The Creation of Perfection Is No Error

Absolutely not.


I had to re-read this (emphasis mine):

The Student Federation of the University of Ottawa used student union dues to bus about 50 student protesters to June's G20 Summit in Toronto, in what the president of the campus Conservatives says is a "blatant misuse" of student fees.

''I highly doubt that every single student who has to pay those fees would be happy to know their money was being spent to send a few individuals to protest for the weekend," Peter Flynn said.

Mr. Flynn said the decision to use student federation budgets to rent the bus was an example of a "cabal of certain individuals using student money-at-large to donate it to their own pet projects."

The federation's Student Appeal Centre, Foot Patrol, Women's Resource Centre and Pride Centre combined resources from their student-funded budgets to come up with nearly $1,000 to rent the bus.

"What does Foot Patrol have to do with protesting?" Mr. Flynn said, adding that concern over the bus rental was raised at a federation board meeting on Sunday. "It's mandated to get students home safe, not send them to Toronto."

Federation president Tyler Steeves said the union was just doing its job by aiding student participation in the protests. "We try to capture the passions of our students and help students to pursue them, whether that means setting up intramural sports leagues or renting a bus so they can protest something they care about," he said. "We're helping them be involved in activities that make university special."

The U of O group is not the only student federation facing controversy over sending protesters to the G20.

According to the Phoenix, the student newspaper at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus, two members of the school's student union, Grayson Lepp and Kirk Chavarie, used student funds to fly to Toronto to protest the summit.

The two were arrested on June 27 and charged with conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. They are scheduled to appear in a Toronto court on Aug. 23.

Is this the same University of Ottawa that drove Ann Coulter away with a band of rent-some-thugs? The article above illustrates perfectly: (a) why students should NEVER have to pay student fees and (b) why there should be an independent body to hold these "cabals" to account and make them re-pay the money wasted on roving gangs of spoiled little Canadians who think torching cars and smashing windows is somehow a constructive way to help the starving masses all over the globe. Oh! I forgot. They don't care about the starving masses of the world, only if daddy's money can get them out of the mess they find themselves in.

My mistake.

**

I think I can pin-point the problem here (again, with emphasis):

In the isolated town of Stoneville, N.L., population less than 500, residents are starting to wonder what to do about an eight-year-old boy whose behaviour has long concerned them, but has now grown violent.

First, it was a dog bludgeoned to death with a barbecue utensil in June. And now it's a dozen ducks, hens and chicks kept in a backyard as pets, found beaten with gardening tools on Tuesday.

The boy, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, has admitted to both attacks, police say, although he is too young to be charged with a criminal offence. It is believed that the boy used gardening tools he found in the shed of Cory Hodder to kill the birds. Some were so badly abused they had to be euthanized...

The boy wanders over to her house and seems to have no adult supervision, she said. He's even been out in the neighbourhood since the incident on Tuesday night.

One woman, who is an aunt to both the boy's unmarried parents, who are cousins, said his parents don't get along. "Sometimes I think it's the way they're reared up," she said.

The father will shoot "a bird, a duck, a seagull, anything that moves," Ms. Gillingham said. When interviewed last month after the boy killed Cuddles, a black Pomeranian belonging to Emma and Norman Hodder, the father largely shrugged the incident off: "Yeah, it's not a very good thing for him to do but the dog is dead, you can't bring him back.''

One day there will be a documentary on this little darling with the townsfolk scratching their heads and wondering how this boy graduated from killing small animals, to setting fires, to killing drifters and prostitutes and finally killing college students before being ploddingly stopped by the local constabulary. "What could have turned this boy into a monster and how could we have let it go on?" What, indeed.


**

Why kid-gloves are horrid things:

The night Canadian Master Corporal Darrell Priede of Brantford died in Afghanistan, the Afghan war took a sudden dangerous new twist.

A stream of secret U.S. military intelligence reports released this week by the WikiLeaks website suggests the May 2007 death was the result of a Taliban attack with a heat-seeking, surface-to-air missile launched from the shoulder.

In all likelihood, the deadly weapon was provided by Iran.

Those two facts alone may be transforming the almost nine-year-old Afghan war.

Iran has long been suspected of covertly supplying arms to the Taliban, but the WikiLeaks data dump suggests it could now be almost as crucial to the Afghan insurgency as Pakistan.

Summaries of classified U.S. military and diplomatic reports among the documents demonstrate a growing concern over Iran's influence in Afghanistan and catalogue fears Iran's Revolutionary Guard is waging a secret campaign to arm, train, fund and equip the Afghanistan insurgency.

Master Cpl. Priede's death may have been a point of convergence for those fears...

Iran and the Taliban dislike each other. They have a history of animosity that almost erupted into war in the 1990s, when the Taliban's Sunni fundamentalists murdered thousands Afghan Hazara Shiites and killed 11 Iranian diplomats.

That hostile relationship has gradually become a more collaborative one as Iran's relations with the United States and the West deteriorated.

Once again, Iran kills a Canadian and the kid gloves stay on.

**

When in France...

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, proposed tough measures yesterday to fight crime, delinquency and illegal immigration as he looks to shore up his support amid scandals and low ratings ahead of 2012 elections.

Speaking in Grenoble, the scene of riots two weeks ago sparked by the death of a man of Arab origin who was fleeing the police, Mr. Sarkozy partly blamed immigration for a breakdown in society.

"We are suffering from 50 years of lax immigration regulation which has led to a failure of integration," he said in a defiant speech.

Lax immigration policies are certainly no walk in the park but failure to integrate new immigrants lies squarely with the existing population. Before one is tarred as cruel, consider that integration is a fact of life and was done before in much less understanding and supporting circumstances. No one is doing a favour to either the immigrant or native population by not enforcing existing mores or customs. Why not make the immigrants' new home a welcome one? Would it not be easier to familiarise the newcomer with the official language and customs than deal with burning cars?


Speaking of language...

Quebec, once the notorious milieu for French-English sparring, appears to have passed the baton east to a less likely hornet's nest: New Brunswick, where language tensions have recently shifted from latent to feverish.

In the past month alone, a smattering of linguistic duels have emerged across New Brunswick --which, as it happens, is Canada's only officially bilingual province...

These days, in Moncton -- an officially bilingual city where two-thirds of the citizens consider themselves anglophone--a host of English-speaking business owners are petitioning against a proposed bylaw requiring all new commercial signs to be in French and English. And one Moncton businessman, who said he has received countless threatening phone calls from francophones yelling at him in a language he does not understand, said anglophones there are fed up with "forced bilingualism."

I'm fond of learning languages but not fond of being forced into multi-lingualism or being denied a job or place of business because of a rather militant minority. Any culture or language must be supported by the people who adhere to it. They run the risk of losing what they hold dear with the kind of "insistence" they exhibit. Sometimes it's best not to push.


**

Whatever your feelings on this topic, it is incredibly sad that a grandmother handing out pamphlets gets more jail time than Karla Holmolka:

Since Aug. 30, 1994, when a temporary injunction was placed around several abortion clinics in downtown Toronto at the request of the provincial attorney-general, Ms. Gibbons has been arrested roughly 20 times and has been behind bars eight of the past 16 years -- more time than Karla Homolka.

She served an earlier six-month stretch for a protest in front of a Morgentaler clinic in 1992. Her most recent stint behind bars began in January 2009.

Instead of standing back the required distance from a clinic as her fellow protesters had done for years, she once again walked within the forbidden bubble zone.

She held up a sign that showed a drawing of a baby that read: "Why Mom, when I have so much life to give?"

If she would only comply, Ms. Gibbons could be out on $500 bail in mere days, thereby breaking her tortuous 16-year cycle of arrest and imprisonment. But until the injunction is quashed, she will refuse bail, insisting that would be "compromise and complicity with evil" and, to her, unthinkable.

To those inside Canada's antiabortion movement, Linda Gibbons is a quiet hero whose sacrifice is to be admired.

"I didn't have the courage to break the injunction," says retired high school teacher John Bulsza, of London, who was named in the original injunction in August 1994. "Every one of us should have protested with her and this case would be history. She's our Gandhi and we're letting her take the fall for the rest of us."

To her detractors, though, she is a self-aggrandizing pain in the ass who has no respect for the rights of others. They see nothing honourable in her commitment to the cause. She is simply another self-delusional fanatic with a martyr complex.

*"What people like her do is creepy," says Celia Posyniak, an abortion clinic director in Calgary. "They don't even have to say anything. It's intimidating just to have someone standing there."

"Why is it acceptable to intimidate women making a personal and legal decision?"

Ms. Posyniak has no respect for Ms. Gibbons, even for being so persistent.

(* How about- for the refreshing honesty- she just admits that Mrs. Gibbons is bad for business?)

Trudeau's Canada- where free expression and congress are punished but killers walk free.

Mid-Week Post

A most interesting find:

Arctic archaeologists have found the ship that forged the final link in the Northwest Passage and was lost in the search for the Franklin expedition.

The HMS Investigator, abandoned in the ice in 1853, is in shallow water in Mercy Bay along the northern coast of Banks Island in Canada's Western Arctic.

"The ship is standing upright in very good condition," Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's head of underwater archaeology, said Wednesday. "It's standing in about 11 metres of water.

"This is definitely of the utmost importance. This is the ship that sailed the last leg of the Northwest Passage."

On shore, not far from the wreck, are what scientists believe are the graves of three British sailors.

The disappearance of the Franklin expedition — considered the British admiralty's state of the art — provoked widespread public concern. Numerous British and American ships set sail in an attempt to find the HMS Erebus and the Terror, the vessels commanded by Sir John Franklin in his doomed search for the Northwest Passage in 1845.

None ever has.

This is just one of the reasons why Canada should maintain Arctic supremacy. Could you imagine the Russians preserving this remarkable piece of history? Destroying and re-inventing history is their game.


Some history about Lord Franklin here.


Stan Roger's "Northwest Passage".

**

Why only eleven years?

A Canadian man who admitted to having sex with young girls in Columbia and Cambodia has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge said Kenneth Klassen committed "serious" and "opportunistic" offences in delivering his sentence on 14 counts of sexual interference and one count of importing child pornography.

Justice Austin Cullen rejected the defence argument that Klassen was just a "customer" in a transaction with sex-trade workers, saying the girls were very young and vulnerable.

The judge also noted the crimes may have never surfaced if police hadn't discovered a package Klassen mailed himself of videos showing him having sex with girls the Crown says were as young as eight.

If the judge had any decency, he would have chained this monster up to a rock in the high Arctic and let the polar bears have a go at him.

**

The controversial Arizona immigration law has hit a snag:

A federal judge dealt a serious rebuke to Arizona's toughest-in-the-nation immigration law on Wednesday when she put most of the crackdown on hold just hours before it was to take effect.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton shifts the immigration debate to the courts and sets up a lengthy legal battle that may not be decided until the Supreme Court weighs in. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer said the state will likely appeal the ruling and seek to get the judge's order overturned.

But for now, opponents of the law have prevailed: The provisions that most angered opponents will not take effect, including sections that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.

The judge also delayed parts of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places — a move aimed at day laborers. In addition, the judge blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants.

"Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked," Bolton, a Clinton appointee, said in her decision.

I don't understand why the rule of law should apply to one group of people and no one else. I can tell you from my experiences crossing the Canada-US border, I've been treated in the coldest manner imaginable by officious border guards who don't recognise how valuable my dollars are to their economy. I've had to present my passport, papers, even leave my vehicle because it was required of me. Why are illegal immigrants- whose slave labour wages go unchecked- completely untouched by this scrutiny? It is a straw man argument that racism is a by-product of this law because anyone entering the US (legally) has to jump through hoops to get in and is treated in the same manner (I know whereof I speak). If the rule of law doesn't apply to one person, forget about applying it to anyone else.

**

Surprise, surprise:

U.S. complaints about Russian compliance with the 1991 START nuclear arms control treaty had not been resolved when the pact expired last year, but the disputes never amounted to allegations of cheating, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Rose Gottemoeller, chief U.S. negotiator of the newly completed follow-on START treaty, said in an interview that the most significant compliance issues were settled before negotiations began.

So, what about this?

The Russian state-owned weapons exporter Rosoboronexport yesterday announced it was set to sell short-range Iskander missiles to foreign entities, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

**

In closing, please enjoy this dog on a mower.

Some Neat Stuff

For all your cuddly animal watching needs:




I don't remember Sense and Sensibility being like this!



To quote Mr. Colson: "It seems that some atheists need to put their books down and watch more Star Trek."


Damn right!


Is a world without Star Trek a world we want to live in?!

Tuesday Post

Question: isn't this- I don't know- a tad irresponsible (though not always surprising)?

It is being described as the biggest leak of military secrets in history -- a treasure trove of more than 92,000 highly classified field reports, intelligence assessments and after-action battle reports released on the Internet that paint a damning portrait of the war in Afghanistan.

Yesterday Julian Assange, the Australian founder of the WikiLeaks website, compared his group's release of the AfghanistanWar Logs to the Vietnam War's Pentagon Papers.

The 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam War, marked a sea change in public perceptions of the war. They exposed a string of U.S. presidents as liars who deliberately deceived to advance their diplomacy and even fabricated evidence around an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to speed deployment of U.S. troops to Vietnam.

So far, WikiLeaks' Afghan file contains nothing so explosive. The secret archive of six years' worth of military documents doesn't do much more than add detail to a dark picture of an already gloomy war. The thousands upon thousands of documents don't really tell us anything we didn't already know...

The single most constant complaint running through the U.S. reports is that Pakistan's spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), is the major supporter of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

Report after report claims Pakistan's intelligence agents have met secretly with the Taliban; offered them strategic advice; organized groups to fight foreign troops inside Afghanistan and even plotted the assassinations of top Afghani officials.

One document, dated August 2008, identifies an ISI colonel as plotting with a Taliban official to assassinate Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President.

Another report claims Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who ran ISI in 1987-89, held a top-level meeting to discuss strategy with three senior Afghan Taliban leaders and three "older" Arab men, who were presumably al-Qaeda members, in the South Waziristan capital of Wana in January 2009.

It's no surprise about Pakistan but- in my completely unmilitary opinion- it's probably not a good idea to blab this sort of thing to the papers.


Way to drop the ball, intelligence community.


From thirty years to nineteen for fifteen thousand lives:

In a historic first, a UN-backed court yesterday sentenced a Khmer Rouge prison chief to 30 years in jail for crimes against humanity over mass executions during Cambodia's "Killing Fields" era.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, is the first Khmer Rouge cadre to face justice in an international tribunal over the deaths of up to two million people through starvation, overwork and execution under the 1975-79 regime.

But to the dismay of survivors and victims' relatives, the court took into account the years he had served since his arrest in 1999, meaning the 67-year-old could walk free in about 19 years.

"Millions of people were killed, millions of dollars have been spent [on the trial], but the killer could be released," said a tearful Chum Mey, 79, one of only a handful who survived imprisonment and torture at the jail.

Duch apologized during his trial for overseeing the mass murder of 15,000 men, women and children at Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, but shocked the court in November by asking to be acquitted....

"This is a court case, not a football match, so there are no winners or losers. It's really a question of whether justice has been applied," said Bill Smith, the deputy prosecutor.

Tell that to the dead.

A Quebec Court judge is expected to decide this week whether a 38-year-old Dorval woman will be released on bail in a case in which she is accused of attempting to kill her daughter in what police allege was an honour crime.

She'll probably get it, too.

I'm not sure how this going to help but....

A church in Florida is organizing a Burn the Koran Day in remembrance of the victims of 9/11 and "to stand against the evil of Islam," USA Today reported yesterday. Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove Outreach Centre said people were mailing the church copies of the Koran for incineration after news of the campaign was posted on Facebook. In response, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling on American Muslims to host educational Share the Koran Ramadan fast-breaking dinners at which copies of Islam's holy text will be distributed to neighbours, public and law enforcement officials and journalists, the Orlanst news services

Someone is taking the higher road. A far cry from this to be sure.


And they wonder why no one takes them seriously anymore:

An Anglican priest has apologized for offering communion to a dog, but the act has repercussions for a Church already divided by liberalization measures.

"Communion is a symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus's body; he died for all of us," said Cheryl Chang, director of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANIC). "But I don't recall anything from the Scripture saying anything about Jesus dying for the salvation of our pets.''

Marguerite Rea, the interim priest at St. Peter's Anglican Church in Toronto, offered Trapper -- a four-year-old German shepherd-Rhodesian Ridgeback cross --communion during a church service in late June. It quickly became symbolic of an ever-widening theological rift between the conservative brand of Anglicanism observed by ANIC congregations, which, for example, reject same-sex marriage, and a more liberal-leaning Anglican Church of Canada that condones the rite.

Was there ever a time when they devoted their lives to God other than absurdity? Was there?


Hollywood's favourite communist nutjob director apologises for anti-semitic comments:

Filmmaker Oliver Stone has apologized after critics slammed him for making comments that were interpreted as anti-Semitic in an interview last Sunday.


While promoting his documentary “South of the Border” with The Sunday Times of London, Stone not only defended Hitler, but also downplayed the Holocaust.


“Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein,” Stone, who is half Jewish, told the paper. “German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support. Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.”


This year, while promoting his Showtime documentary “A Secret History of America,” Stone said “Hitler was an easy scapegoat.”


Later, he complained about the “Jewish domination of the media,” saying, “there’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f**ked up United States foreign policy for years.”On Monday afternoon, Stone issued the following statement in an attempt to appease the situation.


"In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret.


"Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity -- and it was an atrocity."

It wouldn't be the first time Oliver Stone made up some outlandish nonsense to support his skewed view of the world but this one takes the cake. When is he going to be lumped in with Mel Gibson, or is the Hollywood community gladly ignorant of history?



Hollywood's favourite rapist is accused once more:

Another woman has come forward charging that Roman Polanski raped her in 1974....

The woman, who was 21 at the time, reported the alleged sexual assault to the Los Angeles District Attorney in May and was interviewed by authorities.

Edith Michelle Vogelhut, a former model also known as Shelli Paul, told authorities Polanski "handcuffed" her at actor Jack Nicholson's Hollywood house where he was staying, then sodomized her repeatedly, before he passed out...

When you live in Hollywood, only some people can be monsters.

Bukhan Jihad

Yeah, I can't believe it, either:

North Korea Saturday threatened to respond with nuclear weapons to a major US-South Korean naval exercise starting this weekend, saying it was ready for a "retaliatory sacred war."

I believe the North Koreans are taking a page out of the Islamofascist playbook and invoking some sort of holy war to receive American funds, Japanese food aid and South Korean molly-coddling.


Please see here:

The communist government of North Korea, currently bouncing through the headlines once more, still the despair of the American State Department, was supposed to have gone out of business at least a generation ago....

This phenomenon among nations, living by secrecy and punishing anyone who even speaks to a foreigner, remains largely unknown to the world. Barbara Demick, while spending five years in Seoul as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, discovered during six trips to the north that the government thugs escorting her wouldn’t let her exchange even one word with a private citizen. So, back in South Korea, she began to study refugees from the north.

The result, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, recently won the Johnson Prize for the best non-fiction book published in Britain. It turns out to be a marvellous journalistic performance, the first account I’ve read that delivers an intimate sense of North Korean life. Demick braids the stories of six Koreans and their families into the history of a state dedicated to isolating and oppressing its citizens.

She leads us carefully and thoughtfully through desperate lives. A kindergarten teacher reports that the hardest part of her job was watching her pupils die of starvation. A pediatrician says much the same about her patients.

Yet most of these survivors acknowledge that for a long time they believed what the regime told them. They were persuaded, for instance, that South Korea was suffering terrible deprivation — one reason children sang a song beginning, “We have nothing to envy in the world.”

It's hard to imagine the complete paralysis of thought but it exists. We allow it to exist in some indirect ways. We tolerate China's octopus-like grip over the economy by fooling ourselves into thinking this will radically change the tyrants whose grip on this filthy Asian country has changed very little since Mao. Some even visit North Korea and see it as some kind of obscene novelty. As for the politicians, maintaining the status quo is better than shaking things up. Why rile China's lap dog? It will do that whenever it wants something and China- like a doting mother to an enfant terrible- will spoil it.

**

I was messing about when I found this:

Remember the end of "Samaritan Snare" where the rather unintelligent Pakled shouted, "We will destroy them!"? That's what I thought of when I read this:

In Pyongyang, "hundreds of thousands" of North Koreans marked the anniversary of the 1950 start of the Korean War by "denouncing the U.S. imperialists, the sworn enemy of the Korean people," according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

The protesters "reiterated the firm stand of the army and people of (the North) that should the U.S. imperialists ignite another war of aggression on this land, they will mobilize all the political and ideological might and military potentials built up generation after generation ... and mercilessly wipe out the enemies and victoriously conclude their standoff with the U.S.," KCNA reported.

So what are Kimmy & Ko. up to? There is the danger that they might give nuclear bomb technology to terrorists, but we'd turn Pyongyang into rubble if we could trace it back to them. No, I don't think Kimmy really wants to start a war he knows he couldn't win, but he can bluff. Making noise has created quite the Pavlovian reaction in the West, because every time he threatens, Western politicians want to placate him with more food and money. But our continued aid shipments are more "Oh just take this and shut up!" than "Please don't start anything." Think Riker sending Geordi to fix the Pakleds' engines not because they're an actual threat, or out of compassion, but so they'll stop saying that annoying "We look for things...it is broken."

Yep.

The North Koreans are mirror images of the Pakleds, a painfully slow yet touchingly pathetic species of the Alpha Quadrant.

Pretty sad, really.

Our country is broken. We need to make it go...

Latte Poverty

It's all Israel's fault! Waaaah!

Palestinian shoppers browse in a supermarket at a newly opened shopping mall in Gaza City July 20, 2010. The mall, the first of its kind in Gaza, opened to the public last week and contains about 15 shops, including a supermarket and clothing stores.

Please read this:

When was the last time the United Nations Security Council met to condemn an Arab government for its mistreatment of Palestinians?

How come groups and individuals on university campuses in the United States and Canada that call themselves "pro-Palestinian" remain silent when Jordan revokes the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians?

The plight of Palestinians living in Arab countries in general, and Lebanon in particular, is one that is often ignored by the mainstream media in West...

Not only are Palestinians living in Lebanon denied the right to own property, but they also do not qualify for health care, and are banned by law from working in a large number of jobs....


Ironically, it is much easier for a Palestinian to acquire American and Canadian citizenship than a passport of an Arab country. In the past, Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were even entitled to Israeli citizenship if they married an Israeli citizen, or were reunited with their families inside the country.

If you try hard enough, I'm sure you could find or invent an anti-Israel angle to this.

Do the Palestinians need some more land?

In the West Bank, Christians enjoy more freedom but still are subject to discrimination. One Christian from Ramallah said he fled after death threats for not giving his land to a Muslim who demanded it. Another, pressed to sell half of his business to Muslim buyers at a fraction of its value, let his company go bankrupt instead, then moved with his family to Canada.

What could top this?

In 2002, dozens of terrorists commandeered Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity for 39 days, knowing that Israeli troops would refuse to storm the church. The gunmen, holding 200 priests hostage, desecrated the traditional birthplace of Jesus with graffiti and a fire, stole relics, and used the Bible as toilet paper.

Clarify something for me: who are the victims and who are the bad guys?

A Post, For It Is Thursday

China the filthy:

The hand of a worker involved in the clean-up of the Dalian oil spill is seen at Nanhaitun in Dalian, Liaoning province July 21, 2010. Oil imports were still blocked at the major Chinese port of Dalian on Tuesday following a fire and oil slick, while authorities recruited an additional 500 fishing boats to help with the clean-up.

[Picture taken July 21, 2010. ]



I want to hear again how the Alberta oilsands are ruining the world.


Visit Alberta.


See things our way and your kids won't get hurt. We mean it.

Throw out the idea that traditional marriage is the way to go (not shacking up or "common-law" or some such ridiculous set-up for people who can't commit to real adult relationships) and watch people become a snarly bunch of fascists.


Speaking of fascists:

The Virginia man who warned on a radical Islamic website that the creators of the cartoon series “South Park” will be targeted for death for their caricature of the Prophet Muhammad has been arrested on charges that he provided material support to the terrorist organization Al Shabab, federal officials said Wednesday.

Zachary Adam Chesser, aka Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, admitted to federal agents that he attempted on two occasions to travel to Somalia to join Al Shabab as a foreign fighter. After he was stopped from boarding a flight from New York to Uganda on July 10, Chesser, 20, allegedly admitted that he intended to travel from Uganda to Somalia.

Chesser, of Fairfax County, Va., attempted to board the plane with his infant son; court records allege he intended to use his son as part of his cover to avoid detection.

Wow. A real coward.


Not a surprise, really:

Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …. I think people should be replicating some of the not-so-pleasant viral email campaigns that were used against [Obama].”

This says more about the fears and hopes of the journalists than it does about Mrs. Palin. Whatever your feelings on Mrs. Palin may be, think about this: someone had zero faith in the abilities of the guy they backed that they would smear his opponent to an unbelievable degree.


And now, enjoy this picture:

Monday Post

This has been said before but bears repeating:

Young migrant workers in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen are sorely underpaid but in no position to ask for more money, state media on Monday cited a survey as showing against a backdrop of strikes.

Factories in China's export powerhouse province of Guangdong, where Shenzhen is located, have been hit by a string of stoppages over the past few months by workers demanding a bigger slice of the country's economic wealth.

In Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, the average monthly wage for young migrant workers is less than half that of those who hold full-time, long-term jobs in the same city, at 1,838.6 yuan ($271.3), according to the new survey.

"Many companies pay in line with the city's lowest minimum standard, and migrant workers can only raise their income by doing excessive amounts of overtime," the All-China Federation of Trade Unions said.

Such a salary "can only maintain the very lowest standards of living in Shenzhen," it added.

The survey, excerpts of which were carried in Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, made no reference to the bout of strikes, in line with the muted coverage of the unrest by Chinese media.

The latest strike has affected a plant supplying parts to Honda Motors' China operations.

But the publication of the study in an official newspaper shows that the rising demands of a new generation of workers migrating from Chinese villages, or born to migrants in the cities, are weighing on policy-makers.

A similar report last month warned migrant demands were a test for stability, something the Communist Party values above all else.

The new survey pointed out that young migrant workers were in a weak position when it came to pushing for higher pay.

"They ... don't know much about protecting their rights and ... lack communication channels within companies," it said. "When their rights are infringed upon in most cases they choose to change jobs, so there is a lot of movement of labor."

Young migrants thought they should be getting at least 2,679 yuan a month, but would need 4,200 yuan a month to be able to afford to have a family, the survey found.

Though they were better educated than the generation of migrants that came before them, they were still essentially doing the same manual jobs and few had risen to the ranks of management, it added.

NOTE: by stability, refer to how the communist Chinese government deals with parents who have lost their children in earthquakes or people whose homes have been bulldozed during the Olympics. This is what Canada trades with China for.

Maybe I shouldn't type this in case I appear superstitious or ridiculous:

ABC’s Nightline has a fascinating story about Edward Kagin, an atheist and provocateur, who conducted a mass "de-baptism" of fellow non-believers to symbolically dry off the baptism waters:

Standing at a podium wearing a long brown monk’s robe, Kagin read with the oratorical skill of a preacher from a set of pages in his hand and invited participants to come forward to be de-baptized.

He recited a few mock-Latin syllables, to the audience’s amusement. An assistant produced a large hairdryer, labeled "Reason and Truth," and handed it to Kagin. The man who’d elected himself to be de-baptized stood before him. Kagin turned on the hairdryer, blowing the hot air in his face in an attempt to symbolically dry up his baptismal waters.

"Come forward now and receive the spirit of hot air that taketh away the stigma and taketh away the remnants of the stain of baptismal water," Kagin shouts.

Because nothing says rationality or intelligence like waving a hair dryer around to "remove" the effects of baptism.


So we're clear:


Can. 845 §1. Since the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and orders imprint a character, they cannot be repeated. (More)



People who hate dogs cannot be trusted:

Blind passengers are being ordered off buses or refused taxi rides because Muslim drivers or passengers object to their 'unclean' guide dogs.

One pensioner, a cancer sufferer, told how had twice been confronted by drivers and asked to get off the bus because of his guide dog, and had also faced hostility at a hospital and in a supermarket over the animal.

The problem to carry guide dogs on religious grounds has become so widespread that the matter was raised in the House of Lords last week, prompting transport minister Norman Baker to warn that a religious objection was not a reason to eject a passenger with a well-behaved guide dog....

The tension stems from a strand of Islamic teaching which warns against contact with dogs because the animal's saliva was considered to be impure, the Muslim Council of Britain said.

It urged Muslims to show tolerance and common sense over the issue.

'We need to be flexible on this,' a spokesman said. 'Muslim drivers should have no hesitation in allowing guide dogs into their bus or car.

'If a dog does lick you, it's not the end of the world. Just go home and wash yourself.'

I'm still trying to understand why we need to explain to adults the need to grow the hell up.

Where is Batman when you need him?

Sarah Palin, who waded into a New York political fight by endorsing Ann Marie Buerkle in NY-25, is drifting into a decidedly higher-charged battle: The fray over a planned mosque near Ground Zero.

"Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing," she tweeted Sunday....

The building's planners, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, have said it's modeled on religious and community centers such as the YMCA, and that the 13-story, $100 million building would also include an arts center, gym and a swimming pool, as well as a mosque. It would be two blocks away from Ground Zero.

The project, which has become an increasingly partisan issue in New York, received a renewed burst of national attention when CBS and NBC rejected an ad from the National Republican Trust PAC that crosscut footage of the 9/11 attacks with the sounds of Muslim prayer.

"On Sept. 11, they declared war against us," a narrator says. "And to celebrate that murder of 3,000 Americans, they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at ground zero."

While a recent poll showed a majority of New Yorkers oppose the plan to build the mosque built near Ground Zero, an aide in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's City Hall hit back at Palin, first tweeting “@SarahPalinUSA mind your business.

This is the same Michael Bloomberg who thought the Times Square bomber was some random nutjob opposed to Obamacare. When someone from outside of your state sees a bad move before you do, you know it's time to quit.

I'm amazed at the stuff you can do with duct tape or glue. Really.

Facts

FACT: During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.


FACT: Obama waited over fifty days before addressing the massive seepage of oil into the Gulf of Mexico where the commercial shellfish and fish catch is an estimated 1.3 billion pounds valued at $661 million.


FACT: Obama's effort to introduce a six month moratorium on deep-sea oil drilling was quashed by a federal judge given that it was not practical.


FACT: Engineers capped the leak, not Obama. There was no time for a "community organiser" to get an engineering degree.


In case we forgot.

Smoke on the Water

It's all Israel's fault! Waaaaaah!

There are few pleasures left for Gaza's 1.5 million people, squeezed by both a blockade and Hamas efforts to impose its strict Muslim lifestyle. And women here just lost another one.

Gaza's Hamas rulers have banned women from smoking water pipes in cafes, sending plainclothes agents through popular beachside spots Sunday to enforce the edict. Some women in the Palestinian territory are grumbling....

The water pipe restrictions are just the latest in a yearlong Hamas campaign to gradually enforce a strict Muslim life code on the people of Gaza — many of whom are conservative Muslims themselves and not entirely opposed. But the secular minority feels the crunch.

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that overran Gaza three years ago, has banned women from riding motorbikes — mostly impoverished women riding behind their husbands on cheaply bought Vespas. Teenage girls are pressured by their Hamas-loyal school teachers to cover up in loose robes and headscarves.

Men, meanwhile, are the ones mostly targeted if they are seen alongside women in public. And they too are bullied by Hamas officials if they dress in ways considered too Western — like shorts instead of long pants.

Hamas frequently mixes its strict interpretation of Islamic law with conservative Gaza tradition. Over the weekend, the two dovetailed to produce the smoking ban.

"It is inappropriate for a woman to sit cross-legged and smoke in public. It harms the image of our people," Ihab Ghussein, Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman, said in a statement Sunday. Police spokesman Ayman Batneiji claimed husbands have divorced wives who smoked in public, without substantiating his claim.

Many residents are deeply sensitive to any effort by Hamas to infringe on leisure activities in the territory, which already are limited. A three-year-long blockade by Israel and Egypt has depressed the economy, limiting options in entertainment and practically every other facet of life....

I don't believe for one minute that vice addiction- whether its drugs, alcohol or cigarettes- is the answer to life's problems but if I was under the thumb of a nutcase totalitarian regime, I'd probably be tempted by some Middle Eastern bong, too. Not that I would partake because drugs are bad. Really.

Until Muslims realise their problems are the result of their wacky tribalism, this kind of thing will continually pop up. Get ready for fatwas on ducks that wear long pants.

Just added: the poor Gazans now have an enormous shopping mall.


Breadlines in the former Soviet Union- just to keep everything in perspective.

A Post, For It Is Thursday

So much to say.....


In order to work overseas, I needed a Canadian passport. Whatever trouble I had to go through to get it, I did so in order to work and travel.


So why are there different standards for those who live on or near the Canadian Shield?

The Iroquois nation should not be allowed to travel abroad on their own passports if other nations, such as the Québécois, do not have their own passports, the Bloc Québécois’ Indian affairs critic said Wednesday.

“We must all have a valid passport from a recognized country, not a nation. If that was not the case, there would be a Basque passport, a Québécois passport, a Scottish passport, a Corsican passport,” said Bloc MP Marc Lemay. “Last I heard Quebec was still part of Canada and, even if we are very, very sovereigntist, we still need a Canadian passport to travel.”

Mr. Lemay was responding to issues of nationality that have come to light as a 47-person delegation of Iroquois have been stuck for several days in New York because they were travelling to an athletic competition in Britain on passports of the Iroquois Confederacy. The group, whose members live on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, refuse passports from either country as a matter of principle.

Perhaps I am unclear about what a principle is. Is it that freeloaders who live in First World Western countries reject the nation-state they should feel damn glad to live in? Maybe.


Who nearly wiped out the Huron (or Wendat, as is their preferred name)? Oh yes! The Iroquois.

Moving on....


What the hell? It's sad when hockey takes precedence over bravery.


Shut up, Ignatieff:

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff called for the resignation of the head of Canada’s spy agency Thursday, saying claims Richard Fadden made last month about several politicians in British Columbia acting as spies for China have damaged Canada’s reputation.


“What would I do as the prime minister of Canada when I have the visit of the president of another country and my director of intelligence chooses the eve of his arrival, to make unsubstantiated set of allegations about members of our national community?” he said during a stop at the Chinese Cultural Centre east of Toronto.
“I would ask for his resignation.”


Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Richard Fadden has stood by his comments, but has refused to name the politicians.
“So the question is, why is Mr. Harper remaining silent on this? Why is he letting this go on?” Mr. Ignatieff charged. “This is damaging our relations with China but it is also damaging our relationship among citizens. We think it is unacceptable.”

Goad someone else with your mud-slinging and unsubstantiated blather (see this). I think they fixed your bus.


Maybe this judge took a page from Ignatieff's total fabrication book and smoked something peculiar with it:

The Federal Court has overturned a government decision to reject a prospective immigrant who had eavesdropped on NATO bases for the Soviets during the Cold War.

It doesn't stop there:

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday he would like to create a federally funded program to allow young Canadians to work overseas and gain international experience.

“I don’t want Canadians to think the only good Canadian is someone who’s never left these shores,” Mr. Ignatieff said.

Like he is one to talk, the visitor.



Tourism isn't a human right. If people want to travel, they can pay for it. Just lower the taxes on travel and gasoline. Aren't we supposed to live in a "multicultural mosaic"? Why leave the country when you can get an education by walking down the street to your nearest store or restaurant? Besides, quite a few Canadians have never even left their province and if they have, it's to either the US or some Third World hellhole. I'd encourage people to go to Alberta before going to Cuba. Scratch that. NEVER go to Cuba. Visit Alberta. They have pie.


And now Stan Roger's "Northwest Passage".


A letter to be answered:

Autonomy, liberty, justice are the founding principles of democracy, and I wholeheartedly subscribe to them. As such, I was dismayed to hear of that French politicians have voted to ban face-covering veils. To add to my shock, many Canadian politicians are petitioning for this same ban to come to this country.


Banning face veils only takes away the freedom of women. It is not for the French or Canadian public, the judicial system or the government to determine whether Muslim women should be mandated by their faith to wear the face veil; it is for each Muslim woman to decide for herself.


Forcing a woman to reveal part of her body will not "liberate" her. Indeed, it is the same as forcing her to be covered. The pretext of "rescuing" women is paternalistic, and frankly, quite offensive. As Canadians, we should be committed to supporting the personal freedoms of all women. In the name of "gender equality," the French government is marginalizing only one group: Muslim women. Ironically, this legislation actually perpetuates gender inequality, and effectively sanctions discrimination against Muslim women.


Muslim Canadian women, such as myself, are integral and productive members of society who possess diverse capabilities and faculties. The Islamic teaching of modesty allows us a comfortable atmosphere where we can further these strengths and skills. This legislation, however, does not bode well for the integration and participation of women, and will inevitably lead to further gender inequality.

Aqsa Parvez is my withering counter-argument to that letter. She opted not to wear those horrid coverings which, in my opinion, are more about snubbing Canadian culture and customs than they are about religion or individuality. Now she is dead.


When thirty-three year old rape cases go very wrong:

The Swiss government asked the U.S. Justice Department to release sealed transcripts in the Roman Polanski case just days before a Los Angeles judge was told that the Swiss did not request that information, according to a letter from Swiss officials that points to apparent miscommunication in the case.
The officials said that the denial of access to the information was the key factor in the refusal to extradite the film maker to the U.S., according to the letter to the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.
A district attorney's spokeswoman said their office was never notified of the Swiss request and did not know that the Justice Department had turned it down.

Let this be a lesson: only famous people can get away with forcible confinement, intoxication and sexual assault of a minor. If Roman Polanski was- let's say, a janitor- he'd be in prison right now.

Another lesson: only the Chinese-backed North Koreans can get away with murder.


A note to the Chinese and the North Koreans: Kim Jong-Il is fat, on his last legs and is backed by the Chinese government which considers not only all Koreans but their own citizens as dirty socks. You're better off without the lot of them. Seriously.


Cool.


Even cooler.

Alberta: Come for the Beauty, Stay for the Pie!

A San Francisco-based environmental group has launched a billboard campaign in several U.S. cities asking Americans to rethink their travel plans to Alberta because of the oilsands.

Corporate Ethics International has set up up the ads in Denver, Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis "revealing Alberta to be one of the world's dirtiest destinations." The campaign is targeting U.S. cities with the most Canadian travel.

I don't know why anyone would say that about beautiful.....






pristine Alberta.

A Post For It Is Thursday

Something Michael Ignatieff overlooked:

Chinese Bishop Giulio Jia Zhiguo, who was arrested last year after holding a meeting on the state of the Roman Catholic Church in China, has been released, the Vatican announced Thursday.

The 75-year-old bishop of Zhengding, in northern China's Hebei province, "was freed yesterday" (Wednesday), Radio Vatican said.

The Vatican had called Jia's arrest on March 31, 2009 "an obstacle to dialogue" and noted that other clergymen were also being held or put under pressure because of their religious activities.

A Vatican committee of Church officials and representatives of Chinese bishops which discussed Church life in communist China as he was being arrested found that "problems are not only due to difficulties inside the Church but also to the tense relationship with civilian authorities".....

The arrest was not Jia's first and came following a previous detention on August 24, 2008, the closing day of the Olympic Games in Beijing. He has now been detained 13 times by police since 2004.

The prelate advocates the rights of people with disabilities.

Rights groups say those who remain loyal to the Vatican often suffer persecution, with detentions of bishops common.

In September 2008, an elderly Chinese Catholic bishop who spent almost half his life in detention died while serving his latest prison term in Hebei.

China counts several million Catholics -- comprised of members of an official Church with links to Chinese political authorities and an unofficial "clandestine" Church that says it derives its legitimacy from the pope.

What could we learn from a country that arrests men of the cloth, particularly men who help the disabled?

Prepare to be disgusted:

In Sheba's pediatric hemato-oncology department was Mohammed Abu Mustafa, a four-and-a-half-month-old Palestinian infant. Protruding from his tiny body were pipes attached to big machines. His breathing was labored.

"His days may be numbered. He is suffering from a genetic defect that is causing the failure of his immune system," said the baby's mother, Raida, from the Gaza Strip, when she emerged from the isolation room. "I had two daughters in Gaza," she continued, her black eyes shimmering. "Both died because of immune deficiency. In Gaza I was told all the time that there is no treatment for this and that he is doomed to die. The problem now is how to pay for the [bone marrow] transplant. There is no funding."

"I got to her after all the attempts to find a donation for the transplant had failed," [Eldar] relates. "I understood that I was the baby's last hope, but I didn't give it much of a chance. At the time, Qassam rockets falling on Sderot opened every newscast. In that situation, I didn't believe that anyone would be willing to give a shekel for a Palestinian infant."

He was wrong. Hours after the news item about Mohammed was broadcast, the hospital switchboard was jammed with callers. An Israeli Jew whose son died during his military service donated $55,000, and for the first time the Abu Mustafa family began to feel hopeful. Only then did Eldar grasp the full dramatic potential of the story. He told his editor, Tali Ben Ovadia, that he wanted to continue accompanying the family.

...Nevertheless, this idyllic situation developed into a deep crisis that led to the severance of the relations and what appeared to be the end of the filming. From an innocent conversation about religious holidays, Raida Abu Mustafa launched into a painful monologue about the culture of the shahids - the martyrs - and admitted, during the complex transplant process, that she would like to see her son perpetrate a suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem.

"Jerusalem is ours," she declared. "We are all for Jerusalem, the whole nation, not just a million, all of us. Do you understand what that means - all of us?"

She also explained to Eldar exactly what she had in mind. "For us, death is a natural thing. We are not frightened of death. From the smallest infant, even smaller than Mohammed, to the oldest person, we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem. We feel we have the right to it. You're free to be angry, so be angry."

And Eldar was angry. "Then why are you fighting to save your son's life, if you say that death is a usual thing for your people?" he lashes out in one of the most dramatic moments in the film.

"It is a regular thing," she smiles at him. "Life is not precious. Life is precious, but not for us. For us, life is nothing, not worth a thing. That is why we have so many suicide bombers. They are not afraid of death. None of us, not even the children, are afraid of death. It is natural for us. After Mohammed gets well, I will certainly want him to be a shahid. If it's for Jerusalem, then there's no problem. For you it is hard, I know; with us, there are cries of rejoicing and happiness when someone falls as a shahid. For us a shahid is a tremendous thing."

You can draw a line between good and evil right here. Clearly, the mother whose son is saved by the goodness of the people she hates holds no value on any human life. One can imagine the bovine expression of her face as she says flat-out how life is not precious. This isn't Israel's fault or America's fault. And I don't think "shahid" is a Presbyterian concept.