I live in Canada. We don’t have freedom of speech here as defined by the first amendment of America’s great Constitution. In fact, we have entire quasi-judicial bodies that hear claims from people with hurt feelings. No, I am not exaggerating – hurt feelings are covered under the Human Rights Commission.

Two years ago journalist and pundit Mark Steyn and his publishers at Macleans magazine went through a grueling and expensive litigation process brought about by Islamists who disagreed (read: Went batshit fucking crazy) over an excerpt of Steyn’s bestselling book America Alone that appeared in Maclean’s under the title The Future Belongs to Islam. [Disclosure: Mark Steyn is a friend of mine, so I get a little heated on the subject.]

These Islamic law school students, backed by a madman named Mohammad El Masry, brought Macleans before the Human Rights tribunal in Ontario – they actually tried multiple jurisdictions across Canada, but only Ontario British Columbia * took the bait. In these commissions/tribunals, the plaintiff pays nothing to file a complaint and have it acted upon. The defendant has to bear the burden of all their own legal costs, and because it’s not a real court of law, cannot apply for recovery of costs should they win in the end. Which no one ever does, by the way. Every case brought under Section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Code is found guilty of discrimination, or – as in the case of Steyn and Macleans – dismissed due to political pressure.

This is not a new thing. We saw something far worse take place over the so-called Mohamed Cartoons, put out by the Danish Jyllends-Posten newspaper. Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is still in hiding. Just two weeks ago, Comedy Central chose to edit a scene in South Park where Mohamed was dressed as a teddy bear – not-so-coincidentally a bomb was placed in a truck outside the Viacom building two days later. Viacom owns Comedy Central.

And now, even tech blogs are bearing the brunt of this Islamic censorship.

North Africa has become a testing ground for a new sort of online harassment, and ReadWriteWeb is in the middle of it. Groups of Islamists are using the proliferation of Facebook’s public pages to single out users they consider ideologically unorthodox (a broad category indeed by their definition) and then using Facebook’s public ban process to stop their mouths.

Once a target is identified, groups of allied Facebook users report the target as defying terms of service. Once a certain number of users mark a profile to be blocked, Facebook automatically does so. How do we know? Because our French editor, Fabrice Epelboin was one such target.

Further to this, the ReadWriteWeb site has been blocked in Tunisia. This link in in French.

Any of you who have actually read America Alone know about the demographic shift in favor of Islam, so this problem is only going to get worse. That said, it doesn’t mean we have to take it. There are organizations like the International Free Press Society that can help spread the word.

I don’t normally get all politicky on this blog – I have my home blog for that. But given the nature of this issue, all freelance journalists, bloggers, writers and apparently even gadget hounds run the risk of being affected by this.

As my good friend Kathy Shaidle – whose birthday it is today – always says “Come and get me you fairies!”

* Correction, thanks to Bob in the comments. How could I forget that it was BC? Especially since I interviewed Mark half an hour after the case wrapped up for decision. My bad – thanks Bob.

Bloggers beware: A recent ruling out of Great Britain could severely limit the things you think you can get away with saying on the web.

In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who is the author of a blog called NightJack.

The officer, Richard Horton, 45, a detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary, had sought an injunction to stop The Times from revealing his name.

In April Mr Horton was awarded the Orwell Prize for political writing, but the judges were not aware that he was revealing confidential details about cases, some involving sex offences against children, that could be traced back to genuine prosecutions.

So here’s the thing. You can blog all you want, say whatever pops into your mind, but you aren’t anonymous and should have no expectations thereof. Which means trolls, for example, should reconsider their potentially slanderous or libelous words before hitting the publish button. Also, don’t blog about your work if you want to keep working there.

Personal story: I used to work for a large telecom company. I discussed my news/politics blog with my VP, and we agreed that I couldn’t write about the company. I did argue however that because we owned news and print publications, they should not be off limits from critique by a political blogger. That was granted, and I got on with my blogging. There were a couple of times that my company did something I wholeheartedly didn’t agree with, and I had to bite my metaphorical tongue. Conveniently, a dear friend of mine worked for our main competitor. She had the same agreement in place with her superiors. So we would often blog about either other’s companies for plausible deniability. Shazam. How hard is that?

Which is not to say I never got a spanking from higher-ups, especially when our corporate communications department mistook me for a terrorist. Oops. But I knew that being a controversial blogger could lead to, uh, controversy. While everyone has the right to speak their mind, it doesn’t mean your every utterance is free from repercussion. That’s why we have libel and defamation laws. And anti-stalking legislation. You can’t undermine other people’s work or life without facts to back you up.

Remember, if you’re not willing to say it under your own name, maybe you should rethink saying it at all.