Intellectual freedom in Canada: News roundup

- Rev. Sean Binks in Nova Scotia makes an appeal for help for Kathy Shaidle for her legal expenses in a SLAPP suit against her by "human rights" advocate Richard Warman, now that there has been a promising development in her case, explained here:

Warman must hand over his neo-Nazi records

The Post story is headlined "Lawyer who launched libel suit against Ezra Levant ordered to hand over computer", and that's a pretty accurate summary of what happened this week. In brief, an Ontario judge has ordered Richard Warman, a former Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) staffer and Canada's most prolific censor, to hand over a copy of his laptop computer to an independent forensic expert, who will search it for evidence relevant to Warman's Nazi activities.

Warman's neo-Nazi activities already condemned by Canadian Human Rights Tribunal

Those activities are at the center of Warman's two nuisance lawsuits against me. Warman is a member of several neo-Nazi organizations, including Stormfront and Vanguard, and he posted hundreds of anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-gay comments online, including my personal favourite, when he called Jews "scum". That last comment was particularly offensive to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, which issued a ruling last year calling Warman's racist conduct "disappointing and disturbing". No kidding.

Writing hundreds of bigoted messages is bizarre and un-Canadian to begin with. But even weirder is that Warman published much of this bigotry while he was working at the CHRC [Canadian Human Rights Commission], and then later when Warman went on to work at the Department of National Defence's own internal human rights commission, called the Directorate of Special Grievances. Seriously, that's what it's called.

So here was someone claiming to be fighting against "hate speech" by day, but pumping out hundreds of hateful comments by night.

This is what happens when a society chooses government by bureaucrats, grievance lobbies, and self-appointed censors over government by elected officials. Anyway, a computer expert is required, and if anyone can help Kathy Shaidle and civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant with the cause, they both have PayPal buttons.

They and Blazing Cat Fur are excellent sources of material on the battle for intellectual freedom in Canada, as is Binks's Free Canuckistan.

- Blazing Cat Fur, regarding Toronto mayor candidate for the fall elections, Rob Ford,advises that, of all things,

Sharp eyed Rob Ford supporter ES has caught someone from an IP address traced to the Toronto Star "editing" Rob Ford's wikipedia page to include reference to a parody web site robfordmayor.com. Legal steps were taken against the parody site and its author elected to remove it. Check out comment no. 7 for ES's revelation of the wikipedia editor's identity.

I thought the Star had reached a new low when they hired Heather Mallick however this escapade shows a determined effort to plumb ever greater depths of left wing derangement. Papers are supposed to report the news, they should not be engaging in election hijinks.

Here's the National Post on the story. The Star is an old and large newspaper. If Staristas are indeed acting like Wikimorons, it is bad news indeed. Fortunately, the Star redeemed itself to some extent by an investigation that discovered some potentially damaging information about Ford and substance abuse. It doesn't appear to have damaged Ford's chances. But in any event, that is what a newspaper should be doing. Otherwise, let us bloggers handle it. We will do it for PayPal donations.