Free Republic

The Tony Snow International Appreciation Society [Mark Steyn] I was about to tell my own Tony Snow story when I realized it was the same as so many others - that of meeting the guy when you're an obscure peripheral fellow of no consequence and being amazed that he's familiar with your work and is gracious and affable and collegial and full of generous advice. So I thought instead, as an illustration of the range of his generosity, I'd pen a PS to this Corner post from six months ago about the great Australian wag Tim Blair being stricken by...

Maclean's magazine, Canada's Newsweek, was brought before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for running an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book America Alone. The California websites introduced as evidence were FreeRepublic and Catholic Answers. The claim was that their discussion boards proved that Maclean's inspire hate-speech toward Muslims. The Washington Times reports: "Numerous Canadians and Americans following the hearing denounced the case as absurd and that it is a threat to free speech that a provincial tribunal is asserting jurisdiction over the writings of a best-selling author residing in New Hampshire, based upon an out-of-province complainant offended by the response...

Rush just said it. I trust Mark Steyn needs no introduction here.

TORONTO - The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean's magazine. The Congress claimed an article written by Mark Steyn, entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam" and posted on the Maclean's website in October 2006, made a number of statements and assertions that were likely to expose Muslims to hatred or contempt. In its ruling, posted on Maclean's website, the commission acknowledges "the writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike." But the commission also says that,...

News reports from the past few months has turned the phrase "human rights" into something of a joke. On the one hand, a group of Muslim activists has gone before four separate human rights commissions in a high-profile bid to censor critics of militant Islam -- realizing the worst fears of critics who, years ago, predicted that "human rights" would become an instrument of thought control. On the other hand, the places in Canada where real human rights are most at risk -- dysfunctional native reserves controlled by self-serving clans -- have long been explicitly exempted from the provisions of...

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a hate speech complaint against Maclean's magazine. Brought by Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the complaint was the centrepiece of a three-pronged offense against what he sees as Islamophobia in the national newsweekly, with columnists Mark Steyn and Barbara Amiel the main offenders. An identical complaint, brought with the help of three Muslim law students who became the public faces of the complaint, was rejected in Ontario on jurisdictional grounds. The third was heard this month by a British Columbia tribunal, which is now deliberating. Announcing the decision (the...

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, like any petty tyranny, has a strong instinct for survival. As I predicted last week on the Michael Coren Show, that instinct would cause them to drop the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean's. And so they did. With an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation and a pending Parliamentary investigation, they're already fighting a multi-front P.R. war, and losing badly. Not a day goes by when the CHRC isn't pummelled in the media. Holding a show trial of Maclean's and Steyn, like the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal did earlier this month, would be writing...

This is fully in accord with Mark Steyn’s precise observation that “so-called hate speech laws” are “not about facts,” but rather, “they’re about feelings.” Yet facts are really all that should concern us; the rocks Mahmoud Alkhazeh threw at the driver he confronted did not hurt more because they were accompanied by stinging words. Hate speech laws are an assault on truth telling, at precisely the moment when so few dare to tell the truth, and it is for that reason all the more urgently needed.

The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to. "I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for more...

IF we conducted an audit of civil liberties, the result would go something like this. If you are an alleged terrorist detained at Guantanamo Bay, suspected of waging murderous jihad against the West, you can count on a certain class of vocal Westerners defending your right to a fair trial. Fair enough. But if you're a right-wing commentator who publishes views that may offend the feelings of a minority group, don't count on much support for your rights: your right to free speech or your right to a fair trial. Go figure. Before we nut out that grotesque hypocrisy, it's...

Mark Steyn, the author of “America Alone,” is on trial in Canada for inciting hatred against Muslims in an article adapted from that book. Pakistan just asked the European Union to restrict freedom of expression so as to curb “offenses to Islam.” Finland recently gave a blogger 2 1/2 years in prison for “insulting Islam.” When Dutch police arrested the cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot, Amsterdam’s public prosecutor explained: “We suspect him of insulting people on the basis of their race or belief, and possibly also of inciting hate.” Against Muslims, of course.

In certain parts of Europe, "hate speech" already is a criminal act. When the late journalist and author Oriana Fallaci wrote books critical of Islam in 2002, she was sued in France. Later, Swiss and Italian judges ordered her to stand trial for "defaming Islam." In France, Brigitte Bardot — the former film starlet turned animal rights activist — has been convicted five times of "inciting racial hatred." In one instance, her crime was writing a letter to French officials, objecting to the ritual slaughter of sheep by Muslims. Sheep to the slaughter, sadly, is a perfect analogy for European...

[The Canadian Islamic Congress] took [Maclean's Magazine and author Mark Steyn] to "court," but not a real court. These tribunals [of the Canadian Human Rights Commission] have all the rigor of a student government star chamber. There are no rules of evidence and, again, truth is not a defense. Why bother with evidence at all? Hate speech is essentially defined as anything certain "victimized" people find offensive... And what about free speech? Dean Steacy, an investigator for Canada's national commission, explained it nicely: "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." He gets points...

Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America's mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia's Human Rights Tribunal. His crime? Spreading "hatred." The...

The New York Times (NYT) is in the business of changing the American culture, especially what it perceives as really bad American habits. One of them is free speech. In an article (Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech) the NYT tried to address the issue of the different approach that American judicial system takes on the important issue of free speech. The article is a marvelous study in the architecture of deceit. What is omitted and what is included create a much distorted picture of the issue at hand. It all starts in the first paragraph: “A...

The pen is reputed to be mightier than the sword -- and probably is, over the longer stretches of history. Over the shorter stretches, the sword is definitive; or, as that great Leftist sage, Mao Tse-Tung, expressed it: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." With its monopoly on power, the State is equipped to suppress the truth. And yet the truth will not die, no matter how many people are punished for expressing it. They may die -- or be imprisoned, fined, compelled to publicly recant, or otherwise silenced and humiliated -- but the truth will...

Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal. His crime? Spreading “hatred.” The...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal will soon rule on whether the cover story of the October 23, 2006, issue of Maclean’s magazine violated a provincial hate speech law. Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial...

Author and columnist Mark Steyn’s week-long trial for “hate speech” began in a British Columbia courtroom on June 2. As previously reported in Pajamas Media, Steyn was accused of “flagrant Islamaphobia” after his bestselling book America Alone was excerpted in Canada’s oldest newsweekly magazine, Maclean’s, in 2006. If found guilty by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, Maclean’s could be ordered to stop publishing Steyn’s column, or other articles “likely” to expose Muslims to “hatred or contempt.” In other words, a magazine that’s been published for over a century in an ostensibly free Western nation will now be subject to...

AT its best, Western civilization has fostered freedom of speech and of thought. But Canada has a better idea. Last week, a Human Rights Tribunal in British Columbia considered a complaint brought against journalist Mark Steyn for a piece in the Canadian newsweekly Maclean's. The excerpt from Steyn's best-selling book "America Alone" argued that high Muslim birthrates mean Europeans will feel pressure to reach "an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots." The piece was obviously within respectable journalistic bounds. In fact, combining hilarity and profound social analysis, the article could be considered a sparkling model of the polemical art -...

If you want to look ahead to the United States under Barack Obama and a an expanded Congressional majority for the Democrats, consider Canada. Canada's greatest gift to the contemporary world of letters --- Mark Steyn --- is being persecuted for free speech in his home country.    Columnist Steyn is being hauled before something called the "Canada Human Rights Tribunal," a parallel legal system to the normal Canadian courts, without all the bother of due process, the presumption of innocence, a defined and limited legal venue, and protection for free speech.  Four Muslim law students complained about Steyn for accurately quoting Norway's...

Two American Web sites - one conservative, the other Catholic - are at the heart of a Canadian prov incial government hearing against Maclean's magazine, Canada's largest national newsweekly. The magazine was brought before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal after publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn's best-seller "America Alone" under the title "The Future Belongs to Islam." The first part of the hearing began last Monday and ran until Friday afternoon. The American Web sites introduced by the complainants are FreeRepublic, a popular conservative discussion forum, and Catholic Answers, an evangelism and apologetics site popular among young Catholics. Both...

What could Mark Steyn's punishment look like, if he's convicted by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal? It could look like this order, issued just last week by Alberta's human rights commission, against a Christian pastor named Rev. Stephen Boission. (The substantive ruling against Rev. Boissoin can be found here. See paragraph 357 where the right not to be offended "trumps the freedom of speech afforded in the Charter." And see a thoughtful response by the former executive director of the gay rights lobby, EGALE, here.) The kangaroo court judge in this case is a Tory patronage appointee, a divorce lawyer...

The short version of the Democratic-party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to. “I felt this thrill going up my leg,” said MSNBC’s Chris Matthews after one of the senator’s speeches. “I mean, I don’t have that too often.” Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for over six...

June 07, 2008 Obama, Political Viagra Now is when you get worried. By Mark Steyn The short version of the Democratic-party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to. “I felt this thrill going up my leg,” said MSNBC’s Chris Matthews after one of the senator’s speeches. “I mean, I don’t have that too often.” Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage...

The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to. "I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. snip.... Every time I hear an Obama speech, I start to giggle. But millions of voters don't. And, if Chris Matthews and the tingly-legged media get their way and drag Obama across the finish line this November, the laugh will be on those of us who think that serious times demand grown-up rhetoric.

Merciful heavens, it’s the last day. Time for final arguments… Faisal Joseph for the complainants: We’re here to right a terrible wrong. Case involves a complicated intersection of two important values — free speech and the right to be free from discrimination. Neither trumps the other, in his view. Not all speech is afforded the same protection — speech that is not close to the “core value” of free speech is not as well protected. That would be hate speech. Doesn’t advance truth-seeking, because it silences the target group. Doesn’t advance their self-development, etc. Not offensive speech we’re after, but...

HH: I want to begin with Mark Steyn, who has managed to leave the British Columbia courthouse wherein the British Columbia Human Rights tribunal is meeting to try him. He’s in the dock. He’s across the street from the courthouse. Mr. Steyn, welcome, how goes the affairs up there? MS: Well, I’m glad to be able to shake off the fellows from the British Columbia Sheriff’s department. It’s very bizarre to me. They said they’d had, they’d been following me around everywhere in the building I go because they say there are security concerns. And it’s not clear whether it’s...

The charge levelled against Maclean's by the Canadian Islamic Congress is that, in publishing an excerpt from my book, this magazine exposed Muslims to "hatred and contempt." Alas, at the first day of the Great Maclean's Show Trial at the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal, the well of my book excerpt's "hatred and contempt" pretty well ran dry in the first hour. So Faisal Joseph, counsel for the plaintiff Mohamed Elmasry, was forced to bus in a huge pile of miscellaneous generic "hatred and contempt" from all kinds of other sources. And even then much of it seemed less like...

The writings of Canada’s most talented journalist, Mark Steyn, went on trial in Vancouver on Monday, in a case designed to challenge freedom of the press. It is a show trial, under the arbitrary powers given to Canada’s obscene “human rights” commissions, by Section 13 of our Human Rights Act. I wrote “obscene” advisedly. Before Canada’s “human rights” tribunals, a respondent has none of the defences formerly guaranteed in common law. The truth is no defence, reasonable intention is no defence, nor material harmlessness, there are no rules of evidence, no precedents, nor case law of any kind. The commissars...

Interviewed by Hugh Hewitt today, Mark Steyn said that posts from FreeRepublic were introduced into evidence in the Canadian proceeding against him.

"...Joseph is now asking him about the Free Republic blog. How did he come across it. Well, shorttly after reading the Steyn article in October 2006, which he found “concerning,” he went on the internet to “look for any impact,” ie he Googled it. He found what he was looking for on the Free Republic: the Steyn article, with comments from readers underneath, to the effect that Muslims should be “eradicated,” that they should not be here, etc. We’re working off a printout of a Google search performed today. Porter is up, pointing out that Google searches produce different results...

We’re back, and the first item for business is Joseph demanding an apology for yesterday’s “scaredy-pants” outburst, which he says is causing his client “stress.” It seems he is going to call Habib, but first wants to introduce yet another piece of last-minute evidence, from yet another blog post — this one from the California-based “Free Republic” site — which is yet again operated from somewhere in that vast section of the universe that is outside the jurisdiction of the tribunal. McConchie is raising objections, probably futilely.

“If one, because of one’s sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered ‘hate’?�The question was not rhetorical. Nor was it theoretical. Fr. Alphonse de Valk, a Basilian priest and pro-life activist known throughout Canada for his orthodoxy, is currently being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) — a quasi-judicial investigative body with the power of the Canadian government behind it. The CHRC is using section 13 of Canada’s Human Rights Act to investigate the priest. This is a section under which no defendant...

Of late I’ve been having some sport with a fellow called Oscar van den Boogaard. He’s a novelist over in Europe, and, while I’m not the most assiduous reader of Continental fiction, my eye was caught by an interview he gave to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard. Reflecting on Europe’s accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up for the Eutopia he loved, but what could he do? “I am not a warrior, but who is?” he shrugged. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.” This seemed such a poignant...

Dear Mark, Can you please republish some of the funniest columns from the late 1990s when Clinton sex jokes were all the rage and you once wrote about Monica’s dress in the witness protection program? Best wishes, Tom Hernandez MARK SAYS: Well, I think we reprised the Monica's dress column a few months back, but in honor of the demise of the Hillary campaign and with it the hopes of a Clinton restoration, how about my grand summation of the Administration? This is the way things seemed in the week it ended seven years ago. And don't forget, the SteynOnline...

Lots of good coverage of yesterday’s proceedings, beginning with the mighty Ezra Levant, who had so much fun he’s staying on another day. Also Brian Hutchinson, my old stable mate at the Post, pays appropriate homage to the majesty of it all. Plus the great man himself, of course, and uber-blogger Michelle Malkin and Jay Currie and … well, I better get in while there’s a chance of a seat… 9:32 AM Habemus dongle! The good folks at Rogers — wonderful people, never said a bad word about them — have kitted me out with some sort of external modem...

I am posting the first few postings from Andrew Coyne who is live blogging the BC Human Rights show trial....soliciting freeper comment and updates throughout the day. So we are in, and almost ready to go. As trials of the century/year/week go, this one is decidedly down-market: the courtroom would make a good walk-in closet. Maclean’s legal team is out in force, a phalanx of half a dozen suits. The opposing counsel, by contrast, is one suit and two or three badly-dressed juniors. If I didn’t know the stakes, I’d be rooting for them. Actually I am rooting for them,...

...Omar Sharif saying that, when he has a problem with some guy, he finds it far easier to go to the neighborhood sheikh to sort it out than to have to mess around with all that western legal mumbo-jumbo. He'll be happy to know they've introduced a similar system in British Columbia: The sheikhs sit on a "human rights" tribunal and lay down the smack without any time-wasting rubbish about rules of evidence, presumption of innocence, etc. Andrew Coyne is live-blogging the first day of the Steyn/Maclean's show trial from the Robson Square courthouse in Vancouver, and from the Omar...

Announcer From the Maritimes to the Yukon, the Great White North was once a lawless land where cruel and offensive opinions roamed free - until one man stood up and brought them to justice. One mighty masked man, clad in the scarlet breechcoat of the Royal Canadian Mounted Human Rights Police, astride a golden disabled lesbian steed, with his faithful transgender Indian scout at his side. Together they rode from Yellowknife to St. John's, keeping Canadians safe from the spectre of multicultural insensitivity. The Canadian Broadcast Corporation invites you to return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear...

Canada's descent into self-mockery opened today with the start of trial of Mark Steyn on allegations of human rights violations by the British Columbia Human Rights Commission.

Ian Fleming, the father of James Bond and inventor of Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, was born one hundred years ago today: May 28th 1908. We'll be marking the occasion in the days ahead, and might even get around to the new Bond novel commissioned for the centenary from my old friend Sebastian Faulks. Sebastian came to stay with me a few years back to get some background for a novel he was writing that included a chapter said in northern New England. If you're planning on reading it for glimpses of my home life, he turned me into a woman and had...

‘Someone wins, someone doesn’t win, that’s life,” Nancy Kopp, Maryland’s treasurer, told the Washington Post. “But women don’t want to be totally dissed.” She was talking about her political candidate, Hillary Clinton. Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. “Healing The Wounds Of Democrats’ Sexism,” as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Senator Clinton’s presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism. How else to explain why...

The Dominion of Canada. It was nice while it lasted: "Nineteen Regular Army divisions, one dozen divisions of the Army National Guard, plus the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions, rolled across the border just before dawn on 11 May, 2020. "Despite the gallant resistance put up by the main elements of the Canadian Forces, notably the Royal 22nd and Twelfth Armored, which died in defense of Quebec City, the Royal Canadian Regiment and Royal Canadian Dragoons, shattered in the forlorn defense of Ottawa, and the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and Lord Strathcona's Horse, butchered in detail in a hopeless...

Here's a column we get a lot of requests for - from four years ago, Memorial Day 2004: Memorial Day in my corner of New Hampshire is always the same. A clutch of veterans from the Second World War to the Gulf march round the common, followed by the town band, and the scouts, and the fifth-graders. The band plays "Anchors Aweigh," "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," "God Bless America" and, in an alarming nod to modernity, Ray Stevens' "Everything Is Beautiful (In Its Own Way)" (Billboard No. 1, May 1970). One of the town's selectmen gives a short speech,...

Steyn, as usual, has some moments of brilliance in this hour of TV. From explaining his changed view of the world as a result of 9/11 to Palestinians using nationalism as a means to terrorism (rather than the other way around), this hour makes for some great viewing. I know a spare hour is hard to come by, but watch the whole thing when you get a chance...

Steyn quotes from an article in The Church of England Newspaper: "If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this...." At all levels of national life Islam has gained state funding, protection from any criticism, and the insertion of advisors and experts in government departments national and local. A Muslim Home Office adviser, for example, was responsible for Baroness Scotland's aborting of legislation against...

I was watching the Big Oil execs testifying before Congress. That was my first mistake. If memory serves, there was lesbian mud wrestling over on Channel 137, and on the whole that's less rigged. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz knew the routine: "I can't say that there is evidence that you are manipulating the price, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not." Had I been in the hapless oil man's expensive shoes, I'd have answered, "Hey, you first. I can't say that there is evidence that you're sleeping with barnyard animals, but I...

I was watching the Big Oil execs testifying before Congress. That was my first mistake. If memory serves, there was lesbian mud wrestling over on Channel 137, and on the whole that's less rigged. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz knew the routine: "I can't say that there is evidence that you are manipulating the price, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not." Had I been in the hapless oil man's expensive shoes, I'd have answered, "Hey, you first. I can't say that there is evidence that you're sleeping with barnyard animals, but I...

HH: As we get ready for the Memorial Day weekend which begins tomorrow, we do so with Columnist to the World, Mark Steyn. You can read everything Mark writes eventually, and pretty quickly, most often, at www.steynonline.com. Mark, a preemptive Memorial Day good wishes to you. MS: Yeah, and happy Memorial Day weekend to you. In fact, my town in New Hampshire, Hugh, has a tradition going back, I think, to Decoration Day, of actually celebrating Memorial Day a week ahead of the rest of the country. So in fact, it’s a kind of retrospective Memorial Day greeting as far...