Maclean's Magazine - which published the excerpt of Mark Steyn's America Alone that is now the subject of much "human rights" consternation in the great white north - has fired back at the tyrants who run the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Here's their side of the story regarding how this whole mess started:

Not surprisingly, the article generated enormous reaction from our readers. In the weeks following publication, we printed 27 letters to the editor, reflecting a broad range of opinion on the merits of Steyn's thesis. This is more letters than we've published on any other subject in recent years, and several of those we did publish were part of a campaign run by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington and its affiliate in Ottawa. But six months after the story appeared, and long after we believed the debate had subsided, we heard from a group of law students angry about the article, and demanding a meeting. Normally we wouldn't meet with aggrieved readers regarding a six-month-old story. But because it involved sensitive issues, we agreed to sit down with them and to discuss their concerns.

The students complained that the story and the cover image we used, presented a prejudicial and sinister image of the Muslim community and stoked unreasonable fears of a Muslim conspiracy to take over the world. To bolster their complaints they selected a handful of other articles from the magazine that they felt presented an unfair and negative portrayal of Muslim people.

We answered that Steyn's article was an interesting and well-researched essay expressing the opinion of the author. We pointed out that nowhere does it suggest there is a plot for global domination involving the entire Muslim community (in fact, he distinguishes between various factions in the Muslim world, moderate and radical). Furthermore, we had already printed many letters dealing with precisely the same counter-arguments the students were raising. We demonstrated that our magazine is staunchly supportive of peace-loving, law-abiding Islamic-Canadians. Indeed, we have taken several editorial positions explicitly in support of the Muslim community, including the right of Muslim women to wear whatever religious garments they choose, and the merits of public funding for Muslim religious schools. Finally, we explained that Maclean's is dedicated to asking provocative questions and fostering debate on important public issues.

This did not satisfy the students. They demanded the right to respond with an article of equivalent length, by a writer of their choosing and with a cover of their own design. The editors of this magazine would have no opportunity to edit the article except for spelling and punctuation. According to their terms, they would be free to write anything they wanted, however inaccurate or unreasonable or offensive or libelous or criminal or otherwise unsuited for our publication.

They also wanted a substantial sum of money donated to a charity of their choice. If we refused any of their terms, they said they planned to bring a human rights complaint against us. They said they were also contemplating a criminal action against us.

We told them that we couldn't possibly meet their demands. No publication could. It would violate an editor's responsibilities to his publication, his readers, and his profession. We told them we would rather go out of business than to give over complete control of space in the magazine to anyone on such terms. We stand by that decision. Faced with their ultimatum, we asked if there was anything else we could do to satisfy them. They said "no" and smiled.

They overplayed their hand. Now they're running the risk of having their illiberal cudgel of a commission shut down. Nice work, gang. And be sure to read the whole thing; it's an excellent summation of and response to this whole mad situation

Such an apt logo...

Mark Steyn rings in the month of March with a heckuva column:

The "human rights" racket is a disgrace. Canadians are not notably "hateful" people. To be sure, deep in the human heart lurk dark prejudices that may occasionally be furtively expressed to like-minded persons over a drink or two. But discrimination in housing and employment on the grounds of gender and race — the original justification for creating the "human rights" pseudo-courts — is all but extinct, so a self-perpetuating nomenklatura has moved on to invent new rights — like the human right to a labiaplasty or a joint on someone else's property. You'll recall the Osgoode Hall law students who objected to my book excerpt in Maclean's demanded a five-page cover story in response, unedited, with the students determining the artwork and the cover art, along with a financial contribution to their "cause." As any self-respecting publisher would, Kenneth Whyte told them he would rather go bankrupt — much as Mr. Kindos seems likely to. The Osgoode students have since explained that they went to the "human rights" enforcers because they were only trying to "start a debate," and mean old Maclean's was preventing their voices from being heard. They have repeated this mournful plea in lengthy editorials they've written for, at last count, the Globe And Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, the Toronto Sun, the Ottawa Citizen, the Calgary Herald, the Montreal Gazette, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the London Free Press, and no doubt a few other publications. That's the reality of Canada's "Islamophobic" media: they've been given acres of op-ed real estate to yell that their voices are being silenced and all they want to do is start a debate — even though, in none of their many columns, do they actually start it.

Mark Steyn, as usual, is correct:

My book's thesis — that most of the Western world is on course to become at least semi-Islamic in its political and cultural disposition within a very short time — is "alarmist."

The question then arises: fair enough, guys, what would it take to alarm you? The other day, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of sharia — Islamic law — to the United Kingdom was "inevitable." No alarm bells going off yet? Can't say I blame you. After all, de facto creeping sharia is well established in the Western world. Last week, the British and Ontario governments confirmed within days of each other that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions receive welfare payments for each of their wives. Still no alarm bells? I see female Muslim medical students in British hospitals are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Would it be alarmist to bring that up — say, the day before your operation?

Syed Soharwardy has dropped his "human rights" complaint against Ezra Levant, who had the temerity to engage in free speech in a (supposedly) western nation. This isn't really a victory, as Soharwardy will not face any legal repercussions for his illiberal abuse of the system. That is, unless Levant gets his way:

I understand that Soharwardy has an Op-Ed in tomorrow's Herald in which he effectively admits his complaint was motivated by Saudi-style censorship, not any Canadian belief in human rights. In other words, he admits what I've alleged all along: he was hijacking a secular "human rights" commission for his radical Islamo-fascist agenda. But now he wants us all to pretend he didn't.

Well, back in the land of real laws and real rules of court, there's a tort called "abuse of process", and Soharwardy has just admitted to it.

For two years, this corrupt, radical imam has hunted me using the resources of the taxpayers of Alberta for the "thought crime" of publishing a cartoon he didn't like. I had a preliminary discussion with my lawyer today. My aim is to file an abuse of process claim in the Court of Queen's Bench within the month. Whether or not I sue the commission itself, and its inquisitor Shirlene McGovern, is something I haven't discussed yet with my lawyers.

When the chief complainant in a two-year censorship exercise admits the whole thing was improper, an abuse of process suit is not just about recouping my losses. It's about holding a little fascist, and the government agency he hijacked, to account, and having grown-ups -- that is, real judges in real courts -- tell them that what they've been doing is morally and legally wrong.

Go get 'em, Ezra. Ace offers this comment:

Have at 'em, Ezra. Make sure the Canadian authorities go on record, one way or another, as to whether freedom of speech and freedom of thought are "peculiarities of American law" or the natural rights of Canadians as well.

He's started a Union of Bloggers to help defend bloggers against bogus defamation lawsuit threat (in Canada, anyway) and is personally defending a blogger who goes by the handle Blazing Catfur (Nice!) against one such bogus claim:

I contacted Kinsella to advise him that I was legal counsel for Blazing Catfur. I didn't expect what came next.

First, Kinsella demanded to know if I was licensed to practise law in Ontario. I thought it was a trick question: all Canadian lawyers now have the right to practise law across the country. I thought Kinsella was just joking around, but he wasn't -- he genuinely didn't know that, and he told me he was going to immediately (it was Sunday night, if I recall) write a letter to the Law Society to put a stop to my shenanigans!

Interprovincial mobility is probably the single largest change to the practise of Canadian law since law firms were allowed to advertise; the fact that Kinsella didn't know that -- and even doubted me when I gently broke the news to him -- was stunning. I'm guessing the guy doesn't do a lot of law, though he talks a good game to bloggers.

One of those fun posts to read, that's for sure...

Absolutely unbelievable:

While in the Illinois legislature, [Obama] opposed a Born-Alive Infants Bill. What this means is that when he, as a state legislator, was presented with the reality that babies who had survived abortions were being left to die, he would not raise his hand to provide those children legal protection. His reason: He didn’t want to cede ground to crazy pro-lifers. He warned: “Whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a . . . a child — a nine-month-old child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.”

What kind of a moral monster do you have to be to accept that logic? How utterly blind to human suffering, how uncompassionate? This is just sick. And I refer you to my earlier statement. As a society, we really need to take this issue more seriously before it corrodes our souls down to nothing.

It turns out that Ezra isn't the only Levant to have been harassed by a Canadian "Human Rights Commission"...

Note, if you will, a new link banner over in the sidebar to a site called Abort73.

The Sunday prior to last was Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in many churches in the US. I ran across that link while browsing through some resources that my church had made available to members of the congregation on the issue of abortion, including a little booklet from Abort73.

I'm about as pro-life as they come, and I'm pretty passionate about the debate once it gets going. I've long felt that the argument over abortion in America has been framed incorrectly from a moral standpoint. The pro-abortion side has, for a very long time, been quite successful in focusing attention on their buzzword of "choice," as if the choice made by a pregnant woman about whether or not to keep her baby was far more important than the life of the baby itself. And as long as the debate is focused on concepts like women's rights and the virtue of being able to make free choices, the pro-abortion side will always win - after all, who wants to oppress women, and who doesn't love freedom and the ability to make free choices?

And while in general, the right of free choice is important, it is not more important than the right to life. For instance, if you offend me, inconvenience me or wrong me in some way, I am not free to choose to kill you in response because the value placed on your life is (or should be) much higher than the value placed on my ability to choose a course of action to right the perceived offense, inconvenience or wrong. There is such a thing as a hierarchy of rights, because some rights are dependent upon others, and thus some rights trump others: The right to choose (or, put another way - the right to pursue happiness) is meaningless if you don't have liberty. And liberty is meaningless if you don't have life. Ultimately, all of our rights depend upon the fundamental right to life.

And so, since life is the most important fundamental human right upon which all other rights depend, the ultimate question in the debate over abortion must be this: when does human life begin? If abortion is a transaction that involves, as the pro-abortion crowd constantly claims, only a woman and her doctor, and the fetus is nothing but a non-human clump of cells and not a separate, living human person, then there's no problem. But if that fetus actually is a separate human life, we have a holocaust on our hands.

And that's exactly what the situation is. The only reason abortion is not recognized as a holocaust is because of the way the debate has been framed. The intrinsic value of the unborn child's life and the horrifying injustice of abortion have been obscured by all the talk of "women's rights" and "choice." And let's be frank: because abortions generally happen out of sight, and because a fetus doesn't necessarily "look human," and because we've never met the fetus and never will, well, it's easy to just not think about it too much.

The more I think about the abortion issue, the more chilling it becomes. And not only because of the millions of lives lost to the procedure, but also because of the corrosive effect that it has had on our society. When the Supreme Court made its huge error in legalizing abortion on demand, proponents of the procedure argued that there was no slippery slope, that this would not lead to legalization of assisted suicide and eventually active euthanasia, that abortion would never be taken so lightly as to become little more than a method of birth control, and so on. And yet, today abortion is primarily viewed as a method of birth control, assisted suicide is available in some jurisdictions and has many advocates, and medical professionals are even starting to talk about active involuntary euthanasia.

Back in 1995, I wrote the following:

We hear a lot in our society about the importance of “death with dignity.” Often this phrase is used in the promotion of physician-assisted suicide by people who argue that those with terminal illnesses should have the right to “hasten their death” in the face of suffering. In so arguing, however, advocates of assisted suicide reinforce the idea that those who suffer have no intrinsic value as human beings that would cause society to favor sustaining their life; and as a result they strip those who suffer of any dignity at all. They seem to say that the terminally sick and aged have no inherent dignity - but it can be earned by choosing suicide.

The assisted suicide movement - like so many well-meaning “compassionate” efforts - fails because it does not recognize the inherent worth of every man, woman, and child. Dignity and value are not commodities that rise and fall on some moral market in response to the fluctuations of human frailty. They are intrinsic to what we are as humans. They are a part of our very nature, as real a part of us as the blood that flows in our veins.

These thoughts come to mind as I read of the passing of Dame Cecily Saunders, the founder of the modern Hospice movement. Her life’s work has allowed countless individuals to face the end of their life with some amount of physical comfort, often in their own home surrounded by their loved ones. There is a profound truth at the core of the movement that she founded: that dignity in death comes not through the act of dying, but through the act of living one’s life to the fullest until death.

One of the most important concepts in Western society is that individuals are not granted rights by a government, but that individuals have been endowed with certain rights by their Creator. Because we are created in the image of God, we each have intrinsic value from the very first moment of our life to the very last. To chip away at that idea is to do damage to - and potentially to destroy - the foundation of every other right that we have. Abortion is nothing more than a chisel, chipping away at and cracking this fundamental foundation of our rights. It has been incredibly damaging to our society, and it will continue to do damage until we have the courage to see it for what it really is. Go look. How comfortable are you?

Specifically, letters from lawyers demanding retractions. Fortunately, Ezra also responds to said letters:

3. I am not a physician, but I can assure you that my discovery of Soharwardy will be fairly described as proctological.

All that in a good post on the media and defamation law...

It can happen here. Ezra Levant is being hauled before a government commission in Canada (a supposedly free, Western nation) to account for his thoughts:

Today at 2 p.m. I will appear before an Alberta "human rights officer" for an interrogation. I am being interrogated for the political crime of publishing the Danish cartoons in the Western Standard nearly two years ago.

As a lawyer, I've been in different courts and tribunals, but I've never experienced a kangaroo court first-hand.

This is disgusting. I'll be following his blog closely over the coming days and weeks. I suggest you do the same.