Intellectual Freedom in Canada: Five Feet of Fury interviews Ezra Levant, as Shakedown is published

Following on the publication of civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant's Shakedown, revealing the immense corruption of the "human rights", industry, Kathy Five Feet of Fury Shaidle interviews him here:

EXAMINER: Has anything happened since the book was printed that you'd like to tell people about, to keep them up to date on certain cases you covered in the book?

EZRA LEVANT: "To my surprise and delight, the cabinet minister in charge of Alberta's human rights commission -- the one that had fifteen bureaucrats and lawyers investigate me for 900 days -- has denounced his own agency as a 'kangaroo court', has appointed a real judge to oversee it and has given him a mandate to reform it. That cabinet minister -- a black man himself -- has said there is no right not to be offended. It's a hopeful sign that the campaign of reform is moving from the court of public opinion into the legislatures of the land."

"At the federal level, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has gone into damage control mode. It has quietly dropped some of its more political cases, such as against the Christian Heritage Party. It is clearly hoping that by just getting out of the headlines, it can weather its PR storm without being reformed. I hope they're wrong, and I think they're wrong.

"My book contains some explosive facts about the CHRC that will likely shock 'severely normal' Canadians, including evidence that the CHRC is Canada's largest disseminator of anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-gay bigotry. I just don't see how any government other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's could accept the fact that staff from their 'human rights' agency has actually joined various neo-Nazi organizations, and made literally hundreds of bigoted comments (e.g. gays are 'deviants' and a 'cancer on society'; an apartheid city called 'Whiteville' should be formed; Canadian neo-Nazis need to get 'dangerous', etc.). This is a scandal of the first order, and political heads should roll."

The real scandal, in my view, is that the legacy mainstream media only got on the bandwagon after the blogosphere had been screeding the scandal for years.

Recently, friends in media have been kvetching to me about the decline of newspapers and how awful it is. I sympathize, but - where WERE they when bloggers were covering this? Hiding, apparently, afraid of being charged.

Yes, a number of writer bloggers, including famous ones, were indeed charged.

Guess what ... they fought back. They fight back today.

Well, the legacy media soon won't need to hide any more. They can start a museum and catalogue their exhibits. Doubtless, they can get a government grant for that. Justabout anyoine can, for just about anything, it seems.

Here's Ezra Levant's now famous opening statement at his interrogation: ("I don't answer to the State.")





(Note: The Danish Mohammed cartoons to which Levant refers - the actual ones, not the ones included to ensure controversy in Muslim lands - were dull, innocuous, or fair comment, at least in Canada. Here, at most, we might have expected angry letters from people who say that the cartoonists don't understand, cancelled subscriptions and advertising, etc.; not government interrogations. The government does not control the media here, or not any more, it seems.)

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: