Of cats and men

My wife liked this one from her Page-A-Day cat calendar today:

Cats are independent, they don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they're home they like to be left alone and sleep.

In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat.

- Jay Leno

Lib MP Keith Martin moves in favour of free speech

Thanks to Joanne for this post on MP Keith Martin's motion (M-446) to delete Section 13(1) of the Human Rights Act.

Bravo Keith!!

Keith Martin is my MP. I've always thought of him as a bit of an opportunistic weasel and whiner. He's run for the leadership of the Reform Party then He was a Reformer when it was a safe bet and when he later ran for the Alliance leadership was always quick to complain about his "unfair" opponents, grabbing the nearest microphone (usually the CBC) to whine. That he's no team player is epitomized by his shift jump to the Liberals - I thought they deserved him.

That said, he is VERY popular with his constituents and will be hard for anyone to beat no matter what party he runs for. Also in his favour is that he does stand up for his principles and will defend them courageously no matter how unpopular that may make him with his party. In this case, more power to him.

Anyway, I've sent him a congratulatory email thanking him for his HRA motion.

Regarding Section 13 of the HRA.

Update: Joanne's comment twigged a second thunk. Could this backfire? If the skids weren't sufficiently greased and support lined up it could easily fail. Then where does that leave us? With implicitly renewed "approval" from parliament, emboldened HRCs would be in an even stronger position to press a PC censorship agenda. That would be a big step backward. Then again I'm not sure how these private member's motion thingies work. So maybe I'm being unnecessarily paranoid.

More: Much more at Blazing Cat Fur (and), Mike Brock (with a long list of others).

Open borders

This from an American friend:

I saw a billboard sign that said:

NEED HELP? CALL JESUS

____ 1-800-005-3787 ______

Out of curiosity, I did. A Mexican showed
up with a lawnmower.

[h/t Vinney Di]

Cowards, scofflaws, appeasers

Or, "I’m from the government - I’m here to help you."

That title and subtitle would be John Findlay’s description of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Ontario law enforcement officials for their pathetic response to the plight of Caledonians who are under siege by a violent, lawless, local Mohawk Indian band and its imported agitators and "warriors".

Mr. Findlay provides an outstanding background and summary of this sorry, on-going tale of government fecklessness. An end-note says:

John Findlay, a lawyer, has brought a class action suit against former OPP Comissioner Gwen Boniface, the former Haldimand provincial police detachment commander and the Ontario Government on behalf of several businesses and property owners in Caledonia.

Where do I donate?

For more see Joanne’s Journey. Joanne has been providing exceptional coverage of this for months, and saying many of the same things.

Also.

Canada’s Charter applies to Afghan detainees?

That’s what Amnesty International Canada and the BC Civil Liberties Union are contending in federal court. As David Frum puts it to his American audience:

One reason to follow Canadian politics is that Canada's hyper-activist courts often function as a kind of test kitchen, in which the legal left can experiment with concepts before advancing them in the US.

As one of the lawyers for Amnesty and the BCCLU puts it:

"If detainees are just protected by international law, only the general decides; if the Charter applies, the courts can overrule the generals. The real difference is who can supervise the generals."

That would be one more hand tied behind our military’s back. With friends like Amnesty and the BCCLU who needs the Taliban?

I wish these clowns would take as much interest in seeing that Canada’s Charter actually applies to Canadians - as in "freedom of expression."

[via]

Update (Feb 4/08): A response to Amnesty and BCCLU. [via]

What he said.

If I had Mike Brock’s talent I’d have said what he said in this great response to Leftist critics of this excellent defense of free speech.

I’ve nothing to add, except:

HRC colluding with Warman?

Mark Steyn on Richard Warman today:

What we have here is compelling circumstantial evidence of collusion between a serial plaintiff and his enablers at the CHRC.

I've written to the federal Minister of Justice about this matter. No reply so far.

Who knew?

Warren Kinsella & Richard Warman - rotten peas in a pod*

In recent days there’s been a blogospheric blizzard surrounding that illiberal Liberal hack and attack mutt Warren Kinsella and professional censor Richard Warman. Kinsella has been busy slagging Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn and at the same time boosting for his pal Richard Warman, lawyer, former HRC investigator and odious serial abuser of the odious HRCs’ odious censorship ‘system’.

A selective roundup:

Blazing Cat Fur: Steyn on Warman, Kate’s email, Oh Hell, it’s all here and here.
Five Feet of Fury: Warman, Kinsella,
Mike Brock: Freespeecher: The New Leftist Pejorative
Small Dead Animals: Freespeecher,
Western Standard: Kinsella is full of s*it
Mark Steyn: Warman vs David Icke, Kinsella’s fog, Warman and HRC "joke jurisprudence",
Ezra Levant: Ruthless bullies - blogger defense fund needed:

I don't think Kinsella is a thinker; he's a doer, or more accurately an undoer. And his goal here was to confuse and chill the growing media scrutiny of human rights commissions generally, and Warman in particular. In a series of over-the-top blog posts (here, here, here, etc.), he has threatened a number of Warman's critics with defamation lawsuits if they didn't stop. It was classic war room style: stampede your opponents with enough threats and half-truths to panic them into a hasty over-reaction.
[...]
Kinsella and Warman are lawyers by profession, but they try to avoid real lawsuits -- better to win by the mere threat of one. Compare their high school braggadocio towards little bloggers, with this rather meek demand letter sent to the Post in response to a column I had written about him. It was properly ignored....
[...]
That reply is not just me being lippy; it's knowing the difference between empty, blustering, Kinsella-ish threats made as a political tactic, and a real legal problem.

If Kinsella, Warman and their ilk are the lead champions of the HRC censorship system, then that alone should be sufficient to completely discredit it. There’s little doubt their quasi-fascistic mentality is well represented within the HRC bureaucracy. After all Warman was once an HRC insider. That should scare the crap out of any reasonable person.

Update (01-31-08): Ezra on "Borin' Warren"

*Note: I had originally considered naming this post "Kinsella and Warman - assholes" but when I started this blog I vowed not to use profanity (I use it more than enough off the web) and I intend to keep that vow.

"No wonder Canadians are confused and ill-informed"

At the "The Torch" Mark Collins posts a couple of excellent letters on Afstan he wrote to the Globe and Mail and the National Post.

Mark is unimpressed with Don Martin’s journalistic abilities:

...his vision is rather limited. He's basically all attitude and little cattle...:

No wonder Canadians are confused and ill-informed about the situation in Afghanistan. ...in his column "Canadian troops far from alone" (Jan. 24)...[...] he gets quite a few basic facts wrong--all the more emarkable since he was in Afghanistan himself just half a year ago.

[The litany of Martin’s errors follows]

Couldn't agree more. In December Mr. Martin wrote up his assessments of the year’s best and worst politicians. My thought at the time was that in a similar list of journalists he would easily be among the worst.

Up yours!

Mark Steyn’s Town Hall interview with Hugh Hewitt on Mark’s "travails with the Canadian Human Rights Commission":
Great line, great interview (transcript, audio).

[via]

I was asked whether I wanted to get off the hook, and I said no. I wanted to take the hook and shove it up the collective butt of the Canadian thought police.
... it was widely quoted in 'The Economist', and around the world, in fact, and 'The Australian'.

Rex Murphy on "human rights"

Mark Steyn praises Rex Murphy's latest CBC video and Globe and Mail column.

Media "cowardice camouflaged as principle"

The support from the Canadian media for Ezra Levant's human rights "case" has been pathetic. Never mind "support" there's been next to no news coverage. That's astounding! A magazine publisher being hauled before a "human rights" commission for printing news is of no interest!

In today's Sun Peter Worthington reminds us that this fits the pattern for a cowardly media:

We all remember those Danish cartoons, that most newspapers around the world declined to publish on grounds that they would offend Muslims.
[...]
... it was one of our "free" media's sorriest moments -- a persuasive example of cowardice camouflaged as principle. The cartoons were not religious slurs; they were political comment against Muslim extremism.

[via]

An aside: The Free Dominion petition (click the above graphic) still sits at a pathetic 2000 signatures. No Worthington, no Jonas, no Cosh, no [your favourite pundit here]. Are they withholding on some principle or other? Or does the petition just need better promotion / publicity?

Ezra Levant on the Glenn Beck Show

Here's the transcript (scroll down about 2/3).

Even better, thanks to Muslims Against Sharia in the comments, here's the video.

“military sugarcoating what is going on..” - Newman on Afstan

This incredible baloney from Don Newman’s interview with John Manley on Politics today:

11:40 Newman: ..you say there has to be better communication, better understanding by Canadians ... the implication being the government is in a way, uh, or maybe the military is sugar-coating what is going on, uh because we hear about the successes all the time in Afghanistan and then we hear almost back-channel both NATO and the US are reviewing their tactics in Afghanistan because the Taliban is doing better than it did. So Canadians are not getting straight goods from the government?

Sure Don, all Canadians get from the media is the good news.
Correction from Manley:

12:50 Manley: Not that I would ever be critical of the media, but Don, ... when we visited a project in the center of Kabul, an amazing redevelopment project largely funded by CIDA ...the whole package ... A group of Canadian reporters came to see it because it was a CIDA project. That afternoon, regrettably a Canadian soldier was killed. The whole [CIDA] story was killed so that we could report ... the incident, then a couple of days later we show the ramp ceremony, then we show the return, then we show the funeral. Canadians have the impression that all we do over there is sit and get shot. Well we’re into a lot more and balancing that story is an important element of ensuring that Canadians actually know what it is they either support or oppose.

Good for John Manley!

For more see Mark Collins' posts at The Torch here and here; and Joanne's Journey.

The Pope’s Galileo

Pope Benedict was recently prevented from delivering an address at La Sapienza University by Leftist faculty and student protests. They were upset that he was going to deliver an address supposedly defending the Catholic Church’s trial and conviction of Galileo.

David Warren writes about this linking it to "witch-hunting spirit of "political correctness"" prevalent at universities as well as to "Human rights" ... kangaroo courts, free speech, ....

It’s an excellent read. What I found most interesting, though, was Mr. Warren’s update telling readers that the Pope’s address to La Sapienza is now available in English - and it "does not even mention Galileo."

I, & most of the rest of the world media, fell for the imaginings of the
people I compare to "howler monkeys" ...

Of course this doesn’t alter the validity of Mr. Warren’s arguments a bit. And the upside of the whole sad episode of the Pope's being hounded off the campus is that it helps expose the university for the illiberal, post-modern, rat’s nest that it is; and, the Pope’s address will be far more widely read than it would have otherwise.

Update: From Doug Newton in the comments another take from Edward Michael George.

Happy New Year Hillary!

From Jackie Mason. Ouch!

[h/t: Vinney Di]

New York Times attacks the troops

Mark Steyn’s OCRegister column picks up the story of the New York Times’ latest hack job. This time it’s homicidal military vets returning from Iraq and Afstan:

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan either "committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one." The "committed a killing" formulation includes car accidents.
[...]
It didn't seem to occur to the Times to check whether the murder rate among recent veterans is higher than that of the general population of young men. It's not.

Au contraire, the columnist Ralph Peters calculated that Iraq and Afghanistan vets are about one-fifth as likely to murder you as the average 18-to-34-year-old American male.

The reality, then, was the opposite of what the NYT tried to portray. Compared to the general population war vets are model citizens. That’s precisely what most reasonable people would expect, isn’t it?

What's going on? Sloppy journalism, anti-military bias, political agenda or all of the above?

[Related]

Dumb poll - democracy vs dictatorship

This idiotic poll appeared in today’s Globe and mail:

‘Efficient’ in what sense? What is meant by "works best"?

Dictatorships are certainly ‘efficient’ at producing and maintaining failed states. Most dictatorships in existence today are relative economic basket cases. And name a former dictatorship in recent history that didn’t cause chaos and pain for its citizens.

According to R.J. Rummel in "Death By Government" dictatorships were responsible for hundreds of millions deaths during the 20th century. So I suppose that makes them ‘efficient’ killers.

“Locavores” - incipient food nazis

I always enjoy William Watson’s wit and wisdom. In his column yesterday the topic is the agriculture economy and the growing AGW/green-inspired eat-local-and-save-the-planet movement:

[My bold]
'Buy local' is just the latest bid for protection from our tiny, shrinking agricultural sector [...] counting only what farmers actually sell brings them down to 0.57% of GDP.
[...]
.... a "locavore" is a devotee of the "local food" movement. Eating locally, which ... agricultural protectionists have been recommending ... ever since the first turnip peddlar wheeled his wagon in from the next settlement over — seems to be the next green fad.
... one movement member ... said local eating is so popular because it's voluntary: "We're not telling people to do something ? We're telling people to try something." How long will it be, though, before the Minister for Local Food tells us the time for trying is over, now we must do?
... another locavore [is quoted] as saying: "Why would we be buying garlic in China when we could go out to our garden and dig it?" I can think of six reasons for starters:

1. I have a skating rink in my backyard and don't really want a garden.
2. If I had a garden, it would currently be covered with snow.
3. I'm not good at gardening.
4. Doing other things I'm better at allows me to make income I can use to buy garlic.
5. The Chinese do garlic well and sell it for less. ("Save money. Live Better.")
6. There are things we'd like to sell China that they won't buy if we boycott their garlic.
And, oh, a seventh: Most of the world's poor people would like to try to better themselves selling us food. Should we really tell them to "Stuff It"?

But what chance does good sense have in the face of green mania? My bet is we're about to reverse four centuries of progress ...[and raise the farmer’s share of the GDP]

It’s hard not to notice grocery stores getting-with-the-fad and increasingly pushing ‘local’ and ‘organic’ produce labels -- often to the detriment of choice and quality. So I believe Mr. Watson. It won’t be long before the green ‘revolution’ has our living standards (not mention the rest of the world's) driven down to former Soviet lows.

9/11 was an inside job!

Blazing Cat Fur notes that another deranged passenger has climbed aboard the 9/11 conspiracy nut-wagon:

Ugh yet another Canuck Whackjob - Stephen M Beckow, evidently a former, now retired, member of the Canadian Immigration & Refugee Board - Which makes a weird kinda sense if you think about it:

To Muslims of America, I Apologize...

BCF asks:

"What caused their collective madness? Was it precipitated by government
service or the result of a pre-existing condition?"

Good question. I’ll bet a lot of it is closely related to BDS. Given the number (about 900) of professionals and academics willing to sign their name to this nuttery it seems like it’s approaching epidemic proportions.

But that’s only 900 out of a population of, say, several million professionals and academics. So the incidence is actually much lower than for schizophrenia.

I wonder: Does this say anything about the number of professionals and academics who signed onto the AGW bandwagon? Just asking.

And his trip was going so well!

Poor Stéphane. He was getting good press on his visit to Afghanistan. Well, not everyone agreed.

But Mr. Dion has reversed the effect of any good press by musing about the need for NATO to intervene on the Afghan/Pakistan border. It’s hard to see how he’s going to square pulling our troops out of combat with a proposal to involve NATO in a potentially much more intense combat operation.

See also: Mark Collins’ ‘More of M. Dion's ignorance‘ and Joanne’s ‘Regarding Stephane Dion's leadership potential‘.

“Oh Canada, where are you taking us?”

This little anecdote from Mark Steyn was a real hoot:

The great Janet Albrechtsen - with whom I had the honor of sharing a stage in Sydney a year ago - writes in The Australian on some of my little legal difficulties up north. Terrific opening:

"But you must understand," implored a well-intentioned woman in the audience, "multiculturalism is Canada's gift to the world."

If Australia is set to follow Canada, then thanks, but no thanks. Call me ungrateful, but we should have returned the gift to Canada long ago. I say that as someone who has long adored Canada. Its politics may be as dripping wet as Vancouver, but the people are warm and funny, and there is something sweet about the US's insecure, slightly wimpy northern neighbour. Yet there comes a point when weakness morphs into a reckless death wish.
That point is about now.

Ms. Albrechtsen’s column goes on to discuss Ezra Levant’s and Mark’s 'human rights' cases and the implications for Australia, closing with:

Great stuff.

Update: Thanks to Joanne in the comments, here's the Jack's Newswatch item on this post.

So, we need to watch Canada. As it goes, so will we. And even if you can stomach the idea of handing over power over social policy to unelected bureaucrats and self-opinionated lawyers, you might like to hang on to free speech. Oh Canada, where are you taking us?

It was one of those rare, particularly sunny days in Vancouver in November when, addressing an audience at the University of British Columbia, I suggested that multiculturalism and its partner in crime, moral relativism, were leading to the demise of Western values.

Ezra's day in court

Ezra's opening statement to the kangaroo court lets the inquisitors know exactly where he stands.

Bravo, Ezra! The best defence is a superb offence.

[via the five foot fury]

Update: More on the interrogation here, here, here and here.

Upperdate: Mark Steyn weighs in.

Upperdate2: Here's a more comprehensive list of links at MAD.

Fusion - the end of a gravy train?

Plentiful, clean power from nuclear fusion has been an elusive dream for decades. Billions have been spent pursuing it.

Apparently there have been some encouraging developments recently. Two of my favourite UK bloggers have been following them:

The Devil’s Kitchen has lots of background, commentary and links.
Roger Thornhill suggests a key fringe benefit of success:

Gore's face when that happens. I want a Gore-cam set up so we can see the moment his gravy train is shunted into the siding and lifted onto the flatbed headed for the scrap yard.

Now there’s something we can all get behind.

Ezra in kangaroo court today

Today Ezra Levant submits to interrogation by the Alberta HRC. And true to character, to mark the occasion he republished the cartoons.

It will no doubt be a weird experience but I don’t think Ezra will let them grind him down. I’m looking forward to his report.

[h/t Dr. Roy] and more commentary at Marginalized Action Dinosaur.

Carbon tax insanity

In his Toronto Sun column today, Lorrie Goldstein says the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy is off its collective rocker recommending Canada unilaterally impose carbon taxes and/or set up a ‘cap and trade’ emissions trading scheme:

... [NRTEE] recommended Canadian taxpayers should fall on their swords for the sake of winning a Pyrrhic victory over global warming.

the NRTEE is telling us to do two contradictory things: Act in concert with the rest of the world to combat global warming and, regardless of what the world does, act unilaterally now.

the NRTEE is effectively recommending Canadians pay significantly more for carbon (meaning for virtually everything) for decades to come, at the risk of severely damaging our economy ... even if countries responsible for up to 10 times our emissions do nothing.

That's not a policy. It's insanity.

The Harper government requested this report. It should thank the NRTEE -- and shelve it.

Couldn’t agree more. Nor, I suspect, could Terence Corcoran.

Now I wish BC’s government would get a clue and stop trying to be Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best pal. Though it’s equally likely that the weasely Gordon Campbell and Co are simply intending to capitalize on pliable, green, loony left coast environmentalism to squeeze more cash from our wallets.

H/t to Joanne here and here.

Update: Terence Corcoran’s latest (Jan 11) column on this.

The next HRC victim?

The National Post is publishing excerpts from Philip Carl Salzman’s soon to be published book, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East. The series theme:

Why did the Muslim Middle East become so violent? Philip Carl Salzman explains how Bedouin politics became embedded in modern Islamic sociology

Today’s excerpt entitled ‘Muhammad’s Tribe’ describes how Muhammad’s Bedouin followers violently conquered the Middle East, Northern India and parts of Europe. Some samples:

Once united, the Bedouin warriors of the umma turned outward, teaching the world the meaning of jihad, holy war.

... Arab armies invaded and subdued much of Christian Spain and Portugal, and all of Sicily. Since the Roman Empire, the world had not seen such power and reach. All fell before the Saracen blades.

...evidence is overwhelming that vast numbers of infidel male warriors and civilians were slain, and that most of those spared, particularly the women and children, were enslaved for domestic and sexual servitude...

It is true that throughout history intergroup relations ...were.. not infrequently brutal and bloodthirsty. The world of Islam was not so much an exception to this, as exemplary of it.

The article is accompanied by an illustration showing a horse-mounted, sword-wielding "Prophet Muhammad and his followers" spreading the ‘religion of peace’.

So,the infidel Maclean’s magazine publishes an excerpt of infidel Mark Steyn’s book quoting a Scandinavian Imam’s words about European Muslims "spreading like mosquitos" and is hauled before an infidel Canadian Human Rights Commission on the complaint of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Now we have the infidel ‘National Post’ printing the words of infidel author Salzman describing the bloody jihad of Muhammad and his followers, and further, committing the ‘blasphemy’ of depicting an image of the Prophet Muhammad.

If this doesn’t rate at least one complaint to a Canadian HRC against the National Post, not to mention a world-wide Muslim uprising, then I don’t know what does. Teddy bears and cartoons are small potatoes by comparison.

The UK scene

Which reminds me of a recent comment by Mark Steyn re. the HRC-Maclean's 'case':
"What's at issue here is the non-jihadists' right to free speech."


[From, and]

"Fun with algebra" (isn't always an oxymoron)

One of many algebraic surface visualizations from Innsbruck U. Math. Dept.

[Via John Derbyshire]

The (not so) “new atheism”

Having recently read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion I very much appreciated the insights offered in this essay by Damon Linker (published in today’s National Post). Linker provides an excellent overview of the history of atheistic thought and puts into context the nasty, ideological "new atheism" espoused by Dawkins, Hitchens and others:

Mindless argument found in godless books [Essay subtitle]
..."the new atheism" is not particularly new. It belongs to an intellectual genealogy stretching back hundreds of years ... [It is]driven by a visceral contempt for the personal faith of others....
... In describing their atheism as illiberal, I do not mean to imply that the new atheists are closet totalitarians. On the contrary ... Yet the fact remains that the atheism of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens is a brutally intolerant, proselytizing faith, out to rack up conversions.
... the tone of today's atheist tracts is so unremittingly hostile that one wonders if their authors really mean it when they express the hope, as Dawkins does in a representative passage, that "religious readers who open ['The God Delusion'] will be atheists when they put it down."
... It is with this enmity, this furious certainty, that our ideological atheists lapse most fully into illiberalism.
... To be liberal in the classical sense is to accept intellectual variety--and the social complexity that goes with it--as the ineradicable condition of a free society.
Liberal atheists accept this situation; ideological atheists do not.

Alberta, say it ain’t so!

On January 1st new anti-smoking rules came into effect in Alberta.

This has people in BC upset - Alberta stealing pinko BC’s thunder!

... In related news, Hell froze over yesterday.

Never thought we would see the day when Alberta would leapfrog
British Columbia. Never thought we would see live-free-or-die Alberta not only
match but pass B.C. in A) public health policy or B) saving the world through
regulation.

This is not the way it is supposed to be. We're the certified-organic pinkos who will chain ourselves to a bumper at the drop of a rasta hat, demanding government do something about, well, everything. They're the Kentucky-fried libertarian rednecks: "You can have my cigarettes when you pry them from my cold, grease-stained fingers."...

I suppose this confirms Canada’s status as pinko nanny state. The reputedly most right-wing province topping the nanny-statism of one of the looniest leftard jurisdictions in the land.

‘Human ambitions’ are not ‘human rights’

George Jonas lends some clarity to the definition of ‘human rights’:

[...]
Human rights laws and tribunals are based on the notion that being hired, promoted, serviced and esteemed is a human right. It isn't. Being hired, promoted, serviced and esteemed is a human ambition. It's a justifiable ambition, but still just an ambition.

A human right is to be sovereign in one's legitimate sphere. A human right is to select whom to hire, promote, service or esteem. It's to decide with whom to associate. It's to have an opinion, silly as it may be. It's a human right to be an idiot.
[...]
Hauling a leading newsmagazine before an HRC tribunal may create the storm that sweeps away these ludicrous kangaroo courts.

Islam’s prison bitch

Just finished reading Mark Steyn’s column in Maclean’s magazine on the HRC-CIC harassment of Maclean’s. Great column. One of my favourite quotes:
Priceless.

...the Ontario Federation of Labour is supporting the Canadian Islamic Congress's case. As Terry Downey, executive supremo of the OFL, primly explains, "There is proper conduct that everyone has to follow"...
.... there seems to be some kinky kind of competition on the Western left to be, metaphorically speaking, Islam's lead prison bitch.

More state sponsored suppression of free speech

... and encouragement of phony grievances from Muslims.

From ‘Marginalized Action Dinosaur’ we have a British example of the HRC-CIC-Maclean’s human rights "case":

This is a travesty against the Magna Carta and all the good the UK has done for the world. Remember today so when someone asks what did you do when democracy died you remember. These thought police would have arrested Churchill before WWII.

And MAD’s photo array give us a glimpse of what happens when state coddling of the "religion of peace" has gone too far.

See also (via).

Self defense (II)

It seems most people 'get it'.

Self defense

A home invader is killed by a Calgary man defending himself and another resident.

"The Criminal Code authorizes people to use as much force as necessary to protect themselves and their property," [an RCMP spokesman] said. "However, that force must be the minimum amount necessary."

Hmm, "the minimum amount necessary". That’s a close enough paraphrasing of the law - which, to my mind, discourages self defense and gives way too much leeway for weasely after-the-fact interpretation. How does one decide what’s ‘just enough’ force in the midst of what could well be a fight for one’s life?

It’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Humble Canadian braggadocio

In the comments on a BBC weblog covering the USA beat were several from Canadians, including these two:

18. Just remember that Canada is part, in fact, the best part, of North America. We may be quiet and humble compared to our southern neighbours, but we still exist.

26. ... Yes Canada is seen as boring and uneventful. Our motto is the less than exciting "Peace, Order and Good Government", but the fact is that Canada matters. As the most diverse nation in the world, we're embarking on an experiment that could be a true alternative to both the U.S. and the European model. Come and visit us. You might be surprised by what you find.

Yecchh! And we wonder how it is that we’re known worldwide for being boring, quiet, diverse, humble braggarts.

[via]

Another Bhutto post mortem

This one by David Warren:

The queen is dead, long live the king. This is the message from Pakistan's "People's Party," founded forty years ago by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the machine to advance his own political career. ....

... The creed of the PPP -- "Islam is our faith, democracy is our politics, socialism is our economy, all power to the people" -- consists of three calculated lies followed by a howler. A more honest creed might be, "Government of the Bhutto, by the Bhutto, and for the Bhutto." ...

... Those who thought Ms Bhutto the agent of democracy and progress, because she was young and a woman and told them in fluent English exactly what they wanted to hear...

... She was my exact contemporary, and I met her as a child in Pakistan ....at age eight, arriving in a Mercedes-Benz with daddy's driver...This girl was the most spoiled brat I ever met.[...] when she was studying at Oxford. She was the same, only now the 22-year-old version...

... she, a libertine in previous life, submitted to an arranged marriage, because she needed a husband to campaign for office. Stood by him in power only because there was no other political option when he proved even greedier than she was. ...

... In addition to killing a hated symbol of Westernization, they set the mobs not against themselves, but against Musharraf. ... for all his visible faults, Musharraf has been dealing to the limit of his abilities and opportunities with the actual problems of Pakistan.

[via]

The road from serfdom?

The UK Libertarian Party web site cranks up. Via The Devil's Kitchen.

The road to serfdom

On certain fronts the similarities between Britain and Canada are remarkable. Roger Thornhill observes on coming changes to the UK National Health System:

Authoritarian just does not seem to quite cover it, even. There is a hint of indentured servitude about it all.
[...]
This, of course, is being dressed up as a "Constitution for the NHS", where so-called "patient rights" actually translate into obligations and limits on freedom.

and on the BBC’s response:

The BBC appears to swallow it whole and not even offer a whimper of dissent or critical analysis of the implications this brings with it. The ease by which the BBC abdicates its duties towards the people of the UK appears to have no bounds. Again. However many times it happens, it still has the capacity to disgust.

And for a somewhat less reserved take, try The Devil's Kitchen.