Ezra Levant Picking another CHRC Fight?

No sooner had Ezra Levant's show, The Source, gone on-air on Sun TV than he was once again digging up some old fights. Or perhaps even picking them.

During the April 18 episode of his show, Levant again showed the infamous prophet Muhammad cartoons. However whereas he was previously publishing them in the Western Standard, he's now broadcasting them on Sun TV.

He's already drawn the attention of Imam Steve Rockwell. Rockwell was previously in the news when he and Aly Hindy tag teamed a radio show caller who questioned the practice of polygamy in Islam. It immediately followed an episode in which a Canadian Muslim man had been caught maintaining three marriages; at least one of his wives were in the dark.

Now Rockwell's gone solo. The results have been truly remarkable.

“If he wants freedom of speech why doesn’t he go up to a black man and use the N-word?” Rockwell asked angrily. “There is no absolute free speech. With freedom of speech there are rules.”

Rockwell suggested that the media has a special tolerance for Levant's antics because his targets are Muslims, not Jews. Jews, you see, control the media.

“If he were to show 100 Jews in flames with soap coming out of the other end he would not have a job the next day!” he declared. “Why doesn’t he show his Jewish cousins being fried by the Nazis?”

Wow. Just wow.

Levant countered by noting that anti-Semitic cartoons are published so frequently, and the reactions to them are so relentlessly tame, that they are practically a non-story.

“Anti-Semitic cartoons run in newspapers around the world all the time,” he remarked. “If they were the cause of riots and 200 people dying you are darn right I would run them.”

It seems entirely fair to wonder whether or not Levant is deliberately attempting to provoke a complaint with one of the Human Rights Commissions his Islamist opponents previously used against him.

But one could be a long time waiting for such a complaint. When Levant was the editor of the Western Standard, it was one thing. Now that he has Quebecor behind him, it's unlikely that Steve Rockwell or anyone else will attempt to take him on in that forum.

Which basically demonstrates that that the proponents of Human Rights Commissions have been banking on the financial vulnerability of their targets for their success. When tye go after an organization like Macleans, who have some real money to defend themselves with... well, we've already seen the results.



Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Blazing Cat Fur - "F$cked Up Imam Steve Rockwell On Ezra Levant: 'Why doesn’t he show his Jewish cousins being fried by the Nazis?'”

God's Copy Book - "Bless You Ezra"

Michael Ignatieff's Man in Somalia

Adam Esse wants to be President of Puntland

With Somali pirates continuing to grab headlines in the international media, one could have expected it would only be a matter of time until the issue was raised in Somalia.

Interestingly enough, it's become an issue in the Puntland Presidential election. Even more interestingly, it's being raised by a Canadian candidate, who is contesting the Presidency against yet another Canadian.

Puntland is a semi-autonomous region within Somalia.

Adam Esse, who also holds a Canadian citizenship, believes that the piracy issue in Somalia can be solved by creating more jobs there.

"I want to become president to change the bad situation that we have over here in terms of security, stability, the economy, education and equality between the genders," Esse recently announced.

Spoken like a true Liberal. And interestingly enough, it just so happens that Adam Esse is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada. He was a delegate for Michael Ignatieff during the 2006 Liberal leadership campaign.

Some may have considered Esse to be something of an oddity at the leadership convention, as he had arranged a meeting in which Aly Hindy accused Liberal deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety Anne McLellan of "terrorizing" Canadian Muslims.

"If you try to cross the line I can't guarantee what is going to happen. Our young people, we can't control," Hindy said at the time. "The police came to me and said, 'This is a kind of threat', and I said yes. But it's for the good of this country."


"We believe CSIS should stop terrorizing us," Hindy wrote in a pamphlet in which he encouraged Muslims not to cooperate with terrorism-related investigations. "CSIS is powerless. CSIS has no authority over you. If CSIS agents come to your door, do not open it for them."

Less than a year later, as many Canadians may recall, 18 suspects were arrested for a terrorist plot against the Prime Minister, Parliament and the CBC. While Hindy almost certainly was not involved in this, his encouragement to Canadian Muslims to not cooperate with terrorism-related investigates could have made this plot more difficult to detect than it had to be.

At the time, however, Adam Esse offered excuses for Hindy's behaviour. "Some people, when they talk, they get a little heated," Esse mused. "If you talk, you remove a lot of misconceptions, a lot of misunderstandings."

Of course, what Esse forgets to mention is that there are some things that talk is insufficient to address.

For example, Hindy noted to the media that six or seven young Muslim men had asked him about joining insurgent forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. Hindy wisely told them "people fighting in Iraq, they don't need more people," and told them to wage a non-violent struggle at home.

However, when asked by the RCMP if he knew the identities of any individuals who may engage in violent actions, Hindy told them "you just open the telephone directory" despite clearly knowing the identities of up to seven potential terrorists. In this particular case, these individuals had discussed travelling to Afghanistan in order to fight against Canadian soldiers.

Considering Michael Ignatieff's fairly vigilant stance toward Afghanistan in particular, it seems fairly surprising that Adam Esse would be a delegate for him while seemingly associating with individuals such as Aly Hindy.

The other Canadian in the race for the Putland Presidency is Mohamud Muse Hersi, the incumbent.

Hersi has faced international criticism for his inability to get the piracy situation in Puntland under control. Hersi has even been accused of collusion with pirates. More specifically, Hersi has been accused of allowing Somali pirates to operate out of Puntland's ports and hold hijacked ships for ransom.

Hersi has also been accused of personally profiting from oil contracts.

The wealth appropriated through piracy in Puntland -- an estimated $60 million annually -- is three times the government's annual budget of $20 million. Many blame the lack of a central Somali government, and its accompanying poverty, for the prevalence of piracy there.

It would be interesting to see how the Canadian government -- whether headed by Michael Ignatieff or not -- would interact with either Hersi or Esse as the President of Puntland. With the President of Puntland holding a Canadian citizenship, Puntland -- and perhaps Somalia in general -- could become a logical focal point for Canadian foreign aid.

With Canada already involved in the fight to prevent UN aid shipments from pirates, close cooperation with a regional President who is also a Canadian citizen only makes sense.

However, judging from some of the characters Adam Esse associates with while on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, some Canadians could find cause for concern should be become the President of Puntland, just as the accusations of corruption against Mohamud Hersi are very troubling.