – a blog in the first place. And having read what you published, it is open to Lynch to characterize the shrill idiocies that you publish, for all the world to see, in any way that she likes. It’s a free country for her too.
And you wonder why people don’t take you seriously.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Delighted to see that you are happy with a government agency using public resources to compile lists of its critics tw. Now if the coward Lynch was doing this in her spare time I might agree with you. Plus, the compilation of such a list is not in furtherance of any program or activity of the CHRC and so attracts scrutiny under the Privacy Act.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
And I’m delighted to see that you hug a Nazi every night before you go to sleep. Give me a break.
As Dawg has observed, the CHRC is doing what every government and business organization in the country does: maintaining a clipping file so that it knows what people are saying about it in public.
Your blog is public and you have styled yourself as a critic of the CHRC. Small wonder that they should take note of what you’re saying. Only a paranoid lunatic would compare that to the Stasi. And only a legal ignoramus would think that it engages the Privacy. I didn’t think you were either of those things. Apparently, I was wrong.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:14 pm
I don’t want the CHRC gathering the names of its critics. Their arguments, sure, for all the good that would do. I’d react the same way if the RCMP was secretly gathering names of libertarians critical of the drug laws.
We don’t even know who is in the file, or why. We don’t know who else has access to it, or what it is used for. Personally, I don’t trust the government, and that goes double for its official censorship branch.
Maybe Ms. Lynch should publish all the names she’s gathered on the CHRC website.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I am way more more Eviler than that Piker Jay. Well the “Be Mean to Jennifer Lynch” T-shirt slogan contest is set for stage 2. A Top Ten will be determined and you the public get to vote for the Top 3. Stay tuned.
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:28 pm
A couple of years after I had been writing about corruption in Indian Affairs – I was asked to appear on the Rafe Mair show. When I got to the studio – we started the interview – at the commerical break Mair pulled out a press clipping of a column I had written 2 years before – where I refered to him as a “boob at large” – It was a local column for the Cowichan Valley Citizen. I didn’t even have the clipping. Somebody had faxed it to Mair from a Vancouver number. So—somebody in Vancouver, (not Duncan or outlying areas) had gone to the trouble of collecting my columns For the Cowichan Valley Citizen—and when it was advertised that I would be on Mair’s show, had faxed him the clip. I was later informed that this is a standard DIA practice by Janice Switlo – who had similar things happen to her.
I thought it was funny at the time. So did Rafe Mair.It was one of those. “You know you are having an impact when…” moments.
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:51 am
Dawg, has it occurred to your tiny, infinitesimal mind that one single election could put a CPC majority in? And since that Harper is such a bad bad person I’m sure he’d turf good ol’ Liberal Jenny Lynch out of the CHRC and put in the Church Lady.
Who would then go after enemies of the CPC. Like, oh I don’t know, Dr. Dawg ferinstance? And the Church Lady will have this handy list, see? Which would make her job so much easier, you know? No digging through google caches and all, just zim zam, thank you Dr. Dawg that’ll be $100k for lawyers fees and a $200k fine for being un-Christian on the interwebs.
Its true. You ARE beyond parody.
You should get yourself looked at to make sure your brain stem is still hooked on to your cerebrum, buddy. Or is it that censorship and stuff are cool so long as its only your political enemies getting shut up?
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:07 am
I’m not so much disturbed by her making lists but this comment from the National Post article did get my attention.
“The Criminal Code plays a very valid role. However, when we look at the statistics, we find that there aren’t a lot of specialized [police] hate teams across the country,”
Good Lord! I certainly hope not. This is her justification for the continued existence of the CHRC? Is she now planning to field “specialized hate teams across the country”?
Gonna need a MUCH bigger budget for that.
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:35 am
Maybe Dawg can enlighten us as to how many blog posts and comments he collected and collated while working for a government agency taking press clippings from published commentary? It it’s zero, as implied by the phrase published commentary, then why is Lynch compiling a file on electronic criticism and her and her minions constantly monitoring conservative blogs?
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:34 am
I didn’t work in the communications section, but in any case they didn’t have blogs back then.
Where do you find that only conservative blogs are being “monitored” and their relevant content noted? I’ve already said that CHRC has been to my place. They’re collecting “clippings,” as institutions are wont to do.
If you need any food or drink in your panic room, please let me know.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:49 am
Thank you Dawg…Nachos all round and a couple of cases of beer should tide us over.
At the moment we have no information about the coward Lynch’s list save what she has mentioned in the National Post. In her remarks there she did not mention the stalwart work done by Team Stazi, just the nastiness coming from us speechers. Perhaps, al la Santa, she has a naughty list and a nice list.
We’ll soon find out.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:58 am
Thanks, dawg, we don’t drink Kool-Aid.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:03 am
Well, I hope so, because I’ll definitely be on the “Nice” list. We have a tyranny, you know. Do I get a cookie?
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Actually, every department of government, as far as I am aware, collects news items and comments about itself. If you mention “Canada Revenue Agency,” it is fairly certain that the public relations people at CRA will read it in the near future. If you mention “Minister of Finance,” it is likely that Jim Flaherty’s communications director will read it. If you write about the “Royal Canadian Regiment,” someone in public affairs at National Defence will print it and pass it to the people at the top.
What do they do with it? Mostly nothing, in my experience. Much of the actual response, when there is one, is preparing for the $#!%storm that will come from the minister’s toadies if there is anything vaguely discomfiting to them or their boss. Sometimes they collect things like this because it actually gives them information about their department, things their underlings were keen to keep from them. Sometimes they find something that they want to respond to, either with a private letter, a press release or, in extreme cases, a solicitor’s letter.
My relevant experience is so dated that I can’t say if they regularly survey internet postings, but I would certainly expect them to. After all, if you are going to be new media, you are going to be treated like, well, media.
As far as I know, no one actually compiles a list of authors of these things. The identity of the writer is seldom that interesting any of the audiences, either internal to the department or to the public at large. If some massive scandal (or tempest in a demitasse) were to erupt from this blog (or any other) onto CBC news, I don’t really think Peter Mansbridge is going to mention any names (for credit or blame). Frankly, I doubt that any one at the CHRC has ever heard of any of the people on this post or comments, including me. What you say may be of interest; who you are, not so much.
Now, I’m not a big fan of the CHRC, as I have seen it do some remarkably stupid and counterproductive things over the years and I’ve spent a surprising amount of time cleaning up some of the resultant messes. But the fact that they read what you write? I’m not seeing the cause for either outrage or even surprise here.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Jim, I am well aware that Departments and assorted agencies collect information about what is being written about them. Pretty benign by and large and almost entirely defensive.
The difference here is that the coward Lynch used her file to attack. And she singled out bloggers in her attack. So what I want to know is what is in the file(s) she is referring to and to what extent personal information is involved.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:15 pm
C’mon Jay, we’re supposed to be the side of cold hard facts. Constantly referring to ‘coward Lynch’ betrays a visceral emotion we don’t normally associate with sober analysis.
We should concentrate on the fact that she mistakes criticism for censorship, and that given her organisation’s track record of going after conservative writers, her list is potentially more sinister than one compiled by, say, the Finance Ministry.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Sholto, the facts speak for themselves. The problem is can anyone hear them? Invective is a powerful tool. It directs people to facts.
Being serious about the CHRC and its corruption means crossing some of the lines of polite discourse. These people are far too dumb and self-assured to hear anything nuanced or respectful.
We are the enemy and so we should and must shoot back.
With cold, hard, facts and a healthy dose of invective. The woman will not debate her foremost critic. She is a coward. I will call her that.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Sholto! Welcome back! How’s the beer in Sydney?
June 24th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
it is open to Lynch to characterize the shrill idiocies that you publish, for all the world to see, in any way that she likes. It’s a free country for her too.
You are absolutely right TW, though I don’t imagine we are obliged to feel a need to continue to contribute to her paycheque for the privilege.
She might also consider actually critiquing the ‘shrill idiocies’ that we ‘Naughty’ people publish. Instead, she keeps repeating ad nauseum that we are misinformed and belligerent, the system is working, it is fair and unbiased and that any discussion must be properly contextualized. After reading through her report to Parliament, it appears that this is not entirely the case. There are significant changes proposed in that report. Changes that no doubt have been proposed due to the ‘shrill idiocies’ some of us have expressed.
Truthfully, his woman is the last person I’d trust to contextualize a discussion. She took Mark Steyn’s argument with respect to Pearl Eliadis’ op-ed and used that quote, out of context, to prove how unfairly supporters, like Ms. Eliadis, have been treated. In fact, it was Ms. Eliadis haughty pronouncement with respect to Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant that prompted the ridicule.
Ms. Lynch has a huge staff and paid PR people behind her, and apparently somebody is doing a very good job compiling what is said about them in the press and on the internet. Why then, do they not provide direct and candid responses to the criticisms of which she complains? Do they honestly believe, given the level of discomfort people have expressed with respect to the operation of CHRC/T’s and s. 13(1), that anybody, and there are not but a few, on this side of the aisle would be satisfied with the inconsequential drivel she has provided in responding to pointed public questions?
There are too many unanswered questions to accept at face value that the ‘system is working’ or that it will, with tinkering, work in the future. If she’s actually reading the press she collects, she knows well what are those questions.
This is not a case of zoning changes/building permits, placements within a school district, pay equity, workers compensation, etc. This is something that could affect an invariable fundamental right belonging to each and every Canadian. Freedom of thought and freedom of expression are not bestowed by Government. They are inherent rights that each of us possess, from birth. Given this, the discussion Ms. Lynch claims to promote demands that it consist of more than the Pollyanna platitudes of a true believer.
I’m looking for meat and potatoes and she’s offering a very thin gruel. I think we have every right to continue to complain about the quality of the service.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Unfairly treated?
This is the civility to which Pearl Eliadis is treated by that logorrheic yob, Ezra Levant:
Eliadis hints at her real agenda: hijacking and commandeering Canada’s media
[S]he amends the truth; changes the facts; and then presents it to her echo chamber of fellow human rights jet-setters. What a liar.
I said it before, back in February when I first heard of Eliadis: we are lucky to have such thick-skulled, thin-skinned, politically tone-deaf opponents.
Pearl Eliadis, the former Ontario HRC director who has made her career living off the government and GONGO (that’s government-organized Non-Governmental Organization) human rights industry.
[S]he’s just a political dhimmi, a modern version of Lenin’s useful idiot, putting forward an apologia for sharia law, but masquerading it as some sort of jurisprudence.
And, just to show that he’s not a petty individual:
Pearl Eliadis, who has made a healthy income off of the human rights racket for many years. And, unlike Le Clezio, Eliadis has actually coined a new word: “hatemongererer”. Mr. Fancy Pants Nobel Prize Guy can’t top that kind of intellectual horsepower, can he?
Mark Steyn made much of this typo as well.
When you don’t have content, argument, manners or plain common sense, personal attacks and a spelling flame are, I guess, all that’s left.
Unfair? This goes well beyond “unfair.” It’s nothing more than hateful raving. As I review Levant’s comments—slanted, selective, disingenuous—I am confirmed in my conviction that debating this fellow on public television would be like mud-wrestling—except that the substance he deals in is not mud.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I’m with Jim on this. Perspective, people, perspective.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:49 am
I think you’ve missed the point, Dawg. Whether they’ve been treated fairly or unfairly by their critics and vice versa is not really the issue.
I expect more corporate introspection and responsibility on the part of the well-paid, well-equipped Ms. Lynch to enhance and expand the discussion. Had I been through what Ezra Levant has provincially and Rogers/Mark Steyn have provincially and federally I might also find myself a tad angry and uncivil.
The fact that arguments are not always civil and highlighting some instances really added nothing to her speech. Taking this quote out of context because, on its own, it appears repugnant while not informing the audience of its history strikes me as less than forthcoming and exceptionally whiny.
Ms. Eliadis is no innocent in this pissing match. She chose to personalize her commentary when it was not at all necessary by opining, “Are Levant and Steyn hatemongerers? Maybe not. But no one has decided that.”
Replace Levant and Steyn with Dawg and see how that reads to you. If hatemongerer doesn’t work for you, try any other nasty pejorative, like say Nazi, Commie, insane, rightard . . . well, you get my drift and perhaps Mark Steyn’s argument.