Stand Your Ground

Here's a speech which Don Feder couldn't give, because he was shouted down by a radical leftist mob. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Well, what else could you expect at a university campus?)

Author's Note: I was invited by the UMass Republicans to give this address at a forum at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on March 11. Due to an organized and highly disruptive demonstration by a mob of socialists, "peace activists," and homosexuals, I was unable to deliver the speech. More on this in a future commentary.

When asked if fascism could ever come to America, Huey Long (the Depression-era governor of Louisiana) replied, “Sure, only here they’ll call it anti-fascism.”

Hate-crimes laws are fascism in the guise of protecting minorities. They’re fascism in crime-prevention drag. They’re fascism in the name of combating bigotry and hatred.
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In his speech Don Feder provides a detailed overview of "hate crime" legislation and enforcement in the US, exposing the real intent behind those laws, which are more about censorship and social engineering than about actually protecting vulnerable groups from targeted assaults. No wonder the lefties don't want this speech to be heard.

That's what Frank Caplan from St. Catharines proposes for our cities:

Despite all the attempts to get the message circulated widely, several of my neighbours did not participate in Earth Day. I wouldn't accuse them of deliberately doing this. I guess they just forgot.

Perhaps we need to have neighbourhood wardens, like the air-raid wardens we had during World War II, who knocked on doors to remind offenders to shut off their lights.

Sounds like that ill-famous Liberal attack ad from the 2006 election campaign, about Stephen Harper willing to deploy troops in Canadian cities. Yeah, if you bring in those climate patrols - don't forget to send some of them to knock at Al Gore's door. Because you see, our chief alarmist just happened to be one of those forgetful fellows. Or maybe it just took him too long to go through all those rooms and turn off the lights everywhere...

Meanwhile, it looks like New Brunswick wasn't the only place where people had to shovel 4 inches of global warming today. (Now that's where those green neighborhood wardens would be quite handy.) In fact, it was even more than 4 inches today in Moncton. And, barring a sudden heat wave, it seems like we'll have snow in April - for a third year in a row...

But the debate is over, isn't it? And the science is settled: Unless we act in 99 months 24 days 7 hours and 34 minutes, the planet is doomed, the polar ice caps will melt, Charlottetown and Saint John will go under water and those few survivors on Fredericton Island and Moncton Archipelago will be growing pineapples in February.

This streak of leftist authoritarianism manifests itself most noticeably in the debate over AGW. Stifling debate by threatening to try as criminals people who disagree with them, declaring an end to the scientific method by saying that the debate about AGW is "over," spreading lies about skeptics by positing the notion that they are all being paid by oil and coal companies, attempting to ruin the careers of scientists who disagree with them, and seeking to censor scientific studies that challenge AGW orthodoxy -- all point to a desire by AGW advocates to control minds by not allowing any dissent.
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Another article, quoted by Tim on The Black Kettle blog, suggests that the public opinion is shifting and that the bogeymen of the C02 hoax is losing ground. I sure hope so. After all, how many April snow storms (at the 46th Parallel) does it take to realize that something isn't right with all that "global warming" scare?

An interesting article, dispelling the key myth that the pro-aborts use to demand unrestricted abortions at taxpayers' expense:

One of the most common arguments abortion advocates make in defense of legal abortion is that making abortion illegal will cause women to go to the "back alleys" and obtain unsafe abortions. They cite how thousands of women died as a result of unsafe abortions before abortion was legalized through the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

We already know legal abortions are not safe - they can and do cause women to lose their lives and harm women physically and emotionally. So let's address some other issues.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, admits his group lied about the number of women who died from illegal abortions when testifying before the Supreme Court in 1972. "We spoke of 5,000 - 10,000 deaths a year.... I confess that I knew the figures were totally false ... it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"

That claim of thousands of maternal deaths due to illegal abortion doesn't measure up when compared with other statistics. About 50,000 women of child-bearing age die each year -- from all causes combined. To suggest that 10,000 of these deaths were from illegal abortion would make that the cause of one out of every five deaths, or twenty percent. This would have made illegal abortion the leading cause of death among women in that age group.
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George Orwell wrote his Nineteen Eighty-Four in late 1940s, so he simply couldn't envision a better way to keep the people overworked without letting them benefit from the fruits of their labor than permanent warfare. But it seems like half-a-century after Orwell, some in the governing elite have found a better way; one that would not involve threats of accidental death and destruction and yet one that would still ensure that ordinary people are kept busy, without benefiting from it themselves.

Yes, I'm talking about all that hysteria over global warming or global climate change. Those who believe in it, don't even bother trying to find a scientific proof to their claims. They don't care about the evidences which show that human contributions represent only a fraction of a percent of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which in their turn represent 0.038% of the atmosphere itself. Instead, we have thousands of politicians, artists and even scientists presenting their believes as indisputable truth, and denouncing anyone who thinks otherwise as "denier".

What is the purpose of all that fear-mongering if not to create an environment in which the need for austerity would be self-evident? Call me paranoid if you must, but I do find too many similarities between all the frenzy over global warming, including all those apocalyptic prognoses which promise global doom in no time unless we do as we're told and Orwellian Oceania, where a permanent state of war created an illusion of national emergency and ensured that people accepted longer work days and lower rations without the need for the thought police to intervene.

Just look around. California is outlawing black cars - because they capture more sunlight than cars of any other color, thus requiring more energy to cool the passengers. Sure, those black cars just kill the environment. If we repaint them all white, we'll conserve so much energy that it will not only offset China's ever increasing emissions but also revert the global doom which is predicted to happen in 100 months. (God forbid we wait even a day longer!)

Meanwhile Ontario is planning to introduce mandatory energy audits for real estate. Want to sell your home? Get ready to pay some $300-400 for the audit and then - to spend thousands, fixing all the deficiencies the auditor may find. Fines for trying to avoid such an audit are hefty. Special inspectors will be authorized to visit any house they believe could be on sale to ensure that nobody here is trying to sell an energy-inefficient dwelling...

But then, if you look at it - Ontarians and Californians are getting off lightly. Here's a group of enviro-nuts that want Britain's population to be halved. They think that's the only way to ensure that Britain meets its long-term emission reduction goals. Oh, sure, those tiny fractions of a percent justify forced abortions and euthanasia without which there's simply no way to bring the population down from 61 million to 30.

But even if those are radicals - the moderates are no better. We have all those 'cap-and-trade' carbon emission control programs that would confine Canadian businesses to the US-mandated quotas; we've got all those carbon markets, carbon credits and in some provinces - carbon taxes, that burden the businesses and the consumers without reducing the number of smog days in our cities. And we're about to have Kyoto 2 - the Copenhagen accord which talks a lot more about wealth transfer than about actually making the air cleaner:

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming.
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And shall I remind you that the mere existence of global climate change, let alone - the human causes of the latter have never been scientifically proven? That all those measures I listed above, are proposed not because there is a real threat to the planet, but for the sake of mere ideology, for the sake of green socialism which is nothing but a modernized version of the good old red socialism. Let us not forget that in North Korea - each hour is an "Earth hour". And that in Orwellian Oceania, they used to cut the electric current to residential buildings during nights and middays - because they needed the coal for the military industries.

Yes, believe it or not, but sitting an hour in the darkness is not going to achieve much. If anything, it is a lot more likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions:

It will take more than the metropolitan borough of South Tyneside, population 152,000, to solve global warming. Even if a billion people turn off their lights this Saturday, the entire event will be equivalent to switching off China's emissions for six short seconds. In economic terms, the environmental and humanitarian benefits from the efforts of the entire developed world would add up to just $21,000.

The campaign doesn't ask anybody to do anything difficult, such as coping without heating, airconditioning, telephones, the internet, hot food or cold drinks. Conceivably, if you or I sat in our houses watching television, with the heater and computer running, we could claim we're part of an answer to global warming, so long as the lights are switched off. The symbolism is almost perverse.
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And it gets worse: the event could cause higher overall pollution than if we just left our lights on. When asked to extinguish electricity, people turn to candlelight. Candles seem natural, but are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light globes, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. If you use one candle for each extinguished globe, you're essentially not cutting CO2 at all, and with two candles you'll emit more CO2. Moreover, candles produce indoor air pollution 10 to 100 times the level of pollution caused by all cars, industry and electricity production.
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So, even if the recent climatic trends were truly man-made, then those 40 watts of mine (3 compact florescent light-bulbs) wouldn't do much to "save the planet". But real climate change experts actually dispute the notion of man-made climate change, let alone - global warming. This whole hysteria then turns out to be nothing more than a mass-sacrifice to Gaia, with all its attributes - candlelight, vegetarian meals (because you wouldn't want to turn on the stove during "Earth hour",) meditation (a TV set consumes several times more energy than a light bulb) and so forth. So why would any of us want to participate in a massive neo-pagan ritual which has a lot more symbolism than practical use?

Sure, these exercises in earth-worshiping may be beneficial for all those self-righteous enviro-nuts who foretell an environmental apocalypse in 100 months, while flying around in their private jets and who call on us to "live simple" from their 35-bedroom mansions. But from the actual environmental prospective that "Earth hour" won't do anything to make the air cleaner. Not to mention that accepting this global warm-mongering as indisputable truth only harms us socially.

It's just that simple - without life none of us would be here. Including the guy who invented ice cream. Abortion claimed the lives of 1 in 6 in my generation. Nowadays, 1 in every 4 babies ends up being killed before he gets a chance to see daylight. Babies that are being killed can't speak up for themselves - that's why we have to be there for them.

Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) has launched a petition campaign calling for legal protection of human life from the moment of conception to natural death, in the lead-up to the March for Life. The petition will be presented to the pro-life MPs, who will present them in the House of Commons. Make sure your signature is there. And of course - don't forget to join us at the March for Life.

Margaret Somerville weighs in on the ethics of allowing babies to die, discussing the controversial law suit against a Quebec hospital that decided not to remove the feeding tube from a disabled baby, despite the parents' wishes. She summarizes her article by saying that the baby Phebe case could help clarify the ethical and legal rights of disabled babies and disabled people in general. In fact, this case is going to show whether or not disabled babies have any rights left at all nowadays.

We know that from the prospective of the Supreme Court and the large part of our governing elite, (including the PM and the Justice Minister,) unborn babies have no rights whatsoever. But here is the case of a born baby, a baby that should therefore have all the rights that other children have, but who is treated as an unborn, whom the hospital has refused to abort.

Parents have the primary right and responsibility to decide for their children. But this right is not absolute and narrower than what one may decide for oneself. Competent adults can refuse life-saving treatment for themselves, but not for their children. Decisions must be based on a presumption in favour of life and the child's "best interests" must take priority.

Some people see not providing treatment to a disabled baby and its dying as a result, as being in the child's "best interests." That can be correct if the treatment is simply prolonging dying. But a decision based just on a "quality of life not worth living" criterion is not ethically acceptable.
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Try telling that to all the abortion activists out there; to all those who believe that slaughtering a baby before he gets a chance to see daylight is an absolute "right" which is 100% indisputable and which every woman must be able to exercise at any time during pregnancy, at every hospital and, of course, at taxpayers' expense. Try convincing those who see nothing wrong with ripping the baby in the womb apart or injecting him with potassium chloride that it's wrong to let a baby who is already out of the womb to starve and dehydrate to death. Try explaining all that to a morally relativist crowd whose answer to all the above questions is "why not?"

Here, we have a couple that thought they might have a chance to exercise their implied "right to choose" and get rid of their "unwanted" baby several weeks past the legal deadline. And they were quite upset when they found out that they couldn't, that the hospital had chosen not to proceed with its initial decision to withdraw life-supporting treatment, keeping the baby alive without having asked them for permission first.

Baby Phebe's parents believe that their opinion should have prevailed over the one of the hospital and its ethics committee. If the court sides with the parents that will effectively extend the implied "right" of the murderous "choice" beyond pregnancy, allowing parents to demand euthanasia for babies whom post-natal disabilities have made "unwanted".

Despite having been charged with trespassing on their own campus, pro-life students are again setting up their controversial display on the University of Calgary campus, as they have been doing since 2006. They are back despite the University's obvious intention to pursue even more "trespassing" charges against the courageous students:

CALGARY, AB, March 25, 2009: The University of Calgary’s campus security personnel have taken down the names and addresses of seven members of the Campus Pro-Life club at about 2:30 p.m. today, presumably for the purpose of charging students with “trespassing” on their own campus.

Since 2006, students have set up a 2-day “Genocide Awareness Project” display on campus once per semester (twice per year). Initially the University declared that the display was permitted pursuant to the freedom of expression guarantee in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but in 2008 the University began demanding that the signs be turned inwards so that passers-by cannot see them.

In November 2008, the U of C’s campus security took down names and addresses of Campus Pro-Life club members. In January, these same club members were individually visited by Calgary Police at their homes after dark and issued a summons to appear in court on trespassing charges. The students have entered a plea of “not guilty” and the trial is set for November 4, 2009.

“We have a legal right to be on campus, and an equal right, like all students, to engage in the peaceful expression of our opinions,” stated club President Leah Hallman.

“The idea that students can trespass on their own campus merely by expressing their views is absurd,” she added.

The club will continue with its plans to return to campus tomorrow, Thursday, March 26, 2009, to complete the second day of its display, beginning at 8 a.m.
(From the Campus Pro-Life e-mail release)

I just can't understand why would the University of Calgary oppose the Genocide Awareness Project to that extent. Why it's ok for the Falun-Gong supporters show graphic pictures of their tortured comrades; why it's ok for the animal rights activists of all stripes to show graphic pictures of mutilated and disemboweled animals, but showing graphic pictures of aborted babies is a crime? How come Canadian unborn babies are less equal than Chinese dissidents or even animals?

Oppose abortion by sending the Prime Minister an empty red envelope with a pro-life message in it. This initiative, the Red Envelope Project, has been going on in US for a couple of months. Now, it's coming to Canada. The date set for the Canadian pro-life action is March 31st.

It's simple. Just take an empty red envelope (you may still have some left from last Christmas,) seal it and write the following message on the back:

This envelope represents one child who died because of an abortion. It is empty because the life that was taken is now unable to be a part of our world. Responsibility begins with conception.

Then address the envelope to:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
House of Commons,
Ottawa ON K1A0A6

And mail the envelope on March 31st. No postage necessary. If you got some red envelopes left - please consider mailing one to your MP and to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson - the one that wanted to have the Unborn Victims Of Crime Act withdrawn.

And don't forget to forward this information to all your friends. Not sure if we can send as many as 3 million red envelopes, one for every Canadian child who died before having a chance to live. But 100,000 envelopes (which is approximately the number of surgical abortions performed in Canada each year) is certainly achievable.

Let us show the Prime Minister and the Parliament that we're not in minority. Let us make it clear that the abortion issue has never been "settled", that voices of those who stand up for the unborn babies' right to life come from all across Canada and they can't be ignored. Together we can change the heart of The Prime Minister and save the lives of millions of children.

A judge has ordered Free Dominion, the Canadian counterpart to Free Republic, to release the records of its anonymous forum posters in order to enable a lawsuit by Richard Warman. The release will mean the end of anonymity for all practical purposes in Canada, as well as an end to privacy for Free Dominion itself, which must also produce all its hosting agreements and ownership information as well. The judge offered this ironic justification for his order:
[33] In the case before the court, we are dealing with an anti-hate speech advocate and Defendants whose website is so controversial that it is blocked to employees of the Ontario Public Service.
That’s the threshold for privacy in Canada? Anyone styling themselves as an “anti-hate speech advocate” can raid the records of a web community he doesn’t like? Note also the circular reasoning here employed by Judge Stanley Kersham. If the government sees fit to block a website from its employees at some level, then it’s permissible to strip them of their rights to privacy and speech at any point.
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Technically, Warman doesn't win much. (Except for the $5000, awarded to him by the judge.) Despite the ruling, he won't be able to determine the identity of those anonymous posters that are listed as "co-defendants" in his law suit against Free Dominion, since the forum has long stopped tracking posters' IP addresses and most of the e-mail addresses in its database are out of date. Still that ruling sets a dangerous precedent, as no confidentiality agreement between a user and a website owner or an ISP is now guaranteed. Any private information which we enter online (from e-mail addresses and telephone numbers to the SIN and credit card info,) may under certain circumstances be disclosed to the public.

Suddenly, the Liberals feel for the little unemployed guy and they pledge to make EI reform their priority.

OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Parliament must improve the employment insurance program within the next "six to eight" weeks and vowed his party will make that element of Canada's social safety net a priority when Members of Parliament return to Ottawa today.

Mr. Ignatieff's criticism of the existing employment insurance system follows similar proposals by the New Democrats and comes as a new poll puts the Liberals in first place among national parties as NDP voters jump to the Liberals.

"People are shedding jobs like crazy," Mr. Ignatieff said on CTV's Question Period. "We've got to have a government that steps in and says 'Let's put some floor under this. Let's give people an employment insurance system that allows them to get training for new jobs.'"
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Don't they think this rhetoric comes some 13 years too late? After all - which party was it that trimmed EI benefits without reducing the premiums and then - mismanaged the surplus? From 1996 and up until the beginning of the recession, the unemployment was going down much faster than the government was lowering the EI premiums. The surplus (amounting to $54B) went into the general revenues, into wasteful spending.

Liberals pretend to care now. But weren't they the ones in power when EI surplus funds got mismanaged? Years 2002, 2003 and 2005, that have been singled out by the Supreme court, are the years when Liberals financed their outgoing leader's "legusee" with taxpayers' money; when they were throwing away cash, trying to get re-elected in light of the Sponsorship Scandal; when Paul Martin was striking a coalition-like deal with Jack Layton in a desperate attempt to buy himself a few more months in power. That's where the money went.

And now they're trying to blame the Conservatives for merely admitting the obvious - that the money is gone. As if it wasn't the Conservative government that has finally stepped in to end this practice when funds, initially regarded as EI safety cushion were used to finance anything but the unemployment benefits.

The reason for this move is simple: with the new poll numbers, some senior Liberals may regard an early election as an opportunity for a "re-vote" that is almost certain to increase the party's seat count. So they're looking for a good excuse for a confidence vote that could trigger an early election. And, unless the poll numbers change, the EI issue seems to be win-win for them: If the government gives in to their demands - that will strengthen Ignatieff's image as a strong leader who can stand up to Harper, boosting Liberal support even further. If the government refuses to play along and an election is called - the Liberals get their now desired "re-vote" and they have a campaign issue which will allow them to retain the support of those NDP voters that are now supporting the Liberals.

The author of the island breezes blog posts daily prayers and quotes from the scripture in the memory of the unborn babies that weren't allowed to see daylight:

Intention:

Pray that we fully recognize in the unborn child our brother, our sister, and we recommit ourselves to care for them.

Scripture:

Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground."
-- Genesis 4:8-10

Reflection:

After Cain committed the first murder in human history, God asked him, "Where is your brother?" He replied by saying, "I don't know."

In 1973, the Supreme Court was asked the same question, and gave the same answer. Unable to admit that the unborn children are our brothers and sisters, the Supreme Court said in its Roe v. Wade ruling, "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins." Boil all that down to three words, and it's, "I don't know."
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Actually, it's a great idea. The closest vigil site is in Montreal which is over 1000 km from Moncton, not to mention PEI. But we can always pray in our cities (that initiative is known as 40 DAYS FOR LIFE @ 180º) or - stage the vigil online, like this PEI blogger did, posting a new prayer each day. (Isn't that a great job?)

Great essay by Larrey Anderson, debunking moral relativism as well as the cult of tolerance, derived from that myth. It's a long essay, but it's worth reading.

Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness -- and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of the various claims to truth and the various ways of life and kinds of human beings -- is the great insight of our times.

But relativism is not a new idea. Ever since Protagoras declared, “Man is the measure of all things,” people have been attracted to relativism. Human beings are attracted to relativism -- not because it is true -- they are attracted to it because relativism is easy.

I mean two things by “easy” and I mean to discuss those two things later in this essay. I will introduce them here. First, relativism is easy on the intellect. A person’s entire understanding of the entire workings of the entire universe can be stated in eight words: The truth is that there is no truth. Here is a truth, if it is true, simple enough for any simpleton.

Next, relativism is easy on the conscience. If there is no truth out there then there are no values out there either; rather, the only values out there are the subjective ones that we create and put there. Thus, it is possible for us to agree to have this value as a shared value: if you let me make my values, I’ll let you make yours. The allowance by a society of the creation of conflicting values between one human being and another is, in our culture, called “tolerance.” As we will see, tolerance is one, but only one, possible moral outcome of relativism.
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Have you ever tried to explain why 2x2 makes 4 to someone who rejects the multiplication table? That's pretty much what our struggle is like in a society dominated by relativist thought.

Not to mention that few of us envisioned a situation in which we'd have to explain the very basics on any social issue (from national defense and social justice to abortion and marriage) to someone who rejects self-evident facts, let alone - national traditions and moral values. No wonder we've seen little success in the last half-a-century. Turning the tide won't be possible without destroying the myth of relativism and restoring the absolute truth first.

If you ever wondered what might be the consequences of allowing the government to regulate the internet content - take a look at what's going on in Australia. There, as it turns out, a legitimate web site could be black-listed if its content is deemed "potential prohibited"; and merely posting a link to a black-listed site could earn your hosting provider a $11,000-a-day fine:

CANBERRA, Australia, March 19, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is coming under fire from free-speech advocates after it threatened the host of a popular Australian online discussion forum with a $11,000-a-day fine for publishing a link to an American pro-life website that ACMA had previously blacklisted.

The controversy erupted after an anonymous online user lodged a complaint with the ACMA in January over graphic images of aborted unborn children on AbortionTV.com, an American pro-life site.

According to Australian IT, the individual who originally reported the page said his goal was to test the system and show that legal webpages could end up on the blacklist. The ACMA's Internet blacklist was launched to block illegal child pornography.

About two weeks later, the ACMA told the complainant that it was "satisfied that the internet content is hosted outside Australia, and the content is prohibited or potential prohibited content." This was taken to mean that AbortionTV.com had been blacklisted.

Pro-life advocates, while supporting bans on pornography, are concerned that corrupt beaurocrats may use such lists may to target legitimate websites.

To express concerns contact the communications Minister in the Australian government: minister@dbcde.gov.au
(Life Site News)

Finally - a small step in the right direction. The government is reviewing its multiculturalism spending in an attempt to deny public funds to organizations that promote hate or that praise terrorism:

Jason Kenney: “I think there is a tendency to be a little bit naive in Canada. We’re so self-congratulatory about the success of our model of pluralism and diversity, that surely no one could really mean ill in Canada... We don’t necessarily all subscribe to Canadian values, and we should be willing to recognize those that don’t.”
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Not sure how far we can expect the government to go. Of course, if we had a majority government and if we had more of the good old Reform policies in the Conservative policy book - we could see the end of all those "sensitivity training" programs and other nonsense funded with the taxpayers' money. But cutting public funds to extremist organizations and ensuring that "sensitivity training" at our airports is not provided by jihadists - that's a good start.

Although the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney was quick to acknowledge certain challenges:

“Unfortunately, the federal government is a huge, complicated machine. You know, (it has a) $200-billion budget, hundreds of thousands of people, and sometimes not everyone gets the message,” Kenney said.

Well, how about zero-base budgeting then? Instead of just adding new spending on top of what the departments have spent last year (plus the indexation, plus adjustment to population growth,) let's require them to justify all their expenses, including those that were approved for the past fiscal years.

Doesn't that make sense? Instead of having to go through thousands of expense items for every single department, make the departments come to you with the lists of expenses which they want to see extended for the upcoming fiscal year. Instead of explaining the departments (or organizations) why they can no longer have certain public grants, let the departments and organizations explain you why do they still need that money. I agree - a Federal government is a huge, complicated machine. So wouldn't it make sense to make everyone do their share of the work, rather than doing all the work alone?

Not to mention that abolishing needless spending could slash some $10B from the upcoming deficit, ensuring Canada's return to balanced budgets as early as 2011.

Powerful Islamic groups detest the countries they call home - that's how Michael Coren summarizes his Toronto Sun article:

"Allah has cursed you and you will suffer you scum," chanted one heavily bearded young man.

Another group held signs mocking dead British soldiers, even though they knew that the families of the fallen were in the crowd. When one supporter of the soldiers lost his temper and shouted at the Muslim protestors, he was arrested by the police.

If this were an isolated incident it could be dismissed as absurd enthusiasm. Luton, however, is home to several Muslim men charged with terrorism-related crimes and the town itself is replicated all over the country. All over France, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and elsewhere as well. Powerful and influential groups within the Islamic community feel no connection with the country of their birth and instead detest all for which it stands.

It is entirely understandable when immigrant groups maintain their language, recall the achievements of their home nation or band together out of solidarity. This tends to dilute and largely disappear over time. Identification with places of parental origin also is completely natural. But second and third generation immigrants violently supporting regimes with which their adopted states are at war and calling for death and defeat for the country that gives them so much is a totally different issue and is unprecedented in modern history.
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Interesting, isn't it? A man who shouts back at raving jihadis gets arrested and charged with "racially aggravated harassment, involving verbal abuse". But Muslim protesters are apparently immune to prosecution. (Sure, how could a member of a visible minority group and supposedly - a victim of racism, be a racist himself?) Hmm... I wonder what would have happened to an ethnic German (or Italian or Japanese) living in Britain (or Canada or US for that matter) had he behaved like that during a homecoming parade in 1945?

In his article, Michael Coren mentioned several European countries that have significant population of jihadi Muslims who detest the nations that try to accommodate them. Unfortunately, that also applies to Canada. We have Said Namouh, a Moroccan with a Canadian permanent residence visa who entertains himself by creating videos of charred bodies of Canadian soldiers being dragged through the street in celebration and who just happens to have some ties to a terrorist group which kidnaps journalists. And then of course we have Omar Khadr, a "Canadian" and a "child soldier" in the eyes of our lefties, but in reality - a jihadi combatant who has no other ties to Canada except having been born here. And we have plenty of others which the media won't mention - because nobody wants to be branded a racist and an "islamophobe".

So that's what multi-cult looks like, some 40 plus years after its inception. Not merely more pavilions at folk-fest, as people used to picture it back then, but significant amount of population which detests their adoptive country and which is determined to build its own nation within a nation. Luckily, there are still immigrants who get it. There are still people who don't want Canada to resemble the countries they had to leave:

Naveed Khan
March 17th 2009, 1:35pm

I am a muslim born and raised in Pakistan now living in Calgary...Coren story is an eye opener..What worry me more while living in Karachi, Pakistan, people are generally liberal..However when they move to Canada or any other western country they become more conservative and "Religous" than back home. I visited Village Square Library in North East quadrant of the Calgary for my exam preparation and have seen 8 year old girls from Islamic school visiting Library, wearing scarf...I know Islam and I was born and raised in Islamic society but an 8 year old muslim girl wearing a scarf is sacry for me..These days are for her to play...She has a long way to go before becoming adult...Let treat her as a child...
...
Ed Wesselius
March 18th 2009, 9:31pm

Once again Mr. Coren has accurately identified what is indeed happening not only in England, but also here in Canada. And we the people are allowing it to happen, it's an example of "political correctness run amok". I was born in a European country and have proudly accepted Canada as my home. Canada is a great country because of immigration and we've become that way because of the diversity of people that have immigrated here and have become proud, contributing Canadians. But the recent wave of immigrants seem to want to destroy and challenge all of those accomplishments. I think it's time these people were told "like it or leave". I'm tired of political correctness and tolerating the most intolerable people I've ever met!!
(Source)

According to the real scientists, if the present trend continues, the world will actually be 1.1C cooler in 2100. The problem is that nobody is willing to listen to the real climate change experts:

Led off with stirring speeches from the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the acting head of the European Union, and Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, perhaps the most distinguished climatologist in the world, the message of this gathering was that the scare over global warming has been deliberately stoked up for political reasons and has long since parted company with proper scientific evidence.

Nothing has more acutely demonstrated this than the reliance of the IPCC on computer models to predict what is going to happen to global temperatures over the next 100 years. On these predictions, that temperatures are likely to rise by up to 5.3C, all their other predictions and recommendations depend, yet nearly 10 years into the 21st century it is already painfully clear that the computer forecasts are going hopelessly astray. Far from rising with CO2, as the models are programmed to predict they should, the satellite-measured temperature curve has flattened out and then dropped. If the present trend were to continue, the world in 2100 would not in fact be hotter but 1.1C cooler than the 1979-1998 average.
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Yet the terrifying thing, as President Klaus observed in his magisterial opening address, is that there is no dialogue on these issues. When recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he found the minds of his fellow world leaders firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers.
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So, when the real climate change experts discuss climatic trends and discover that there's no man-made climate change whatsoever - the governing elite denounces them as "deniers" and ignores their message. But when politicians and celebrities tell us that greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities (less than 0.001% of the atmosphere) cause the temperature to go up, block the sunlight or otherwise responsible for a global climate change - we should accept that as science.

The Global Warming hoax depends on its success on only one thing ... fear. No matter the science, no matter the proof, no matter how right or wrong ... there will be no War on CO2 and a massive transfer to wealth to government institutions if the public at large doesn't buy into the hoax.

As a result, green organizations and prophets of doom like Al Gore make no hesitation in departing from truth in their quest to scare carbon taxes out of the pockets of gullible citizens. The battle is not one of science, but one between fear and logic. So far, fear has been winning ... but possibly not for long.
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According to the Investor's Business Daily the tide is turning and there are more people willing to consider scientific facts rather just go with the panicking crowd. Having two coldest winters in a row also helps the people realize that what is being promoted as an "inconvenient truth" could in fact be nothing but a profitable lie.

To say this is monstrously outrageous is to say nothing.

MONTREAL, March 17, 2009 (LifeSIteNews.com) - A Quebec couple have launched a $3.5-million lawsuit against Montreal Children's Hospital for allegedly putting their infant daughter back on artificial food and hydration without their approval.
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According to the lawsuit Laurendeau and Phebe's father, Stephane Mantha, were told by doctors that their daughter had little chance for survival and advised them to take her off respiratory support and hydration, to which they agreed.

After withdrawing respiratory support, however, it was found that Phebe could breathe on her own, and the hospital's ethics committee reversed the parents' decision to withhold fluids and food from their baby.
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So, first we have the doctors jumping to an erroneous conclusion that the baby wouldn't last and recommending to have the baby starved and dehydrated to death as an act of "compassion". (We stopped using the death penalty of fear that a wrongful conviction could have resulted in an innocent person being executed, but executing an innocent baby following a wrongful speedy diagnosis is apparently nowhere near that disturbing.)

Then, once the doctors notice their mistake (thanks God they actually noticed it!) and once they let the baby live, they end up being sued by the girl's parents for not following through with their original plan to get the baby starved and dehydrated to death. They say the baby was allowed to stay alive without their consent. Now, shall I remind you that we're talking about a born girl, one who is recognized as a person and as a Canadian citizen by every law and every Supreme Court ruling there is? Doesn't she (I repeat - a born girl) have a right to life, just like any of us?

Among other things, the baby's parents complain that it takes too much time and energy to care for a disabled baby girl, that the girl's mother had to quit her job to care for the baby. But the hospital did offer them an opportunity to let the baby be placed in protective custody, didn't it? If the parents made the decision to take their daughter home and raise her, disabled or not, shouldn't they be the ones responsible for their own decision? Or do they believe that the hospital is at fault for merely making them choose? Do they believe that refusing to put a baby to death makes hospital responsible for all the problems the parents may face raising that baby?

Right to life? Forget it! Personal responsibility? Ditto! Common sense? Long gone. That's a world inside out, indeed.

To make things worse, this might be just the beginning. Imagine, what could be the consequences if the court rules against the hospital. Imagine the pressure on the doctors, some of whom simply won't dare to go against the decision made by their superiors or by the patient's relatives and save the life which could still be saved. If they actually maintain the right to save lives; if the ruling against the hospital doesn't become a precedent setting case that would eventually force the doctors to euthanize patients irregardless of the medical condition - just because the patients' relatives or legal guardians demand so...

Terrible. Scary. And yes, monstrously outrageous.

That's what six pro-life students from the University of Calgary are being accused of.

CALGARY, AB, March 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The six University of Calgary students who were charged by the university with trespassing on their own campus after they participated in a pro-life event last year, were scheduled to appear in court this morning where they intended to enter a "not guilty" plea.

Last November, CPL exhibited a graphic abortion display on campus, the sixth time that the group had done so. While at several past exhibits the university acknowledged the students' rights to express themselves, last year U of C administration told the students they had to change how they exhibited their signs, pointing them inwards so that passersby could not see the display.

The students refused, however, arguing that the demand was akin to telling someone they could speak as long as no one could hear them. They erected their controversial display, facing outwards, and the university made good on its threats to charge them with trespass.
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Well, at least their case is being heard in the court of law, where truth is a defense and where hurt feelings are not the factor. Let the U of C jackboots suffer the embarrassment they deserve. If the judges haven't yet completely parted with common sense, they'll acknowledge that students can't really trespass on their own campus. (Unless those students are expelled or suspended - which wasn't the case for any of them.)

Meanwhile the students plan to set up the display on campus again next week, March 25 and 26, continuing with their established practice of engaging their fellow peers in debate each semester.

Or why else would any of them consider it necessary to have a special "atheist sacrament" of "debaptism"?

Now Mr Hunt has become the pioneer in a rejuvenated campaign for a way of cancelling baptisms given to children too young to decide for themselves whether they wanted this formal initiation into Christianity.

However, baptism is proving a difficult thing to undo.

The local Anglican diocese, Southwark, refused to amend the baptismal roll as Mr Hunt had wanted, on the grounds that it was a historical record.
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What's next? A group of secular Jews having it sewn back on in a special ceremony of "decircumcision"?

Seriously though - if John Hunt truly rejected beliefs and superstitions as he claims - why would he need a special ceremony to decry that in public public or to have that statement written on a piece of paper and signed? Think about it - if you don't believe in Santa - would you bother getting yourself a "non-believer in Santa" certificate? If you believe that there's nothing scary about Friday the 13th; that it's just a calendar date like any other - would you consider writing something like "it's Friday the 13th and I'm feeling lucky" on your T-shirt? Just like one of the commenters said:

I don't get it. Shouldn't atheists regard baptism as nothing more than regular water being poured on someone, symbolizing something they don't believe exists anyway?

If some nutty wiccan, for example, wanted to cast some false spell over me, I wouldn't demand she take it back. I would laugh at her nuttiness and forget about it.
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Exactly! If Mr. Hunt & Co were truly atheists, if they truly believed that holy water is merely an H₂O which can make one wet but hardly has any spiritual meaning - why would any of them bother trying to wash away the H₂O which evaporated decades ago?

Looks like those guys feel somewhat insecure about their conversion to secularism. So they're lashing out at the faith they've renounced, trying to prove it to everyone (but first and foremost - to themselves) that they're through with it, that the days when their parents brought them to church are over, that starting from this day on they have absolutely, categorically, 100% nothing to do with Christianity and here's a special certificate in case you don't believe them and please take their name off the baptismal roll because they don't want anyone to remind them that they were actually baptized...

Looks like, contrary to their own bus slogans (which call upon people of faith to "stop worrying and enjoy life") - those newfound atheists are the ones who worry the most.

Yet another health regulatory body moves to take away doctors' freedom of conscience:

The Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons has rewritten its guidelines covering the standard of care that doctors must provide. Most of the changes are unremarkable, but some doctors and members of the general public are balking at proposed changes that essentially ask physicians to set aside their moral beliefs, conscience objections and medical opinions to ensure women have unfettered access to abortion.

The proposed changes are being debated this week and, if accepted as drafted, doctors who oppose abortion (for whatever reason) will no longer have the option of refusing to assist a woman requesting abortion.
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As patients, we should be equally concerned that the body regulating medical practices in Alberta is willing to force its doctors to make medical decisions based on policy instead of their own medical assessment of the situation. (Think of how we would react to this idea if the medical procedure was anything but abortion.)

Some doctors rightly reject abortion as a necessary medical procedure because they are concerned about its medical and psychological impact. Decades of research on a woman's mental and physical health after an abortion reveals a whole new set of realities that have the capacity to bring harm to the patient. Consequently, it shouldn't be wrong to give these concerns greater consideration than her potential inconvenience or even her 'right' to choose.
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Those who support the initiative, claim this is about providing access to "reproductive health" - even though elective injurious procedure like abortion could hardly be considered healthcare, let alone - reproductive. Not to mention that forcing pro-life doctors to choose between going against their conscience and leaving the profession altogether is obviously not going to improve the quality of our healthcare.

It sounds crazy, but that seems to be the logic of the North Carolina Judge Ned Mangum who's in charge of the case:

A North Carolina judge has ordered three children to attend public schools this fall because the homeschooling their mother has provided over the last four years needs to be "challenged."

The children, however, have tested above their grade levels – by as much as two years.

The decision is raising eyebrows among homeschooling families, and one friend of the mother has launched a website to publicize the issue.
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Mangum said he made the determination on his guiding principle, "What's in the best interest of the minor children," and conceded it was putting his judgment in place of the mother's.
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So where did he see the best interest of the children? If they are a couple years ahead of other kids in studies, if they are well taken care of and well behaved - why would the judge even consider it necessary to intervene?

The judge claims that "public schooling would be a good complement". How could it be a complement if those kids are already well ahead of the rest of the kids their age?! What could there be that he believes the kids are missing? Peer pressure? Or maybe - sex education and all those other courses in "world religions" and "social justice" in which kids would be taught to despise their culture, their country's history, let alone - the social and moral values of their parents? Judging from Mangum's remarks that the children's beliefs, as taught by their mother, need to be "challenged" - that's apparently exactly what he wanted those kids to go through.

To make things worse, the time is running out:

The truth is that the deadline for any objections to his verbal orders is Sunday, March 15th. Even then, Venessa Mills will not have the opportunity to go before the judge. Objections must be submitted in writing so the judge can make his decision behind the scenes.

Use this link to automatically send faxes RIGHT NOW to the Judicial Standards Commission, the Governor, and state representatives! (This is an independent site and it makes a small charge to send the faxes.)

Judge Mangum needs to do the right thing and remove himself from this case. The Governor needs to do the right thing and intervene.

As far as we know, there is NO APPEAL to temporary orders in these circumstances. By the time the opportunity comes around to bring this back before a judge, these children will already be placed in public school. And that judge will probably be Judge Mangum, unless action is taken to see that Venessa Mills has a fair hearing and at least a chance for justice.
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I hope you don't mind spending $0.90US to help a persecuted homeschooling family.

The SMU Journal has published an interview with one of the pro-abortion jackboots that succeeded in shouting down a pro-life presentation at Saint Mary's University several weeks ago. The activist, one Holly Taylor, is making a pathetic attempt to justify their group's decision to drown out the speaker instead of trying to prove their point in a civilized debate:

Intro from Holly: I would like to clarify the fact that this protest was a last resort measure taken on our part in a deliberate effort to have the talk shut down. A small group of us among the much larger group of protesters that were present made a decision to take an active role in protecting women from this type of harassment and assault on campus, after the university administration failed to do so.
(Source)

Harassment? Assault? Wait a minute, did someone forced this Taylor gal to attend a pro-life presentation? After all, it's not like all those "Chinese buffet" classes in "world religions" which some provinces have made mandatory for all students, including religious ones. Taylor had all the freedom to simply boycott the presentation. And, if what she says is right, if the majority of women find pro-life views so intimidating, then she wouldn't have any problem convincing others to do the same; to leave the auditorium or to boycott the event altogether and let the speaker do his presentation in front of empty benches. (How long would he have lasted?)

But apparently, not only Taylor didn't believe in her ability to convince others not to show up to the presentation. Moreover, the mere fact that someone out there on the campus is saying something she doesn't agree with, was enough to make her furious:

We were not willing to engage in debate within the context in question- to do so would be to legitimize his presence and presentation, and we maintain our position that a university institution is not the appropriate forum for encouraging discrimination and hate.

In plain English - this Taylor gal believes that her opinion is the only right opinion on the subject and that's non-debatable. Anyone who thinks otherwise shouldn't even be allowed to open his mouth if Taylor is around, because her excellence, the self-appointed Kommissar of SMU, regards that as "discrimination and hate". And she can even quote a vague paragraph from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act which, she believes, equates presumably "hate" speech to discrimination.

The interview itself displays quite similar attitude of the pro-abortion camp: Taylor is sure that Jojo Ruba should have never been allowed to the campus in the first place, that just being there made him wrong. So Taylor insists that everything she and her fellow jackboots did to stop his presentation and to remove him from campus was therefore justified.

It's worth reading, just so you can see the contempt for free speech and others' opinion which Taylor & Co express; just to see how pathetic and logically unsound their arguments are and how insecure they feel when it comes to an actual argument on fetal rights. It looks like the only way for the pro-aborts to win a debate is not to allow the debate to happen. So Taylor & Co would come up with whatever excuses they could think of, even with the most absurd ones, just to avoid discussing the actual question of whether or not an unborn baby is a person:

I do not view "protests as the superior choice". I also do not view debate as the superior choice, especially not within the context of such gross power imbalances. Jose Ruba is part of a massive organization, with much money and much support behind him. The theatre in Burke was not a safe space- how can you expect women who have had an abortion, or anyone for that matter, to sit through violent, traumatizing imagery- deliberately designed to exploit women's vulnerabilities, and then engage in a meaningful debate? It is an unreasonable request to make.

Yeah, right! Massive organization with a lot of money... (Darn, there must be years worth of pay checks waiting for me in some secret headquarters!) As if all those hundreds of millions in government handouts were going to Life Canada and the Real Women of Canada, not to the SOW and plenty of other feminist "anti-hate" organizations. And as if it wasn't the pro-aborts paying the homeless in Halifax to shout and heckle the pro-life protesters, because there's just no other way for them to challenge the pro-life message in the public square...

Have you heard about the Indoctrinate U movie? It's a great documentary about the sad state of free speech at university campuses. Obviously, the US-made movie focuses on the US universities, but as we've seen in the past few weeks, our universities aren't any better.

Speech codes. Censorship. Enforced political conformity. Hostility to diversity of opinion. Sensitivity training. We usually associate such things with the worst excesses of fascism and communism, not with the American universities that nurtured the free speech movement. But American higher education bears a disturbing resemblance to the totalitarian societies that are anathema to our nation's ideal of liberty. Evan Coyne Maloney's documentary film, Indoctrinate U, reveals the breathtaking institutional intolerance you won't read about in the glossy marketing brochures of Harvard, Berkeley, Michigan, Yale, and hundreds of other American colleges and universities.
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While the movie itself is unlikely to be shown in a local theater, you can still watch a few deleted scenes on the documentary website. Check out the story of how 1960s campus radicals morphed into today's academics. Follow the documentary makers on their quest to obtain a permit to film on campus. (Is filming at Columbia /university/ any easier than filming in, say, Venezuela?) Observe an intellectual academic debate between campus radicals and the US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. See how mere two sentences in what would otherwise be an A- paper could get someone expelled. And don't forget to request a local screening (too bad their system won't accept a Canadian postal code).

And consider getting your degree online or in a private college...

That's the gruesome reality of the culture of "choice". As you watch this video, remember - this is just one hand out of hundreds of thousands.

The truck you saw was the one picking up baby bodies. It used to come on Tuesdays, and we convinced the truck driver to quit the job and go elsewhere to work. We gave him leads for jobs and he was hired. He has stopped back on occasion to visit and thank us. The baby bodies are put in red plastic bags with "medical waste" printed on them, then the red bag is put inside a large box and thrown in the back of the truck. The babies are then disposed of in the landfill where your regular doctor medical waste is put. That is how they dispose of babies whose bones have developed to the point that the industrial type garbage disposal will not break them up and flush them down the drain.
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The new website is www.snnsite.com. And it's sure great to see the SNN back, defending the anglosphere through satire.

Check out their latest podcast. Among other things it weighs in on the riots that took place at the York University campus a few weeks ago. And here's something I haven't heard before: As it turns out, the event that enraged the campus radicals (jihadis and lefties side by side,) leading to a riot, had nothing to with Israel or Zionism. It was a press conference, organized by a group of students from a wide variety of backgrounds, to announce they had successfully collected over 5000 signatures to hold a recall election for the "student government" at York University.

Yes, that was enough for some campus groups (guess which ones) to feel threatened. And they responded in their usual manner: trying to drown out the speakers by chanting slogans and banging on walls, demanding to halt the conference and remove those students who had organized it from campus, mixing accusations of racism with ethnic slurs... Sounds just too familiar, doesn't it? Well, check out the podcast, there's a lot more about what happened at the campus that day, and a lot more other news which you won't find in the mainstream media.

By the way - it took just a few weeks for Shire Network News to raise the funds they needed for the new hosting. In the end, $1810 was raised from 36 contributors. Now compare that with all those "cultural groups" out there that are demanding $100M of taxpayers' money and more government regulations for the ISPs to shove their production down our throats.

That's the option which is currently being considered by Canada's telecommunications regulator - the CRTC.

Traditionally, Ottawa has stayed away from treating online content as part of the broadcast industry. But under a scenario proposed yesterday, Internet service providers could be asked to surrender 3 per cent of their subscriber revenue – roughly $100-million – to a fund that would help produce Canadian programs for the Web.
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Members of the TV production community, including actors and directors, supported the idea at the hearings in Gatineau, Que., saying it would help carve a place, however small, for Canadian content in a borderless Internet world.
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Though it's not certain the CRTC will adopt the idea in the end – the hearings are spread out over the next four weeks – the concept would be similar to the $242-million Canadian Television Fund. The CTF collects about half of its budget from cable and satellite TV companies and turns those dollars over to independent producers to help fund domestic comedies, dramas and documentaries.
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In other words - they want to make us pay a couple dollars extra per month to subsidize yet another website (or a group of websites) that most of us will never visit. And it's obvious that while this whole tax grab is being organized for the sake of streamlining Canadian content online, their definition of Canadian won't include traditional, pro-life, pro-family Canadians. So, not only we'll be paying extra for something we're not going to use, but also - we'll be paying extra for a supposedly Canadian content that won't even represent us. They'll misrepresent us - that's for sure. But why should any of us be required to pay for that from our own pockets?

And that's just the beginning. So far the CRTC hasn't ruled out the idea of licensing the online content providers. That means the proposal could still be discussed during the remaining weeks of the hearings. No doubt, all those "cultural" groups that are currently lobbying for our cash, will also push for licensing or some other type of content regulation that would give them an advantage over their competition in the online media market.

John Fulton, the owner of a fitness club in St. Catharines, Ontario, is being hauled in front of a "human rights" tribunal for not letting a male pervert into women-only areas of his gym. The complainer, a so called "transsexual" was dressing like a woman and was planning to get his body surgically mutilated to resemble one of a female. So he demanded to be treated as if he actually were a woman - even if that meant forcing women to let someone who was biologically a male into their bathrooms and changing rooms. As a responsible business owner, Mr. Fulton refused to allow that. The pervert filed a "human rights" complaint. The OHRC was quick to side with the complainer:

Fulton said he called the tribunal and was told he had to let the man use the women's facilities, but he said he couldn't get an answer on what his rights and the rights of his female clients are.

"I had to find out what my women's rights were," he said Wednesday.
(Source)

So, according to the OHRC, sick desires of a perverse man who thinks that merely changing clothes could turn him into a woman, outweigh normal women's right to privacy. Hmmm... I wonder if Barbara Hall, the chief of Ontario's Orwellian tribunal would want that guy in her own changing room...

Here's an interesting essay, modeled after a famous Soviet-era joke which listed the six paradoxes (or "dialectical contradictions") of the Soviet socialism. Here's how it was back then:

There is full employment - yet no one is working.
No one is working - yet the factory quotas are fulfilled.
The factory quotas are fulfilled - yet the stores have nothing to sell.
The stores have nothing to sell - yet people got all the stuff at home.
People got all the stuff at home - yet everyone is complaining.
Everyone is complaining - yet the voting is always unanimous.

And here's how it goes nowadays:

Economic justice:
America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.
Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.
They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.
Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.
The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.
Hollywood cliches:
Without capitalism there'd be no Hollywood - yet filmmakers hate capitalism.
Filmmakers hate capitalism - yet they sue for unauthorized copying of their movies.
They sue for unauthorized copying - yet on screen they teach us to share.
On screen they teach us to share - yet they keep their millions to themselves.
They keep their millions to themselves - yet they revel in stories of American misery and depravity.
They revel in stories of American misery and depravity - yet they blame the resulting anti-American sentiment on conservatism.
They blame the anti-American sentiment on conservatism - yet conservatism ensures the continuation of a system that makes Hollywood possible.
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In fact, there's a lot more. Check out the essay to see how those dialectical contradictions affect other aspects of our lives. Here's just one more out of many:

Public education:
Liberals have been in charge of education for 50 years - yet education is out of control.
Education is out of control - yet liberal teaching methods prevail.
Liberal teaching methods prevail - yet public schools are failing.
Public schools are failing - yet their funding keeps growing.
Their funding keeps growing - yet public schools are always underfunded.
Public schools are always underfunded - yet private schools yield better results for less.
Private schools yield better results for less - yet public education is the only way out of the crisis.

That's pretty much the message from the recent by-election in Ontario. Voters in what has always been a strong Conservative riding have elected a Liberal.

I wish I could say that the FCP supporters have split the vote and cost John Tory his seat and (hopefully) his job as a leader of the Ontario PCs, but unfortunately this wasn't the case. Most of the Conservative voters simply stayed home. They didn't find much of a difference between a Progressive pretending to be Conservative John Tory and the Liberal candidate Rick Johnson, but they weren't ready to try something new and cast their ballot for Ontario's only pro-life, pro-family political party. (If they were even aware that such a party actually exists.) That's sad.

Now, is there a silver lining? Yes, there is. The recent by-election has clearly demonstrated that "Progressive Conservatism" is losing its place in Canada's political spectrum. Urban voters don't buy this Liberal Lite brand - they'd rather vote plain Liberal. And, as we've just seen, rural voters aren't enthusiastic about the Red Tory brand either; they'd rather stay home than blindly cast their ballot for a candidate who is a Conservative in name only.

Let this be a lesson for the Ontario PC party. So far, all its electoral losses have been blamed on the traditionalist small-c Conservatives. The "Red Tory" wing kept claiming that in order to succeed, the party should become more moderate, more centrist, more progressive, more broad-based - even if that means alienating the party's traditional supporters. Well, they've got the most progressive, most moderate, most tolerant and "accepting" leader they could ever hope for - and they failed miserably. Will they be ready to learn from their mistakes now? Are they going to try and bring back at least some of the voters they've alienated so successfully? By the way, the Federal Conservatives too could learn a lot from what has happened in Haliburton — Kawartha Lakes — Brock.

As for the Ontario Liberals - for them it's nothing but a Pyrrhic victory. Had John Tory won the by-election, he would have secured his position as a leader up until the next general election - literally granting Dalton McGuinty yet another term in power. This however is not going to happen. After having managed to lose a by-election in a riding where any other PC candidate would have won with a safe margin, Tory will most likely step down; making way for a real Conservative leader and giving the Ontario PCs an opportunity to prepare themselves for the campaign of 2011.

It may surprise all those multi-cult fans, but there are still more than enough people who choose to come to Canada because it does not resemble their home countries. Those guys have no problems with values and freedoms associated with an earlier Canada and they don't believe that our society should be bending backwards, trying to accommodate the very same extremists that drove them out of their home countries in the first place.

In their view, the liberal and left-leaning Canadian intelligentsia is wracked by guilt and contempt for their own intellectual heritage and they do all they can to stand up for radical Islamists whose agendas are more closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood than to Canadian freedoms.

They, on other hand, the “good-looking” Muslims whom the mainstream media generally ignore, stand with John Stuart Mill in upholding individual freedom and traditional values associated with an earlier Canada.

So spoke Tarek Fatah and Salim Mansur at a recent lunchtime lecture at the offices of the Ontario Bar Association, sponsored by the Speakers Action Group and the Canadian Jewish Civil Rights Association, and in interviews with The CJN.
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And here's another article that speaks about a similar trend. Somehow, bending backwards and trying to airbrush Canada from its history did not strengthen the cause of Canadian unity; rather the opposite:

As thinkers such as George Grant and Charles Taylor have correctly observed, an English-Canadian political culture weakened by the denial of its own unique history has contributed to, rather than eased, French Canadians’ worries that the rest of Canada is still committed to building a bicultural society along non-republican and non-assimilative lines.

Obscuring Canada’s colonial past has also made it more difficult for an increasingly diverse country to forge those essential bonds of citizenship and community that all nations depend upon. Newcomers to Canada, if they are exposed to Canadian history and civics at all, are fed a watered-down version that focuses on the country’s recent past — primarily post-Second-World-War history — and the rights and privileges of citizenship.

To this day the history of Canada as told through provincial history curricula and in much of our popular culture remains bereft of the unifying and inspiring civics lessons that past generations derived from the stories associated with the country’s journey from colony to nation-state: its military triumphs, its struggle for democracy and its bicultural foundations.
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So maybe it is the time to go back to basics and start encouraging unity rather than self-isolation and ghettoization?

As if all those "sex education" lessons weren't enough, we now have family doctors enthusiastically promoting contraceptive pills to children - without bothering to obtain any form of consent from parents.

...I winked at Jody and left, honoring her privacy and modesty.

Not five minutes later the doctor called me back in. One look at Jody and I knew she was distressed. My motherly alarm system kicked in and I felt my heart speed up. Dr. X left the room and I said,

“What’s wrong?”

“The doctor asked me about birth control,” said Jody. “I don’t even know what it is.”
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When they were alone the doctor asked Jody if she was drinking or using drugs. Jody said no and the doctor then told Jody in a firm way how important it was to keep drug- and alcohol-free. Then the doctor asked if Jody had a boyfriend. Jody said no. Then the doctor said, “If you ever get a boyfriend, and you’re having sexual relations, I can give you birth control pills.”
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That almost sounds like a sales pitch, than an advice of a healthcare worker. I wonder if he does get some extra income peddling this hormonal trash or if he was merely following someone else's bad advise without considering the consequences. Either way this is not the kind of behavior one would expect from a professional.

He justifies his actions by suggesting this is a "routine conversation" for 12 year-old girls; that it was part of a "community-wide effort to cut down on teen pregnancy". Hmmm... I wonder - how many teen pregnancies is he going to avert by suggesting 12 year-olds that if they want to sleep with each other - they can, as long as they take a few precautionary measures?

A real doctor would be warning 12 year-olds that at this age the body is simply not ready for sexual relations and he would be talking about health risks associated with having sexual relations at such an early age. His advice to a 12 year-old who might be pressured into sexual relations by her "boyfriend" would be - to let the grown-ups know about it right away. He would explain that a "boyfriend" that doesn't want to make the sacrifice and wait until the girl is old enough to get married should not only be told where to go and what to do there, but his departure better be accelerated with something heavy and pointy.

Finally, a true professional would have lauded Jody for her moral convictions. Because a girl who believes in abstinence until marriage is far less likely to become a pregnant teenager than a girl who just can't wait for her parents to look the other way. But this "Doctor X" is more of a "product of our culture" than a health care professional.

Just a great cartoon from the Calgary Herald, posted on the Island Breezes blog. Meanwhile, a warm-mongering gathering in Washington D.C. was disrupted by a snow storm.

(CNSNews.com) – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had to cancel an appearance Monday at a global warming rally in Washington, D.C., that was hit by a snowstorm because her flight was delayed, her office told CNSNews.com.
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A blizzard Sunday night and early Monday morning blanketed the nation’s capital with snow, causing events to be cancelled and delayed across the city.

House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who was scheduled to speak at the global warming event, also canceled his appearance because of the inclement weather, a spokesman from his committee’s office told CNSNews.com on Monday.
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Later Markey's communications director tried to blame his absence on a "scheduling conflict", but he wouldn't specify where exactly Markey was at the time the rally took place. So most likely - the weather was to blame.

And guess what - it's not the first time a warm-mongering event gets disrupted by a cold snap or a snow storm. Yeah, that must be because of those oil sands... not being developed intensively enough?...

Andrew Coyne weighs in on the CRTC decision to conduct hearings on regulating the internet:

Once upon a time there were only four or five television channels. Hardly anyone had the money to broadcast a television signal, and if anyone did, there were only so many spots available on the dial.

In such a world of “spectrum scarcity,” it was argued, government regulation was essential to ensure a diversity of content—and, in Canada, to ensure that some of that content was Canadian. Or as the cultural nationalists had it, to make it possible for Canadians to “tell ourselves our own stories.” This was the world in which the CRTC was born.

Flash forward 40 or 50 years, to a very different world. Not only are there now hundreds of conventional television channels catering to every conceivable taste, but with the advent of Internet broadcasting the constraints of cost and spectrum have disappeared. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Canadian websites, each of them, post-YouTube, potentially a broadcaster in its own right. It is now possible for any Canadian with a video camera and a laptop to transmit to every other Canadian. And the cultural nationalists’ response? This just makes the case for more regulation.

You get the picture? When we had five channels, we had to have regulation, because there were so few of them. Now that there are potentially millions of channels, we have to have regulation, because there are so many of them...
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The hearings themselves are being live-blogged on Wagmedia blog. And it's sure frustrating to see all those parasitic organizations that already consume more than enough of our tax dollars, demanding money, money and even more of our money in form of taxes, levies and licensing fees to be imposed on the ISPs and the new media. Not to mention a bunch of elitist snobs from the National Film Board, ACTRA and other similar groups demanding more regulations so they could shove their production down our throats at our expense...

2. Intervention in the name of maintaining professionalization
I have been particularly struck by the way "professional, high quality" production has become a key motif in these hearings. No one is interested in regulating what people put up on YouTube, everyone says, it's just those productions which are professionally rendered for commercial benefit. The Canadian Conference for the Arts suggested that it could help the commission in this regard, as it had drafted its own criteria for what constitutes a commercial artist in its submission to the CRTC. The Canadian Independent Record Producers Association (CIRPA) declared that making a professional level as a musician is harder today than it used to be. What's interesting about such developments is that it seems to be asking the commission not only to become a promoter of Canadian content, and to provide economic safeguards for the industry, but to also act as a body that defines guild membership. This is important in the new media age, since more people can produce audiovisual works of varying qualities at relatively little expense. What would happen if the CRTC brought down a levy on ISPs to a create a fund that any Canadian could access to produce works for new media -- not just those who do this for a living? Now that would be interesting, wouldn't it?
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I agree with Suzanne - average Canadians are definitely not represented at those hearings. It almost looks like the CRTC officials have already made up their minds and now they're just looking for more excuses for their actions. So it's quite likely that we may soon have to petition our MPs and the government to intervene and to overturn any taxes and regulations which the CRTC may impose.

Here's a great speech by the Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput. The Archbishop had been invited to Toronto, to address the themes from his book, "Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life." He presented some background and thoughts on the book and then discussed the US election and the meaning of true hope.

Catholic social teaching goes well beyond abortion. In America we have many urgent issues that beg for our attention, from immigration reform to health care to poverty to homelessness. The Church in Denver and throughout the United States is committed to all these issues. We need to do a much better job of helping women who face problem pregnancies, and American bishops have been pressing our public leaders for that for more than 30 years. But we don't "help" anyone by allowing or funding an intimate, lethal act of violence. We can't build a just society with the blood of unborn children. The right to life is the foundation of every other human right -- and if we ignore it, sooner or later every other right becomes politically contingent.

One of the words we heard endlessly in the last U.S. election was "hope." I think "hope" is the only word in the English language more badly misused than "love." It's our go-to anxiety word -- as in, "I sure hope I don't say anything stupid tonight." But for Christians, hope is a virtue, not an emotional crutch or a political slogan. Virtus, the Latin root of virtue, means strength or courage. Real hope is unsentimental. It has nothing to do with the cheesy optimism of election campaigns. Hope assumes and demands a spine in believers. And that's why - at least for a Christian -- hope sustains us when the real answer to the problems or hard choices in life is "no, we can't," instead of "yes, we can."
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It's also worth noticing what Archbishop Chaput says about those who choose to be loyal to their political parties, instead of being loyal to their faith, traditions and moral values.

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