A Boy Named Sue

Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant has issued a cry for help to all his supporters tonight. He needs $$$ to fight off a lawsuit by Syed Soharwardy, described in an email from Levant as '"a radical Calgary Muslim imam" who is going after the WS for publishing those controversial Danish cartoons last month.

In the email, Levant pleads for donations for a legal defence fund.

He asked the police to arrest me for publishing the cartoons. They calmly explained to him that’s not what police in Canada do.

   So then he went to a far less liberal institution than the police: the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Unlike the Calgary Police Service, they didn’t have the common sense to show him the door.

   Earlier this month, I received a copy of Soharwardy’s rambling, hand-scrawled complaint. It is truly an embarrassing document. He briefly complains that we published the Danish cartoons. But the bulk of his complaint is that we dared to try to justify it - that we dared to disagree with him.

   Think about that: In Soharwardy’s view, not only should the Canadian media be banned from publishing the cartoons, but we should be banned from defending our right to publish them. Perhaps the Charter of Rights that guarantees our freedom of the press should be banned, too.

   Soharwardy’s complaint goes further than just the cartoons. It refers to two news articles we published about Hamas, a group labelled a terrorist organization by the Canadian government. By including those other articles, he shows his real agenda: censoring any criticism of Muslim terrorists.

   Perhaps the most embarrassing thing about Soharwardy’s complaint is that he claims our cartoons caused him to receive hate mail. Indeed, his complaint includes a few e-mails from strangers to him. Some of those e-mails even go so far as to call him “humourless” and tell him to “lighten up”. Perhaps that’s hateful. But all of those e-mails were sent to him before our magazine even published the cartoons. Soharwardy isn’t even pretending that this is a legitimate complaint. He’s not even trying to hide that this is a nuisance suit.

You can find the letter and more here.

But you can't find any sense in any of this.

Comments

[Robert McClelland]

"But you can't find any sense in any of this."

Actually you can. It's called war. Levant and others of his ilk have been waging a campaign to demonize all Muslims for a couple of years now and Canadian Muslims are simply tired of taking it. So they're starting to fight back. It's just that they don't appear to be too skilled at it and so it's rather sloppy. But they'll learn.

And as more of the rightwing's funding gets sucked into defending against this type of thing, the more the right whingers will learn to aim their shots at those who truly deserve it instead shooting wildly at everyone in hopes of hitting something.

It's doubtful Levant will understand and accept this though, so I expect it's going to be an expensive lesson for him and his patrons.

[Jay Currie]

I can't imagine why Ezra does not dust off his shiney law degree and defend himself.

The complaint is a joke and even a Human Right s Commission will be capable of seeing that. How much of a joke? Well, I got Ezra's email as well and the part you snipped is pretty telling,

"One of the leaders in Canadian human rights law, Alan Borovoy, was so disturbed by Soharwardy's abuse of the human rights commission that he wrote a public letter about it in the Calgary Herald on March 16th. "During the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech," wrote Borovoy, who is general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Censorship was "hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There should be no question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons," he wrote.

Borovoy went even further - he said that the human rights laws should be changed to avoid this sort of abuse in the future. "It would be best, therefore, to change the provisions of the Human Rights Act to remove any such ambiguities of interpretation," he wrote. That's an amazing statement, coming from one of the fathers of the Canadian human rights movement."

So, the complainant appears to be a Grade "A" crank - Ezra wanders into the hearing and says so. I suspect he'd win in a walk; but think of the free, anti-Human Rights Commission PR he'd get if he somehow lost.

[sooey]

ah... the charter of rights and freedoms. and here i thought *it* was enemy numero uno to western standard adherents...

[balbulican]

Poor Ezra. I'm quite sure he was hoping for a firebomb or two, and maybe - dared he hope - demonstrations in the street, all confirming his thesis that when you set out to deliberately provoke people, they get provoked.

Instead, those damnable radical Calgary Imams go all Canadian on him, and sue (and wouldn't they just, cunning beggars that they are!) Much harder to paint yourself as a victim when all you're facing is a "rambling, hand-scrawled complaint" instead of torch bearing mobs. But it's courageous of Ezra to try. Let's see how many of his slack-jawed fans and admirers buy the martyr act this time.

[Adam in Whitby]

One hopes the one beneficial outcome to this will be a general public disgust with the processes of our "human rights tribunals" and an overhaul of them. How revoltingly easy to harass a legitimite media voice.

Now I look forward to all reporters, unions and pundits of all stripes to rally behind the cause of freedom of speech and the right to report without fear of litigation at every turn.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Gee, what is with the right wing and pleading for money?

Is there a school they attend or something? Jerry Failwell, Jimmy Swaggert, Oral (oh there is a pun waiting to happen) Roberts, Ezra Levant, Pat Robertson, and on and on.

As to the lawsuit, well, who gives a damn actually? LOL

[Ti-Guy]

"Perhaps the Charter of Rights that guarantees our freedom of the press should be banned, too."

Well, isn't that what Ezra was suggesting two years ago with his little campaign against the "stupid Charter?"

Levant may have a valid point here, if I cared enough to actually follow this story. Alas, I don't. Ezra Levant is just background noise, and I'll probably only really pay attention to it again when I've noticed that it has finally stopped.

[keeper]

It is idiots like him that make me think --- quite possibly, the Netherlands have a good anti-immigration idea?

[JM]

Isn't this what would be called, in other contexts, a 'slap suit'? A suit which has no hope of winning, but is designed to tie up resources and shut people up. I would have been perfectly content to never have seen those cartoons, but they were news, no?

[Ivan Prokopchuk]

Ye gods and little fishes.
I am no great fan of Ezra Levant.
But this?

[Antonia]

Thanks to Julie, Michael Watkins and Russ Skinner for pointing out my boo-boo in the link. It has been fixed.

[True North]

Three possible explanations -

1) The Western Standard is on the verge of financial collapse!

If Levant can't come up with the legal costs to swat this kooky attack - then he's pretty near the edge.

He should have saved the money he spent of all those unwanted extra copies of WS he printed up to exploit his exploitation of the cartoon controversy.

2) He's on the verge of journalistic collapse!

His desperate begging in the hopes of whipping up support from the out-to-lunch far right islamophobic crowd shows how close he is getting to hate publishing.

It's hard to know who's more out there - Levant or the Imam.

3) He has invented some new form of satire that we could do without.

[Mark Federman]

Extremists don't exist in a vacuum - they gather their strength from opposite-side-of-the-fence extremists, much in the same way that a hurricane gathers strength over open water. The more hot air, the more ferocious the resulting storm, and the more attention everyone pays.

It's a yin-yang thing, I think. One good kook deserves another.

[Robert McClelland]

"The complaint is a joke and even a Human Rights Commission will be capable of seeing that."

And you base this on what exactly, Jay? Have you seen the complaint or are you merely relying on Ezra's interpretation of it? Given Levant's penchant for hyperbole and spinning the truth, I wouldn't take anything he says at face value.

Now see, this is a perfect example of what Muslims are facing. Bigots like Jay hate Muslims and everything about them so they automatically assume a Muslim can't possibly have a valid complaint but instead must be a crank.

And what's worse is the double standard at play. Jewish groups routinely go after the media for anything they perceive to be even the slightest bit anti-semitic. Where are the cries of censorship when they do it? It makes me wonder if people like Jay think it's okay when Jewish groups do this or if they think they're just a bunch of cranks too?

[Jay Currie]

I note that of all the Canadian media The Western Standard was the only publication which had the guts to actually print rather than describe the cartoons. Something which, as Antonia noted in her earlier posts, 70% of Canadian journalists thought was the right thing to do.

[Glowbull]

Ah, music to my ears. For once - just this once - I'm cheering for the Islamic lunatics. Hope the relentless publicity whoring over the issue was worth $75,000, duchebag. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Couldn't have happened to a more deserving little prick.

[Nbob]

Jay-

I'm sure - if polled- 70% of all lawyers would vote to do away with trust audits, 70% of cops would rather not have to bother with search warrants and those same 70 % of journalists would think a right thing to do would be to scrap liable laws ( or at least make them much less -plaintiff friendly ). Nobody likes to work with restraints or someone looking over their shoulder. So that poll carries little validity.

The Calgary Sun - that's the Sun even ! - did not print them because they found them to be a "gratuitous insult" . Now if 70% of journalists think that the right thing to do is to throw around gratuitous insults that may explain why society esteems them on about the same measure as they do lawyers.

And what of the WS " guts" ?

You miss the point of the complaint. Levant would have you believe that he is standing up for "freedom" and against the oppression that "radical" imans are trying to foist upon us by making us adhere to their laws. But read the complaint - this radical iman sez there would be no problem if it had only been a drawing of the Prophet.

What he objects to is the characterization of Mohammed as a terrorist. That creates a negative stereotype and fosters the notion that all followers of Islam follow a terrorist and are terrorists themselves. That in turn is " likely to expose" them to "hatred or contempt "( and if you don't think that has in fact happened check out some of the posts at the Shotgun)

Would Levant have "guts" if he published a cartoon of a Catholic bishop leading his flock down to their knees (- only they're not praying they're giving oral sex to little boys). Or would we be outraged that a mag would try and stereotype all followers of that faith as perverts. What "guts" if he ran a cartoon of a white man carrying the burden of a fat lipped black on his back ? outrage or defense fund ?

I doubt many people would get their knickers in a knot if someone complained about the the later two cartoons but if someone complains about negative stereotypes of Muslims it is an attack on our western way of life ?

In this land of equality if we think it a good law to stop people from publishing material that is likely to expose Catholics, blacks, women, jews, gays etc. to hatred or contempt then the law obligates us to give that same protection to Muslims. To do otherwise would be discrimination and that is against Canadian law and not some red herring , straw-man Islamic law.

[greg Felton]

Ah, da poor widdle pischer!

Now he knows what it's like.

B'nai Brith, that bastion of zionist servitude and all things Israeli, lodged a complaint with the Ontario Attorney-General two years ago to have my column shut down. So desperate were they to silence me that the BB libeled me by splicing sentences from two columns to make me sound like a——WAIT FOR IT…………

Holocaust denier>

What else.

The Canadian Arab News had a slam-dunk case but a quirk in Alberta's libel law prevented us from taking action. It was also hard to find a legall frim with enough balls to take on The Lobby.

Let's hope Soharwardy's lawsuit forces this nasty little bottomfeeding hatemonger to crawl back into the muck whence he came.

[sheena]

The Western Standard appears to be back in the good books with Air Canada. The March 27 issue is stacked up in the Maple Leaf Lounge with the official stamp of approval "Enjoy this Magazine/Bonne Lecture...aircanada.com...Your 24/7 one-stop shop/Votre boutique 24 heurs, 7 jours sur 7"

[Stephen Reevess]

How long before Right Wing Christians sue Leftie Publications. The Left ignore this at their own peril.

[TB]

IN case you didn't know, the right has been doing this for years, So the left ignores nothing. This is called turnaround and it is fairplay.