This Is What A Hate Crime Looks Like

From Wendy Sullivan, author of Girl On The Right:

Last time I remember reading anything about Wendy she was begging for money on her blog, which is not surprising...she's not terribly employable.  But I'm not sure how advocating killing Muslims will help with that.

PS.  I suspect her latest has something to do with this. But that got dealt with by police within 24 hours (they are still investigating, last I heard).  And, just to be partisan for a moment, it looks as though Mr. Hazineh's ties to the LPC were cut six years ago.

More Wendy here.

Truth Won't Be A Defense In Any Arthur Topham Hate Speech Trial?

The hate-speech case against Arthur Topham, which I have written about on occasion, moves slowly forward.  Topham has been discussing it at length on his website.  His website's cuckoo land, but there is an interesting bit reproduced below.  Its some correspondence from a B.C. Ministry of Justice representative to Topham's lawyer, Doug Christie:

You have also asked me to specify which of Mr. Topham’s comments the Crown believes to be true and which the Crown considers false. You should be prepared for the Crown to put all of Mr. Topham’s postings and comments, as given to you in disclosure before the court. The Crown declines to limit their theory of the case at this juncture.

Now, the way I read the above passage (and I know a few lawyers, though IANAL) is that the Crown is refusing to argue Topham's many, many anti-Semitic contentions.  This way, if the thing goes to trial, lawyer Christie won't be able to bring forward a whole series of crack-pot witnesses willing to deny the Holocaust or claim that Jews control Hollywood or whatever.  The Crown is trying to avoid the freak-show that Zundel's trial became, in other words.  Which is what the tribunal process did by disallowing truth as a defense, and why so many people argued for using the criminal code in such circumstances.  Ah well.

The World Post S13, Part Whatever

Looks like Arthur has finally been charged, and they've dinged him with a firearms offence for good measure.  As I've written repeatedly over the past couple of months:

The only  difference [post Section 13] is that the police will sub-in for officers from the various human rights commissions and tribunals, and folks like Mr. Topham will wind-up going to the pokey rather than getting a letter in the mail.  Somebody explain to me how this is an improvement.

Another Arthur Topham Update

The fight against hate continues, section 13 or not.

h/t.  Some background here.

Hate Crimes Up In Canada

According to a StatsCanada report released this morning, hate crimes in 2008 were up 35% from the previous year, to 1,036 incidents.

As far as victims go, there is nothing particularly surprising that I can see: once again, Jews are the religious group, blacks the ethnicity, most often targeted.

Hate crimes pertaining to sexual orientation rose a whopping 124% to 159 incidents, though that's still a small portion of the overall total.

On 42% of occasions, the crimes committed were threats and assaults, with vandalism and such like offenses constituting another 49% of occasions.

From a geographical perspective, the report contains a few interesting numbers:
When it comes to crimes per 100,000 population, Vancouver tops the chart at 6.3%, that rate almost doubling from last year. But you don't read much about racial tensions in that city. And Calgary, where the Aryan Guard has had two years of fairly heavy press coverage, nevertheless ranks in the middle of the pack.