Booking out for surgery

I will not be writing any posts for the next week or so as  I will be going under the saw and knife tomorrow for valve surgery at Vancouver General Hospital. 

This will be my second valve job in 14 years and, confident though I am in my surgeon and his team, I am definitely not looking forward to it.

Ciao for now.

A despicable, cowardly media

It almost goes without saying that the so-called mainstream media has a significantly leftist political bias.  We also know that the MSM is weak on press freedom and is prone to self-censor and to downplay or ignore certain issues.  They do this out of politically correctness (ie. upsetting lib/leftists who share their biases).  They also do so out of simple cowardice in the face of potential physical danger.  Altogether this highly unfortunate situation is just short of earning the MSM the title "despicable".

This week they (the journalists and executives of CTV, Global TV, CBC) crossed the line during the anti-fracking "protests" (riots) near Rexton, NB.  They displayed all of the above near-despicable negatives plus failing to come to the defence of fellow journalists who were attacked by Indian thugs and criminals.

The violence and thuggery of Indian "protesters" was bad enough.  But Ezra Levant hits the right target when he calls out members of the despicable "Media Party" for their cowardice and duplicity:

Charles Krauthammer tries to educate Jon Stewart

Fat chance:

A phony poll to boost a fraud's image

Ezra Levant shows how a poll manipulated by a PR flack at Angus Reid got David Suzuki to the top of a "most admired" list:



Update: Ezra's column.

The Marxist cat-fight in Toronto Centre

Terence Corcoran: Linda McQuaig and Chrystia Freeland stage Marxist battle in downtown Canada

On the left running for the NDP stands journalist Linda McQuaig, co-author of The Trouble With Billionaries, a book that plays to ancient leftist theories of alienation ... She prescribes tax rates of up to 70% and radical confiscation of the assets of the wealthy ...

Ms. McQuaig came out swinging Monday with a direct video challenge to her opponent, Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland. “Hi Chrystia. It’s Linda McQuaig!”  says Ms. McQuaig in her best innocent-friendly trap-setting manner. “You’ve written a book on income inequality and I’ve written a book on income inequality.” But they are very different books, she says, with very different policy prescriptions.  So let’s have a debate, one on one, “any time, anywhere.”

Ms. Freeland’s book is Plutocrats:  The Rise of the New Global Super-rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.  The premise is false—everyone else has not fallen. ... To say that Plutocrats is “very different” from Ms. McQuaig’s The Trouble with Billionaires is somewhat misleading. ...  Both books are identical in their foundations, political tracts that popularize class warfare ... her analysis is no less Marxist in its origins.  She frequently quotes Karl Marx, the granddaddy of state socialism. Marx, she says, understood the dangers of a capitalist class ... 

... The poor voters of Toronto Centre are about to get a heavy dose of such crypto-Marxist revivalism. ...

Foreign-funded homegrown terrorists

Not to mention latter-day-Luddites and Palestinian Wanna Be's:

Influential Canadian climate model one of the most extreme

Study: The Canadian Climate Model 's Epic Failure

The Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis located at the University of Victoria in British Columbia submitted five runs of its climate model CanESM2 for use in the fifth assessment report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The climate model produces one of the most extreme warming projections of all the 30 models evaluated by the IPCC. (See Note 1.) The model badly fails to match the surface and atmosphere temperature observations, both globally, regionally, as presented in six graphs.

... The results from the Canadian climate model were used in a U.S. Global Change Research Program report provided to the US Environmental Protection Agency to justify regulating CO2. The authors of that report were told that the Canadian climate model produces only anti-information. They confirmed this fact, but published their report unchanged. The Canadian government has indicated it will follow the lead of the U.S.A. in regulating CO2 emissions.

... Climate alarmism based on climate models that don't work has so far cost the world $1.6 trillion in a misguided and ineffective effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These efforts have caused electricity prices to increase dramatically in Europe causing fuel poverty and putting poor people at risk.

Note that the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis in Victoria is a division of Environment Canada's Climate Research Branch, formerly run by CAGW alarmist Andrew Weaver (now BC Green Party MLA).  So that's where the feds have been getting the "science" on which to base their "climate change" policy.

Do Canadian university professors lean left?

Do fish swim?:

... A 2011 study found that Canadian university professors were left leaning but were not "hugely different in this respect from the Canadian university-educated population."

So, for left leaning professors - "mission accomplished".

"Smart" grids, "smart" cities, "smart" growth - "subversive, or dumb or both"

Peter Foster:

... “smart” has ... become a ubiquitous weasel word that, like “social” and “sustainable,” conceals a multitude of political dangers. 

When it comes to smart grids, smart cities and smart growth, we are dealing with concepts that are potentially subversive, or dumb, or both.  

... Technology will obviously continue to shape the city, but the dangers of “over-specification,” that is inflexible top-down design, are highlighted in a recent pamphlet, “Against the smart city”, by New York based urban designer Adam Greenfield. 

... Mr. Greenfield does a wonderful job of explaining the manifest shortcomings and dangers of the overdesigned smart city, but his critique ultimately flies off the rapid transit rails because he sees these urban monstrosities as an offshoot of the “neoliberal agenda,” a Chomskyan phrase that speaks volumes about anybody who uses it. 

... The smart city may be a cover for the moralistic city, and moralism is often a cover for power-seeking.  Indeed, the overweening ambition of “seamlessly coordinating everything” is the very model of sustainable development as conceived by the likes of Canada’s former UN mastermind Maurice Strong.

In fact, the "smart" concept reeks of U.N. Agenda 21, the sustainable development mantra, which a whole lot of "smart" bureaucrats and politicians in a whole lot of cities round the world have enthusiastically signed on to.  Subversive indeed!

It's too easy for thin-skinned hypocrites to sue for "defamation"

Mark Steyn reviews the defamation lawsuits brought against him (by Michael Mann) and Ezra Levant (by a touchy Muslim lawyer):

... the urge to litigate disagreement is never far from the surface in contemporary discourse. So both Ezra Levant and I find ourselves back in court yet again. 

... In that sense, Dr. Mann is, indeed, a fraud. It is a fascinating legal question whether a man guilty of serial misrepresentation can, in fact, be defamed. But it’s not that fascinating, and certainly not worth the court’s time and seven-figure legal bills. 

...  it’s a pretty basic free speech case. Dr. Mann, whatever his other gifts, is an inveterate name-caller.  

... In court, our notably unimpressive judge Natalia Combs-Greene declared, even before we got anywhere near the trial, that she was with Dr. Mann: “The court agrees with the arguments advanced by Plaintiffs. To place Plaintiff’s name in the same sentence with Sandusky (a convicted pedophile) is clearly outrageous.” 

... Mann is entitled to insult me ... and anyone else who has the temerity not to prostrate themselves before him. It is remarkable that an American jurist is too obtuse to grasp this 

... Mr Awan said something that was not so and was exposed in court for so doing, and in a free society Ezra ought to be well within his rights to characterize such a person as he pleases. 

... What else? Awan complains that Levant called him an anti-Semite. Big deal. Awan called Levant a racist. He’s called me and my book racist, Islamophobic, virulent and hateful. Likewise: big deal. 

...  If you’re going to be a partisan warrior in the public arena you need, as the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle likes to put it, “insensitivity training.” Miss Shaidle also argues that the matter of honour was better handled before the libel laws replaced dueling. When a fake Nobel laureate and a frontman for a terrorism-sympathizer are suing for their “reputation,” I’m inclined to agree. If Dr. Mann’s up for it, how about hockey sticks at dawn?

However you cut it, being sued in a real court is far better than being persecuted by a kangaroo "human rights" tribunal.  But either way it's expensive and, with clueless and/or ideological judges and juries, risky for defendants. The bar seems to be set way too low for getting these anti-free-speech and hurt-feelings lawsuits into court in the first place.

Ezra Levant needs help in the fight for freedom

Ezra is being sued by a Muslim waging legal jihad:

... Today in a Toronto court, Khurrum Awan is suing me for critical comments I wrote at the Maclean’s hearing in 2008. I said nothing that hadn’t been said by many critics across the political spectrum, who universally condemned the nuisance suit. But the rest of the media soon dropped the free speech cause. I turned it into an ongoing campaign.  

... Maclean’s spent [huge sum$]. And every other media company was sent the message: Don’t you dare talk about radical Islam, or you’ll face a nuisance suit, too. 

... Khurrum Awan ... later boasted: “We attained our strategic objective — to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material.” 

... So time to apply the “strategic objective” to me. 

So, it's also time once again to Stand with Ezra.

Ezra Levant forces "trial" judge to recuse herself

Suzuki mock trial judge withdraws after questions of bias:

Ontario Superior Justice Harriet Sachs announced that she would no longer be participating in a mock trial of environmentalist David Suzuki.

... [Suzuki] was barraged with questions by Sun News host Ezra Levant, including queries on Judge Sachs and her possible bias.

... A Superior Court judge since 1998, Judge Sachs is the wife of Clayton Ruby, a prominent Toronto lawyer known for championing liberal [including radical environmental] causes.

No doubt, without Ezra shining a bright light on her, judge Sachs, having been dumb enough to accept a role in this eco-propaganda stunt in the first place, would have blithely gone ahead with it.  But now that she has let us know who she is, Sachs has compromised any claim she might have had to objectivity in environmental cases that might come before her.  So she might as well permanently recuse herself from hearing any such case. 

Ezra is the man!

Ezra Levant gets in David Suzuki's face

Ace reporter and pundit, Ezra Levant, attended a Suzuki anti-oil media event and produced this brilliant episode of The Source:




Peter Foster also attended. He opines on Suzuki's "Carbonist Manifesto" and on Ezra's role at the event:

The occasion was a photo op ... at which Mr. Suzuki would reveal his “Carbon Manifesto” and generate publicity for his upcoming “trial,” an event due to take place at the Royal Ontario Museum on November 6.

... His Carbonist Manifesto, however, amounts to a plan to wreck the Canadian economy. Oil exploration has to stop at once. Seventy per cent of energy has to be generated from renewables within a generation. A carbon tax of $150 a tonne must be applied immediately.

... Usually ... Mr. Suzuki expresses his wacky beliefs within the safe and scripted confines of the CBC, not with Ezra Levant in his face.

The problem, however, is that the photo-op event to promote the mock trial had already been hijacked by Mr. Suzuki’s nemesis, Sun TV’s Ezra Levant.

Mr. Levant, whose persona might be described as somewhere between a steam roller, a legal pitbull and a right-wing Jon Stewart, has been a relentless critic of Mr. Suzuki ...

... Mr. Suzuki fled, with the Sun TV mic hounding him all the way to his waiting Chevy Volt. ...

... I asked Laurie Brown, the “veteran” CBC-er whose brainchild the trial is, what would happen in the unlikely event that Mr. Suzuki were found guilty. Would there be a sentencing?

Sure she said with a laugh, they’d take him outside and hang him.

Maybe they should have had a gallows at the photo op. I’m sure Mr. Suzuki would have had no trouble imagining Mr. Levant swinging from it.

Update:  The two Suzukis - Saint Suzuki and Secret Suzuki

An insane federal proposal to expand Indian reserves

It's a potential nightmare for municipalities:

B.C. municipalities are raising concerns over a proposed federal policy change that would allow First Nations bands to buy land and create satellite reserves anywhere in B.C. - even if they're not next to their traditional territory.

... the changes to the so-called "additions-to-reserve policy" would allow residential, commercial and industrial development in cities across B.C., resulting in the loss of land, taxes and costs associated with servicing agreements.

It could also create a "proverbial patchwork quilt" of jurisdictions, with municipalities wrangling with First Nations over bylaws and regulations on everything from fire services to house inspections.

... the policy, which would allow satellite reserves in cities like Burnaby, which has no reserves, and "turn community planning on its ear,"

... "If they bought a large block in middle of Surrey and it's a tax-free zone, imagine the impact on the surrounding businesses,"  ...

This idea is beyond nuts.  With few exceptions Indian reserves are among the most dysfunctional jurisdictions on the planet.  And the feds propose to multiply the problem?  Insane!  The object should be to get rid of reserves, not multiply them.

And whose money would be used to make the property acquisitions?  Taxpayers of course.  The Minister of Indian Affairs needs a good smack upside his head.

Fun and games with diversity

The oceans are not more acidic now

As claimed by the Guardian and carelessly re-Tweeted by the usual suspects:

Fiona Harvey’s article in the Guardian on 3 October 2013 Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years misrepresents the scientific literature. This error has propagated across the Twittersphere. 

... Hönisch et al. 2012, cited by the State of the Oceans report, showed in Figure 4D that the ocean has been more acidic for most of the past 300 million years than it is now. The rate of acidfication may be faster now, but Hönisch’s graph has a resolution of 20 million years, so cannot address that question.

It is unfortunate that an environmental journalist should confuse the rate of acidification with levels of acidity, but appalling that this story was tweeted uncritically by Nature Geoscience and a number of climate scientists other influential accounts. This is not some esoteric area of climate science. It is well known that CO₂ was much higher during parts of the past 300 million years than it is today and therefore ocean surface pH would be expected to be lower. Why was Harvey’s assertion that “[the] oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years” not challenged (as far as I can see) by anyone from the scientific establishment?

A little misrepresentation goes a long way in the world of climate scare-mongering.

[via]

Legal jihad - Ezra in court next week

Remember Mark Steyn's wanna-be censor, Khurrum Awan?

The case goes to court on October 15th.

Go get 'em Ezra!

Statism

Buy the T-Shirt.

[h/t: Vinney]