No HRCs In The U.S. But Look At Greeley, Colorado and Dearborn, Michigan

Here's a story about the Somali meatpackers in Greeley, Colorado's Swift & Co. meatpacking plant, who walked off the job, and 100 of whom were fired last year, because their supervisors wouldn't let them pray at sunset during Ramadan.

There are no Human Rights Commissions in the United States. Yet, there are enough loopholes for minority groups to make cases for their discontent at work (or at schools, as the University of Michigan foot-washing sinks for Muslims demonstrates). Also, see my previous story about a Hate Crimes Bill H.R. 254 that is underway in the U.S.: 

Pending Hate Crimes Legislation

On January 5, 2007, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee introduced H.R. 254. The definition of "hate crime" remains the same as passed in 1994, but this bill goes much further than the enhanced sentencing provided by the 1994 legislation. H.R. 254 establishes a new federal offense for hate crimes and mandates a separate federal criminal prosecution for state offenses with the possibility of life imprisonment for crimes motivated by "the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or disability of any person."

Here's another story from Dearborn Michigan, where an Arab Christian proselytizer was prohibited from handing out Christian literature during the Dearbon Arab Festival. From Creeping Sharia:

The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Dearborn’s policy and seeking a court order allowing the group to wander the festival grounds freely to pass out literature. U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds denied the Law Center’s motion on behalf of the Christian group.

No HRCs in the U.S., but Muslim groups, amongst others, are having no difficulty curtailing the freedoms of other groups through regular court proceedings. This is exactly what Levant recommends: use the court system to fight your battles, and get judges like Nancy Edmunds to favor the aggressive, freedom quenching groups.

Ezra Levant, who managed to untangle the corrupt HRCs, is merely working on the surface. His latest post is that the new leader for the Progressive Conservatives, Tim Hudak, put the dismantling of the HRCs on his political platform.

The National Post had this to say about Hudak:

Mr. Hudak is not without his flaws either. His attempt to have it both ways with the HRC (keep the commission, but abolish the tribunal) will probably satisfy no one.

To be fair, Hudak, according to an interview he did recently, just wants to keep the educational component of the HRCs, rather than any part of the fraudulent court. But why even keep that seemingly harmless component?

Hudak evidently believes in the principles of the HRCs, which is to fight the dual demons of discrimination and inequality at various levels in someone’s life – from the workplace to acquiring housing and even to eating in a restaurant.

Even without the HRCs, given Canada’s Multiculturalism Act and the Canadian Human Rights Act, there are infinite venues for people to voice their grievances.

It is easy to get all indignant about false courts and the guilty-until-proven-innocent charges of the HRCs, let alone the exorbitant costs they incur on the poor recipients of these filed cases.

But, not one dismantler of the HRCs, from Hudak to Levant, has talked about their underlying problems.

They just saw an unfair system, run by government monies, and said that real courts are where such cases should be filed.

The question is:

Why should such cases be filed anywhere, at a bona fide court or a  fraudulent one like the HRCs? Why should a group of people like, say, the Somali Muslims in Greeley, have the option to file their ridiculous claims that their supervisors were mistreating them? This meatpacking plant has already its established workplace traditions, which have obviously helped build the plant very successfully over time. Yet a new set of people is setting up its own traditions which are obviously disrupting the plant and its workers. A sane supervisor should indeed fire them.

Levant is saying that the Muslims who complained about his Mohammed cartoons, and later filed a suit at the HRCs against him, should go to real courts.

They very well might, in the near future. And they might win their cases, causing him yet another six-figure cost for his defence. There are many ways his opponents can save money, including using the government-subsidized legal aid centers which furnish people with lawyers based on income, but which subtly favor minorities and immigrants.  So, its back full circle to the beginning. 

To put it bluntly, the problem is not fully that of the HRCs. The problem is the kinds of people who are filing these cases, as I have discussed in detail in my previous posts.

Hate Crimes in Australia and America

The International Free Press Society has a video up entitled: "Australia, exactly as Canada does, criminalizes opinion of Islam."

As far as I can tell, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in Australia is similar to the Provincial Human Rights Commissions in Canada.

An Australian pastor has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending himself against a Muslim group which says he vilified Islam. The Muslim group took him to court based on the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.

His only crime was to read quotes directly from the Koran during a seminar on Islam.

His conviction has since been overturned by the Australian Supreme Court, and several states in Australia have dropped this law, but Victoria has only made amendments.

He talks with Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network and says the United States is in danger of such "hate crimes" laws. A "hate crimes" Bill HR 254 has been introduced to Congress, and is now just a matter of votes. 

As I keep saying, as long as Ezra Levant fights the symptoms (the HRCs) rather than the causes, which I have identified as high immigration and the concomitant multiculturalism (and especially Muslims), then a few decades down the road he will wonder what went wrong with his valiant fight.

Green Pundits

There's not much room for humor at Our Changing Landscape, but here is something that made me laugh. Writes Diana West:

At what point do said pundits change the color of their Twitter avatars (Joe Scarborough) and their blog backgrounds (Andrew Sullivan) back from Islam green? And will they ever apologize for the fuss?

Both these "pundits" have added the color green to their sites in solidarity with the Iranian "revolution." Diana West's article debunks all that by saying that what's happening in Iran isn't so much a revolution as an intra-Islamic power struggle.

Also, green is the color of Islam. There is nothing revolutionary about that. I remember asking myself why Mousavi's party was using the color green if he was staging a revolution. The answer is, he isn't staging a revolution.

Even If The HRCs are Dismantled, There Is Much More Work To Be Done

In my previous post I wrote:

As long as high levels of immigration from non-Western countries is the norm in Canada, I argue that there will be an endless stream of visible minorities who are potential HRC case filers, and will thus keep the HRCs going.

I should qualify that. Even if the HRCs are successfully dismantled with Levant's incessant activities, systems and institutions which do the work of the HRCs (affirmative action is one example) will still exist as long as there is the population group that demands these kinds of services.

That is what I meant by "underlying problems." If Levant doesn't address these problems, then dismantling the HRCs will have become a futile exercise.

Congratulations to Ezra Levant

Congratulations to Ezra Levant on the birth of his new baby this past weekend. This must come at an especially happy time for him, given his enormously successful book Shakedown, and the continuous screw-ups by the major players of the HRCs .

I hope Levant does read this blog, and takes note of my slant on all of this, which is that the HRCs are just a symptom of the underlying problems. Almost all my posts at Our Changing Landscape from May 16, 2009 onwards have been a detailed analysis of these underlying problems, with my moment of epiphany on May 28th which I titled: "The Human Rights Commissions Are Here To Stay." As long as high levels of immigration from non-Western countries is the norm in Canada, I argue that there will be an endless stream of visible minorities who are potential HRC case filers, and will thus keep the HRCs going.

Levant has made a courageous start to make Canada a better place for his infant child. I hope he goes a step further by attacking this underlying problem as well. As I've said, he is the ideal candidate for this.

Prime Stoppers of Free Speech Are Muslims

Here is a great speech given by Diana West, who as a journalist is understandably concerned about free speech issues. She is the Vice President of the International Free Press Society, and was recently in Copenhagen for a conference on "Free Speech and Islam."

As I've been saying all along, Levant cannot ignore the main reason that he had to spend three years fighting the HRCs is because he published the Mohammed cartoons, and Muslims took him to the HRCs.

The multicultural/immigration link that I have been writing about was succinctly and eloquently addressed by Diana West in her speech. And especially the Muslim link.

Also, I can't believe that this discussion has been going on for almost twenty years, and Levant, immersed as he is in a multicultural and immigrant affair, still hasn't caught on.

He thinks that free speech denunciations just come out of thin air. But, there is a history behind all this. Something I have been recommending he study for a while now, if he wants to have lasting effect in his battles against those trying to stop free speech.

Levant's Quixotic Battle

Ezra Levant started his personal journey to fight the HRCs because he got caught in their machinery.

As I kept writing over the last few week, a mere observer like me (who’s not a politician or even a political analyst) managed to pick up on the salient points of the HRCs, whereas Levant still doesn't get it.

This is what I wrote about my moment of epiphany on the HRCs while watching a debating panel on the HRCs:

[T]here was nothing new or insightful that this group brought [to the debate].

The only thing that happened was that I had an epiphany.

The HRCs are not going anywhere. If anything, they will just be fine-tuned to avoid the wrath of ordinary folks who may have realized their fraudulent nature from Levant's and others' exposures .

I got this affirmation when an older black woman, in all sincerity, asked when Canada was going to change the underlying problems of inequality and barriers to minorities, since the HRCs are only there to report the problems that this unequal society produces.

The black woman, with her strong Caribbean accent, was clearly an immigrant.

The main purpose of the HRCs is not to silence free speech, which is the battle that Levant is immersed in. Their main point is to follow the mandates of the Multiculturalism Act.

The Ontario Multiculturalism Act is responsible for:

Recognizing the pluralistic nature of Ontario society, to stress the full participation of all Ontarians as equal members of the community, encouraging the sharing of cultural heritage while affirming those elements held in common by all residents.

What the government-controlled HRCs are doing is simply fulfilling the mandates of this Act, and specifically the "participation of all [Canadians] as equal members of the community."

But, there is a second twist to this. While the Multiculturalism Act protects the "pluralistic" nature of Canada, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act continues to provide an unremitting source of people who make up this "pluralistic" society, and especially those who would require these government-mandated controls that ensures they participate as equal members of society; i.e. visible minorities.

Perhaps it is too much to ask Levant to take on these two behemoths: Immigration and Multiculturalism, both of which are ingrained in the government's laws and polices.

But, it is far better to be truthful about the problem, than to live in some kind of euphoria and excitement doing a Don Quixote-type of battle.

If (I still don’t think the HRCs will go anywhere) the HRCs are dismantled, other instituions will still stay in place, doing exactly what the HRCs are doing but in more subtle ways.

One very recent issue that has come up in a study by a diversity-promoting organization, DiverseCity:The Greater Toronto Leadership Project, is the under representation of minority leaders in Toronto’s public and private sectors. DiverseCity is calling for measures to rectify this problem.

This sounds innocuous enough, not like the hard-line HRCs. But the aim is the same: to change, by diversifying, an existing natural distribution of leaders.

DiverseCity’s funders include the Government of Ontario (and also other governmental bodies indirectly through their partner Toronto City Summit Alliance).

Levant is just scratching the surface with his HRC battles, and not only that, his focus on freedoms of speech and expression (and hate speech) is extremely narrow.

Maybe in five, six or ten years time, Levant will be sued by an HRC-type institution, again. Maybe this time, it will be some visible minority co-worker, who feels he got bypassed for a leadership position because of his ethnic and racial makeup, which Levant received. Of course, Levant says he is a minority (Jewish), but blacks, Asians and Hispanics will always trump Jewish in these battles. And institutions such as DiverseCity will be ready to fight for them to the bitter end.

Here is an interview with Pajamas Media where Levant, breezily, talks about "getting along, regardless of race, sex, etc.." and "life's little grievances and setbacks." The HRCs and their quieter sister organizations certainly don't think their cases are "life's little grievances and setbacks." Their grievances are so big, to them, that they are willing to bully a whole country and its institutions to get their way.