SteynOnline

...and, to be honest, I wish he'd stayed in the Witness Protection Program instead of unleashing 50 pages of sentimental and ahistorical twaddle:

The triumphs of Fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany through audaciously false propaganda have shown us how fragile tolerant, liberal societies can be.

No Canadian who had a proper respect for the history of his country could write that sentence. Which is why it alone is a good example of why we need free speech. Nobody who gave it ten minutes' study would think that the Dominion of Canada, one of the oldest, peacefully evolved, constitutional democracies on the planet, is as "fragile" as the Weimar Republic or the Kingdom of Italy. So the most obvious "audaciously false propaganda" on display there is from the audaciously false propagandists on the Justice Department payroll. As to the general accuracy of the thesis, see my Maclean's piece on the proto-Trudeaupian "hate" laws of pre-Hitler Germany.

Ezra Levant dismantles the Nicholson Report pretty thoroughly. What he doesn't address is how the government's "audaciously false propaganda" strikes the fellows suing him and Maclean's and now The Halifax Chronicle. If you were Elmasry and his Sock Puppets, wouldn't you read the Justice Department's nonsense and feel the wind at your back? 

Next month the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, encouraged by the squish Nicholson and the polytechnic lite-Marxists his department "consults", will take unto itself the right to micro-regulate the content of Canada's oldest and biggest-selling news weekly. It will, thus, reward the "audaciously false propagandists" of the Canadian Islamic Congress for their thuggery. Kathy Shaidle is "pissed off", and you can see why. As I always say, the CIC lawsuits objecting to America Alone's thesis in fact confirm it - that in the long run free societies are at risk not from fellows flying planes into skyscrapers but from a misbegotten alliance between the likes of the CIC and bovine western "progressives" only too willing to sign away ancient liberties. 

I don't know why any self-respecting person would want to work in the "journalistic" environment Nicholson and Co are creating, a world in which audacious propagandists will be free to use "human rights" courts as a threat to browbeat the press into serving as spineless pliable propagandists. Personally, I'd rather be Eliot Spitzer's hooker. The principles are the same, but the hourly rates are higher.

The Sock Puppet Three's oft-heard cry is that this isn't about "freedom of speech" or "censorship"; they don't want to silence me personally, but are merely seeking the "right" to a reasonable response. Davin Burlingham addresses this point directly:

When I heard them repeat this position on television, I have to say I was shocked. Genuinely shocked. I will tell you why. These three are law students, correct? They are currently articling, which means they must have passed all their final exams, and are about to be called to the bar. Presumably they have demonstrated all the skills and their brains have imbibed all the knowledge needed to get through law school and find jobs. How, then, could they have failed to actually read the Code under which they are bringing a complaint?! Take a look at s. 37(2) of the BC Human Rights Code, where it says:

    (2)If the member or panel determines that the complaint is justified, the member or panel
    (a) must order the person that contravened this Code to cease the contravention and to refrain from committing the same or a similar contravention,

That is a mandatory injunction. An obligatory 'cease and desist' order. If the complainants win, the Tribunal has to order Maclean's to stop running 'Islamophobic' articles. Not just articles by Mark Steyn, mind you; they have to stop running those articles period. Goodbye Barbara Amiel. Now, you might respond that Steyn wouldn't be silenced, he would just have to pick his words more carefully. But think about it; the CIC is not just complaining about the excerpt from America Alone, but about a whole sheaf of Steyn's articles. It's pretty safe to assume that whatever Steyn has written about Islam in the last seven or so years would be considered offensive by the CIC. In the face of an injunction, then, he would either have to stop writing about Islam or stop obeying the dictates of his conscience as a writer.

The students may say they don't want to silence Mark Steyn or anyone else. Their complaint, if successful, will do just that. It can do no other.

Just so. I've tried to make that point in interviews. The BC tribunal's ruling will mean that I can no longer write for Maclean's, and that Maclean's itself will be highly circumscribed in what it can publish about the relationship between Islam and the west. In other words, on one of the central questions facing the world today, the editorial decisions of Canada's largest news weekly will be determined by a British Columbia "court".

My career in Canada will be formally ended next month. But don't break out the champagne and conga lines. If Maclean's decides to comply with the ruling, it will not be a "news weekly" in the sense the term would be understood by any genuinely free society. And one day there will be plenty of Jews and gays and all kinds of other fellows who'll come to understand the damage this case has wrought.

Here's how it stands:

I'm scheduled to debate Mohamed Elmasry's vicar on earth, Faisal Joseph, this coming Wednesday on the John Oakley show at AM640 in Toronto.

We're trying to figure out when I can get back to Toronto to re-debate Elmo's Sock Puppet Three live on TVO's "The Agenda". It should around May 20th or thereabouts.

Elmo himself has yet to respond the Maclean's offer to host an Elmasry/Steyn one-on-one.

Meanwhile, a gibbering derelict with some form of blogospheric Tourette's keeps yelling "Pompous windbag!" and "Chickenshit!" in my general direction. As I said to Joseph Brean of The National Post:

I don't know why Warren Kinsella is inserting himself into my hate crime. Why doesn't he get a hate crime of his own?

From The Arab American News:

Steyn Honored

The Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom announced its Tenth Annual Press Freedom Awards on May 2...  Runner-up was Mark Steyn, who was nominated by Maclean's for his article in their magazine, "The Future Belongs to Islam."  The Canadian Islamic Congress brought charges against Maclean's in various human rights commissions across Canada, claiming that the article constitutes a hate crime.  The second place acknowledgement by the Committee serves to illustrate the self-defeating nature of the complaint, which has given Maclean's, the article, and Steyn publicity which they ill deserve.