A Blast From Ezra's Past:

Despite his constant criticism of CBC as a "state broadcaster" spouting propaganda "on the tax-payers dime", Ezra Levant sponged up government dough when he ran The Western Standard.  And, when it went under, what happened to its subscribers?

I wasn’t a Western Standard subscriber — I received its e-mails because I had registered for its website, in hopes it would provide grist for this blog. As it has. It is to laugh. All those loyal subscribers with their avaricious belief in the free-market, now invited to place their subscriptions where the liberal sun don’t shine. Perfect.

Levant didn’t help matters by telling The Globe and Mail that “the magazine wasn’t purely an economic mission to begin with, but also a moral one.” Apparently that morality doesn’t extend to meeting one’s financial commitments.

Levant also left the WS' new owners with a real stinker of a blog post, which drew calls for Muslim genocide in the comments and resulted in a police investigation and, eventually a grovelling apology from Matthew Johnston, the mag's new editor.

Western Standard On C-15

See, we are told by Liberal insiders that Liberal support for C-15 makes a certain amount of twisted sense if it is considered in the light of some cold political calculus: we want a crack at the Tory "tough on crime" voter. But, on this issue, how many votes does that amount to? There is a whole swath of the Conservaverse--ably represented by the lads at Western Standard--that demand some measure of effectiveness as well as "toughness" out of our drug laws. For them, C-15 is a load of crap, for reasons your typical progressive is likely to be familiar with.

It sounds to me like the Libs are selling their souls for a terribly thin slice of the electorate. (Otherwise somebody show me some polls demonstrating otherwise)

The Next Leader Of The Ontario Conservative Party?

Q: Do you still believe greenhouse gases are nothing to worry about and it would be wrong to shut down coal-burning power plants?

A: There are greenhouse gases. I disagree that human contributions to greenhouse gases are so significant that we should be hysterical running around suggesting we have to do all these things to prevent its catastrophe.

We've had periods of global warming and global cooling from the beginning of time and there weren't too many cars or factories at the last global warming period... I think science is far from conclusive.

Randy Hillier, if you haven't figured that part out. Incidentally, the WS piece refers to the Lanark Landowners Association, and Ontario Landowners Association, which Hillier played a large role in, as "excellent associations, worth joining and supporting". Well, yeah, if you like spending the night in jail.

Kudos, incidentally, to the new Western Standard. Looks like they're getting their hands on some half decent material these days. (although it looks like this interview first appeared in the Ottawa Sun)

A Conservative Advises The New Tory Majority

Sell the CBC. Junk most of the cultural subsides. Get rid of the human rights Gestapo. These, in the end, are “stroke of the pen, law of the land” sort of things. If a Prime Minister with a majority government wishes them, they could be so.
[...]
Burn them down and salt the Earth. A future Liberal government won’t have the guts, the time, the wherewithal, or the money to recreate them all at once. Sell the land and the buildings. Shred the records. Disperse the staff. It’s easier to destroy than it is to create. A Tory government on a rampage could destroy in a couple of months what it took four decades to create – and what it would take another forty to recreate.
[...]
A large-scale buildup of the Armed Forces will do more than prepare Canada to fight in an increasingly-dangerous world, but it will also create a powerful military-industrial complex that a future Liberal government would be loathe to confront.
[...]
Build a pair of Aircraft Carriers – giant, expensive, deadly, and useful symbols of Canadian pride that children can hang on their walls. Name them after Wolfe and Montcalm or something like that.
[...]
What Harper needs is someone creatively evil to serve as the Justice Minister...to spend the next five years thinking up new ways of brutalize and humiliate criminals and which will send the left marching to the barricades time and time again to defend people who normal Canadians hate.

So there's your hidden agenda. And here's a link to that strategic voting site again.

Chris Reid Coda

I won't pick on Mr. Reid anymore, other than to note that this post to the Shotgun Blog, whose Tory insider creds are impeccable, seems to confirm what was apparent in the first place:

I can say with 100% confidence that the party knew of his blog before he even started to run. They were the ones that told him to take his blog down before he became the candidate. ...

On his initial resume given to the party, it had a URL for the blog on it. How much anyone read of his blog really can't be known obviously, however, there weren't so many posts on it that 10-15 minutes wouldn't have been enough to skim all of them...

So the party told Mr. Reid "You're okay if you hide your beliefs.", then disowned him when these beliefs became public. Nice.

The Blog Post They Are So Proud Of

Andrew Coyne's coverage of Macleans appearance before the BHRC, for the first day and a half astoundingly non-newsy, takes off a bit in yesterday's afternoon coverage, in which he chronicles the cross-examination of complainant Kurrum Awan by Macleans' lawyer Julian Porter. Porter seems to poke several significant holes in Awan's account of his attempted negotiations with Macleans.

In fact, the magazine looks to be halfway in the clear, which means, oddly enough, that they lose--Coyne has admitted that he would rather see this thing appealed to the Supreme Court.

But what I am interested in at the moment is this brief passage from yesterday's morning session:

11:45 AM The hearing now turns to readings from various blogs I’ve never heard of: The Brussels Journal, some Catholic blog and… oh, the late Western Standard! Not obscure, just obsolete! (The mag, I mean — the website is still in business.) The Western Standard reference: a blog post by Ezra Levant, the defunct magazine’s former publisher, dated Dec. 2 2007. This is slightly surreal: he’s sitting in front of me as I write this, laptop in hand, writing about being spoken about with reference to something he’d written about … this case. This is getting so meta I’m losing track…"

Both Ezra and the Western Standard were thrilled to get a mention at the hearing. This is bizarre, and perhaps a little history lesson will explain why.

The blog post in question is entitled Elmasry vs. Steyn, and was composed by Ezra Levant on December 2, 2007. It was in fact the last blog post Ezra wrote for the Standard before he fled the flaming wreckage of its paper incarnation. By December 5 it had attracted a comment advocating Muslim genocide:

There is no such thing as innocent Muslims. They must all be killed. All of them.

This comment was left to fester for about two weeks, until Levant adversary Syed Soharwardy discovered it. He threatened a complaint to the AHRCC, and to organize a protest against the magazine outside of Calgary city-hall. He also called in the police. As a result, the Standard's new editor, Matthew Johnston, issued an apology, and has since been making an effort to weed out the crazies that occasionally still post to the WS Shotgun Blog. Mr. Soharwardy withdrew his threatened complaint, and the comment author was traced to Ontario, presumably with the assistance of the WS technical staff.

In any case, hardly the kind of thing to be proud of.

Macleans Magazine As Corporate Welfare Bum, Part III

Terrence Watson has a nice post on the Western Standard's Shotgun Blog here, which refers to several earlier posts of mine on the topic of Maclean's Magazine and its $3,000,000 per year subsidy from the Canadian Heritage Publications Assistance Program(PAP), which offset[s] the mailing costs of Canadian content magazines and non-daily newspapers mailed within Canada. This is just a rewrite of a comment I made on the WS blog:

Part of what I wanted to communicate in these earlier posts (esp. to people who might be pissed off with MaCleans etc. for publishing allegedly offensive material like Steyn's) is that there are other, less controversial and maybe more effective ways of expressing your displeasure than via HRC complaints. Comparisons to C-10 aside, we should all agree that, if we ever figure out what "offensive" means, we should be able to call a magazine like Macleans for being offensive if they're doing it on the government dime.

More generally, there ought to be at least a set of methods of protest which both Right And Left can agree are legitimate. So for example: boycotts. If pro-lifers can actually convince Disney to be less Gay-centric by refusing to visit Disneyland, and thus causing Disney to hemorage profits, more power to them. Same with picketing: If Mo Elasmry's bunch could dig up forty Muslims to wave placards in front of the Rogers building, they would get far more positive coverage for their cause, and far less media hassles, than channeling their aggression through HRCs.

When such methods are employed, the whole argument that "you are trying to silence debate" becomes irrelevant. OF COURSE I AM TRYING TO SILENCE DEBATE. I personally would have Macleans sack Steyn and hire someone that finished highschool (I, for example, am available). But the point is: there ought to be some common ground on which means are legitimate for accomplishing this end.

Cutting MacLeans PAP funding seems to me to be one of these legitimate means.

An interesting tidbit from the Shotgun Comments section:

In the final days of the Citizens Centre Report (the final incarnation of Alberta/BC/Western Report), the decision was made to reject this funding. The magazine went out of business just a few months later.The rejection didn't put the magazine under, but it didn't help. The argument for accepting the funds had long been that the magazine would put itself at a competitive disadvantage by ripping up the cheque. That is, if all other magazines were accepting the money (as they did), we would be tying a millstone around our necks by not accepting the money too.As well, it could also be argued that, in light of the fact the government took large amounts of money from us in the form of taxes, accepting the Heritage money was simply a matter of getting back some of the money that was ours to start with.

The Western Standard, by the way, accepted the grant money: $132,000 in 2006-07, for example. See: http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/ac-ca/progs/pap/pubs/report-rapport/annualreport2007/7_e.cfm

Terry O'Neill

You mean Über Capitalist Ezra Levant accepted government funds? Oh My!

A Recent History Of The Western Standard

Noted this short piece in the Calgary Herald this morning:

A Muslim leader is praising Calgary police for making progress in their investigation of anti-Islamic postings on a local website last year.

Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada thanked police for identifying two people who posted the remarks on the Western Standard website.

A quick backgrounder. When Ezra Levant abandoned the flaming wreckage of The Western Standard, he left behind one final blog post (which has since been sent down the memory hole). Fans quickly decorated the post with anti-Muslim sentiments. For example:

"...there is no such thing as innocent Muslims. They must all be killed. All of them."

Mr. Soharwardy swiftly organized protests outside of Calgary City Hall, and threatened a complaint via the AHRCC against the Western Standard, which elicited this grovelling apology from Matthew Johnston, the Standard's new Head Honcho. Afterwards, Mr. Johnston vowed to weed out the crazies posting to the WS Shotgun Blog.

What is interesting about the latest development is that, presumably, Mr. Johnston and the gang at WS must have co-operated with the police investigation.

More McKeever On Human Rights Legislation

Yesterday, Freedom Party of Canada/Ontario leader Paul McKeever wrote this Op Ed for the Western Standard (registration may be required) in which he attacked Ezra Levant's case against HRCs from what I would describe (though Mr McKeever might not) as a Libertarian perspective. I wrote about his piece here, and noted:

[this] raises an interesting point. If I was, for example, renting a room and did not want to rent to a Black, the safest course would be to simply not rent them the room and keep my mouth shut over the reasons

Mr. McKeever has been kind enough to respond in my comments section, and his remarks were extensive enough and coherent enough (unusual for this blog) to merit a post of their own. Opinions expressed etc. are not those of the blog owner. Take it away Mr. McKeever

BCL: I saw your post and noted your last paragraph. Your insight is sound on this. Racists, sexists, and others who are landlords or employers can and do deny accommodation/jobs to people all of the time, with impunity, by keeping their views to themselves (or, at least, by trying not to let the would-be tenant/employee know the reason for the refusal of accommodation/employment).

This is why, in effect, human rights legislation is not really legislation that effectively forces racists/sexists (etc) to rent/hire those they dislike/hate. The actual effect of the legislation is that it censors the expression of racist/sexist or other irrational views.

I would not go so far as to suggest that those who drafted the legislation intended it to censor speech. Rather, I would argue that the effect (not the intention, but the effect) has been censorship.

Having worked as a human rights lawyer for almost 11 years now, I can tell you this: the act is largely ineffective for most instances of racism/sexism. However, its ineffectiveness is not due to the subject matter (i.e., irrational discrimination). Rather its ineffectiveness is due to the fact that force cannot effectively change a person's beliefs/thoughts. Physical force/coercion can govern action, but it cannot govern thought (i.e., it is physically, hence philosophically, impossible).

At the end of the day, human rights legislation has functioned - more than anything else - as an official state rejection of the ideologies that prevail in racist, sexist, anti-homosexual (etc.) jurisdictions.

The money would be better spent, in my view, on doing a much better job teaching children that a person's genetic make-up has nothing to do with the value of the person; that the irrational person - including racists, sexists, and other such tribalist - are morally inferior to those who judge each individual's value rationally (hence, without regard to race, sex, etc.).

Cheers, PM

BCL again. If the spelling in any of this is a bit shaky, its because I am still having Blogger problems and can't get spell-check to work.

New Western Standard Editors Will Attempt To Weed Out Crazies, Raise The Tone

All mockery aside, a good thing:

On the matter of my apology to Syed Soharwardy...
[...]

The comments that prompted the human rights complaint appeared on an un-moderated blog, posted anonymously by someone who was not a Western Standard staffer or freelancer. I removed the comments when they were brought to my attention as they were offensive and did nothing to advance genuine discussion or enhance the reputation of the Western Standard. And I apologized to Syed Soharwardy as I am ultimately responsible for comments made on this forum, and, again, those comments were indefensible.

Just as the Western Standard magazine content was edited, the Western Standard website content will be edited. We simply want to provide our readers and advertisers with the best product we can.

Moderating the comments on our website will also protect the Western Standard from unfair attacks. For example, as online reader "OBC" noted, tonight we were forced to ban an IP address with 6 user names. This individual was actively working to discredit the Western Standard with anti-Semitic and racists comments that would never have come from any of the thousands of thoughtful readers who visit us online. I removed the comments and reported the IP address to our webmaster.

Kudos.

One point I should like to make, though, concerns the notion that the WS' new editor Matthew Johnston removed the comments "when they were brought to my attention". This is not a particularly credible claim. As Mr. Soharwardy has pointed out, the comments in question remained posted for more than two weeks, and as anyone who has posted to the Shotgun Blog can tell you, while perhaps their forums are technically speaking unmoderated, if the editors want your comments gone, they will be deleted within minutes.

But that aside, Mr. Johnston's actions are a necessary first step if the new editors want their product to be taken seriously beyond the ghetto of far right kooks that currently hover over the WS website. There ARE in fact areas where a Conservative critique can serve as a useful corrective to main-stream thinking, but only if their authors cannot be summarily dismissed as lunatics. I look forward to the day when this is the case at The Western Standard.

Western Standard Caves, Pulls Blog Post From Website!

It looks as though some fairly blatantly racist material written in response to a blog post got The Western Standard in serious trouble.

A protest at City Hall this afternoon to condemn alleged violent and racist postings on the Western Standard magazine website has been cancelled.

This morning the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada reported the owner of the online publication had apologized.

The material appeared in the comments to a "Shotgun Blog" post written by Ezra Levant on December 5th, and contained such sentiments as:

"...there is no such thing as innocent Muslims. They must all be killed. All of them."

Now, what December 5th post by Ezra, you ask? Well exactly, as the screen-shot above demonstrates, in what can only be described as a orgy of self-abasement, the Standard has sent all material from December 5 down the memory hole (It's in black rather than blue, which means it's no longer a clickable link).

Yeah! Standing tall for Conservative values!

h/t to Buckets. Next time we meet I owe you a drink.

Western Standard Goes Levantless

Got this email yesterday afternoon. Looks like Ezra is quitting the Western Standard:

Dear friends,

As you know, the Western Standard stopped publishing our print edition last month.

But I'm happy to announce that one of the Western Standard's founders, Matthew Johnston, has assembled a small team of our former staff, and they're going to revive our magazine's websites.

Working with other long-time Western Standard staff like writer Kevin Steel and sales manager Josh Frederick, they're going to try to make a go of it online — and I wish them good luck. They loved the magazine and I'm sure they'll do a great job of the new venture.

I'm moving on to other projects, but Matthew and his team have invited me to continue to blog from time to time on the site, and I'm sure I will.

So make sure to visit www.westernstandard.ca to see what the new team is up to — and keep an eye peeled for their e-mail updates.

Join with me in wishing them good luck!

Yours truly,Ezra Levant

Don't bother visiting the site yet, as it hasn't changed much in the past couple of weeks.

I wonder if the remaining bunch will be able to attract the same calibre of right-wing heavy, or whether it will turn into just another Conservative blog.

And interesting, in that Ezra hasn't written a column for the Sun Chain since October when the whole "bus driver in a hijab" thing blew up in his face and Canoe.ca pulled his column. Maybe he's being "Zuber Linked" (ie put out to pasture).

Pity, in a way, the Right loses its dorkiest looking gun-slinger.