Your Daily Nazi: Late Coda To Hechme Case

Richard Warman is still having to tell people it's lies:

The "Hechme allegation" was one of the stranger incidents in The Speechy Wars--the epic political battle over section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act  that began in 2008 and still grinds on in the Senate.  Two  Neo-Nazis managed to convince a good portion of the Canadian media establishment that government employees hijacked the wifi network of one Nelly Hechme in order to spy on said Neo-Nazis.  it was a lunatic assertion, for many reasons, and the various investigations that followed cleared everyone involved.  More than once, in fact.

But here's the interesting thing. At the time Macleans Magazine was one of the prime media suckers.  They let Mark Steyn defame one of the government employees in question on their website; they let Steyn accuse this man by name (not Richard, incidentally) of criminal acts that he did not commit.  The story still appears on the Macleans website!   Now, the fellow didn't sue them because, I am told, he doesn't do that kind of thing.  But Macleans has been asked many times by bloggers like myself and, I think, Dr. Dawg, to pull down the defamatory piece, for decency's sake.  Clearly that kind of plea cuts no ice with the crew over there.

Steyn Makes More Trouble For Macleans

Caol Waino's on-line sleuthery  is noticed by J-Source.  My favorite bit from their short article:

(When contacted by J-Source for comment on the story, Maclean's declined)

This isn't the first time Mark has brought shame to the magazine of choice of Canadian dentists--I mean it has to be, right?  Its all I can ever find to read in their waiting rooms.  Back in 2010, Steyn wrote an article for them that attributed comments from an item in the Mississauga News to the Canadian Jewish Congress.  Legal letters soon followed, and  a grovelling apology from the Macleans editorial staff.  Steyn disappeared from their pages for over a year after that, though nobody involved has ever made a specific connection between the two events. 

Whither Mark Steyn?

It was pointed out to me yesterday that Mark Steyn hasn't produced content for Macleans in quite awhile.  So I fired off an email to Senior Columnist Paul Wells.  He responded:

Feel free to quote me but I won't be very helpful. Mark hasn't written for us for about a year. I don't know whether that's permanent; he normally deals only with senior management.


So I fired another one off to Ken Whyte asking whether Steyn was still on the payroll, but have received no response as yet.  In any case, "about a year" puts us in the vicinity of Steyn's April 12, 2010 column True North Strong Not Free.  In the course of this column, which was otherwise Steyn's typical Muslim bashing, railing against censorship, and etc., Mr. Steyn attributed comments to the Canadian Jewish Congress that were in fact from an item in the Mississauga News that was hosted on the CJC website.  This screw-up triggered a nasty letter from the CJC headBernie Farber and,  eventually (about April 18th), a grovelling apology from Macleans.

Since then, it would seem, nothing more from Steyn in Macleans.  Has Bernie and the Ceej chased him out of the Canadian jounosphere?  That's a bit speculative, but in any case its nice to see him gone.

PS. Unless he's gone because of poor health, obviously.  Although I thought he had resolved all of those issues.

Chinese Canadian National Council

...fact checks Maclean's "Too Asian"? article, finds a real dearth of facts: instead there's research misrepresented and quotes taken out of context. Also, scroll down for the council's list of demands, and especially this one:

1. Maclean’s will publish a ‘rebuttal’ article of generous length from CCNC (ie. 2 to 4 pages or an article of similar length to the original article);

Maclean's has already conceded to this, apparently. The folks behind the Steyn complaint, who asked for but did not receive the same variety of concession, should take heart. You've broken the ground that others have followed upon.

Vivienne Poy's Letter

...on defunding Macleans Magazine can be found here. There are many reasons that handing 1.5 million a year to a product of the deep pocketed Rogers media empire is a bad idea, beyond the magazine's occasional foray into race-baiting. Norman Spector outlines them succinctly here.

And Ms. Poy is right: a magazine can indeed have its funding yanked for publishing offensive material. The protocol for filing a "questionable content complaint" is right there in the applicants guide to the Canada Periodical Fund (although I wrote that post ages ago and some of the links may have changed). Moreover, the provision has been used before, in the case of Catholic Insight Magazine, which was put on a "watch list" for a time to stop the editors from gay-bashing. So, once again, the cries of "censorship" are misplaced. Or at least, if there is censorship involved, it is mandated by the regulations of the fund. Got a problem with that? Lobby to have the regulations changed so that Kenneth Whyte and Co. and publish any filth they want on the taxpayer's dime.

Macleans To Bonhomme

I sir, am a wiggly worm sir.
A wiggly worm, sir, is the lowest lump of whale blubber in the ocean depth

My favorite bit from The Flintstones, for those of you old enough to remember it.

And, oh by the way--Coyne, Wells, Whyte: they're all commies, sucking from the gov. titty.

Sue Macleans, THEN Defund Them

"All graphical representations of Bonhomme Carnaval are protected by the intellectual property rights," organizers said in a statement. "The defamatory and unauthorized use of Bonhomme Carnaval is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated."

The carnival has demanded Maclean’s apologize and pull all issues from store shelves. The magazine has refused, and the issue has sold out in many Quebec stores.

More info on the defunding option here. Meanwhile, Wells tries to pretend the article wasn't crap.

And this is a good start at an apology:

While Maclean’s recognizes that Bonhomme is a symbol of the Carnaval, the character is also more widely recognized as a symbol of the province of Quebec. We used Bonhomme as a means of illustrating a story about the province’s political culture, and did not intend to disparage the Carnaval in any way. Maclean’s is a great supporter of both the Carnaval and of Quebec tourism. Our coverage of political issues in the province will do nothing to diminish that support.

But it needs more self-abasement.

Defund Macleans

If they want to publish crap like this, then remember: they're still sucking $1,000,000 or so off the government titty via the Canada Periodical Fund. Why not take that money away from them?

And, just to be clear as to what's going on here: this an attempt by Ken Whyte, once of the National Post, to stir up some enmity against La Belle Province so as to sell a few copies of his slowly fading magazine to knuckle-draggers.

I'd also point out that, as far as I know, any publications accepting handouts from the periodical fund are still subject to questionable content complaints. If Macleans wants to trash a quarter of the population, maybe it should do so exclusively employing funding from the private sector.

More Steyn Bashing

I am not an agent for the CJC (Canadian Jewish Congress); its just that somebody has to put the boots to Mark Steyn and his editors at Macleans, who have turned an icon of Canadian publishing into a rag, and Bernie Farber has been going after them with both feet lately. Quite justifiably, too. Here is a letter from him that will be appearing in their print edition, and this my favorite bit:

I would also note this statement from the CJC website:

Mr. Steyn has neither apologized nor even acknowledged his error and continues to post the fallacious column, without any clarification, on his private website.

Oh well! The Ceej must think they're special! Steyn never apologizes, no matter how big the screwup. For example, this column still remains on the Macleans website. In it, Steyn accuses CHRC investigator Dean Steacy of illegal acts, based on the say-so of a couple of Neo-Nazis. When the RCMP cleared Mr. Steacy, what did we get out of Macleans or Mr. Steyn? Nada.

And speaking of illegal acts, it look Shaidle's husband, in the context of his endless Muslim bashing, is down to publishing kiddy-porn. I'm not going to link to him, but it seems to me that he has gone to a very dark place, and then decided it wasn't dark enough.

The Most Important Part

...of Mark Steyn's latest, True North strong not free, was not actually written by Mark. It's this bit added at the end by an appalled (one would hope) editor:

Editor’s Note: In this column, “True North strong not free,” (April 12, 2010), quotes were attributed to the Canadian Jewish Congress that came from The Mississauga News. The CJC had posted the quotes on their website under the heading ‘Articles of Interest.’ Subsequent commentary and satire in the column was linked to those quotes. Maclean’s regrets any confusion they might have caused by attributing certain positions directly to the CJC.

The Mississauga News article, if you want to read the whole thing, is here. Steyn's reference came through Scaramouche, who was operating under the assumption that if the CJC posted something on their website, they must be in agreement with it. Steyn either accepted that assessment or, more likely, didn't give a shit. One wonders, though, what Macleans thinks of its editorial staff having to follow this guy around like a dog owner with gloves and a baggy.

In any case, you don't really need to read the Steyn piece. Its his typical Muslims blah blah, political correctness blah blah blah, with a bit of trash talking re the CJC thrown in for good measure. He really needs to find a new minority groups to bash; his schtick is getting tired.

And while we're on the topic of Mark Steyn, the folks at Media Culpa have turned uncovering the man's many instances of self-plagiarism into a cottage industry:

Whatever it’s called, there are more identical or similar (and apparently interchangeable) paragraphs. You can be chugging along through the same 500 words or so, and bump into Lloyd Axworthy in one version, and Bill Gates in the other.

[...]

And copyright? It’s nice that his publishers are willing to share (and maybe pay twice), but isn’t all this communal property stuff a bit - well, leftist?

Finally, a bit OT (but not much), I swapped a few emails this week with Isabelle, Poirier of the Gatineau police. It turns out I was right: there was indeed a third person with Nick Bergamini and Mark Klibanov the night they were allegedly attacked by a mob of machete wielding Arabs outside Le Volt. As of Friday, though, there was no more further information on the incident to be had. Updates, when they become available, should appear here but perhaps, since the "attack" seems to already have passed into the realm of legend, they don't matter.

Dead Finns And Recycled Steyn

One of my favorite crusader's for truth over at Media Culpa has finally convinced Macleans to correct their story about the "10,000,000 Finns who died under Stalin". Its taken months for them to do it, and they probably wouldn't have bothered if a Finnish magazine hadn't called them out. Here's the correction:

CORRECTION: In the original version of this story we said that 10 million Finns died under Lenin in the 1917 civil war. The correct figure is 37,000. We regret the error.

Except that too is a bung-job:

Just a couple of problems with this: the original article did not say that 10 million Finns died under Lenin “in the 1917 civil war”. In fact, even the closing paragraph correctly places Finland’s civil war in 1918, not 1917 (and at any rate, Lenin did not rule Finland - formerly a protectorate of Sweden and later Russia, one of Lenin’s first acts when he took power in October 1917 was to grant Finland independence in December 1917). The 1918 civil war was therefore not fought “under Lenin”.

Alas!

And here: Mark Steyn's wholesale re-purposing of Mark Steyn articles.

Mark Steyn: The Pieces Are Interchangable

From his Macleans Oct 15 column on Michael Ignatieff:

In Britain, a land with rampant property crime, undercover constables nevertheless find time to dine at curry restaurants on Friday nights to monitor adjoining tables lest someone in private conversation should make a racist remark. An author interviewed on BBC Radio expressed, very mildly and politely, some concerns about gay adoption and was investigated by Scotland Yard’s Community Safety Unit for Homophobic, Racist and Domestic Incidents. A Daily Telegraph columnist was arrested and detained in a jail cell over a joke in a speech. A Dutch legislator was invited to speak at the Palace of Westminster by a member of the House of Lords, but was banned by the government, arrested on arrival at Heathrow and deported.

From a May 8th piece in The Progressive Conservative, on the decline of America under Obama:

In Britain, a land with rampant property crime, undercover constables nevertheless find time to dine at curry restaurants on Friday nights to monitor adjoining tables lest someone in private conversation should make a racist remark. An author interviewed on BBC Radio expressed, very mildly and politely, some concerns about gay adoption and was investigated by Scotland Yard’s Community Safety Unit for Homophobic, Racist and Domestic Incidents. A Daily Telegraph columnist is arrested and detained in a jail cell over a joke in a speech. A Dutch legislator is invited to speak at the Palace of Westminster by a member of the House of Lords, but is banned by the government, arrested on arrival at Heathrow and deported.

Sweet. Paid twice for the same anecdote.

H/T CW

Macleans Retracts, Will Steyn Apologize?

Something Dawg and others have already picked up, and
...something Maclean's would have realized months ago if they had only been paying attention. Of course, the first article Mark Steyn wrote on the topic, in which he accused CHRC Investigator Dean Steacy of criminal wrong-doing, is still up. So I will be sending Mr. Steyn yet another email suggesting that he apologize to Mr. Steacy and have Macleans put the article down. We shall see what kind of man he is.

You're Daily Nazi: Nazi Shows Up At Macleans Magazine

...screen name Julius Streicher, and starts whining about the travails of the white race. Of course its in response to a standard Mark Steyn "fear the fecund foreigner" piece. Kenneth Whyte, you must be so proud.

Lenin Vs.The Finns: He Killed Them All Thrice Over

From Macleans:

The debate has dragged in Finland’s minister of culture and sport, Stefan Wallin. He recently told the Helsinki newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that the support given to the museum shouldn’t be perceived as approval for Lenin’s totalitarian administration (about 10 million Finns died under Lenin, almost half due to starvation). “This is one of dozens of special museums that the state supports and has done so for a long time,” he said.

The average population of Finland during Lenin's lifetime: about 3,000,000. A point already noted by a reader and not yet corrected. Also worth noting: Lenin spent time in Finland, but never ruled over the nation, and hence, it was never "under" him in any but the physical sense.

h/t CW.

Changes To PAP Program Would Kill Canadian Lit Mags, Subsidize Macleans And Mark Steyn

No shit. There's a Facebook Page (Natch) to fight the changes:

On February 17, 2009, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore announced in a speech he made in Montreal (see here) that the Canada Magazine Fund and Publishing Assistance Program will be merged to create the Canada Periodical Fund. Initiatives from this new body will come on stream in 2010.

Departing from his prepared remarks, James Moore indicated that eligibility for funding could potentially be restricted to those magazines with an annual circulation above 5000. With notable exceptions, the circulation of virtually every Canadian literary and arts magazine, large and small, is below 5000.

Lots of background, here for example, but the bottom line appears to be that the Tory government will de-fund Canada's literary magazines while continuing to shovel $2,500,000 per annum at Macleans so Kenneth Whyte can keep publishing slop that "resembles hate speech". Talk about Robin Hood in reverse.

Steyn's Back

...and he's boring.

A hint, Mark: "ecopalypse" has nothing going for it. Try "Warmocaust", or "Warmageddon", and refer to environmentalists as "Green Shirts". That brings the yucks every time.

On the upside, there's nothing there that would trigger a questionable content complaint. Steyn and Maclean's get to keep their millions in free government stamps (their PAP subsidy) for another week.

Macleans Should Pull Steyn's Column On The "Hacked Wifi" Conspiracy

In it, Steyn accuses CHRC employee Dean Steacy by name of criminal wrong-doing. Accusations which have since been proven false.

Kenneth Whyte, Paul, Kady et al. It isn't about where you stand on Canada's various speech codes. Its about showing a little bit of class when one of your writers screws up and, indeed, in this case Steyn was suckered by the owner of Stormfront, America's premier Neo-Nazi website.
The post in question should be disappeared and, frankly, apologized for.

Meanwhile, 12 hours later and still no sign of class from the Steynosaur himself.

Apology To Mark Steyn

On November 26th I wrote a short post entitled "Steyn Gets Punked By 28 Year Old Literary Hoax ". The subject of this post was a passage from Mr. Steyn's review of Oriana Fallaci’s book The Force Of Reason in Maclean's magazine, where Steyn discusses the writings of the Ayatollah Khomeini:

Also: "A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin." Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah's not clear on that.

And the particular claim I made re the passage above was that no legitimate source for this statement on the topic of bestiality could be found in Khomeini's work. Having read Mr. Steyn's response, I must concede that my claim has not been fully proven.

Now, a couple of things.

Firstly, it is pretty appalling that Maclean's should have published this garbage. They are, after all, supposed to be Canada's national magazine, and not some potty-mouthed blog dedicated to flinging rhetorical poo at vulnerable ethnic and religious groups. And it is reassuring that, in recent months, Maclean's seems to have ended its association with Mr. Steyn.

Secondly, the kind of "cheap joke" (his own words) that Steyn is playing here can be played, with identical results, upon any religion. One might point out that Europe's animal trials, which were carried out by both secular and church authorities, continued into the 18th century and had their own odd customs in regards to bestiality. For example, if you were caught sleeping with your sheep, the sheep hung too, which seems grossly unfair.

Furthermore, biblical injunctions against bestiality are similarly peculiar. Take Leviticus 18:23:

Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

While (according to The Bible) neither men nor women may actually engage in sexual relations with animals, women are additionally prohibited from "presenting" themselves to the animal for the purposes of sexual activity. Which is to say that guys are, and women are not, allowed to flirt with their animals, as long as no tongues are involved.

Nuance aside, however, let me just say at this point that I believe bestiality to be wrong. In fact, I think the Ayatollah and I concur on this point. Of the three of us, it is Mr. Steyn who, with such statements as

A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way...

...appears most ambiguous on the issue. I would call upon him now to come out with some kind of clear statement against bestiality, if not for the sake of the children, then at least for the sake of the child-like men who read his work and may otherwise show up at his next book-signing with their newly purchased bovine lover in tow.

But these are side issues. Although I still hold that Mr. Steyn's writings are ghastly and ill-researched, this inference could not be legitmately drawn from the example I presented. That I drew such an inference is wrong, and I apologize for it most whole-heartedly.

PS. Is Khomeini the guy they referred to as "the Ayatollah of rock n' rolla", or is that someone else?

Meanwhile, we offer Mark Steyn a chance to make an apology of his own here.

Mark Steyn and Macleans Acquitted

...and the best part of this is, I win my bet with Mark Bourrie. I'm a bit confused as to the amount, but I think my favorite journalism prof owes me $5 and $20. Booyah!

Update from the "Speechys are bone-heads" department.

Mrs. [Kari ] Simpson’s plan is simple—and audacious. She plans to file a human rights complaint against the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.

To whom will she present the complaint?

To the tribunal itself!

“Of course, they can’t really hear a case against themselves,” she said, “so my complaint would automatically be passed on to the British Columbia Supreme Court for judicial review. But even if they were arrogant enough to hear the case, the rules say that any Human Rights Tribunal decision automatically comes up for judicial review. So one way or another, my case will be heard.

[...]

Her complaint is based on seven years’ worth of complaints to the tribunal, all made by Christians alleging religious bias against them—and all dismissed without a hearing. During this same time, the tribunal accepted many complaints against Christians, filed by homosexual activists, many of those complaints legally baseless, or even frivolous.

The tribunal may not be able to hear a case against themselves, but since the BCHRT "rules of practice and procedure" state that

A person must file a complaint:

a.within 6 months of the alleged contravention of the Code; or

b.if a continuing contravention of the Code is alleged, within 6 months of the last alleged instance of the contravention.

...Mrs. Simpson's detailing alleged offenses back to the early part of the century will get her nowhere. So, sorry ma'am, I suspect your complaint is bound for the waste-paper basket.

By the way, Kari Simpson is the lady who sued Rafi Mair for calling her a Nazi, and lost.

Ht FD.