John the Mad

Immaculate Mary v. the president

2009-05-18T19:04:00.002-04:00

I dare any practicing Catholic to watch the arrest of Father Norman Westlin at Notre Dame University and not feel a deep sense of shame for this once great Catholic institution of learning.

As Father Westlin is arrested he sings that great Catholic hym Immaculate Mary. As he is handcuffed

"Why would you arrest a catholic priest for trying to stop the killing of a baby? Use your mind. You got it all backwards."

Indeed father we do.

Gaza

2009-01-04T10:24:00.009-05:00

(Hamas Rocket Heading for Israel, AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

I've been reading a fair amount about the Israeli military assault on Gaza this week. Amid Christmas celebrations and family time here in my comfortable Canadian home I watched as the crisis escalated. Among the articles I read, was a piece in today's Sun newspaper chain, by Eric Margolis, called A Mess in the Making.

While Israeli F-16 jets dropped tons of bombs on tiny, 360-sq.-km Gaza -- the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel -- Israel's Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, asserted, "We have totally changed the rules of the game."
He was right. By blitzing Hamas-run Gaza, the world's largest outdoor prison, packed with 1.5 million Palestinian refugees, Barak presented the incoming U.S. administration with a fait accompli and neatly checkmated the newest player in the Mideast Great Game -- that other "Barack," Barack Obama -- before he could even take a seat at the table.

I wouldn't worry too much about Obama. There is nothing he can't do. But "the world's largest outdoor prison" .... ? Does Margolis think Gazians live in fields? It must have something to so with closed borders and restricted access to a larger adjacent country. If so, he may he may be on to something. I think someone ought to complain to the United Nations about that big wall the Egyptians erected along their shared border with their fellow Arab brothers and sisters in Gaza.

Thanks to that wall, Gazians, such as Abu Ali, (h/t to Breitbart.com via the Drudge Report) are reduced to digging tunnels to Egypt to carry out their smuggling operations.
The Israeli Defence Force, of course, is aware that these tunnels are conduits for weapons along with foodstuffs and other smuggled contraband materiel. Accordingly, their air force is attacking the tunnels as I write. But fear not:

Abu Ali vows that once the war in Gaza ends he will quickly repair his tunnel under the frontier with Egypt, one of the many underground links used by Palestinian smugglers that have been blasted by Israeli warplanes.
"Life cannot go on in Gaza if the tunnels are destroyed -- they're our only opening to the outside world," he said, speaking inside the Palestinian enclave that has been blockaded by the Jewish state for more than two years.
Hundreds of tunnels have been carved out beneath the Gaza-Egypt frontier, providing a vital conduit to bring basic needs into the territory which has suffered an increasing stranglehold in the past 18 months.
Foodstuffs, building materials, medicines and electric equipment are all brought from Egypt through the passages -- as well as weapons, notably rockets, and ammunition.
Such contraband provides smugglers with a profitable business. It is also a source of income for Hamas, the Islamist movement which has been the sole ruler in the Gaza Strip since June 2007.
The movement levies taxes on the smugglers' income from the tunnels which are linked to the territory's electricity grid with the blessing of Hamas.

I'm told those triple P, public-private sector partnerships are the wave of the future in public policy circles and here it is in action in Gaza. Go Abu go. But I digress. let us return to Margolis.

Israel believes its mighty information machine will allow it to weather the storm of worldwide outrage over its Biblical punishment of Gaza. Who remembers Israel's flattening of parts of the rebellious Palestinian city of Jenin, or the U.S. destruction in Falluja, Iraq? As Stalin liked to say, "the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on."

Actually, I remember a wee bit about Jenin. I remember terrible tales told of a Israeli massacre there in April 2002 back in the good old days of the heroic Intifada. It was claimed that over 500 Palestinians were slaughtered in the refugee camp, many crushed by Israeli tanks. Marie Colvin's April 2002 reportage in the Free Republic was common.

Images of this man-made earthquake zone have flashed around the world as evidence that the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is responsible for another war crime in Jenin on a par with the massacre of Palestinians in the Chatila and Sabra refugee camps in Beirut 20 years ago.
Israel has responded that the devastation was the consequence of a pitched battle against entrenched terrorists.
What really happened? Tragedy doesn't necessarily breed truth. The propaganda war had begun before the white dust settled over Jenin.
Rafi Laderman, a personable Israeli reserve major, emerged from the battlefield and made the rounds of the media in his rumpled green uniform. His clear plastic spectacles signalled his real job as a marketing consultant.
Laderman insisted that all the buildings in the refugee camp had been destroyed by explosive booby traps set by the terrorists, or levelled by Israeli bulldozers because they "presented additional engineering difficulties" that could endanger civilians. He himself had stopped the fighting to lead Palestinian civilians to safety.
All that seemed disingenuous. Equally unlikely were Palestinian claims that the Israelis had killed 500 Palestinians in cold blood, most civilians, and buried them in mass graves under the rubble after running them over with tanks. Israel said about 70 had been killed.
Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, cut through the propaganda by stating the obvious: "No military operation can justify this scale of destruction. Whatever the purpose was, the effect is collective punishment of a whole society."
He and his family received telephone death threats from Israeli callers for his pains.

In May 2002, Richard Starr, managing editor of the Weekly Standard wrote this.

The Big Jenin Lie
PRECISELY A MONTH AGO, on April 8, the Palestinian news agency Wafa was reporting that Israel had committed the "massacre of the 21st century" in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. "Medical sources" informed Wafa of "hundreds of martyrs." This was a lie, concocted not only for local consumption--to keep the Palestinian people whipped up in a patriotic, Israel-hating frenzy--but mostly for export to the West.
That same day, you could hear breathless reports of the supposed Israeli atrocities in Jenin being spread by Palestinian sources on NPR, CNN, and elsewhere. Typical was the hysteria of Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative to the United Nations, on CNN: "There's almost a massacre now taking place in Jenin. Helicopter gun ships are throwing missiles at one square kilometer packed with almost 15,000 people in a refugee camp. . . . Just look at the TV and watch, watch what the--what the Israel forces are doing. . . . This is a war crime, clear war crime, witnessed by the whole world, preventing ambulances, preventing people from being buried. I mean this is an all-out assault against the whole population."
No, this was an all-out assault on the truth. There was a pitched battle in Jenin. But the "hundreds" of martyrs were a cynical invention. The death toll was 56 Palestinians, the majority of them combatants, and 23 Israeli soldiers.

What sparked the battle in Jenin where the Israeli army fought a vicious house to house battle against a few hundred Palestinian guerrillas? A suicide bomber blew up 28 innocent Israeli civilians. The bomber was trained in the Jenin camp.

No suicide bombings, no Jenin. No rocket attacks into Israel, no Israeli military incursion into Gaza. Simple really.

So why does Hamas continue to provoke war that it knows will result in large Palestinian casualties? That's the essential question for you to contemplate.

Update

The disinformation campaign to discredit Israel is in full swing for the current military operation. Go to Little Green Footballs to learn about a propaganda piece purporting to show a gruesome Israeli attack on civilians. Not so, it seems. It was a 2005 Hamas rally at the Jabalya refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, in which their own damn Qassam rockets exploded, killing 15 people, injuring dozens - including children.

I simply do not trust media reports showing civilian casualties. There are civilian casualties, to be sure, but the media is simply not very trustworthy on this matter.

Polar bears and scrambled eggs

2008-12-16T19:30:00.006-05:00

(Large white pig carnivore looking for pigs at Churchill garbage dump - www.worldofstock.com)

From Randy Boswell of CanWest News Service we learn the following horrible news.

Canada's vulnerable polar bear population could survive the effects of climate change by switching a significant part of their diet from seal meat to scrambled eggs, according to a new U.S. study that suggests snow geese nests along the Hudson Bay shore may become a key feeding site for the iconic Arctic mammal.

This is outrageous. Will no one move to save the snow geese young? Does no one care?

The latest study of the Arctic's "most visible and charismatic predator" highlights the energy-rich attributes of geese embryos but cautions that egg eating benefits for bears "will depend on the increasing temporal overlap with the nesting period and on the foraging behaviours of individuals eating the eggs. It is likely that other food sources will also have to play a role if the polar bears are to persist."

Temporal overlap? I think I've heard of that - t'was a central theme of a number of Star Trek episodes, wherein Wesley Wark fell in love with a anarchistic alien lizard ..... or something like that. Just because I'm lighthearted doesn't mean that the polar bears can be. Their traditional way of life rummaging in northern garbage dumps for leftover tuna tins is at stake here. Anyway, I am surviving. Not the least of why is because my nesting period does not overlap my temporal whatever.

Focus here folks. The study is clear and authoritative. It was done by academics.

"It is likely that other food sources will also have to play a role if the polar bears are to persist."

What other food sources? Once those damn furry ice flow foragers have developed a taste for scrambled eggs, can back bacon be far behind? (Note to American readers - back bacon is what you republican revolutionaries call Canadian bacon.) If so, pigs are now endangered. Now this may serve the theological purposes of certain strict bearded Wahabbist mullahs in caves in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but I like my back bacon. Crisp and tasty.

And once those beached arctic landfill foragers get a taste of back bacon they will pillage existing stocks of porkers and hunt them to extinction. They are now empirically proven by American Museum of Natural History biologist Robert Rockwell et al, to be insatiable once they fix their minds on what to eat.

The authors themselves witnessed a young bear as it consumed eggs from about 200 eider duck nests near Manitoba's La Perouse Bay.

The horror! The horror! Al Gore, are you listening? There is celebrity life beyond the narrowing circumfrence of current global cooling. Save Porky and the poor suffering eider ducks from the big bad bears! You'll be a hero - to the bearded mullahs and the little ducks, at least.

Bob Rae figures out democracy

2008-12-08T23:47:00.005-05:00

(Ignatieff and Rae)

Liberal leadership contender Bob Rae is making this interesting plea for democracy on his website.

2/8/2008

All weekend, I'd been hearing rumors about this, but today I was really surprised to read press reports about various MPs moving for an immediate vote to elect our Leader next Wednesday, in the Commons caucus.

I thought I'd seen a lot of politics over 30 years of public service, but this one really came from left field.

The idea of taking away the vote from tens of thousands of grassroots activists in every part of Canada, and reducing the franchise to just 76 men and women seems so out-of-step with the modern world.[bolding is mine] It makes you shake your head. Here's just a quick, off-the-cuff list of things that struck me as wrong about this idea:

The activist base of the party would be unable to vote. As an MP, I'm enormously and profoundly grateful to the volunteers who sustain my political career in my riding. I cannot imagine rewarding their tireless work by removing their say in the leadership.
Significant portions of the country that didn't elect a Liberal MP would be unable to participate. What about the voice of rural Liberals, of almost all of Western Canada, of Quebeckers outside Montreal? All of these folks would be silenced.
What about the Senate? These great Liberals, distinguished Canadians from inside and outside of politics, would have their votes taken away after lifetimes of service.
What about the Party Constitution? The party is preparing a perfectly viable, constitutionally valid plan for holding a one-member-one-vote ballot electronically in mid-January. That's just a few weeks away, and gives us time to prepare for the Conservative budget. It's timely, legal, workable, low-cost, and constitutional.

It's up to us to put a stop to this hasty, ill-considered idea for electing our leader. I am raising my voice publicly for your right to vote. Please help me by raising yours as well.

Ah yes, Mr. Rae is the champion of the right of people to vote for Liberal party leader. But as for the right of you and me to vote for which political party forms our government, well ..... that's not on. Here's what the Toronto Star had to say about Bob Rae's involvement in the formation of the coalition.

There is no doubt that Jack Layton is the brain behind the anti-Harper coalition and Stéphane Dion is the funny salesman who tried to sell it to Canadians. But the person who sold it to the Liberals was Bob Rae.
When the first rumours about the coalition surfaced last week on Parliament Hill, few people gave them much credence. Many Liberal MPs wouldn't feel comfortable with Dion leading the Christmas Parade in Vaughan, and Michael Ignatieff and his supporters were against it.
Then former prime minister Jean Chrétien got involved and one MP told me that "now it's clear that Bob Rae is behind this." He also said that Rae's move "trapped" Ignatieff, who had to support the deal because otherwise "he is going to be seen as the person who kept Harper in government."

Why confine democracy to Grits, Mr. Rae? If it's good enough for Grits, it's good enough for all Canadians.

A miserable coalition

2008-12-03T20:44:00.008-05:00

(Poisoned chalice drawing by Riddel - of The Guardian)

Let see now. The Conservatives should be thrown from office because Mr. Harper was mean about withdrawing public funding from political parties.

Why was that mean? Many like me think abolishing public funding for parties is a principled stand.

Conservatives actually raise enough money through voluntary contributions of individuals to support their party without the need for direct public funding and without corporate or union donations. Why can't the others? I think it was more tactically stupid, than mean, or in the alternative (as the lawyers are wont to opine) perhaps it was mean, but so what - give your head a shake - this is politics not a girl guide quilting bee. But let me grant you the argument for now. Mean I can take. Unprincipled coalitions I cannot.

Mean does not justify the response. The Liberal Party has now gone beyond the pale, by entering a formal coalition with Bloc Quebecois. M. Duceppe's signature is on the coalition document and the Bloc is committed to undertake certain things - They are most certainly a party to this miserable coalition, despite obfuscation to the contrary. It matters not that they won't be given seats at the Cabinet table. The price of their support will be demonstrated, should they succeed in wresting power from the Tories, in skewed policies towards separatist priorities in Quebec. Jacques Parizeau, the former Party Quebecois premier and leading separatist ideologue is thrilled with the coalition. Wonder why that might be?

The Liberals and NDP have made common cause with the separatists, which clearly will have a veto over government legislation including any budgets. Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau must be howling in his grave in Westmount. His son, a much lesser newly elected member of the House of Commons supports the miserable coalition. When you voted six weeks ago did you contemplate such a scenario?

The miserable coalition intends to install an individual as PM who the country clearly rejected in mid-October (some 50 days ago) in a general election. All because Harper was mean? Was that intended by us voters?

Mr. Harper I remind you, already retreated on that funding proposal. Accordingly, it can't stand as the current causus belli, though it is clearly the reason for why we are where we are. A woman scorned apparently cannot match the fury of opposition parties denied public funding. The three coalition partners argue that they ought to be allowed to form a government without recourse to an election because the Conservatives have lost the confidence of the House of Commons and among them they control the majority of seats.

Constitutionally, this may be legal, but it ignores the political imperative inherent in the recent electoral result. The Prime Minister must indeed have the confidence of the Commons to govern. This is a bedrock parliamentary convention. Mr. Harper has clearly lost the confidence of the Commons. But there is a greater constitutional principle at play here. The legitimacy of parliament derives from the will of the people, not the will of members of parliament. There might be merit to the parliamentary "confidence" convention, were it not for the proximity of the election. Remember that? It was but seven whole weeks ago.

In my view, the Prime Minister has the right to ask the Governor General to prorogue parliament until January when the government can present its budget. Should the opposition oppose that budget, the Governor General should dissolve this wretched parliament and call a general election. The people of Canada did not vote for M. Dion to be Prime Minister, on an interim basis. They did not vote for a coalition government of the Liberals, limousine NDP socialists and separatist Bloc, only to be see a new unknown prime ministerial successor, once M. Dion resigns as promised in three months. The electorate did not vote for this miserable ragtag coalition or this ridiculous scenario.

Keep in mind that M. Dion specifically rejected a coalition during the recent campaign. According to constitutional convention, the Governor General must decide if the coalition can provide a stable government before opting to allow them to form a government. It cannot. It is inherently unstable and, given the results of the recent election, is profoundly undemocratic. If the coalition wants to govern Canada, let Canadians say if they agree.

That's called democracy and we forget it at our peril.

Three amigos thwart the will of the people

2008-12-01T19:42:00.014-05:00

NDP leader Jack Layton, Liberal leader Stephane Dion and separatist Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe
(Photograph by : Chris Wattie, Calgary Herald)

Here we have it folks. The three political party leaders prepared to thumb their collective noses at the electorate who rejected M. Dion in a resounding way a mere 48 days ago. You will recall that the Liberal Party received the lowest percentage of votes the party has received since Confederation. This low Grit vote was, if noting else, a clear repudiation of M. Dion, the Liberal leader.

Now the trio is proposing to have the Governor General of Canada appoint the rejected candidate to the office of Prime Minister. How will this be done? With the support of the NDP and the separatist Bloc Quebecois. Cabinet seats are to be given to the former and a great political victory and inordinate political influence over government policy to the latter. There's something for everyone but ordinary citizens denied their franchise.

If the Liberal Party really believes it ought to form the government let it go to the people. Vote a lack of confidence in the Conservatives and let the Prime Minister go to the Governor General to ask her to dissolve parliament and let's have another election. That's the democratic way.

Let the people decide if they want already rejected Liberal leader Stephane Dion to be their Prime Minister, propped up in a formal coalition by limousine socialist Jack Layton and separatist (and former Maoist revolutionary) Gilles Duceppe - a man dedicated to the destruction of the Canadian federation. Let the people decide.

This despicable political ploy may be constitutionally legal, but it is politically unacceptable in a democracy. It is repugnant to those of us who hold democracy dear.

Mr. Harper had already hauled down his battle flag, junked the political party financing proposal, withdrew the plan to temporarily strip civil servants of the right to strike and moved up the budget date to January with the promise of additional stimulus measures. As the casus belli diminishes, the opposition's lust for power grows.

If there is one sentence that can sum up the politically stupefying events of today it is this sentence penned by Kelly McParland of the National Post.

The Liberals apparently believe Canadians will buy into this: an unstable government beholden to a separatist party for its survival, led by a man who was repudiated by voters less than two months ago, who will be given the reins through a critical period in the national history and then replaced with somebody to be identified later.

Just so. Let the people decide.

--------------------------------

Have a look at the Daily Bayonet for another fine commentary on this disgusting effort.

Morally grave reasons

2008-11-18T19:42:00.006-05:00

John Bentley Mays

My copy of the The Catholic Register was awaiting me as I arrived home from the office. I read it as I munched my way through my left over supper warmed in the microwave (not at all as bad as it appears). I wish I hadn't (read it, not eaten it). One of the Register's regular contributors is well known journalist, John Bentley Mays. No surprise that Mays is a Catholic.

In his article Despite his pro-choice stance, Obama is the right man: Bentley explains how and why he voted for the man destined to be the 44th president of the American republic immediately to the south of the Great White North.

What follows is a numbingly depressing justification for voting for a man who is almost certainly the most pro-abortion candidate to ever run for President of the United States. Bentley Mays recites a number of reasons for his vote:

In the end, I decided to vote for pro-choice Obama for what I consider to be “morally grave reasons.” He is the right man to lead America through months, and perhaps years, of hard times, when thousands are losing their jobs and homes and businesses, and are in danger of losing their hope. He is the right man to counteract the poison of cynicism, greed, ignorance and fear that George W. Bush’s presidency has spread throughout American political culture. He is the right man to restore America’s promise and reputation as a force for good in the world. These were serious reasons to vote for Obama in this moment of crisis — one that is moral and spiritual, as well as economic and political — and they were among the reasons I did so.

He did so with some moral qualms.

But while I was leaning in the Democratic direction, I was fully aware that the Democratic Party backs virtually unlimited access to abortion — a position I do not and cannot share.

I knew that, should a Supreme Court vacancy occur when he is in office, Obama would almost certainly appoint a justice who will maintain the court’s historic 1973 decision in the case Roe v. Wade, which struck down the country’s last legal restrictions on abortion. These political realities were, or should have been, quite enough to give Catholics pause before voting for the Democratic ticket. They certainly gave me pause.

I suppose that pause may contain Bentley May's salvation. For his sake I hope so, but for the sake of millions of victims of abortion worldwide, including approximately a million babies aborted each year in the United States, I fear not.

Perhaps the most disingenuous thing in Bentley May's article is that he attempts to justify what he did by enlisting the support of [most of ] the Catholic Bishops of the U.S. in his cause.

In 2007 the U.S. Catholic bishops issued guidelines called Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility From the Catholic Bishops of the United States.

And what does Bentley Mays harvest from these guidelines?

Intrinsic evils,” such as abortion and racism, can never be supported, while seeking justice and pursuing peace must always be approved and backed. But the bishops foresee the most common problem for Catholics in the voting booth: There is rarely any candidate whose views either coincide exactly with Catholic teaching or explicitly contradict it in every respect. That would make the decision easy. In the real world, however, “Catholics may feel politically disenfranchised, sensing that no party and too few candidates fully share the church’s comprehensive commitment to the dignity of the human person.”

In considering how to vote under these circumstances, the bishops conclude, “there may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral interests, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.”

But Mays quotes selectively from the bishop's guidelines. Among other things He neglects to mention are the following quotes.

Human life is sacred. The dignity of the person is the moral foundation of any society. Direct attacks on any innocent person are never morally acceptable at any stage or in any condition. In our society human life is especially under attack from abortion. Other direct threats to the sanctity of human life include euthanasia, human cloning and the destruction of human embryos for research.

Barack Obama supports unlimited abortion. As a state senator he voted against a bill designed to protect babies that were born alive after botched late term abortions. He supports embryonic stem cell research that results in the destruction of human embryos as a normal part of research modality.

The bishop's document references another bishop's document, Living the Gospel of Life promulgated in 1998 in which the U.S. Catholic bishops state:

Abortion and euthanasia have become pre-eminent threats to human life and dignity because they directly attack human life itself, the most fundamental good and condition for all others (no.5). Abortion, the deliberate killing of human life before birth, is never morally acceptable, and must always be opposed. Cloning and destruction of human embryos for research and even for potential cures are always wrong.

The position of the Democratic Party, that won the presidency, and a majority of seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate and therefore an untrammeled ability to enact its political agenda states the following:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.

Bentley Mays is a Catholic. We are told 52% of Catholics in the United States voted as he did, no doubt for similarly "morally grave reasons."

Saint Matthew quoted Jesus as saying in the garden of Gethsemane (in Chapter 38 of his gospel):

My soul is sorrowful even unto death

I begin to see why.

Vomitus in Extremis

2008-10-20T22:40:00.004-04:00

Ezra Levant has resumed blogging about his travails with the Canadian Human Rights Commissions. As far as Canada goes, the term "human rights commissions" is a misnomer if there ever was one. These legislated star chambers (and if you don't know what that is, dear reader, your education is very, very sub-standard - try Googling it) are the antithesis of what ought to exist in a democratic and free society. Come to think of it, they are the very antithesis of what exists in a free and ..... hell you get the drift.

Alan Paton once wrote a book about South Africa called Cry the Beloved Country. Given what is happening with these commissions, Canada's version would have to be Vomit the Benighted Country. Extreme rhetoric you say? Perhaps. But consider the following: from Mr. Levant, referring to the latest "complaint" emanating from the wretched bowels of Rob Wells, who Mr. Levant describes thusly:

The complaint,which you can see here, was filed by Rob "Fred Phelps" Wells, an anti-Catholic bigot in Edmonton who has made a habit of harassing school children and little old ladies outside St. Joseph's Basilica. The fact that Wells is a CHRC complainant (he also filed complaints against Catholic Insight magazine and Rev. Stephen Boission) and not a target of a CHRC investigation shows the moral inversion at work at the CHRC. Then again, the CHRC is one of Canada's largest hate groups on the Internet, with its staff posting literally hundreds of anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-Black comments with impunity.

This in itself ought to be sufficient to shame the Canadian Human Rights Star Chamber, and cause self-respecting Canadians to rise up en masse and demand these commissions be abolished. In fact, it ought to be sufficient cause, in a free and democratic society, to have these diabolical, despicable, disgusting HRC dweebs run out of old Bytown and the respective provincial capitals, on a rusty rail, .... but I digress.

No, dear reader, the depth of moral turbidity has not yet been fully plumbed. Ezra Levant's statement of defence, the very document he relies upon to defend himself against his odious accuser was censored by a civil servant (I use the term loosely) and only then passed his statement of defence on to the star chamber commissioners.

If the commissioners find me guilty, they'll prosecute me before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. In the thirty years they've been prosecuting section 13 "hate speech" cases, they've never lost. Political prosecutors in Iran and China would be impressed.

But here's where Dagenais becomes a symbol of everything that's wrong with the CHRC and its censorship fetish: she blacked out portions of my defence before passing it on to the commissioners. Seriously -- she censored what I wrote in my own defence, before she passed it along to the people who will sit in judgment of me. She's only allowing me to say thing in my defence that she approves in advance. Look at the version of my letter she's passing on: several of my arguments are blacked out. You can read the full, uncensored version here (.pdf version here).

Lord love a duck! Is this what my father wanted to defend when he volunteered to become an air gunner in the Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII? Is this what my grandfathers intended to defend when they volunteered for service in the Canadian Army in WWII? My fraternal grandfather fought at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele for this? Is this what my maternal uncle, a Loyal Eddy, lost his leg in Holland for? I swore the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen of Canada and served as her commissioned officer to have this state of affairs? Thank God my father and grandfathers never lived to see this outrage.

What the hell? NO BLOODY WAY! NO BLOODY WAY! If we love freedom, we must not tolerate or submit to this as Canadian citizens. No one who loves freedom and democracy can tolerate this. No one. This is wrong. It is immoral. It violates the principles of natural justice. It cannot, and must not, be allowed to stand.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae (died 1918)
Brigade-surgeon, First Brigade
Canadian Forces Artillery

A most dishonourable honour

2008-10-11T00:11:00.005-04:00

Henry Morgentaler, Canada's foremost abortionist has now received the Order of Canada from Her Excellency, the Governor General of Canada.

I am filled with disgust at those involved in recommending this noxious award and I applaud those who returned their snowflake and the 100 parliamentarians who publicly expressed their profound disagreement over the shameful decision.

Approximately 100,00 babies are killed in the womb each year in Canada thanks, in large measure, to Morgentaler and his ilk.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Bardot bites Palin with canine like fury

2008-10-07T20:20:00.005-04:00

It is remarkable how vicious people, particularly female "progressive" types, are towards the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin. The depth of the animus strikes me as something Satanic in its fierce hatred. From Brietbart.com, via the Drudge Report we read this.

French film legend-turned-activist Brigitte Bardot took a swipe at Sarah Palin on Tuesday, saying the US vice presidential candidate was a disgrace to women.
"I hope you lose these elections because that would be a victory for the world," Bardot wrote in an open letter to Republican John McCain's running mate in the November vote.
"By denying the responsibility of man in global warming, by advocating gun rights and making statements that are disconcertingly stupid, you are a disgrace to women and you alone represent a terrible threat, a true environmental catastrophe," wrote Bardot.
The screen icon from the 1960s, who now heads an animal rights foundation, went on to assail Palin for supporting Arctic oil exploration that could jeopardize delicate animal habitats and for dismissing measures to protect polar bears.
"This shows your total lack of responsibility, your inability to protect or simply respect animal life," Bardot wrote.
In a final salvo against Palin, the 74-year-old ex-star picked up on Palin's depiction of herself as a pitbull wearing lipstick and said she "implored" her not to compare herself to dogs.
"I know them well and I can assure you that no pitbull, no dog, nor any other animal for that matter is as dangerous as you are," Bardot wrote.

As I have pointed out previously, polar bears, are not endangered and are actually growing in numbers. Drill baby drill!

Nancy Pelosi Keeps on Digging

2008-08-28T08:21:00.004-04:00

Kathleen Gilbert of Lifesite News reports that Speaker of the US House of Representatives has backpedaled on her statement to NBC's Tom Brokow (Meet the Press) on when human life begins - thereby defending her pro-abortion views while attempting to maintain the political gloss that she is in union with the Church. The nub of her earlier statement is as follows.

"I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time," she said. "

And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And Senator - St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know."

The 10 regular readers of this blog know that John the Mad spent five minutes researching statements from the fathers of the Church correcting her spurious assertion. The results are in a post below.

Her statement created a large negative response from Catholic bishops, 18 ardent and practicing Catholic congresspeople, ordinary ardent and practicing Catholics, and ardent and practicing gay, lesbian, and transgendered Catholics ....

(oops sorry, I got carried away with post-modern rhetorical bafflespeak here .... please delete the latter three cossetted and protected special interest groups. Certain of their ardent and practicing members may take offence at JtM including them and thereby drag JtM before any of the plethora of human rights commissions operating in Canada outside of the principles of freedom and common law my ancestors fought to protect. Being a family man, I simply don't have a spare $100 grand to spend defending my freedom of speech from ardent and practicing zealots who may wish to complain to the modern Canadian Star Chambers. ...... but back to the brouhaha at hand .....)

Ms Gilbert writes:

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 27, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A spokeswoman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the speaker's position as a "pro-abortion Catholic", not because the Church is unclear on when life begins, as earlier stated, but because Catholics routinely contravene "clear Catholic teaching" against abortion.

In a statement praising Pelosi's appreciation for "the sanctity of the family," Brenda Daly, speaking for Pelosi, said, "While Catholic teaching is clear that life begins at conception, many Catholics do not ascribe to that view."

In the controversial interview on NBC's Meet The Press that spawned Daly's statement, Pelosi had said, "The Doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition [of when life begins]," and called it "an issue of controversy" throughout the history of the Church. "St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know," said Pelosi.

Brenda Daly's statement says that Pelosi is not justified in her pro-abortion stance due to vague Church teaching, but on the basis that many other "Catholics" also violate Church teaching.

(bolding is mine)

Frankly, my advice to Ms Pelosi is to stop digging. After all many Catholics believe that it gets mighty warm down where she seems determined to go.

Late Breaking News!

John the Mad has learned that Congresswoman Pelosi's office has just released a list of things that she, as an ardent and practicing Catholic believes is okay for other ardent and practicing Catholics to do, even though the Catholic Church has consistently held them to be impermissible for two millennia.

Brenda Daly, speaking on behalf of Congressperson Pelosi, says the list was carefully compiled after 24 hours of intensive research by the Speaker of the House using her new and innovative theological test for sin called "What do many other Catholics violate in Church teaching" and the Washington Post newspaper.

According to Brenda Daly, Ms Pelosi says she first used this test as a precocious six year old when her mother told her she had to go to bed at 8 p.m. She recalls that her brilliant retort to her mother was a vestigial harbinger of her brilliant recent spiritual insight on the matter of abortion. "Why do I have to go to bed now, Mom," she remembers whining. "All my Catholic friends get to go to bed at 8:30."

Ms. Daly said that the Speaker, as an ardent and practicing Catholic fully intends to use this novel defence of "Other Catholics do it" when standing before the throne of God at her last judgement. The brilliance of the Speaker's theological insight speaks for itself, said Ms Daly. It's a wonder Saint Thomas Aquinas didn't think of it.

The list of newly allowed practices for ardent and practicing Catholics is as follows.
abortion
euthanasia
same sex marriage
idolatry
blasphemy
taking the Lord's name in vain
elder and child abuse
assault
murder
coveting thy neighbours goods
"Smoking, bottled water, drilling for oil in the arctic, owning a handgun and coveting John Edwards neighbour's wife will remain on the list of prohibited activities for ardent and practicing Catholics," said the Speaker's spin doctor. "Ms Pelosi will not vote in favour of and congressional bill that favours these matters. There have to be some standards, after all."

Chicken Neck Wringing by Human Rights Commissars

2008-08-25T21:52:00.007-04:00

Ah, dear reader, things get more and more tawdry with every passing week. I am the son and grandson of men who went to war with the Canadian army and air force respectively (WWI and WWII) to fight for our freedoms. In my youth I had the great honour to receive a commission from HMQ, who for some odd reason had the notion to "repose especial trust in my loyalty, courage and integrity," which merely goes to prove that there is simply no accounting for the whims of royalty or their Governors General (in my case The Right Honourable Roland Michener).

When made a second lieutenant, back when men were still men and sheep were nervous, I was a rather pathetic and spindly specimen of the profession of arms- so much so - I kid you not - that a doctor of medicine, in good standing with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, after appropriate and solemn reflection, recommended I quaff copious quantities of brewed hops and malt every day in order to gain weight. I followed his advice. It took diligence I tell you. But I digress .............

The point of this post has to do with the odious institutions in Canada that are doing their level bureaucratic best to strangle freedom of speech in what Mark Steyn (himself a target of the these modern Star Chambers) calls our "demented Dominion." My forebears would be shocked and appalled at our negligence in defending our freedoms against all enemies external and internal.

To the point. My Saturday National Post had this to say about that.

A group of U. S. professors launched a campaign this week protesting plans by a prominent political science organization to hold its annual conference in Toronto next year, claiming that Canada's restrictions on certain forms of speech puts controversial academics at risk of being prosecuted.
Bradley Watson, professor of American and Western political thought at Pennsylvania's St. Vincent College, said he will present a petition calling for the American Political Science Association (APSA) to re-evaluate its selection of Toronto for its 2009 conference at this year's annual meeting, taking place over the Labour Day weekend in Boston.
His protest has garnered support from dozens of professors across the United States, including prominent scholars such as Princeton University legal philosopher Robert P. George and Harvard University's Harvey Mansfield.
"Our belief is that the APSA should choose its sites carefully, with particular regard for questions of freedom of speech and conscience," Mr. Watson told the National Post by e-mail. "We therefore believe Canada to be a problematic destination."
Mr. Watson said that professors signing the petition are concerned that recent human rights commission investigations into Maclean's and Western Standard magazines over articles concerning Islam, and the conviction of pastor Stephen Boisson, who was ordered by Alberta's human rights tribunal in May to cease publicizing criticisms of homosexuality, suggest that professors risk being chilled from discussing important academic subjects, or ending up in legal trouble. Mr. Watson said he plans to distribute hundreds of buttons to attendees at the Boston conference reading "Toronto 2009, Non!"

Canada's human rights chickens are coming home to roost and like most chicken coops the stench from the coops is ripe. The smell extends south to our southern neighbours who, while having their own challenges in dealing with politically correct claptrap, have a constitution that unambiguously defends the right of free speech. Here we piously affirm we have the right of free speech, but then immediately state that it is subject to certain necessary restrictions (freedom is not unrestricted - subject to such reasonable limitations etc. etc.) , before proceeding to gut the freedom it of any real content. It is what happens when you treat a seminal constitutional document like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as not a written set of political guarantees, but as a living tree, necessitating regular applications of ideological legal fertilizer.

Sir Winston Churchill said to the Canadian Parliament in December 1941:

When I warned them [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their prime minister and his divided Cabinet, "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Some chicken; some neck.

What Petain's generals of collaborationist France predicted in 1940, and what Adoph Hitler's evil legions failed to accomplish thanks to men like my father, the odious apparatchiks of Canada's human rights commissions are achieving through stealth and ideological zealousness. Unaccountable human rights commissars are succeeding in wringing the neck of the chicken.

American political scientists are right to be afraid of speaking their minds in Canada.

Several professors in the working group behind the protest "have written in areas that seem particularly disfavoured by the Canadian legal establishment," Mr. Watson said. "We are uncertain of the extent of the legal jeopardy that APSA members might place themselves in should they make public arguments in Canada, or post those arguments online, concerning hot-button issues like homosexuality, same-sex marriage, or the nature of the Islamist threat to Western civilization."
The American Political Science Association, whose members include both American and Canadian academics, is the oldest and largest organization of political science professors. Next month's annual meeting, expected to draw roughly 7,000 political scientists, will be its 104th. The program includes such discussions as Terrorism and Human Rights; Varying Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage; and Missing Alliances and (Un)expected Transformations in the Politics of Islam.

How much longer will Canadians put up with these modern inquisitions?

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Nancy Pelosi and Camel Farts

2008-08-25T20:02:00.008-04:00

(Photo of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, acting the smarmy Catholic hypocrite - from the Curt Jester blog )

In an appearance on the NBC program Meet the Press (hat tip to Lifesite News) on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a self-professed Catholic, denied that the Catholic Church condemns abortion.
Referring to Barack Obama's now-notorious answer to Pastor Rick Warren to the question of when life begins, Meet the Press moderator Tom Brokaw asked Pelosi, "Senator Obama saying the question of when life begins is above his pay grade…If he were to come to you and say, 'Help me out here, Madame Speaker. When does life begin?' what would you tell him?"

Pelosi responded by sidestepping the question, appealing to her Catholic faith as the source of her uncertainty.

"I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time," she said. "And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And Senator - St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know."

Pelosi then said that in her view the question of when life begins is a non-issue in the debate on abortion.

"The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose. Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when the child - first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester; not so third trimester. There's very clear distinctions. This isn't about abortion on demand, it's about a careful, careful consideration of all factors and - to - that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god."

Brokaw continued to press Pelosi on the question, observing, "The Catholic Church at the moment feels very strongly that it… begins at the point of conception."

Pelosi again side-stepped the question, suggesting that the Church's current position is only a recent position and that "over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy."

Pelosi is either very ignorant of Catholic teaching on this subject, or she is lying through her teeth. You choose. I suspect that in choosing between these two options you no doubt take into account that politicians are as pure as the driven snow in all public utterances. We know that. For sure. No lying, no obfuscation, no prevarication, no comments that appear to emerge as the aroma emerging from the south end of a camel walking north.

St. Augustine was speculating on when "ensoulment" took place, not whether abortion was permissable. As explained by Brother Andre Marie M.I.C.M:

“Ensoulment” is the word which describes the point at which the body of the conceptus is said to be informed by a human soul. (The notion of a living being having “no soul” is a philosophical oxymoron, since the soul is the principle of life in a material being.) There are two basic theories of ensoulment. The first is called the “immediate animation, immediate ensoulment theory”; the second, the “immediate animation, delayed ensoulment theory” (also called the “serial ensoulment theory”). As the names suggest, the former asserts that, at the very moment of animation (when life begins), the newly conceived human is animated by a rational soul; while the latter holds that the human soul’s informing of the new body is delayed. This latter theory further holds that there is a progression from vegetative to animal to human soul as the principle of animation. Common in the middle ages, the theory was based on Aristotelian biology and is untenable considering all that is presently known from the empirical sciences. Many learned Catholic authors of the ages of Faith held this theory and advanced it in their writings because it was the accepted biology of the day.

The issue comes into the abortion debate largely by way of abortion advocates advancing the notion that, since men like St. Thomas Aquinas did not believe a human soul actually animated the newly-conceived body for a number of weeks, Catholics are hypocritical for opposing abortion on the grounds that it kills an innocent human being. Of course, this is in itself a species of hypocrisy, given that advances in the sciences of fetology [sic] and embryology (as well as genetics) have undone the earlier theory. The abortion advocate using this argument generally presents himself as an “open-minded” individual of a broad scientific culture (one who is “reasonable” as opposed to “dogmatic”), but, by advocating the delayed ensoulment theory, he falls into a senseless retrogression to primitive biology.

Among those who have recently revisited the delayed ensoulment theory are the liberal Jesuit moralist Joseph Donceel and the feminist ideologue, Rosemary Reuther.

And more recently it appears we can add to the list of delayed ensoulment acolytes Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Here are some citations from Catholic Answers pertaining to the actual teaching on abortion from today back to the earliest days of the Church:

Thus, in 1995 Pope John Paul II declared that the Church’s teaching on abortion "is unchanged and unchangeable. Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors . . . I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church" (Evangelium Vitae 62).

The early Church Fathers agreed. Fortunately, abortion, like all sins, is forgivable [forgivable, not permissible - JtM] ; and forgiveness is as close as the nearest confessional.

The Didache

"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child" (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).

The Letter of Barnabas

"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born" (Letter of Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).

The Apocalypse of Peter

"And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and there sat women. . . . And over against them many children who were born to them out of due time sat crying. And there came forth from them rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes. And these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion" (The Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D. 137]).

Athenagoras

"What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our character, that we are murderers?
. . . [W]hen we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it" (A Plea for the Christians 35 [A.D. 177]).

Tertullian

"In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed" (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).

"Among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.

"There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of course was alive. . . .

"[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive" (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).

"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does" (ibid., 27).

"The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22–24]" (ibid., 37).

Minucius Felix

"There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth. And these things assuredly come down from the teaching of your [false] gods. . . . To us [Christians] it is not lawful either to see or hear of homicide" (Octavius 30 [A.D. 226]).

Hippolytus

"Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what was being conceived, since they would not, on account of relatives and excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!" (Refutation of All Heresies [A.D. 228]).

Council of Ancyra

"Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees" (canon 21 [A.D. 314]).

Basil the Great

"Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’ penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not" (First Canonical Letter, canon 2 [A.D. 374]).

"He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense, when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it dies upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees" (ibid., canon 8).

John Chrysostom

"Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication. . . . Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?—where there are many efforts at abortion?—where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution, prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine" (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).

Jerome

"I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).

The Apostolic Constitutions

"Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for he says, ‘You shall not suffer a witch to live’ [Ex. 22:18]. Thou shall not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten. . . . [I]f it be slain, [it] shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed" (Apostolic Constitutions 7:3 [A.D. 400]).

The historical Catholic doctrinal record is clear. Abortion has never, ever, been allowed by the Church - even when there were arguments, based on incorrect, primitive human biology, about when the soul enters into the picture.

You may well believe Pelosi when she says that "As an ardent practising Catholic, this is an issue I have studied for a long time." It took me less than five minutes to Google some of the the actual doctrinal positions on "this issue.

One more thing. She describes herself as an ardent practicing Catholic. Yowie! No Catholic I know worth their salt would presume to use the word "ardent" to describe their faith.

Sorry folks, the evidence is clear. What we have here is the fragrance of the south end of a VIP Democratic camel walking north.

Wherein Freedoms of Religion & Conscience Are Abolished

2008-08-17T19:15:00.014-04:00

Jeroen Bosch (Here: “Hell” from the tryptich “Garden of delights”)

I am now convinced that draconian powers granted to human rights commissions, the disregard of due process allowed the accused and the politically correct mentality of the commission staff constitute a grave threat to the human rights of Canadians.

Any reasonable person observing the auto da fey proceedings against Maclean''s magazine (referencing Mark Steyn's book America Alone) replete with a drive by smear by Ontario's Human Rights Czar Barbara Hall, the undemocratic silencing of Pastor Steve Boisson, the sordid and costly persecution by process of Father Alphonse De Valk at Catholic Insight magazine, must understand something is seriously amiss.

Now we have the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons (OCPS), the governing body for medical doctors in the Province of Ontario, considering adoptimg a new policy, based on case law brought to us by our unelected, unaccountable judiciary and the newly expanded mandate of the Ontario Human Rights Commission brought to us by the elected government of the province.

According to Lifesite News:

"Refusal on conscientious or religious grounds to refer a woman for an abortion could be deemed professional misconduct under this new policy," said Dr. Will Johnston, president of Canadian Physicians for Life. Johnston was describing the likely outcome of a draft policy of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for which the public comment period officially ended today.

How very totalitarian. And how consistent with the mentality underlying human rights commissions. Behold our brave new world where the most profound human rights are routinely violated by the very body named to protect them.

Here is the proposed OCPS policy (hat tip to Lifesite News). An excerpt.

ii) Moral or Religious Beliefs

If physicians have moral or religious beliefs which affect or may affect the provision of medical services, the College advises physicians to proceed cautiously.

Personal beliefs and values and cultural and religious practices are central to the lives of physicians and their patients. However, as a physician’s responsibility is to place the needs of the patient first, there will be times when it may be necessary for physicians to set aside their personal beliefs in order to ensure that patients or potential patients are provided with the medical treatment and

services they require.

Physicians should be aware that decisions to restrict medical services offered, to accept individuals as patients or to end physician-patient relationships that are based on moral or religious belief may contravene the Code, and/or constitute professional misconduct.

A bit later the draft policy has this to offer.

Within the Code, there is no defence for refusing to provide a service on the basis of one of the prohibited grounds. This means that a physician who refuses to provide a service or refuses to accept a patient on the basis of a prohibited ground such as sex or sexual orientation may be acting contrary to the Code, even if the refusal is based on the physician’s moral or religious belief.5

And what is note 5 at the end of this excerpt? It is this.

5. This could occur if the physician’s decision to refuse to provide a service, though motivated by religious belief, has the effect of denying an individual access to medical services on one of the protected grounds. For example, a physician who is opposed to same sex procreation for religious reasons and therefore refuses to refer a homosexual couple for fertility treatment may be

in breach of the Code.

We are hurtling over the precipice without even realizing it is there. There is none so blind as them that will not see.

Maurice Strong speaks the party line

2008-08-08T21:32:00.006-04:00

I picked up my copy of MacLean's Magazine at the end of a shortened but very busy week at work. After supper and fortified with a decent Sicilian wine (2004 vintage), I turned to an article at random to find myself reading an article written ostensibly by Maurice Strong (see photo), the well known Canadian champagne socialist, multi-millionaire, and now fully revealed, Chinese Communist Party fellow traveller. Oh yes. He is a mentor to former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin.

On reflection however, I came to the conclusion that Comrade Strong's piece was really ghost written by a gaggle of Chinese communist party communications flacks undertaking damage control for the public relations fiasco leading up to the Peking Olympics.

I accept that my conclusion was driven by drink. I am a Celt after all and a long time civil servant to boot, so I am therefore, familiar with the effects of drunkenness and political spin on public policy matters. I accept that Maurice Strong may well have written it. His agitprop is entirely consistent with the plethora of crap written throughout the 20th century by those whom Vladimir Lenin called "useful idiots of the West." His defense of evil is an ignoble, but unfortunately all too common, tradition with those on the left.

Here is the great man.

To be sure, this process has been a difficult and even painful one for many, but both Chinese and Tibetans continue to learn and to accommodate the changes that will enable Tibet to retain its distinctive cultural and religious heritage while according its people new and growing opportunities for a better life.

Note the denial of the extreme efforts of the Communist Party to eradicate Tibetan culture, religion and identity. He even disingenuously suggests that the Dali Lama's differences with the Chinese Politburo amount to mere quibbles over the degree of autonomy Tibet ought to be allowed to possess by their Chinese colonial masters.

Regrettably, most of the article is behind a firewall, but here are a few tidbits upon which you can chew.

Societies progress at different speeds, and in different ways, towards incorporation into their political and social stystems of the highest principals to which they aspire.

Translation. We ought to judge the Chinese communist dictators on whether they achieve their own internal aspirations, not any universal human rights norms.

Or this:

China has made immense progress towards meeting the goals and objectives articulated by its leaders of producing a harmonious society guided by science that will meet the needs and aspirations of all its people and contribute towards a sustainable and equitable world society. Indeed it [the Chinese Communist Party] is embarking on a distinctive an unprecedented pathway to a new model of development based on utilizing methods of capitalism to achieve the goals of socialism - a socialist market economy.

Distinctive and unprecedented? This is, of course, intellectual blather. I'm not saying Strong doesn't believe what he is asserting. I can't judge the his interior thought processes, but I am saying that his reasoning process is utterly bogus crap. The Chinese Communist Party politburo, witnessing the partial-eclipse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1990's and the dissolution of large segments of the Soviet empire, decided to abandon the completely incoherent theories of orthodox Marxist-Leninist/Maoist economists and adopt a market driven (capitalist) economic model led by an elite socialist governing tyranny, continuing to call itself the Communist Party of China.

Now where have we seen this scenario before? You soft leftist advocates think hard now. Can you spell NATIONAL SOCIALIST?

Think about that.

Strong is a strong advocate of the Kyoto accords. In fact, I would say he is a high priest of that religious cult. Here is some of what he has to say on China and global warming.

China realizes that it will be one of the most vulnerable victims of climate change and is already taking serious measures domestically to avert these risks. But it cannot be expected to transform these into binding commitments that are not matched by firm and enforceable commitments by the countries , notably the Unite States, whose accumulated emmissions of greenhouse gases have caused the irreversible damage already inflicted on the world.

Where does one begin? I am not a Kyoto cult member, but it is instructive to those who are, to simply note that China is currently increasing its greenhouse gases to such an extent that it is adding the equivalent of the entire industrial output of Germany each and every year. It is building hundreds of dirty coal fire electrical generating stations. Typical of Marxist/socialist tyrannies China is a environmental disaster in action.

One more quote for the Gipper.

The needs of the poor and the newly developing countries cannot be subordinated to the wasteful and indulgent appetites of the rich. and their pre-emption of a disproportion of the world's resources.

So sayeth this very wealthy socialist/industrialist globetrotter.

Pardon me while I go look for a barf bag.

Pastor Steve Boissoin Appealing HRC Ruling

2008-07-07T21:41:00.004-04:00

July 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Alberta Pastor Steve Boissoin has filed an appeal to the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal ruling that convicted him of hate speech. The pastor was found guilty last November of having written a letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate that was "likely" to expose homosexuals to hatred.

The appeal was filed on June 26 with the Queen's Bench of Alberta.

A hearing has preliminarily been set for September 9, although that date could change during negotiations between the involved parties.

LifeSiteNews spoke with Boissoin's attorney, Gerald Chipeur, who said that he is confident that the court will grant the appeal and overturn the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal's decision.

"We are very optimistic, because the Constitution is so clear," said Chipeur. "We were surprised to have lost before the Tribunal, but we believe that the courts will conclude that there has been a violation of the constitutional rights of our client. We feel very confident in our arguments, and we do expect the courts to intervene and reverse the decision."

Chipeur said his confidence was based on the fact that, "the courts have always seen themselves as the defenders of the oppressed. The context and the experience of the courts will lead them to accept our arguments."

Good. Now the whole shoddy matter will be dealt with by a real court, with due process, presumption of innocence, real rules of evidence, and 1,000 years or so of jurisprudence since Magna Carta. The santimonious, bureacratic, ideological zealots in the Alberta Human Rights Commission are about to see what happens when the law is properly adjudicated. That is God willing and the creek dont rise. (I would put in the apostraphe, but for reasons unknown when I type an apostrophe this strange looking creature appears. (è)

The Attack on Saint George

2008-07-07T19:32:00.006-04:00

Behold the ancient cross of Saint George, patron saint of the English, among others. Alas, there is a move afoot among the English clergy to replace Saint George and his cross with that of Saint Alban for fear of offending Muslims.

His dragon-slaying heroics have kept his legend alive through the centuries.

But the Church of England is considering rejecting England's patron saint St George on the grounds that his image is too warlike and may offend Muslims.

Clergy have started a campaign to replace George with St Alban, a Christian martyr in Roman Britain.

The scheme, to be considered by the Church's parliament, the General Synod, has met a cautious but sympathetic response from senior bishops.

But it clashes with the increasing popularity of the saint and his flag in England. The World Cup brought out millions of St George crosses as the symbol became increasingly mainstream and less frequently dismissed as a badge favoured only by far-Right political activists.

If St Alban replaced St George, the red cross on a white background would have to be replaced as England's flag by Alban's symbol, a diagonal yellow cross on a blue background that bears a strong similarity to St Andrew's cross, the flag of Scotland.

Go to the link to read the rest. As a Celt of Irish/Scottish descent my default tendency is to take the micky out of the Sassenach, but even my rather fevered imagination, twisted though it may be, is insufficent to conjure up such insanities, and that is saying something. Total madness is not, it would appear, the sole perogative of this poor writer.

Hat tip to Kathy Shaidle and Rachel Lucas.

Morgentaler

2008-07-06T21:39:00.004-04:00

David Warren is always excellent. This is great.

Like many, many, many Canadians, I took the appointment of Henry Morgentaler to membership in the Order of Canada -- proclaimed on “Canada Day” -- as a stick in the eye for everything we believe in. As a gratuitous insult to the memory of three million aborted babies.

It was intended as that. The perpetrators of this hateful deed -- presenting an abortionist as a model for “humanism” and as a champion of women -- knew perfectly well what they were doing. As I had learned even before the event, protocol had been breached in making the appointment. There was no consensus on the appointment committee; the chair, Chief Justice McLachlin, had failed to recuse herself. It was done deceitfully, after the Governor-General’s office had assured outraged callers last February that Morgentaler would not be on the list this year. And last weekend, as the rumour spread, a fresh round of outraged callers were being mocked -- given the phone number of Campaign Life Coalition by the Rideau Hall switchboard.

The announcement was then delayed -- another irregularity -- until after the Parliament Hill celebrations, to prevent a large pro-life demonstration from coalescing there. And, instead of denouncing the appointment, our cynical prime minister had “talking points” distributed to his caucus before the fact.

A very dark thing was done, as such things are always done -- in a very dark way.

Read the rest.

General Rick Hillier

2008-07-05T19:01:00.002-04:00

"We're not the public service of Canada, we're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people."
General Rick hillier C.M.M., M.S.C., CD
------------------------------------
Gen. Rick Hillier has officially retired as the leader of Canada's military, handing over the reins to Gen. Walter Natynczyk in a ceremony Wednesday in Ottawa.

Soldiers marched and Snowbird planes flew overhead moments before Hillier passed a ceremonial flag to Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean, who handed it over to Natynczyk.

"It has been my privilege to have served you as your chief of defence staff, and to have had the opportunity to represent you across our country and around the world," Hillier said, addressing the soldiers participating in the ceremony directly.

"I leave as chief of defence staff awed by you, awed by all our troops, who in my view are absolute national treasures, Canada's sons and daughters, and heroes to all."
-----------------------------
Bravo Zulu General Hillier. I salute you, sir!.
John the Mad CD Major (Ret'd)

Another appointment to the Order of Canada

2008-07-05T00:47:00.008-04:00

www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=80945

Rideau Hall announced today that Her Excellency the Governor General is following up her exciting appointment of Doctor Henry Morgentaler to the Order of Canada, by appointing at the same time, Morgentaler's old friend and colleague, best known to the general public as the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse (see depiction above -third from the right) .

"This newest appointment is consistent with the transgressive and progressive style for which Her Excellency and her Advisory Committee is striving," said a Rideau Hall staff toady who asked to remain nameless.

John the Mad, can report that at considerable expense of buying rounds of expensive single malt, he has ferreted out the "behind the scenes" deliberations of the Order of Canada Advisory Committee.

"The Second Horseman, will be inducted into the highest level of the Order, that of Companion," hiccuped the nameless toady, who added that, "Her Excellency's Advisory Committee, Chaired by the Chief Justice of Canada, certainly engaged in vigorous debate and a thorough review of the equine candidate's qualifications before reaching a consensus on this recommendation."

"Why we had to send His Excellency Jean-Daniel Lafond to the Prime Minister's residence at 22 Sussex Drive to obtain a copy of the Bible, after a frantic search of Rideau Hall proved fruitless. It seems that Rideau Hall library possesses several copies of Das Capital and a dog eared copy of the annotated history of the French communist party in his library, but no Bible."

It is rumoured that most members of the Committee were at first opposed to this appointment because it is supposed to go to someone who has demonstrated, "... a lifetime of outstanding achievement and merit of the highest degree, especially in service to Canada or to humanity at large."

Judy Laroque, Deputy Minister of Canadian Heritage, led the initial objection by reading out the following passage of scripture from the Book of Revelations.

And there went out another horse [the second] that was red: and to him that sat thereon, it was given that he should take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another, and a great sword was given to him.

Ms Laroque was of the view that the Second Horseman, whatever his merits, appeared to be rather more focused on some sort of Divine effort at ending human existence on planet Earth, rather than providing a service to Canada or humanity at large. She stated that, in her view, ending peace and killing one another was definitely not consistent with the primary Canadian values of peacekeeping and supporting equal pay for work of equal value.

The President of the Royal Society of Canada, Doctor Yvan Guindon CM. nodded his head in agreement and added that another meritorious factor is that, "the second apocalyptic horse is red and that is one of Canada's official colours!" Thomas Traves Ph.D., Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada was very enthusiastic about this point, slurred my anonymous bean spiller.

The Clerk of the Privy Council, Kevin Lynch, then sagely rebutted these arguments by pointing out that Canadian values may have been operative under the Liberals but that the current Conservative government appeared more fond of Albertan values of making war and killing one another. Values change he said and the Advisory Committee must change with the government, .... er times. Everyone seemed to think that notion was hilarious.

Once they stopped guffawing, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Right Honourable Beverley McLaughlin PC, rose to her feet - her Crimson robes casting a scarlet and fetching reflected glow to her judicious complexion.

"Ladies and gentlemen of this August advisory committee," she astutely opined. "You miss the point. Because you are not Supreme Court Justices, I can hardly fault you for your errors in judgment, but errors they are. Why are we spending time perusing this old book for celestial precedence anyway? "Values and governments do indeed change, but we are the vanguard of the new Canada. On the Court we Supreme Ones deliberate matters afresh and so must you. In the Morgentaler decision we took our inspiration from the living tree of the Charter, not some retro prophesy enshrined in moldy Holy Writ. Get with the spirit of the age people. What is our end game here?"

According to my inebriated toady, a member of the Committee (just who, my informant could not remember) then spoke up and spluttered, "Crikey, I tell you that we have just buggered up the Morgentaler appointment and now have millions of Canadians PO'd at us. The Governor General and newspaper editors are being deluged with emails and phone calls from outraged churchgoing anti-choicers. Catholic bishops and Evangelical pastors are denouncing us from the pulpits. Fortunately the United Church has taken time out of its theological struggle against bottled water to support us, but that accounts for only 300 churchgoers in the country. We gotta do something. I warned you this would happen."

Justice McLaughlin smiled serenely and replied, "Of course we have to do something and we are. We are going to recommend to the GG that she appoint this Second Horseman fellow as a Companion of the Order of Canada. All those upset priest ridden, anti-choice, protesters are going to be blind sided by our being sensitivity to their deepest concerns. We will deliver, for Her Excellency's consideration, one nihilist abortionist and one venerated New Testament figure. We get spokewymen from the Canadian Abortion Rights Action Council to protest the Second Horseman appointment as an unwarranted intrusion of religion into a secular honours system. The media will applaud our balanced approach and the public feeding frenzy will abate.

"But the Second Horseman's entire purpose is to bring death and destruction to the planet," muttered the anonymous Committee member.

"Indeed," opined the Chief Justice, "but this is also true of Henry Morgentaler. We must be entirely consistent in our principles must we not?"

And now you know the rest of the story.

Doctor Death Gets the Snowflake

2008-07-02T11:19:00.011-04:00

The insignia depicted above is that awarded to inductee members of the Order of Canada. The constitution of the Order limits the number of recipients of this gong to 136 Canadians per year out of a population of some 33 million souls. It is intended to be a great honour bestowed on those Canadians who have demonstrated, "a lifetime of distinguished service in or to a particular community, group or field of activity."

Sometime in the very near future a man named Henry Morgentaler will be inducted as a member of this order. It was so announced on the 141st anniversary of this nation's founding. Morgentaler's presence among the members of the Order will debase, as it already has the Hippocratic oath of the medical profession, all who wear the insignia of the Order of Canada and deeply wound the system of honours maintained by Canadians to honour achievement by its citizens.

As a nation we are about to grant our highest honour to a man responsible (as a good friend of mine says) for the deaths of more Canadians than the German army in two world wars. His lifetime achievement is to have snuffed out the lives of children growing in their mother's wombs - children entirely innocent and helpless before this champion of what Pope John Paul the Great correctly called the culture of death.

I loathe the very sight and name of Henry Morgentaler, for though his followers and fellow travellers are legion, it was he who led the way for the general acceptance of the idea that it is acceptable for physicians and mothers to kill babies in the womb. The Canadian judiciary, members of parliament, the respective provincial legislatures and the medical profession have all have played their perfidious parts, but Morgentaler is the central actor and symbol of the unrelenting struggle to unleash the beast. And unleash it he has.

A generation of innocent Canadians have been subjected to murder most foul and the leading high priest of the Canadian coven for the fetal holocaust is now to be feted and lauded at Government House by Her Excellency, the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor-General of Canada. She accepted the advice of the advisory committee established for the purpose of nominating new members to the Order. It is a distinguished panel led by the Right Honourable Beverley McLaughlin, PC, Chief Justice of Canada. I'd be embarrassed by the title Right Honourable if I were them.

In a macabre way, Morgentaler's appointment to the Order of Canada is entirely fitting. The debasement of the Order merely reflects the corruption of our country's noble ideals by the poltroons we allow to lead us.

Alas, I fear it will get worse before it gets better.

School acts on psychic's accusation of abuse

2008-06-18T23:04:00.005-04:00

From the alternative universe of the (Ontario) Simcoe County District School Board the Toronto Sun brings you this tale out of Edgar Allen Poe.

On May 30, Leduc picked Victoria up from school, where she's enrolled in an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) class with several boys around the same age. When Leduc returned home, there was an urgent call asking her to return to the Livingstone Street East school.

Frightened, Leduc rushed back to the school. She and Victoria entered a room where they were met by the principal, the vice-principal and the teacher.

Leduc said they advised her that Victoria's educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with "V" was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old. Leduc was also handed a list of recent behaviours exhibited by her daughter.

School principal Brian Tremain -- who referred phone calls seeking comment to the board -- advised Leduc that the CAS had been contacted.

"That's when I got sick to my stomach," she said. "I was shocked the whole meeting."

You think I made this stuff up don't you. You think that in a rationale world, school officials wouldn't accept a phychic's musings that a child named "V" was being sexually abused by an unnamed man aged somewhere between 23 and 26 years old. You would be wrong.

Dr. Lindy Zaretsky, a school board superintendent whose portfolio includes special education, said the school was just following protocol, adding the board is bound by the same legislation (Child and Family Services Act) as the CAS when it comes to suspected neglect or sexual abuse.
"It is clear in all cases that this (information) must be reported," Zaretsky said.

What is clear is that some school board employees ought to be given the old pink slip. Get thee hence. You aren't fit to teach a tadpole how to swim.

Did you know that Doctor Lindy Zaretsky cross dresses as a 25 year old man on weekends and spends her time in playgrounds with autistic children named V? How do I know? A homeless two-headed dwarf, high on LSD, on a street in Toronto told me that he consulted an Ouija board on the matter. There you are. Who you gonna believe? An Ouija board or a school board? In Simcoe County is there a difference?

Now that you know of this new information, it is your duty to call the Children's Aid Society! It's required by law. So says Dr. Zaretsky, whose PhD is, no doubt, in a hard science such as necromancy.

Disgust does not begin to describe it

2008-06-07T22:38:00.002-04:00

Ezra Levant informs us that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has altered the official transcript of the Lemire hearing. There is an RCMP investigation underway into possible wrongdoing of HRC staff in this matter and the commission is playing silly bugger with the transcripts!

This is beyond belief. It illustrates as nothing else does, that these commissions constitute a threat to our freedoms as citizens of this democracy. I am utterly appalled.

John the Mad

Star Chamber procedings - Day two

2008-06-03T23:40:00.004-04:00

Andrew Coyne has been brilliantly live blogging the abuse of human rights being foisted on the public by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal in its consideration of a complaint brought by a Muslim radical against Canada's largest news magazine MacLean's.

I know, on the face of it, that the notion of a human right tribunal committing human rights abuses sounds fantastic and Orwellian, but if you know anything about these tribunals you will understand what I mean. If you don't, go look at Coyne's blogging. Just a few minutes doing that and you will find yourself weeping in frustration or gagging in horror ...... that is, if you have a conscience or a brain.

We must rekindle the spirit of William Lyon MacKenzie 1791-1861, journalist, member of the legislature, first mayor of Toronto, and leader of the rebellion of 1837 that opposed the Family Compact.

Shame on us all

2008-06-02T16:21:00.005-04:00

Today, the British Columbia Human Rights Commission(BCHRC)began hearing a complaint by a Muslim extremist against Maclean's, Canada's largest news magazine. The hearing, if ultimately supported by a court of final jurisdiction, may well determine the fate of freedom of the press and its Siamese twin freedom of speech, in this demented Dominion. The complaint is against Maclean"s for having the temerity to publish an excerpt from Mark Steyn's bestselling book, America Alone.

That such a hearing is taking place at all is an utter disgrace in a constitutional democracy. The BCHRC commission uses processes that thwart centuries of established jurisprudence from Magna Carta onwards that is intended to protect citizens against the capricious and arbitrary exercise of untrammeled government power. Lest you think I exaggerate, let me pass on one of the guiding principles inherent in the operation of Canadian human rights Star Chambers.

Truth is not a defence before a Canadian human rights tribunal, including this provincial rights grotesquerie in B.C. If you love freedom, this singular truth should be sufficient for you to conclude that cherished ancient rights are under attack in Lotus Land O'er the Rockies. But if you, like me, reside in more elegant and sophisticated Upper Canada, do not gloat. No.No.No.

When the Ontario Human Rights commission heard the same complaint from the self-same complainant, Mr. Elmasry, the head of the Ontario Commission launched a scurrilous diatribe denouncing Maclean's and Mr. Steyn, even after admitting that the local Star Chamber lacked jurisdiction under Ontario statutes to even hear the case.

Why would a sworn servant of the Canadian Crown abuse her position of public trust in such a way, you ask? Because she can, that's why. Here is what the Commission has to say about the case.

For immediate publication

April 9, 2008

Toronto -
The Ontario Human Rights Commission has decided not to proceed with complaints filed against Maclean’s magazine related to its publication of an article “The future belongs to Islam.” The complainants alleged that the content of the article and Maclean’s refusal to provide space for a rebuttal violated their human rights. The decision means that the complaints will not be referred to a hearing before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

Denying a service because of race or creed can form the basis for a human rights complaint. However, the Ontario Human Rights Code does not give the Commission the jurisdiction to deal with the content of magazine articles through its complaint process.
Even though the Commission is not proceeding with these complaints, it still has a broader role in addressing the tension and conflict that such writings cause in the community and the impact that they have on the groups that are being singled out.

While freedom of expression must be recognized as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy, the Commission strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and indeed any racialized community in the media, such as the Maclean’s article and others like them, as being inconsistent with the values enshrined in our human rights codes. Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism.

“Clearly more debate on this issue is required in Canada,” commented Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall. “That’s why we issued a statement today.”

So Commissioner Hall condemned Maclean's (and by extension, Mark Steyn) without any hearing on the grounds that the accused acted contrary to values expressed in "our human rights code." Some values! If, as Ms Hall asserts, the media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism (what obligation? - not a legal one), what can be written about a commissioner and commission established to protect human rights, who does such a thing. Those "enshrined values" apparently do not include giving Maclean's, or Steyn, a chance to defend themselves before the commission. No jurisdiction. No hearing. Just a verdict.

It seems the Ontario Human Rights Code has not enshrined principles of due process, prudence, fairness, or common decency.

But for those demented fellow Canucks who rise in applause over such abuse of power and lament the jurisdictional limitation of Ms Hall and her ilk, fear not. Your time is coming soon - as soon as the end of the month.

The New Mandate of the Ontario Human Rights Commission

When the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2006 comes into effect on June 30, 2008, there will be a number of significant changes in the mandate of the Ontario Human Rights Commission [OHRC].

Under the new Act, the role of the OHRC Commisson in preventing discrimination and promoting and advancing human rights in Ontario will be strengthened. The OHRC will expand its work in promoting a culture of human rights in the province. We will have the power to conduct public inquiries, initiate our own applications (formerly called ‘complaints’), or intervene in proceedings at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO). We will be able to engage in proactive measures such as public education, policy development, research and analysis.

The OHRC has also been given broad inquiry powers. The HRTO may refer matters in the public interest to the OHRC and may ask the Commission to conduct an inquiry. We will have the power to monitor the state of human rights and report directly to the people of Ontario. The OHRC may also apply to the HRTO to state a case to the Divisional Court where it feels the HRTO decision is not consistent with OHRC policies.

We will, however, no longer process human rights complaints under the Ontario Human Rights Code. Dealing with such complaints will be the job of the HRTO. A new body, the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, will offer independent human rights-related legal and support services to individuals, ranging from advice and support to legal representation.

We will continue to be guided by the Human Rights Code in all our work. The overall spirit of the new law is that the OHRC is one part of a system for human rights alongside the HRTO and Human Rights Legal Support Centre.

In some ways, the new law enhances the OHRC’s independence. We will file our annual report directly to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, instead of through the Attorney General, as we currently do. We will have the power to monitor and report on anything related to the state of human rights in the Province of Ontario.

Our powers to review legislation and policies, for example will be very broad. The new law refers to our ability to consider whether legislation is inconsistent with the intent of the Code. We will have a role in dealing with “tension and conflict” and bringing people and communities together to help resolve differences. Our current role as a developer of public policy on human rights is made explicit in the new legislation, as is the way those policies can be used in issues that are before the Tribunal.

Yes dear reader, the Ontario Commission's mandate is about to get broader. It says it is getting a role in setting public policy on human rights - a role in dealing with "tension and conflict." What gives me great confidence in what is about to happen is best summed up the following testimony by a Canadian human rights commissar respecting that old British concept of freedom of speech. Let us hear now, via Mark Steyn in the National Review's online The Corner, from Mr. Dean Steacy, the principle "anti hate" investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. He summed up under oath, in Warman vs Lemire (page 4793 of the transcript), the approach we are about to see in Ontario.

MS KULASZKA: Mr. Steacy, you were talking before about context and how important it is when you do your investigation. What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints?

MR. STEACY: Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value.

MS KULASZKA: Okay. That was a clear answer.

MR. STEACY: It's not my job to give value to an American concept.

Think about that. Think hard. Then recall the final stanza of that famous World War I poem by Canadian Army Lieutenant-Colonel John McRae In Flander Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Wherever he may be, old King John must be smirking. Magna Carta indeed!

Faith based schools

2007-09-21T21:19:00.001-04:00

Permit me to muse on one aspect of the current Ontario election campaign, the proposal of the Conservative Party to fund faith-based schools not currently funded in the province.

Ontario now has two publicly funded faith-based school systems. The first is called the public school system - a system that zealously proselytizes a leftish mush of relativistic, secular humanism, including the usual political melange of pro-global warming, pro-abortion, pro -euthanasia, pro-homosexual, pro-transgendered, pro-questioning, profoundly atheistic, dogmas.

The second faith based school system is the Catholic school system, promulgating (in theory at least) the Popish dogmas of Rome - non relativistic in nature and (gasp) overtly Catholic in content. These latter schools obtain public funding because of an historic constitutional deal in 1867 that allowed for the federation of the northern British colonies into what became the Dominion of Canada, sometimes called Canukistan by American politicians.

Progressive Ontarians want to expunge the constitutional provisions allowing for Catholic funding on the grounds that it is, .... er "..... so retro man ..... it's like more than 20 years old, eh." I hasten to add that this simplistic political analysis is not necessarily their fault. I'm told smoking dope on a regular basis can seriously impair long term memory.

The provincial leader of the Conservative Party, a fine figure of a man called John Tory (I kid you not), is proposing to fund the other faith-based school systems, if his party forms the government on October 10th. He holds to the rather quaint view that fairness and equity compels us to fund the 52,000 students in private Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu schools, at a reputed cost of $500 Million.

Mr. Tory is no doubt aware that five of ten Canadian provinces presently fully, or partially, fund faith-based private schools. He is no doubt aware that the public, secular humanist, faith-based schools in those provinces are thriving at least as well as those of Ontario.

The premier of the province, Dalton McGuinty (a Liberal), is a product of the publicly funded Catholic system, has two children currently enrolled in Catholic schools and an attractive wife who teaches in the Catholic system. Accordingly, you would think he would agree with Mr. Tory that funding other faith-based schools would be a good thing. You would be incorrect. Very incorrect.

Mr. McGuinty says that funding more than two faith-based school systems would be "terribly wrong."

He says, "Public schools teach not just the ABCs, but to understand and accept one another."

He says, "You know what I love about Ontario's public schools - they're public. Whatever the race or creed of the kids they attend the same schools. Together they learn play laugh and sing - together. I believe that taking a half billion dollars from those schools to give to private religious schools is a mistake. Our public schools are what makes Ontario, Ontario. I'm asking you to join me in standing up for our schools......."

By inference it is clear that he believes that those private religiously based schools are divisive and do not make Ontario, Ontario.

He does not say why he and his wife chose, therefore, to place their kids in fully funded Catholic schools.

I have a question. Not the question of whether this is rank hypocrisy. I leave you to draw your own conclusions on that. My question is why is it that people of the left champion diversity in all things but this? What is it about religious education that turns the celebration of diversity into a paean to monolithic indoctrination in one philosophical pedagogy?

The answer, dear reader, is painfully obvious. Let those whom have ears hear. But first clean the political bullshit from your earlobes.

Judicial madness

2007-08-16T21:26:00.000-04:00

Okay, I understand no one is tuning in because of my extended absence from blogdom, but I have to get this off my chest.

From the CBC we learn that:(courtesy of National Newswatch)

Montreal's largest school board has been ordered to rehire a teacher who had been fired for failing to disclose to the board that he had killed his wife in 1990.

Jean-Alix Miguel had pleaded guilty to the crime and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

In 1998, the Commission scolaire de Montréal hired him to teach electronics to adults at a construction trade school in Montreal's east end.

The board fired him in 2004 when it learned about his criminal record, something he had not told the board about when he was hired.

An arbitrator later ruled that Miguel's dismissal violated Quebec's charter of rights, because his crime did not in any way relate to his work.

The board appealed the arbitrator's ruling to Quebec's Superior Court, but the court ruled in favour of Miguel on Wednesday.

The board has 30 days to appeal that decision.

What complete tommyrot! The arbitrator and the judge (unaccountable jurists both) in this sorry situation ought to be sentenced to live with said murderer during the period of time he spends employed by the school board. Friends and colleagues of these twits ought to ignore their very existence. Sending them to social coventry is the minimal response from civil society towards such monumentally irresponsible dorks. I would suggest further appropriate action, but am aware this country has laws against such things. Lucky for them.

Those who deliberately place the lives and safety of our children in peril deserve to suffer grave sanctions from the ordinary sane citizenry. Parents! Rise up and defend your kids. Have you no pride or sense of duty?

Equalization payments writ large

2007-06-16T23:00:00.000-04:00

Equalization and the Atlantic accords. As I observe political leaders from the Atlantic provinces engage in the biggest political snit since the Parti Quebecois invented humiliation, I must say I am left cold. Really cold. As in cold cold anger.

The entire logic of those who try to defend the Atlantic provinces' position is based on the fact that the (then) desperate Liberal federal government of Paul Martin signed a fiscally indefensible accord and the (then) opposition Conservatives, led by Steven Harper, promised more of the same.

This scurrilous demand of the east requires Ottawa to acquiesce in a grotesque fleecing of the taxpayers of Ontario. Being a taxpayer in Ontario this offends me greatly. It is not just. It is not in accord with the principles of equalization and it is contrary to common sense, fiscal prudence, fairness and justice. Did I make myself clear? Hope so.

Cry Havoc Let Slip the Dog of Kyoto!

2007-05-12T20:00:00.000-04:00

(photo of a neo-anarchist from CBC.ca)

In yesterday's Mop & Pail we learn of the tribulations of one Jeff Monaghan Esq., a federal civil servant, who leaked a copy of the Conservative green plan to the media before its scheduled unveiling. We now know the hapless self-described member of an anarchist collective was handcuffed at his cubicle by the RCMP and frog-marched from the building in which he worked.

According to a CBC story, Mr. Monaghan was not pleased.

Jeff Monaghan, an employee at Environment Canada, was arrested and led away in handcuffs from his office early Wednesday as co-workers looked on. At a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday, Monaghan called it a "politically engineered raid of my workplace."
"The spectacle of my arrest, the subsequent RCMP press release and the prepared statements from Environment Canada, including [Environment Minister John] Baird, have been crafted to bully public servants," he said.

Monaghan, 27, also called the proposed charges "vengeful" and an "extension of a government-wide communication strategy pinned on secrecy, intimidation and centralization."

Tut, tut, my good man. Counting military service, John the Mad has served HMQ (Her Majesty the Queen) in Right of Canada and in Right of Ontario for over 25 years. During this period of time I have served Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic Party ministers of the Crown to the best of my poor abilities. Also, during this time, I worked hard not to distinguish between the minister's parties in my public duties, despite my strong personal views respecting their competence, or their respective political philosophies.

I serve the Crown and by doing so I serve the public interest. Such is the glory of a civil servant under our constitutional monarchy. In this, the British got it right. It is not Tony Blair's government in London, or Stephen Harper's government in Ottawa, or Dalton McGuinty's government in Toronto. In all those cases it is Her Majesty's government. And Her Majesty, through her first minister, gets to choose who becomes a minister who, in turn, sets policy for the government. Mr. Monaghan, regardless of the purity of his ideology, the elegance of his starched white shirts, or the eloquence of his media anathemas - does not.

You see, there is an firm understanding between the political and the bureaucratic realms in this constitutional monarchy called Canada. We civil servants accept that policy decisions, good, bad, or indifferent, are ultimately a decision of elected representatives of the commons. The commons (not the Commons), of which I am also an undistinguished member, are stupid in many things, but wise in one thing. We the people require political accountability to rest with ministers of the Crown, not with wily and clever civil servants such as me. This is a good thing.

Politicians may be poltroons, in need of constant guidance and close supervision by deputy ministers, but they are, in the end, the repository wherein lies the accountability for the wielding of power in our democracy. It is politicians who carry the can (or ought to). It is they who have to hug drooling babies, give speeches to the Rotary Club, genuflect in the local David Suzuki Kyoto cult temple, pontificate on the efficacy of seat belt laws at Catholic Women's League meetings, earnestly shake hands of poe-faced girl guides and scouts while handing out merit badges for proper bicycle hand signaling. It is more difficult than it seems.

This is not to diminish the role of civil servants. We philosopher kings sit in workstations (or fortunate me - in a window office), reading the Globe & Mail while sipping coffee and tut-tutting over the latest peccadillo's of our ministers who simply will not listen to reason. We work hard to shelter our minister's under our benevolent wings, but accept their right to leap out of the political nest onto the hard pavement below - if that is their wont - and it sometimes is. Some people will not be helped despite our most cogent briefing notes and elegant arguments.

Jeff Monaghan, late of Her Majesty's civil service, confuses his erstwhile role as a public servant with his deeper more lustrous role of a citizen. He has the legal right as a citizen to be an idiot if he wants. He does not have the legal right, as a civil servant, to yank the chain of the elected government of the day - however correct his personal political philosophy, or however zealous he is in that cause. We are all that - even those who are dedicated couch potatoes.

But if we want to decide public policy we must convince those bland Rotarians that our earnestly narcissistic thoughts are not narcissistic thoughts at all, but are formulated purely to serve the public good. Only then will Mr. Monaghan find himself worthy of those Rotarian votes. I admit it ain't as exciting as the anarchy so loved by Monaghan and his ilk, but it is the way we are expected to do politics in this country.

God save the Queen!

Alas the The Honourable Stéphane Dion, Leader of her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, thinks differently according to the Toronto Star.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said that while he has "no sympathy at all for leaks," he was uncomfortable with the RCMP's handling of the matter.
"It looks like an attempt of intimidation and this is going very, very far, very, very far," he said. "It doesn't look good. It looks quite ugly."

Like I said. Some politicians can't be helped, no matter what.

Late breaking news thanks to the Times Colonist via National Newswatch. Mr. Monaghan says he is not an anarchist, although he shares many of the political ideals of anarchism. Okay. If that's what he says. Sure thing. By jingo. I believe him. Truly.

Partial Birth Abortion

2007-04-19T21:05:00.000-04:00

(Illustration demonstrating the implementation of progressive pagan inalienable right )

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The [US] Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a law that banned a type of late-term abortion, a ruling that could portend enormous social, legal and political implications for the divisive issue.

The sharply divided 5-4 ruling could prove historic. It sends a possible signal of the court's willingness, under Chief Justice John Roberts, to someday revisit the basic right to abortion guaranteed in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.

Hilary Clinton

This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose and recognized the importance of women's health. Today's decision blatantly defies the Court's recent decision in 2000 striking down a state partial-birth abortion law because of its failure to provide an exception for the health of the mother. As the Supreme Court recognized in Roe v. Wade in 1973, this issue is complex and highly personal; the rights and lives of women must be taken into account.

It is precisely this erosion of our constitutional rights that I warned against when I opposed the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.

...........

Ah yes. That famous unwritten constitutional right to infanticide.
...........

Barack Obama

I strongly disagree with today's Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman's medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient.

.............

The court giveth by arbitrary rulings and the court taketh away....... or ..... ya can't have it both ways ......

.............

Democrat John Edwards

I could not disagree more strongly with today's Supreme Court decision. The ban upheld by the Court is an ill-considered and sweeping prohibition that does not even take account for serious threats to the health of individual women. This hard right turn is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election. Too much is at stake - starting with, as the Court made all too clear today, a woman's right to choose.

...............

Another "having cake and eating it too" guy.
...............

All Democrats of the progressive left. All vying to become the next president of the United States. All standing foursquare against the first civil right, without which all human rights are rendered moot.

Easter Sadness

2007-04-08T17:31:00.000-04:00

(Canada in Mourning - statue on the Vimy Memorial)

It is Easter Sunday. It is a day when Christians around the world rejoice that Christ is risen. But our joy this Easter is tempered by the news from Afghanistan that seven have fallen. Six Canadian soldiers, and in a separate attack one American soldier, were killed today in Afghanistan by an explosive device placed by someone who follows the Koran.

It is often said, by the superficial among us, that religion kills more people than anything else. That is not true, as the mass murders of 20th century pagan Nazis and athiestic Marxists-Leninists and Maoists attest. But I grant superficial readers their premise that many wars have religion at the root of the conflict, for the simple reason that religious convictions are among the deepest convictions we humans possess.

I don't know what the religious beliefs the slain soldiers had. I know what religion motivated their killers. The latter is not one I choose to emulate.

These words of Pericles are a most fitting tribute for today's fallen warriors.

Each has won a glorious grave - not that sepulchre of earth wherein they lie, but the living tomb of everlasting remembrance wherein their glory is enshrined. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of heroes. Monuments may rise and tablets be set up to them in their own land, but on far-off shores there is an abiding memorial that no pen or chisel has traced; it is graven not on stone or brass, but on the living hearts of humanity.

Take these men for your example. Like them, remember that prosperity can be only for the free, that freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

Amen.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord??

2007-04-01T15:35:00.000-04:00

(www.gloriadeichurch.org)

Today is Palm Sunday. I suspect that many of today's youth have no idea what this means, or what historical drama is being played out. I can tell you younguns confidentially that it is not a marketing campaign day for a certain electronic hand held device. Pass it on.

Palm Sunday commemerates the triumphant entry into Jerusalem of one Jesus of Nazareth - a man who on that day was so revered that the crowd spontaneously tore palm leaves from trees and spread them in his path. He was conveyed into the city on a donkey, and by the end of that week - what we now call Holy Week - he was set upon by a much lesser breed of asses and summarily put to death on a cross by the Roman procurator of the day. The procurator, Pontius Pilot, sentenced him to death even though he admitted that he found no fault in Jesus. Don't be too hard on Pilot. He is the merely the forerunner of so many Catholic politicians of today. "I think putting an inncocent man to death is wrong, but if the majority are in favour of it, hey, ..... I can't let my personal beliefs get in the way of the will of the people .........

Today, everywhere thoughout the world, Catholics, including many Catholic politicians of the ilk above, gather to celebrate mass - part of which always involves a number of readings from scripture. Palm Sunday begins the most solemn, dreadful and inspiring of weeks in the liturgical calendar. The readings this week are much longer than usual as the Passion of our Lord is read out - from the garden of Gesthemene, where Jesus knelt, prayed and suffered so greatly that scripture tells us His sweat fell as blood on the ground - through His arrest, trial, beatings, crucifixion. Towards the end, Jesus in indescribable agony utters the words, "It is consummated" bows His head and (in the words of the old Douay Rheims version of the bible) "He gave up the ghost."

Along the way his disciple Judas betrays him, his disciple Peter (the first Pope) denies him three times, and all but one of the other ten (the first college of bishops) flee in fear and confusion. Of the disciples only Saint John, stood beneath Jesus cross to see his master writhe in pain. The solemn (and to my eight year old son - interminable) readings in Holy Week end with Jesus being laid in a freshly hewn tomb donated by a just member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, a fellow known to history as Joseph of Arimethia.

Holy Week is a time of great solemnity and reflection. It is a time when God teaches us through example what it is to love unconditionally, totally and eternally. Greater love hath no man than that of God who gives up his life for his creatures ..... you and me.

The extraordinary ending of this tale is not read in churches until next Sunday on Easter Day, when Christians around the globe cry out those great words of our faith that have rolled down the ages from then until now, "He is risen!"

But this is the beginning, not the end, of Holy Week.

The seduction of a soldier as a young man

2007-03-18T11:05:00.000-04:00

(photo of Andria Hill-Lehr from the Halifax Chronicle Herald)

I have never had much truck nor trade with peace nicks. I find them to be morally superficial, frequently loose with the facts and habitually blind to the interests and threats facing Western civilization. Their most egregious failing in my view is their ugly habit of asserting a moral equivalence between our Western values and those of our mortal enemies. Scratch that last thought. That is too generous. In practice, peace nicks almost inevitably grant our enemies the benefit of the doubt, while giving short shrift to those charged with defending our society.

Andria Hill-Lehr (photo above) takes things a bit further in an article in the Halifax Chronicle Herald.

Published: 2007-03-18

Mom: military seduces young
Valley woman, whose son is in Afghanistan, complains of ‘brainwashing’
By IAN FAIRCLOUGH Valley Bureau

WOLFVILLE — The military is seducing impressionable youth into service in the Armed Forces, says the mother of a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan.

Andria Hill-Lehr says youth of all ages are being led to join the military before they have the ability to think critically.

She said Forces’ advertisements, shown at movie theatres, target teens. She also said the cadet program starts as young as age 12 and puts youth in touch with military life.

"We’ve used words like brainwashing and indoctrination and they’ve lost their emphasis," she said. Now she uses the word seduction. The Wolfville mom spoke on the issue at a Voice of Women for Peace rally in Halifax last month and she is writing a book for Pottersfield Press, a Halifax County publishing company.

She said teens who become involved in cadets, the reserves and the regular forces are being taught to follow when they should be learning to lead and to think for themselves.

"The cadet (program) promotes itself as providing friendship, fun, adventures and challenges, but if that’s what’s important to parents, there are other ways to get it without promoting the military culture.

"Some parents see it as the opposite of joining a street gang," Ms. Hill-Lehr said.

She said youth could do volunteer work with aid groups, such as Crossroads and Oxfam.

The federal government spends hundreds of millions of dollars on the cadet program but nothing on Scouts Canada, which has more members, she said.

"If it’s all about citizenship and community, how come the guides and scouts aren’t getting that kind of support?"

She said her concerns are not based on the fact that her 23-year-old reservist son, Master Cpl. Garrow Hill-Stosky, and other Canadians are in Afghanistan.

Canada does need an army, she said, but it shouldn’t be developed through enticement of teenagers. She believes reserves should be restricted to people 18 years and older.

( ifairclough@herald.ca)

As the saying goes, one hardly knows where to begin, ...... but fear not, I shall figure it out.

To begin with, let me establish my credentials respecting the Canadian Cadet organization and Scouts Canada programs. A long time ago, I was myself a cadet, attaining the top rank of Warrant Officer First Class in a squadron of approximately 120 cadets. I was also a cub and a scout. Later in life I was a commissioned officer in the Canadian Forces during part of which I supervised 54 air cadet squadrons in central Ontario. Afterwards I spent some years as a training officer and a commanding officer of an air cadet squadron.

Currently, I'm a director of the Air Cadet League of Canada (Ontario provincial Committee). My eldest son is an air cadet and was a cub and a scout. This year I stepped down as a Group Commissioner with Scouts Canada and my youngest son is a cub scout. You might say I know whereof I write. You would be correct.

Ms Hill-Lehr, from her comments in the media, is an ideological horse's ass and she is obviously ignorant about the cadet program. From personal experience, I can attest that it offers some of the finest leadership and citizenship training available in any youth program anywhere in the world. In addition, cadets put in far more hours of public service than does the average peace activist in this country. Cadets in the squadron I am affiliated with spend time planting trees, cleaning up parks and ravines, visiting nursing homes, serving dinners at the local seniors centre and assisting city council in hosting numerous public events.

Aside from that, the program does not develop followers; it develops leaders who think for themselves. This is not surprising. It is run by reserve officers of the Canadian Forces and the Canadian Forces is not in the business of brainwashing anyone, in the manner of say - leftist peace activists. The demands of the modern battlefield precludes brainwashing as an effective training modality. Followers do not generally do well in the complex environment of the modern battlefield.

Of course, the vast majority of the Canadian sea, army and air cadets do not join the Canadian Forces. They are not required to perform military service, though those that do enlist normally do well. Some do very well. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who was an air cadet, springs to mind.

"If it’s all about citizenship and community, how come the guides and scouts aren’t getting that kind of support?"

The one does not preclude the other. I'd welcome more support from government for the scouting program. Like the cadet program, scouting is a very good youth program. But the support given the cadet program is good public policy with proven positive results. It is money well spent, and as a person with a public policy background I can tell you (in case you are brain dead and weren't aware of it) that not all our tax dollars achieve positive results.

She said her concerns are not based on the fact that her 23-year-old reservist son, Master Cpl. Garrow Hill-Stosky, and other Canadians are in Afghanistan.

Think about that. It is simply not credible (see my opening comments about "frequently loose with the facts"). I suspect her 23 year old son was a cadet before he enlisted in the reserves and volunteered for service in Afghanistan. Her problem is not really that the cadet program develops followers that cannot think for themselves. It is that they do.

Her 23 year old son is a man - a man who made a choice to serve where he is in harm's way in the Canadian military - a decision that is anathema to the ideological group-think pap of a peace movement activist.

According to Canada.com,

In Halifax, Andria Hill-Lehr said: "Right now I am ashamed of wearing a Canadian flag on my back."

The Wolfville, N.S. mother of a 22-year-old soldier leaving for Afghanistan in November was one of about 200 people who gathered in the Nova Scotia capital to protest Canada's participation in NATO-lePublishd operations in Afghanistan.

She took part in the rally because she said Canada's role should be as peacekeepers and nation builders but not a combative one.

"What we are doing is wrong in Afghanistan E destroying the country and promoting the U.S. imperialist agenda E," said Hill-Lehr.

She does support her son's decision but worries his spirit will be changed forever.

I'd be surprised if her son Master Corporal Garrow Hill-Stosky is ashamed of the Canadian flag he wears on the shoulder of his combat uniform. But then he's a soldier - a Canadian soldier. The soldiers I know - and I've been honoured to know many - are able to reason simple things through and it is self-evident to anyone who thinks about it that whatever we are up to in Afghanistan, the destruction of the country is not what we are there for.

I wonder whether M/Cpl Hill-Stosky is ashamed of anyone.

Others are Important

2007-02-17T19:32:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Lifesite News, you are about to take a voyage where many of you have not been before.

EDINBURGH, Scotland, February 16, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Nurses and other health care professionals should avoid using the terms ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ to refer to family relationships since the terms could be offensive to homosexual couples with children, a new directive published by Scotland’s National Health Service recommends.

Issued in conjunction with the country’s leading homosexual activist organization Stonewall Scotland, the publication is entitled Fair For All - The Wider Challenge: Good LGBT Practice in the NHS. Americans for Truth reported Feb.11 on the publication’s release.

The booklet calls for a “zero-tolerance policy to discriminatory language” among Scotland’s health care system. Included in discriminatory language is the use of terms that assume a traditional family structure of mother, father and children, according to the NHS directive.

“LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered] people can and do have children, sexual orientation or gender identity has nothing to do with good parenting or good child care,” the booklet states.

“Individual circumstances lead to varied family structures and parenting arrangements. It is important to be aware of this. When talking to children, consider using ‘parents‘, ‘carers’ or ‘guardians’ rather than ‘mother’ or ‘father‘.

Carers? I suppose in the interest if full disclosure I must disclose here. I disclose to being a Carer twice over. My children greet me at the door when I return from a hard day negotiating for the government. "Carer is home," they yell as I trudge over the drawbridge into the castle . "Yippee! Carer is home." It warms the cockles of my Carer heart when they do that. How could it be otherwise?

Along the same lines, the directive points out, use of the terms ‘husband’, ‘wife’ and ‘marriage’ is not acceptable since such terms exclude lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Instead, health care workers should use the terms ‘partners’ and ‘next of kin’. Since ‘next of kin’ is often understood to mean nearest blood relative, however, the booklet recommends that it may be preferable to use ‘partner, close friend or close relative’ to avoid confusion.

“This allows the patient to identify and choose who is important to them.”

Identifying who is important to them is .... well ...... important. It's the same for kids. You have no idea how long it took me to train my genetic offspring to drop the archaic and heterosexist term Dad. Not that I claim anything special because they sprang from my personal loins - genetic attachments are so .... retro ... and hurtful to who have not so spawned .... .

It was Dad this and Dad that and most embarrassing in my yoga classes when they did so. "Dad I love you. to infinity and back." I kid you not. They made such appalling statements. I blame it on their kidful youth myself. It's not like my domestic partner (who just happens by an accident of fate to be a woman, though it not necessarily need be so), and I didn't try. Why the sheer number of timeouts required to bring the genetic progeny to heel was extraordinary .... though vitally necessary for the establishment of a just society.

I assure you that I did not spank them to get them to call me "Carer." That would have been abusive. Instead I sent them to their room for six months without television or computer games. And no pizza on Fridays. It was tough I tell you, but sacrifices must be made so that hospital workers are not confused if the genetic progeny are in an accident away from school and an ambulance is called and the progeny need to ask for those who do the dishes in the residence in which they live.

Even the heterosexist, deist, Lord Baden Powell of Boy Scout fame said we must "Be prepared." If such a disreputable person understands such things can today's enlightened elites do any less. I ask you.

Other recommendations include ensuring the health care environment is visually reassuring to LGBT people, with posters and magazines on LGBT issues on display.

“Posters with positive images of same-sex couples, alongside similar material depicting opposite-sex couples, should be displayed in all areas e.g. waiting areas, hospital wards.”

In order to better ensure the comfort and security of LGBT people in the health care environment, the NHS calls for sexual identity “monitoring forms” to be included in all registration procedures for both staff and patients. The booklet recommends five reply options to the question of sexual orientation, including ‘Lesbian‘, ‘Gay‘, ‘Bisexual‘, ‘Heterosexual‘, and ‘Other‘. Sections recording gender should be changed to have three reply options, ‘Male‘, ‘Female‘, or ‘Other, “where people can define their own gender.”

I could not agree more. Through a sheer accident of fate I am a male, and my domestic partner is an accidental female. But what if I had married an "other." I could have. This is Canada, after all - the land of other possibilities, where other is a part of us.

Not at all like that place to the south where Mad George reigns without the rule of law and others are left feeling so .... otherly. I knew a person once who thought he was loon. It doesn't get more otherly than that, but I respect him for his loony courage. I recall one rude mutual acquaintance once saying to him, "But you lack feathers." ... as though feathers are the measure of a loon. It was so hurtful.

Among guidelines for implementing pro-LGBT policies in the health care system, the directive requires that management or team leader job descriptions include a mandatory commitment to combating any “discriminatory” language or attitudes among staff.

You might think I agree with that, but I don't. I object to the use of the term "combating." It is too militaristic. We should get away from using such terms. They are redolent of the patriarchy ... of a time long gone .... when "Carers" were Dads and Mums. When there were such things as ugggh .... families .... . It is time to bring a stop to the pain. We must pursue other options.

Go General Go

2007-02-17T18:56:00.000-05:00

Dennis Coderre MP (Lib) is not happy with General Rick Hillier, Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff. It seems that General Hillier, an uncharacteristically blunt general officer, called the 1990's under the Liberals, a "decade of darkness" for ther Canadian Forces. According to CTV News:

In a speech to a defence group on Friday, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier said the Canadian Forces dealt with troubled times from 1994 onwards when the Liberals worked to balance the federal budget with heavy budget cuts.

The Canadian Forces had only now begun to "fully realize the negative impact of the defense expenditure reduction from 1994 and the lasting, most negative, legacy that they brought into effect which has to be put right," the outspoken general told the annual meeting of the Conference of Defence Associations.

The military was deprived of money it needed for education, training, postings, equipment, fleets as the same time as it increased the number of operations, he said.

"Those actions, dollar deprived, have now led to some deep wounds in ... the Canadian Forces over this past, what I would call, a decade of darkness," Hillier said Friday.

Mr. Coderre is outraged.

Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre blasted Hillier's speech, saying it was inappropriate that he described the Liberal era in such a way.

Coderre defended the party's legacy, saying that the Liberals under Paul Martin proposed adding billions to the defence budget.

"We also have to understand that, when we came to power in 1993, we inherited a deficit of $40 billion and we had also to take care of some of the priorities including the quality of life of the people. So, talking today about 10 years of darkness, I don't think it's appropriate, I think it's highly political and I am very disappointed at it," Coderre told reporters.

Ah, how the truth hurts. The unrefutable truth of the matter is that the Liberals allowed the fighting capability (training, equipment, numbers of personnel) of the Canadian Forces to degrade to the point of near collapse. The Forces bear the scars still and will for some time.

Mr. Coderre thinks General Hillier is playing politics. Actually, the problem for the Liberals is quite different. Unlike so many of the good general's recent predecessors he isn't. He is just refusing to remain silent on operational matters involving the capacity of the armed forces to function. Doing that is inherent in his job description.

"I think there would be many people who would line up to say I'm not a politician. I don't tread in those waters," he said after his speech.

"My job as Chief of Defence staff is described clearly. And hopefully I paint a picture for Canadians, for our government, on what the state of the Armed Forces is. I have described it about three, or three-and-a-half years ago as we were in a decade of darkness with respect to what we needed to do versus we were being asked to do. And, as I said this morning, we've gone through a decades of darkness and we are starting to come out of it and like it or not that's the description of the Canadian Forces."

The truth is that Mr. Coderre and his Liberal ilk did not live up to their national obligations as a government in this regard. It is one of the prime reasons I am no longer a Liberal.

In vino veritas

2007-01-04T23:48:00.000-05:00

Well let's see. It's almost midnight on January 4th and I've had about four glasses of vino (Yellow Tail). Just finishing the last few pages of Mark Steyn's America Alone.

I'm not sure if the wine improves my usually brilliant analytical prose or not. I usually post sober. I hope it doesn't affect my many prejudices. I've spent too many years cultivating them to have them wiped out in a few minutes by a couple of glasses of red wine. Accordingly, if I do post something here redolent of liberal wishy-washy cheese eating surrender monkey ...... whooooa .... all systems seem to be registering go for prejudicial commentary .....

Steyn has written a pretty good book (somewhat repetitive, but good) that accords with my view of the Islamic threat to our civilization. Even more importantly he points out how our defeat, if it comes, will be largely a self-inflicted wound. That is how great civilizations die, you see ... by suicide.

That part of his book is the most depressing part of his analysis, but it is the pertinent part. The demographic reality is not empirically refutable. Our refusal to procreate dooms us.

We are either aborting our future, or are refusing to make and nuture it. My apologies to my two sons. I bequeath you a mess created by my generation that is largely narcissistic and materialistic in the extreme. Steyn says we Westerners spend our productive decades as perrennial adolescents. Guilty as charged. I did not begin to grow up until I married at 39. I did not become an adult until I held my first-born son in my arms at age 43. I became a Conservative after I turned 50. It seems I'm a late bloomer boomer.

Well better late than never I say (an early bird not being an option). I will nurture my sons with all the love I can muster to the best of my callow abilities and I promise, as a New Year's resolution (which I normally abhor) to shake off the dead hand of social consensus and speak that which I know.

God bless those engaged directly in the fight against our ancient and pitiless enemy. On you rests more than your smugly effete compatriots know.

(burp!)

Harrowing risks and insurgent seepings.

2007-01-03T15:37:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday Canada's national Mop & Pail newsrag ran a Canadian Press story by a chap named Les Perraux noting that the Canadian Afghanistan mission was the top news story of 2006. Not too surprising if you think about such things. Consider, however, how Mr. Perraux depicts the deployment.

For the first time since the Korean War, Canadian soldiers went into sustained, major combat and suffered hundreds of casualties, including 36 deaths in the past year.

Canadians took tiny patches of terrain at harrowing risk only to have insurgents seep back into strongholds. like ghosts of anti-Soviet forces from the 1980s.

And through the spring-to-fall Afghan fighting season, images of Maple Leaf-draped coffins became crimson staples for front pages and newscasts.

There is nothing I like better than un-slanted, fact-based news story that leaves editorializing to - ah - editorial writers. Yessiree. Globe & Mail editors and Canadian Press writers are exemplars of this fine liberal press tradition, as the above noted prose exemplifies. Don'tcha think?

Scrooge Cohen presides

2006-12-17T19:07:00.000-05:00

The tiny Christmas tree Scrooge Cohen put behind bars

A Toronto judge is standing firm by her decision to keep a Christmas tree out of her downtown courthouse despite backlash from the public and objection from Premier Dalton McGuinty. ... (Madam Justice Marion) Cohen ordered the tiny plastic tree removed earlier this week, saying it's not an appropriate symbol to non-Christians. In a letter to staff, she said courthouse visitors are "confronted" with it, which makes them feel "they are not part of this institution.'' ....

Employees called the move stupid and insulting, saying the tree has been a lobby staple for decades. The story has triggered a flurry of angry responses from CTV viewers and readers. A number of
Christmas trees are on full display inside other public institutions, including at the Ontario legislature, Toronto City Hall and at Nathan Phillips Square. There are also trees inside the Old City Hall courts. Lawyers at the Jarvis Street courthouse were also upset and puzzled. McGuinty slammed the judge's order, calling it unfortunate."

"I think it represents a misunderstanding of what we are working so hard to build here in Ontario," he said.

There is currently no court or ministry policy that addresses this
particular situation. Attorney General Michael Bryant said he'll be speaking to the chief of the Ontario Court of Justice about creating one. Cohen would not comment on camera.

The tree now sits in an administrative corridor off to the side.
And so it does. At best Judge Cohen has a very very cramped and crimped understanding of what makes this nation great. At worst she is a bigot. I have my opinion. What do you think?

Jesus the Snake god

2006-11-08T23:18:00.000-05:00

Granted I have had a couple of glasses of wine and I haven't blogged properly in months and, accordingly, no one will read this, but a man has to do what a man has to do. I swear I am not making up the following story.

They are, however, differences with which the Church of England has increasingly little problem. One priest, the Rev David Hart, a convert to Hinduism, has been allowed to continue to officiate as a cleric. His diocese renewed his licence even though he had moved to India, changed his name to Ananda (Sanskrit for "happiness"), and participates daily in pagan fire offerings to the snake god Nagar, and offers prayers to the elephant god Ganesh.

He also offers namaaz at Muslim prayer halls. He sees no contradiction between these practices and his duties as an Anglican priest; he said he will officiate in a Christian church and a Hindu temple because "My philosophical position is that all religions are cultural constructs? The modern world is no longer dominated by any single form of belief. It is a world of religious pluralism. The Anglican Church firmly believes in engaging itself fully in inter-faith dialogues. God is the same irrespective of whether you pray to him in a temple, church or mosque."

Ah so. Jesus of Nazareth is the very same guy as the snake god Nasar, or the elephant god Ganesh...... no difference........ all is relative....... Yahweh, Buddah, Sun Yung Moon ..... why try to differentiate, eh? Drawing distinctions is so hard ...... relax .... don't worry .......

John the Mad's first principle of philosophy. Something cannot both be and not be at the same time. (It's the Catholic Thomist in me.)

Whew! Had me going for a moment.................. (I rarely criticize other denominations, but there is little the CofE/Anglican Church can assert or support that will shock me for long.)

Where are the fatties?

2006-11-06T22:58:00.000-05:00

I keep reading about the "epidemic" of obesity transforming our formerly slim youth into great gobs of gelatinous roooling fat. According to those ringing the alarm bells up to a third of Ontario yung uns are now grossly obese.

Shocking ........

Except ...........

I have two sons in the primary Catholic school system in Ontario. I look for the legions of tubbies waddling through the halls of my kids' school. What do my eyes see? A very few kids overweight. Most are just fine.

So .......

Either my kids go to a school where the laws of fast food trans-fat are suspended, or .....

We are being had ............

The Pope's Remarks

2006-09-17T20:50:00.000-04:00

Batten down the hatches folks. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI committed a most grievous affrontry to Islam by making a speech in which he spoke against religious violence.

The Pope's speech quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and an educated Persian on the truths of Christianity and Islam. "The emperor comes to speak
about the issue of jihad, holy war," the Pope said.

"He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached'."

It seems that this allusion to Islam being a religion of violence is not being received well by its adherents, many of whom are the descendants of people forcibly converted when old Byzantium fell to Islamic warriors spreading their religion through, ..... er ....... the sword. In order to prove the falsity of the Pope's premise they are, as I write, setting about indiscriminately attacking Christian churches in the Middle East.

I say indiscriminately because the followers of the religion of peace have had a go at burning Orthodox and Anglican, as well as Catholic, churches in the past two days. Any port in a storm. Any church in a rage. Oh yes, one nun has been murdered, ....... so far.

Blame the Pope do you? Why? He has killed no one. He has burned no mosques. It is entirely within the purview of those Islamic zealots who are undertaking the violence to stop. Now. Completely. If not, be it on their heads. The Pope, being more of a man of peace than I am, has apologized to Muslims for quoting, goodness gracious, a 14th Byzantine emperor (who knew whereof he spake) to the effect that the prophet Mohammed wrote that Muslims are to spread religion by the sword - perish the thought.

Apologies will do no good, of course. The followers of the religion of peace have a head of righteous religious steam a building and they will surely set about, frothing at the mouth in delirious mobs, demolishing churches, killing clerics and innocent Christians and generally proving that the 14th century emperor was an astute judge of religions.

When one considers many Muslims' insane reaction to a few Danish political cartoons a few weeks back one can only await the cataclysmic orgy of violence which is surely about to inundate the world.

Evil is as evil does.

Alexandre Trudeau ejaculates

2006-08-14T22:05:00.003-04:00

(Alexandre Trudeau looking pensive, likely reflecting on Mr. Castro's barrel chest)

To my great regret I just finished reading the recently published hagiographic cartoon of dictator Fidel Castro, penned by Alexandre Trudeau in the Toronto Star. I can't quite figure out if the son of the former Prime Minister is expressing subconscious homo-erotic thoughts about the cigar smoking, communist octogenarian, or if it is that Trudeau is as thick as a brick. I do not rule out both. What is beyond dispute however is that he is beyond a doubt his mother's son.

Consider this piercing piece of prose.

Indeed, like my father, in private, Fidel is not a politician. He is more in the vein of a great adventurer or a great scientific mind. Fidel doesn't really do politics. He is a revolutionary.

He lives to learn and to put his knowledge in the service of the revolution. For Fidel, revolution is really a work of reason. In his view, revolution, when rigorously adopted, cannot fail to lead humanity towards ever greater justice, towards an ever more perfect social order.

Or not. If the 20th century demonstrated anything, it showed us that rigorously adopted revolutionary ideology leads to the ruin of nations and the suffering and death of countless of millions of people. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were nothing if not rigorous. They were rigorous in suppressing basic human rights, rigorous in killing all who stood in their way and many who didn't, rigorous in ignoring the great virtues and rigorous in championing the great vices. Fidel Castro is a soul mate of them all.

Note how Trudeau gushes like a dewy cheeked schoolgirl over Fidel's manliness and intellect.

His intellect is one of the most broad and complete that can be found. He is an expert on genetics, on automobile combustion engines, on stock markets. On everything.

Combined with a Herculean physique and extraordinary personal courage, this monumental intellect makes Fidel the giant that he is. He is something of a superman.

Expert on everything? The word twaddle does not begin to describe this adolescent nonsense. If Castro knows something about internal combustion engines it is the 1955 Chevrolet, that iconic Cuban mode of transportation that is his great legacy to the Cuban people. I understand that Cuban auto mechanics try to emulate their great leader in this respect. But virtue of necessity is no virtue. (As wrote Aristotle, as I recall.)

Trudeau, of course, does not blame Castro, or the unworkable Marxist economic model for the catastrophic failure of the Cuban economy and the concomitant misery of it's people. He reveals the real cause.

Cuba under Castro is a remarkably literate and healthy country, but it is undeniably poor. Historians will note, however, that never in modern times has a small, peaceful country been more subjected to unfair and malicious treatment by a superpower than Cuba has by the United States.

Oh really now? How about Finland crushed by the communist USSR, Holland and Denmark by the rigorously ideological Nazi Germany, Tibet by communist China, or the Phillipines by Imperial Japan. One can go on and on, but the point is made. Alexandre may have a degree in philosophy, but he should have done at least a minor in history. He would be saved from great personal embarrassment.

Now it is true that the United States has refused to permit Fidel Castro to play the great Marxist internal combustion engine expert, while reaping the substantial economic benefits of selling his cigars in the world's greatest free market economy. That is surely America's right.

Access to the rather advanced economies of Canada and Europe, however, and the infusion of massive subsidies from the USSR (another failed economic and political experiment), did not seem to compensate much though. All those educated healthy Cubans can not overcome domestic political oppression and a thoroughly discredited and unworkable economic theory, no matter how rigorously applied or how charismatic the deep diving revolutionary leadership. The Cuban communist dictatorship is rotten to the core, just as other Marxist inspired dictatorships are, and were, rotten to the core.

Towards the end Trudeau's silly article, already plumbing a newly discovered definition of the word dreadful, finally death spirals into irredeemable pretentiousness.

With the possible exception of Nelson Mandela, already well into retirement, Fidel is the last of the global patriarchs. Reason, revolution and virtue are becoming more and more distant and abstract concepts. We will perhaps never see another patriarch. We thus have to conceive of the departure of the last patriarch in psychoanalytical terms. The death of the father doesn't signal our liberation from him -- quite the contrary. The death of a father so grand and present as Castro will, rather, immortalize him in the minds of his children.

Mr. Trudeau will no doubt make a celebrated film about Castro that will be watched reverently by platitudinous political dilletantes everywhere.

And I expect Fidel Castro, once he makes his final deep dive, will be immortalized wherever the romantically puerile gather to gush ahistorically about Marxist revolutionary theory in a rigorously intellectual void that is pig ignorant about the real meaning of virtue and romantically irrational about the place and character of right reason in the firmament.

T'was ever thus.

The war against just about everybody else.

2006-08-06T16:47:00.000-04:00

(Doctored Photo by Reuters)

Because of my new job I have not really had much time to reflect on recent events in Lebanon, where the Israeli component of the worldwide Muslim war against just about everybody else is in a new phase. Today, about eighty rockets were fired at Israel by Hezbollah from inside Lebanon. Nine Israeli army reservists were killed and two homes suffered direct hits. According to CTV News over 80 rockets hit several towns. "There was a lot of blood."

In Lebanon the Israeli airforce is reputed to have killed 17 people. Of those who were killed it is not known how many were Hezbollah terrorists and how many were non-combatant Muslims who were not allowed to leave their homes by Hezbollah, so the media would not miss another opportunity to decry Israeli air attacks on innocent Muslim civilians. No doubt there was a lot of blood there also.

In the Afghani theatre of the Muslim war against just about everybody else a Canadian soldier was killed in a road accident. Four other Canadian soldiers were killed in combat a few days before that. And federal Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh MP has stated that he would prefer it if the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan were to concentrate more on reconstruction efforts than on combat. Mr. Dosanjh, with all due respect, is a blithering, blathering idiot.

Meanwhile an unarmed Canadian Forces UN Peacekeeper was killed when his post was bombed by Israeli jets . Why was that? Hezbollah was using the area adjacent to the compound to launch rockets at Israelis, that's why. I don't support the Israelis targeting of UN observation posts, but once the shooting war started it was irresponsible of the UN to leave unarmed observers in harm's way.

And then there is Qana. It now appears to be another Jenin massacre fable brought to us by the friendly propaganda folks of Hezbollah and propagated by compliant liberal media. And Reuters is busy trying to explain why it doctored photos of scenes of Israeli bombing destruction to make it look more devastating that it is. And Mark M. commenting at Small Dead Animals notes the photographer who brought us the trophy photos from Qana photos is none other than ...... ta da .... Adnan Hajj, who took the doctored Reuters photo. Encroyable, mais non?

Coalition soldiers serving in Iraq continue to be killed by Muslims engaged in that part of the war against just about everybody else. Everybody else seems to include sizeable portions of the Muslim population who are deliberately targetted by suicide bombers. Is there anyone they wouldn't blow up to further their cause? Just asking?

In the Sudan the murder and enslavement of non-Muslims by Muslims goes on and on and on. The UN debates, deliberates and denounces, but distressingly does dick all defending against despicable Islamic diehard dastards.

Whew. Glad I'm too busy to focus on all this stuff. David Warren quoted from a Hamas suicide bomber yesterday in his column A Middle Way:

"My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children's thirst with your blood. ? In the name of Allah, we will destroy you, blow you up, take revenge against you, purify the land of you, pigs that have defiled our country. This operation is revenge against the sons of monkeys and pigs."

Jesus wept blood and well he might.

CBC's coverage

2006-06-11T17:41:00.000-04:00

I am tired. The new job I have taken on is consuming in the extreme and I have had no time to consider commenting on world events. What little down time I have is spent resting, or with my family.

The recent arrest by Canadian police of 17 people from a wide variety of backgrounds, all of them Islamic, is perhaps the most important of these news stories from a Canadian perspective. The CBC was pathetically hilarious in its coverage. In one CBC radio news story the announcer intoned gravely in the same breath that the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto and the Prime Minister of Canada were targets of our domestic Islamist terrorist cell.

The news story then focused for about five minutes on the threat to the CBC. The plan to behead the Prime Minister of our country, and decapitate our parliamentary government was clearly secondary in the minds of newfolk at the Mothercorpse. I guess nothing concentrates the minds of sensitive media socialists like a possible terrorist bomb in their place of personal employment.

Birthday of a good man

2006-05-29T22:06:00.000-04:00

I have just learned from Chesterton and Friends via Relapsed Catholic that today, April 29th is the 132nd birthday of that great Catholic apologist, writer and journalist and one of my heroes, Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Happy birthday, G.K. I expect you are quaffing a heavenly brew as I write.

Da Vinci Code

2006-05-20T16:58:00.000-04:00

I'm half way through the Da Vinci Code right now. It's a pretty badly written thriller that is replete with utter historical nonsense about the Catholic Church. Many Catholics and other Christians are upset with the novel and the movie (which I hear is boring to the max.)

Despite its anti-Catholic thesis, Catholic mobs have not descended on Hollywood to burn it to the ground. The producer and director have not been stabbed to death by an enraged Opus Dei flagellant. We Papists haven't even sprinkled Dan Brown with Holy water yet to make him explode in a puff of smoke, ...... though that may yet happen.

We'll survive this silly drivel. But many sad souls will believe it.

I heard from a Vatican mole within the Masons that Dan Brown has cloven feet and that there is a subliminal photograph of this woven into the dust cover of his novel. Nostradamus predicted in the 16th century Brown would pick his nose in public during a media interview this year.

Watch for it.

Where is the Mad One?

2006-05-04T21:25:00.000-04:00

(unknown reader searching for John the Mad)

I've been given a special assignment at work that is assismilating me like the Borg. When HMQ calls, JtM responds. Duty first. Single malts later.

Unfortunately, my posting will be sparse for the next few weeks. My apologies.

Yet another scintillating update

2006-04-20T07:30:00.000-04:00

(The Last Supper by a painter called Leonardo of the Town of Vinci, Italy)

What am I doing spending time commenting on the public birthing drama involving a former Catholic now known as Placenta Man, and a former Catholic, but still winsome, Katie? I have no idea. I don't normally follow the comings and goings of diminutive actors who can't act, but I shall press on to the bitter end of this story, .... which I fully intend to be this posting.

It seems that former Catholic Katie had a silent birthing experience in conformity with the doctrinal precepts of the Church of Scientology to which the happy couple now belong. Thanks to The Online Sun, an impeccable media source for gossip about the dumb and famous (hat tip to Neale News), a silent birth is required by adherents of the church so that noise does not cause harm to the newborn later in life.
Cruise also ordered medical staff to stay silent, meaning the delivery nurses had to make hand signals to tell Katie when to push. The bizarre order was because Scientologists believe noise when a baby enters the world causes it suffering in later life.

There you have it. Never let it be said that this blogger does not print every silly piece of gossip that's fit to post. There is more. In my view, once you drop your standards on your blog and head down the path of tacky celebrity drivel you must see it through.

The Online Sun article states that Scientology is a, "wacky religion." This value judgment, along with the already cited use of the word "bizarre," so boldly put online, puts paid to the false rumours circulating that the mainstream media have no cojones when it comes to criticizing religious beliefs .... an ugly rumour which gained currency recently because of a misunderstanding over their refusal to publish certain political cartoons that suggested a certain religion of peace and tolerance was violent and intolerant.

Those of us in the know understand that the reluctance of the main stream media big guys to publish the cartoons was motivated by their sensitivity to the sensitivities of that peaceful religion and not at all because of the pucker factor engendered by the world wide riots, burnings, and murders that continue to this day.

Even peaceful and tolerant folks have their limits and portraying images of that peaceful and tolerant religion's founder with a bomb in his turban was naughty indeed and fully deserving of a severe rebuke. Accordingly, the priest murdered in Turkey, the churches burned in Nigeria and those Coptic Christian worshippers stabbed to death in three churches in Alexandra Egypt last weekend by peaceful and tolerant protesters were the unfortunate result of the clear provocation by Norwegian political cartoonists. There are limits.

But here, with The Online Sun article we have a leading online news source, bigger even than this humble blog whose readership is in the tens, daring to print criticism of a religion. This is daring stuff. How many Scientologists who, being born to ordinary Catholic parents with all the attendant moaning, groaning, grunting, screaming and yelling "Push! Push!" are now walking among us later in life as damaged ex-papist Scientologists? It hardly bears thinking about.

It is a given, and I do not deny it, that in our multicultural utopia undamaged Scientologists are at least as peaceful and tolerant as that other religion of peace and tolerance that is so worked up over the insult inherent in cartoon bombs in cartoon turbans and cartoon Piglets and china piggy banks. It would be offensive to Scientologists to suggest otherwise and I don't want to make any Scientologist feel unsafe in this place by suggesting others are unsafe because of them. Are you still with me? This northern utopia has rules and making someone feel unsafe in your space is a grave violation of the prime directive. I completely support safe places and huggable feelings. That is why I am never critical of anyone on my blog.

But still, I worry about the damaged Catholic apostates, who are now Scientology converts, who have yet to undergo sufficient auditing by Scientology clerics to erase the damaging effects of noisy Catholic deliveries. Are these people under control? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Mind you, if Placenta Man and Katie read the article from The Online Sun and take to the streets burning coffee houses and Birkenstock sandal factories and killing journalists from CNN, I will not blame Scientology, which as I have already stated is as peaceful and tolerant as that other religion mentioned above. I will blame the Vatican.

The Da Vinci decoder ring I got in my cereal box this morning has set me straight about who is really responsible for all the religious violence we see in the streets. Who knew? Dan Brown, that's who. Now that it has been revealed, I'll hold Opus Dei responsible if Scientology riots rocks the globe. It's that Catholic birthing noise plot. With my decoder ring I was able to discern that the third figure from the left on Leonardo's Last Supper is not an apostle, but a Roman pediatrician by the name of Umbilicus. He was an early Vatican plotter with evil Simon Peter the first Catholic pope. Once you understand the code you can see that Umbilicus is a pediatrician from the way he is holding his hands up to catch a baby.

Oh yes, one more thing while we are writing of doctors. Katie it seems had an epidural in a hospital. We know Placenta Man is strongly opposed to prescription drugs. Evil they are. And he spent thousands renovating the mansion in readiness for the silent birth. But he must have realized that Katie only recently got out of that Vatican cult thing. While she is familiar with the Virgin Birth she is new to the idea of the silent birth, so theological flexibility was needed for now. And epidurals do help with that pain thing which often frustrates the silent birth thing.

I've seen epidurals work in the delivery room. One minute her face is contorted with agony and the next thing you know she is singing arias, tossing back single malt scotch and channel surfing the soaps. I wouldn't lie about this. I turned over all my notes and recordings from my delivery room Lamaze coaching experience to a direct descendent of Jesus and Mary Magdalene who would confirm it to The Online Sun were it not for his damnable involvement in those secret Vatican noisy birthing intrigues. So that won't happen. After all, former Vice President Al Gore is a man of great discretion.

The Placenta Gourmet

2006-04-18T08:11:00.000-04:00

(The actor as a young dork)

Tom Cruise strikes me as being a cocky, arrogant dork but the Great Himself has surpassed himself this time. According to the Daily Mail he is planning on eating the placenta that is expelled after Katie gives birth to their baby. I'm not making that up. I'm mad, not nuts. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, is nuts.

The actor, 43, said: 'I thought that would be good. Very nutritious.'

Now I have been present at the birth of both of my sons and I cut their umbilical cords and I know the drill. I am a fully trained coach in the time-honoured Lamaze tradition. My job was to yell "Stroke! Stroke!" as Lady Mad lay there contracting. .... No, that's not it. I yelled "breathe! breathe!" or something. Stroke was what I yelled when I was coxswain for a short time of my university's freshman rowing eight back in 1972. (It get harder and harder to keep this straight I tell you).

Now any Lamaze-trained breathing coach guy knows a few things about the child bearing process. For instance, the Lamaze training manual says that when one's wife/partner/darling/ love/mistress/strangerwithwhomonehappenstobehavingachild says she needs gas, one is supposed to talk her through the next few sets of contractions smothering her with encouraging phrases like, "You go girl!" and "Do the next set for the Gipper!"

Real guys know better. We know at that moment when she demands gas with that crazed glassy eyed stare that can melt steel and power a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, that the drill is to dump the Lamaze training manual in the wastebasket while muttering, "Yes dear. Right away my love" .... and then run like hell down the hallway hollering "Gas! Gas! For the love of God get gas in room 201 now!" That's what real men do.

What we do not do, what we would never consider in our most drunken state at a rowing team hazing, is consider the nourishing aspects of baby placentas. It does not enter a sane man's brain. And if it did enter our admittedly thick skulls, as extraordinary a hypothetical stretch as this is, no real man would talk about it on television to a national reporter in terms of being a feasible snack. Not now. Not ever.

Yup. Tom Cruise is an cocky, arrogant, dorky stupido.

And what's this about silent birthings? Sheesh ............ Nuts I tell you ......

Update:

Katie and the Culinary Dork are happy parents of a bouncing baby girl. Apparently, the placenta was not consumed by the Great Himself, nutritious though it may have been. It is rumoured that the only haute cuisine chef willing to undertake the cooking, wanted to boil it and serve it in buns with ketchup, and lord knows you lose most of the vitamins that way .... and the suger in the ketchup ..... Everyone knows placenta is best when broiled on a BBQ with the liberal use of a white wine basting. Can't blame Tom for taking a pass at the last moment.

No report on whether the birth was a silent affair, entirely respectful of the mother, mind you.

Priest arrested and expelled from Saudi Arabia

2006-04-10T22:25:00.000-04:00

April 10, 2006

Riyadh (AsiaNews) - (Hat tip to the Curt Jester) A Catholic Indian priest was yesterday forced to leave Saudi Arabia. He was discovered by the religious police as he organized a prayer meeting in the lead-up to Easter. Arrested on 5 April, he remained in police custody for four days and on Saturday 8th April he left for India. The practice of any religion other than Islam is forbidden in Saudi Arabia. Meetings held privately in people's homes, among friends, are also banned.

The priest, Fr George Joshua, belongs to the Malankara rite of Kerala (India). His visit to Catholic Indians in the Saudi Kingdom was planned with his bishop's permission.

On 5 April, Fr George had just celebrated mass in a private house when seven religious policemen (muttawa) broke into the house together with two ordinary policemen. The police arrested the priest and another person.

The Saudi religious police are well known for their ruthlessness; they often torture believers of other religions who are arrested.

AsiaNews sources said there were around 400,000 Indian Catholics in Saudi Arabia who were denied pastoral care. Catholic foreigners in the country number at least one million: none of them can participate in mass while they are in Saudi Arabia. Catechism for their children - nearly 100,000 - is banned.

Often, for feasts like Easter and Christmas, Catholics plan holidays in the Emirates, Bahrain or Abu Dhabi, where at least for once, they are free to attend mass.

From the mouth of a scamp

2006-04-10T22:14:00.000-04:00

So Master Brendan age 7, smelled something on his way down the stairs to the recreation room at Castle Mad.

"Eeeuuuuwwww, what's that," he said. "Something smells. Is Mum baking something again?"

Fortunately for him Lady Mad, who does not often bake, thought that comment hilarious. Young Brendan lives to fight his brother another day.

I hasten to add that the brownies are delicious.

They just can't leave Holy Week be

2006-04-07T21:35:00.000-04:00

"Altarpiece of the Lamentation"

CLEVE, Joos van
(b. 1485, Antwerpen, d. 1540, Antwerpen)

Holy Week is upon us and so it is the time for editors of the mainstream media to seek out a good story that undermines traditional orthodox Christianity. In some years we get updates on the Jesus Seminar showing yet again how little of the Gospel stories are scientifically accurate and how much the biblical gospel writers embellished the truth. (a little projection here folks?)

In other years they publish stories about stories, like Dan Brown's bestseller the Da Vinci Code, which purports to be a thriller based upon Church history. Jesus did not die on the cross, married Mary Magdalen, had a passel of kids, and by the way the Vatican has been murdering and covering up the real story for two bloody millennia. Thank God that the truth is finally revealed.

This year we have the gospel of Judas to entertain the flock. I suppose it will supplant the Da Vinci Code stories, to a point. In case you haven't heard, the gospel of Judas (apparently authentic) is an ancient gospel discovered in the 1970s and recently translated. National Geographic has a story on it. My quotes below are from the New York Times.

I read the gospel yesterday. In my view, the language, the theology, and the spirit of the text is not compatible with the four gospels of the Bible. For instance, Judas is viewed in this text as liberating Jesus from his flesh in order to allow his (Jesus')true (divine) spirit to emerge. We Catholics and Orthodox Christians have insisted from the beginning that Christ was true God and true man. No wonder Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, condemned this gospel in 180 AD.

I find Professor Karen King's comments in the New York Times article interesting.

"You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus' death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," said Ms. King, the author of several books on the Gospel of Mary. "So what does that make Judas? Is he the betrayer, or the facilitator of salvation, the guy who makes the crucifixion possible?"

Here you can see the nexus between liberal Christian theology and contemporary secular liberal death cultists, i.e., if everything is part of God's plan, and God does nothing evil, then evil does not exist.

The Church says something quite different. We are all responsible for the crucifixion, not through our virtue, but because of our sin. The good is with God, not with Judas, or with us.

"Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton who specializes in studies of the Gnostics, said in a statement, "These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion, and demonstrating how diverse - and fascinating - the early Christian movement really was."

Myth of a monolithic religion??? This is rubbish of the first order. Anyone who has taken an introductory course in the history of the Church will know ancient Christianity was rent by multiple and continual struggles between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. The great councils of the Church were called to address these struggles and settle doctrinal disputes.

I think she puts forward a spurious monolithic myth in order to undermine Catholic assertions of doctrinal continuity. Of course there were different views in the days of the early Church. There was also a magisterial authority (the Apostles and their successors the bishops) to sort it out and the Judas gospel got sorted out the door.

Judas as the hero, the "facilitator of salvation." What a monstrous concept. By this inverted logic Hitler should be seen as the admired facilitator of modern German democracy.

I note the same sort of liberal Christians who look approvingly upon this obviously Gnostic (It is not Christian) text mock the Catholic Marian doctrines. A diversity of views is good apparently, unless it threatens to embrace the rosary. Did I say rosary? How embarrassing. Good thing this blog isn't a dinner party. Everyone would be aghast then.

Me? If I'm looking for a facilitator of my salvation, I'll avoid Mr. Iscariot and the latter day Gnostics and stick with the Mother of God. She's much better connected to that Jesus fellow. Christ may not be a facilitator, but he is a merciful judge and Saviour and his mother has a much better record than Judas Iscariot. Despite the lyrics of the M.A.S.H. theme song, suicide is not necessarily painless.

Before you judge my scribbling as complete gibberish, read the Gospel of John and then the gospel of Judas. The gospel that is truly gibberish becomes quite apparent. But modern Gnostics are no doubt partying. Just remember the salient point. However interesting the manuscript, and it is that, Gnostics are Gnostics and Christians they ain't.

Dominus vobiscum.

The fly in the fishing

2006-04-04T11:02:00.000-04:00

(very sensitive photo of a fly fisherMAN intended to avoid unpleasant riots, church ransackings, car burnings and murders of priests. One cannot be too sensitive these days.)

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a policy wonk for an unnamed provincial government. As a matter of personal survival, ..... er, policy ...... I stay away from that very fertile ground of blogging madness. It is not for lack of courage, I assure you, but my children must eat.

Not to fear. Other governments supply me with an endless fodder for JtM. From the United Kingdom (courtesy of Political Correctness Watch), we read the following:

It is Britain's most popular participation sport and crosses the class divide. The four million people who enjoy a quiet afternoon on the river bank are, according to the Government, too white, too male and too middle-aged. The Environment Agency, which protects waterways, has decided to spread the message about coarse and fly fishing to ethnic minorities and women. The agency's 10-year campaign will use money from the 19 million pounds raised each year by the sale of fishing licences, and a leaflet has already been produced covering "10 things you should know about angling". These include: "Angling does not discriminate against gender, race, age or athletic ability", and the "Government is interested in angling in the context of social inclusion in deprived urban areas.?
It is hard to top that story for monumental policy wackiness. I can visualize my counterparts in the UK writing the briefing materials for Cabinet and coming up with those (bolded) communications messages. I can surmise it happened after a four beer lunch (something this PW would never ever do, as he is much too responsible and loyal to Her Majesty's unknown government here in the Dominion).

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it was a British Cabinet minister who drank the beer and came up with the line (hiccup) in the presence of his astonished ministry staff during a pre-Cabinet meeting briefing. Perhaps the policy wonks merely scribbled the "communications messaging" down in order to capture it in all its pristine weirdness and replicate it in their Cabinet submission. Policy wonks are good scribblers and can be a tad slavish in their devotion to ministerial utterances, even when uttered by the drunk or the insane.

At least British wonks are. I couldn't possibly comment on a certain unknown wonk in an unknown government, though it is said that he only scribbles the sane utterances of his betters. He believes that the first principle of philosophy is that something cannot be and not be at the same time. Which is one reason why he may never rise to command others; a situation which is no doubt a small mercy to others. But I digress.

In the Swansea pilot scheme, Muslim women and children are taken by coach to a lake and learn to fish for trout. The project is run by Nica Prichard, 68, the international president of the Ladies Flyfishing Association. She said: "A couple of hours out in the countryside and you come back a new woman. If you could just see their faces when we're teaching them, you'd know we're really on to something."

Women's faces? If you can see their faces, Bin Laden and the mullahs must be really pissed. What kind of Muslim woman goes fly fishing without her Burkha? Are there no mullahs worth a damn in Swansea? Are they all scouring Afghanistan looking for Abdul Rahman to cut off his head because he converted to Catholicism? Before you accuse me of bigotry here, please note that it is mullahs that are demanding Mr. Rahman's head be severed from his body, not me. I think Catholic bodies should be left connected to their respective Catholic brain stems, but as a strict professional matter, I admit to a conflict of interest on the issue.

Or are the mullahs in Swansea in a pub drinking beer with that unnamed British cabinet minister? Did my English confreres not advise the right honourable minister that this faces thing could be an unintended and most unfortunate outcome of the initiative? Did he ignore the advice? Lots of time they do. I bet he did here. Drink does that to a man.

Faces! On Muslim women! Yea gods and little fishes. It is a truism in government that scandals arise because insufficient policy work is done in the planning stages. That is why policy wonks are indispensable and why we need more of them and why they need to be paid more so we don't lose the ones we already have. I can produce studies by consultants to prove this contention, given a big enough project budget and time to massage the results. I can I tell you.

Another thing. As a policy wonk, I think it is obvious that the Swansea mullahs need government funded remedial training to learn how to properly treat their women. If you allow those women to participate in government teaching fly fishing in hip waders, they may next demand the right to quaff ale in the pubs in the company of tipsy mullahs and British politicians about to attend meetings of Cabinet. Next thing you know they are attending Cabinet meetings.

It happened to Anglican women in Britain and the next thing we knew Maggie Thatcher was going to war against Argentina. That will never do. Islam is a religion of peace and must be kept so. Withdraw the hip waders and reissue the burkhas. World peace depends on it.

It starts as a trickle of beer in a pub and ends in a trout stream in Swansea. In policy, as in law, the devil is in the details.

Our Existential Peril

2006-04-03T19:58:00.000-04:00

Sobieski at the Seige of Vienna, by Juliusz Kossak

We are at an existential crossroads here in the West and, as every traveler must do at such junctures, we have choices to make. That is a fancy way of saying that what we have at stake in our choosing is no less than our cultural, political and spiritual existence as a people. Our first choice, as individuals and as a society, must be whether or not we want to continue to exist as a people rooted in Judeo-Christian economic, political and religious freedoms, accept an alien religion as our creed, or live in subservience as Dhimmis under Sharia Law.

The choice is that stark, I'm afraid, and there are no pain free answers to the question. Nor can we duck the question. Any refusal on our part to make decisions will simply mean those who are demanding our submission will determine our fate. Accordingly, we must choose, and decide well, for our time of happy indolence is over as the ground shifts beneath our feet.

The threat to us is threefold in nature. First, as we can discern from events around the globe, Islam our old relentless enemy has emerged from the defeats induced by our overwhelming military, political and economic might during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was not always so, for during the previous thousand years Islam tended to be the victorious expansionist power and Christianity the colonized and threatened.

After centuries of conquest, forced conversion and repression, the old Orthodox Christian lands of the Mediterranean are now Muslim and the Christian remnant is lying low or fleeing from Muslim persecution. Abdul Raham, threatened with death in Afghanistan for the crime of converting to Christianity, is now living in Italy to escape the wrath of so-called moderate mullahs.

In a very real sense Mohammed's followers are again as they were in 1529 and 1683 moving on Vienna, but this time they are within the gates as well as without. Modern large-scale Muslim immigration into Europe since World War II has changed the old strategic dynamic and the change is not to the advantage of Europeans.

The second threat, more serious because it disarms us as we engage the first, is of our own making. Western society has become nihilistic, self-loathing, hedonistic, narcissistic, and utilitarian in its actions and view of human life. The acceptance and advocacy of euthanasia, abortion, and infanticide; the decline of the family; the destruction of marriage and the resulting plummeting in the birth rate may well result in the ceding of Europe to Islam before any defence can be properly mustered.

The latter point is very relevant. As in the thirteenth century, the capacity of the West to withstand the Islamic threat is today compromised by internal divisions. In 1204 invading Catholic crusader armies from Latin Europe sacked Constantinople. These crusader depredations weakened the Eastern Empire leading to the eventual defeat of Byzantium by Sultan Mehmed II (known as The Conqueror) two hundred years later. The lands of Orthodox Christianity are now Islamic lands and the great Cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, known as the Hagia Sophia, became a mosque. Repressive Muslim zealots are even now driving the tiny remnants of this once great Christian culture from the lands of their birth.

Today, many in the West reject Christianity because they see it as the enemy of personal freedom. It is not. It is the enemy of their personal licenciousness. Their growing effort to remove Christianity from the public square, in order to clear the ground for the pursuit of untrammelled hedonism is weakening this society at a time when it needs to be united. Our post-Christian latte sipping compatriots have no idea what awaits them should the Islamists triumph.

To be continued ...

Private Robert Costall - A man and a Patricia

2006-03-27T19:41:00.000-05:00

Today the family friends and comrades of Private Robert Costall, 7 Platoon Charlie Company of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, are coming to terms with his death in combat during a fierce firefight with the Taliban near Kandahar. His funeral is to be held in Edmonton this week.

His one-year old son Colin will not have the opportunity to know his dad, as my sons know me. For him, his father will live on only as an aching void of lost possibilities; as a dad who never got to watch him play T-ball, or soccer, or tighten his skate laces in the dressing room before the big hockey game on a Saturday morning, or as a scout leader in his troop, or go canoeing with him on a perfect lake on a perfect summer's afternoon, or do a million other things we dads do with our sons.

Chrissy, his twenty year old wife did know him (they were childhood sweethearts) and is no doubt experiencing great pain and grief as I write this. My mother lives in Trenton where his body arrived on the weekend and told me that Chrissy looked like her heart was breaking. It likely is. My mom spent many a year as an air force wife, by the way, as my father served in the RCAF. Military families are particularly sensitive to these things. My prayers go with his family.
His regiment, the Patricias will suck it up and carry on with the mission, for that is what good regiments do and the Patricias are a very good regiment indeed.

God bless Private Costall. He died doing the good and there are worse deaths than that. May perpetual light shine upon him.

The plot against Abdul Rahman thickens

2006-03-22T23:27:00.000-05:00

It appears that the Afghani Islamic zealots in charge of prosecuting (persecuting) Abdul Rahman for apostasy are casting about for an exit strategy that does not involve executing Mr. Rahman or admitting the moral degeneracy of Sharia law where it calls for the death penalty for those who convert to Christianity.

The Globe & Mail is quoting prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari as asserting Mr. Rahman is unfit to stand trial.

We think he could be mad. He is not a normal person. He doesn't talk like a normal person," prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari told the Associated Press.

By Afghanistan's Muslim standards this may well be true. Since he accepted Christianity a decade and a half ago, Mr. Rahman, no doubt, does not accept the moral legitimacy of polygamy, suicide bombers and the abysmal Islamic treatment of women. He certainly does not accept the Muslim view that Jesus was only a prophet who did not die on the cross, or that the Judaic-Christian scriptures were deliberately corrupted by Jewish and Christian clerics in order to spread error among the people. He would be against the view that Sharia Law ought to prevail everywhere and that non-Muslims ought to be treated as inferior persons to be maintained in a state of Dhimmitude.

From their perspective, by rejecting Islam and many of its primary tenants, he must be mad. Personally, I find a certain degree of madness to be an endearing quality, but fundamentalist Muslims have demonstrated that they lack a sense of humour on such matters. Wait, scratch that. I just read a story (hat tip to Lifesite News) that has this quote.I

If he recants, he will be "forgiven," said trial judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah. "We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. [emphasis is mine] We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him," the trial judge told the BBC on Monday.

I guess they do have a sense of humour, after all. Nor are they completely crazy themselves. As the Globe reports:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper telephoned Mr. Karzai on Wednesday to discuss the case, The Globe and Mail has learned. Canadian government officials were also in direct contact with their Afghan counterparts yesterday afternoon to express concern about the case, sources familiar with the situation said.

The Prime Minister's Office issued a statement late in the day, after Mr. Harper's phone call.

"I called President Karzai today to express my deep concerns regarding the Raham case and the issue of freedom of religion in Afghanistan. President Karzai listened to my concerns and we had a productive and informative exchange of views," Mr. Harper said in the statement.

He added: "Upon the conclusion of the call, he assured me that respect for human and religious rights will be fully upheld in this case."

In the end, I suppose labelling Abdul Rahman a crazy man may help the prosecutors avoid proceeding with a case that would be sure to enrage the public of Afghanistan's most loyal allies. Perhaps not all the public, for there is in Western nations a growing faction of left listing secularists, feminists, and gay rights activists that delights in opposing any and all manifestation of Christianity in the public square.

The insanity dodge does not, however, address the underlying salient political issue, let alone respect Mr. Raham's rights to life, dignity, respect, religious freedom and protection against slander by state officials. But let us for the moment leave aside the personal human rights of the victim, vastly important those may be, to consider the salient strategic issue.

The new Afghani constitution accepts the primacy of Islamic law. If, however, Islamic law requires converts such as Mr. Rahman to be put to death, then the question arises if Islam is compatible with liberal democracy. The growing body of empirical evidence would suggest that it is not. If that is so, we have a grave problem on our hands, as the entire Afghanistani/Iraqi intervention of the West is now based on the premise that it is. If it is not, what are we to do?

A perfect constitution

2006-03-21T19:38:00.000-05:00

According to news reports, Canadian Forces personnel in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan are gearing up for a possible intensification of terrorist attacks during the Persian New Year celebrations. These traditional celebrations were suppressed under the Taliban on the grounds that they were un-Islamic.

Of course, under the Taliban, even singing was considered un-Islamic and was likely to lead to a most unfortunate rendezvous with a zealous Mullah in a Sharia court. It seems the nasty boys want to disrupt the people's festivities by bringing more mayhem and murder to the long-suffering Afghani people. If they can also take out some foreign troops and reconstruction workers their joy will be even greater. Evil rejoices over the most grotesque things.

Meanwhile today's Globe & Mail reports that an Afghani man who converted to Christianity some 14 years ago while working in Pakistan for a Christian aid agency is to be tried and maybe executed. It seems that Sharia law prescribes the death penalty for those who reject the religion of peace and adopt another faith community. Accordingly, cafeteria Muslims are few and far between in traditional Muslim societies. It's a question of incentives.

The judge deciding whether an Afghan man should be executed for converting to Christianity does not understand what all the fuss is about.

"In this country, we have [a] perfect constitution. It is Islamic law and it is illegal to be a Christian and it should be punished," Judge Alhaj Ansarullah Mawawy Zada said in an interview yesterday. "In your country, two women can marry. I think that is very strange." ....

"It is a crime to convert to Christianity from Islam. He is teasing and insulting his family by converting," Judge Zada said. "The Attorney-General is emphasizing he should be hung."

Judge Zada's position is understandable. Why should we here in the West object to the application of Sharia law in Afghanistan? It's integral to the new Afghani constitution which, as he says, is perfect because it is Islamic.

And he's correct. Here in Canada, wymyn do marry wymyn. You might think I would be with Judge Zada on thinking this strange, but I'm not. I don't find it so strange that one can be attracted to women. Personally, I was so smitten by one that I married her. So the concept is understandable to me.

But hanging a man because he converts to Christianity is, I think, a bit excessive. I know, my liberal, latte drinking, moral relativist friends would say it's all a matter of perspective and that tolerance of the other is required if we are to live in peace. It's not that I don't try to be politically correct in my outlook. It's just that hangings and beheadings and such make me queasy. It is the way I am.

You may well feel the same about these things. If so, it's best to admit it. There is no shame in admitting to faults of this kind, even if Judge Zada might think you a girly man because of it. Based on his remarks, the good, fundamentalist Muslim jurist probably already thinks of you as a religiously deceived, culturally perverted Dhimmi, completely unworthy of basic respect. What's being a girly man compared to that! If watching the Afghanis hang a man from the neck until dead just because he converted to Christianity makes you all squirmy, be proud of who you are. You go, girly man!

Prosecutor Abdul Wasi said the charge would be dropped if Mr. Rahman converted back to Islam, which he has so far refused to do. Prison officials refused requests to interview Mr. Rahman, but one of his cellmates said he was resolute.

"He is standing by his words," said Sayad Miakel, 30. "He will not become a Muslim again."Another cellmate said Mr. Rahman seemed depressed. "He keeps looking up to the sky, to God," said Khalylullah Safi, 31.

See! As an erstwhile Canadian prime minister once declaimed, "Da Proof is da proof is da proof." Islam is a religion of tolerance after all. If Mr. Rahman just renounces this silly obsession he has about Jesus being the Son of God and Saviour of the World, and re-adopts the religion of Mohammed, Islam will forgive him. It's not like he'd have to garb himself in a chador or some other wymyn thing. And he would be allowed to marry one.

Unfortunately, Rahmin the Apostate appears to have a stubborn streak. "He keeps looking up to the sky to God." If I were Mr. Rahman, I'd be doing just that. I'd also glance from time to time in the direction of the US and Canadian embassies.

According to Afghani law, Mr. Rahman cannot be put to death without the consent of the president of Afghanistan. The American and Canadian ambassadors may want to chat with President Hamid Karzai about why we are expending so much blood and treasure defending a government that maintains a law making it a capital crime to convert to Christianity. Those soldiers of ours who are Christians might also want to know why, if this is the case, they are risking their lives in President Karzai's cause.

Contradictions of the Righteous

2006-03-20T22:16:00.000-05:00

(Private Jon Drew of the Canadian Army in Afghanistan , courtesy CTV News)

During my two weeks as a blogger slacker I noted the rise in domestic opposition to the Canadian Forces deployment in Kandahar region of Afghanistan. I am only surprised that it took this long for the dreary left wing of the political spectrum in Canada to raise public objections to what we are doing there.

It certainly seems that Prime Minister Harper's (excellent) decision to make his first foreign tour a visit to the troops and reconstruction teams in Operation Archer (the military code name for the deployment) has raised a clamour from the left.

At first I was a bit confused by the reasons proffered for their opposition. I mean, the Afghanistan deployment has the full blessing of the holy and sacred United Nations and is being carried out through the multilateral action of NATO. One would have thought the imprimatur of the UN Security Council would be sufficient for the UN true believers who constantly prattle on about the fact that the font of all evil, George Bush, did not have the Security Council's permission to depose Saddam Hussein.

The same people who sanctimoniously criticised the United Stated for "abandoning" Afghanistan after the Soviet army fled the scene in 1988 are now hacking away at those governments (like ours) who are standing by her this time in the aftermath of the defeat of the Taliban Islamic regime of terror.

The same folks who claim that there is no justification for the Americans and British, et al, being in Iraq because there was no nexus between Saddam and Osama (an assertion growing more shaky by the day) are silent on the clear, proven, connection between the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar and the leader of Al Qaida, Weird Beard the Cave Dweller.

Those NDP, BLOC Quebecios and Liberal parliamentarians who were silent until now about previous Canadian deployments to Afghanistan under Liberal Prime Ministers Chretien and Martin and about Mr. Martin's decision to increase our current role and numbers in the Kandahar deployment, are clanging bells and beating drums over the absolute need, lest democracy perish, of holding a House of Commons debate on the matter, now that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is in power.

Our starry-eyed socialist latte sippers who are so appalled that Canadian soldiers are being sent to the field as honest-to-goodness combat troops instead of peacekeepers, uttered nary a peep when our military was shooting bad guys in Bosnia (which was not a UN operation). Peacekeeping, of course, is not a rational option when there is no truce, the adversary is our sworn enemy, and when he/she is a terrorist determined to enslave, convert or murder whomever stands in the way of their fanatical, hegemonic, theocratic, religious nightmare.

One could continue, but it is very wearing and the evening grows late. Besides, in the end, their opposition to our presence in Kandahar is really just about the great hatred they hold for George W. Bush and all things American. All their huffing and puffing really emerges from that singularly wretched fact.

A Sad Anniversary

2006-03-19T23:19:00.000-05:00

Terri Schiavo
In Memorium

Killed March 19, 2005

May Perpetual Light Shine Upon Her, O Lord

Baseboards and the Barbary Pirates

2006-03-19T17:30:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd better post something before my readers (are there any still out there?) surmise that I've been captured by Barbary pirates. If you don?t know what a Barbary pirate is you probably drink lattes, vote socialist and believe that the institution of slavery was a vice perpetrated exclusively those of European Christian stock. It was not and you should dispel your ignorance at once by finishing your latte and reading a book on them.

I can report that I have not been kidnapped and transported to the slave markets of Morocco or Tripoli to clean toilets for some superannuated Sultan in his North African villa. Rather, I've been on vacation at home, somewhere in Durham region near Toronto. Shortly before the vacation began Lady Mad convened the Supreme Council of Renovators (she and I constitute the grand assembly) at Castle Mad and we agreed that the guest bedroom was badly in need of rehabilitation.

This came as no great surprise to this half of the Supreme Council. That guest room has been so for eight years past, ever since we purchased the castle. It reduced the length of stay of freedloaders, I tell you. It can be said no longer. Now it is a thing of great beauty surpassed, perhaps, only by the Sistine Chapel in Rome, or a mug of Guinness imbibed in an Irish pub on the Feast of Saint Patrick. I expect visitors at any moment.

My goodness, did I mention Guinness? How did that slip in here? I have heard reports that it was held last Friday and that the usual gathering of devout revellers was seen at McVeigh's New Windsor Tavern in Toronto. If you haven't been to McVeigh's on Saint Patrick's Day, I recommend you do so before you are captured by the Barbary pirates. For once those pirates get you, your opportunities to quaff Guinness while singing Danny Boy will be significantly limited.

So lie low until next March, and then make your way to McVeigh's shortly before lunch. Arrive later than about 11:30 a.m. and you'll be stuck going to some dreary Protestant beer hall to drink Bud Light. You don't want that. I hear it's almost as bad as being snatched by a Barbary pirate.

All of this is a surpassingly long way to complain that I never made it to McVeigh's this year. Lady Mad and my sons and heirs were struck with what Evelyn Waugh called Bechuana tummy and I was left playing the nurse and painting my baseboards. Did I mention how white and glistening my baseboards are now? That they are. My tongue may be as dust and my annual visit to the shrine of Mr. McVeigh was derailed, but the choir of angels is gaping in silent awe at my glistening white baseboards.

It's a fine guest room now. Truly. And Clan Mad? They are convalescing.

Éireann go Brách!

German Mardi Gras humour

2006-03-03T23:58:00.000-05:00

From Lifesite News:

COLOGNE, March 2, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday and Pancake Tuesday are among the many names for the custom of keeping a festival on the last day before the beginning of the Christian penitential season of Lent. In most countries that have European roots, Mardi Gras has always included elements mocking Catholic ceremonies and customs.

But the tone has changed since the growth of what Christians are recognizing as a new militant secularism that specifically fosters hatred of Christianity. One skit planned for Cologne features the Pope and the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne as homosexual pop stars who end up in bed together. Last year, a float in the Dusseldorf parade showed Cardinal Meisner striking a match to a pregnant woman tied to the stake, the words "I had an abortion" written on her. The float's caption read, "Fostering Tradition."

My my. How very transgressive. Hit the above link to read whole article. As the rest of it indicates, the ridicule of Church leaders has nothing to do with the organizers having any real courage.
Bernd Jost, spokesman for the Dusseldorf carnival committee said that the religion the committee wants to exempt is Islam. "In view of the current debate, we will be keeping very clear of things related to Muslims," Jost said. "We don't want to fuel hatred," Jost said. But he admitted that the real motive is the need to keep parade spectators safe.

Last year's parade floats reflected a more egalitarian secularism and included one in which a Muslim Imam was crawling out of a hamburger.

"In view of the current debate?" At first that comment had me a tad confused. Then I realised they were speaking of the bold interaction now taking place wherein some Danish cartoonists draw some political cartoons with religious connotations and their religious interlocutors respond by:

- rioting in the millions;
- denouncing the entire culture of the West as perverted and Satanic;
- burning down a dozen or so churches;
- killing a score of their own people;
- murdering at least two Catholic priests and a score of Christians;
- calling for draconian laws to stifle free speech;
- trying to lay hate crime charges against magazine publishers; and
- threatening the cartoonists who began the interesting dialogue with beheading.

It's that debate.

Hmm. One can see why the organizers of the Düsseldorf carnival committee decommissioned that particular float. As recent explosions have revealed, Imams have an unfortunate propensity to turn those who ridicule their religion into ground meat. If you are an effete poseur, it's preferable to be ballsy with someone who won't cut them off when you unleash your biting sense of humour on them.

No, it's best to attack the Pope. It's been a long time since a pope launched a retaliatory crusade. The war plan parchments are no doubt still in the Vatican archives, but few potential crusaders can read Latin anymore and Google's translation program is notoriously uncertain. There is danger in that. The Pope's crusaders could end up sacking Munich instead of Düsseldorf and then what would the Germans do for Octoberfest?

Let the last word rest with Jacques Tilly.

Jacques Tilly, an organizer of Dusseldorf's parade said he thought the restriction was a compromise. Reflecting a more even-handed antipathy for religion, Tilly said, "Religion is in my eyes a delusion and hence should be mocked. The humour depicted on the floats simply needs to have some bite otherwise there is little point."

Ah hell, it's my blog and I'll have the last word if I want - and I want. If you are interested in reality, Mr. Tilly, then mock the followers of the "religion of peace." I assure you, you'll get a reality check from them.

The pointed end of the stick

2006-03-03T07:51:00.000-05:00

photo of LAV III is from CTV News

In the past couple of days one Canadian soldier, has been killed and several soldiers wounded in separate incidents near Kandahar, Afghanistan. The soldier who was killed was Corporal James Davis of Bridgwater Nova Scotia, serving with the Princess Patricia?s Canadian Light Infantry. May perpetual light shine upon him.

Today, CTV News (hat tip to Neale News) reports that five Canadian soldiers were wounded (one seriously) in a suicide attack.

One soldier is in critical but stable condition, and underwent surgery for wounds to his arm. He is expected to be airlifted to the U.S. medical facility at Landstuhl in Germany. The other four soldiers were slightly hurt in the blast, the military said. They are expected to return to duty shortly.

Friday's suicide attack -- the first against a LAV III vehicle -- left a large crater in the road, and the blast was loud enough that it could be heard by soldiers several kilometres away.

A man driving a white Corolla in the opposite direction turned his vehicle into the convoy that was carrying the Canadian patrol and detonated his explosives, said CTV's Steve Chao, reporting from Kandahar.

Names of the injured have not yet been released, pending notification of kin.
The death of Corporal Davis raises the number of Canadians killed in Afghanistan to ten (one was a diplomat). This number is expected to rise now that we have deployed 2,200 troops to the volatile Kandahar region. Canada commands the NATO forces in the region engaged against Taliban and Islamist forces.

The troops are reporting that they have been well equipped for the deployment and the fact that the troops survived this suicide attack is attributed to the robustness of the new LAV III.

We are all Jews now

2006-02-28T18:30:00.000-05:00

Thousands of Parisians marched in the streets of their city yesterday to protest the rise of anti-Semitism in France. The march was occasioned by the kidnapping, torture and murder of a young French Jewish man by the name of Ilan Halimi. His torture apparently went on for three weeks and extended to the poor man's family who were forced to listen to his screams over the telephone as his tormentors read out verses of the Koran. If you're squeamish you may not want to know the details. It's difficult, but necessary reading. According to an article by Tom Gross in today's National Post (from my print copy).

On February 13 Halimi was found tied naked to a tree, handcuffed, gagged, hooded and starved, with severe burns and torture marks and cuts all over his body.

The French police officer leading the investigation said the gang "Kept him naked and tied up for weeks. They cut bits off his flesh, fingers and ears, and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him alight. It was one of the cruelest killings I have ever seen."

One of the cruelest killings? I wonder what this police officer has witnessed in his career that could surpass this ugly murder for its sheer, base brutality.

It seems that Mr. Halimi was kidnapped not because of any special qualities he possessed, other than his Jewishness. It could have been any Jew, really - an old Jew, a young Jew, a sick Jew, a healthy Jew, a male Jew, a female Jew, a Jewish infant - it's all the same. It is only necessary that the victim be one of that ancient tribe that God chose as His people so long ago.

A rich Jew would have been a preferred victim, of course. Who knew there were Jews of modest means? Those grotesque murderers apparently didn't. As they say in the army, time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. Still, even an impoverished Jew can scream adequately over the phone as you read out verses from the Koran, while cutting off his fingers.

In a glaring instance of hypocrisy the very same people who claim to be marching in the streets over the publication of a dozen Danish political cartoons are utterly silent about this bestial torture and murder. Most Muslims in western countries would not likely support this murder, but neither are they prepared to demonstrate against this bloody blot on their religion.

They are not writing letters to the editor, they are not burning buildings, or rioting, or otherwise opposing what happened to Mr. Halimi. That, by the way, is why they have no credibility with the general population and why Islam itself is increasingly viewed with a jaundiced eye. In the deafening silence, the hard men do their work.

It is said that silence denotes consent. What is being consented to here? Is it the idea that is alright for fellow Muslims to treat people in such a sub-human manner - long as the victims are Jews? I pray that is not the case, but the evidence continues to mount.

Behold the face of evil incarnate. It has shown its face to us before - at Auschwitz and Treblinka - and it lurks in our cities today. Don't delude yourself into thinking this kidnapping and terrible murder is peculiar to Paris, or is confined to Jews. It's hatred is demonstrating its global presence every day now - in the murder of innocent Christian school girls in Indonesia, in the burning of churches in Pakistan and Nigeria, in the enslavement and genocide of tens of thousands of black Christian and Animist Sudanese, in the destruction of a Shiite mosque in Iraq, in the nuclear threats of mad Iranian mullahs, in the suicide bombing of buses and trains and nightclubs in Israel, Britain, Spain and Indonesia, in the destruction of Buddhist temples in Afghanistan and of office towers in New York City.

Radical resurgent Islam's stated purpose is to cow us, convert us, or kill us. This is a vicious and merciless enemy which, by its own cruel actions, pares down the choices before us. We must defeat them, submit to them, or perish. Ignoring them is not an option. I know where I stand on this continuum of terror. Do you?

The Gathering Storm

2006-02-24T20:38:00.000-05:00

The signs are there to see. An Islamic storm gathers and will break upon our shores at some point. Are we prepared? A prudent people faced with such portents in the natural world will batten down hatches, board up windows, and move to higher ground. Those of us faced with hard political choices are seldom so immediately moved to action.

In Iran, the mullahs are racing to produce an atomic bomb. The mullah currently in charge of the country says that Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth. The Israeli government and military is beyond question, prepared to turn a goodly portion of the Islamic Middle East into glass should the Iranian try and make good on that threat. Europe is nervous. The United States is nervous. Blustering noises are heard on the diplomatic circuit. Bunker buster bombs are mooted about as a solution. But the disbursement of the Iranian nuclear weapons program makes tactical solutions very difficult. You should be nervous too, but you probably aren't.

In Iraq, Islamofascists have blown up an 1,100 year old Shiite Muslim shrine which, is the burying place of two of the most revered Shiite clerics. This action was calculated to precipitate civil war between the Shiites and the Sunni Muslims. The tactic is probably going to work. Daytime curfews are being imposed, folks are being dragged from cars and shot and dozens of Sunni mosques are being torched in retaliation for the Askariya shrine bombing. The newly elected Iraqi government is nervous. The United States and it coalition partners are nervous. They should be. This is going to get really ugly.

In Afghanistan, the Canadian army is in the process of assuming command of the NATO Forces in the Kandahar area. In the past couple of weeks our troops have come under fire from jihadists. Some were wounded. The troops are worried, but continue with their mission. That's what good soldiers do. Meanwhile, today's release of a CTV/Globe & Mail poll indicates that 62% of Canadians oppose sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan. Oops. My friends, it's too late. They're already there; having been deployed oversees by the former Liberal government, which was no doubt trying to keep our soldiers' combat boots and guns from sullying the streets of cities here at home.

The Danish cartoon fiasco goes on and on and on and on. Pakistan is under virtual military lockdown, (that is to say, those areas of the country under the control of the military government are in lockdown). Apparently, the regime initially supported the street protests, until the street protesters turned against the regime. It is an open question how far this will go.

In northern Nigeria, home to the majority of Muslim Nigerians, Islamic mobs protesting the Danish cartoons, saw no contradiction in demanding greater religious sensitivity by burning Christian churches and murdering Christians. Danish intolerance apparently cannot be tolerated. Nigerian Christians must suffer.

In Canada protests by Muslims over the cartoons received little media attention because they were peaceful. In my view that circumstance was very newsworthy, but I am not a member of the main stream news oligarchy. After all, I only have around 40 visitors a day. Wait a minute. Those numbers must rival the number of viewers of CBC TV. Maybe I am a media oligarch after all.

The Right to Offend

2006-02-23T07:55:00.000-05:00

A clear demarcation exists in this civilization between those who cherish and defend the right to free speech and those who believe that the public good is served by constraining its public exercise in instances where certain groups may take offence.

This latter view lies at the very heart of what we call political correctness. Political correctness is pernicious in its nature and must be eradicated if we wish to bequeath our liberties to our children and our childrens' children.

Jewish store clerk tortured and murdered

2006-02-21T07:59:00.000-05:00

According to Sebasian Rotella, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times:

PARIS - - In a new case of strife and brutality in France's immigrant neighborhoods, authorities alleged Monday that anti-Semitism influenced a gang that kidnapped a Jewish store clerk, tortured him for more than three weeks and
killed him. ......

The kidnappers, who called themselves "The Barbarians," beat, burned and mutilated Halimi during 24 days of captivity in the cellar of a tough housing project in Bagneux, southwest of the capital, according to investigators.
The gang taunted Halimi's family and a rabbi with anti-Semitic epithets and recited Koranic verses during telephone calls and e-mails demanding wildly diverging amounts of ransom that never were collected, investigators said. The kidnappers also sent photos of the victim with a gun to his head, bound and blindfolded, apparently mimicking images of hostages and abused prisoners in Iraq. Those actions and others led prosecutors to add aggravating circumstances of anti-Semitism to the charges sought against some of the suspects.
"When the family said they didn't have money, they told them to go to a synagogue to get the money," said Sammy Ghozlan, a Jewish leader who is a retired police chief and has campaigned against anti-Semitic crime here in recent years. "This gang massacred this young man. They cut off ears and fingers. It was like they had a trophy, a Jewish kid, and everybody abused him."
According to Monday's edition of Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Halimi's mother criticized the police for moving too slowly and for ignoring the anti-Semitic motives.
"If Ilan hadn't been Jewish, he wouldn't have been murdered," Ruth Halimi told Haaretz.

The fact that the group has no known ties to Islamic extremist groups does not mean they don't. On the other hand I am no longer sure that is a prerequisite for what is unfolding within Islam today.

Well, at least in this case, the excuse for murder and mayhem is is naked greed and hatred and not some Danish political cartoons.

Murder and Mayhem

2006-02-20T20:12:00.000-05:00

The Islamic anti-west hate campaign continues. Anyone who continues to hold to the view that the current murders and riots by hundreds of thousands of Muslims around the globe is more than peripherally connected to a half dozen political cartoons in a Danish newspaper is thick beyond belief.

This situation has nothing to do with insults directed at the Islamic prophet Mohammed. It has everything to do with a visceral hatred and intolerance of millions of Muslims towards Christianity and the West and a bullying attempt to make us adhere to the rules of Dhimmitude. A reasonable person will find it hard to credit the oft repeated mantra that Islam is a religion of peace. Actions speak for themselves.

Last week a leading Islamic cleric in Pakistan issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill the Danish political cartoonists. On Saturday, Nigerian Islamic mobs killed 15 Nigerian Christians and burned 11 Christian churches to the ground. I gather the sectarian murders and the church burnings was intended to avenge the cartoon insult in far off Denmark.

Think about that. It certainly says a lot about the Islamic views of tolerance and peace.

In a related event, the United Church of Canada (for my non-Canadian readers - this is a very liberal Christian church which is rapidly becoming extinct) has condemned the publishing of the cartoons as a racist act. This is the text of the church's letter.

Dear Imam Patel and Imam Slimi;

Greetings in the name of Jesus, whom both Christians and Muslims honour.

On behalf of The United Church of Canada we wish to express to you and through the Council of Imams, to the Islamic communities of Canada, our deepest regret that the name of Muhammad has been so tragically misused in the depictions of cartoons first published in Europe, but now also in Canada.

We believe that the intention of publishing the cartoons has little to do with freedom of expression and much to do with incitement to racial and religious hatred. As you have noted in your recent press release, the cartoons suggest that Islam itself teaches, condones and encourages violence, bombings and the mistreatment of women. Furthermore, the implication is that all Muslims believe so as well. This we know to be untrue. The answer to your question of "why publish such cartoons?" we believe is simply racial hatred. In other forms it has been called Islamophobia.

These attitudes should have no place in Canada. Because we all share responsibility for the society in which we live, we wish to offer our sincere apologies that such attitudes can persevere in a country that we believe can and should be a model for the world of racial and ethnic respect.
May God's peace be with you.

The Muslim world could certainly do with some peace right now.

Up to this point the United Church of Canada has failed to denounce the evident bigotry, hatred and "Christianaphobia" that underlies Muslim murders, death threats, riots and church burnings around the world. Don't hold your breath until it does. You'll explode for sure.

Oh yes, ten people were killed in Libya and five in Pakistan.

From CNN News

An angry but peaceful protest in the British capital Saturday drew more than 15,000 people to Trafalgar Square. They prayed before marching through Hyde Park. Many carried placards.

"Europe lacks respect for others," stated one placard. "Don't they teach manners in Denmark?" asked another.

There were no arrests or reports of violence Taji Mustafa, a spokesman for the Muslim Action Committee, said the protests are sparked by the Muslim people's reverence for the prophet.

"So when he is demonized, the young and old are deeply affected," Mustafa said. "As long as the abuse is ongoing we will continue to rise up in protest."

The general anger over the cartoons was stoked when several newspapers reprinted the cartoons and by Calderoli revealing the T-shirt on television, he said.

Mustafa added that the cartoons were reminiscent of attacks on Jews in European publications in the 1930s.

"Now there is a demonization of the Muslim community, so we have to speak up to prevent something like the Holocaust from happening," he said.

You understand now? Muslims have to rage about the world destroying Christian businesses (Pakistan, Nigeria, Libya etc.), burning embassies (Beruit and Damascus), burning churches (Nigeria) killing priests ( Turkey) and other Christians (Nigeria) and threatening to murder the political cartoonists (Pakistan and India) so that we won't treat them like the Nazis treated the Jews!

And we are expected to hang our heads and offer contrite apologies.

Manners indeed.

Support Denmark.

2006-02-19T21:36:00.000-05:00

I bought some more Danish Havari cheese today and I'm eating it while sipping on a robust Australian red.

Mmmmmmmmmm good.

Prime Minister Harper Going to Afghanistan?

2006-02-19T20:08:00.000-05:00

Fri Feb 17, 6:30 PM ET Yahoo News

OTTAWA (CP) - Stephen Harper is considering one of the most chaotic corners of Afghanistan for his first foreign trip as prime minister.

The Taliban stronghold of Kandahar is being weighed against a more genteel option - visits with the presidents of the U.S. and Mexico - for Harper's first trip abroad in office. Harper began considering Kandahar late last month after his federal election win, at the urging of senior military brass.

He was told that such a visit would send a strong message about his commitment to the Armed Forces and about Canada's desire to make a difference in the world.

Canada's military presence in Kandahar is being increased to 2,200 this month in an effort to improve security in the longstanding Taliban bastion.

A suicide bomber killed a Canadian diplomat there and seriously injured three Edmonton-based soldiers when he attacked their convoy last month.
What a great idea!

Gadzooks - What's This?

2006-02-19T19:50:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I watched the Canadian Olympic men's hockey team crash and burn whilst playing Finland. Finland has yet to taste defeat in this tournament. Canada has yet to score a goal.

Please do not adjust your computer. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. You have plunged unwittingly into the Outer Limits.

Yikes!

Wayne Gretzky thinks he's seen pressure from the gambling ring affair? (For the record, I believe him innocent.) Wait t'ill the crows pick the flesh from his bones over this. This stuff is important! And the Great One selected the team.

The rich ain't like us

2006-02-19T15:45:00.000-05:00

Last week (February 13, 2006) I read an article from the Ottawa Citizen, quoting a study done by the Vanier Institute for the Family, that shocked me. I meant to post on it sooner, but haven't found the time until now.

Cash-strapped Canadian families are racking up debt at an alarming rate and the record number of households declaring bankruptcy will continue to rise unless people tighten their belts now, a new report warns.

"The alarm bells are ringing louder than ever," says the Vanier Institute for the Family, in a report on the state of family finances in Canada released on the weekend.

"They rang for governments and for many businesses and they did something about it. It is now time for families to do something about their own situations."

The average household income is now about $55,000 a year, roughly the same as at the start of the decade and up only one per cent, or about $500, from 1990.

In contrast, average household debt now stands at about $70,920, up 16 per cent from 2000, and 40 per cent from 1990.
"On average, households are putting nothing away for a rainy day, for a bout of unemployment, or for retirement," the report says.

That Canadian families are facing escalating debt does not surprise those of us raising families. What shocked me is the very little increase in average family incomes since 1990.
Those of us who pay attention, even peripherally, to the grotesque increases in executive pay packages over the past 15 years cannot help but compare what (often unsuccessful) captains of industry are earning in comparison to the average Joe and Jane. A $500.00 increase for families since 1990! That's it.

This is really appalling. We are getting tossed the crumbs.

Bill Graham Passes Wind

2006-02-16T19:23:00.000-05:00

(The Honourable Bill Graham, Leader of Her Majesty's Arrogant Opposition)

In today's Globe and Mail (hat tip to Neale News) we read that Bill Graham, the Leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition is saying the Liberals will not vote with the minority Conservative government in parliament, laying the onus on the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois to keep the government afloat.
Ottawa -- Opposition Leader Bill Graham said he will not be afraid to defeat Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government, even though the Liberal Party will spend much of the year in a leadership race.

Mr. Harper must either accommodate Liberal positions on key issues such as child care and income-tax cuts or turn to the New Democratic Party and Bloc Québécois for support in the House of Commons, Mr. Graham said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
He placed the onus for avoiding a quick election on the New Democrats and the Bloc, saying they triggered the last election out of political opportunism.

"We're not in the business of propping up the government," he said. "We're the Official Opposition. And that is our role, and we will stick to our points where they are important to the future of the country.

"Other parties will have to decide whether they want to compromise on this, because they're the ones - the Canadian public very well knows - that put us in this position. They're the ones that created the Harper government. They're the ones that are going to have to accommodate it."

Mr. Graham said he believes Canadians do not want to go to the polls again soon, and he recognizes the possible consequences of his warning: "It could lead to an election."

Consider that statement carefully. Mr. Graham is saying that it is other opposition parties that "put us in this position." He says they're the ones that created the Harper government.

No Mr. Graham. That is all wrong. It shows that you have learned nothing from your electoral defeat. Let us be plain spoken here. The opposition merely toppled your arrogant and corrupt government (Goodness gracious, it wasn't their role to prop up your government either.) But more importantly, the opposition did not, as you say, create the Harper government.

THE PEOPLE OF CANADA CREATED THE HARPER GOVERNMENT!

And a Decima poll just released says we would bloody well do it again if a vote were to be held today. You windbag.

Saddam on Hunger Strike

2006-02-14T21:43:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well. Apparently Saddam Hussein doesn't like the "tough" way the new chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, is running the trial. Poor lad. No more tantrums and histrionics are allowed. What's a former murderous dictator to do? The grotesque master of feeding political opponents into industrial shredders, and his henchman half brother, have gone on a hunger strike, that's what.

According to Associated Press reporter Hamza Hendawi, the infamous prisoners are protesting the proceedings by refusing to attend court and by wearing pajamas. Judge Abdeel-Rahman has hauled them into court anyway. Good for him.

Let's hope Saddam keeps at it. It will save everyone a lot of trouble if he shrivels away to the miserable death he so clearly deserves.

Carbuncle's clarion cry!

2006-02-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

Occam of the Carbuncle is a tad steamed. He should be.

I don't believe what they believe and I'm not about to start. Ever. More importantly, I will read what I want to read and I will express myself as I see fit, not within the strictures of Sharia, but according to my rights as a citizen of a liberal democracy. That means Muslims do not have the right to impose upon me their own views of what is or is not proper, what is or is not sacrilege or blasphemy.
Their sacrilege is not mine. Their God is not my God. They may not damage my property or my person as reprisal for anything I might say or write. They may express themselves as freely as I. They may insult me. They may shun me. They might even consider ignoring me. But they may not threaten me. They may not do harm in furtherance of the precepts of their religion, just as I may not do harm to show my objection to their dogma.

That about sums it up, folks. Go read the rest.

Islamic mobs continue riots

2006-02-14T18:31:00.000-05:00

World wide protests by Muslims protesting the Danish cartoon incident continue.

Thousands of demonstrators attacked Western-owned businesses in the eastern city of Lahore, set dozens of vehicles on fire and staged a sit-in at the provincial legislature. Guards at a bank that was attacked shot two men dead, said Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao.

Police used tear gas, fired into the air and swung batons to try to control the crowd. In Islamabad, about 400 students stormed into the city's diplomatic enclave and were repelled by tear gas. Outside the enclave, water cannons were turned on the crowd.

The demonstrations were among the most violent in Pakistan over the publication of cartoons in a Danish newspaper in September. The caricatures have been reprinted by several European publications and recently by a few Canadian publications.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Canadian Minister of National Defence, Brigadier General (Ret'd) Gordon O?Connor has stated that the publication of the Danish cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammed is placing Canadian Forces troops deployed in Afghanistan at greater risk. According to today's National Post (hat tip to Neale News), he said:
"It doesn't help. Radicals in Syria and Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, they get people roused up because their religion's being offended," Mr. O'Connor said in an interview. "We don't need any more risk in the area than we have."

General O'Connor is no doubt only trying to minimize the real danger facing our soldiers in Operation Enduring Freedom and he has a point. But realistically, Islamists are currently doing their level best to kill our troops, however and whenever they can. If there is an increased operational risk to our soldiers arising from the publication of these cartoons it is surely minimal in comparison to the political risks being run by Western governments kow-towing to the manipulations and bullying arising from the Danish cartoon incident.

It is in this context that Gordon O'Connor has got it all wrong.

Mr. O'Connor said there's little that can be done to prevent the Western Standard from reproducing the cartoons.

"I have a bit of concern but it's freedom of the press. Just like Denmark, we can't control what's in the press. If people do it, we have to live with the consequences," he said.

"I'm hoping that religious groups around the country, around the world will understand that our government does not countenance ridiculing anybody's
religion."

Is that what is happening here? Ezra Levant and the National Post is ridiculing another religion by printing the cartoons? I think not. It would take better writers than those employed by the National Post (and they are fine scribes) to ridicule Islam in this affair. Frankly, a great segment of Islam is doing that job quite well all on its own. The Canadian Islamic Conference, led by Mohamed Elmasry (who asserts that Israeli civilians are legitimate targets) continues his efforts at invoking Canada's hate laws against the Western Standard for publishing political cartoons.

"I think there is a fine line between freedom of the press and freedom to incite hate. These cartoons cross that line," said Mohamed Elmasry, the CIC's national president. "Canada has a hate literature law and we will be able to test it to see indeed if the law protects the well-being of minorities."

What gross hypocrisy! Why doesn't the news media remind its readers/listeners just who this guy is and what he preaches?

Let us accept that Muslims do not like having the man they assert to be the greatest and final prophet being the object of political cartoons emanating from a non-Muslim source. Fine. None of us likes having our faith criticised or attacked.

I am deeply offended when my Catholicism is viciously attacked under the guise of art by a man who dunks a crucifix in a jar of urine. I am further offended when the main stream media publishes photos of this desecration. Yet the main stream media does not censor itself when it faces editorial decision respecting this, and like matters. It is only when we come to matters concerning Islam where the media withholds the offending images. Why? Because the media flaks fears for their lives in such situations (as well they should).

I am very deeply offended as a Catholic when a young Muslim man in Turkey shoots a priest in the back as the priest kneels in prayer after mass and runs from the scene screaming Allah Akbar. I am very aggrieved when I see Christian churches frequently burned or ransacked in Muslim countries by Islamic mobs. I am further aggrieved when the main stream media glosses over such attacks. I could go on. In fact, I shall.

How about the beheadings of innocent young girls on their way to school; girls whose only discernable crimes is that they happened to offend Muslims by being Christian girls who attend school. Or is it that just that they were Christian? .... or girls? .... or were being schooled? It's hard to know for sure. All the aforementioned appears to offend much of Islam.

You get my drift. What I do not do is demand an apology from democratic Arab governments for the actions of private citizens. Of course, I couldn't even if I wanted to. I don't go about threatening death to Muslims and burning Arab consulates to the ground in order to enforce the provisions of canon (Church) law on non-Catholics. Nor do I invent and circulate cartoons much more offensive than the bland Danish originals for the express purpose of inciting riots, as is the case in this affair.

Let us get some important matters straight. We non-Muslim Canadians may choose not offend Muslims in this affair as an act of simple courtesy. I have not published any of the cartoons on my blog for this reason alone, although as the protests continue and develop I may change my mind. I have no duty in law to withhold offensive commentary. None at all. I am a free man living in a free country. And if you don't like it, well .... tough titty.

Have a go at my faith, if you choose. It is resilient and I'm more than capable of defending it. I won't threaten you with death. I won't burn your home or your car. I won't march in the streets, which are too slushy for good protesting, anyway.

But whatever you do, don't ever ask me to be a willing Dhimmi. Won't happen. Not now. Not ever.

Now where is that Tuborg? This Havarti cheese is really quite delightful ......

Happy Saint Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T15:16:00.000-05:00

I wish everyone well on this ancient Catholic feast of Saint Valentine. Of course you know that Valentine is a saint and a Catholic priest, right? He really isn't the CEO of Hallmark greeting cards, or even the President of the International Association of Chocolateers. Sorry. I can understand the confusion.

As Lifesite News notes, Saint Valentine is a martyr for the Catholic faith, not because he strapped a belt of exploding roses onto his torso and ignited it on a crowded London bus, I hasten to add, but because he refused to stop performing marriages, as ordered by the emperor of ancient Rome.
"St Valentine was a Roman Catholic priest who continued to perform marriages even after the Emperor Claudius II had outlawed marriage in a short-sighted attempt to increase the size of his army. The faithful priest was arrested and condemned to death. Before being executed, he sent a note to a young bride where his closing words were Your Valentine."
Now you know the rest of the story. Be tender to your spouse today. Marriage is important. Father Valentine understood that truth and gave his life for it. Those of us in the marriage state are only called upon to live it, faithfully, fruitfully and fully.

Under my rough curmudgeonly exterior, I love you Lady Mad.

Western Standard Publishes Political Cartoons

2006-02-13T19:31:00.000-05:00

The publisher of the Western Standard, Ezra Levant, is publishing the infamous political cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammed. Mr. Levant says that he is doing so because these cartoons are, "... the central fact in the largest newstory of the month" and that the Western Standard is a newsmagazine. According to Mr. Levant.

"I'm doing something completely normal. I'm publishing the centre of a controversy. That's what news magazines do."

Mr. Mohamed Elmasry, leader of the Canadian Islamic Congress, warned on Sunday that his organization will seek to have charges laid against Levant's publication under Canada's hate laws.

Mr. Elmasry is, of course, perfectly entitled to try and abuse Canada's hate laws in order to try and silence the Canadian media if that is how he chooses to spend his time. One hopes that any Crown Attorney he approaches with his accusation hands him a copy of the Constitution of Canada and shows him to the door. We'll see. Meanwhile it is useful for the rest of us to recall that only last October Mr. Elmasry said some remarkably hateful things himself. You may recall this commentary from Damian Penny's blog, Daimnation.

On Oct. 19, Mr. Elmasry appeared on Michael Coren Live, a Toronto-area television talk show. As we have noted many times before, Mr. Elmasry takes a rather dim view of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. So it was hardly surprising to hear him tell host Michael Coren that the Palestinian intifada should be seen as the modern day equivalent of the French resistance -- with Israel, of course, being cast in the Nazi role.

But then Mr. Elmasry went a step further. Not only were attacks against Israeli military targets acceptable, he said, but also those against civilians. The CIC president justified this on the basis that Israel has a military system that requires many young adults to periodically report for training or reserve duty. Speaking of the Jewish adults who are regularly blown to bits while they sit in buses and cafes, he declared: "They are not innocent [because] the total population of Israel is part of the army ... From 18 on, they are part of the soldiers, even if they have civilian clothes."

"What about women?" Mr. Coren asked.

"The same," said Mr. Elmasry.

"So everyone in Israel ... irrespective of gender, over the age of 18, is a a valid target?" asked Mr. Coren.

"Yes," replied Mr. Elmasry.

We have noted the irony of Mr. Elmasry's extremism before. But in light of such odious pronouncements, it is worth pointing it out again. Here is a man who obsessively lectures Canadians about their preconceptions of Islam. He then walks into a television studio and whitewashes the terroristic slaughter of Jews -- single-handedly reinforcing for viewers the poisonous stereotype that would have all Muslims cast as apologists for terror.

This whole business reeks of hypocrisy and bullying. I have nothing against peaceful protest by anyone, but this has gone beyongd the pale. The only hate being exibited towards anyone in this affair is by Muslims against non-Muslims ... a regrettable but true circumstance, for which those engaged in this grand manipulation have much to answer.

Hat tip to Cathy Shaidle of Relapsed Catholic.

Franciscan friar attacked in Turkey

2006-02-11T14:56:00.000-05:00

From the Asia Times:

9 February, 2006
Turkey
A priest is beaten in isomer, to the cries of Â“we will kill you allÂ”

This latest attack targets sulfonamidean friar and comes the same day the Vatican confirms Benedict XVIÂ’s visit to Turkey, scheduled for November.

AnkarAsiansews) - With the battle cry "We will kill you all" a group of youths launched themselves in attack on a Franciscan friisomer Izmir (the ancient Smyrna). The attack took place within the confines of St. Helen's parish.

Speaking with evident evident emotion, Msgr Luigi Padovese, Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, says "The boys grabbed him by the throat shouting 'we will kill you all' ". According to the bishop this latest aggression is "fruit of rampant fanaticism". The attack took place within the monastic compound. The priest, who hails from Slovenia, is Martin Kmetec.
Msgr Padovese says that brother Kmetec reported the incident to local police but "they took little heed of the attack".

Go read the rest. This threat comes on the heels of the murder in Turkey of Italian Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, of Santa Maria Church in Trabzon, Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims are going beserk around the world because of cartoons (the worst of which are fake and never published in Denmark), yet utter little in the way of protest when Muslims attack Christian clerics or burn Christian churches.

The good news is that the Turkish government has invited the pontiff to visit Turkey this fall. Clearly, many Muslims are trying to find ways to reach out to non-Muslims.

Mosques near Montreal Vandalized

2006-02-09T21:37:00.000-05:00

From CTV News we get this little gem.
... police are investigating acts of vandalism at two Islamic mosques north of Montreal. Rocks were thrown through windows at the Islamic Cultural
Centre and the Al-Hissane Islamic Centre. They are less than a kilometre apart,
said police spokesman Guy Lajeunesse. Amid rising tensions over the Muhammad
cartoons, police believe there could be a connection, and are stepping up
patrols around these two mosques.
Which goes to show us that Islam is not alone in harbouring some people with cretinous attitudes. Arseh*les are everywhere. I hope that those responsible are soon caught by the police and tried before a judge in accordance with the rule of law. Any attack on a place of worship is repugnant.

Offending Religious Sensibilities

2006-02-09T16:45:00.000-05:00

photo of St. Maron (Maronite Catholic) church in Beruit from Catholic Online

As much of the Islamic world writhes in ugly anger over some Danish political cartoons they find to be offensive to Islam, we here in the true north strong and free have an opportunity to consider what is really going on out there beyond the tundra.

We are told by sympathetic commentators in the main-stream media that there are essentially two reasonable reasons why Muslims are offended by the cartoons. First, we are told that Islam does not permit depictions of their prophet, as this might lead to idolatry. As medieval Islamic paintings exist that clearly depict their prophet, this would appear to be a spurious argument.

Second, we are told that Muslim's are simply outraged by the portrayal of Muhammed in the cartoons. In the most egregious cartoon Muhammed is drawn wearing a turban shaped like a bomb thereby, for some unknown reason, drawing a connection between terrorism and Islam. Muslims assert that their religion is a religion of peace and many are deeply offended by any suggestion to the contrary.

One can see how this insult might lead peace loving Muslims to prove the Danish cartoonists wrong by spontaneously burning Danish embassies to the ground, demanding that heads be cut off the offending cartoonists, newspaper publishers and editors, stomping on the Danish flag (which contains a cross), boycotting European goods in general and denouncing the Americans, ransacking a Maronite Catholic church and the chancery of the Greek Orthodox bishop in Beruit.

To be fair, in the Maronite Catholic church attack one Muslim cleric shouted, "Do not harm the holy church; the anger is against Denmark and not Christians." One man who tried to plant a bomb was thwarted when a church window would not open. It seems there is diversity in Islamic beliefs, after all.

What have the Americans got to do with the cartoon frenzy you ask (a factoid noted no doubt by my American readers)? It is enough to know that it is all George Bush's fault. In this matter, rioting Muslim mobs converge with latte drinking western liberals everywhere.

Of course, it simply beggars reason to hold that all these Muslims are ranting, rioting, burning and bullying, in the hundreds of thousands, in numerous countries around the world, just because of those dumb ass cartoons.

If offending another religion is the issue, Muslims would not be regularly burning Christian churches around the world. If it were the issue, Muslims would march in the streets to denounce these burnings. If it were the issue, newspapers in the Muslim world would not regularly publish much worse political cartoons about Jews; cartoons akin to the worst anti-Semitic hate ravings of Hitler's Nazi regime. If giving religious offence is the issue, Christian schoolgirls would not have be beheaded on their way to school in Indonesia by Islamic fanatics. If it were the issue, Muslims would march in the streets to protest murders of such innocents by their co-religionists.

Did I mention the murder (shot in the back) of Father Andrea Santoro, in Santa Maria Church in Trabzon, Turkey? It is said that the murderer fled the scene shouting "Allah Akbar." Indeed he is, as the killer will find out one day when he meets Him.

What is to be done? According to the Associated press in today's Jerusalem Post, the leader of Hizbullah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has a way to end the mob violence. Leading a march of some 700,000 or more outraged Muslim's in Beruit he opined:

"There can be no settlement before an apology and there can be no settlement
before laws are legislated by the European Parliament and the parliaments of
European countries," Nasrallah said.

Islamic nations should demand "a law committing the press and the media in the West that proscribes insulting our prophet. If this matter cannot be achieved that means [the West] insists on continuing this," he added.

All I can say is that Muslims now hold the world's record for the ease with which they are offended and humiliated; a status which heretofore I believed to be the sole purview of French speaking Quebecois separatists.

At least Sheik Nasrallah clarified the real agenda here. The issue, in case you missed it, is the demand that Europeans submit to Islam. That is the agenda of the Islamic puppeteers who manipulate the mobs in the streets. This demand is entirely consistent with the Islamic concept of dhimmitude, whereby non-Muslims must submit and recognize their inferiority to the Islamic faith. Through such measures they intend to prevail.

The question is, will Europe submit, or has it now fully awakened to the peril facing us all?

Free clean blades for cutters

2006-02-07T23:20:00.000-05:00

From the (London) Times Online comes this cutting edge story (thanks, I think, to my friend Sancho Panza)

Sarah-Kate Templeton, Medical Correspondent

NURSES want patients who are intent on harming themselves to be provided with clean blades so that they can cut themselves more safely.

They say people determined to harm themselves should be helped to minimise the risk of infection from dirty blades, in the same way as drug addicts are issued with clean needles.

This could include giving the ?self-harm? patients sterile blades and clean packets of bandages or ensuring that they keep their own blades clean. Nurses would also give patients advice about
which parts of the body it is safer to cut.

Go read the rest, if you want. How depressing.

Disappointing Effort Mr. Harper

2006-02-06T21:12:00.000-05:00

Ye gods and little fishes! I thought I'd be writing the praises of the new Conservative government today, heralding the swearing in of Canada's 22nd Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. It was supposed to herald a different way of governing this delusional Dominion and a departure from cynicism and cronyism.

What is this all about then? Mr. Harper has begun his term as Prime Minister with two absolutely appalling decisions which undercut the hopes and aspirations of Conservatives like me who prayed for an small respite from the nonsense of the Liberal government.

In choosing his first Cabinet Mr. Harper selects a man as international trade minister who two weeks ago was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament, and who sat in the previous Liberal Cabinet of Paul Martin as industry minister. The Honourable Paul Emerson said on the radio (I was commuting home) tonight that he was not switching parties because of the opportunity to continue in power (no, no, of course not), but because he wanted to serve his constituents in the best possible manner (sound of trumpets). I only regret that it was radio so I couldn't actually see his nose grow.

Secondly, but no less appalling was the appointment of Montreal resident Michael Fortier, the Conservative campaign manager during the election to the unelected Senate and hence to the Cabinet as the Minister of Public Works (it certainly works for him) and Government Services. Why run for office when it can be granted as a gift by Prime Ministerial fiat.

I don't fault the new ministers anywhere near as much as I fault the guy we just swore in as Prime Minister. What crap! If this is a harbinger of things to come, this government will not do well.

Catholic Students Riot on Yonge Street

2006-02-05T14:39:00.000-05:00

Notice: This story is a recreation of a JtMNews story hacked out of existence by the Islamic Hackers Brigade, one of the emerging radical jihadist groups formed in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. The story was pieced together from a fragment of a scroll found at Castle Mad and the razor sharp memory of JtM himself. It is not a word for word account of the ealier destroyed post, but is faithful to the truth. The story is shocking and not suitable for children. Please send them to their rooms before reading any further.

JtMNews
By John the Mad
February 2, 2006
It all started last Friday when some Catholics undergraduates from Saint Michael's College of the University of Toronto paid their nightly visit to their favourite Irish pub on Bay Street last Wednesday. They came across a Saudi Arabian newspaper in their booth that had been left behind by a Saudi prince. They figured out that he was a prince of the House of Saud because of his dress and behaviour. According to one of the students, Mary McGuire:
He like wore flowing robes and a rope wound around this cloth thing on his
head and he had was swarthy and overweight and had a goatee and everything. The waitress told us he came in flashed a wad of awesome $100 bills, drank several mugs of beer from his personal 24 caret beer mug and followed that up with some very expensive single malt scotch. Like, he even left her his beer mug and the deed to a villa in some town called Andalusia or something, as a tip. The prince then climbed into his chauffeured driven Rolls Royce limo accompanied by three freckle faced school girls in kilts.
The students told this reporter that they perused the Saudi newspaper he left behind as they were working their way though their first pint. Fortunately one of the students named Bernadette majored in sociology and had done a paper on the women?s liberation movement in the Middle East as it pertained to the historic development of the hijab from an instrument of patriarchal oppression into a chic counter-culture symbol of coolness among young Islamic co-eds on Western university campuses. Bernadette apparently had learned Arabic in Dubai during the previous March break reading week in in order to research her topic. According to Sean O'Toole:

We were like totally shocked we when she translated that Islam asserts that Jesus is only a prophet. How gross! We Catholics are brought up to believe that Jesus is the Son of the Living God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity and the Saviour of the world. We were very deeply offended to see this false view of our Lord published in an Arab newspaper.

"Yeah it?s grotty alright," confirmed Patrick Maloney. "When we went back to our dorm we Googled around and discovered this view of Jesus is very common in the Muslim world. They say we Catholics corrupted scriptures and that when the bible quotes Jesus saying that 'I and the Father are one' and 'He who has seen me has seen the Father' it cannot be trusted. What an affront!

Traumatized, we went over to the Newman Centre to consult with Father Cassidy. When Father heard what the Muslims were claiming about Jesus, he
flipped. "What an egregious outrage!" he spluttered. "The Vatican shall hear of
this."

Father Cassidy then showed us an old version of the Baltimore Catechism, published in 1956, in which it states that it is the duty of every Mick, who is old enough to patronize a premise where alcohol is being served, to punch the snot out of anyone who differs from Catholic orthodoxy on this point.
Father noted that the antiquity of the Baltimore Catechism makes it more authoritative that the more recent documents of Vatican II, because it was written closer to the time of the Apostles. Father Cassidy said we were members
of the Church militant and we must therefore militate.

The students told me that at that moment they understood their Christian duty in a way not previously felt. This was, if not outright war exactly, a theological disagreement of great importance. They girded their loins by guzzling a couple of bottles of cheap Ontario merlot and set out onto Bay Street waving the Baltimore Catechism, splashing holy water about and chanting slogans like, "JESUS ROCKS" and "CATHOLICISM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE" and "KICK THE SNOT OUT OF ANYONE WHO SAYS IT ISN?T." Simultaneously, the pubs were just closing and the ranks of the protesters swelled as the bars emptied of students. As Bernadette told me,

We were even joined by a few dozen Anglican theologs from Victoria College
who had been visiting St. Mike?s cadging some grass from their suppliers. They
unfurled banners they happened to have with them that read, "GAY, LESBIAN AND TRANSGENDERED THEOLOGIANS FOR CHRIST" and ?THIS IS ALL GEORGE BUSH'S FAULT."

"Soon we has a couple of hundred students marching and chanting and glaring at anyone who didn?t look Catholic," said Patrick Maloney. "When some passers by proffered their bona fides by making the sign of the cross, we cheered."

The students realized they needed a Muslim focal point to express their rage at the blatant Islamic blasphemy. After a short caucus the protesters turned off Bay Street and headed over to The Golden Crescent falafel shop on Yonge Street. Upon their arrival they stood on the street and chanted threats at the shop. "WE DEMAND FISH AND CHIPS" and "MEAT ON FRIDAY IS AN INSULT TO GOD" and "GO HOME HERETICS" The protesters then politely purchased a falafel from the shop, took it outside to the sidewalk, poured aftershave on it and set it ablaze. It is said that the glow could be seen for a metre or more.

The Toronto police riot squad stood by not doing anything. Some even winked
and surreptitiously flashed us their rosary beads. It was an awesome moment of
solidarity, I can tell you.

Then the falafel shop manager emerged and we immediately knew we had made a tactical error. His complexion was dark and his hair was in dreadlocks. Sean said that he shouted in a quizzical voice, "Go home? Hey man, I was born in Scarborough?"

At that point a murmur ran through the crowd as we realized he was an ethnically Jamaican gentleman. Every Torontonian knows that ever since Prime Minister Paul Martin seized control over guns in Canada that Jamaicans are the only armed civilians left on the streets ..... not that we blame them for that ...... as we fully acknowledge that many, but by no means all Jamaicans only carry handguns because their free swimming pool and ice arena funding was slashed by former Conservative Premier Mike Harris during their formative years, ..... hereby stunting their normal pycho-social development and driving them into street gangs not of their personal choosing ..... for most are hard working and good soccer players, ..... though very discriminated against.

As the realization of the potential danger we found ourselves in outside that falafel shop sunk in, (for we only had Baltimore Catechisms and aftershave lotion for our defence), we still knew in our hearts that we were obligated to act in accordance with our Catholic Faith. We were obliged, as newly aware members of the Church militant to conduct ourselves in the same manner as the Apostles in the bible did when faced with grave danger. Accordingly, we consulted the Douay-Rheims English version of the Catholic bible, looked up the relevant passages, realized our scriptural course of action and fled.

And so it is that this intrepid reporter found the undergraduates cowering in an upper room of a college dormitory, yet eager to express their grievances against Islamic insults to their faith. Having heard their story I know that this is not over yet, not by a long shot. The protests will continue and grow. More falafels will be burned as this protest grows strength. The Government of Saudi Arabia and all Arab governments must apologize. This insult has legs.

Don't say you weren't warned.

My missing post

2006-02-05T09:11:00.000-05:00

????????????????????

Okay what is going on here at blogger.com? Two days ago I posted a satire on Irish Catholic students from St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto rioting on Bay Street over the Islamic world's contention that Jesus is but a prophet and not the Son of God and Saviour of the World.

Where is my post? It has vapourized. Is anyone else having problems with losing posts in Blogger? Is there an Islamic hacker jihad nefariously destroying such posts?

Worse yet, I don't have a copy of the post. I tell you that such genius is hard to reproduce.

Give me back my priceless commentary.

The Religion of Peace Burns an Embassy

2006-02-04T19:07:00.000-05:00

(AP Photo)

The picture above is of the remains of the Danish embassy in Syria. A Muslim mob burned it to the ground because a Danish newspaper published some unflattering cartoons last September of their prophet Muhammed. In the Islamic religion is is not acceptable to depict their prophet with a bomb in his turban. It is not acceptable to depict him at all; such portrayals apparently being idolatrous.

Thus, thousands of Muslims have marched in the streets in many countries. Muslim marchers have threartened to cut off the heads of offenders in Western countries. Danish goods are being boycotted by Muslims.

In response, European newspapers are publishing the offending cartoons to make the point that there is freedom of expression in western countries. This further enrages Muslims and Arab governments are demanding apologies from European governments for the actions of independent domestic new outlets. Cartoonists (and newspaper staff) are going to the mattress in a legitimate fear for their lives.

In the middle of all of this we are told repeatedly that Islam is a religion of peace. It may well be, but the empirical evidence for that claim is getting scarce. For a religion claiming to be peaceful, it sure is finding it difficult to get along with other religions and cultures all around the world.

Why?

This is a legitimate question.