London: Free Speech Death Watch Report

Free Speech Death Watch Alert: "BREAKING: Conference facility caves to pressure from Islamic groups, bans Mark Steyn from speaking," by Andrew Lawton at Strictly Right, October 21:

Strictly Right sent out a press release earlier today to Canadian media with some rather startling news about the upcoming Mark Steyn speech in London, Ontario that we're putting together. Mark Steyn will be speaking on November 1st in a speech entitled "Head for the Hills: Why everything in your world is doomed." Apparently, London-area Muslims didn't like that idea too much.

Due to capacity constraints at the University of Western Ontario, the original venue for the event, we had booked the London Convention Centre (LCC,) London's premiere conference facility. On Tuesday, I received a phone call from the LCC telling us that our venue had been pulled, and that Mark Steyn would not be permitted to speak there. The reason offered by the LCC was that they had received pressure from local Islamic groups, and they didn't want to alienate their Muslim clients. It's interesting to note that the LCC is owned by the City of London, and is therefore a government operation.

It's interesting that a government-run business decided that freedom of speech was no longer a concept to be upheld, and even more interesting is the fact that the Muslim community in London is applying pressure to a company to not entertain a speaker when only a day earlier they made a statement to the press saying that they didn't care about Steyn speaking and wouldn't do anything to counter it, (except "charity work.")...