Yes, it's me - Mark Steyn of that ilk. I'm back-ish. Had a very rough week, in and out of hospital on both sides of the border - and with some rather intrusive procedures. Plus I could use a blood transfusion right now, if you'd like to leave one in the comments section. My blood is Type O but identifies as Type A.
[UPDATE! Massachusetts Steyn Clubber Josh Passell distills the mood of the hour:
You can have some of my blood. Most of the news makes me want to open a vein anyway.]
Notwithstanding any of that, I'll be back tonight to launch a brand new week of The Mark Steyn Show at 8pm BST/3pm North American Eastern. If you're in the Antipodes, you may prefer to watch at 5pm Aussie Eastern via our friends at ADH TV, whose stellar talents Alexandra Marshall and Fred Pawle were kind enough to pinch-hit for me last week. Tonight we'll get to some of the stuff I missed while on the slab - including the Trump indictment and a particularly grisly story from France that hit close to home. We'll also address a further evolution in what Laura Rosen Cohen calls The Great Walkbackening:
'The BBC has a reputation as a truth-teller – but in Covid it did what the Government wanted'
Oh, you don't say. The Telegraph's headline hardly does justice to the piece's revelations on officialdom's determination to squash what remains of free speech on public policy. More or less random quote:
The person sent by the BBC to attend meetings of the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum was Jessica Cecil, founder of the Trusted News Initiative, which was set up under the then director-general Tony Hall in 2019 – before Covid – to smoke out fake news and warn media partners of untruths circling the globe...
They were chaired on some occasions by Dame Caroline Dinenage, the then minister of state for digital and culture, and otherwise by Sarah Connolly, director of security and online harms at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Attendees included other officials from the DCMS; an official from the Department of Health and Social Care; representatives of social media firms; academics from six universities and someone from the broadcast regulator Ofcom.
It was initially set up to prevent untruths about the Covid vaccines being disseminated online, but at a meeting in January 2021 the group discussed 'whether the scope of harms should be confined just to Covid-19/the vaccine', suggesting it was possible the clampdown on so-called disinformation would go beyond Covid.
Its very existence – along with that of the separate Counter-Disinformation Unit within the Government, exposed by The Telegraph last week – was kept under the radar at the time...
[emphasis added]
If you want to know why I'm suing the UK state censor Ofcom for their "rulings" against me, it's because none of the above is normal in a free society: The BBC, which once employed George Orwell and indeed erected a statue to him outside Broadcasting House, is now so tone-deaf it doesn't even recognise the Orwellian nomenclature all around - "Trusted News Initiative", "Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum", "Director of Security and Online Harms"... These are not mere rhetorical flourishes from a censorious officialdom. As I hear every day from viewers and listeners across the British Isles, people are dead or crippled because of the UK media's degeneration into mere propagandists:
2 years ago today the @AstraZeneca vax killed my wonderful,kind, gentle,funny,26 year old son.Still waiting for an apology for this tragedy from them or @GOVUK our lives have been shattered @ukcvfamily @TruthBrigadeUK @GBNEWS pic.twitter.com/Z8X5TUGmKQ
— TraceyHurn1 (@THurn1) June 11, 2023
The "100 per cent effective" AstraZeneca is no longer available in the UK: only the propaganda remains, and that must be rigorously upheld. You can only read the above Tweet because an eccentric South African happened to buy Twitter. In the European Union, threatens the cocksure commissar Thierry Breton, you will not be able to read it for much longer. In a land that was once the crucible of liberty, Lord Grade, a semi-competent Light Entertainment exec, is content to close out his days as Britain's chief censor and extend Ofcom's throttlehold on UK TV and radio stations to the Internet, and to the above Tweet.
A fortnight or so back, my barrister, Gavin Millar KC, initiated proceedings against Ofcom in the High Court. You can read our initial Statement of Claim here. We are going to extend it to include Ofcom's second "ruling" against me and my doughty comrade-in-arms Naomi Wolf. I confess to a certain chippiness on my lack of top billing. The case is formally designated as:
The King on the application of Mark Steyn
vs The Office of Communications (Ofcom)
I wouldn't mind but I suspect His Majesty is not fully on board with my theory of the case. Still, needs must - and we shall see whether English courts are still prepared to defend English liberties.
In my present condition, I need this case like the proverbial hole in the head. But I figure that, after a transfusion or two, I've got enough puff in me for one more battle - and the woeful state of free speech in a post-Covid world is one of the central issues of our time. The UK media have mostly fallen in line with the new strictures. As I have noted before, when Commissar Grade's second banana attended Klaus Schwab's annual Spectre board meeting at Davos, the only chap who even attempted to interview her was our pal Andrew Lawton from London - not London, England, but London, Ontario, whose reporters evidently have more gumption than today's Fleet Street toadies:
Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes defends "free and frank and open conversations on any topic" when asked in Davos about Ofcom's investigations of networks over discussion of vaccine injuries. pic.twitter.com/6hOUDdMLis
— Andrew Lawton (@AndrewLawton) January 19, 2023
The Ofcom Effect, as enforced by Lord Grade, Dame Melanie and their shadowy commissars and anonymous judges, has been a disaster for freedom of expression - and needs to be decisively defeated on every front.
~Many readers, listeners and viewers have inquired about ways to support this important lawsuit in the High Court. Well, aside from anything else, Ofcom's double-conviction of me seems to be doing wonders for five-star reviews of my new book, The Prisoner of Windsor. As this Amazon UK customer raves:
Excellent
Very entertaining and relevant at the moment. I support Mark's legal action against the tyrants at OFCOM.
I hasten to add the book is well worth reading on its own merits. However, there are other methods of support, including:
a) signing up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership;
b) buying a chum a SteynOnline gift certificate; or
c) treating your special someone to a stateroom on this summer's Mark Steyn Cruise. They will love you forever.
In the first two cases, one hundred per cent of the proceeds and, in the last, a significant chunk thereof go to a grand cause - and you or your loved one gets something, too.
~Speaking of The Prisoner of Windsor, set in a strange land that may nonetheless seem oddly familiar...
If you absolutely can't live without your full-price hardback being personally inscribed, that we can do.
However, if you disdain my John Hancock, Amazon is selling the book at a discount - and the shipping will be rather less, too. Likewise, if you order from Amazon Canada. (An alternative option north of the border: for a hardback direct from the University of Toronto Press, click here.)
For digital versions of the book, please scroll down the page.
~If you enjoy The Mark Steyn Show, we'll also be doing it live at sea during the 2023 Mark Steyn Cruise - and with all of your favourite guests, including of course Eva, Leilani and Alexandra. More details here.
~Notwithstanding my one-step-forward-three-steps-back health, we had a busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with Laura Rosen Cohen back at the helm of our Clubland Q&A. Rick McGinnis's Saturday movie date plumped for Steve McQueen and attempts to put his off-screen interests on-screen, and on Sunday Tal Bachman continued to play up, play up and play the game. My Song of the Week remembered the lady to whom it fell, at very short notice, to introduce to the rest of the planet the world's most famous Brazilian song.
If you were too busy spending the weekend cowering before incoming Canadian clouds, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
~Finally, if you are way beyond print copies of books, The Prisoner of Windsor is also available in digital format.
For Nook, see here.
For Kobo, see here.
For the Kindle edition around the world, please click below: