"It is difficult to conceive a more retrograde idea ..."

Rex Murphy:

.... it is with more grief than anger that I caught the story of an Ottawa “vigil” this week, held after a Missouri grand jury said it would not charge police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown. Organizers of the rally asked “white/non-black allies” to “refrain from taking up space” and “never be the centre of anything.” 

That last phase “never be at the centre of anything” is particularly troubling. It is so defiantly categorical and universally — “anything” — dismissive.

The phrase and the other gibberish attending it should serve as a motto for every meeting and seminar dedicated to diversity as the governing motto for how not to engage with social issues, how not to bridge the real differences that can exist between people. ...

Rex's column is a very thoughtful take on a good example of what our universities are churning out these days.  Humanities faculties at virtually every university, against all logic, embrace  hare-brained, radical, po-mo social theories as if they were established scientific fact.  It has become what most "progressives" accept unquestioningly as mainstream thought.  The damage done to students' brains, society at large and to tax payers' wallets is enormous.

Tarek Fatah hammers smug Liberal Senator

Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell, a smug, arrogant, self-righteous, finger-waving tool ("pr*ck" for short), met more than his match at a recent Senate hearing, when he tried to lecture Tarek Fatah on Islam:


[via]

It's good to see that this video is receiving such wide attention.

Here's Tarek with Michael Coren. And here's Tarek's Sun column on 'de-radicalization' of Islamic radicals.

Mitchell has a reputation for smug, self-righteous arrogance.  Here are two posts from three years ago when the topic was climate change.

Indians balking at transparency

Brian Lilley:

One of the biggest themes in politics right now is transparency, letting the taxpayers, the people who foot the bill, know where their money is being spent. Most politicians have accepted it but others continue to fight.

This week a group of Native leaders announced they would take the federal government to court to challenge the First Nations Financial Transparency Act.  ...

Here in BC the Legislative Assembly makes the law on financial accountability/transparency applicable to all municipalities, towns and cities in the province.  They are required to publicly account for every penny of taxpayers' money spent.  Also by law, they are required to publicly reveal the salaries of every public servant earning $75,000 or more (by name, alphabetically).  I'm sure this is also the case for every other municipality, town and city across the country.

As the provinces are for their municipalities, etc, the federal government is responsible for setting the rules for financial accounting on Indian Reserves. Chief Fox and others objecting to this (as "racist", no less) is absolutely asinine.  Their objections to financial transparency are beyond bizarre! (the only possible reason is that they have some very interesting things to hide).  What is also bizarre is that such laws haven't always been in place.

I doubt they have legal leg to stand on, but should their attempt to avoid accountability make it into court let's hope they don't draw some bone-head of a liberal judge who sympathizes with them.

The Trudeau Foundation

Peter Foster:

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation last week held a conference titled “Weathering Change: Pathways to Sustainability in Canada.” It confirmed that the pathway to serfdom now makes its way through the thickets of climate hysteria, past social-mediated mobs, and via smokeless backrooms filled with radical NGOs. ...

... essentially a sleeper cell to promote the kind of big and pervasive government favoured by its eponymous hero, who died in 2000, and now by his son, Justin. It was endowed in 2002, by a Liberal government, with $125-million of taxpayers’ money....

One big strategic difference since the days of Trudeau pere is that much of the bogus conversation has been hijacked by radical environmental groups masquerading as “civil society.”

Who knew?

Obama - the guest from Hell

Mathew Fisher:

There are ominous parallels in how U.S. President Barack Obama deliberately humiliated Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott ... and how the American leader has kept Prime Minister Stephen Harper waiting at the altar for several years by withholding approval of the XL Keystone pipeline.

... Obama has cavalierly threatened close ties with two of the few countries the U.S. has always counted on when the world has gone berserk.

... Obama ignored the advice of his own embassy in Canberra that such a commentary would badly damage relations. Moreover, Obama failed to mention to Abbott his desire to deliver a speech in Australia during several long conversations that the two men had at the APEC leaders’ summit two weeks ago in Beijing.

...  Ignoring diplomatic protocol when visiting a friendly country, the White House refused to give its hosts a copy of the president’s speech or even a summary of what was in it.

... What Obama did at the University of Queensland was intervene in this country’s often intense internal debate about climate change.

... the Abbott government was left fuming about their visitor’s insults. 

... Obama’s comments in Brisbane made a total nonsense of the White House’s stated intention ...

... the preaching and disloyalty ... is immensely unhelpful at a time when China and India are ascendant, the Russian bear is marauding through Ukraine and threatening Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states and Poland, and the Middle East is becoming an increasingly unpredictable cauldron of dysfunctional states.

Talk about guests from Hell!  Let's face it, the man is a complete a**h*le, and a dangerous one at that.  Two more years is a long time to have a rogue American president on the loose.

Why the Burnaby Mountain protesters will make no difference to the Kinder Morgan project

Brent Stafford in Vancouver's "24 Hours" :

These Kinder Morgan protesters have a lot of nerve. Who elected them to speak for the “people?” No one. They only speak for a small hyper-ideological fringe that is radically hell bent on upending our entire economic system. ...

...  the protests have nothing to do with an impending danger to the local environment. It’s all about fighting capitalism and the primary target is the fossil fuel industry. ... 

... It is for this very reason the people protesting Kinder Morgan will make no difference. Their demands are unreasonable and entirely unfeasible. And I suspect they know that. ...

Good for Mr. Stafford.  News and opinion on this subject much more often than not foolishly sympathizes with the protesters, lending them undeserved attention and legitimacy.

How a "green" journalist came to hate radical environmentalists

Elizabeth Nickson explains how she came to write her book "Eco-Fascists: How Radical Conservationists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage":



It's an excellent book, by the way.  She has, in the process of researching it, become a great advocate for property rights.

See also, Agenda 21.