Case in point (as reported by the dreadful CBC because only they would do this with as much gusto. Maybe the
A child-free picnic was held in Montreal Saturday by people who have chosen not to have children and are reaching out to others who made the same decision.
Pierre Dubuc took part in the event at Lafontaine Park in Montreal's East End.
Dubuc and his wife Gerarda Capece made a choice not to have children eight years ago.....
"On a Saturday morning, she was just relaxing and watching TV, and she turned to me and said 'You know what, this would be impossible with kids, you know, having kids around'," he said.
Capece said the couple enjoys the company of children — but not all the time.
"I have nephews, I like to play with them but I also like to give them to their mother and go home, you know?," she said.
Capece says people have questioned her decision, asking her who will take care of her when she gets old, but she said she's confident her social circle will help out.
I find it adorable she believes that. What, with the low birthrates, immigration, debt and people just as self-centred as she, I'm sure people will line up to care for her in her old age.
What a tool.
It's one thing to make a decision concerning one's life and being solid about it. It is quite another to lord one's decidedly selfish decision, draw attention to it and seek validation for it, as this couple is obviously doing. People who are comfortable with the course of their lives are too busy living them, not begging for people to pat them on the back.
They must not want children because they are children themselves.
Case number two: the riot that wouldn't die:
As was widely reported following the Vancouver hockey riots, social media was used to crowdsource a vigilante effort to identify the jerks who tore up their own city. Sites like Identifyrioters.com were launched to post pictures of the mayhem. They encourage users to click an “I know who this is!” button to link a pic to a person. Allegations are not posted publicly. They’re forwarded to the cops, who can follow up and see if the names fit the pics....
But some of the hooligans exposed on Youtube found a clever way to get the video removed—copyright claims. Under Youtube’s “Notice and Takedown” policy, all you need to do is claim you own the rights to a video and demand that it be removed, and Youtube will remove it. The video’s uploader will be informed of the allegation and then have a chance to challenge it.
But here’s the rub: in order to claim ownership of a video’s copyright, you have to identify yourself. And when Youtube informs the uploader that they’re being accused of a copyright violation, they have to tell them who their accuser is. So rioters are indirectly handing their names over to the very people who were trying to identify them.
Dave Teixeira of Port Coquitlam runs the site canucksriot2011.com. He posted a video of a guy getting hit in the groin with a stun grenade. Youtube told him “Flashing Nut Shot” was removed due to a copyright complaint filed by a certain individual. Texieria simply forwarded the complainer’s name to the police.
Oops.
 |
| Smashed window: $600. Outing yourself as the window-smasher: priceless. |
Case number three: a well-written piece on the "mosqueteria" business and the strange silence of Canada's
Whaddayaknow?
Margaret Atwood warned us that North America would turn into a theocracy—and she was right!
Funny, though: She hasn’t said much about that lately, now that The Handmaid’s Tale is being acted out in a public school, here in her very own city of Toronto.
I don’t mean the kids are staging her anti-theocratic novel as a play. In fact, I’m guessing Valley Park Middle School has quietly removed it from the “required reading” list.
And why not? After all, they’ve already turned the cafeteria into a mosque.
Yep.
Since November 2008—with the, er, blessing of the Toronto District School Board—Muslim prayers have been matter-of-factly conducted within an Ontario public school’s walls every Friday afternoon. Which is against the law.
For more than two years, the father of one of the school’s few non-Muslim students complained about this to the newspapers. Naturally, they ignored him. Then two weeks ago, somebody published his story. Now pretty much everyone in Canada is buzzing about that Toronto public-school “mosqueteria.”
The “somebody” who finally listened is a lowly blogger whose nom de Web is “Blazing Cat Fur” and who happens to be my husband.
On June 30, “Fur” posted an email he’d received from a regular reader, which read in part:
Every Friday my daughter’s school cafeteria changes into a mosque as dozens of Muslim boys and their imams (Islamic preachers) lead Islamic ritual prayers and no one else can even walk through the cafeteria.
My husband duly tracked down some school council meeting minutes dated November 24, 2008, that confirmed everything.
You see, letting Valley Park’s Muslim students leave for Friday afternoon prayers (!?) was proving to be too…disruptive. Jeepers, some of them even played hooky and didn’t go to the mosque like they were supposed to. So since they’d let Muhammad go to the Valley, as it were, those pesky boys and girls couldn’t skip prayers anymore.
Unless those girls have their periods.
Then they have to sit at the back.
As they might say on The Simpsons, the Toronto District School Board turned into the Taliban so slowly, I hardly noticed. Apparently, neither did Theocracy Finder General Margaret Atwood. (I guess she’s been too busy campaigning—unsuccessfully—to keep the country’s first “conservative” TV network off the air.)
Hell, even the Toronto District School Board didn’t notice, or else it would have been forced to charge itself with violating its own policy against “gender-based discrimination.”
Read the whole thing.
But some of the most telling elements of this whole fiasco are in the comments section (language within):
"Blah, blah, blah... more nutty Islamophobia. If Muslims have the will to stand up for their religion when Christians seem to have lost the will to do so, whose fault is that? Also, may I see your evidence that these Muslim middle-schoolers are "praying for the deaths of Christians and Jews", or did you just pull that slander against 13-year-olds out of your ass? Using your own baseless bullshit to counter Atwood's baseless bullshit does nothing but cheapen the general tone of political debate - which is already shrill, hysterical, and full of unlikely boogeymen."
"This is exactly the worst kind of racist islamophobic bitching that no country needs. See, these kids weren't breaking law, creating mayhem, having sex in school, setting things on fire, being sleazy asses, drinking, ... or a thousand common problems of today's youth. They were praying for God's sake, meaning the best cultural thing they could do, this is something that helps them and the society at large. I mean this is their best behavior. Plus, granting them the right to pray is the most fundamental principle of democracy. It does not get more intolerant than this. Do we prefer to see boys as pricks and girls as sluts? Do we need to reduce every group to trash? Apparently, we do.
Separation of men and women in prayers , practised by many christians and jews and hindus and sikhs is almost a universal rule outside of anglican churches. This fake outrage is just ...well fake. The nazi tendency to rein in the churches will not have good ending. Other false claims (prayers for destruction of jews and christians, checking for menstruation, who pays for quran,....) are all really the cheapest shots I have seen in a while.
Doubting the possibility of a multi-cultural society is something, ferociously sabotaging it (as well as sabotaging basic freedoms) is something else.
Finally, Canadians ARE boorish with a potential for bigotry much worse than Americans. They are culturally less sophisticated with a larger tendency for atheist mob/totalitarian/monopolistic rule. The whole socialist system is one indication. Their recent stupid right wing foreign policy ( contrary to US , Canada does not have any interest in the middle east oil) is almost comically stupid and ideological. While we are at it, let's mention that major media outlets in canada almost entirely belong to a single Jewish family. I am no fan of over-hyped Canada."
(Sidebar: coming from someone who has an inability to actually examine the facts of the case and capitalise proper nouns but can display her own bigotry, she is in NO position to call anyone "boorish".)
"Canada is run by a kleptocracy , it is rus worse than Saudi Arabia for sure. If any other nation had this much and, water and natural resources , they wouldn't struggling this much. everything is 30% more expensive than US and an average family is hooked for a life of slavery. Rich in canada is a super exclusive oligarch club worse than Russia. Canadian youth drink more than an Irish homeless sailor. Authentic , non-commercial culture , does not exist in Canada, just a life of drinking, smoking , hockey, and penny pinching. Jews have such a monopoly over media and politics, unmatched even in Israel and push the clueless sheep towards buying, loans and military spending. The legal system is a joke and one of the most intrusive in the world. A massive brainwash is always going on to make canucks believe they are something special."
""They were praying for God's sake, meaning the best cultural thing they could do..."
Praying is the opposite of doing, since the prayers never rise above the ceiling. Praying is the essence of doing nothing at all.
Trust me, it gets far more intolerant than this, in every Islamic theocracy on Earth. If you'd be happier here, don't let the door hit you on your hairy ass on the way out."
"Anybody can use a simple 10 minutes google research to see any claim of war of islam against jews and christians is baseless. I mean even wikipedia laughs at this, which is telling. But we all know this discussion is not about facts. This is about an unholy alliance of militant atheists, general clueless racists and right wing jews and not-so-smart evangelical christians to create fear and hatred. This suits their bigotry , but not LIBERTY, which is what I care about. I hate the mobs and their ever-pathetic members."
Baird was doing so well with North Korea. Now, he's fouled the ball:
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, in Beijing to warm ties, has signalled the Harper government feels little sympathy for Chinese fugitive Lai Changxing.
Mr. Lai’s case has dogged relations between Beijing and Ottawa for more than a decade, as the Chinese fugitive fought his extradition, arguing he would be executed or abused if he’s returned home.
But after four years of quiet in his case, Canadian immigration authorities opined last week that he would not be mistreated if sent back to China. The government moved quickly to deport him until a court order issued last Wednesday stalled the efforts.
The movement in the case occurred just before Mr. Baird travelled to China for his first official bilateral visit to any country as Foreign Affairs Minister – a trip intended to underscore the importance Ottawa places on relations with Beijing. Mr. Baird shrugged off questions about the coincidence by arguing Ottawa can’t control the case....
Concerns that China might execute Mr. Lai blocked Canada from extraditing him in the early years. But China has since assured Ottawa that it would not execute him. The question, however, is whether those assurances are reliable guarantees – and critics also argue China’s legal system does not provide sufficient due process to decide the case fairly.
Mr. Baird’s tone in describing relations with Beijing underlined the efforts that Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is making to warm ties – a change from the early days of Tory government, when comments about Tibet and human rights annoyed China, and Mr. Harper chose not to make a visit. The Prime Minister finally visited at the end of 2009.
Mr. Baird not only said Ottawa welcomes Chinese investment in Canada, including the oil and gas sector, but referred to working with Beijing as “friends” on human rights.
Who do you think is keeping North Korea afloat, Mr. Baird? Now how do you feel about friendly ties with this octopus?
Related: is the US appeasing China?
And now, the Japanese art of making antique robots and utterly terrifying fifteenth century robots.
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