Human Rights Laws Lead to Despotism

A copy of the blog post has been sent to Jeff Poirier, Senior Policy Analyst, Ontario Human Rights Commission. No reply expected or received.


The European Court of Justice recently ruled that car insurance companies discriminate by charging men higher premiums than those charged to women. The court ignored that fact that these premiums are business decisions based on real-world experience. The frightening point is that the ruling was based on the court's concept of human rights.

Human rights legislation is essentially idealism on paper. It is subject to gross violations of common sense, to whims and notions. Historically, utopian idealism has often led to despotism -- the Spanish Inquisition, American vigilantism, Soviet Communism, Nazi Holocaust, the agrarian utopia pursued by the Khamer Rouge in the 1970s,  In each case, the protagonists believed they were purifying the world of some evil -- heresy, social unrest, religion, non-Aryans, or capitalism. Similar attempts at purification are discernible more recently and closer to home.

A second feature of utopian behaviour is the need to expand. In the examples above, the action was halted, either externally by an outside party or internally by time.

In its near-Messianic yearning for more power, the Ontario Human Rights Commission seeks its version of the perfect society. It has asked for authority to levy unlimited fines on anyone with whose opinions it disagrees. The Commission believes this will purge society of social evils. This is evident in its links to "human rights."

Such tribunals search for more wrongs to correct. For example, overriding the family's right to determine children's education, this Commission has arrogated to itself the mandate to decontaminate all educational material, including that used in homeschooling. All must be approved to insure conformity to the Commission's idea of propriety.

Several years ago, this same Commission sought authority to censor the Internet.

Almost sadistically, it wants to punish anyone who causes injury to another's "dignity, feelings and self-respect" These are the vague, undefined words on which such tribunals base their destructive decisions.

Even if the case is dismissed after horrendous legal costs to the defendant, he has no legal recourse against the complainant as he would have in a real court. The process itself is the punishment, and the perpetrators feel justified..

This conforms to the utopianism described by Brooklyn College philosopher Thomas Molnar as a "delirious ideal stamped with the madness of logic." He continues, "[T]hey want so thoroughly to organize freedom that they turn it into slavery."

Professor Emeritus Ian Hunter of the University of Western Ontario Law School describes how this has occurred. "An important part of the answer I suggest lies in the essential theological nature of human rights legislation. To a secular society, the quest for equality fulfills the same yearning as, in centuries past, did the quest for God. The religious vision of heaven . . . has been replaced by a utopian vision of an egalitarian society to be obtained through charters, human-rights commissions, affirmative action and legislated codes of behaviour."

Before this fledgling despotism begins to fly, we have a choice. Abolish human rights commissions and tribunals altogether, and leave such matters to real courts where innocence is presumed. Or turn human rights laws into real laws with strict limitations and definitions of all operative words. The present criteria of political correctness, feelings, tendencies and vagueness merely fuel the utopian fires of despotism.

The public immediately saw these tribunals as cash cows. By lodging a no-cost complaint, one might demand and receive thousands of dollars. The solution is to order levied fines to be paid into general revenue, not to the complainant. The resultant steep decline in complaints would prove the commissions were hardly needed in the first instance.

Terry Jones Wanted for Murder

On March 20, 2011, Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida authorized the burning a copy of the Quran. As a result, in Afghanistan, mobs killed United Nations staff. In Pakistan, Christians were killed, their church burned to the ground. Likely, other acts of violence occurred as a result of his action.

Since World War Two, an expanding concept of justice gave rise to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, as well as a multitude of boards and commissions with international jurisdiction.

The action of Terry Jones gives cause for further expansion of international law. Jones must be tried for murder. The prosecution should have little difficulty in establishing his awareness of the likely consequences of his act, and therefore intent, as well as a causal connection between his behaviour and the killings.

What is "Islamophobia"?

Note to Jeff Poirier, Senior Policy Analyst, Ontario Human Rights Commission. Unanswered.

Thank you for your reply to my request for the OHRC's definition of Islamophobia. This definition sorely needs editing. I would prefer to see the Commission define precisely, not describe vaguely, the words by which it operates. The OHRC's definition is followed by my suggestions for improvement:

"A contemporary and emerging form of racism in Canada has been termed 'Islamophobia'. Islamophobia can be described as stereotypes, bias or acts of hostility towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual acts of intolerance and racial profiling, Islamophobia leads to viewing Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional and societal level."

Correction: “contemporary and emerging” If something is emerging, it is contemporary. The writer likely meant contemporary and growing.

"form of racism" 
Correction: Islam is not a race. If a Caucasian Muslim were discriminated against by other Caucasians, would you call that racism? The description assumes that all Muslims are of one race. That is stereotyping.

"has been termed" 
Correction: Termed, by whom? The passive voice is inappropriate in serious matters. It indicates hesitancy and doubt.

"Islamophobia can be described" 
Cirrection: The passive voice again. This should state: "Islamophobia is"

"stereotypes ... towards." 
Correction: One does not stereotype towards something. And again the passive voice.

"bias or acts of hostility" 
Question: Is refusal to accept a copy of the Koran when handed out on the street an act of hostility? It certainly is bias. Bias is not necessarily bad.

"individual acts of intolerance" 
Question: As defined by whom? Had I commented unkindly as I returned the book, or accepted it and threw it away, would that have been intolerance? No, it would have been rudeness.

"racial profiling" 
Correction: It required racial profiling for the Toronto School Board to open a school for black students. It is racial profiling to question why there is a disproportionate number of aboriginals in our jails. It is racial profiling to inquire why Asian students on average score better marks than Caucasian students, who score better than black students. Or to ask why 40 per cent of black students drop out of school. Of course it is, but for worthy objectives. Racial profiling is not necessarily bad..

"viewing Muslims as a greater security threat" 
Question: Greater than what? Is viewing them as a great or normal security threat permissible? And bad only when it becomes greater?

"on an institutional and societal level" 
Question:  What does this mean? If it's bad, it's bad on any level.

How's This for Intimidation?

Air Canada, perturbed by the recent spate of head bashing in the National Hockey League (NHL), issued this statement: "It is becoming increasingly difficult to associate our brand with sports events which could lead to serious and irresponsible accidents..."

How did NHL commissioner Gary Bettman react to Air Canada's $6-million annual sponsorship? Did he even promise to look into the mischief that has devastated, among others, the Lindros and Crosby families? Unfortunately, he took the low road by threatening to take the league's business to another airline.

Tim Horton's echoed the concerns of Air Canada. Will the coffee emporium feel the full Bettman wrath as he bans Tim Bits from the locker rooms? Will he refuse to roll up the rim? We can already hear coffee mugs rattling with fear.

Via Rail joined the demand that these young men be better protected. Dare hockey fans await a more positive reaction from Mr. B.?

The following Saturday, Don Cherry, dressed as an overweight leprechaun, made his usual bombastic Hockey Night in Canada appearance. Waxing righteous, he emoted in his wearisome trademark bully-boy fashion. He castigated Air Canada and Via Rail.

Through bluster and the usual muddled chatter with his straight man, an opinion got through -- How dare these corporations complain. They know nothing about hockey. They should shut up, and keep paying the bills.

Go, Don, go. Please, far away.

Politically Correct Hockey

Copy sent to the Ontario Hockey Association. No reply.

The Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) should stick to what it knows best -- teaching young men to bash into each other. Concussion may be the by-product.

An OHA appeals board has upheld a player's seven-game suspension. His crime? He called a tall person on the other team "amazon".  A board member explained the draconian punishment by claiming the young man's intent was to disparage the opponent. As if one yells at opponents to encourage them.

With mind-numbing logic, the referee testified that "amazon" has a distinct geographic and regional connotation, and fits the league's ruling against using race and ethnicity in a derogatory fashion.

The 20-year-old guilty party: "We're leaving it to the referee to define the English language in the heat of a game. [The black opponent] looked like a tree, and the Amazon Forest was the first thing that popped into my mind."

In the manner of a human rights tribunal, the OHA requires an accused prove innocence. Confronted by irrationality, the young man could not. The association's extremist ideology leaves no room for board discretion. In a cowardly manner, the OHA hides behind the right-wing policy of "zero tolerance", even when it's dead wrong. The seven-game suspension was automatic.

The Ontario Hockey Association must feel cleansed.

No More Apologies and Presentism

Let us end the currently popular need for apology. Dredging up real or imagined historical grievances fosters a mentality of victimization, a hope of compensation, possibly a monument which would serve only to perpetuate feelings of entitlement.

In her book, The Uses and Abuses of History, Margaret MacMillan asks, "Is it healthy for societies to apologize for things that were done in different centuries and under different sets of beliefs?"

The former University of Toronto history professor and now at Oxford adds, "It is all too easy to rummage through the past and find nothing but a list of grievances, and many countries and peoples have done it."

"Politicians and others have been quick to make all sorts of apologies, even when it is difficult to see why they need feel any responsibility -- or what good an apology would do," Professor MacMillian wrote in The National Post.

In her book, she states, "The past can be used for almost anything you want to do in the present ... If the study of history does nothing more than teach us humility, skepticism and awareness of ourselves, then it has done something useful."

She concludes, "We should be wary of grand claims in history's name, or those who claim to have uncovered the truth once and for all. In the end, my only advice is to use it, enjoy it, but always handle history with care."

Add to this the opinion of Andrew Wheatcroft, Director of the Centre for Publishing Studies, University of Stirling. In a private e-mail he states, "I believe the whole notion of 'apologies' is ludicrous, and demeaning to those at whom the apology is directed. 'Apologies' also deny the whole notion of the past and simply extend the present backwards."

Roland N. Stromberg cautions that one should not demand that past epochs conform to current prejudices, and thus commit the sin of  excessive" present-mindedness" -- the distortion of the past by forcing it into a mold of recent construction. European Intellectual History since 1789, p.83.

This is also called the error of "presentism", that is, the judging of past events by current standards.

Law is not Justice

"The middle class has been shut out of a justice system that caters primarily to the very rich and the very poor, the country's top judge recently told a group of legal luminaries ... Do we have adequate access to justice?" asked Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin (Toronto Star, Feb 11, 2011).

The public wonders why legal practitioners aggrandize their trade by equating it to justice. Law is a process. Justice may or may not be the product of that process. Laws change every day. Justice never. One does not access justice upon issuing a writ. Rather, it is entrance into a complex legal process the outcome of which is doubtful. We do not have courts of justice. They are courts of law.

The confusion may be due to the word "judicial." It sounds like justice, but it the means legal.

In society, justice is rendered through a strong education system, a good health care system, an adequate social welfare system, and somewhere down the line through an equitable law system.

Further confusion is caused by titles bestowed. Why are they termed "Mister or Madame Justice So and So"? Are people who rise in other professions styled Professor Educated Jones? Dr. Healthy Harley? Madame Chief Social Welfare Smith? Worse still are the politicians with the title Minister of Justice when their job is to enforce law as written, not seek justice.

The Pan Am Games

The Toronto Star supports the Pan Am Games. My unpublished letter of March 5, 2009.

Where are Toronto's priorities? We are about to shut down 39 public swimming pools due to lack of funds. Yet, the city is today spending millions of dollars in a bid to win the 2015 Pan Am Games. Some politicians and their hangers-on want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to stage another bloated extravaganza.

The fact that this waste of money will be shared by other levels of government, and spread over a number of years, masks the fact that it still increases the burden on taxpayers who may have other priorities.

Update: January 16, 2011. The cost of these games is now estimated to be $96.5 million, almost double the original of $49.5 million. Construction has not even started.

Translating Tapestries

"Translation from one language to another is like looking at a tapestry on the wrong side." When Miguel de Cervantes put these words into the mouth of his protagonist, Don Quixote, he was speaking for millions of us forced to read great books in translation.

I first read Death in Venice by Thomas Mann decades ago. As is my practice, I made margin notes. These I later transcribed to the book’s inside back cover. About ten years after the first reading, I read a later translation of this German masterpiece.

During this second reading, I awaited in vain the appearance of turns of phrase I had earlier noted. The1925 translation: His steps followed the promptings of the demon who delights in treading human reason and dignity underfoot.  In 1954, this became: His footsteps guided by the demoniac power whose pastime it is to trample on human reason and dignity. Fine, possibly truer to the original, but I prefer the earlier rendering.

We are doomed merely to prefer one translation over another.

We may only hope for a translation that conveys the essential thought of the author. Witness The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Salient among other translations, we have that of Edward Fitzgerald -- a magical blending of the poet's thought and the translator's command of our language. A 1979 translation of the Persian astronomer's work conveys his ideas, but not in the glorious language of Victorian Fitzgerald.

My English professor criticized a translation of the French gem The Little Prince by lamented Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Much meaning has been missed, he said, and urged us to read the original. I noted powerful differences. For example, one English dedication has the author claiming the dedicatee needs "cheering up." The French states that the author's friend "a bien besoin d'être consolée." Not the same, especially if one is aware of the context. The book was written during the dark days of the Second World War. The author's friend was hungry and cold in Nazi-occupied France, while he is warm and well fed and in New York. More than cheering up was needed.

All of this came to mind as I attempted to reconcile two translations of The Book of The Courtier, the Italian Renaissance work of genius by Baldesare Castiglione. In later editions, "a salutary craft," becomes "a healthy deception", "a grossness of dull wits" reads "obtuse insensitivity," and for "subtleties" we read "sophistries".   Unless we look at the front of the tapestry -- reading the original Italian, we will never know which translation approaches closest to the author's intent.

Even within our beautiful language, we face problems. The various editions of the works of William Shakespeare (who died on the same date as Cervantes) present problems. We may understand "tainted" becoming "diseased." But what of "the all-binding law" modernized into "the all-building law"? In Measure for Measure, Angelo has been transformed from "precise" to "prenzie," whatever that means. What is the difference between "headstrong jades" and "headstrong weeds" when they both mean spoiled horses?

Given all this, perhaps Cervantes did not write the opening observation of this essay. I may have merely quoted what one of this many translators wanted me to read.

Human Rights Commissions for Fun and Profit

A copy of the blog post has been sent to Jeff Poirier, Senior Policy Analyst Designated, Policy, Education, & Monitory; Outreach, Ontario Human Rights Commission.

The first thing you need to know is that human rights tribunals are theatre. The better your performance, the greater your chance of financial success. Be honest. If it weren't for the money, you wouldn't be there. Your complaint is a time investment.

Unlike as in a real court, you need not be the "injured" party. You may claim on behalf of people who do not bother to complain themselves, or of people who may not even exist. There is no need to prove anyone was hurt, just maybe, perhaps, might have been, tended to have been hurt or offended. In a real court, the complainant must prove actual damage.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission/Tribunal states that you need only be "bothered" (their word) by someone because of race, colour or ancestry to establish racism. In Saskatchewan, you need only claim that the behaviour exposed you to hatred, ridicule, be belittled, or it was an affront to your dignity. These are terms so vague they would be thrown out of a real court, but are the meat of tribunals. If you cannot prove a specific instance, allege a pattern of whatever it is you abject to. Again, no proof required.

Harassment, for example, may be conduct with the effect of violating your dignity or creating an environment that is intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive. It's all about feelings. Feel-good commissions thrive on vagueness.

The weepier your grievance, the better. Truth is irrelevant. You cannot be charged with perjury no matter how outrageously false your statements may be. Describe in great detail hurt feelings, even if you are simply imagining them on behalf of someone else. Claim injury to dignity, feelings, self-respect and anything else you find in a thesaurus.

By law, the accused must appear before the commission, perhaps with legal counsel at his own expense. You have already hurt him financially. Even if he is declared innocent after days of testimony, he cannot claim legal expenses against you. Some accused persons have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then found innocent. There is no chance of reimbursement, even though someone's reputation may have been damaged in the process.

Start a cult, no matter how outrageous. Then add religious discrimination to your complaint.

The commission may order a police raid on the accused's home, office, cottage, houseboat, whatever. So, imply evidence may be anywhere, even in their gym locker. Spread the embarrassment as much as possible. The police may take what they want: files, computers, cameras, books. The tribunals may keep them for however long they wish. The case could drag on for weeks, perhaps months, thereby putting the accused out of business. So, even if you don't win, it's better than breaking even, because you will have harmed someone you don't like. Feel good about it. It's legal. And it did not cost you a cent.

When you appear before a commissioner, claim the victim high ground. Keep it vague. Commissions love to fill in the blanks. Rehearse in front of a mirror. Hire an acting coach. Here's how best to play the victimization card:

1. Depending on the situation, and as often as possible, work into your deliberately stumbling speech those buzz words that set Utopian adjudicators' hearts all aflutter: racism (rampant racism is better), homophobic, Islamophobic, sexist, hateful, bigoted, intolerant, discriminatory, abusive, exclusionary, profiling, harassment and negative differential treatment (code for discrimination), colour, ancestry, disability, and family status. Adjudicators love that wonder word "systemic." It means everything; it means nothing. It lets you condemn an entire workplace, the owner of which may be innocent of any wrong-doing, but will still have to pay.

Much is good. Too much is better. Overload is best. It all helps the commission to write a favourable judgement.

2. Claim that since the time of the offence which occurred months, years earlier, your human dignity still feels hurt, that you suffer loss of  -- sleep, weight, sex drive, work opportunities, friends, family, waking hours, feelings and self-respect. Claim you also have medical issues such as fear of leaving home, fear that people look at you and talk funny about you, and that you have become moody and isolated. The word "stress" sounds good, as in "post-traumatic stress disorder," although few know what it means. Even vaguer, and therefore better, is "severe separation anxiety." You need not prove any of this, just claim it. The accused cannot possibly disprove it. How does one disprove something that did not occur? The odds are always in your favour.

It's a low burden of proof on your part, while the accused, already presumed guilty, must prove innocence "on the preponderance of evidence." This is the common failing of such tribunals that are sprouting up all over the world.

3. A tear of two would not be out of order. If the case in any way involves physical action, claim the defendant acted in a "threatening manner by creating a hostile environment." You may even suppose he acted in this manner. No one can question how you claim you felt. It might boost the cash prize by a few thousand.

4. Constantly refer to feelings. Tribunals like feelings. They also like tendencies and likelihood. Boldly state that the accused's real or imagined behaviour likely might have tended to expose you or some fictitious person to hurt feelings. Don't let it bother you that this strips away any semblance of objective legal reasonableness. It's all to your benefit.

5. Try to get bleeding-heart media coverage. It could only be a plus. They like the word "devastated." So work that one in somewhere.

6. Adjudicators and commissioners, all political appointees, are empire builders, and always in the market for expanded authority, for new "human rights", for new crimes. One of them recently dreamed up "unconscious racism." Any ideas for new offences you might dangle before them would be gratefully received. Try "structural racism." These people constitute a bureaucracy of solutions looking for problems.

There is a current movement seeking to equate human and animal rights. So, if you have a pet whose dignity you feel was likely tended to be hurt by the accused, even unconsciously, work that into your tale. If your dog is a Dalmatian or Mexican hairless, claim canine racism.

7. End your speech with an emotional plea for diversity, tolerance, understanding, affirmative action. No matter what your complaint, this will just about guarantee success.

8. Claim that no amount of money could possibly restore your lost human dignity etc., but thousands of dollars would go a long way to easing the pain, attracting friends, attracting family, improving sexual performance, restoring weight, getting a good job, blah, blah, blah. Whatever the problem, money will solve it. These days, commissioners favour awards of around $25,000.

The really good news is that Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall wants authority to impose unlimited penalties. You might get enough to retire before she does.

Follow these instructions, and claim the pot of gold at the end of the human rights rainbow.

Citizen Pays for Corporate Incompetence

On December 1, Ontario Hydro One deducted $11,907 from the pre-authorized bank account of a customer. The normal deduction was $477 per month. Since 2008, Hydro One had failed to read the electricity meter on the client's second property. Without the courtesy of a notice, this bureaucratic giant scoops up all the money it feels owing.

But hold on. The public deserves protection against corporate incompetence. The government (provincial? federal?) must decree that all such services must be invoiced within three months, otherwise the claim for payment becomes void. Lawsuits have a statute of limitations. Why not service charges?

Toronto Life Magazine and Prostitutes

In an overwrought piece of journalism, the December 2010 issue of Toronto Life presented prostitutes and their clients as well-balanced people. My letter to the Editor published in the February 2011 issue:

No matter how you dress (or undress) them, men who consort with prostitutes admit their deficiencies.

The media, in their own cute way, present them as up-scale swingers, the prostitutes as strong in family values.

Men's lack of self-containment, self-confidence, communication skills, and interesting things to say, renders them unable to attract real women -- women who come to men on women's terms and not as marketable flesh.

The "R" Word

What is the appeal in the words racism and racist?

The Ontario Human Rights Commission, in its own ungrammatical way, describes Islamophobia as " a contemporary and emerging form of racism".

The U.K. report of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia presents the case "for seeing Islamophobia as a form of racism".

In explaining Belgium's banning the burqa, a member of parliament claimed, "We are not a racism kind of country".

In a legal dispute over Muslim women wearing veils, a lawyer "raised the spectre of racism".

Airport security screening of turbans called "elements of racial profiling".

A letter to the Toronto Star of June 18, 2014, dealt with our failings towards our aboriginal people. The writer avoided the word racist. The headline writer editorialized this complaint into "our racist history."

Not one of these examples involves race, other than in the minds of the accusers. (In the case of the Toronto Star, in the mind of the editorializer.) Such words trip off the tongue more readily than intolerance or bigotry or racial discrimination. Is it the snake-like sibilance hissing through clenched teeth that appeals? Or because it's but a short linguistic step from fascism and fascist? Or because the perpetrator is linguistically challenged?

Philosopher of Despair

Princeton philosopher Peter Singer denies the humanity of people with special needs.

In his 1975 Animal Liberation, he argued that highly aware animals are owed more respect and protection than mentally-challenged humans.

Singer claims that babies "are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons ... The life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee." He teaches that it is permissible to take human life if the person lacks awareness, such as the mentally disabled.

Under Singer's influence, the Spanish government has enacted The Great Ape Project. Henceforth in that corner of the world, apes (gorillas, chimps and orangutans) will enjoy greater rights than humans. For example, from the moment of conception, abortion and fetal experimentation are now illegal. He permits such procedures and experimentation on humans.

The original promoter of the law, a socialist government of a nation with no indigenous apes, The Great Ape Project director said: "This will doubtless be remembered as a key moment in the defence of our evolutionary comrades."

The Director believes he himself evolved from these comrades. That's why apes have been granted standing in Spanish courts. No human can kill them, except in self-defence. They cannot be used in circuses, movies, or television commercials. Experiments on great apes are now outlawed, even though there is no evidence of any being carried out.

Should apes in Spain be granted the vote and allowed to run for office? Why not? Then the government and their evolutionary kin may concoct more freedoms, such the right to swing from trees into parliament. As they are higher on the evolutionary ladder, apes should officiate at bullfights.

Speaking of which, this beneficence of rights does not extend to horned animals. Bull taunting in Pamplona, and the wholesale slaughter in bullrings continues unabated, more than 7,000 annually. The government does not want to lose those tourist dollars. No one visits Spain to see non-existent apes. This government knows when to rise above principle.

Singer has acquired a Princeton bioethics professorship from which he claims that, as ours should be the last generation of human life, we can party ourselves to death, that concern for human life is "medieval". [To use "medieval" as a pejorative, indicates limited historical knowledge.]

Nothing new in all this. The nihilist opinion of Benatar and Singer -- that life is not worth living -- has slithered down through the ages. In the 11th century, Syrian philosopher Abdul Ala Al-Ma'rri recommended that no children should be begotten, so as to spare them the pains of life. In the 18th century, the Marquise du Deffand complained that the only misfortune was to have been born. Certain overly-sensitive people are still with us, distorting young minds.

The Great Ape Project administrators intend to spread their compassion. "We are seeking to break the species barrier," the manager states. By equating himself to an ape, he is well on the way to that noble aspiration.

Letter to The Globe and Mail, August 14, 2011. Unpublished 

Professor Peter Singer speaks of "the moral gulf" humans have dug between ourselves and the animal world (A planet for all apes, Aug. 13). Humans did not dig any gulf, moral or otherwise. Nature put it there. Any attempt to blur or bridge it, a chasm actually, is wrong. It is a form of self-loathing.

Yes, some animals behave in some respects like humans, and others can be taught to imitate human actions. And the DNAs may be close.  That does not justify comparing humans with "our closest non-human relatives," as Singer describes apes. He may consider apes his relatives. I do not.

Chatter about D.H. Lawrence

"The trial that untied our tongues" claimed the headline in The Globe and Mail's shrinking literary section of October 30, 2010. The piece by feature writer Ian Brown celebrated the 50th anniversary of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence being declared not obscene in law. Before the trial, the then British attorney-general expressed hope for a criminal conviction. For that, Mr. Brown declared him "anti-intellectual."

Law is not the standard thinking people use to judge obscenity.

The wrong charge was leveled against the book. Oscar Wilde said that boredom (he called in ennui) "is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness."  By Wilde's standard, the book is undeserving of forgiveness. I found it a soporific eye glazer. Were it not for the book's mention of naughty bits (Monty Python phraseology), we would today not even be discussing it.

More plausible as the basis of the lawsuit is class distinction -- a lady taking a gamekeeper as lover.

This trial was a money-making lesson for today's scribblers. No matter how inconsequential, no matter how encased in ennui, no matter how hackneyed your book may be, work in something sexual. Too much is not enough. That's what the media and the sub-literati look for.

 Should anyone object, mock them as "anti-intellectual."

A Twist on Foreign Aid

Pick a country in need of a little foreign aid. Here's the plan.

A Canadian lends to the government of that country $10,000, at 10 per cent, for 10 years.

The only requirement is that the $1,000 annual interest be spent in that country. The Canadian government does not charge taxes on the interest earned by the Canadian investor.

The result:
1. The country has the use of the money for a fixed period of time.
2. The purchaser's interest is spent to support local industry.
3. The Canadian government aids a country in need.

Alberta Rights Commission a "Kangaroo Court"

Tolerance enforced by law is tyranny.

Yet another "worst example" of this comes from the Alberta Human Rights Commission and the May 30, 2008, judgement of Commissioner Lori G. Andreachuk, a lawyer. The issue was a letter in a local newspaper written by Stephen Boissoin in which he expressed his view of the homosexual agenda.

Darren Lund, a heterosexual, lodged a complaint. "[A]lthough not a direct victim [he] did expend considerable time and energy and suffered ridicule and harassment as a result of his complaint. The Panel finds therefore that he is entitled to some compensation," Andreachuck decided.

What do we have here? Lund, a person not affected by the letter in question, suffered ridicule from a third party, and Boissoin is ordered to pay him $5,000 for "pain and suffering." The illogic of all this failed to register on the Commissioner.

The farce continued when Andreachuk ordered Boissoin to "request" the newspaper to print her judgement and "request" the newspaper to publish his apology. Of course, the newspaper refused. This naive opinion constitutes legal over-reach at its most obscene.

Andreachuk further ordered Boisson never again,  until the day he dies, express similar views, not in his emails, not even in private conversation. This is more restrictive than what the Inquisition imposed on Galileo (who continued to publish).  Will the good Commissioner Andreachuck eavesdrop on Boissoin's pillow talk?

Fortunately, a court overturned the commissioner's mischief.

Human rights commissions are staffed by lawyers. One would think their training, if not common sense, would inhibit participation in such abuse of the legal process. The judgements of such tribunals too often smack of anti-intellectual flailing and gasping utopianism.

No law has ever changed a privately-held opinion.

Now the really good news. Commissioner Andreachuk's mischief came to the attention of the Alberta Government. The Culture Minister ordered changes in the Commission procedure. He has also initiated a search for a new Director who will "re-tool the commission from top to bottom. We had to change the governance of how it's run," he told the press. "It has to become objective. It's a quasi-judicial body that has to be run like one. No more kangaroo courts." All the commissioners were fired. They have been replaced, it is to be hoped, by people endowed with a modicum of common sense.

The non-profit Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership recommends the repeal of that part of the Code that deals with "statements or publications likely to expose people to hatred or contempt" in order to protect freedom of speech. There are those in the human rights community who are quick to say 'shut this person up, he said something nasty about gays or shut this person up he said something nasty about people in Somalia.' We don’t see limitations on freedom of expression as a good thing in the human rights arena. We see it as a bad thing.”

Media Interviews

In the early days of television, the BBC interview program Face to Face set the standard for such telecasts. Its salient feature was the hidden interviewer. The camera over his shoulder focused on the guest throughout the entire program. The CBC program Take 30 had much the same format. The interviewer's ego was restrained. Since then, the interviewer has gained prominence to the point of intrusion. He/she has become the celebrity, not the guest.

The interviewer-free format produces desirable results: It minimizes the temptation of interviewer at self-glorification. It does not provide the interviewer with a platform for his opinions. It discourages negative interrogatories so favoured by today's media.

The format today is designed to showcase the interviewer. The late but not lamented program of CNN's Lou Dobbs illustrates this common practice. Dobbs introduced his guest as an expert in the topic of the day. With the camera focused on his abnormally white teeth, Dobbs opened with a self-serving thesis, the guest given time only to validate on what Dobbs has just said. Dobbs repeated his harangue. The guest uttered the affirmation sought by all down-scale interviewers, "You are absolutely correct." Another close-up of Dobbs's teeth ended the interview.

The flow of intelligent dialogue too often is not present as much as the listener deserves. Some interviewers operate from an inflexible agenda, thereby forcing the interview into a sought-after conclusion.

The closest we come to the ideal is TVO's Steve Paikin. Alone on camera for only short sequences, questions well phrased and researched, his personality never intrudes, no hand waving, no head bobbing. His guests are encouraged, indeed urged to soar. That's why they are there, to inform the viewer.

The clue to the interviewer's style is the negative interrogatory, and the word "but." For example, "But do you not believe...?" Good interviews are conversations among knowledgeable people.

The interviewer represents the listener. Questions should be those an informed person might ask. To accomplish this, the interviewer must be a well-researched listener, not a polemicist with an agenda.

Book Burning a Western Disease?

A copy sent to The Globe and Mail, unpublished.

The opinions of two novelists on book burning fill a page of the September 11, 2010 issue of The Globe and Mail. Neither seems aware of relevant historical context.

In the longer of the two pieces, Esquire columnist Stephen Marche opines that book burning is "an endemic Western disease with deep cultural roots." This ignores the fact that the vast majority of books were and still are published in the West. Where most books are produced, most books will be read, most books saved, most shredded, most burned.

 By way of illustration, according to the United Nations' Arab Human Development Report 2002, "The Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one-fifth of the number that Greece translates." Population of the Arab world 300 million, Greece 12 million.

The books burned by the Nazis were not those of business, economics, mathematics, geometry, and the physical sciences. They burned books dealing with the humanities: religion, philosophy, culture, history, literature, the arts, that is, the mind-stretching, idea-producing works. The latter are the same areas of study our universities are currently downgrading.

Burning is not necessary in order to destroy a book's value. Just leave it on the shelf un-read. That neglect will have the same result as incineration. Society will have forgotten its message. While the physical sciences are cumulative, and only the latest version need be known, the humanities must be re-learned, from the beginning, in every generation.

The authors of the famous 1066 and All That got it right. "History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember," the preface tells us. The authors therefore, did their research in "golf-clubs, gun- rooms, green-rooms, etc." This tongue-in-cheek procedure contains much truth. It isn't what's written in books that counts, but how often those books are read. But I digress.

Elsewhere on the same page of the Globe, novelist Drew Hayden Taylor commits the same error as Marche. He too seems unaware that "white people" (as Taylor terms the West thereby revealing his status) have written the most books, and therefore likely to destroy the most books. A culture with no books has none to burn.

Taylor does not know that Muslims consider the actual physical pages of the Koran as sacred property. Christians do not ascribe the same sanctity to the pages Bible. For them, the message not the medium counts. But he has his own drum to beat (pun intended) in using book-burning as an excuse to drag in the unrelated topic of residential schools.

Now that we're talking about residential schools, Taylor is advised to await the report of the inquiry currently in progress. The commission will show that the treatment of aboriginal students had little to do with religion, and everything to do with government. The religious instructors were forced to implement such policies under pain of financial sanctions from Ottawa.

Taylor's worst deficit is in Islamic history. He writes, "It seems to me far more damage has been done to natives by people following the gospels and by any believing in the Koran." This speculation also evidences a lack of Canadian history. No Canadian aboriginal was ever exposed to Islamic behaviour. But he is free to read the history of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, for example, to learn what havoc it wreaked across the Balkans for almost 600 years, and how many millions of slaves Muslims took from Europe and Africa. (In 1631, Muslims raided and enslaved the entire village of Baltimore, County of Cork, Ireland.)

Taylor is half correct in his belief that books are not evil, only people. But like everything else in our ambivalent world, books can influence people to do evil things, instance Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Neither of these authors mentions Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 415. How can a novelist write about book burning without mentioning this insightful work? It describes an anti-intellectual society where the job of firemen is to burn the great books of the Western world -- the humanities, of course.

G20, Sherry Good and the Class Action Cash Cow

A copy of this post was sent to The Law Society of Upper Canada.

A self-described "paranoid" is suing the Toronto Police Services Board and the Attorney-General of Canada for $45 million. Sherry Good claims her rights were violated while she mingled with G20 protesters and gawkers in downtown Toronto on that famous weekend in June 2010.

"I didn't think they had the right to tell me I couldn't go out and protest," she complained to the media. Of course, the police do not deny the right to protest. But the law they enforce describes what protest acts are criminal.

"I couldn’t sleep last night. I took the day off work. I’m so upset" at the way she felt treated by the police. "I don't believe human beings can do the kind of things they did to other human beings that weekend."

Precisely what she and her companion wearing a black-shirted with Russian markings were doing at the time of police confrontation, other than packing golf balls in her purse, awaits a convincing reply. The police claim she got "mouthy." That's a no-no when dealing with authority no matter what.

Ms. Good intended originally not to get involved with the law, but simply wanted to tell her story on the Internet. A couple of lawyers trolling for business picked up her complaint.

According to newspaper reports, Murry Klippenstein and Eric Gillespie approached and convinced her to be the representative plaintiff. And there we have a big-bucks class-action lawsuit. Is inducement to litigation legal or ethical? Law Society of Upper Canada -- lawyers' trade association -- thinks all is fine. The public has less flattering words for such behaviour.

Casting the money net even wider, The Globe and Mail reports, "It's these 800 people, as well as anyone else detained by police but never arrested that the lawyers are targeting in their class-action suit." To harness more citizens to this lawsuit, the lawyers organized a rally in Queen's Park.

In common class-action patter, Good (coached by her lawyers?) told reporters, "What happened to me and hundreds of others was very wrong." She now speaks for hundreds of others. It wasn't wrong enough to sue, until lawyers convinced her otherwise.

Why a press conference in Queen's Park to launch a lawsuit when the site of her complaint is at Spadina Avenue and Queen Street, and just north of the G20 meeting site? Many suspicions present themselves. Needless to say, lawyers Klipperstein and Gillespie featured prominently in the photo-op.

Full disclosure: I was downtown both days. I brought along my teen-age grand-daughter to demonstrate to her how to behave: No screaming, no smashing golf balls against store windows, no goose-stepping, no Nazi salutes. no insults by Courtney Winkels of B.C. assaulting Constable Adam Joseph by blowing soap bubbles at him.

Footnote: Police officer Adam Joseph is suing YouTube for defamation of character with regard to this incident. Go Adam, go.

On a dozen occasions, I approached the police lines. Stepping over occasionally abusive adolescents trying to look cool stretched out on the roadway, I thanked the officers for being there. I wished them well. They responded kindly.

Sidebar: The sinking of the Queen of the North ferry on March 2006 off the B.C. coast resulted in a class action lawsuit. Forty-five plaintiffs received a total of $140,000 or an average of $3,111.11. The remainder (60%) of the settlement, $213,000, covered legal costs.

In reply to my complaint, the Law Society of Upper Canada sent me two tightly-typed pages (single spaced, both sides of the paper) with this boiler-plate rationale:

"After reviewing the information you provided, we have found that the concerns you raise are not something that the Law Society can deal with. We can only act on complaints that provide information suggesting a lawyer has done something contrary to our Rules of Professional Conduct. It appears circumstances surrounding Ms. Good's hiring of [Klippenstein and Gillespie] are unknown."