Deborah Gyapong: Some telling details emerge from Maclean's show trial

Here are a few things that have stood out in my readings this morning on the craziness going on in British Columbia regarding the Maclean's Magazine show trial. Call these a compilation of "telling details."

Covenant Zone has a must-read, thoughtful essay here. Check this out:

Khurrum is just an ordinary Canadian guy who went to law school and one day was struck dumb by the Steyn article; he showed it to his non-Muslim boss at the Parkdale legal clinic for low income people in Toronto, and received from her a sympathetic response of shock and outrage. The boss immediately started talking to people and looking into whether this article could be considered criminal hate speech. Heh, that's Parkdale for you...

Long story short, Khurrum and his other friends from law school studied all the relevant Canadian laws and decided that their best response was 1) to demand that Maclean's publish their chosen author and make a cash donation; or 2) they would look into legal remedies. It turned out that the test for criminal hate speech is quite demanding, and so they settled on laying a series of human rights complaints, after asking for and getting the support of Mohammed Elmasry and the Canadian Islamic Congress to give them some kind of institutional legitimacy. (Many bloggers argue that, in turn, Elmasry is using the young lawyers as his own "sock puppets" in some kind of lawfare.)

--snip--

One of the most telling points in the proceedings came when the cell phone of CIC lawyer Joseph Faisal rang loudly. He jumped to turn it off and apologized profusely that this was the "first time in 25 years that's happened". The Chairwoman of the tribunal replied "Make it the last!". The way she said this seemed to me awkward, theatrical, a somewhat exaggerated reaction to a feeling of "what do I say to this?", as if the appropriate way to assert authority in this situation were not, as it were, bred in the bone. An experienced judge, one might imagine, would have sufficient worldly wisdom to be inured to the nuisances of our now inescapably networked lives, such that a certain sardonic humility about human imperfections in attention that cannot be commanded away would enter into any warning.

Then there's Brian Hutchinson's interesting column in today's National Post and another telling glimpse of Faisal Joseph.

Mr. Joseph seized upon the phrase "blog idiots." He turned in his chair and leered at Mr. Levant in the spectator's gallery. Once, twice, thrice. He later used the phrase himself, referring to "the idiot bloggers on the Western Standard." And turned to leer again.
Regrettable conduct, but such was Mr. Joseph's finest moment. The Tribunal panel allowed as evidence the Levant blog posting, and others.

Eeewww!

Of course, read Andrew Coyne's and Ezra Levant's great live-blogging of yesterday, and Jay Currie's overview. Check out Free Mark Steyn for links to everything, and Mark Steyn's site, too.

One thing is clear though, even in a kangaroo court where truth is no defense and high-priced lawyers who traffic in such old-fashioned notions as facts and truth seem strangely dry and irrelevant, the truth did prevail yesterday.

Khurrum Awan admitted to what is basically Ken Whyte's version of what happened that day in the editorial offices of Maclean's: that the law students never suggested a mutually acceptable response, but that these words were a later embellishment (though apparently he tried to infer that Jonathan Kay "inserted" those words into something Awan had written for the National Post. Awan's credibility is in tatters. But of course, the soft racism of low expectations may convince the 'Roo troika to attribute this fudging of the truth to a victim's hurt feelings and Maclean's will still be toast.

Andrew Coyne writes:

1:50 PM Julian Porter begins cross-examining young Awan. He notes off the top that Elmasry’s complaint to the human rights commission was filed April 30, 2007. The meeting with Maclean’s was March 30.

The claim the students have made publicly on a number of occasions, including in their filings to the various human rights commissions to which they took their complaint, is that they had proposed the “reply” to Steyn’s piece be written by a “mutually acceptable” author, the better to show how “unreasonable” Maclean’s had been. Porter rounds on him: “I suggest to you that you never said ‘mutually acceptable’ at that meeting.” He’s caught off guard. He stammers out a concession: they did not.

Kerrannggg!!! As Porter says, “this goes to his credibility.” It’s a peculiarly pointed exchange: Porter was himself at the meeting, as Maclean’s lawyer. So when he says “I suggest you never said” something, the witness is under unusual pressure.

2:00 PM Now we’re looking at a letter Awan wrote in April of 2007 to Brian Segal, president of Rogers Publishing. No mention here of any “mutually acceptable” author, as there had not been in previous communications with Mohamed Elmasry. Likewise at the students’ press conference on December 4, 2007: no “mutually acceptable” mention here. (His defence: we didn’t realize until some days later, when Ken Whyte replied, that Maclean’s disputed his version of what happened at the meeting.) It was only in a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail some time later that the phrase first appears - the phrase he now admits he never used.

Kerranngg! Actually, more like rinngg: it’s Porter’s cellphone. He’s forgotten to turn it off. (Same thing happened yesterday to Joseph. Twice in one hearing must set some sort of record.)

Now Porter returns to the attack. “When did you first publicly admit that you asked for money for a donation” at the Maclean’s meeting? (The money, to be clear, was not to go to the students, but to a race relations foundation for the promotion of religious tolerance.) When was it? Porter supplies the answer: At a press conference on April 30 of this year, when Joe Brean of the National Post asked him about it. At that time, the group’s lawyer, Joseph, said it was only “a nominal” amount.

Awan now says they were considering asking for $10,000, but never got around to naming a figure. He doesn’t think this could be characterized as a “substantial” sum, given the magazine’s resources. He doesn’t know Maclean’s.

2:37 PM We’re going through an interview Awan gave on Mike Duffy Live. He tells Duffy that this isn’t a case of free speech versus minority rights. Rather, he says, Maclean’s can go on publishing what it likes, Steyn can write whatever he likes, just so long as “the Muslim community” gets a right of reply. (I’m paraphrasing. The video of the interview is here.) So really, what they’re proposing (he explains in the interview) is an extension of free speech.

I think I see his point. Every time Maclean’s wants to publish an article some group doesn’t like, they just have to give them an equal amount of space in the magazine. Double the space, at twice the cost to Maclean’s - but zero cost to the complainants. That’s ”free” speech, of a kind.