Here's a story about the Somali meatpackers in Greeley, Colorado's Swift & Co. meatpacking plant, who walked off the job, and 100 of whom were fired last year, because their supervisors wouldn't let them pray at sunset during Ramadan.
There are no Human Rights Commissions in the United States. Yet, there are enough loopholes for minority groups to make cases for their discontent at work (or at schools, as the University of Michigan foot-washing sinks for Muslims demonstrates). Also, see my previous story about a Hate Crimes Bill H.R. 254 that is underway in the U.S.:
Pending Hate Crimes LegislationHere's another story from Dearborn Michigan, where an Arab Christian proselytizer was prohibited from handing out Christian literature during the Dearbon Arab Festival. From Creeping Sharia:
On January 5, 2007, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee introduced H.R. 254. The definition of "hate crime" remains the same as passed in 1994, but this bill goes much further than the enhanced sentencing provided by the 1994 legislation. H.R. 254 establishes a new federal offense for hate crimes and mandates a separate federal criminal prosecution for state offenses with the possibility of life imprisonment for crimes motivated by "the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or disability of any person."
The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Dearborn’s policy and seeking a court order allowing the group to wander the festival grounds freely to pass out literature. U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds denied the Law Center’s motion on behalf of the Christian group.No HRCs in the U.S., but Muslim groups, amongst others, are having no difficulty curtailing the freedoms of other groups through regular court proceedings. This is exactly what Levant recommends: use the court system to fight your battles, and get judges like Nancy Edmunds to favor the aggressive, freedom quenching groups.
Ezra Levant, who managed to untangle the corrupt HRCs, is merely working on the surface. His latest post is that the new leader for the Progressive Conservatives, Tim Hudak, put the dismantling of the HRCs on his political platform.
The National Post had this to say about Hudak:
Mr. Hudak is not without his flaws either. His attempt to have it both ways with the HRC (keep the commission, but abolish the tribunal) will probably satisfy no one.To be fair, Hudak, according to an interview he did recently, just wants to keep the educational component of the HRCs, rather than any part of the fraudulent court. But why even keep that seemingly harmless component?
Hudak evidently believes in the principles of the HRCs, which is to fight the dual demons of discrimination and inequality at various levels in someone’s life – from the workplace to acquiring housing and even to eating in a restaurant.
Even without the HRCs, given Canada’s Multiculturalism Act and the Canadian Human Rights Act, there are infinite venues for people to voice their grievances.
It is easy to get all indignant about false courts and the guilty-until-proven-innocent charges of the HRCs, let alone the exorbitant costs they incur on the poor recipients of these filed cases.
But, not one dismantler of the HRCs, from Hudak to Levant, has talked about their underlying problems.
They just saw an unfair system, run by government monies, and said that real courts are where such cases should be filed.
The question is:
Why should such cases be filed anywhere, at a bona fide court or a fraudulent one like the HRCs? Why should a group of people like, say, the Somali Muslims in Greeley, have the option to file their ridiculous claims that their supervisors were mistreating them? This meatpacking plant has already its established workplace traditions, which have obviously helped build the plant very successfully over time. Yet a new set of people is setting up its own traditions which are obviously disrupting the plant and its workers. A sane supervisor should indeed fire them.
Levant is saying that the Muslims who complained about his Mohammed cartoons, and later filed a suit at the HRCs against him, should go to real courts.
They very well might, in the near future. And they might win their cases, causing him yet another six-figure cost for his defence. There are many ways his opponents can save money, including using the government-subsidized legal aid centers which furnish people with lawyers based on income, but which subtly favor minorities and immigrants. So, its back full circle to the beginning.
To put it bluntly, the problem is not fully that of the HRCs. The problem is the kinds of people who are filing these cases, as I have discussed in detail in my previous posts.
