Muslim advisory panels at DND

I missed the item last week in which the Kays (mother and son) debate the wisdom of having paid full-time Muslim advisory panels at DND.

Barbara Kay:

The cancellation of [Imam Delic's] speech by Defence Minister MacKay raises the question of why any government ministry would fund any religious consulting group. Why is there a paid “Muslim Working Group” permanently embedded at Foreign Affairs, whose job it is to advise the government on their foreign policy wherever it touches on areas of Muslim density? Why not a “Christian Working Group” or a “Sikh Working Group”? Can you imagine if there were a “Jewish Working Group” to advise on the Middle East? Don’t make me laugh. To me this is a scandal, and I don’t understand why it has not been addressed. Some of the people in this group hold very insalubrious views or are attached to groups with discomfiting agendas.

Amen! But Barbara's squishy liberal sonny boy, Jonathan Kay, thinks mom is all wet and that Muslim outreach is just what's needed at DND. He argues it was done with Germans and Italians in WWII to help win the war.

Barbara responds:

It’s more likely that Defence or Foreign Affairs invited the Muslims in as an appeasing gesture rather than a step towards victory, and that the motives for the Working Group are not to defeat radical Islam, but to spin it and promote the idea that radical Islam is not our enemy at all. You don’t need an embedded working group to help the military reach out to Muslims. The Israeli government doesn’t hire Arabic leaders to advise the Mossad.

... We’ve had a Communist party for generations, but the military never formed a panel to think about how best to reach out to them.

Jonathan might have a point if the so-called "advisory" panel weren't self-appointed representatives of the most radical and outspoken Muslim group (the CIC) in the country.  I seriously doubt that the CIC will be helping DND figure out how to more effectively kill our Islamist enemies.  Barbara is correct - this effort is more politically correct "community" outreach than anything. In other words, totally irrelevant to defence.

Meanwhile, Blazing Cat Fur asks: "What the hell is going on at DFAIT?"

Ontario's insane green energy policy

Terence Corcoran outlines how Ontario's Green Energy Act (courtesy of George Smitherman) is causing  power prices to skyrocket:

... IKEA announced yesterday it will invest $4.6-million to install 3,790 solar panels on three Toronto area stores, ...  enough electricity to power 100 homes.

IKEA will receive 71.3¢ for each kilowatt of power produced, which works out to about $6,800 a year for each of the 100 hypothetical homes. ...  overpaid by $5,400 per home equivalent.

... will recoup $4.6-million in less than seven years — not bad for an investment that can be amortized over 20.

... The government’s schemes suggest that reducing Ontario carbon emissions by say 20% to 12 tonnes would cost $5,000 per person or upwards of $15,000 per household per year.

Meanwhile, China's annual increase in energy consumption is nearly as high as Canada's (and 2.5 times Ontario's) total consumption. I hope Ontarians realize how much their sacrifices are helping to heal the planet.

Update:
Lawrence Solomon: Brits to pay $3200 per year for power bill. Ontarians take note

Who is backing the 10:10 eco-fascists?

Peter Foster provides new details about who's supporting the 10:10 Campaign organization that produced that now infamous "eco-snuff" video:

[10:10] is virtually a propaganda arm of the U.K. government. Moreover, thousands of corporations, local councils and schools have signed on to the group’s Orwellian “pledge” to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010.

... the entire British Cabinet had soon signed on, along with a raft of corporations, soccer clubs (such as Tottheham Hotspur, whose players appear in the movie) and miscellaneous trendies and publicity hounds.

Since coming to power, Tory leader David Cameron’s new coalition government has also signed on. Presumably now he wishes it hadn’t.

The perfect man

A man walks out to the street and catches a taxi just going by. He gets into the taxi, and the cabbie says, “Perfect timing. You're just like Frank.”

Passenger: “Who?”

Cabbie: “Frank Feldman. He's a guy who did everything right all the time. Like my coming along when you needed a cab, things happened like that to Frank Feldman every single time.”

Passenger: “There are always a few clouds over everybody.”

Cabbie: “Not Frank Feldman. He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand-Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone and danced like a Broadway star and you should have heard him play the piano. He was an amazing guy.”

Passenger: “Sounds like he was something really special.”

Cabbie: “There's more. He had a memory like a computer. He remembered everybody's birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order and which fork to eat them with. He could fix anything. Not like me. I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank Feldman, could do everything right.”

Passenger: “Wow, some guy then.”

Cabbie: “He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams. Not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank, he never made a mistake, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good. He would never answer her back even if she was in the wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished too - He was the perfect man! He never made a mistake. No one could ever measure up to Frank Feldman.”

Passenger: “An amazing fellow. How did you meet him?”

Cabbie: "Well, I never actually met Frank. He died and I married his fuckin' wife.”

[H/t: Vinney]

DND and Islamic History Month

Playing catch-up for the record.
For some dim reason the Department of National Defence got involved in celebrating Islamic History Month.  A top Canadian Islamic Congress exec, Imam Zijad Delic, was scheduled to speak.  The CIC has a notorious history of its own involving, inter alia, radical anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic hate speech and  complaints to HRC's against Mark Steyn, Macleans Magazine and Ezra Levant.

Everything about DND's involvement in this begs serious questions.  MND Peter Mackay, to his everlasting credit, decided to cancel  Imam Delic's appearance. Naturally Delic and the CIC were not happy.

The MSM including CBC, CTV and major newspapers including the National Post have all provided coverage of the controversy, most of it lame, incomplete and/or sympathetic to the CIC and Delic with explicit or implied criticism of Peter Mackay.  There were exceptions. One that stands out is by Brian Lilley at Eye on the Hill.

And, today, Binks at Free Canuckistan provides some more needed insight.

Much earlier (years ago) Daniel Pipes wrote an interesting background on the inroads Muslim organizations were making into the Cdn government, DFAIT in particular.

One Nation rally in DC a big flop

Glenn Beck's hugely successful 8/28 Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial in DC freaked out the left so badly they decided they needed to hold their own rally.  They called it One Nation and it was organized by unions and a variety of radical left organizations.  Unlike Glenn's strictly voluntary, on their own dime and time, rally unions ordered their members to attend One Nation. It was held on Saturday. 

Michael Graham provides a comparison of 8/28 and One Nation attendance:

"The most embarrassing part?  Not even buses, paid SEIU attendees and grade-seeking students could turn out a decent crowd."

For comic relief, One Nation featured aboriginal comedian Charlie Hill with songs and hilarious jokes like:

“This land is my land, this land ain’t your land, so get the hell off of my–”, and;

“immigration problems started at Plymouth Rock,“ and ”we’ve been fighting terrorism since 1492.”

And, unlike Beck's 8/28 rally, the One Nation crowd wasn't exactly tidy:

Nor was it as peaceful and law-abiding.

Green campaign promo video backfires

If the reaction of Anthony Watts and his WUWT readers is any measure, this green campaign video from 1010global.org has backfired, big time:



My first thought was that it was a spoof mocking humanity-hating eco-freaks - not a video by eco-freaks.

Update: Predictably, many eco-nutter Guardian readers think the video is just great. Though there are lots in the opposite camp.  One of my favourite comments is from 'Monbiot's TinyBrain':

This video encapsulates all that is wrong with modern environmentalism. Fascism, bullying, pathological hatred of humans and what they do. It's simply a masturbatory fantasy for all warmists, comply or die.