The show trial begins (Mark Steyn)
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. A respondent who comes before Canada's "human rights" tribunals 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 running the tribunals need have no legal training, exhibit none, and owe their appointments to networking among leftwing activists. I wrote "show trial" advisedly, for there has been a 100 per cent conviction rate in cases brought to "human rights" tribunals under Section 13. Take this in: A group of Islamist fanatics, claiming to speak for every Muslim in Canada, charged Maclean's magazine with "spreading hatred against Muslims" for having printed a lucid and reasonable (if controversial) excerpt from Steyn's bestselling book, America Alone. This is a news story that should be on the front page of every newspaper in Canada, every day until it is resolved. Everything about this case stinks to high heaven. It was brought before three different "human rights" tribunals simultaneously. The British Columbian venue was openly "jurisdiction shopped" because the province's human rights tribunals have an especially egregious record for ignoring respondents' most basic Charter rights. The charges were brought more than a year after the article appeared. There was an open attempt at extortion, when representatives of the complainant called a press conference in which an offer was made to retract the charges for unspecified considerations. The case is the more ludicrous because the allegations brought are semi-literate (for instance, Steyn's quotations of lunatic Islamist imams are confused with Steyn's own assertions). The remedies sought keep changing; the arguments keep changing; the explanation of why the complainant has brought the case and what he hopes to gain from it has kept changing. And now the show trial has begun, the prosecution is presenting a parade of entirely irrelevant -*test*-('")imony. (Has Steyn properly understood the Koran? Etc.) A farce, but a farce that has huge consequences for Canada: for by such methods free speech and free press are being snuffed out. The Left may think they have found the ideal method to silence anyone who challenges their insane, "politically correct" ideas, but have instead created a monster that can as easily eat them next. This is a disaster also for Canada's Muslims, for the views of fanatical Islamists are being presented as representative of all. No single person has done so much to advance contempt for Islam in this country as Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the complainant in this case, whose public assertions include, for example, the view every adult Israeli citizen is a valid target for Palestinian hitmen. The bland acceptance of this man, by mainstream Canadian media, as the definitive spokesman for Muslim interests in Canada, cannot be blamed on the Muslim community. Innumerable Muslims have disavowed him, and yet are entirely ignored. Indeed: Mark Steyn has been among the few journalists distinguishing between camps. He would be: for he has plenty of Muslim supporters. There is some good news. It appears the Harper government has finally been goaded into calling a public inquiry into proceedings of at least the federal "human rights" commission. Some good may come from public confirmation of the outrageous, often sick behaviour of its members and hangers-on, which Canada's leading bloggers have been documenting. But the problem is at once more urgent and much broader than any carefully-focused inquiry can present. For what radical activists have achieved through "human rights" commissions is now endemic, in all kinds of "star chamber" and "kangaroo court" operations, in everything from the tax system to provisions of family law. Another crucial point: While media attention to Mark Steyn's show trial is inadequate, it is nevertheless the best publicized case ever to come before our "human rights" bureaucracies. Most of the victims of these neo-Maoist tribunals have been "little people," with nothing like the resources Maclean's magazine has put in play to defend itself and Steyn, and no media reporting whatever. They have been persecuted, stripped of their livelihoods and savings, demonized among their neighbours, made to endure humiliating "re-education" programs - without lawyers, without assistance of any kind -- all for exercising rights that any Canadian would have taken for granted a mere generation ago. I want justice for Mark Steyn. But I also want justice for all these little people, who have been crushed under the jackboot of "political correction." http://tinyurl.com/6qkdpq

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 security concern is that someone will try to kill me, or whether it’s me who’s the security concern. HH: Well, I have been following Maclean’s live blogging by Andrew Coyne and your dispatches. It sounds like an extended version of theater of the absurd. MS: Well, it is, actually. I was thinking of that today. They have the Royal Coat of Arms behind the judges, you know, symbolizing the 800 years of common law legal tradition that this court is supposed to be heir to. But in fact, every principle of that tradition has been inverted. I think they ought to have the Coat of Arms on a pivot, and swing it around so that the crown’s pointing downwards, because every basic principle of common law, the due process, the admissibility of evidence, the presumption of innocence, every single thing is inverted and turned on its head. It’s more…I had no idea, actually, quote how ludicrous it was until I sat through these geniuses, and listened to their legal deliberations. HH: I just saw that Andrew Coyne pointed out that one of the prosecutors, or one of the complainants is attempting to introduce postings at Freerepublic.com as evidence of something or other. MS: Yes, which is bizarre to me, because the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has no jurisdiction over the internet, period. But even so, being a British Columbia court, it’s supposed to only have jurisdiction over British Columbia. And the fact is that the witnesses, the people who said how much damage and hurt and pain and distress they’d received from my piece, for two days, it was this fellow called Kurrum Awan, who was flown in from Ontario, and the evidence of all the distress this has caused the British Columbia Muslim community, was posts from California-based Free Republic, and from the Brussels Journal, which is in Brussels, Belgium. And the last time I checked, British Columbia wasn’t a member of the European Union. So I don’t quite know what this…but all those kind of jurisdictional matters are all tossed out the window, because it’s a politically correct kangaroo court, and they make the rules up as they go along. HH: How long does the kangaroo court keep jumping? MS: Well, I’m hopeful they’ll bounce off tomorrow, and we will have closing arguments, and they will retire to make their deliberations. And this is a bit like, we’re in the situation, Maclean’s and I are in the situation where we’re like the guys in the Mel Brooks show, The Producers. We’re hoping for an almighty flop. We want to lose, and we want the other guys to win, so that we can then get appeal to a higher court, and eventually up to the Supreme Court of Canada, and get free speech restored, and get Canadians’ ancient liberties restored, the ones that have been eroded by these kangaroos over the last couple of decades. HH: Well, keep writing. In the meantime, it is certainly at least amusing, though certainly inconvenient for you. Mark Steyn, even in your windowless, quiet and very dank courtroom, you must have heard that Barack Obama has seized the Democratic nomination. But I don’t know if you heard his… MS: Well, I don’t know whether seized is the word. It’s been a kind of slow-motion seizure, and I don’t think in history, you can, there’s been anything like this as a kind of technical victory on points in slow motion. It’s an amazing sight. HH: If you listen to Barack, as he seizes in slow motion the nomination, it is really an important moment in history. Let’s listen to Barack Obama the night he went over the top. BO: I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith, in the capacity of the American people, because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick, and good jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal. This was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves. HH: Mark Steyn? MS: (laughing) Well, I think he’s flown the coop there. HH: (laughing) MS: I loved that line about this will be the moment when the rising oceans begin to subside (laughing) HH: (laughing) MS: You know, you mentioned this windowless basement I’m in. HH: Yes. MS: There’s no link with the outside world except a clock, which is stuck at 8:00. and that’s government bureaucracy for you. You know, in British Columbia, it claims to be able to eradicate hate, but it can’t get someone in to restart the clock. And it will be the same with the Barack Obama presidency. He can make the oceans (laughing)… HH: (laughing) MS: …he can make the oceans subside, but will he be able to improve border security? I doubt it. And I think this kind of…you know, everybody gets the King Canute story wrong. King Canute didn’t think he had awesome powers. He took himself down to the seaside to show his advisors, his government, that he couldn’t make the waters recede. In this case, Obama has out-Canuted King Canute, because he thinks he can make the waters recede. HH: Now Mark Steyn, I’m having an e-mail exchange with one of actually California’s better political reporters, William Bradley, who writes Newwestnotes.com. And I made the argument yesterday that Barack Obama is to the left of George McGovern, and he thinks that’s preposterous or ridiculous. And I pointed out five things, that they both favored immediate withdrawal from a war, but that this war featured an attack on America, and George’s war was in Southeast Asia, and they weren’t going to follow us home, that Obama favors climate change legislation that would reshape the American economy from top to bottom, and George just wanted the massive grant program that was the McGovern grants, George never declared for gay marriage, to my memory, or for partial birth abortion rights as Obama has. George didn’t attend a church with a radical pastor and have a radical priest pal to boot, or an indicted, corrupt neighbor and financier as a friend. And I don’t think I ever heard Mrs. McGovern at all, much less demanding radical change. So who’s to the left? McGovern or Obama? MS: Well, I think Obama is to the left, certainly if you look at the life experience, what he did before running for president, compared to McGovern. McGovern, in a sense, was a product of his moment, and he shifted with the moment, whereas I think Obama has spent his entire adult life immersed in a very narrow sliver of American society. And this is where the quasi-revolutionary rhetoric becomes disturbing. When he says, you know, this is the moment when we begin to remake America, well sorry. I speak as an immigrant. I happen to be in Canada at the moment, but believe me, I can’t wait to get south of the border the way I feel right now. But speaking as an immigrant, I’m pretty happy with America, and I don’t want to remake it from top to toe. I think it’s been a great success story for the last two hundred and thirty years, and I think this kind of, you know, the idea that not until Obama came along have we even thought about beginning to heal the sick. I mean, I think this is nutso talk, this messianic drivel. When he talks about his profound humility, profound humility’s just a phrase in the speech. HH: Let me ask you, there are three different Obama archetypes being brooded about. One, you know, he’s Chauncey Gardiner, the other, he’s Niccolo Machiavelli, and the third, he’s Vladimir Lenin. Which one is it? MS: (laughing) Well, of those options, I would hope it’s the Chauncey Gardiner. And in fact, I think that’s what the mistake that was made in the first year when he was being mooted as a presidential candidate, is that we thought he was an empty suit. A lot of us carelessly assumed, we listened to this bland, vapid generalities, and we just thought he was an empty suit. In fact, the suit is bulging with Tony Rezko and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and some of Mrs. Obama’s crazier pronouncements. You know, the suit is stuffed, and it was to his advantage, in a sense, to present himself as an empty suit. HH: So the last question, before you go back to the dock, Mark Steyn, do you think six months from now, America will have continued its swoon for this lightweight from the left? Or will it right itself? MS: Well, no, no, no. America hasn’t swooned for him. Democratic voters have massively, have rejected him in massive numbers these last three months. The media have swooned for him. And the question now is whether the media swoon is strong enough to drag him over the finish line. And I think that’s a very open question. I think it might well, the swoon might be universal enough to drag him across the finish line. HH: Does there come a counterrevolution within the media? Are they obliged to push a little harder at this empty suit now, in this Rezko corruption, et cetera? MS: No, I think they decided a long time ago they were in love with him. And despite all the evidence from Pennsylvania and Kentucky and a lot of other places, the Democratic Party voters were not in love with this guy. They persisted in these sort of Soviet-style magazine covers with the uptilted head, and looking into the sunlit uplands. And I think that will continue. HH: Mark Steyn from Canada, good luck in getting this to a conclusion. www.steynonline.com, www.macleans.ca. All of the links are at www.hughhewitt.com. End of interview. http://tinyurl.com/4yry6t

Re: The show trial begins (Mark Steyn)
The writings of Canada's most talented journalist, Mark Steyn I got that far and was too busy laughing to read any more. I suppose he may be Canada's most talented journalist, but that says more about Canadian journalism than anything else.

Well, TJ .... We know that your views on what makes a talented journalist are certain to differ from those of the general herd of Bears and the like.... Hence your blanket condemnation of the Daily Mail and all its works, a paper whose commercial success speaks for itself. I don't know whether Mark Steyn is Canada's most talented journalist, but that he is indeed a very talented journalist is plain for most of us to see ... I always read his stuff with enjoyment and usually agree with his sentiments :wink: What is really scary is the way that lefties are crusading against freedom of expression in Canada. They would love to do the same thing here. What do you think of that?