* Here is the first update on  how the politically correct mafia in Canada works to suppress freedom of speech. But there’s hope that the unelected ‘human rights’ bueraucritters, most of all the unsavory Richard Warman with his 100% conviction rate will get a shoe in the ass about these witch hunts that amount to nothing other than a modern day inquisition.
Free speech under assault: Steyn, Maclean’s on trial in British Columbia
A bizarre and frightening spectacle indeed. “The court of last resort,” by Brian Hutchinson for the National Post, via DW
* Idiot’s Guide to Completely Idiotic Canadian ‘Human Rights’ Tribunals
Anti dhimmitude from the OTTAWACITIZEN:
By David Warren
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.
* Update: Shut up, dhimmi: Maclean’s counsel not allowed to question conduct of Islamic congress
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.
* Continued below
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 testimony. (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.”
All “Human Rights Tribunals” and their ilk need to be banned. Just the name alone smells like something out of Stalin’s heyday. 50 years ago people would have been aghast (and rightly so) about such an organ but today, thanks to mind numbing PC, there it is. And nobody knows better about how to use such an organ than a Koranist.
I managed to get some photos of the sock puppets doing the perp walk at the marsupial courthouse at 800 Hornby Street in Vancouver, Canada on 2 June 2008 and posted then to my blog. A few of us pro-Steyn protesters were handing out leaflets denouncing this Orwellian “Human Rights Tribunal” show trial. From what I understand the lawyer for MacLeans Magazine was earning his $800.00 per hour retainer by eviscerating the now “dead sock” (the bald one) by forcing him to admit to lying. The Law Society of Upper Canada might have something to say about an articling Osgoode Hall law student and shakedown artist. It is a forgone conclusion that MacLeans will be convicted of publishing material that may cause hatred and contempt for the Islamic community in British Columbia despite none of the complainants are from this province nor even showed up to testify at the show trial.
No, no, no Mr. Warren – you’ve got it all wrong. In the first place, the term “islamic fanatics” is a redundancy. Don’t you understand yet that ALL moslems are fanatics? There isn’t a single mosque rat in our formerly great country of Canada (or anywhere else) who doubts that allah (may his testicles atrophy) has ordered him to devote himself unwaveringly to the struggle to ensure that every last person in the world is either islamic or dead. These awful people may not question even the lowliest comma in the koran; to do so would invite a summary beheading. This literary precursor to “mein kampf” describes us kufrs as “apes and pigs” and “the worst beings in allah’s sight.” It orders the faithful to “hunt them down and kill them wherever ye find them” and to “smite off their fingers and behead them.”
You attempt to draw a distinction between moslems who overtly and floridly advocate the overthrow of our rational and tolerant society and the “silent majority” which eschews such behavior. These two factions do not oppose each other because they disagree on the goal, but rather because they entertain differing visions of the tactics which ought to be employed to achieve that goal. The so-called “moderates” are unhappy with the “radicals” only because the headline-grabbing tactics of the latter draw unwanted attention to islam’s aspirations, when the former are already quietly winning the battle with their profligate overbreeding, mass immigration and mining of the limitless bounty of our welfare state. A “moderate” moslem is simply an oppressor in waiting.
On a totally different topic, does anyone know of a campaign to help Mr. Steyn with his legal expenses, and how we might support it?