Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Litigious Levant not giving up

Oh dear, someone's 14:55 into his 15 Minutes. Waaahhhhh!:

"Calgary Muslim leader Syed Soharwardy says he is withdrawing his Alberta Human Rights Commission complaint against former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant.

The complaint was launched in February 2006, after the Western Standard and the Jewish Free Press reprinted cartoons from a Danish newspaper that many in the Muslim world felt insulted the prophet Muhammad. The cartoons sparked violent protests in a number of countries." [...]

"Mr. Levant said he plans to launch a civil lawsuit against Mr. Soharwardy to recover the tens of thousands of dollars he said he has spent battling the complaint.

"I put in at least 100 hours fighting this guy. He may want to run away from this issue, but I'm not going to. His values are out of sync with Canadian society.""

For the record, I think both of them are out to lunch -- the complaint was frivolous and Levant's response (which included dragging videocams into the Human Rights Commission office to record his performance in front of a bored civil servant) was a lot of overwrought drama. Now that the complaint has been dropped (as expected), it comes as absolutely no surprise that Levant plans to sue -- all in the name of defending free speech, of course. Because nothing says "free speech" like a lawsuit launched against someone for using the system to complain about free speech.

(h/t: BCL)