Mid-Week Post

Late in the game but still just nice.


All thirty-three miners have been rescued:

The last of the Chilean miners, the foreman who held them together when they were feared lost, was raised from the depths of the earth Wednesday night — a joyous ending to a 69-day ordeal that riveted the world. No one has ever been trapped so long and survived.


Luis Urzua ascended smoothly through 2,000 feet of rock, completing a 22½-hour rescue operation that unfolded with remarkable speed and flawless execution. Before a jubilant crowd of about 2,000 people, he became the 33rd miner to be rescued.

"We have done what the entire world was waiting for," he told Chilean President Sebastian Pinera immediately after his rescue. "The 70 days that we fought so hard were not in vain. We had strength, we had spirit, we wanted to fight, we wanted to fight for our families, and that was the greatest thing."

The president told him: "You are not the same, and the country is not the same after this. You were an inspiration. Go hug your wife and your daughter." With Urzua by his side, he led the crowd in singing the national anthem.

The rescue exceeded expectations every step of the way. Officials first said it might be four months before they could get the men out; it turned out to be 69 days and about 8 hours.

Once the escape tunnel was finished, they estimated it would take 36 to 48 hours to get all the miners to the surface. That got faster as the operation went along, and all the men were safely above ground in 22 hours, 37 minutes.

God love the engineers and everyone else who helped these men. It was quite a feat.


Japan takes the high road:

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan called Thursday for the release of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last week.

"From the viewpoint that universal human rights should be protected across national borders, it is desirable" that Liu be released, Kan told parliament.

"Japan-China relations are getting back to the basics of a mutually beneficial strategic partnership which I confirmed with President Hu Jintao in June" when Kan took office, he added.

Liu Xiaobo was sentenced in December to 11 years in jail on subversion charges but international calls for his release have mounted since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, triggering Chinese fury.

Kan's comments came as Japan and China are seeking to put their relationship back on track after the worst diplomatic row in years between the Asian economic giants.

The Beneficence of Kan.

China- naengmyeon is a dish best served cold.

The love is gone:

College students, who were a key to President Barack Obama's 2008 sweep into the White House, have cooled in their support as they confront a miserable job market and anemic economic recovery, according to an Associated Press-mtvU poll.


The poll results appear to compound the bad news confronting Obama and his Democrats as the president battles to rekindle enthusiasm among the newest voters with only three weeks left before congressional elections. Obama does not face voters again until 2012.

The U.S. economic malaise and stubbornly high unemployment — nearly 10 per cent — have considerably curbed Obama's popularity among all voters, taking a sharp bite out of his support on the nation's college campuses, where graduating seniors are facing truly dismal employment prospects.

(sigh)


I guess when you campaign on hype, it just forces people to grow up quickly, especially when they realise their cultural studies degrees definitely won't help them in a stunted economy.


Related:

When Arkansas Democratic Rep. Marion Berry complained that healthcare reform felt like a replay of the Hillarycare debacle, Obama explained that the big difference between then and now was "me." In other words, the White House's plan for making everything work out was an unyielding confidence in the power of Obama's own cult of personality. That's why that cult's high priest, David Axelrod, pursued a strategy of greeting every problem as if it were an excuse for Obama to give another big speech.

Now that the strategy has proved catastrophic, the self-pity is pouring out. Joe Biden, in a rare interregnum of lucidity, assailed his own base as whiners. Rahm Emanuel, as he was fleeing for the healthier and more civic-minded political environment of Chicago's backrooms, said, "I want to thank you for being the toughest leader any country could ask for in the toughest times any president has ever faced."

Really? The times have been rough, we can all agree, but if memory serves, the Civil War was no cakewalk. And that Pearl Harbor thing — not to mention 9/11 — might compete with the miserable economy Obama inherited and then ignored as he pursued his own vanity projects.

This sounds interesting:

Yellowknife RCMP are investigating what the city's Muslims consider to be a hate crime after a picture of the Prophet Muhammad was found at their place of worship.


Nur Ali told CBC News that he went to the Yellowknife Islamic Centre to pray early Monday morning when he saw the picture glued to the door women use to enter the centre.

Ali said the picture showed the face of a bearded man wearing a turban and having eyes "like a crazy person." The name of Muhammad, the founding prophet of Islam, was shown under the diagram.

Islam forbids visual depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. In some countries, it is an offence punishable by death.

"It's very serious," Ali said. "If you remember a few years back, one publisher in Denmark, he did something like this and all over the world there was a demonstration, and people even died for that."

In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, describing the feature as a challenge to many artists' perceived self-censorship regarding Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

Some Muslims believe any depiction of the Prophet whether in a positive or negative light is blasphemous because it could inspire idolatry.

The cartoons sparked international outrage when other newspapers across Europe and then around the globe reprinted the cartoons in 2006. Demonstrations against the cartoons grew violent in some locations, with protesters killed and various embassies attacked.

Yellowknife RCMP told CBC News on Tuesday that they are investigating the situation with officers analyzing the picture and asking neighbours if they have seen anything suspicious.

Note how this gets the RCMP's undivided attention. Vandalise a synogogue or church, tough luck. Render an image of a seventh century war-monger and watch the sparks fly.


Should the guilty party be apprehended (or beheaded), evidence of this "crime" will have to be presented. Is the alleged image going to be disallowed? If so, there is no proof. No proof, no case. I'm sure something will be rigged up. One can't offend a special-interest group, can one?



What this guy said:

We've replaced our sense of outrage with a vast wardrobe of pins and clothes.

Instead of being pissed off, we're a generation of silent supporters in polyurethane bracelets who wear little ribbons on our hearts instead of actually fighting for what we believe in....

Let me be clear: I'm all for activism. I'm saying we need more people who are willing to actually stand up for what they believe in, instead of the hordes of spineless ribbon-wearers orgasming over "making a difference."

A. Men. 


I do not doubt there are good, well-meaning people who have been affected by cancer. What bugs me is how "trendy" it has become to have a cause with a ribbon to show for it. If you care, fine. Do what you can. Wearing a ribbon only serves to give you the attention and it's not about you.


Maybe not getting into the UN's "good graces" isn't such a bad thing:

Steven Edwards, at the UN, reported that Canada had written promises of support from 135 countries, more than enough to ensure victory. It also had 15 verbal pledges, yet in the end polled just 114 votes. That tells you a lot about the integrity of the body Stephen Harper was inexplicably trying to win the backing of.
Like Ivison, Edwards reports that Canada suffered for its refusal to back off its support for Israel and pay fealty to the Islamic countries that regularly argue Israel has no right to exist.

The Harper government’s shift toward support for Israel compared to positions held by previous Liberal governments had not gone down well with members of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Conference, officials based at the UN revealed Tuesday.
One senior Islamic official also signaled that OIC members felt snubbed after Canada did not follow Portugal’s example of addressing the increasingly influential bloc as a group – even though Canadian officials say there were ministerial and other meetings with many individual Islamic states.

That it refused to do so is commendable. Getting rejected by this lot is no embarrassment; if anything it’s something to be proud of. It illustrates exactly how the UN works: You start with a set of beliefs, and then you compromise them over time, currying favour with other countries. The mystery remains why the Conservatives took such a belated interest in the council in the first place. Its most recent display of international leadership was … uh … well, I’m sure we’ll think of something. Given the anti-Israel bias that pervades the UN, campaigning for a seat on the Security Council — if it requires the OIC’s approval — is the international equivalent of applying for membership at a club that bans Jews.

What do we care what a bunch of Free Masons think about our country?

Interesting:

The point being that the Islamophobes are clearly not those who publicly defy Islam's threats and attacks and who just go ahead and publicly criticise it anyway and publicly mock it anyway. Where's the "phobia" in that? No, the phobia - the fear - is being shown by those who refrain from such criticism and such mockery, because they are afraid, and are afraid even to admit that they are afraid (because that too might be interpreted as an implied criticism of the thuggishness of that which they are refraining from criticising or mocking).

Indeed. Who are the real "Islamophobes"- those whose criticisms are legitimate or those who deny and deflect those criticisms? One had a moral duty to decry violence. When an imam declares Jews and Christians to be apes and pigs, why would someone not challenge that? When a dictator orders the arrest and death of his own citizens and declares the Holocaust to be a lie, how can someone not find that disturbing and just plain wrong? When so-called homegrown terrorists attempt to carry out domestic acts of terrorism, how can someone not feel ill at ease? These aren't isolated incidences or a handful of crackpots spewing out nonsense on the street. These are evil people who make it clear that because you do not share their values or identity, you are nothing and deserve contempt and death. There are no roving bands of Lutherans, Mormons, Catholics or Buddhists committing these monstrous deeds.


Yet, if you ask a sympathetic dhimmi (a non-Muslim), don't be surprised to get a mouthful of deflection or denial. For the dhimmi, there is violence or (if they can no longer deny the overwhelming evidence to the contrary) there is but it's rare and spread out. Then expect to hear fantasies of persecution and blame from parties other than those responsible. Let us suppose, for example, that there is yet another violent bombing in Pakistan (which no doubt killed Muslims and burned Korans). Feeling indignant, one cries out that Islamic violence must stop. How do you respond to this: "Maybe there is violence but Christians are violent all the time and they persecute gays!" Did you say that the violence stemmed from the always unsettled Christian region in Pakistan or make reference to the persecution of homosexuals? No, you didn't because that is a fantasy. Christians are persecuted in Pakistan and homosexuals are tolerated in the West. Indeed, crimes against them are not tolerated. However, that doesn't matter if you are a dhimmi. The fantasies of overblown and unrealistic Christian violence and persecution of a sexual minority are things to cling onto. This kind of delusion is like a security blanket. It won't, however, protect the dhimmi if sharia law was ever in effect. Just as the dhimmi is unlikely to admit the enormity (if not the existence) of Islamic violence, he is also as unlikely to thank his lucky stars that he lives in a part of the world where he is tolerated by the same people he despises and accuses of wrong-doings.


And that's where the tranquilisers come in.


In closing, a tribute to the Red Shirts whose untimely deaths are as memorable as they are numerous.

Tuesday Post

Canada, for some reason, was bested by Portugal and Germany in a bid for a seat on the UN security council:

Bruised on the second ballot by its Portugese rival, Canada called an abrupt halt to its bid Tuesday to rejoin the United Nations Security Council — the country's second international black eye in as many days — and laid the blame for its failure squarely at the feet of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.


Canada’s UN Ambassador John McNee made the announcement after the second ballot gave Portugal 113 votes and Canada just 78, both short of the 128 votes required to claim the second of two available seats on the influential council. Germany won the first seat on the first ballot.

Despite recent rumblings about Canada's decidedly Israel-friendly foreign policy, it was Ignatieff, having last month openly questioned whether Canada was ready to re-join the council, who earned the brunt of the blame from both Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and the Prime Minister's Office.

"I do not think that this is a repudiation of Canada's foreign policy," Cannon told a news conference.

"Canada ran a campaign based on principle; we ran a strong campaign. Unfortunately, back home in Canada, the leader of the opposition determined that Canada does not speak with one voice."

Yes, it was a repudiation of Canada's foreign policy and shut up, Ignatieff.


As much as it might sound like a good idea to counteract China and Russia's repeated efforts to screw the world, this is the UN where China and Russia can actually have permanent seats on the security council and where indifference to the rape of Congolese women and the murder of Rwandan civilians can go unabated.


No:

A battle is brewing between the Saskatchewan government and First Nations over the province's potash riches. 

The province's Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd says the government's position is clear -- it is happy to work with First Nations, but potash and other natural resources are under the exclusive control of the provincial government. 

A group of First Nations preparing to launch legal action on the matter says the issue is not so black and white. 

Led by former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations chief Perry Bellegarde, they say First Nations never surrendered any resources below the "depth of a plow" in the treaties. 

With the province's potash industry under the microscope due to an attempted $38.6-billion U.S. takeover of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. by BHP Billiton, a growing number of experts agree it's time for the government to start negotiating a resource revenue-sharing deal with First Nations.

Will this obvious power grab make chiefs more accountable?



Rescue for the Chilean miners is at hand:

Officials are concerned about acute hypertension in some of the miners, as well as sudden drops in blood pressure in others because of the speed of the ascent to the surface. The men have been taking Aspirin since Sunday to prevent blood clots, and will wear a biometric belt that monitors heart rate and body heat and a special suit to maintain their body temperature. They will go from temperatures of about 32C underground to near freezing if they emerge at night. The miners have been put on a high-calorie diet designed by NASA to prepare them for the ride in the capsule, pictured. The liquid food enriched with potassium and magnesium should prevent nausea as the capsule will spin 350 degrees some 10 to 12 times at a speed of up to three feet per second.

The trapped miners while be placed in a one-man capsule that will rotate in a devised rescue shaft. The whole process will take fifteen to twenty minutes per miner. Yikes.



It never ends:

The man who admitted to stealing plants in a high-profile trial against a Chinatown shopkeeper last week is once again in jail, on separate plant-stealing charges. Anthony Bennett, 52, pictured, who is known in the Chinatown and Kensington Market neighbourhoods for his thieving ways and has 43 prior convictions, spent the weekend in the Don Jail. He is scheduled to appear in court tomorrow to face five charges of theft under $5,000, in connection with taking plants from the Jungle Fruit mart in Kensington Market last spring. Bennett is a witness in the trial of David Chen, who owns Lucky Moose Mart on Dundas Street West, and two others facing charges of assault and forcible confinement after catching Bennett stealing plants last year and placing him under citizen's arrest. Bennett testified in court last week that he did indeed steal the plants from Mr. Chen.

Just free David Chen already.


Another Chinese fellow knows how David Chen feels. China is still pouting:

China is still steaming over the "affront" it suffered when dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week...

 Even before the diplomatic snub, it was clear earlier yesterday that feelings were running high in Beijing when the China Daily carried an editorial page column calling the award "part of the plot to contain China." 

 "Some may have expectations that such a prize will effect changes inside China in the direction they desire," it argued. "But it can do little except expose, and in some ways highlight, the deep and wide ideological rift between this country and the West." 

Author Mo Nong, described as a copy editor at the official paper, continued: "Liu's award is a provocation to China. And every time the West waves a stick, relations deteriorate." 

China is not quite alone in decrying the honour to Mr. Liu, either. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dismissed his political opponents who praised Mr. Liu's selection as "lackeys" and said: "Our greetings and solidarity go to the government of the People's Republic of China." 

Meanwhile journalists and some supporters gathered again in front of Mr. Liu's apartment in Beijing yesterday after news spread that his wife, Liu Xia, is under house arrest there. Police did not allow anyone to enter the building and a sign hung outside read: "No interviews in this neighbourhood please." 

The U.S.-based Freedom Now said Liu Xia was able to get a message out on Twitter: "Brothers I have come back. I have been under house arrest since the 8th and don't know when I'll get to see everyone again. They broke my mobile phone so I can no longer make or receive calls." 

Liu Xia said: "I saw Xiaobo, who learned about his winning the prize in prison on the evening of the 9th."

She said Mr. Liu cried when he heard about the honour and dedicated the prize to the "Tiananmen martyrs" -- referring to the hundreds, perhaps thousands who were massacred when the army moved in to quash the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. 

Yang Jianli, a member of Mr. Liu's "international defence and human rights team" at Freedom Now, said: "We hope that world leaders will immediately condemn this shameful act by the Chinese government and urge Liu Xia's immediate and unconditional release." 

Some parenting experts believe stubborn children are being that way in order to get attention. Can we afford to ignore China- "the little emperor"- until it grows up? I guess we owe Japan an apology.



The July 7th attacks could have much worse:

The London suicide attacks of July 7, 2005 might have been planned for the previous day and the bombers were prepared to fight police and throw improvised bombs at them, the victims' inquests were told yesterday. The first day of the inquests into the deaths of the 52 people heard the victims had been killed in acts of merciless savagery during an "unimaginably dreadful wave of horror." Four British Islamists -- Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Jermaine Lindsay, 19,--detonated homemade bombs on three packed underground trains and a bus. The coroner, Lady Justice Heather Hallett, pictured, opened the hearing by pledging to release as much material as possible to the public. She will examine the role of the security services and whether MI5 could and should have stopped the attacks.

 

The next time someone tells you Islamofascism is a myth or that all religions and cultures are the same, remind them they can afford to be that stupid because they live in countries where the punishment for theft is a trial by one's own peers and imprisonment, not cutting off a hand, and where women are allowed to drive.

Related: 

The Koran contains several very specific curses against Jews. And as modern terrorists often like to remind their YouTube audiences, Muhammad himself was a prolific Jew-killer. This passage from In Ishmael's House, for instance, describes events that took place after the Prophet's soldiers captured members of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe in the year 627: "[All] 700 Jewish men were taken to the market at Medina. Trenches were dug in the market square and the men, tied together in groups, were beheaded. Their headless bodies were then buried in the trenches while Mohammed watched ... All Jewish males who had not reached puberty, and all the remaining women and girls, were sold into slavery." This mass slaughter came to be described in Muslim religious literature as the product of divine revelation. To this day, it is cited as clear proof that Allah permits the most hideous forms of punishment to be meted out against nonbelievers.

Also related- Aisha gets a new face (WARNING: contains shocking images):

An Afghan teenager who was horribly mutilated by her husband under Taliban rule was all smiles as she unveiled her new prosthetic nose for the first time.

Aisha, 19, shocked the world when she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine to lift the veil on the plight of many women in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, she bravely faced the public wearing a prosthetic nose - one that gives her some idea of how she will look after having reconstructive surgery....

When Aisha was 12, her father promised her in marriage to a Taliban fighter to pay a debt. She was handed over to his family who abused her and forced her to sleep in the stable with the animals.

When she attempted to flee, she was caught and her nose and ears were hacked off by her husband as punishment.

The wind gives Ezra Levant's cape a billowy effect:

James Hansen, the head of one of President Barack Obama’s NASA labs, came to Canada last week to tell us not to allow a French company called Total to proceed with its Canadian oilsands project.

Even for Obama, that’s quite a foreign policy accomplishment: Interfering with two allies at once.

NASA used to be about exploring space — that’s what the S stands for. But NASA’s new boss, Charles Bolden, recently told Al Jazeera TV that Obama has given him new marching orders: Inspire children to learn math, expand international relationships. “Perhaps foremost. he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.”

I guess that’s what happens when a “community organizer” becomes president.

But when you think about it, Hansen is following Obama’s instructions perfectly: The Saudis probably do “feel good” that NASA is trying to shut down their Canadian oil competitors.

Total is proposing to invest between $15 billion and $20 billion in Canada over the next 10 years, creating 1,300 jobs. Total’s not just producing the oil, they’re going to upgrade it in Canada, too, adding value for export.

Hansen is upset that the Total mine will emit 1.5 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide a year. Anything with the word “mega” in it sounds big. But that works out to just 0.0038% of the world’s fossil fuel emissions.

If carbon dioxide is your worry — and Hansen says it’s his — then coal should be your focus. It emits twice the carbon dioxide than petroleum products to create the same energy.

Hansen can start in his own backyard. Take the Miller coal-fired power station in Quinton, Ala. That one power plant emits more than 20 Mt of carbon dioxide a year. One plant. The Scherer coal-fired power plant in Juliette, Georgia is even bigger. It emits more than 25 Mt a year.

But those plants are just babies compared to what China is doing. China has plenty of power plants bigger than Scherer. There’s one in Tuen Mun at a whopping 35.8 Mt. And Taiwan has one that tops 41 Mt.
The oilsands — all of them combined? Barely 30 Mt.

Individual Chinese power plants have higher carbon emissions than Canada’s 100 different oilsands companies put together.

But Hansen hasn’t flown to China with his protest.

In 2008, Hansen said CEOs of fossil energy companies should be put on trial for “crimes against humanity.” Try saying that in China and you’ll get the Tiananmen Square treatment.

Hansen doesn’t even criticize China from the safety of the United States. In a laughable essay he wrote this spring for the liberal Huffington Post, Hansen says he believes China wants to “avoid the fossil fuel addiction of the United States. They want to clean up their atmosphere and water.”

Avoid fossil fuels? Last year Chinese auto sales hit 13.64 million, more than the U.S. for the first time. The number of cars on the road in China is expected to double to 200 million in less than 10 years. Clean up their atmosphere? The World Bank says that 20 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities are in China.

But Hansen and NASA and Obama don’t criticize China. China is the largest owner of U.S. treasury bills.
When you owe someone a trillion dollars, you don’t call them “polluter.”

You call them “boss.”

If one doesn't agree with Ezra Levant, fine. Give a sound reason. Are there less polluting forms of energy out there that are both practical and affordable? Are China, Saudi Arabia or Nigeria countries in which a worker has basic human rights? I hear comments like:

The problem with the Levants of the world is that they play the juvenile conservative blame game of: "Hey we ain't as bad as the Liberals (no but we are worse) or Nigeria or we ain't got the unemployment that the U.S. has or look at big bad China."

Some comfort.

When Canadians start feeling better about themselves when compared to worse qualities or situations of others. Right, that will get us far.

Typical Canadian thinking of late.
Sending Ezra Levant to do a man's job is like sending an arms dealer to negotiate peace in the Congo.

...but few counter-arguments that bear the semblance of intelligent discourse. Slagging a man isn't a counter-point. It's automatic naysaying.

Darwin will get the last laugh and the forgotten Rachels.

The smell of desperation is in the air. The problem with getting crowds for this sort of event is that either anyone with a stupid crusade will show up to shoot his mouth off or the predictable laziness of leftist slackers. It's like knowing there will a train wreck before it happens.

And now for something cute.

Lightfoot in art.

Happy Thanksgiving

Welcome to you rich Autumn days,

Ere comes the cold, leaf-picking wind;

When golden stocks are seen in fields, 

 All standing arm-in-arm entwinted;

And gallons of sweet cider seen

On trees in apples red and green.

With mellow pears that cheat our teeth,

Which melt that tongues may suck them in;

With cherries red, and blue-black plums,

Now sweet and soft from stone to skin;

And woodnuts rich, to make us go

Into loveliest lanes we know.

("Rich Days" by William Henry Davies)

Saturday Scribbles

It's a cool, sunny afternoon and the leaves are turning from red to orange to yellow. Just in time for Thanksgiving.

The Party never counted on the divide between rich and poor being so relevant:

China has firm reasons for being proud of its economic achievements. Last year, China passed Germany as the world's number-one exporter. This year, China overtook Japan as the world's second-biggest economy and has the largest foreign exchange reserves (worth 2.5 trillion dollars) in the world. However, China's economic good fortune seems to be coming to an end.

China's exports are slumping; its domestic consumption continues to flounder. The problem is an ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor in China caused by a highly centralized system of power.

China's state-controlled economic development is obviously a bottleneck to further fiscal advancement; working on political reform is a must. Apparently, some of China's top leaders, who are all members of the Communist Party, have been well aware of the seriousness of the situation. These leaders, however, either as Marxists or as practical rulers, have all clearly known the close connection between political reform and economic development....

From a historical angle, present-day China's economic achievements repeat part of an old pattern. Fathers captured power by force, and sons firmed the power through economic growth; then grandsons or great-and-so-on grandsons lost it through lack of wisdom, cowardice, and incapacity. The alternation of political power with hereditary properties was supposedly ended when the Communist Party of China seized power in the 1940s. But the traditional political structure and attitude have not been abandoned.

Analysts and scholars, due to modern China's seeming commitment to equality and communism, have neglected this point. In China's long history, there has never been state reform with an attempt to transfer part of the political power to people. Before the 1840s Opium War, China's people had never known the sharing of power, much less democracy and science.

From a historical viewpoint, graft and corruption aren't peculiar to the present Chinese society; in fact, they have been perennial in Chinese history. Over the centuries, China's rulers have never effectively worked out this problem. Graft and corruption have always been an inherent part of China's social or cultural system.

Owing to long-propagandized history, Chinese people now seem to have no doubt that their ancestors once set up the most powerful nation in the world -- the Tang Dynasty. But, in fact, the sphere of influence of the Tang Dynasty never extended beyond Central Asia.

The Chinese often have a peculiar dual character. For instance, in the case of history and education, Japan occupied much of China during World War II. Chinese textbooks regularly deny this fact. Chinese textbooks are unwilling to accept that in the Second World War, the USA was the cardinal strength against and over Japan. The Chinese teach that they were the leading force for the triumph over Japan.

China seems to still dream that one day it can overcome Western powers by a combination basically featuring China's old culture and recover its lost dignity and honor. However, this approach could also sow the seeds of turbulence for its future. China's people don't seem to know that what they have done worst so far is accept a worn cultural foundation. If Confucianism were an effective political philosophy, China's history would have been much different. There wouldn't have been as many as fourteen or so dynasties since the West Han Dynasty.

I've seen this before. The Chinese are crushed by totalitarian dictatorships unresponsive to their needs, the wishes of the outside world and their own prideful culture. Read the whole thing.

A fool on the hill (no, not Michael Ignatieff):

It's a landmark event for Beatledom.  John Lennon, dead these 30 years, would have turned 70-years-old today.

For many 60's survivors who grew up in thrall to the Fab Four, the idea that such an important symbol of the youth culture had arrived at the threshold of old age (if such a category still exists in our teen obsessed culture) must be profoundly unsettling.

It is as if that entire generation had finally found itself washed up at the very doorstep of senility.

There can be no doubt Lennon, in his partnership with the brilliant tunesmith Paul McCartney, did craft some of the most memorable pop tunes of the 20th Century. That might be reason enough to celebrate his life. But the failure to complete his life's journey has frozen his memory in perpetual mid-life. There he presides as the guru of peace and love, an unfazed and unrepentant hippie whose vision for world peace remains unfettered by reality or subsequent historical events.

Forgotten, or perhaps conveniently overlooked, is that Lennon's solo work in his ten post-Beatles years was far inferior to anything he did as a member of the group and was weak even by comparison to the output of his fellow Beatles ( and yes, I include Ringo Starr in that assessment). His coda, the cloying and maudlin Double Fantasy (1980) was an embarrassment for such a great talent, and evidence that perhaps his muse had permanently fled.

Part of this can be attributed to Lennon's early 70s determination to make political statements rather than music. Moving permanently to New York City in 1970, he and his wife Yoko Ono became lightening rods for radicals and far left causes. Feminists, Black Panthers, Yippies and peace movement activists, all pitched their tents under the Lennon/ Ono carapace to propagate their liberation politics. The recorded product of this eclectic jamboree, Sometime In New York City (1972), is a rather tuneless and bleak attempt to capture the radical zeitgeist.   It bombed and is regarded universally as one of the worst post break up efforts by any of the Beatles.

While Lennon's post-Beatles recordings, save for the very early ones, can be largely dismissed, what can't be dismissed is his cultural influence. Lennon stands today as the most revered icon in the pantheon of the peace movement -- a figure of such sainted majesty that he has been practically beatified by secular humanists. This reputation balances precariously on the foundation of just one song -- the anthemic Imagine.

Imagine dredged up some half-baked Romantic notions and presented a vision of a world free of conflict.  Attached to an ethereal melody it seem to float in a sea of mysticism, painting a picture of a utopia that most Communist leaders in the 1970s would have recognized....

Would Lennon have matured intellectually as he aged, ultimately recognizing that this formula for world peace, written in a swishy mansion in the English countryside, far from the Communist despots and authoritarians who at that time imprisoned nearly half of humanity, could not work? Would he have understood that there was something a little skewed about attempting to denude the world of religion, governments, sovereignty and wealth?

Would he have finally understood that his adopted home, the United States, actually stood as the last best chance for humanity to preserve the liberty that had allowed him to pen such masterpieces such as Across the Universe and A Day In the Life....?

Probably not. Naïveté is one of the great privileges of the rich and famous. Insulated from the hard realities of life, our pop icons are safe and free to make ignorant guesses about the world and pose solutions that suggest more, not less, misery for its human population. Once having made such a statement of principle, it is highly unlikely that Lennon would ever have retired his Imagine philosophy. Unlike McCartney, who has revealed himself to be comparatively sensible on a number of important security issues, Lennon, socially alienated as a child and conditioned to reject convention, likely would have continued to find some gratification in oppositional politics and ideologies.  It is doubtful he could ever have written a song such as Freedom, which McCartney penned in outrage following the attacks of 9/11.

I'm not sure I would think McCartney as "sensible" all the time but he certainly was a better songwriter. Lennon, for all his folly,  still leads ignorant generations to think that nihilism is a valid lifestyle. I suppose it never dawned on him while living in New York how fortunate- and arrogant- he truly was.

Thank you!

In Ottawa this week, police arrested five university students for displaying a pro-life exhibition.

They were peaceful and merely expressing an opinion and showing the realities of abortion.

In Toronto at the same time, the trial began of a man arrested and charged by police for defending his store against a career criminal with a mass of convictions. The drug-dealing crook was offered a reduced sentence if he would help their case against the model citizen of a store-owner.

The inescapable conclusion is while the police in this country are supposed to be guardians of the people, they are increasingly becoming agents of the state.

That they are political, or at least obey political masters, is surely now beyond dispute. Notice how they repeatedly refused to arrest or charge violent native protesters in Caledonia, Ont., even after there was filmed evidence of some of the demonstrators attacking people and destroying property.

Bingo. Whatever your opinions may be on the above topics, we must agree that if we labour under the social contract of surrendering some of our freedoms to the state, we should get something back in return. What do I care if there are photos of the oil sands, dead baby seals or dead babies in university halls? I am an adult in full possession of my faculties. I don't need a greedy student union to dictate what is offensive or not. Either they do away with the double standard that stands as the status quo or adopt an airtight policy that applies to everyone. Why arrest a handful of students or a homeowner or an immigrant shopkeeper because they do things unapproved by a liberal oligarchy? We have actual criminals walking the streets. Worry about them.


Related: pro-abortionists hate cupcakes:

You have to be kidding? Children=cupcakes?
To be frank, I hate cupcakes. I love children. And if I recall correctly, school baking "generally" comes from mum. Slogans would not be in any way acceptable. 

Just "ice" the damn things....cupcakes shouldn't speak to you! 

(Sidebar: there were comments that just went into weird directions. They couldn't be printed here. Why someone has this anger against confections, I do not know. It's like saying puppies and sunshine have gotten too uppity lately. Very strange.)

Ragging on cupcakes? That's just sad.

It's not (just) about cupcakes, really. It could be any food item. It is the idea that someone has a belief they would proudly, competently and openly defend. When one wants nothing more than an echo chamber for their empty arguments, having someone or something shake that complacency disturbs them no end. The answer to that is to grow up.

They're just cupcakes, man.

Speaking of cupcakes: pumpkin spice cupcakes. Enjoy.

Friday Post

File this under "a damn crying shame":

West Africa's cocoa industry is still trafficking children and using forced child labour despite nearly a decade of efforts to eliminate the practices, according to an independent audit published by Tulane University.

A U.S.-sponsored solution called the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed in 2001 by cocoa industry members to identify and eliminate cocoa grown using forced child labour. A child-labour-free certification process was supposed to cover 50 per cent of cocoa growing regions in West Africa by 2005 and 100 per cent by the end of 2010. But independent auditors at Tulane University's Payson Center for International Development said in a late September report that efforts have not even come close to these targets.

"Hundreds of thousands of children are involved in work on cocoa farms," the report said. Child trafficking for labour also continues virtually unabated as well, it said.

Thousands of children travel from impoverished neighbouring countries to the cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, where some of them live in substandard conditions and receive little or no pay.

Research in border areas shows that only a tiny proportion of children in cocoa farming ever see a police officer on their way over the border, and that police officers are not properly trained to deal with such crossings. Almost none of the children have any contact with NGOs or anti-child-labour organizations while working.

The Harkin-Engel Protocol set up community-based education and monitoring programs in Ivory Coast and Ghana — the world's two largest cocoa growers — to improve the situation. The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), an industry funded organization charged with implementing the protocol, said because of the protocol thousands of children are no longer working in exploitative conditions on cocoa plantations in both countries.

But industry efforts are "uneven" and "incomplete," the report said. Less than three per cent of cocoa growing villages have been visited by monitors in Ivory Coast and across the border in Ghana, only 13 per cent of communities have been impacted by the program.

The Swiss non-governmental group Bern Declaration, which campaigns for fairness in international trade, said Tuesday that the study's findings prove the existence of "the worst forms of child labour on West African cocoa plantations and the fact that efforts to date by the chocolate industry to prevent this have failed."

Chocolate (used to feed fat people in the West) should be a thing of ultimate good, not one in which children are exploited.

China is furious that no one will let it have its own way:

Jailed Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for two decades of non-violent struggle for human rights, infuriating China, which called the award "an obscenity".


The prize shines a spotlight on human rights in China at a time when it is starting to play a leading role on the global stage as a result of its growing economic might.

"We have to speak when others cannot speak," Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told Reuters. "As China is rising, we should have the right to criticize."

The award drew muted reactions from the European Union, France, Germany and Britain.

But last year's winner, U.S. President Barack Obama, accused China of falling behind on political reforms as its economy surges, and urged it to free Liu Xiaobo as soon as possible.

Liu Xiaobo rose to prominence as a strike leader during the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.

He was sentenced to 11 years' jail last December for writing a manifesto calling for free speech and multi-party elections.

The Nobel Committee praised him for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights" and reiterated its belief in a "close connection between human rights and peace"....

China, which had warned against giving the prize to Liu, summoned Norway's ambassador to protest.
"This is an obscenity against the peace prize," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement.

"(Liu's) actions are diametrically opposed to the aims of the Nobel prize. Nobel's behest was that the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to somebody who promoted peace between peoples, promoted international friendship and disarmament."

Beijing residents reported that CNN and BBC broadcasts were cut when the prize was mentioned.

Activists say human rights have dropped down the agenda of Western powers wary of upsetting China, now the world's second largest economy.

Britain, France, Germany and the European Union all congratulated Liu, saying they had lobbied for his release from prison, but were careful to avoid direct criticism of China.

Seriously, China is like the spoiled child who ruins a party. Put him in his room without dessert. Stand outside his room and describe in rich detail the dessert he is missing. Unfortunately, the rest of the world is the weak-willed parent that will give into China's tantrums.

It's a small world after all:

The Islamic militant whose disclosures under U.S. interrogation in Afghanistan triggered Europe's terror alert is an old friend of a man convicted in the 9/11 attacks and, as the strikes were being planned, frequented the same mosque where the Hamburg-based plotters often met, officials say.


Hamburg security officials in August shuttered the Taiba mosque, known until two years ago as al-Quds, because of fears it was becoming a magnet for homegrown extremists who, unlike foreigners, could not be expelled from the country.

Ahmad Wali Siddiqui, a 36-year-old German of Afghan descent arrested by the U.S. military in July in Afghanistan has emerged as the latest link between Germany and al-Qaida's worldwide terror campaign. 

Siddiqui is believed to have been part of the Hamburg militant scene that also included key 9/11 plotters.

Intelligence officials say he was a friend of Mounir el Motassadeq, who was convicted by a German court in 2006 of being an accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the 2001 terrorist attacks, and also frequented the al-Quds mosque.

Motassadeq was found to have aided suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah by helping them keep up the appearance of being regular university students — paying their tuition and rent — though it was never established whether he knew of the planned timing, dimension or targets of the attacks.

"Siddiqui is a long-term member who has been a friend of Motassadeq since 1997," said a senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

I'm sure this is little comfort to the twits who think the September 11th  attacks were an inside job but to everyone else, this is another page in the terrible story.

It stuns me that this even happened:

Authorities say the concentration of toxic heavy metals where Hungary's massive red sludge spill entered the Danube has dropped to the level allowed in drinking water.


The test results released by the National Catastrophe Management Directorate on Friday further allay concerns that the river would be significantly polluted.

Also Friday, the disaster's confirmed death toll rose from four to seven. An 81-year-old man died from injuries sustained in the torrent and two bodies were found on the outskirts of the village of Devecser.

The red sludge devastated creeks and rivers near the spill site and entered the Danube on Thursday, moving downstream toward Hungary's immediate neighbours, Croatia, Serbia and Romania.

North Koreans will follow Kim Jong-Il's equally fat son:

A top official told APTN on Friday that North Koreans will be honoured to follow the youngest son of Kim Jong Il as the third-generation leader of the communist nation.


The remarks were the first official comment about the future of Kim Jong Un, who just last week made his public debut.

Yang Hyong Sop, a top official in North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, referred to the 20-something Kim as "the young general" during an exclusive interview with APTN.

"Our people take pride in the fact that they are blessed with great leaders from generation to generation," Yang said.

"Our people are honoured to serve the great President Kim Il Sung and the great leader Kim Jong Il," he added. "Now we also have the honour of serving young Gen. Kim Jong Un."

I don't know about "honoured" in so far as "they will follow Kim Fatty, Jr. or be sent to Yodok". I think that is what they meant to say.

Do graphic images cross a line? If you can allow Jew-hating week (or Israel Apartheid Week), "Pride Week", dead seals and oil sands photos splayed everywhere, then you can allow graphic and sordid images of dead babies to be seen. If you can force a student body to pay for services they don't want or need, then you can at least let them determine whether or not they are adult enough to listen or ignore their fellow students. Better yet, contact the geography department head and ask him for a map. Have him calculate the distance between Canada and North Korea. If it is determined that there is a significant distance, then why don't we forget the whole thing? I don't see why we should be shielding a sad number of infantile censors from what people are already paying for.

Police inaction breeds community-policing:

Wang “David” Chen, the Toronto grocer charged for detaining a thief, for the first time told a packed and rapt courtroom on Thursday his own version of what happened in May of 2009 at his store, the Lucky Moose Food Mart.

The testimony painted a picture of a harried shopkeeper who works 19-hour days, preyed on by petty thieves and frustrated by the glacial response of Toronto police. He has, it appears, grown accustomed to using his own methods to deter shoplifters.

In fact, Mr. Chen revealed that on May 22, 2009, the day before the theft that landed Mr. Chen in court, he stopped a woman who had stolen some apricots.


“I asked her to come in the store and pay for the apricots,” Mr. Chen, 37, who wore a black sweatshirt and olive green hoodie, told a judge of the Ontario Court of Justice.

When the woman refused, the Lucky Moose owner had her sit down on the floor in the store between two ­cashiers. She waited there for five hours before police arrived at 10 p.m. The police officers dissuaded Mr. Chen from pressing charges against the woman, he said.

On an earlier occasion, a man who had taken some apples and refused to pay for them waited at the store 3½ hours for police to show up, the shop owner said.

“The police said, ‘Don’t come here again.’ They let him go.”

Mr. Chen is charged along with two other store employees with assault and forcible confinement for tying up a thief, Anthony Bennett, and throwing him into the store’s delivery van, on May 23, 2009.

The case has become ­national news, with two MPs in Ottawa submitting private member’s bills to Parliament to change the law on citizens’ arrests.

The current law says such arrests are only legal if the thief, when stopped by a shopkeeper, has stolen ­merchandise in his hands.

A court last year convicted Mr. Bennett of stealing from the Lucky Moose, but reduced his sentence from three months to 30 days after he agreed to testify against Mr. Chen.

After stealing 12 money tree plants, also known as Malabar chestnuts, from the store at 12:30 p.m. — a theft the store caught on its security cameras — Mr. Bennett returned to the Lucky Moose an hour later, Mr. Chen told the court.

Mr. Chen said he confronted Mr. Bennett and told him to pay $60 for the plants and that he would not call police.

“He told me, ‘I’ve never been here before. Go f— yourself, Chinese. Stop bullsh-tting, and don’t stop me,’ ” Mr. Chen, who normally spoke through a Cantonese interpreter, told the court in English. Mr. Bennett then ran off.

“He is a known thief on the streets of Chinatown,” Mr. Chen added.

Peter Lindsay, Mr. Chen’s lawyer, asked what would have happened if Mr. Chen had not acted.

“He would continue to steal my property and steal my flowers,” Mr. Chen replied.

That was why he chased the thief down the block and stopped him, at which point Mr. Bennett punched and elbowed him. The court saw photos of bruising on the shopkeeper’s body.

Mr. Chen said he told Qing Li, one of his co-accused, to go into a wholesale grocery store he owned around the corner from the Lucky Moose and get some rope to tie up the thief.

“We tied up his feet so he won’t be able to run away,” Mr. Chen said. “He was using his hand to hit us with his fist, so I tied up his hands to bring him back to the store.”

Asked how long he expected police to take, Mr. Chen replied, “About four hours.”

But police, summoned by 911 calls from onlookers, arrived in minutes. Three officers told the court yesterday they ordered three grocery store employees to the ground, handcuffed them behind the back, and then took them to the police station, where they took off all their clothes for a “level three” search.

Mr. Chen, his brother-in-law Qing Ping Li, and his employee Jie Chen, who all work at the Lucky Moose, are charged. Police said they found a yellow box cutter on Jie Chen and an orange box cutter on David Chen.
The two initially faced concealed weapons charges, which the Crown has since withdrawn.

Most grocers use box cutters to open boxes.

What are we paying taxes for, anyway?

Now, let us butt our heads in friendship.

Thursday, the Eve Before Friday

This case should never have gone to court.  The Crown's star witness against David Chen admits he is a thief:

A Toronto shopkeeper, charged with assault and unlawful confinement for apprehending a thief, got some help from an unlikely source in court Wednesday: the thief himself.

Anthony Bennett, the star Crown witness, is perhaps the least sympathetic victim the courts at Old City Hall have seen in a long time. Mr. Bennett testified that he is an unreliable witness, a longtime drug dealer and drug addict, that he lied repeatedly to police under oath, and that he has been a thief for more than 30 years.

Mr. Bennett, 52, also told the court he had been tied up and pushed into a white van by David Chen, whom he identified in court Wednesday as the man who had chased him from the Lucky Moose Food Mart in Toronto’s Chinatown neighbourhood on May 23, 2009.

“I didn’t know if these guys were going to take me back to the store and then call police,” Mr. Bennett said. 

“I didn’t know what their intentions were. Why couldn’t they just walk me back to the store? There were three of them. So, at that point I was in fear of my life, to be perfectly honest.”

“I was so happy to see [the police],” he added. “I felt relief to see them.”

But in court Mr. Bennett did not recognize Qing P. Li and Jie Chen, who are also charged, as the men who had helped to catch him.

The court watched store videotape that shows Mr. Bennett arrive by bicycle at the Lucky Moose, load a dozen plants into a cardboard box, two at a time, and then ride off with the box balanced on the handlebars. An hour later he returns, at which point Mr. Chen confronts him.

Mr. Bennett ran. Two residents of a nearby street testified Wednesday that they saw three men catch Mr. Bennett, tie him up and put him in a van.

“They tied him up with some kind of an extension cord,” Martin Bregman said. “At that point, a van pulled up and they were trying to get him in.”

Before lunch, Mr. Bennett took the stand. He is a short man, balding, with some curly hair on the top of his head. He wore a yellow golf shirt under a black windbreaker. He appeared tired and sat facing downward, rubbing his eyes. During cross-examination, he admitted that he returned to the Lucky Moose a second time on that sunny Saturday in May so he could steal more plants.

“Are you a thief?” asked Peter Lindsay, lawyer for Mr. Chen and the two other accused.

“Yes I am,” Mr. Bennett replied.

“You’ve been a thief for over 30 years,” Mr. Lindsay suggested.

“Yes I have,” Mr. Bennett said. But then he boiled over. “I didn’t tell him to friggin’ tie me up and to friggin’ throw me in the back of a van.”

“We will get there,” Mr. Lindsay said.

“Let’s get there,” Mr. Bennett replied. “It’s plants, man. I didn’t rob him with a gun.”

“You’re a bit of a hothead,” noted Mr. Justice Ramez Khawly, who is presiding over the trial. He repeatedly had to tell the witness to speak up and to answer the questions.

Mr. Lindsay tore repeated holes in Mr. Bennett’s testimony. On May 23, after police “rescued him,” he told them that he had never stolen from the Lucky Moose.

“Another lie under oath?” Mr. Lindsay asked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bennett.

“You said that you were buying flowers for your common-law wife for Mother’s Day.”

“It was a stupid alibi,” Mr. Bennett said.

 “So stupid that you said it two weeks after Mother’s Day.”

Then Mr. Lindsay asked, “Would you agree with me that you are still an unreliable witness now?”

“Yes I am,” Mr. Bennett replied.

“Do you have a bad memory?” Mr. Lindsay asked.

“Extremely,” the witness replied.

Mr. Lindsay also established some justification for the grocers’ actions when he asked the witness, “Often when confronted by honest shopkeepers, you yell at them, threaten them, give them the finger. Fair?”

“Fair,” Mr. Bennett answered. Mr. Bennett also told police at the time that Mr. Chen had bent his index finger back and almost broken it. Wednesday he changed his story, saying it had been his thumb.

I've heard of stupid criminals but this takes the cake. It's one thing when the Crown deprives Canadian citizens of their right to protect themselves and their property; it's quite another when they use an idiot like this to do it

Related:

This story reports that the trial of storekeeper David Chen on charges of assault and forcible confinement was adjourned because there was no Mandarin interpreter for the grocer. I would like to know how long Mr. Chen been a resident of Canada. If he can haggle with food wholesalers, why can't he express himself in English in court? And finally, why should we pay interpreter fees for the accused who make no effort to learn the language of their new country?

As much as I support Mr. Chen, the letter-writer makes a very good point. ESL teachers did not slave away hours of frustrating pronunciation classes for nothing. Just saying.

The real victims here- well- let one decide for one's self:

A Conservative private member’s bill proposes the salaries and expenses paid to First Nations chiefs and councillors should be publicly disclosed like those of all other elected representatives in Canada.

Saskatoon MP Kelly Block said if passed, her bill, introduced Friday, would result in greater “accountability and transparency” by making public all forms of remuneration paid to First Nations chiefs and councillors through federal government funds.

“This has been a long-standing issue for First Nations community members looking to have access of this kind of information,” Ms. Block said in an interview.

“As a member of Parliament, certainly my expenses, my salary are public knowledge. Individuals don’t have to come to me personally and ask me for it,” added Ms. Block, who does not represent any First Nations communities in her riding but said she came up with the idea for the bill by speaking with fellow MPs. 

The First Nations chiefs and councillors would be responsible for making their salaries and expenses public, either through an annual report or annual meeting, she said. The statements would be audited and published on the Indian Affairs website. 

The Assembly of First Nations, the national organization representing some 630 First Nations communities across Canada, called the bill “ill-conceived.”

It “appears to be part of a troubling series of insinuations about First Nations peoples, based on misinformation and a lack of understanding as to what the real accountability issues are,” National Chief Shawn Atleo said in a statement.

Mr. Atleo said First Nations already file up to 60,000 reports a year, and the main issue is that it is the Indian Affairs Department and the federal government “cannot account for their own spending and cannot track which programs are producing useful results. 

“Accountability problems lie largely with the federal government.” 

As it stands, community members who wish to know how much their representatives are paid must approach the chief and councillor directly, who are not compelled to disclose their salaries. 

The audacity to hold out one's hand then deny the living ATMs accountability. 

 

Where are the residents of these wooded ghettos? Why are they not protesting in the streets over this? 

 

Thank you:

 

When an Ontario Superior Court judge struck down several key provisions of Canada’s laws surrounding prostitution last month – ruling them unconstitutional – she made the point that she was ruling in the interest of the safety of women.

The federal government has announced it will appeal that ruling. And we can expect plenty of religiously motivated voices to support the appeal. The purpose of the Christian gospel has always been to set captives free; and that’s why Christianity has – and will continue to – weigh in on the prostitution debate. It is part of the mandate of believers in Christ to speak out for the oppressed. It is an activism that stems not from moral one-upmanship, but from a belief in the beautiful possibility of redemption.

If Judge Susan Himel’s ruling should ultimately stand, Canada will have failed countless girls and women who eke out a living as prostitutes by effectively legalizing their exploitation.


The three applicants who led the recent court case would have us believe otherwise. Counting on a media hungry for  titillation, they were only too happy to deliver plenty of the nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind of content that would guarantee them a place in the headlines and in the lineup of the evening news.

When asked how she would celebrate the ruling for instance, dominatrix Terri Jean Bedford laughed and smacked her riding crop against her leather-gloved-hand. “I’m going to spank some ass,” she declared to a room filled with reporters who erupted in laughter.

Bedford claims to be a sex-worker by choice, but she is, by her own testimony, a victim, many times over. As University of British Columbia law professor Benjamin Perrin has noted: “Her affidavit tells a story of a childhood filled with physical, psychological and sexual abuse. At 16, while in provincial child protection, she met ‘an abusive 37-year-old drug dealer and drug addict’ and began being sold for sex to fund both of their drug addictions.”

Bedford does acknowledge the sad truth that her experience of entry into the sex trade is not unique. “There are the vulnerable that are of course kidnapped and forced into this trade,” she conceded in an interview with Listen Up last year. But she expressed little sympathy for their plight. “You stay a prostitute because you want to. Not because you have to.”

How much did Bedford herself “want” the career she claims to have chosen? “I kept losing legitimate jobs after I was raided because my face would be in the paper the next day and the business didn’t want to draw attention to itself” she told our camera. “I could never sit at the front desk in the reception area ever again, in any corporate office.

“So I’m here. I’ve chosen this path and I have to stick to it. There’s no turning back.”

She feels further victimized by the justice system that’s made it difficult for her to stick to her “chosen” path. “You can’t imagine how happy I am today,” she said following news of the Sept. 28 ruling. “I’ve been abused by the justice system for a very, very, very long time.”

But what if there was a different option for the Terri Jean’s of our nation?

Former prostitute Trisha Baptie believes there is. Recruited into the world of selling sex when she was not yet 14, she worked as a prostitute for 15 years. Her path to redemption began when a student from a local Christian university offered her a cup of hot chocolate on a cold night, eventually arranging for another group of Christians to pay Trisha’s bills for a time, making it possible for her to leave the streets.

Today, Baptie is executive director of Honour Consulting & Ministries and a founding member of EVE: Exploited Voices Educating. She advocates criminalizing the buying of sex, thus penalizing the buyers, and reducing the demand for sexual services.

“As a former prostitute [I know] society hates us,” she says. “We know we’re disposable. We know we mean nothing.”

Decriminalizing prostitution would prove that tragic belief true. Not only would it tolerate sex for sale, normalizing the harms that go with it to the women, children and men trapped in the trade, it would reinforce the idea that human beings can be counted in dollars and cents, when in God’s eyes we are priceless.

If we are unwilling to address the real issues behind prostitution (let us not pretend it is ALL about free will and excitement), then forget about it altogether. 

And you wonder why people have problems with this:

 

When a B.C. couple discovered that the fetus their surrogate mother was carrying was likely to be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. The surrogate, however, was determined to take the pregnancy to term, sparking a disagreement that has raised thorny questions about the increasingly common arrangements.

Under the agreement the trio signed, the surrogate’s choice would mean absolving the couple of any responsibility for raising the child, the treating doctor told a recent fertility-medicine conference. 

Dr. Ken Seethram, revealing the unusual situation for the first time, said it raises questions about whether government oversight of contracts between mothers and “commissioning” parents is needed.

A bioethicist who has studied the issue extensively argues that contract law should not apply to the transaction, unless human life is to be treated like widgets in a factory.

“Should the rules of commerce apply to the creation of children? No, because children get hurt,” said Juliet Guichon of the University of Calgary. “It’s kind of like stopping the production line: ‘Oh, oh, there’s a flaw.’ It makes sense in a production scenario, but in reproduction it’s a lot more problematic.”

Prof. Guichon speculated that courts likely would not honour a surrogacy contract, drawing instead on family law that would require the biological parents to support the child.

It appears no surrogacy contract has actually been contested in a Canadian court, however, leaving the transactions in some legal limbo.

Dr. Seethram’s presentation to the Canadian Society of Fertility and Andrology conference suggested the accord signed by the three in B.C. may have undermined the surrogate’s right to make decisions in a “non-coercive” environment.

The surrogate, a mother of two children of her own, eventually chose to have the abortion, partly because of her own family obligations.

A former surrogate who helps parents and mothers make such arrangements said the parties should agree on what they would do if defects are discovered during pregnancy, ensuring they have the same views on abortion. If a dispute still arises, however, parents ought to be protected, said Sally Rhoads of SurrogacyInCanada.ca.

“The baby that’s being carried is their baby. It’s usually their genetic offspring,” she said. “Why should the intended parents be forced to raise a child they didn’t want? It’s not fair.”

In some U.S. jurisdictions, in fact, parents can even sue a surrogate to recoup their payments if the woman insists on going ahead with a pregnancy against their wishes, Ms. Rhoads said.

Disputes are rare here, but she said it is usually surrogates who end up feeling most aggrieved. She recalled one case where the mother conceived twins, the parents asked for a procedure to reduce the number of fetuses to one, and the whole pregnancy was inadvertently lost. 

In three other Canadian cases, surrogates are now raising the babies after the commissioning couples got divorced and backed out, Ms. Rhoads said.

We've succeeded in commercialising the human person and human functions. We would be pathetic as a keystone species if we had nothing else to offer. I'm disgusted but not really surprised. It's droll in a terrible way. We're keen on killing a child because he is a "knock-off" baby as opposed to a "designer" baby yet the body is not the actual mother's but a woman who has prostituted herself. What a selfish lot of terrible people. The only one I feel sorry for was the one who was not up to scratch for these mongrels.

And no, I'm not apologising.

 

Related: Vatican group dismayed by choice for Nobel prize.

In case we needed further proof what nutjobs Islamofascists are:

 

Two Christian men on trial for eating during daylight in the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan were acquitted yesterday, a verdict supporters said was a triumph for religious freedom. The men, members of Algeria's small Protestant community, were charged with offending public morals for eating at the building site where they were working before the Ramadan fast had been broken for the day. After the judge in Ain El-Hammam, about 150 kilometres east of Algiers, ruled they were innocent, a group of Protestants standing on the steps of the courthouse shouted "Hallelujah!" Algeria is mainly Muslim with a small Christian minority.

There are discussions about culture and people. Ask yourselves this: would any of you give up meat on Fridays during Lent if you didn't have to?

I bet he doesn't feel guilt:

 

 

Failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday, with no chance of parole. He had previously admitted to 10 terrorism-related charges, saying he would "plead guilty 100 times over." Yesterday, he told a court in New York, "If I'm given 1,000 lives, I will sacrifice all of them for the life of Allah."

SMIRKING CITIZEN

As a lot of the media remarked, the failed bomber-Faisal Shahzad, pictured, was most definitely smirking and defiant. "A defiant Faisal Shahzad smirked..." said the Associated Press. "Remaining defiant, and smirking..." said The New York Times. Even Reuters began, with "A smirking Pakistani-born U.S. citizen..." before adding how defiant he was.

Unless it's guilt for having had a plan fail. I hope he likes prison.

Because Israel Apartheid Week is not offensive:

 

After watching the arrest of the peaceful pro-life Carleton students on YouTube, it is truly scandalous to see a Canadian university muzzling free speech in a manner that is usually found in dictatorships. 

Regardless of one's views on abortion, a publicly funded university campus should be a place for open and free exchange of ideas, even if graphic, anti-abortion images are part of that message. 

As a National Post editor's note stated after the January earthquake in Haiti, disturbing pictures are "a necessary -- indeed, a central -- part of telling a story completely ... and understanding that horror is necessary ... in order to galvanize as swift and powerful a response as possible." 

Carleton University should promptly apologize to these students for infringing on their Charter-protected right of freedom of speech and correct itself by allowing them to put up their display.

What a joke. I do hope greedy student unions are prepared to refund all the student body. If you can allow base Jew-hating, you can allow anything, even exposing the truth about tax-payer funded genocide.

And no, I'm not apologising.

And now- caticons.