---

From: <info@westernstandard.ca>

To: <coddy@dowco.com>

Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 9:02 PM

Subject: The Western Standard needs your help!





>

> Dear Western Standard reader,

>

> Our magazine has been sued for publishing the Danish cartoons, and I

> need your help to fight back!

>

> As you know, the Western Standard was the only mainstream media

> organ in Canada to publish the Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim

> prophet Mohammed.

>

> We did so for a simple reason: the cartoons were the central fact in

> one of the largest news stories of the year, and we're a news

> magazine. We publish the facts and we let our readers make up their minds.

>

> Advertisers stood with us. Readers loved the fact that we treated

> them like grown-ups. And we earned the respect of many other

> journalists in Canada who envied our independence. In fact, according

> to a COMPAS poll last month, fully 70% of Canada's working journalists

> supported our decision to publish the cartoons.

>

> But not Syed Soharwardy, a radical Calgary Muslim imam.

>

> 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 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 extremists.

>

> 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 copies of 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.

>

> Soharwardy's complaint should have been thrown out immediately by

> the Alberta Human Rights Commission, just like the police did. But it wasn't.

> Which is why I'm writing to you today.

>

> According to our lawyers, we will win this case. It's an infantile

> complaint, without basis in facts or law. Frankly, it's an

> embarrassment to the government of Alberta that their tribunal is open

> to abuse like this.

>

> Our lawyers tell us we're going to win. But not before we have to

> spend hundreds of hours and up to $75,000 fighting this thing, at our

> own expense. Soharwardy doesn't have to spend a dime - now that his

> complaint has been filed, Alberta tax dollars will pay for the

> prosecution of his complaint. We have to pay for this on our own.

>

> Look, $75,000 isn't going to bankrupt us. But it will sting. We're a

> small, independent magazine, not a huge company with deep pockets. All

> of our money is needed to produce the best possible editorial product,

> not to fight legal battles. This is clearly an abuse of process

> designed to punish us and deter other media from daring to cross that

> angry imam in the future.

> 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.

>

> I agree with Borovoy: the law should be changed to stop future abuses.

> But those changes will come too late for us - we're already under attack.

> The human rights laws, designed as a shield, are being used against us

> as a sword.

>

> We will file our legal response to Soharwardy's shakedown this week.

> And we will fight this battle to the end - not just for our own sake,

> but to defend freedom of the press for all Canadians.

>

> .

>

> Yours gratefully,

>

> Ezra Levant

> Publisher

>

> P.S. Remember, Soharwardy's complaint will be prosecuted using tax

> dollars and government lawyers. We have to rely on our own funds - and

> the generous support of readers like you.

>

> P.P.S. Please help us now, at http://www.westernstandard.ca/freedom

>

>



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>.)

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