The rioting that ensued after the 2006 publication of infamous Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad has long been a central point in the debate over whether or not Islam is inherently violent.
A recent film by Geert Wilder, a Dutch Member of Parliament, has managed to provoke similar responses, although Muslims have not yet taken to rioting in the streets.
The film has already drawn its share of supporters and detractors.
"there is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence," announced UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon. "The right of free expression is not at stake here. ...I acknowledge the efforts of the Dutch Government to stop the broadcast of this film and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it. Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility."
The film itself walks a fine line between being, as Spencer himself admits, "insightful and inciteful."
The film contrasts various quotes from the Koran that clearly encourage violence against some of the horrific acts perpetrated by those allegedly acting in the name of Islam.
As the film concludes, an image of the infamous Muhammad cartoon (pictured here) appears with the fuse burning, as a timer started at the beginning of the film counts down.
"The sound you heard was a book," the film insists, referring clearly to the many Islamic militants quoted in the course of the film. "It's up to the Muslims to cut the hate sowing parts out of the Koran. Stop the Islam from penetrating. Defend our freedom."
To this regard, Wilders is right. It is up to Muslims to deal with the passages of the Koran cited by those who use Islam to spread hatred and incite violence.
Wilders has the right to make this statement in any free society. However, Ban-Ki Moon is right when he notes that freedoms are accompanied by responsibilities. While censoring Fitna would actually do more harm than good -- Muslims do need to answer the criticisms raised in the film -- Wilders also has to take responsibility for his comments.
Part of that is to clarify precisely how he thinks westerners should "stop the Islam from penetrating" and "defend our freedom." It does sound an awful lot like a call to resistance against what he seems to be deeming as an invader.
If Islam must be responsible for those who interpret the Koran as a call to violence against non-believers, then Wilders must realize that he, too, will be responsible for those who treat his work as a call to violence.
But to silence Wilders will accomplish nothing the moderate Muslim community needs to respond thoughtfully to Fitna and, most importantly, without violence or further demands for censorship.
Today, Canada's most hateful blogger is organizing "Hey, watch your &%$@^@#$ mouth" Day", in which he and all of Canada's other "progressives" (be they actual progressives or, like Cynic, faux-progressives) will try to be civil for a day.
He's also referred to it as "Dumbfuck Wanker Day", which -- although he isn't bright enough to recognize it -- defeats the point. Even Martin Rayner smartened enough to realize that.
It's truly indicative of what Cynic thinks the greatest objection to his hateful, vindictive, vitriolic, invective is: that he and his cohorts simply aren't nice.
Yet these are people who cannot even be honest with themselves. They insist they're progressives. But nothing could be further from the truth.
In order to reveal why this is so, it's necessary that we must start with a very basic definition of progressivism, and then move on in order to flesh it out.
"Progressivism is a political movement that represents the interests of ordinary people in their roles as taxpayers, consumers, employees, citizens, and parents. To coin a phrase, progressivism champions government "of the people, by the people, for the people.""
"Progressivism represents the interests of ordinary people." This is worth repeating.
The simple fact of the matter is that no one political philosophy or ideology overwhelmingly represents the views of "ordinary people". "Ordinary people" hold a variety of religious, cultural, moral, ethical and political views, values, and interests. Thus, a truly progressive society -- one in which the cultural and political discourse reflects will, by necessity, also be pluralistic.
So, in order to be a "progressive" -- like Canadian Cynic and his horde of hateful demagogues insist they are -- one must respect the right of other people to hold opinions differing from one's own.
Considering that, in order to act in the best interests of "ordinary people" (and not social or economic elites), a good deal of all-inclusive debate in order to determine what the interests of "ordinary people" actually are is necessary.
In other words, in the minds of these particular "progressives", progressivism is about pursuing the interests of ordinary people -- unless their interests conflict with our interests.
They have to be. Because if progressivism is to act on behalf of "ordinary people" then it must be trusted that ordinary people know their interests. To suggest that ordinary people do not know their interests -- a la false consciousness is actually the realm of elitism, which directly conflicts with the requirement that progressives swear off elitism.
Of course, this illiberal, unprogressive breed of "progressives" (previously and henceforth referred to as faux-progressives) wouldn't be history's first would-be revolution to trip over its own intentions in the name of "ordinary" people. Historically, successful revolutions may always overthrow an entrenched elite, but the engineers of that revolution invariably install themselves as the new elite.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
In the eyes of this particular would-be elite, the views of their political opponents -- certainly, people in many respects as ordinary as any other -- should either be silenced, or derogated to the point that they are considered unworthy of consideration.
And to ensure that this is the case, "criticisms" of the ideas of their opponents are mixed illiberally with the words "dumbfuck", "retard", and often not-so-vague accusations of racism, all too often uncorroborated by any actual evidence.
Ad hominem attacks are held up not only as legitimate methods of political debate, but as the preferred method of debate, as the political is made personal.
It's insisted that political opponents aren't merely people who hold differing opinions -- they're just bad people, and all too often because they hold differing views.
To this end, the conduct of Canadian Cynic and most of his cronies speaks for itself. The litany of assaults and abuses upon Canada's political discourse -- intended to lead not forward, as progressives should, but backward into increasingly regressive territory -- need not be reiterated here once again. At least not for now.
And it certainly isn't being done in the name of ordinary people. The simple fact of the matter is that, thankfully, ordinary people don't hold such hateful views.
What Cynic and his coterie of vicious hooligans either fail to recognize, or fail to admit, is that the freedom for those who disagree with them to express their views without fear of attack or harassment is part and parcel of a progressive social contract in which people -- each presumably as equal as the next -- are permitted to hold to hold their own opinions, recognize their own interests, organize in order to pursue their interests, and express their opinions in that regard.
Canadian Cynic, with his constant bullying of anyone who dares disagree with him, cannot be allowed to undermine the very foundations of progressive politics.
Some individuals insist that it's risky to criticize people Cynic because the protest only represents what they feel these people really want -- attention.
Yet many such people find approval in silence. The greater risk would be in not protesting Cynic's hateful rhetoric, and allowing him -- and others like him -- to believe that ordinary people do hold such views. Allowing them to dishonestly continue doing so in the name of progressivism -- regardless of whether they're being dishonest with other people or merely with themselves -- would be a travesty.
So, no. The objection isn't about them not being "nice". It's about preserving progressivism, and not permitting Cynic and his ilk to destroy it -- dishonestly, in the very name of progressivism.
Of course to this end, they just don't get it. Which is fair enough. We don't expect them to.
Over at the headquarters of Canada's most hateful douchebag, Canadian Cynic points out that progressives are just the neatest people because, by golly, they admit when they're wrong.
One expects that his apologies to Wanda Watkins, Andrew Meier, Ed Snell, Richard Evans and all of the other people he's shamelessly attacked -- often to the point of sheer hypocrisy (it was OK to taser Meier, then suddenly tasers are bad; it's OK for him to make Evans' family a target by publishing their home address, but god forbid anyone should ever publish Cynic's name) -- will be forthcoming. (Also, the Kids With Cancer society. He owes them a big apology.)
Then again, probably not. But then again, we all know he isn't really a progressive. Hell, he doesn't even understand the concept.
Bonus hilarity:
Yes, we all make mistakes. Cynic, however, just thinks it shouldn't be rubbed in people's faces. Unless you admit a mistake like this. Then, it's all good.
"There has been a serious breach in the privacy act," McTeague announced. "This is not only a smokescreen, it's... breaking the law."
What McTeague and Martin are overlooking, however, is that Martin's case is -- and has been -- the subject of foreign relations between the government of Canada and the government of Mexico. The document released -- "leaked" as Martin insists -- is actually a summary of the activities of Canadian diplomats on the Brenda Martin file.
It is not subject to privacy law.
Given that this document is not subject to privacy law, one has to wonder where the smokescreen is really being used: by Canadian consular officials defending their reputation by revealing how much work they've done? Or by Brenda Martin, who wanted to conceal that? The answer is obvious.
Keep in mind that this doesn't change the fact that there simply hasn't been enough work put in on this file by Canada's elected officials -- although our public servants in Mexico have been doing their job admirably.
And the real important question regarding this most recent revelation regarding the Martin affair is: what does this change?
Actually, absolutely nothing. The Canadian government still needs to do more to help Brenda Martin -- Foreign Affairs minister Maxime Bernier, in particular, needs to do much, much more.
But Brenda Martin herself needs to be honest as well. Blaming Canadian officials for revealing information she didn't want revealed is little more than a classic bully's defence: it's not her fault for being deceptive, it's the Canadian government's fault for revealing her deception.
If we don't accept that from five-year-olds, we absolutely should not accept it from grown adults.
With the trial of the Toronto 18 now underway, some of the predictable conspiracy theorists are coming out of the woodwork, once again trying to insist that the so-called Toronto 18 were entrapped.
Entrapment is defined as a condition under which law enforcement officials encourage or coerce a person or persons to commit a criminal act in order to obtain an arrest.
As part of the charge on behalf of this particular claim is a film entitled Unfair Dealing: The Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat, appearing in six parts on Youtube.
In the film, Toronto-area broadcaster David Weingarten, who has a show on the University of Toronto's campus radio station, basically alleges that the Toronto 18 were entrapped as a result of an insidious conspiracy to push through Canada's anti-terror laws.
Unfortunately for Weingarten, his film doesn't stand up to scrutiny. In a film in which he claims a vast conspiracy is withholding the truth from Canadians, he himself goes to some remarkable lengths to conceal -- or obscure -- the truth.
A good deal of the film seems to depend largely upon the testimony of Tariq Abdelhaleem, identified as the father of Sharif Abdelhaleem, one of the terror suspects.
Unfortunately, for mr Abdelhaleem, however, he can't seem to maintain a coherent argument throughout his testimony -- this will become more and more apparent as the film progresses.
For example, Abdelhaleem doesn't seem to understand how an expressed desire to cut someone's head off can be taken "against the person". He claims his son didn't know any of the other terror suspects -- except as friends. Aside from that, the best defense he can seem to offer in this particular segment is the "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" defence.
He also insists there was "no group". But we'll see very differently later in the documentary.
To make matters worse for Weingarten, he wants to rely almost exclusively on the evidence that is still available for public discovery. However, ClearGuidance, the reputedly militant website on which two of the suspects are alleged to have interacted, has been removed. Even so, some of the comments made via that site have been preserved elsewhere, and they are not pretty.
Interestingly, Weingarten rushes over such comments, refusing to pay them little heed. But here's a brief excerpt of some of the comments made on this site:
"In future we will see more of this stuff until those drunk leave Chechnya. And even then, many of the Mujahideen have said they will pursue them on their own land to avenge the 400 years of oppression they hammered down upon us.
And eye for an eye.
The Russians owe as a mountain of eyes."
"All Praise be to Allaah. I ask: If the Taaghoot (example: a president of any Arab country today) were to send him on a special mission, for the sake of his own personal Taaghoot good and that of the regime... what you mentioned will happen to your parents if you go for Jihaad for Allaah's Cause... but for the Taaghoot nothing? Is the Taaghoot greater and more honored in their eyes than Allaah?!?
The answer: If Jihaad is Fard 'Ayn upon someone, there is no permission sought nor obedience of the creation in remaining behind, because there is no obedience of the creation in disobedience to the Creator. And Allaah Knows best."
"Considering that most of us live in lands where the kuffar gov's come after even those remotely related to the mujahideen, shouldn't extra care be taken by the brother going in the Path of Allah? ie. In preparing for the family some sort of protection, (and indeed Allah is sufficient as our Protector but we know we have to make efforts as well).
I don't think I'm alone in having heard of stories of the families of the mujahideen being abused (in the least) back home. I remember this bro crying for the families of the mujahideen, subhan Allah. It made me realise how we tend to forget about them in our du'as, may Allah forgive us.
So if there was anything that addressed this, do post it insha Allah. Because I feel that some may interpret the answer above as "heck care, just leave them". The irony being that part of the jihad is to liberate the oppressed Muslims and in the meantime, you expose your own family to such danger."
The site was clearly used as an online meeting place for individuals with a rather keen interest in jihad. Of course, Weingarten doesn't want this to be fully known, because of the implications for the argument he's trying to make.
Weingarten also makes an effort to dismiss the poem "A Little Muslim From Palestine", reportedly posted by one of the suspects on the site:
"'ll always be a contender Yes, I know my bones are very tender And by Allah you won't see me surrender Look at my eyes? You'll see no butterflies My home is filled with cries... due to all the lost lives But I swear by Allah I'll never compromise I'll still throw the stones even with my broken bones Why can't I hear from you, don't you have any phones? Ya I forgot, your not on the chase, try it out and put your self in my place Soon I'll return to my lord , the one that deserves every grace Oh you don't have to worry cause of me you'll find no trace It really is to late, why did you wait? You could have sent me at least one dinner plate I guess it is my fate And La Ilaha Illa Allah is my mate."
At first glimpse it seems like a rather benign protest poem to the "occupation of Palestine" by Israel. But two lines in particular stand out. The author is returning to his lord. You'll find no trace of him.
Perhaps as in a suicide bomber?
This piece of evidence, in particular, however, is largely speculative, and wouldn't be admissable in a court of law, except perhaps during the course of testimony on behalf of the suspect, who cannot be forced to testify, and likely would not be forced to answer the question even if he did.
Weingarten also takes aim at a Globe and Mail article that cites the following message written in a High School friend's yearbook: "Before us there were many... after us there will be none... we are the ones."
Weingarten then tries to suggest that the passage is taken from Jay-Z's "Encore". (The line is actually "what the hell are you waiting for? After me, there should be no more", and actually refers to what Jay-Z had promised to be his imminent retirement -- he has since returned to making music.)
Once again, this particular piece of evidence is purely speculative, and inadmissable in a court of law. But Weingarten is clearly skimming over portions of the truth.
But Weingarten turns the conspiracy dial nearly up to full blast in the second segment of his film:
In the second segment, Weingarten basically suggests that, as early as 2005, then-Liberal MP (now Conservative MP) Waijid Kahn was hatching a plot with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to betray the Muslim community in exchange for a job as the as-yet-unelected Conservative government's Middle East advisor, and a seat in the government caucus.
Despite the fact that, later, in the same year, Kahn would run for election as a Liberal. Yet somehow he was an "agent of Stephen Harper," in Abdelhaleem's words.
He starts off by noting that it was Kahn who initially complained about a speech given at the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre by Qayyam Abdul-Jamal, an individual known to hold extremist views -- even by those within the Mosque.
"I'm not surprised by the raids," remarked Fahim Bukhari, director of Al-Rahman. "I knew his views."
His neighbours had also noted suspicious behaviour from Jamal. Again, this evidence is speculative, and inadmissable in a court of law.
"Did Waijid Kahn sell out his fellow Muslims as initiation? To prove he was the right man for the Middle East position?" Weingarten asks. "We can only speculate."
In particular it notes the flagging of ClearGuidance (17 November 2004), the August 2005 arrests of pistol-toting Yasin Abdi Mohamed and Mohammed Dirie -- caught smuggling weapons into the country in a car rented by fellow suspect Fahim Ahmad -- the winter 2005 training exercises and the summer 2006 attempt to buy three tons of ammonium nitrate.
Weingarten and Abdelhaleem also take aim at Mubin Shaikh, one of the undercover operatives used in the investigation.
"Mubin is a confused person," Abdelhaleem insists. "His problem is he wants money, he's a drug addict, he has some good intentions inside him. He doesn't want to hurt many people. He wants to hurt people enough to get the money."
In the course of editing, Weingarten goes out of his way to make Shaikh sound like as shady character a person possible. At one point in the film, Shaikh says, "...we're the potheads out in the corner there, and just it was an easy life."
Unfortunately, Weingarten ignores the next part of the interview, wherein Shaikh admits, "I got burned out. That's what happened. I was living — the fast lane was too slow. I was living the passing lane."
"After 9/11 happened, I remember I was on my way to work and I told the story that "Oh, yeah, plane hit a building," and just right after that, somebody else came on and said, "A plane hit a building," and I was like, "I just said that," and he said, "No, another plane."
So I go upstairs and I'm working for a company that contracts for the federal government. And I'm hearing the Pentagon and this and that and everything else, and I'm like, what the hell is going on? I felt really bad because now I knew that every Muslim male or female who was identifiable was now on the defensive. Now you couldn't go to buy eggs without somebody saying, "Hey, why don't you go back to where you came from." Or "Hey, don't you know this is Canada, you don't have to wear that here."
And I remember specifically being at that stage where I was ready to go to Chechnya, I was ready to go to Afghanistan. I wanted to do some jihad-oriented thing, but I was lucky that I was exposed to people who, you know, who I could talk to, who could, you know, correct my understanding."
Shaikh would actually know an Islamic fundamentalist quite well. Before recognizing the error of those ways, he flirted with becoming one himself.
When more of Shaikh's views emerge, the subtext between Weingarten's treatment of him and Waijid Kahn begins to take on an alarming subtext: that the views expressed by Islamic militants are perfectly acceptable, and that any Muslim moderate who tries to nip that militancy in the bud is a traitor.
"I go to Syria 2002 to 2004. I come back in March 2004, and I read in the paper Mohammad Momin Khawaja is arrested on terrorism charges. I know the family very well. We grew up together. His father taught us when we were younger. And so we have a good connection with the family.
So what happened was I contacted CSIS. I phoned them and I said, "Listen, I know the family, I know this guy, Momin, is there some way that I can help, you know, give some information in that, look, I've grown up with him, you know, I don't know him to be like this or his brother, definitely not his family, like his parents are not extremists."
So they're like, "Oh, Momin Khawaja, first terrorism case, sure, we'll talk to you." The guy comes down, he was head of the unit supposedly. We met at Timmy's, and, you know, I'm wearing my pin, the Canadian flag and the Metro police pin, because I was also doing I guess you can call it ethno-cultural religious awareness with the Toronto police, and just to let them know, you know, different things that could be of use to them, and so I met with the CSIS guys, and they were very interested in me now. So basically, you know, they put to me the prospect of working with them, giving information on people, certain groups, getting to leaders of certain groups, talking to them, seeing what kind of views they had and reporting on those views because I am convinced that I'm the best guy for them to have to comment on the different groups, because I have a solid foundation in Islam, you know, I'm born and raised here.
I mean, Toronto's home. So I understand what concerns they have, but at the same time as a Muslim, I understand what concerns Muslims have. So I felt that I could be a link between the two sides."
If Shaikh has any particular biases, it's pretty clear that they aren't against Islamic militants.
Weingarten also does a clever job of editing the CBC interview to confuse the issue of who, precisely, asked Shaikh to conduct the 10-day guerrilla warfare training. The complete unedited video, however, is available on Youtube.
As such, it may have been possible that, as a recent factum filed by defence council suggests, that Shaikh had the only gun present at the training exercise. However, the ringleaders of the plot asked him to conduct it, and the participants probably went along knowingly and willingly.
Weingarten's response to all of this is that Shaikh was acting as an agent provocateur. It's only one small piece in his overall conspiracy theory.
Weingarten also takes issue with the fact that Shaikh, while working as a CSIS agent, was actually paid for his services -- apparently, he must imagine that all of Canada's police offers and intelligence operatives are unpaid volunteers. It's outrageous, he suggests. He was paid with "your tax dollars".
"He is a drug addict," Abdelhaleem reiterates. "And this was published at the time. ...He is a drug addict."
Abdelhaleem also brings up an assault charge filed against Shaikh by a pair of 12-year-old girls who taunted him by shouting "Look look look, it's bin Laden, it's Taliban boy, it's Taliban boy."
Shaikh -- who in a court of law is considered innocent until proven guilty -- insists the story is "fabricated and exaggerated grotesquely", and that the girl tripped and fell on her own.
"He's not highly educated," Abdelhaleem adds. "He could not have a regular job. That's what I keep telling people."
Apparently, Abdelhaleem and Weingarten's response to the challenge Shaikh's background and testimony presents to their argument is to engage in a protracted attempt at character assassination.
"Because there's a presumption of innocence in any free country," Weingarten insists, "we won't refer to him by sensational labels."
Like drug addict? Whoops. Too late for that one.
But character assassination is not reserved for Shaikh -- or Waijid Kahn -- alone. Weingarten and Abdelhaleem also take aim at the other informant involved in the case. He's currently enrolled in the witness protection program and cannot be identified.
Weingarten in particular focuses in on Globe and Mail reports that the informant is an Agricultural Engineer. Weingarten then notes that, according to the MacKenzie institute's John Thompson, "trying to buy three tons of ammonium nitrate will get you thrown into jail pretty quick."
Which, of course, makes it necessary that he also obscure the fact that the suspects started attempting to buy the fertilizer in late May, and were arrested on 2 June, 2006.
They got thrown into jail pretty quick.
Weingarten notes that the informant's Agricultural Engineering degree enabled him to buy the fertilizer without suspicion -- although he probably would have still had some 'splaining to do regarding the fertilizer's urban Toronto delivery address -- but what Weingarten can't seem to answer is this: was this particular informant planted by CSIS, or did he come forward after being recruited into the terror ring?
As it turns out, the informant allegedly asked CSIS for $14 million in exchange for his services. Odds are, he came forward on his own.
But Abdelhaleem, predictably, has a few things to say about the second informant. "He is not smart whatsoever," insists Abdelhaleem "He is not a smart boy. That spy? He is not smart. He is criminally smart. ...We established ourselves in this country. This guy came. He became a failure. He couldn't find a good job to work."
Abdelhaleem also suggests that he only paid various debts only under CSIS direction (despite his alleged multi-million dollar payday). Although a later slip by Abdelhaleem -- "he negotiated from 12 down to four million dollars -- makes one wonder how much of Abdelhaleem's on-camera testimony was fabricated.
After all, it isn't as if an informant rendered entirely anonymous by witness protection can defend himself against such claims.
With few further details about the informant's past, it's hard to know what his past was before his participation in the investigation. But if it's anything like Mubin Shaikh or Waijid Kahn's, one can imagine the subtext Abdelhaleem and Weingarten would push pretty quickly: he's a traitor for opposing Islamic militancy.
From this sad, sad display, Weingarten moves on to the review of anti-terror law.
Ah, yes. There it is: the centrepiece of the conspiracy: the review of anti-terror legislation.
But Weingarten really drops off the deep end when he starts using footage from Alex Jones'9/11 Mysteries: Demolitions (when selling conspiracy theories, one may as well go for gold, one figures).
In essence, he suggests that the Toronto 18 were framed so CSIS and the RCMP could maintain their level of funding.
In order to try and support this thesis, Weingarten cites, through Richard Cleroux, RCMP Operations Project Shock and Operation Thread.
Considering that his argument is that the arrest of the Toronto 18 was done only to ensure that CSIS and RCMP continued to enjoy pre-budget cut levels of funding, one would in fact find it curious that the RCMP had been so active in tracking and detaining terror suspects before the 2006.
He cites a 1999 speech given by CSIS director David Harris as somehow being evidentiary of it.
Weingarten at this point also decides to lace his conspiracy theory with vague accusations of racism, noting that, in the course of Project Thread, "only the Mohammads were arrested".
But he fails to address what some of the "irregularities" provoking the investigation in the first place were. Consider the case of Anwar Mohammad, who, in the course of pilot training, he chose the airspace over and around an Ontario nuclear plant for his training flights.
That's a pretty alarming "irregularity".
Weingarten even suggests that the terror arrests even benefited the passage of the Conservative government's budget, and plans by Stockwell Day -- allegedly years in the making despite the fact that Day had been in office for mere months -- to expand Canada's intelligence and security capabilities.
"It's the political agenda of the Conservative party in order to justify their subservience to the Bush administration and to send troops to Afghanistan to serve Bush," insists Abdelhaleem, despite the fact that it was Paul Martin's Liberal government that committed to the war in Afghanistan in the first place, as well as the current combat mission in Khandahar.
In part five, Weingarten really takes a page out of the self-aggrandizing Alex Jones' playbook, insisting that the Toronto bomb plot somehow qualifies as "false flag terrorism".
Weingarten chronicles numerous illegal activities committed by the RCMP intelligence agency that were committed in the course of fighting Quebec separatism and communism.
He even attempts to milk the Air India tragedy as an example of "secrecy and scandal", despite the fact that the Air India bombing actually proves that Canada was in need of greater intelligence and security capabilities.
Weingarten notes that the ammonium nitrate purchased by the terror suspects was delivered to a warehouse in New Market, Ontario, one of the few cities in Ontario where an RCMP detachment exists. Moreover, the warehouse was less than a kilometer from the RCMP detachment.
"We don't want to insult your intelligence by telling you how suspicious that is," Weingarten says.
Too late.
The fact of the matter is that the suspects were doing something at that warehouse in order to be arrested there. And there just coincidentally happened to be three tons of ammonium nitrate -- or, rather, the white powder that it had been swapped for mid-transit -- there as well.
We don't want to insult anyone's intelligence by saying how suspicious that is.
However, according to Ken Kerr, who manages Magic Motorcycles, a motorcycle shop in the neighbourhood, he was told months later by the owner of the warehouse in question that "it was a set-up".
Weingarten insists that the RCMP must have rented the warehouse, although the building owners refuse to confirm or deny that.
However, this is by no means an admission -- implicit or otherwise -- that the arrests were the result of entrapment, but rather that some of the suspects, at certain stages of the plot, may have been unwitting dupes.
That is what we have criminal trials for: to ascertain guilt, and exonerate the innocent.
While the film does raise some important questions about who and isn't guilty in the Toronto bomb plot, the simple fact of the matter is that all of Weingarten's "evidence" that the plot was simply the result of a mass conspiracy between -- now, follow this closely -- Stephen Harper, Waijid Kahn, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, CSIS, the RCMP, George W Bush, Mubin Shaikh, Stockwell Day, Paul Martin and David Harris.
All of whom, according to Weingarten's feeble attempt at a slick editing job to conclude his film, are "terrorists", intent on leading Canada into "fascism".
Yet he can't even make his own case, and in the end has sold little more than another intellectually bankrupt Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theory.
Fortunately, the truth regarding the Toronto 18 will come out in a court of law. The reason why David Weingarten doesn't want that to happen will be harder to ascertain.
Poor Canadian Cynic. He spent all of that time and effort Googling little ol' me. And the best he could come up with is this.
But therein is where the hilarity only begins. Because no sooner had I stopped by to taunt the hateful douchebag for building suspense for two whole days in advance of such a meager effort than the idiot spouted this little nugget of nose gold:
"I'd love to hang out and argue the point, but I'm currently preparing to go off and consult for a Fortune 50 company for several weeks for an obscene daily rate, due to the fact that I am a genius."
Now, if only there were some objective third party we could go to and test Cynic's latest thesis.
Wait! Maybe there is! Canadian Cynic's reading level, according to Critics Rant:
No wonder Cynic doesn't get it. While we over here at the Nexus are hobnobbing with the undergrads, he's still shooting spitballs in junior high school.
So maybe his whole "genius" remark is a nugget of nosegold he shouldn't have shared with the townspeople.
But to be truthful, he kind of reminds me of someone... but who?
The trial for the 18 individuals charged for a summer 2006 bomb plot targeting Parliament Hill and the Toronto Stock Exchange, amongst other targets, formally got underway today.
On that note, it becomes very interesting to notice that between Canada's two preeminent media outlets, one seems intent to play the role of the prosecution, by focusing on the case laid against the Toronto 18, while the other seems intent on playing the role of the defence.
This is quite unfortunate. For Canadians to fully understand the trial of the Toronto 18 and the key issues of law, order, and civil liberties underlaying such a case, they need to understand both cases.
Crown lawyers expect to present evidence against the Toronto-area terror suspects that show some of the accused planned to commit attacks more deadly than the London subway bombings, according to documents filed in court containing anticipated evidence.
New details contained in the Crown factum that was filed at the trial of the only remaining youth charged allege prosecutors have audio tapes and video tape evidence of some of the suspects plotting several explosions.
The factum contains transcripts of alleged conversations between suspects, including one where one of the accused speaks about the group's violent ambitions.
"They're probably expecting what happened in London or something," the man is quoted as saying. "... Some bombing in a subway kills 10 people and everybody gets deported.
"We're not doing that. ... So our thing it's, it's much, much greater on a scale ... you do it once and you make sure they can never recover again."
The July 2005 bombings in London, carried out by four suicide bombers, claimed the lives of 52 commuters.
One video allegedly shows the Toronto-area suspects at a wooded area in rural Ontario. A passionate speaker is heard saying the men have to "wage war against Rome" -- the Western powers including Canada, the United States, Britain and France.
"Our mission's greater, whether we get arrested, whether we get killed .... Rome has to be defeated. And we have to be the ones that do it," the speaker allegedly says.
The Crown alleges the accused attended two so-called training camps -- one near the town of Washago and the other at the Rockwood Conservation Area near Guelph. The suspects are accused of taking part in military-style exercises in camouflage gear and firearms training with a 9-mm firearm.
The group is accused of planning to storm the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, taking politicians (including the prime minister) hostage and beheading them.
The Crown's filing also alleges that the men planned to construct a radio frequency remote-controlled detonator.
None of these allegations have been proven or tested in court.
The 18 suspects of the alleged al Qaeda-inspired cell were arrested in July 2006. Fourteen men, four of whom are free on bail, are charged with various terrorism-related offences.
Four teens were initially charged, however, charges against three of the youths have been stayed.
The Crown is asking the judge to impose a publication ban to prevent the media from linking evidence at the trial to any of the other adult suspects by name, saying the evidence is "prejudicial" and could destroy any chances of the other suspects getting a fair trial.
The youth's trial has begun with numerous pretrial motions. Evidence is not expected to be heard until mid-to-late May.
Lawyers have said the trials for the adults could be months or even years away.
According to the factum filed today, prosecutors have audio and video evidence detailing the planning sessions for the attack. They allude directly to the London 7/7 Tube bombings, planning to eclipse them in the public mind.
The prosecution also alleges that the accused trained at two terrorist training camps -- one near Washago, Ontario, and the other near Guelph.
Although CTV does recognize that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, although their story contains little mention of the defence council's claims.
A defence lawyer in the alleged Toronto-area bomb plot case filed a court document Wednesday attacking the Crown's case as fanciful and based largely on the unsubstantiated allegations of an unreliable police informant.
The defence factum, a summary of the case that lawyers will argue during the trial, takes on some of the more dramatic allegations made in Crown documents submitted on Tuesday.
The factum was filed on behalf of one of the adult accused whose case has yet to go to trial.
The trial began this week of another defendant, who was 18 at the time of his arrest and cannot be named under the terms of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
The factum says the defence lawyer will show that a so-called "jihadist" training camp run by some of the accused was nothing more than a screening exercise for possible recruits to Islamic militancy, and few of the participants in training at the camp — near the southern Ontario town of Orillia — knew what they were involved in.
Two of the other defendants who have yet to go on trial ran the camp, the factum says, and concealed its purpose from other participants. Trainees took part in winter camping activities but were so ill-equipped for the cold weather that they spent much of their time in a nearby Tim Hortons coffee shop.
Informant brought bullets: lawyer
The document acknowledges that some firearms training took place, but it alleges that the only person to bring live ammunition to the camp was a police informant. That same informant was the person who actually conducted the gun exercises, the factum says.
In addition, the document alleges that the only source of information about what was happening at the Orillia camp was the police informant. There was no "real time" police surveillance, it says.
Responding to transcripts of audio tapes of a police wiretap that the Crown claims were "damning and disturbing" proof of a militant Islamist bomb plot, the factum filed Wednesday said the defendant was not present at the time that other accused were talking about attacking Parliament and the headquarters of CSIS and the CBC.
The factum concludes with an argument against the Crown's request for a publication ban on the names of the defendants, or any evidence that might help identify them.
The document says police and government officials have already taken part in "orgiastic and self congratulatory press gathering[s] … during which evermore private details and 'investigative gossip' were revealed to inflame and misinform the public."
No witnesses until May
"Restricting the publication of evidence at a trial is the sharp edge of a slippery slope," the factum states, "which … results in 'Star Chamber' or military commission [-style] trials where the public's right to know is supplanted by the government desire to withhold."
The document says the defendant would suffer unduly from a publication ban because he wouldn't be disassociated from some of the worst allegations being made in the case.
In all, 18 suspects were originally charged with offences related to supporting terrorism, but three have had charges against them stayed.
None of the evidence detailed in the Crown review has been tested in court.
Although the trial officially began Tuesday, the first witnesses are not expected to be called until May 27.
In short, the factum filed on behalf of this particular defendant concedes that there was, in fact, a terrorist training camp in Ontario. However, it insists that only two of the accused were aware of the true purpose of the camp, and rest were unfortunate dupes.
Instead of participating in training, the defence insists, the defendant was merely being screened for suitability for Islamic militancy.
Moreover, the defence denies that there are any audio or video recordings incriminating the accused, and that the only evidence the crown can offer is the testimony of the undercover officer.
The defence also insists that a publication ban would harm his client by not allowing him to be disassociated from the alleged details of the case. But as the Youth Criminal Justice Act forbids identifying the defendant, it's important to note that his name hasn't been associated with the alleged details of the case in the first place.
With national security -- and the means by which we preserve it -- very much at stake in these proceedings, it's very important for Canadians to understand this case. One-sided representations of the arguments in this case don't serve this purpose, and should be considered alarming to Canadians.
That being said, if the Toronto 18 truly are being tried in the media, it's at least comforting that both sides at least are being represented, even if only separately.
It may be up to the Canadian people to play the role of the judge and jury. The only question is: how many will take the time to learn the whole story?
Those paying attention to the ongoing feud between Canadian Cynic and myself may have noticed, a few days ago, that Canadian Cynic promised to "make my life a good deal more awkward".
And apparently, the best thing he could come up with was this. And this, and, apparently, this.
If anyone can conjure a word lower than "pitiful", feel free to email it to me.
Apparently, Cynic spent a good deal of time Googling me, and the best he could come up with are some things that, quite frankly, I am not the slightest bit embarrassed about.
Perhaps Cynic is hoping for some kind of long-winded explanation of these little "gems" he dug up. But the simple fact of the matter is this: it's unnecessary. They're, frankly, self-explanatory.
And to top it all off, the sheer amount of effort that Cynic clearly exerted on this particular endeavour -- and came up empty-handed -- is proof that these things are true.
The pompous, self-important demagogue who insists that all Canadians should share his opinions doesn't like the idea that I would disagree with him, take him on, and never, eh-eh-eeeeeeever back down. And so he resorts to something like that -- which is apparently the best he could muster.
Apparently, what we're really dealing with here is someone who is so incompetent he can't even dig dirt properly.
So he wants to drag out the introductory post to this blog, written at a time when the entire idea of blogging was to have fun with it -- what else would be the point of telling the NDP to fuck off? -- and anyone who gets offended be damned.
But the overall point is this: whatever Cynic's amusement in the particular pieces in question may really be, there's nothing in there that many people would describe as morally reprehensible.
So this is what we're really dealing with here. Canadian Cynic: coward, hatemonger, liar, hypocrite and an individual so incompetent he can't even assassinate character properly.
But, when all is said and done, the most important question is probably this: what would a day at the beach with Canadian Cynic be like? Probably a little something like this:
But it's OK, Cynic. Keep on reaching for that rainbow. You'll get it right someday.
In opposition to the International Day of the Unborn Child, various opponents of the pro-fetal rights movement have declared today to be the International Day of the Already-Born Child. While the clear desire to politicize various issues facing children in the world today should be condemned, it is an opportunity to shed some light on a few different issues -- such as the scourge of child soldiers.
According to the United Nations parlance, a child soldier is anyone under the age of 18 who has been recruited into a military conflict. some are as young as eight years old.
For those who are unscrupulous enough to make use of them, child soldiers offer various advantages.
"There's all kinds of children. You just go and swipe them from their school and so on," says Lt-Gen (ret) Romeo Dallaire, "And you take them and you drill them and you incorporate them and they eat less and they're less problem if you have to get rid of them, there's lots of them."
Demobilizing child soldiers has been a top priority of UNICEF for years. However, there are various challenges associated with demobilizing child soldiers that are often overlooked.
"There's the mechanics of demobilization," says Neil Boothby of the United Nations Refugee Agency. "The sorting out of the kids, putting the guns down, transporting them back to the communities. But what we don't know very much about is once the kid goes home, what should we do? What kinds of education is most, most important? What kinds of vocational skills or training? What kinds of, you know, livelihood skills are needed? And I think that's the area which we, we have a, a lot further to go on. What do, what do we do once they put down their guns to ensure they don't pick it up again?"
Clearly, the challenges associated with demobilizing child soldiers are numerous: educational, psychological and emotional.
These children need to find a way to cope with the things they were put through. Sometimes, they have been so thoroughly conditioned that they don't even realize that the things did to them were wrong. Even if they do realize this, they have to learn to cope with having taken human lives -- more often than not, the lives of children no older than themselves -- and find a purpose in life.
Perhaps one of the most disturbing things about what has been done to them is that they've been exposed to combat, and all the hazards and the lifestyle of soldiering without any of the discipline taught in the modern armed forces.
Moreover, they've been used to sustain the conflicts that our western governments have purported themselves as being committed to putting a stop to, yet all too often have declined (Dallaire's experiences in Rwanda are a clear example).
All too often, the leaders of such countries argue that they don't have the troops to send, or that the risks are too great.
But what if the various warlords and despots around the world who are recruiting child soldiers and sending them out to do their dirty work were, in the most perverse way possible, providing us with an incredible opportunity to ensure that a shortage of peacekeeping troops would never again prevent intervention in the midst of an atrocity?
At its basest level, it almost seems unthinkable: recruiting demobilized child soldiers into a United Nations program that would transform them into our next generation of peacekeepers.
But then one must consider what such a program would require: one would have to provide them with psychological care (to heal the psychological and emotional wounds they've already sustained in combat), education (to give them the skills necessary to assist in the rebuilding efforts that, by necessity, must accompany peacekeeping operations), and military training (focusing largely on the discipline necessary for professional soldiering). It isn't simply a matter of taking child soldiers and pumping them back into combat under the guise of peacekeeping. It's a matter of providing them with a rehabilitation program tailor-made to the experiences they've already endured.
More importantly, these demobilized child soldiers would already have the combat experience necessary for modern peacekeeping operations (which are, whether idealists care to admit it or not, combat missions).
But most importantly, the generation of professional peacekeeping soldiers produced by such a program would know first-hand what the stakes of their missions are. If we could instill in them the motivation to stop what was done to them from happening to anyone else, the United Nations would finally have a dependable, professional corps of peacekeepers to dispatch where western countries shamefully cannot muster the political will to go.
And while the idea, at its basest level, may seem unthinkable -- and rightfully so -- one has to remember that the principal difference between these demobilized child soldiers and those enrolled in cadet programs in western countries is that these children would already have combat experience.
On a deeper, more philosophical level, training demobilized child soldiers for future peacekeeping duties (and naturally not to be used until they've reached the age of 18) may provide their experiences with the meaning that is often so necessary to foster the healing process.
Not that such a grand experiment would be without risks. And when one considers that an experiment such as this would be played out with such fragile human lives, one also has to realize that, the potential benefit aside, it simply may not be worth the risk.
For the most part, it's a question of whether or not world leaders are willing to think far enough outside the box, and whether or not they're willing to foot the price tag (likely in the billions) for such an initiative.
But it's an idea that's crazy enough that it just might work. And it could, in due time, provide some hope for some of the most hopeless places in the world, as well as hope for some of the most hopeless children.
Today, activists the world over are agitating in favour of fetal rights.
In Canada, in particular, the law has yet to recognize unborn children as having any form of rights. Despite the indisputable fact that an unborn child -- or a fetus, as the pro-abortion lobby prefers -- is human life, a fetus has no forms of human rights.
While some individuals in Canada are working to try and change this particular state of affairs, many others are stringently defending the status quo, insisting that, despite the fact that an unborn child is still human, until birth it is only "a clump of cells" and can be aborted at the mother's whim at any stage of development.
In particular, issues regarding late term abortions have raised the importance of addressing fetal rights -- more importantly, questions regarding at what stage of development they should be granted.
Of course, the very concept of fetal rights raises some important questions that simply must be answered. Unfortunately, many of those in favour of fetal rights may or may not want to address them -- just as their opponents don't want to address the questions that reveal why fetal rights are, in fact, so necessary.
First off, one has to ask: what effect will the establishment of fetal rights have on a woman's right to obtain an abortion?
The answer among anti-abortion activists -- who most certainly make up a significant portion of the pro-fetal rights lobby -- is fairly obvious: it will force legislators to ban abortion outright, consequences be damned.
Unfortunately for these individuals, they clearly have not thought the consequences of such an act through -- or, moreover, have thought them through, and have simply chosen to disregard them.
First off, a ban on abortion will not put a stop to it. Women who want (or need, for medical reasons) abortions will still seek them out. The difference is that they'll be recieving these abortions not by qualified medical professionals bound by a hippocratic oath, but by anyone willing to perform them for a lump sum of cash.
The toll of back alley abortions is well known. A return to those days is not anything that social conservatives could possibly want.
We also have to address the issues of pregnancies that pose a health risk to the mother or unborn child. Forcing women to give birth at detriment to their own health clearly does not constitute a just state of affairs. Of course, some women will inevitably choose to give birth despite the risk to themselves. But not all women would make that choice. Using fetal rights to deny them the right to make that choice would frankly be a travesty.
There is also the matter of women who are impregnated in the course of rape. One also has to consider whether or not it would be just to use fetal rights to force a woman to have a child when she did not agree to sex in the first place. Certainly, abortion may not be the best option in this particular case -- that is a matter of individual opinion -- but it should remain an option for these particular reasons.
The debate in Canada over fetal rights currently rages around Bill C-484, which would make those who commit crimes against women who they know or should know to be pregnant also legally responsible for any harm they do to the unborn child.
The argument is that the bill would be used as a back-door attempt to ban abortion (despite the fact that the language of the bill explicitly forbids that).
Bill C-484, itself, however, does raise an important further issue: what would the law have to do about mothers who, knowingly, continue to drink, smoke or do drugs while pregnant, causing harm to their unborn children?
Bill C-484 also forbids charging the mother of the child under the act. However, the precedent set by C-484 -- that unborn children do have rights, would open a new can of worms, perhaps even forcing Canada's parliament to draft legislation to deal with women who, knowingly and willingly, harm their own children by smoking, or consuming alcohol or other drugs. Of course this begs a further question -- why the hell shouldn't they?
Of course they should. But even a bill such as that raises important questions about how to balance the rights of an unborn child with the rights of its mother.
As Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez note, such a bill could wind up criminalizing women for not following their doctor's recommendations. In cases where fetal alcohol syndrome or other deformities are at stake, this is one thing. But what about matters pertaining to things such as diet? Things such as this pose a serious challenge to how far legislators should go in the definition and defence of fetal rights.
These are the kinds of challenges that fetal rights pose to Canada's legal system. Unfortuantely, one has to wonder whether or not those who support fetal rights are ready to address them.
Just an update from a story earlier today wherein we explored the unending hypocrisy of Canadian Cynic.
I mean, there's just so much to work with there that such explorations will probably continue for the rest of time: this is an individual who will live in the annals of time as the hypocrite.
So later today, Cynic decided to try and dispute whether or not he had ever published the home address of a political opponent in order to encourage people to harass him.
So, how does Cynic defend his conduct in regards to this particular matter? Like so:
"Assuming that Twatrick is referring to ... well, you know who, I believe it's self-evident that that claim is utterly bogus.
Given that I was never running for political office of any kind, it should be clear that no one could have been my "political opponent." The fact that someone else was running for office does not, in any way, make them my "political opponent." See how that works?
But it's that kind of sloppy dishonesty that we've come to expect from Twatrick. And it's just that sloppy dishonesty that I'm going to use to make his life just a little more awkward. Real soon now."
Cynic seems to think that one needs to run for office in order to have political opponents. To suggest that he may have political opponents without running for office is, suddenly, "dishonest".
(Dishonest like suggesting that posting Evans' address was done to protect his kids? Which, by the way, was real believable.)
But here's the thing.
Cynic would like everyone to believe that his hateful crusade against Canadian conservatives is being conducted because their politics are so reprehensible that he can justify anything he would do them -- such as encouraging people to harass them and their families.
Long story short, if we accept Cynic's own assertions, then the matter of contention between himself and individuals like Richard Evans (those he would consider his opponents) comes down to politics.
Thus they are political opponents. Their politics drive them to oppose one another.
This, in the words of Donnie Shulzhoffer, isn't rocket surgery. And that Cynic would try and point out a statement that is obviously true as an example of "dishonesty" really only points to two things: either Cynic himself is incredibly dishonest (something we already know), or that he's simply stupid as fuck (also something we already know).
Unless, of course, his crusade isn't really about politics; unless all the viciousness that has emanated forth from his blog is only about a pathological desire to hurt people.
In which case Cynic still isn't being honest with people. And is still too stupid to realize the regard to which he's potentially tipped his hand. Which really brings us all back to where we started: this individual isn't merely an implacable hypocrite. He's also just one of god's simple creatures.
When the George W Bush campaign suggested that John McCain had an illegitimate black baby, Democrats everywhere probably all thought the Republicans had reached the apex of dirty campaigning in a political contest.
And they were right.
But they probably thought the Democrats would never come close to that. They were wrong.
In what has quickly exploded into a full-blown outrage, Gordon Fischer, a member of Barack Obama's support team, took a shot back at Bill Clinton, in what is, without a doubt, the most predictable manner. Via CNN, an excerpt from Fischer's blog:
"Bill Clinton cannot possibly seriously believe Obama is not a patriot, and cannot possibly be said to be helping -- instead he is hurting -- his own party. B. Clinton should never be forgiven. Period. This is a stain on his legacy, much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress."
Since then Fischer has posted not one but two "sincere and contrite apologies" on his site.
Of course everyone knew this was eventually going to happen. It's actually quite remarkable that it took as long as it did.
What all of this really underscores, however, is how emotional the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has become. And when the primary race gets that emotional, one can fully expect that there will be hurt feelings come November.
If the Democrats want to win the presidency, they need to smarten up.
For a guy who plies his online trade via "snark", one would think he could take a joke. But, unsurprisingly: no, he can't.
Today, he wants to whine about his fascination with mathematical puzzles and "complexities" being "twisted" into a rumination on what an absolutely incredible hypocrite he is.
In a post yesterday, Canadian Cynic condemns a group of Calgary white supremacists for their attacks on anti-racist activists -- and, at its basest level, rightfully so. As Pablo Fernandez writes in the Calgary Sun it is a sad day in Canada when militant racists can threaten and intimidate people largely with impunity.
But let's talk about threats and intimidation for a minute, because it brings us back to the point of this post in particular: Canadian Cynic is a consummate hypocrite and every bit as cowardly as the white supremacists he so despises.
"And the idea that someone at Calgary Social Services might want to check in on the well-being of Richard's kids, Courtney and Tyler, at 107 Beddington Cres. NE? I'd never come right out and recommend it but, hey, better safe than sorry, know what I mean?"
Now, naturally, to Cynic's merry band of equally-cowardly-sycophants, it's OK for them to engage in the same intimidation tactics as white supremacists. After all, nobody over there needs to actually practice what they preach, do they?
Do they?
Of course, when they're caught being hypocritical, in their minds, it isn't hypocrisy. It's complexity.
And of course, when someone points out to the worthless douchebag what a hypocritical douchebag he is, he doesn't like it.
Congratulations are clearly in order for all the players and staff of the University of Alberta Golden Bears, as the storied hockey club emerged as national champions for the 13th time in their history, and third championship in four years.
At the end of the day, however, all too many Canadians knew precisely why he had been kicked out of caucus: that he engineered his own expulsion both by disregarding caucus rules and by helping foster a state of continuing conflict between himself as his ex-Reform party/Canadian Alliance colleagues.
At stake in the latter was his known disdain for what he had labeled HAH (Hats-and-Horses) Conservatives.
Now, unable to swallow his pride and his intellectual vanity, he sits on the other side of the aisle, banished to opposition benches with little hope of ever returning to government. In all likelihood, he will serve out the remainder of his career as an opposition blowhard.
One would think that perhaps Turner would, at some point, reevaluate where that vanity has led him.
But don't count on it. In a recent post at his blog Turner has proven himself all too eager to continue his Ahab-esque battle with the Great White political whale that has already taken his hand:
"Some suggest disgruntled Libs voted Green in this week’s by-elections to protest their own party. Be more aggressive, they urge. Kick Conservative ass.
Others decry a brief comment made here two days ago, chiding many people for simply staying home. Bad voters, I said, use it or lose it. The response: there’s nobody worth voting for.
In my mailbag, this letter from a voter, Ian, in Eastern Ontario. Not atypical of a few I’m getting:
"Dear Garth:
I recently became a new member of the Liberal Party. Sometimes I wonder why. Watching their performance in The House leaves a lot to be desired – skipping votes. I have been voting for the Liberal Party for nearly 60 years. My wife and I are among the many who lost in the Trust Unit fiasco. So much for Harper promises.
The main reason for this e-mail is The Finance Minister travelling about the Country advising Ontario is not the place to invest due to high taxes in the corporate field. Harper is now singing from the same song sheet. Moreover, Harper is merely a mouthpiece for Tom Flanagan. Small govenment, lower taxes, limited Govenment surplus, is the Flanagan manifesto. The Conservative (Reform-Alliance) Party objective to divide the Country. Much of the population cannot see this and do not care.
I do not know Stephane Dion. The information, I gather, is that he is a clever academic. I do, however, fear for his ability to lead the Party to a majority/minority Government. The Liberal Party has to get a more forceful message regarding exactly what is happening with our present governing power. I do appreciate in general the media coverage are not helpful towards Mr. Dion. Coverage from CTV (Conservative Television) including Duffy, Fife, Oliver et al.
Question Period in the House is disgraceful. The Speaker appears to have no control. The failure to answer questions, lying and insults are disgusting.
Again, I fear Mr. Dion’s ability to lead to a Liberal success are about as hopeful as the “South will rise again”!!!!!!"
Dear Ian. I’m glad you wrote. I’m glad you joined the party. Now you have a voice in changing it. As you decide how, let me give you a couple of thoughts from a guy who is also a new member – just over a year now.
The Liberals formed government for thirteen years and did much good, mostly (to my mind) turning a $40 billion deficit into a $14 billion surplus, taking inflation and interest rates to new lows and paving the way for an economic boom. Even as a PC during that time, I applauded the results.
Politically, well, another story. Face it – getting Libs into power was not rocket science while the PCs disintegrated, thanks to the efforts of the wingnuts in the Reform Party, which was basically unelectable. Given that, Liberals stopped being hungry, stopped being aggressive, stopped being insanely partisan, and concentrated on governing."
Sadly, this is a fairly predictable response among many disgruntled former Progressive Conservatives. Much like Liberals can't take responsibility for their own defeats, instead blaming the NDP essentially for existing, Turner, Joe Clark and his merry band of embittered demagogues blame the Reform party for their 1993 defeat -- more or less because they existed.
But it's funny how, even 15 years after that ignominious defeat, Turner can't accept responsibility for the fact that the Progressive Conservatives, through their utterly unapologetic attempts to placate Quebec at the expense of the rest of the country, in many ways made it utterly impossible for conservative-minded Canadians in many parts of the country to continue to support them.
Somehow, in Garth Turner's mind, the plebes in Western Canada were wrong to seek out and support political candidates who shared their vision of what Canada's future should be. Instead, they should have swallowed their principles and continued to vote for a party that no longer embodied them.
"Meanwhile, Conservatives (which is what those Reformers are now called), evolved in an opposite direction. Unburdened with power, they spent every moment plotting how to get it. They organized the shorts off their membership. They learned how to communicate effectively. They got very good at spin, attack, derision, debate, character assassination, smear, media relations, innuendo, tactics, tour and messaging. They set up a killer data system. They hired a mess of political field operatives. They honed a platform. They learned retail politics. They probed the many weaknesses of the guys in office. They hired tough nuts like Doug Finley and Ian Brodie to run the back shop. They lived and ate and drank and slept and breathed and peed politics. And they won."
"Spin, attack, derision, debate, character assassination, smear, media relations, innendo, tactics, tour and messaging."
Sounds an awful lot like the lot that Turner has thrown in with.
For proof of this, one really need look no further than the mass character assassination carried out against Preston Manning and the Reform party. Repeated insinuations of racism against the party -- often carried out through proxies and in open defiance of the fact that Manning acted decisively to rid the party of racists -- made the Reform party unelectable in many parts of the country.
Which was precisely how Garth Turner liked it at the time, and he's almost certainly longing for those good ol' days.
"Today Stephen Harper is therefore not only prime minister, but in charge of a bare-knuckle brigade of streetfighters who still dream nightly of standing over the torn-asunder carcasses of Liberals, holding aloft their still-beating hearts. Or close. You get my drift, Ian?
Thus, you might imagine the work I’ve been doing for the last few months as a special advisor to Stephane Dion. Feeding him raw steak. Hormone injections. Weights. Anger training. New glasses with hidden electrodes. Bought him a Harley. The works. When the House resumes March 31st, I’ll have the guy so hepped up he’ll rip out his desk during QP and crush Stephen Harper with it like a western pine beetle. Let the Speaker look irritated and call, “Order, order!” Bug juice on the mace. Bug bits everywhere.
Oops. Sorry Ian, forgive me. I had a CPC moment there."
The poor attempts at humour aside, Turner then indulges himself in a moment of comfortable delusions:
"Truth be told, Libs suck at political viciousness. Many of my colleagues are content to wait until the great pendulum of common sense swings back into their column, at which time they will continue to govern. They feel Mr. Harper and his knuckle-draggers will expose themselves for all the world to see. In due course, they reason, natural justice will prevail."
There you go again, Garth -- making friends with your former colleagues.
All joking aside, does Turner really not consider this ad, in which the Liberal party suggested that Stephen Harper is a jack-booted fascist in the making, politically vicious?
"Those who actually know Stephane Dion never stop being impressed. They see a guy driven not by a naked quest for power, but by ideas and principles and the passion to pursue them. Even when sand is being kicked in his face. Even when not a day passes when the prime minister and the entire Government of Canada is obsessed with destroying him. Even when people who have never shaken his hand, and never will, pronounce him from their armchairs, brandishing remotes, as gutless.
Dion is anything but. It amazes me a guy of his background, morality and intellect would put up with this crap. After all, he could still be in the world of academia, applauded daily by his students, courted by premiers and prime ministers for his advice, adding to our collective wisdom and having a nice life with Janine and Kyoto.
So, we’re all better off that he perseveres. He stands for environmental rescue, social justice, economic sanity and the big ideas the rest of us miss. Mostly, he represents hope.
Not hope that he’ll be as mindlessly partisan, brutally aggressive or unashamedly ambitious as Mr. Harper, but rather, Ian, that he will never."
Indeed, Turner's obsessive attempts to settle the score with his alleged Reform party protagonists has led him into a realm of sheer fantasy.
Stephane Dion stands for environmental rescue: not when he had the opportunity.
Stephane Dion stands for economic sanity: when he suggests we should handcuff our economy with a carbon tax that will do little to curb climate change.
Since receiving the boot from the government caucus, Garth Turner really does seem to have slowly lost his grip on reality. Sadly, a good deal of that stems from his own political vanity -- the same vanity shared by Joe Clark, David Orchard and Danny Williams. He's not merely a conservative, he's a progressive conservative, they add with a wink.
He, like Orchard, still hasn't come to grips with why Canada's Progressive Conservative party wound up in the predicament it did: because so-called progressive conservatives lost touch with their supporters. Because they lost the faith.
He, like Clark, still hasn't recognized that in order for conservatism to remain a viable, potent political force in Canada, people like himself need to work with conservatives who don't share all of his views, instead of insisting that they be banished to the political fringe so that he never need dirty his hands working with them.
Brian Mulroney swallowed his pride. So did Peter MacKay. The day that Garth Turner can find it in himself to do the same, maybe he'll finally start taking responsibility for his own failings. Maybe he'll even convince Stephane Dion to do likewise.
But in the meantime, Turner just doesn't get it. And he probably won't get it any time in the near future.
It seems to me that I start a lot of these posts by saying "you really have to hand it to Canadian Cynic".
It's become a local cliche of sorts. But it's cliched because it happens to be true -- you really do have to hand it to this guy.
Anyone who graced the Nexus with a visit yesterday may recall a brief reference to some of the internet douchebags who are politicizing the shameful Brenda Martin affair -- largely for personal political gain. This is especially true amongst those for whom the political is always personal.
Unfortunately, nobody ever told the blogosphere's most pathological rageaholic that sometimes, when you take the political so personally, you say really stupid things. Like the following:
"Anything these cretinous fuckwits turn up regarding Martin will in no way excuse the fact that none of these people gave a crap about her for two years. Now that all these vindictive gomers have been exposed as uncaring yobs, they are desperate, frantically looking for something to justify those two years of callous indifference. But it doesn't work that way.
This kind of character assassination doesn't work retroactively. You don't get to use information you just learned last week to defend your mean-spirited, dismissive contempt of two years. Do you understand that? Seriously, do you understand that?"
He was responding, of course, to recent attempts by various opposing bloggers to dig up something, anything in Brenda Martin's past to suggest that she isn't totally innocent.
But here's the thing: apparently, Kate McMillan, JoJo, JR and Tony are bad people not because they don't support Martin enough, but because they've spent the last two years not complaining about the Martin situation enough.
But here's the kicker: the Brenda Martin affair has hit the media with a vengeance over the past couple of weeks. But prior to that, it was so low profile a story that even Canadian Cynic, himself declined to comment on it on such a regular basis.
Thus, in that regard, McMillan, JoJo, JR and Tony's "callous indifference" is also his callous indifference.
Not that anyone should expect him to admit to that. That would require honesty, and we've all learned about Cynic and honesty the hard way.
Bonus hilarity - Maybe Cynic would like to explain himself with a card trick:
"What I'm after is some initial set of data that's trivially easy to describe, but allows for the definition of various problems with as many different complexities as possible. I already have a couple ideas but I'm not giving any hints. You're on your own."
Yes. Complexities. Like claiming that his opponents don't care about Martin because they didn't blog about her during a period of time in which he himself didn't blog about her, or applauding the tasing of a Florida University student then abruptly becoming very concerned about injudicious use of tasers.
Complexities -- or just hypocrisy. You say tomahto, I call you a douchebag.
The case of Brenda Martin -- the 51-year-old Canadian woman currently being held in Mexico without charge or trial -- has raised a significant question of how Canada addresses situations in which its citizens are held in foreign countries.
Some argue that Canadians who travel or live abroad must agree to live under the legal systems of those countries, regardless of how corrupt they are. Others argue that Martin must be brought home now, that Canadians must not be subjected to the corrupt standard of justice that is passed off as such in countries like Mexico.
Of course, variousinternetdouchebags have done everything they can to politicize the situation -- transforming Martin into a point of contention between Canada and Mexico into the political pawn she's so worried about becoming.
The arguments seem to come down to two equally contemptible extremes: from the left-wing blogosphere, that the government has been sitting on its hands and doing nothing despite the fact that there have been approximately 100 visits between Martin and the Canadian Consulate in Mexico city; from the right-wing blogosphere, Martin never should have gone to live in Mexico in the first place.
The left-wing's politicization of the Martin affair is purely contemptible.
But the right-wing's assertion that Canadians who go abroad can essentially go fuck themselves if they ever run into any kind of trouble is equally contemptible.
Even more alarming is the fact that these people claim to be conservatives. But there's nothing conservative in the argument that we should abandon our citizens to the tender mercies of an authoritarian state in their time of need.
Conservatives everywhere should be the first to demand that we maintain the sanctity of Canadian citizenship by standing up for our citizens when they're locked away in some foreign gulag -- particularly one with the track record of Mexico.
Apparently, the vision for the future shared by many Canada's right-wing bloggers (alleged conservatives) is a world in which Canadians cannot safely travel abroad for fear of being thrown in a foreign prison indefinitely without charge or trial. (Frankly, one hopes they aren't planning any Mexican or Brazilian vacations in their near future.)
And when they suggest that Martin should be allowed to rot in Mexican prison, they are indisputably wrong.
Frankly, Stephen Harper and the Canadian government need to perform a gut-check on this issue, and bring Brenda Martin home. They should consider any means to do this, up to and including recalling Canada's ambassador to Mexico and expelling their Mexican counterpart from Ottawa -- or even use of covert ops to bring Martin home by force if necessary.
(And if Mexico doesn't like it, they can remember this: we have better guns than they do, and they don't want to be paid that particular visit.)
The Canadian government simply cannot be in the business of abandoning Canadians to the "justice" systems of countries like Mexico -- corrupt to the rotten core -- where justice takes on a perverse meaning that defies the definition of the word.
True Conservatives recognize that. Unfortunately, all too many bloggers who consider themselves conservative -- much like many bloggers who consider themselves liberal -- simply cannot pass that particular test.
They can feel free to check their phony political stripes at the door -- regardless of what they claim, they aren't conservatives.
In the future (theoretically) mankind will travel amongst the stars as easily as they travel around the planet today.
Unless, if a controversial plan to sell a publicly-funded cutting-edge space technology company to a US arms maker goes ahead, you're Canadian. Then you'll probably have to hire yourself an intergalactic taxi cab.
MDA builds equipment such as the Canadarm and satellites such as the Radarsat-2, which will be crucial in maintaining Canada's arctic sovereingty -- a key issue being persued by Prime Minster Stephen Harper.
Although some of the outrage over selling MDA to a firm that builds and exports weapons is overblown -- Alliant also produces peaceful space technology -- this sale should simply not be allowed to go through.
First off, the price tag on the deal is insulting. $1.325 billion for a company that produces the quality technology that MDA produces is, frankly, ridiculous.
But the bigger issues underlying the sale deal with Canada's research and development sector, which are crucial to building a competitive 21st century economy.
Fortunately, some within Prentice's own party have recognized the critical importance of the issue and have spoken out against the plan.
"It is a waste of your money and a betrayal of the public interest," said Conservative MP Art Hanger. "It's about time Canada stop playing the nice guy at the expense of our own security and sovereignty -- not to mention our own research and development capacity."
"Why do we so rarely stand firm and fight for what's Canadian? Isn't it time we started protecting our own interests in this country?"
Hanger is 100% right. The sale of MDA would transform Canada from a leading nation in development of spacebound technology into just another straggler playing catchup -- and after we've worked so hard to put ourselves amongst the front of the pack.
The MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates sale must not go through.
Five years ago today, the first American and British bombs began to fall on Iraqi targets, as the two states launched a war that has, to many, become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the state of global affairs today.
"The battle in Iraq has been longer and harder and more costly than we anticipated," US president George W Bush admitted in a wednesday morning speech. "But it is a fight we must win."
Bush noted some of the most recent successes in Iraq and attributed them to the recent 30,000 troop surge in the country. "On this anniversary the American people should know that since the surge began, the level of violence is significantly down, civilian deaths are down, sectarian killings are down, attacks on American forces are down and U.S. forces have captured or killed thousands of extremists including hundreds of key al Qaeda leaders and operatives," Bush said. "The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around; it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror," he announced, but noted that these successes still need to be solidified. "We have learned through hard experience what happens when we pull our forces back too fast — the terrorists and extremists step in, fill the vacuum, establish safe havens and use them to spread chaos and carnage."
Yet Bush continued to demonstrate his ability to miss the point and his inability to concede that the American presence in Iraq has actually created more problems than it's solved.
"War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much. In recent months, we have heard exaggerated estimates of the costs of this war," he continued. "No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq."
But one has to seriously ask themselves whether American intervention in Iraq has prevented terrorists gaining the strategic victory he's alluded to, or actually opened the door for them.
The history of the Iraq war has been repeated ad nauseum, and so needs not be reiterated again here. But the question simply must be asked that, given that Iraq clearly had no weapons of mass destruction to distribute to terrorists (alhtough evidence clearly indicates they were trying to acquire them), and given that there were no credible links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida (Osama Bin Laden regarded Hussein as a socialist and unbeliever).
Certainly, as Bush noted today, Hussein waspaying out Iraqi oil money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Putting a stop to that at least takes some of the incentive away from those who would otherwise be more than content to strap a few pounds of dynamite to their torso in the name of profitably killing Israelis.
"Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight America can and must win. The men and women who crossed into Iraq five years ago removed a tyrant, liberated a country and rescued millions from unspeakable horrors," Bush insisted. And he's right about this.
There is value inherent in having removed Saddam Hussein from power. The international community has no business allowing any dictator who uses chemical weapons against his own country's population to continue to govern.
But the United States, in its mismanagement of a war that, considering the priorities of the day (the war on terror) it had no business launching in the first place, has made quite a mess in Iraq. Whether those who are opposed to the continued presence of US troops in Iraq like it or not, they have a responsibility to clean it up.
It has a responsibility to ensure that peace and stability reign supreme in Iraq. They have a responsibility to ensure that individuals as bad as Saddam Hussein or worse cannot come to power there.
"Because we acted the world is better and the United States of America is safer," Bush announced in a statement of absurdly extreme hyperbole.
"Five years ago tonight I promised that in the struggle ahead we would accept no outcome but victory," he added. "Today, standing before men and women who have helped liberate a nation, I reaffirm the commitment. The battle in Iraq is noble, it is necessary and it is just and with your courage the battle in Iraq will end in victory."
Of course, that's easy for Bush to say. He isn't the one who will have to worry about delivering victory in Iraq -- that task will fall to either John McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton.
Of course, whether or not Clinton or Obama are serious at all about achieving victory in Iraq has yet to be seen, but that's another story for another time -- and one that has yet to be told.
In a set of by-elections in which Liberal leader Stephane Dion was looking for some redemption, he found it -- sort of.
Liberals Bob Rae, Martha Hall-Findley and Joyce Murray emerged victorious in the ridings of Toronto Centre, Willowdale, and Vancouver Quadra respectively.
However, the controversial riding of Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River, Conservative candidate (and now MP) Rob Clarke claimed 49% of the vote while Dion's handpicked alternative to disgruntled Progressive Conservative blowhard David Orchard tallied 32%.
"It's a great day for the Liberals," Stephane Dion announced at Rae's celebratory rally.
And while Dion may have finally managed to get two of his inner circle into the House of Parliament, he may also want to take into account the fact that the Liberals are a seat poorer -- and the Conservatives a seat stronger -- in Parliament after today. Cast in that light, maybe this wasn't such a great day for the Liberals after all.
(How stupid, you ask? This bloody stupid -- an individual who doesn't seem to know it's Afghanistan Canada is involved in, not Iraq.)
If Stephen Harper and the Conservative party brass had reined in their heavy-handed tendencies they could have given Bob Rae a run for his money. They probably wouldn't have won -- theory has it that voters in Toronto Centre would elect Victor Von Doom if he ran as a Liberal -- but at least they could have done better than 15% of the vote.
All the same, the day was fairly good for the governing Conservatives -- they managed to claim a Parliamentary seat that they didn't have before.
But a "great day" for the Liberals? Not on a day when you come out of a round of by-elections weaker than you went into them. It's a big win for the Liberals, but just not big enough.
Those playing close enough attention to what passes for foreign policy debate in Canada may be aware of the rhetoric that is Michael Byers' specialty.
Byers has accused Canada's Conservative government of undermining Canada's role in the world -- or at least what he thinks should be Canada's role in the world. "Stephen Harper has been a disaster for Canadian foreign policy on almost every front," Byers said last year. "It's partly because he doesn't understand the issues, but it's also partly because he doesn't think–or he doesn't want to think–that Canada can play an independent role."
"[Harper] has also picked unnecessary quarrels with China over human rights," Byers wrote. This was actually proof that Byers doesn't understand the issues, as he in the same article suggested that Canada needed to pull its troops out of the NATO mission in Afghanistan and participate in a United Nations Peacekeeping operation in Sudan -- where China is a prolific investor in the oilfields at the heart of the lingering Darfur crisis.
Now apparently Michael Byers feels that we shouldn't confront China over human rights if it threatens to damage our relationship with them. "I don't think we should be silent when it comes to human rights in China," Byers said, "but you cannot influence a country of that size and that power by refusing to establish a relationship."
Decades of pressuring China on "good governance and the rule of law" -- former Prime Minister Jean Chretien quite deliberately tiptoed around the issue with Chinese authorities -- clearly have done very little to persuade the Chinese state that human rights are important.
Perhaps the video evidence -- which China doesn't want its citizens to see -- would be enough to persuade Mr Byers to change his tune on human rights in China:
Of course, it's only fair to point out that some of the Tibetan protesters are far from angels themselves, although the extent to which Chinese and Tibetan violence is being provoked by violence from the other side actually remains largely unclear:
So the question for Michael Byers at this point is thus:
How's that "nonconfrontational" approach to human rights in China coming along, Michael? Are you ready to cut out the double-talk and get serious about addressing this issue?
If their previous rounds of sparsely-attended protests against the War in Afghanistan weren't embarrassing enough, Canada's "Peace" movement is at it again today, staging protests in 20 cities across Canada.
"This war has nothing to do with the defense of democracy or women's rights in Afghanistan and everything to do with advancing U.S. strategic interests in the region," wrote the Canadian Peace Alliance in a news release. "We reject sending our youth to serve as cannon fodder in Afghanistan, where 78 Canadians soldiers have now died, with hundreds wounded, and even more psychologically damaged in an unjust, illegal war."
But let's define, if we may, the words "unjust" and "illegal".
First off, let's define "illegal". One the principle complaints against the war in Iraq is that it's illegal.
According to Chapter VII of the United Nations charter, use of force against another country is legal if its perpetrated in self-defense or if authorized by the UN Security Council.
The war in Iraq was launched under dubious self-defense claims, and was not authorized by the United Nations. As such, the case for arguing that Iraq is an illegal war is actually fairly strong.
Meanwhile, however, the security and assistance mission in Afghanistan -- in which Canada is participating -- is approved by the United Nations. Thus, under Chapter VII, Article 42 of the United Nations Charter, the war in Afghanistan is legal.
Of course, it's unsurprising that the "peace" movement can't seem to tell the difference between the two wars.
The other claim made by the Canadian Peace Alliance is that the war is "unjust". Sadly, these people seem to have a very skewed idea of justice.
In the current state of Afghanistan, its armed forces and government, if NATO troops were to withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban would almost certainly return to power. Is this really the "just" result that the Canadian Peace Alliance wants in Afghanistan?
A return to power for the Taliban in Afghanistan is the last thing that would resemble justice for that beleaguered country.
Not only does the Canadian Peace Alliance have a convoluted sense of the legality of the war in Afghanistan, but they have a very bizarre sense of justice.
Which is appropriate enough, considering that their idea of peace is also to allow regimes like the Taliban to continue harbouring terrorists with impunity, allowing them save haven from which to plan their attacks.
The "peace" movement just doesn't get it. They hold the most bizarre and untenable beliefs on legality, justice, and peace imaginable.
In a recent article on CBC Blogwatch John Bowman asks "why bother with bloggers?"
At first glimpse, it actually seems like a fair question. Bowman explains why:
"Why should CBCNews.ca have a blog called Blog Watch that blogs about what's happening on the blogs? What's the point?
Blogs and the internet, we're told, contribute to a "cult of the amateur" that threatens professional media and our very culture. (I've written here about how blogs can perpetuate a falsehood that would never stand up to the scrutiny of a watchful news editor.)
Blogs, we read, are full of ephemeral knee-jerk reactions, free of anything resembling a well-thought-out argument, their words obsolete as soon as their writers click "Publish."
Bloggers are vile, we're told, spewing forth personal insults at anyone they disagree with (although Raphael, no fan of some of the more radical right-wing blogs, curiously fails to provide even one example from among the Blogging Tory ranks of this practice).
And you only have to read through a few pages of YouTube comments or a short series of flames and counter-flames between two bloggers before you're tempted to throw up your hands, rip the Ethernet cable out of the back of your computer and use it for more something more productive, like playing Lemmings all day."
As much as we may hate to admit it, all of these things are true -- to some extent.
Whilt the myth that more and more people are getting their news primarily from blogs doesn't necessarily pan out to be true, it is true that a fair number of people do, and furthermore, turn to blogs to engage with the news, posting their opinions and debating the news with others.
There's a demonstrated home in the blogosphere for those who rush to judgement on various issues -- and even those who strive to be more disciplined can often be hasty -- or allow their particular ideological bent to cloud themselves from the issue (witness some of the heady enthusiasm surrounding the Karlheniz Schreiber non-story).
Bloggers stoop to lows that no journalist who had to worry about professional credibility would dare. And they'll battle one another nearly to the death, sometimes over the silliest things.
We as bloggers -- or citizen journalists -- can't pretend these things don't happen.
"So, why bother?"
Why indeed?
"It's hard for me to write a defence of blogging that doesn't sound trite ("news as conversation," "wisdom of the crowds," etc.) like so many that are out there. The Wall Street Journal ran a very good piece by Peggy Noonan three years ago arguing that journalists should embrace blogs because they perform a public service.
I've told people around the newsroom here that the point of Blog Watch is to find stories originating in the blogs that haven't made it to the wires or the news desk yet.
I hope that it will also be a place to find opinions expressed in the blogs that you might not hear in the (*sigh*) main-stream media. I won't repeat anything vile, but I might feature well-reasoned opinions from bloggers who have at other times expressed views that some might consider objectionable. (CBC.ca has published writing, for example, from both Kate McMillan and Kathy Shaidle.)"
While some bloggers do manage to break stories that the mainstream media doesn't, or focus on stories that the mainstream media largely ignores -- ranging from the recent scandle over apparent CBC/Liberal party collusion this past year is a prime example to the more common muckraking of Matt Drudge -- the real strength of blogs is the wider range of opinions on offer.
Bloggers have the advantage of being able to air their opinions without having to worry about the political bent or editorial policy of a particular publication. The kind of freedom bloggers enjoy can be as much an advantage as a liability.
"Blogs aren't moderated or censored. There's no House of Commons Speaker standing and muttering for order. Most of the time, there aren't even advertisers you can threaten with a boycott. There's no CRTC to complain to if you find something offensive, although it seems like some people think the Human Rights Commission is the place to take their complaints.
Blogs are as free as free speech can get, with everything that entails. It ain't pretty a lot of the time, but it's definitely worth paying some attention to."
Freedom of speech is fairly important, but it's important to recognize the dark side of that freedom.
Freedom of speech, when combined with the kind of anonymity that allows for unscrupulous individuals to dodge responsibility can be extremely dangerous, and damaging to political discourse.
Consider the case (predictably) of Canadian Cynic -- whom Bowman necessarily alludes to when mentioning Raphael Alexander's recent "Why are bloggers so vile?" post.
This is a guy who, when he isn't attacking the mothers of dead soldiers, wishing for the deaths of political pundits or excusing the tasering of university students combs the blogosphere in search of people to attack with petulant, childish insults and ad hominem attacks (which otherwise are considered libelous).
Occasionally he even posts the home addresses of political opponents -- all the while insisting that he be allowed to maintain his anonymity so he may be protected from reprisals from his opponents.
Why bother with bloggers? Freedom of speech is a good enough reason.
The depth of opinion which is otherwise unavailable is another good reason.
But one of the best reasons is that it can remind one of the human ugliness that we occasionally like to believe doesn't exist, and only realize exists when we're confronted with it: such as when an individual thinks it's acceptable to renege on an offer to donate money to charity in order to trump a political opponent.
Blogs can serve as a reminder that human beings are imperfect, mostly because bloggers have the freedom to be imperfect.
In The Politics of Moral Capital John Kane offers varying profiles of political reformers, including Abraham Lincoln, Charles de Gaulle and Nelson Mandella, and uncovers the importance of moral capital to politics.
Kane splits the use of moral capital down into three "phases". In the first phase, moral issues are used to legitimize a political movement by drawing attention to moral situations that affect -- or at least can be argued to affect -- the whole of the polity.
Once a movement is legitimized, support must be mobilized. For Kane, this is phase two. Demands are made that the moral issue be resolved, and a political program is promoted that offers a solution.
Kane's third phase the issue is used to highlight strategic opportunities. Current events are siezed upon as an opportunity for activism, which is then used to bolster political support.
Kane's book refines the use of moral capital into a fine art. His book esentially outlines a program by which political activism can be transformed into political capital. It often seems almost Machiavellian, until one considers that those who have most successfully harnessed moral capital for political gain have been those who had the most legitimate grievances, and who believed in their causes most deeply.
Kane also pays close attention to the American presidency, and uncovers the pivotal importance of moral capital to that particular office. Political offices, he notes, tend to come imbued with a certain amount of moral capital, which can either be enhanced by the office holder, or squandered for future office holders through poor conduct.
Moreover, Kane theorizes that the moral standing of the office of president -- as well as whomever may hold it at any particular time -- is crucial to a country's self-respect and morale.
Times when leaders fail to meet the moral standard their citizens expect of them tend to be very troubling for a polity, and it's at times like this that we need to reevaluate the moral cogency of our societies. Kane's theories can be helpful but ultimately it's up to individual citizens to decide whether or not they're satisfied with the moral standing of their society.
It's a fairly hilarious little temper tantrum, so one hardly knows where to start.
Apparently, Stewart wants to take issue with two things: first off, that my writing, in the past, has reached audiences in excess of 30,000 readers, and that this blog has recently featured exclusive content featuring Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff and Lt General Romeo Dallaire.
We'll get to that in time, but first let's deal with some of the preamble to Stewart's faux-outrage, because this is where some of the best hilarity lies.
"Ross has taken great delight in throwing names around. He is part of the blogger outing stalkerazi, so I am not shocked to see my real name waved about when he gets up on his pudgy hind legs to bleat. My name isn't a secret, I'm not anonymous, I just prefer to use a nom de blog. He has also made much of having discovered Red's name. Also not a tightly held secret. The implication in his useage is that he thinks he's shamed us, as though we have anything to be ashamed of in our writings. Whatever."
And yet Stewart threw such remarkable tantrums when her identity was revealed. Yep, Lindsay Stewart didn't care about that at all.
Then, of course, there's good old Marty Rayner who recently deleted "version 1.0" of his blog. He insists that it was done in order to "turn the page and start a new chapter", or some other hogwash. But most people don't turn the page by slashing and burning every previous page -- unless, of course, they don't want people to read those particular pages for some reason. Such as, perhaps they're embarrassed (and for good reason, too).
And in fact, Stewart herself was very, very upset about the revelation of her identity, as were her sycophants who swooped on by the Nexus to bawl about it every time it was mentioned.
Take note of this -- we just caught Lindsay Stewart lying.
"Ross' audience of "30,000+" is claimed because Patrick writes for his school paper. Holy meritocracy chilluns. How much does that gig pay, I wonder."
Is this coming from the same person who insisted that the value of their work was found entirely in the satisfaction she herself derived from it? But let's press on.
Stewart picked this is some how evidentiary that I'm a liar -- that my claims of having reached such a modestly impressive readership were somehow false, then fails to follow that particular idea through to conclusion, instead deciding to quote from a Godzilla-themed point/counter-point (located in the Arts & Entertainment section of the newspaper by the way -- you know, the section where she typically reads the bad reviews of her awful, awful performances).
Then again, there is a certain advantage to writing for a paper that audits its circulation. If Lindsay wants to accuse the Gateway of exaggerating its readership numbers, she may feel free to make that accusation. It would be fun to see her try and prove it, but then again, Stewart and her sycophants have never been worried about things like "proof".
Take note of this one, too: we just caught Lindsay Stewart dissembling.
"Well Ross wrote the fourth article but it is hardly an exclusive, an opinion piece and one of middling quality. But perhaps the vagaries of the University's web archiving have eluded me. Perhaps Ross has been awarded these cherished exclusives for his highly regarded web log the Nexus of Assholery! So I performed a little search and land sakes alive lookie what came up!
Dallaire to Canadian Youth wherein Patrick EXCLUSIVELY, reproduces the text of Dallaire's speech to the student body. Yes, he adds a few extra comments to bookend the piece but hardly what one of integrity would call an exclusive.
Well maybe I'll have better luck with the fabulous, one on one exclusive interview with Michael Ignatieff. Hey there's two of them, My Meeting With Michael, So To Speak which, again, provides the text of a speech delivered by the gentleman in question. Then there's Part 2 which is the EXCLUSIVE transcript of a question and answer session that followed the speech.
Seems that in all of his huffing and bloated claims of his own magnificence, Patrick left out an important detail, the truth. He doesn't have an exclusive interview with either Dallaire or Ignatieff either."
Ah, yes. But Stewart is missing the point: that being, that I never said they were exclusive interviews.
What Stewart seems to be ignoring (or openly trying to conceal) is that there are two kinds of exclusives: granted exclusives, in which an individual agrees to sit down with a reporter and grant an interview on an exclusive basis, and earned exclusives, in which a reporter takes advantage of an opportunity that their competitors don't.
No one else, in the blogosphere or otherwise, has published this particular content -- at least in its entirety. Thus, it is exclusive to the Nexus of Assholery.
But perhaps Stewart is really so offended by these exclusives because it directly contradicts an idea she once put forth.
The "idea", as previously asserted by Stewart: that I'm just another evil, arch-conservative blogger. Now, if this were really the case, then why am I posting so many delicious left-wing goodies on my site?
Better not to ask people who have constantly demonstrated themselves to be intellectual cowards such difficult questions.
At the end of the day, one must ask themselves, what is it that people like Lindsay Stewart really take issue with? Is it the ideas the Nexus promotes -- often ideas that they themselves claim to support (but will discard just as often)?
Or is it because I stand among those who were able to find the courage and moral wherewithall to stand up to Stewart and her blog mate, and never back down?
It's uncertain why Lindsay Stewart hates the Nexus so much. But the truth is, I could really care less. We just caught Lindsay Stewart lying once, dissembling once, and being just plain retarded on a third count.
When Canadian Cynic decided he was going to rescind his offer to donate $250 to a charity of my choice (I choose St Albert's Kids With Cancer Society) he must have thought it was as simple as that.
"Kids With Cancer, huh? Fuck it. Screw 'em."
Well, that has truly become thematic. As some may recall, Let Freedom Reign's Richard Evans registered a domain name in Cynic's name that redirects readers to the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
I never really agreed with that, but recent developments have demonstrated that Canadian Cynic does indeed like to stiff little kids -- in a matter of speaking.
So, with some help from the fine folks at Cafepress, I've decided to raise the money and donate it for him. Starting today, a number of fine products are being offered via the Nexus of Assholery's new online store, including the very fetching t-shirt you'll see to your right.
Or, perhaps you'd like to savor the petty, hateful cheapwad's humiliation over your morning coffee. I have a product that will help you with that one, too (pictured left).
All proceeds from the sale of these products will be donated to the Kids With Cancer Society of St Albert, Alberta -- in Canadian Cynic's name.
If Canadian Cynic doesn't want to make good on his offers, hey! 'Tis no big deal. We can do it for him.
When John Gomery drafted and released his report on the federal sponsorship scandal, he was perfectly entitled to expect that it would be given some consideration when it came time to finally tackle the corruption that had crept into the Canadian government under Jean Chretien's Liberal government.
Sadly, that isn't what has happened.
"I was expecting the report would be given more consideration and would be to some degree at least followed, and it really hasn't," Gomery said during a recent interview. "It's been put on the shelf."
Gomery notes that while the Conservatives tabled and passed their Accountability Act -- despite predictable opposition from the Liberal party -- it was largely drafted before he tabled his report, and contains very few of his recommendations.
Furthermore, Gomery is concerned about the continuing centralization of power in the Prime Minister's office.
"I don't think Canadians elect only a prime minister," he said. "They elect a House of Parliament which is there to deal with government policy. I don't think government policy should arrive only out of the prime minister's office -- that's sort of an anti-democratic kind of government."
"They've gradually re-engineered the system. I'm quite impressed with it," Flanagan announced.
"They're boxing in the ability of the federal government to come up with new program ideas. ... The federal government is now more constrained, the provinces have more revenue, and conservatives should be happy."
And while putting more money -- and power -- into the hands of the Provinces certainly only helps decentralize the government, there is still a long way to go. And Gomery is entirely right to be concerned about the lack of action on his recommendations -- let alone dragging its feet on its own Accountability Act.
Stephen Harper and the Conservative party won power by promising to clean up the government and decentralize power.
It's time for Stephen Harper to put his money where his mouth is.
In the wake of the opposition's further decimation at the hands of Ed Stelmach and his provincial Progressive Conservative party (not that they were a very strong opposition to begin with), various opposition supporters have been kicking around a few rhetorical footballs trying to figure out just how to get themselves out of this mess.
Many of the answers come down to two things: proportional representation and uniting the left.
If one treats the election results of a microcosm of all eligible voters (although with only 41% of eligible voters bothering to show up, who honestly could?) in the province, then one would also assume (again, not necessarily correctly) that the 53% of the popular vote that the Tories captured would have been good for 53% of the seats. It may be an uncomfortably slim majority, but a majority nonetheless.
Instead, the Tories, with that 53% (actually 52.7%, but we'll round it up for simplicity's sake) won them 87% of the seats. The Liberal party's 26% of the popular vote won them 11% of the seats, and the NDP's 8% of the popular vote won them 2% of the seats. The Wildrose alliance, with 7% of the popular vote, won 0% of the seats.
Proponents of proportional representation argue that something simply must be wrong with this.
But they're missing the point.
The popular vote is an indication of total support for a political party. As such, it's a measure of how much support that particular party has across (in this case) the province's 83 ridings. As such, it's little surprise that the Wildrose alliance's 7% of voters situated in 83 different ridings wouldn't warrant them any seats. It doesn't amount to enough support to win a riding.
In a parliamentary system, there's really only two ways to make proportional representation work: either abolish ridings outright or implement some kind of system in which representatives are simply assigned to a riding.
While the latter could almost be done amicably by assigning them to ridings where the popular vote reflected strong support for their party, it would be inevitable that some riding -- likely numerous ridings -- would be summarily assigned a representative that they did not support.
An alternative model, naturally, is to abolish ridings altogether. Of course, this would deprive citizens of representation -- or at least of the security of knowing they have a representative who is obligated to hear their concerns, regardless of whether or not they voted for them.
The favoured model, as promoted in a recent referendum in Ontario, is MMP -- mixed member proportional represention -- in which a portion of the legislature is elected riding by riding, and another block of MLAs is elected proportionally.
Of course, one can debate the value of electing a portion of representatives who are accountable to nobody other than their party whip. It really just doesn't add up.
The other option for Alberta's opposition parties is actually one that is much, much more viable -- especially here in Alberta where they literally have nothing to lose: that is, uniting the left.
Of course, there have been suggestions that uniting the left on a federal level would equal permanent super-happy-fun-time for the entire country. This, naturally, ignores the fact that the Liberals, NDP and Bloc (the last of which is actually an extreme right-wing party pretending to be a left-wing party) are all viable parties on their own. They can maintain official party status, and even form the government or official opposition.
In Alberta, neither of the main opposition parties can. One of them can form the official opposition on a largely ongoing basis, but it's such a meager and pathetic opposition that it barely warrants the label of "official".
Uniting the two parties would serve two crucial purposes: first off, to renew hope amongst those who would consider voting for a new government if only they had the opportunity, and secondly, creating a new party with a new lease on life.
Traditionally in Alberta, governments are only defeated by the emergence of new parties -- or at least new incarnations of old parties, such as with the Progressive Conservatives.
As an alternative, the Alberta Liberals and NDP could at least agree not to run candidates against each other, cutting down on the vote-splitting that has cost them numerous urban ridings in the past. But don't count on it. While NDP leader Brian Mason is permanently irrelevant and at least seems to understand this, Liberal leader Kevin Taft is still flirting with delusions of adequacy despite the fact that his leadership has been the exact polar opposite of that.
But uniting the Liberal and NDP parties in Alberta -- as the Canadian Alliance and federal Progressive Conservatives did to form the Conservative Party of Canada -- could give them the opportunity to show Albertans they can provide an alternative to the governing Progressive Conservatives, and force Albertans to give them a second look.
What's more, they may not have a choice. It's desperation time for the left, and desperate times call for desperate measures.
Those of you following The Nexus over the last couple of days probably aren't the slightest bit surprised to discover that Canadian Cynic is stiffing kids. (With cancer!)
Well, today he only continued to try and rationalize his pathologically dishonest, selfish and miserly behaviour.
Moreover, he continues to lie.
Consider this embarrassing little passage from his blog today:
"Do we all accept that it is Patsy's position that reading my original blog post would cause WW "emotional harm?" We're all in agreement on that point, yes? Good. So let us now drop that million-pound shithammer on poor Patsy, as we quote him here:
# Patsy thinks reading that original post of mine would cause WW "emotional harm" (his own words, remember?), and
# Patsy really, really, really wants WW to read that post (again, his own words).
Ergo, Patsy wants to hurt Wanda Watkins. There is no escaping that logic, it's there in black and white for everyone to see. Patsy will, of course, flail madly disagreeing with this logical analysis, but he will be unable to refute either of those two points or their painfully obvious logical conclusion. But that's not the real lesson here."
Of course it isn't! The lesson is that Canadian Cynic is a liar.
In this case, lying by omission. After all, as much as I hate to quote myself, here's the rest of that passage -- the portion he doesn't want you to see:
"Frankly, Cynic, I hope Wanda Watkins does some day happen by one of my blog posts and does find out about your shameless, vicious, hateful attack on her. I then hope she happens upon the first blogger who publishes your identity (and I'm told we're getting very close), and comes to confront you with your comments.
(However she tracks down your home address, it won't be through my blog. I'm drawing the line well short of that. See, Cynic, I can demonstrate the restraint that you can't.)
I only wish I could be there to see it. I would simply love to hear you try to rationalize the entire thing by telling her about your dead cat (she can rationalize her comments, if she really feels the need to, by telling you about her dead son).
And I wish I could only be there to tell her "Wanda, I'm sorry you had to read that. But you have the right to know."
See, Cynic, in Canada, we have the right to confront our attackers -- regardless of whether or not they wish us physical or emotional harm. (And considering that inflicting emotional harm on people is known to have much more long-lasting effects than physical harm it isn't unfair to say that the kind of harm you've inflicted on Wanda Watkins is much more serious than any beating any of your other victims may be hankering to administer.) If my blog facilitates that process, I'll be damned proud of that."
So there you have it: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Was the idea to hurt Wanda Watkins? Heavens, no. The idea is to facilitate a meeting between Wanda Watkins and her attacker. And to make Canadian Cynic face his victim.
That's much different than the lies being purveyed over at Canadian Cynic's cesspool today.
But here's the hilarious thing about the entire affair: Canadian Cynic took issue with being referred to as a pathological liar. How does he respond? By lying constantly.
Today, we've caught him in his third lie. Canadian Cynic is a pathological liar. There is no denying it.
One almost has to admire the twisted excuse for Orwellian logic that passes for argument amongst Canadian Cynic and his equally-intellectually-cowardly sycophants.
Some may recall that yesterday, Cynic issued a challenge. He would donate $250 to a charity of my choice if I could catch him lying.
So the next time someone asks you what Canadian Cynic has in common with Jack Thompson -- the United States' anti-video game "do gooder" extraordinaire -- you have your answer: they both offered to donate money to charity as part of a challenge, and both rescinded their offer when their challenge was met.
So Canadian Cynic, like Jack Thompson, is a liar. Most damningly he's stiffing an incredibly valuable charity -- one that helps the families of children stricken with cancer travel to treatment centers so they can be with their loved ones during their treatment.
Of course, the saddest, most tragic part of the affair is simply thus: Canadian Cynic seems to think that he's only stiffing me.
You really just don't get it, do you? I mean: wow. You just don't get it.
I mean, where to start? It's a tough question. But I say we focus on some of your more recent stupidity, and from there we'll just take it from the top.
In a 17 July post this past year, you wrote some comments to one Wanda Watkins. Not merely about Wanda Watkins, but you addressed the comments directly to her:
"With all due respect, Wanda, fuck you and your grief. It's not the job of the rest of Canada to continue to let its soldiers die just so you can sleep better at night. At this point, I don't give a rat's ass about making you feel better for your loss now that I know that the price is other peoples' lives. Fuck you and the politically-motivated, neo-con propaganda train you rode in on."
See that? You addressed her. By name. Those extremely vicious, hateful and cruel comments were meant for Wanda Watkins.
Now, in your post today, you (as usual) seem all too desperate to tiptoe around that:
"...When I wrote that post, I made no attempt to inflict "emotional harm" on WW in any way. I did not seek her out to discover where she lived so I could rub her face in it; I did not try to learn her phone number so I could call her up and harass her; I did not check if she had a blog so I could leave rude comments on it, and so on. In short, I wrote my piece for my readership (and no one else), I had my say, and I moved on."
But if that were really the case, Cynic, why did you address the comments directly to Wanda Watkins?
You could have simply said "Wanda Watkins can go fuck herself and the politically-motivated neo-con propaganda train she rode in on". Instead, you wrote "Wanda, fuck you and your grief. ...Fuck you and the politically-motivated, neo-con propaganda train you rode in on."
You addressed the comments directly to her. Regardless of whether or not you expected she would ever read them, it doesn't change the fact -- yes, fact -- that those comments were meant directly for her.
So I suppose the biggest question is this: why did you just lie about this?
You really should have stuck to that lame excuse about your cat being run over. (Still doesn't change the fact that you were mourning your cat and Wanda Watkins was mourning her son.)
Cut the cheque. Make it payable to the Kids With Cancer Society. Unless you're lying about that, too, and coming from a sociopath like yourself, it wouldn't shock anyone in the slightest.
But, in the words you so love: no, we're not done here. Not by a longshot.
I'd have to say that the most comical thing I've heard out of you in a long time slipped out of those sneering lips of yours today:
"Just recently, I had it on good authority that the object of that original post, WW, was still unaware of my original diatribe. Yes, that's right ... I was informed by someone who is in a position to know that WW is, as of this moment, comfortably ignorant of my original post, which means that it could not possibly be causing her any harm, emotional or otherwise.
...
If my source is correct, WW wouldn't have learned of my little hissy fit from my blog. Rather (and here's the hilarity), if she ever finds out, it will almost certainly be due to countless, right-wing fuckwits who won't let that piece go, and insist on dragging it up again and again, with the inevitable result that WW will notice it one day, and only because idiots like Patsy (and Neo, of course) are so obsessed with it and can't stop blogging about it.
Is that irony or what, Patsy? If WW ever comes to "emotional harm" due to finally reading my blog post, it will almost certainly be because an obnoxious toad like you keeps flogging it so often that she won't be able to avoid it. Yeah, that's irony. And I hope you appreciate it."
First off, Cynic, precisely how do you imagine your source would have found out that Watkins was blissfully unaware of your comments? Yeah, I can imagine that now:
Cynic's anonymous source: Hey, Wanda, did you hear about Canadian Cynic, the guy who told you to fuck yourself and your grief? And the politically-motivated neo-con propaganda train you rode in on?
Wanda Watkins: No. Why do you ask?
Cynic's anonymous source: No reason.
Of course then, unsurprisingly, you go on to defend yourself in precisely the same way as the average schoolyard bully: it's not your fault for doing something wrong, it's my fault for telling on you.
Frankly, Cynic, I hope Wanda Watkins does some day happen by one of my blog posts and does find out about your shameless, vicious, hateful attack on her. I then hope she happens upon the first blogger who publishes your identity (and I'm told we're getting very close), and comes to confront you with your comments.
(However she tracks down your home address, it won't be through my blog. I'm drawing the line well short of that. See, Cynic, I can demonstrate the restraint that you can't.)
I only wish I could be there to see it. I would simply love to hear you try to rationalize the entire thing by telling her about your dead cat (she can rationalize her comments, if she really feels the need to, by telling you about her dead son).
And I wish I could only be there to tell her "Wanda, I'm sorry you had to read that. But you have the right to know."
See, Cynic, in Canada, we have the right to confront our attackers -- regardless of whether or not they wish us physical or emotional harm. (And considering that inflicting emotional harm on people is known to have much more long-lasting effects than physical harm it isn't unfair to say that the kind of harm you've inflicted on Wanda Watkins is much more serious than any beating any of your other victims may be hankering to administer.) If my blog facilitates that process, I'll be damned proud of that.
And maybe that's what you really don't get. I may allow my principles to be my master some times. But you? Your master is hate. You wallow in it. You brag about it. And we've seen that you'll stoop to any low in order to vent that hatred.
But that's not all that important. And it isn't anything you don't already know.
What you do know is that you're donating $250 to the Kids With Cancer society in St Albert, Alberta.
Unless you're lying again. And don't think I won't find out if you don't send the cheque. Don't think you won't be taken to task if you don't.
If one were to believe the pro-abortion lobby, Bill C-484 is simply a "back-door" attempt to re-criminalize abortion.
They've gone to protracted lengths to try and argue this, including arguing that, because an unborn child (or fetus, as they prefer) is not legally a person, it cannot be considered a victim. Yet, they seem to ignore the fact that, in the course of a crime, a fetus an be targeted quite deliberately.
Take, for example, the case of Olivia Talbot, an Edmonton-area woman who was murdered by a friend of hers who not only murdered her, but also deliberately targeted Lane Talbot Jr, her already-named-yet-unborn child, "to get the baby," as he testified at his trial.
Yet, despite the fact that one of the intended targets of the murder was the unborn child, the pro-abortion lobby wants to insist that it can't possibly be the victim.
Mary Talbot, Olivia's mother and Lane's grandmother, knows differently -- and she wants to help the criminal justice system recognize that victimizations of the unborn should be addressed. "[Ken Epp] is an MP who is doing something to fight criminal violence, to help protect women and babies, to change the law so that no other grandmother in the future has to go through the grief and insult of being told that the murder of her grandson - that the murder of my darling Olivia's beloved baby, Lane Jr. -- doesn't even register a blip in our criminal justice system."
Bourgeois admitted in court that the woman was never his target. His crime was directed at his girlfriend's unborn child. "Many men face an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, and the message must be clear that they can't take into their hands the destiny of their girlfriends or their babies," said prosecutor Anne Gauvin.
While Gauvin argued that the sentence fit the crime -- many would disagree -- the Bourgeois case, in particular, was a case in which the offender may have known he was going to go to jail, but knew that he wouldn't go to jail for murder.
If it had, he may have considered his premeditated act.
Bourgeois murdered his unborn child. But he was merely charged with aggravated assault and administering a toxic substance and sentenced to a grand total of one year in prison.
The punishment does not fit the crime. While the law may not permit this charge to be laid, the crime was murder.
The pro-abortion lobby argues that the proper way to address situations like this would be to toughen penalties for domestic assault. But if individuals like Bourgeois had to worry about facing charges related to crimes against two victims, the deterrent would be that much stronger.
What, after all, would make a stronger deterrent: a few extra years in jail for crimes against a single victim? Or (providing that consecutive sentencing is instituted) 26 years for crimes against two victims?
This isn't rocket surgery.
Preventing an assault against an unborn child would, by definition, also deter crimes from being perpetrated against the mother.
So for the pro-abortion lobby to argue that Bill C-484 provides no protection to women is nothing more or less than a pure logical fallacy. This is another one of their arguments, and yet another one that they can't support with any evidence.
"It’s bad enough that people would attack a woman, or anybody, but a pregnant woman? They’re so vulnerable," Mary Talbot said. "If it’s known out there that this is even worse, then maybe people will stop and think before they do such stupid, insane things."
So long as it prevents the murder of even a single unborn child, Bill C-484 will have been a success.
As for the pro-abortion lobby? Let them keep forgetting who the victims of these crimes are. 72% of Canadians know better.
If one were to ask either the pro- or anti-abortion lobbies about abortion, and one would think that there are only two possible positions on the matter: completely unfettered abortion rights, or outright outlawing abortion.
Whenever the abortion debate -- in any form whatsoever -- rears its head in this country, that is the face that it usually wears.
Which is unfortunate, because both extremes are almost equally wrong. And it causes people to overlook important facts.
A recent study on late-term abortions in Britain has revealed just such a fact: in this case, the shocking increase in late-term abortions. And while one extreme side of the debate will do almost anything they can to ignore or obscure the issue, the other side will use it as evidence that abortion must be recriminalized.
During the timeline of the study, it was determined that 3,000 women sought and received late-term abortions. This represented an increase of 44%.
Most disturbing, however, was the percentage of these abortions that was sought for crisis abortions (situations in which concerns for the health of the mother, child, or both): less than 25%.
The rest were sought for "lifestyle reasons". In other words, these were women who simply changed their minds before the 24-week cutoff date for abortions in Britain.
In response, British MPs are planning to adjust the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill so that, if passed, it will impose a limit of 20 weeks on abortion, after which medical concerns would be necessary in order to seek an abortion.
British doctors have raised concerns about sex education. In particular, Dr Trevor Stammers of the Youth Family Concern noted that many women "get the idea it's a trivial matter and as a result they are much more cavalier about presenting to their [General Practitioner] late." He noted that some women seem to think abortions are "like having an appendix out".
Quite unfortunately, a quick persual of some pro-abortion lobbyists can confirm this. (Of course, there's a difference between removing an organ that cannot survive outside of someone's body and aborting a fetus that eventually would, but don't ask them about that.)
Of course, to the pro-life lobby, any limits on abortion is an absolute non-starter. They argue it's all about incrementalism, also known as the "slippery slope" theory -- "if we allow this," they argue, "then they'll take more". "If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile." "Once we start, when will it stop?"
(Ironically, slippery slope arguments are always dismissed as empty sensationalism by the pro-abortion lobby when it's used against them. Don't ask them about that one, either.)
In Canada, where we have no time limits on abortion, this debate is particularly important. Unfortunately, the pro-abortion lobby would rather not have it at all (sometimes they even insist that there is no debate, despite the fact that it's ongoing as we speak).
Unfortunately, Canada's pro-abortion lobby may have one of the itchiest trigger fingers in all of the Western world. Even bills that have no effect on abortion, such as the current Bill C-484 (which applies only to criminal offenses) meet with some of the most virulent and vitriolic responses imaginable.
They simply refuse to have the debate under open or honest terms, and for obvious reasons: the ethical dilemma posed by flippant abortions (such as in Britain) is simply too difficult for them to answer.
(Then again, the anti-abortion lobby isn't any better.)
Of course, criminalizing abortion is an absolute non-starter. Even those opposed to abortion must recognize that there will be abortions regardless of whether or not they're legal, and back alley abortions are the absolute last thing that Canadians should be willing to tolerate in their country. As such, the only way to keep abortions "safe and rare" is also to keep them legal.
But having no limits on abortion, particularly in revelation of Britain's late-term abortion ills, is an absolute non-starter as well.
Canada needs to regulate late-term abortions, regardless of whether or not the pro-abortion (pro-choice is a distortion) lobby throws a shit fit over it.
Apparently, in the midst of a recent complaint by Canadian Cynic that Raphael Alexander allegedly accused him of wishing harm on Wanda Watkins, intellectual coward extraordinaire forgot one little thing before he raised the alarm of protest.
After all, it isn't as if he hasn't wished harm on people before.
According to Cynic, this was neither OK nor was "not OK". But he argues it isn't relevant.
He objects to being accused of wishing harm on another person (and writing a post like this it's pretty safe to assume that he wished emotional harm on Watkins), yet his response to pointing out that he has, in fact, explicitly wished harm on other people some how isn't relevant.
But he won't explain why. And just don't ask him. We wouldn't want the idiot to have an aneurism.
Most people would probably agree that people who are implacably unwilling to apologize when they have done wrong should never demand apologies from other people.
Especially when those people haven't done anything wrong.
Then again, Canadian Cynic isn't most people. And apparently he thinks that Raphael Alexander owes him some sort of apology for pointing out what a hateful scumbag he is.
Certainly, it must be tough for the little piece of garbage to see his hateful, unending hunt for evidence that all conservatives are as hateful as he is disrupted by the revelation of the shocking truth that he and his cohorts are not even one little bit better.
And now he wants an apology.
He isn't owed one. Wanda Watkins is owed an apology. Richard Evans is owed an apology. Kate McMillan (as contemptible as she herself can often be) is owed an apology. But Canadian Cynic?
No way. This little twit doth protest way too fucking much.
He doesn't deserve an apology. He deserves nothing less than the complete and utter contempt of all proper-thinking denizens of the blogosphere. And whether or not he wants to admit it, he's earned it. In spades.
If you can't take the heat, get the fuck out of the kitchen, and save the crying for people who give a fuck.
In an apparent attempted response to suggestions that the Official Opposition Liberals have abandoned the realm of opposition to the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, the Liberals are digging up some old bones to pick.
According to the Toronto Star, the Liberals will introduce a motion condemning the NDP and Bloc for helping the Conservatives defeat their minority government in 2005.
It's nothing new. Immediately following the election of the sitting Conservative government in 2006, various Liberal partisans blamed the NDP. After all, not only did they not fold up during the 2005/06 election, but also defeated the sitting Liberals in the first place.
So of course the Liberal defeat in 2006 wasn't their fault. It was all the NDP and now, the Bloc.
Right.
The motion, resolving that Parliament "condemn the irresponsible and self-serving actions on Nov. 25, 2005, by the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois which led to the installation of a government that is hostile to the rights and needs of vulnerable Canadians," is a farce.
To suggest that the Liberals lost the 2006 election only because of their fellow opposition parties (let's not forget about a little thing called "Adscam") is as equally ridiculous as to suggest that they're the reason why the Liberals are such a shitty opposition in the first place.
Opposition politics, after all, isn't exactly rocket surgery. You vote against the government. John Turner got it, and he still identifies himself as "former Prime Minster of Canada" despite never having been actually elected to that position.
It's hard to say what the Liberals should think is more embarrassing: introducing this motion in the first place, or being defeated on this resolution in the house.
In a recent post at his new blog, Bruce Stewart seems to have formulated what is at least a partial explanation for why so few voters (41% in 2008) bother reporting to the ballot box.
"All the incessant posturing, pre-electioneering, shouting, etc. that is modern politics in the age of the twenty-four hour news cycle, the spinmeisters, political consultants, and so on — all of which is focused on hard, fast, negative sound-bites — has alienated the electorate. The parallel to this, for those of us who have worked in and around the computer industry, was the late 1980s, when then “no one ever got fired for buying” giant IBM was almost universally disliked, mistrusted, yet (when a decision needed to be made) rewarded, for lack of an alternative. Alternatives are not a substitution of one company for another; they are a shift in the paradigm of use. When it came — with LANs, Windows 3.1, and the client/server computing model in and around 1992 — an earthquake occurred. IBM was rocked and spent years reinventing itself. (There are those who think this is about to happen to Microsoft in turn. We shall see.)
What this means is that the problem with politics has practically nothing to do with who the leaders are! The Liberals, for instance, will see no real gain by dumping Stéphane Dion for another leadership choice. Alberta PCs may be led by a less than stellar leader in Ed Stelmach — I expect the negative comments about him and his actions to begin again immediately — but that’s not the point.When the problem is the way we handle politics in the public arena, leaders are irrelevant."
While it seems counter-intuitive (in fact, Canadian politics seem to be obsessed with party leaders) a quick overview of recent Canadian political history actually demonstrates precisely the opposite.
Consider, in particular, the federal Conservative party. Then consider the criticisms directed at Preston Manning when he was leader of the Reform party, and Stockwell Day when he was leader of the Canadian Alliance. The criticisms directed against the three are essentially the same: "too right-wing, too religious, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-French and will dismantle our cherished social programs".
This despite the fact that Harper and Day both speak fluent French, all three led the most diverse caucuses in Parliament of their time, and Preston Manning once paid for an African immigrant's wedding -- after helping him find his plane to Edmonton (he almost accidentally boarded a plane to Winnipeg instead).
Yet none of that mattered. Racism, sexism, homophobia and religion (there are still a number of ideologues about who throw a shit fit if Stephen Harper so much as says "god bless Canada") remain the tired old predictable epithets hurled at conservative leaders in Canada.
During this week's elections in Alberta, the predictable negative campaigning model was predictably at the forefront.
Albertan opposition groups have refined negative campaigning down to an art. Consider the following ads:
The idea, apparently, is that the now-defunct Albertans for Change spoke to every Albertan in the province, and found that none of them trust Ed Stelmach.
And if you believe that, the same people probably have a house in Fort McMurray they'd like to sell you -- a real bargain, too.
Likewise, it's funny that a group calling itself "Albertans for Change" would criticize Stelmach's plan for wanting to change too much. They really should have called themselves "Albertans for Change... not so much".
Previous ads for the group (seemingly no longer available via YouTube) actually went a step even further and seemed to suggest that oil and gas royalties were not merely uncollected, but had "gone missing" (read: were stolen).
Add all of this to the ludicrous episode in which a former U of A Student's Union executive misappropriated Stelmach's name in order to promote his blog, and the prevalence of negative political campaigning and political stunting in Alberta becomes prevalent.
But then compare that to the criticisms of Stelmach's predecessor, Ralph Klein: he, too, was accused of having no plan.
Different leaders, same criticism. Then again, having invested so much time and effort in formulating these criticisms in the first place, why would these individuals want to go back to the drawing board?
But the inherent laziness of these individuals does more than simply save them the trouble of matching a new criticism to a new leader. It also results in stale politics, wherein the same old, same old campaign is continually trotted out, just with some new window dressing.
Maybe Albertans aren't voting out of sheer boredom with the process.
Clearly, something new is needed. Bruce Stewart elaborates:
"I sometimes think the Green Party has it precisely backward (and I speak of them here because Green is as much a movement beyond normal politics as it is an attempt to enter the fray in the chambers of government). It’s not that we need another party. Instead we need a new politics. Part of the mania for Barack Obama that we see south of the border — and the original Tony Blair in Britain — and recently, Nicholas Sarkozy in France — and ever (malheursement) Pierre Trudeau in 1968 — is that they didn’t need to campaign from the sound-bite, negative, “my opponent est un gros enmerdement” point of view. They could strike out positively and say nothing about their opponents. (”Vote for us because of a, b & c” is so much more appealing than “Vote for us because we’re not those lying, cheating, stealing cretins”. So is treating the electorate as thinking, rational adults who are capable of responding to a sense of history, of vision and of direction rather than scaring them into taking action to avoid their fate.) That’s not to say that at various points in the campaign the experts didn’t create negative views, and the sniping didn’t begin — clearly it has — nor that the public is fooled with the leader keeping to high road while his or her entourage gets down in the mud (it is not; merde can be smelled even when the front-man’s shoes don’t stink)."
Of course, a lot of this helps dispel a myth regarding politics: that once upon a time politics was about ideas, and that voters were treated as adults. Politicians campaigned based on ideas, principles and policy, and refrained from smearing their opponents.
The old politics, however, are often mythologized as more refined and more mature, and the new politics as dirty, vicious affairs wrought with muckraking.
So what it turns out that what we really have is a bizarre vicious cycle in which the old politics masquerading as the new politics, making us long idealistically for the old politics.
Stewart is precisely right: what we really need is newer politics which, ironically, would finally be the new politics.
Politicians who deliver us this new political paradigm should almost certainly be rewarded -- if the electorate still cares enough to reward them when they finally come along.
And in Canada, we need this rather badly. The Alberta election may just turn out to be the greatest evidence of we have seen of this in a long time:
"Periodically institutions need reform. This is because, as Thomas Langan showed in his book Tradition and Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Wisdom, the institution takes on a life of its own separate from the tradition that gave it life. The faith yields the Church, and by so doing people in charge of the churches have interests in their roles separate from those required of them by the faith. The desire for societal self-government yields parliaments and assemblies, and those who sit in them have interests (for their factions, as the first American President, George Washington, noted) that diverge from what the process of governance requires of them. So it goes, everywhere.
Our political institutions are in advanced decay. They have been subordinated to parties, and those who cling to the apron-strings of power these represent.
What this electorate — and I care little whether we speak of your municipal government, your provincial government or institutional Ottawa — is most waiting for is the person who will come to politics to reform the system. Reform, in this sense, need not mean “a new political faction”: it could come just as easily by working within an existing party. But it would be a reform, indeed, of how politics is conducted. They would take the Kinsellas with their “ass-kicking”, and the Carvilles and Morrises with their “triangulation” and “it’s (just) the economy, stupids”, and others of their kind and boot them overboard. They would stop playing to the polls, or even worrying about them — pollsters need not apply for work here. They would treat their counter-parts with respect and speak firmly but quietly about matters of import rather than seizing upon the “issue of the day” or seek to blow up the scandal du jour (really, what’s the difference between that and the pumping and dumping which our Securities Laws say is illegal around the stock market?) in their place. They would assume in everything they do that their potential voters are capable of following complex issues with complex argumentation and rational (i.e. not simplistic) solutions on offer.
They would, in other words, offer an adult in place of the schoolyard bullies we must listen to today."
Unfortunately, even those who have the acumen to offer us such change can all too often go astray. As, sadly, was the case with Preston Manning:
"Would they win at first? Oh, heavens, no! — for staying the course is part of proving that this is reform and not merely a dash of lipstick on the same old street-walking. But there comes a tipping point, and then the whole structure from before comes tumbling down. When they do, it will wipe much of the past out of existence.
This is what Preston Manning didn’t know and lost sight of (and why I could not support his Reform Party). This is what is yet to be born. This is why Albertans told pollsters they wanted change and then voted for more of the same. This is why Federal politics remains deadlocked; why BC’s politics are frozen almost to the point where Gordon Campbell could do anything and not fear returning to the other side of the House; why Dalton McGuinty exists in the face of Caledonia, incredibly bad economic management and the destruction of a province and why, in the face of everything, Vancouver will probably return Sam Sullivan and Toronto David Miller to continue their reigns of error."
Manning, with his demotic political philosophy -- the belief that all disagreements can be amicably resolved if only the common sense of the common people is trusted -- was willing to offer a bridge between left-wing and right-wing ideologies in Canada. He offered precisely the kind of alternative that Canadian politics desperately needs.
But in time, the carrot and stick of Canadian politics, power, and the ability to enact his agenda turned Manning away from this path. At the end of the day, Manning all too often appeared to be an ordinary run-of-the-mill politician.
Bruce Stewart is precisely right: when Canadians are finally provided an alternative to the old-as-new politics, the results will be undeniable.
Alberta could prove to be an ideal testing ground for such an alternative, but the question remains: is anybody willing to take the risk of offering it?
For John McCain, certainly one more endorsement couldn't have hurt.
After all, he's piled up endorsements from virtually every prominent Republican in the United States, most of his defeated opponents, and even a few Democrats.
Now, he's just received his biggest, most important endorsement from... President Bush?
Aw, fuck.
It may seem counter-intuitive to suggest that an endorsement from the sitting president would be a bad thing... if you're a complete idiot.
Certainly, an endorsement from Bush will help McCain better access the Republican base. This could be helpful.
But what Republicans desperately need to do right now is access soft Democrat voters -- the very voters that Bush will absolutely repel from McCain's campaign.
Bush's endorsement of McCain could prove to a boon to the Democrats, just as Ralph Nader running for President will prove to be a boon to the Republicans, just as it has in the past.
Of course McCain accepted the endorsement in his typical fashion -- very politely, and with underwhelming enthusiasm.
"I appreciate his endorsement, and I appreciate his service to our country," McCain announced.
Then again, there's also the issue of trust. After all, if you're John McCain, just how far do you trust the guy who's presidential campaign fraudulently suggested you have an illegitimate black baby? Probably not too terribly far.
And certainly, Colonel Clusterfuck probably thinks he's really throwing McCain -- and his party -- a bone on this one.
In a so-pitiful-it's-almost-hilarious post over at Canadian Cynic's carnival of hatred, Lindsay Stewart mopes over the fact that Bill C-484 -- the Unborn Victims of Crime Bill -- passed its second reading and is now being referred to a Parliamentary Committee.
According to Stewart, it's not only the end of the world -- it's also the end of Stephane Dion's leadership:
"Sir, while you were absent from the House of Commons today, a vote was held. The vote in question allowed Bill C-484 to pass into committee. Because you saw fit not to whip your party's vote, because it did not interest you sufficiently to attend, your leadership will now come under harsh scrutiny. This Bill is an insult to the intelligence of Canadians and a blatant attempt to undermine the ability of women to maintain the right to bodily self determination and personal autonomy. This Bill is a bald faced attempt to enshrine in law a definition of life that precedes birth and creates criminal precedent for ending that newly defined life. Mr. Dion, while I sincerely hope this Bill is killed in committee, your inaction and abandonment of Canadian women's rights has defeated any faith I might have had for your growth as a leader. You are clearly unfit for the job.
Your seeming fear of holding this minority government to task shows you to be effectively neutered. We desperately need a capable alternative to Stephen Harper and his party. You are not that alternative and the current configuration of the Liberal Party seems ill equipped to take the reigns of government. You are cowed by what should be a weak minority and Mr. Harper has routinely rolled over you and faced no resistance. Mr. Harper is remaking this nation in his own image and you are allowing him to do so. You are either cowards or fools but you have shown no will to fight and no vision worth fighting for.
Mr. Dion please step down. This nation will not elect you Prime Minister. You are a non-entity, a milquetoast and a flop. The Liberal Party might as well appoint a traffic cone to the leadership. At least people will take notice of a traffic cone. As for the members of the Liberal Party who saw fit to vote for the travesty that is Bill C-484, you will not be forgotten come the next election cycle. The simple fact that while Mr. Harper's minority government is embroiled in scandal upon scandal, the polls refusal to shift in support of the Liberal Party should be informative. You have lost the confidence of Canadians. Shape up sir, or get out of the way."
Certainly, it's heady stuff. Apparently, Dion's decision not to go quietly (or even not-so-quietly) along with the pro-abortion lobby's agenda on this particular bill makes him unfit to leadership, and he should step down.
Hooooooooo boy...
Aside from the slavish reiteration frantic and previously disproven talking points, it would seem at least part of the issue actually has to do with the wide variety of parliamentarians who voted in favour of the bill. Notably, not just Conservatives.
Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal, NDP MP Peter Stoffer and Independent MP Andre Arthur are among those who voted with the Conservative caucus in favour of the bill. Particularly notable was Liberal MP Albina Guarnieri -- a female MP.
All in all, 27 of 94 Liberal Members of Parliament voted in favour of Bill C-484 -- that's nearly 30% of their caucus.
Perhaps what is most disturbing about the pro-abortion lobby's stance against Mr Dion -- as well as NDP leader Jack Layton -- is their demand that they whip their caucuses in opposition to this bill. The idea that Dion and Layton should feel obligated to force MPs to vote against their conscience on -- whether the pro-abortion lobby will admit this or not -- a justice issue is a little bit terrifying.
The pro-abortion lobby likes to brag about how it at least thinks it holds all the cards. The idea that they feel they have the right to dictate the public agenda, even against public opinion (an October 2007 Environics poll determined that 72% of Canadians favour making the murder of an unborn child a criminal offense) is, quite frankly, frightening.
After all Canada is supposed to be a democracy. If 72% of Canadians favour Bill C-484 they certainly have the right to at least see it go to committee, where any potential kinks can be worked out (or, conversely, the bill can be shelved if such problems cannot be resolved).
Unfortunately, the most extreme demagogues within the pro-abortion movement seem to feel they have the right to force their agenda on Canadians.
Fortunately, they've failed thus far. But the battle isn't over. Those of us who are willing to see this vital piece of criminal justice legislation through to fruition must take the fight to these demagogues.
After dominating Republican primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island, John McCain has finally clinched victory in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
"I am very, very grateful and pleased to note that tonight, my friends, we have won enough delegates to claim with confidence, humility and a great sense of responsibility, that I will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States," McCain announced.
"We've kept the faith," Huckabee said. "And that for me has been the most important goal of all. I'd rather lose an election than lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place."
"It's now important that we turn our attention not to what could have been or what we wanted to have been, but now what must be -- and that is a united party," he added.
With McCain all but assured the Republican nomination and all the remaining primaries before the GOP convention rendered little more than formalities, Americans can rest assured that the 2008 presidential election will be anything but dull.
Now McCain can focus on maintaining his momentum leading up to the beginning of the campaign -- although it'll prove to be an uphill battle considering that the still too-close-to-call contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will continue to claim the lion's share of media coverage.
If one believed the poll numbers, the vocally disgruntled Progressive Conservative voters, the opposition parties and the labour unions, one would have thought that, yesterday, Ed Stelmach's governing Tories were in for an unpleasant surprise.
Instead, it was the allegedly growing legions of opponents of the government that got the surprise, as Ed Stelmach and the PCs claimed a stunning 73-seat majority government.
The provincial Liberal party -- who made a point of repeatedly announcing that they were out to win -- found themselves reduced from 16 seats to nine. The NDP fared even more poorly, winning a mere two seats in the legislature.
With the polls favouring them, another PC government is no big surprise. However, with the political momentum being clearly against them, such an overwhelming majority (one seat short of Ralph Klein's biggest majority) absolutely should not have been in the cards.
So what happened?
Well, first off, the Liberals and NDP, collectively, ran the same-old same-old campaign. While rolling out a few promising policies, they focused mainly on negative campaigning, whether on their own or through proxies.
Collectively, their campaign fell just short in terms of sanctimony of the "Ralph Klein is the devil" campaign they essentially ran in 2004.
Beyond that, it stands as support that Alberta's opposition parties just don't learn, and they've internalized their inability to learn on very deep levels.
When Kevin Taft lost the 2004 election, he essentially responded by writing Democracy Derailed, which accused the provincial Tories of undermining democracy in the province. That's why the Liberals can't win in Alberta. Not because their ideas and policies don't appeal to the Albertan electorate, but rather because democracy has been undermined. By the villainous Tories. Right.
While a few aspects of Alberta's democratic system certainly are in need of a tune-up (the selection of returning officers to name just one example), for Taft to scapegoat the system for his inability to win is simply way too far off the mark.
Of course, there is one other factor, and it's an important one.
Alberta's positively depressing voter turnout seems to have reared its ugly head again. Early estimates suggest that perhaps as few as 40% of registered voters actually showed up to cast ballots.
One can't help but wonder how many Liberal, New Democrat and Wildrose Alliance voters decided to stay home out of the hopelessness deeply ingrained in so many opposition voters. If they had shown up, one can only wonder what could have happened.
Perhaps yesterday's Alberta election could have been the starting point for long-term change in the province.
Perhaps Alberta's opposition parties will have to search for a new way to make that happen.
In the meantime, Stelmach's landslide victory has left a lot of people scratching their heads, wondering, "what the fuck just happened?"
Apparently, Cynic and his coterie of dimwitted sycophants seem to think that there's some kind of context that will make McClelland's comments acceptable.
And apparently, in their mind, that context is thus:
"We live in a world where people go postal. If the Brocks of the world continue on their present course they will one day run into someone who goes postal on them. When that happens I seriously doubt they'll be able to save themselves with the type of gibberish Brock is spouting to justify going after Beemer's job."
And apparently that's supposed to make it all better.
In other news, Cynic and his cohorts think the following is all hunky dory as well:
"A judge investigates a terrorist act - an assassination, a bomb. The only thing the terrorist has to do is phone the judge or his wife saying, for example, 'you have a daughter of such-and-such age and she goes to such-and-such school and makes such-and-such journey every day -- well, be careful...'."
And consider that this is the kind of thing that very much does happen in other parts of the world.
Certainly, even if not construed as threats, such statements are certainly meant to intimidate. And so, the question that Canadian Cynic and his merry band of dimwits can't seem to answer (or simply won't) is this:
As the rescheduled debate regarding Bill C-484 (the Unborn Victims of Crime Bill) approaches, there seems to be a last-minute panic spreading through the pro-abortion lobby that are so determined to defeat the bill, as they seem to recognize that their talking points simply aren't up to snuff.
In the latest attempt to convince people to oppose the bill, the argument seems to be that the bill would somehow result in convicted offenders serving shorter sentences.
Unfortunately for the pro-abortion lobby, however, this particular assertion simply isn't true.
In the most bizarre example of the counter-factual nonsense being forwarded one particular blogger suggests that a recent suggestion by Conservative MP Tom Lukiwiski that consecutive sentencing be reinstituted alongside Bill C-484 as evidence that the bill isn't really about justice, and is merely an attempt to recriminalize abortion (despite the fact that the bill only applies to criminal offenses, and doesn't introduce any new crimes).
But do these people really understand the difference between consecutive sentencing and concurrent sentencing? Obviously not.
Even under concurrent sentencing, it turns out that this latest talking point from the pro-abortion lobby turns out to be flagrantly false. The Public Safety Canada website turns out to be very educational.
Under Bill C-484, the crown would retain the option of charging an offender separately for the crime committed against a pregnant woman and the harm done to her unborn child.
Under concurrent sentencing, convicted offenders serve both sentences at the same time. However, if sentenced for two offenses on which they were tried separately, the second sentence doesn't take effect until the date of the conviction.
The case study offers an example of an offender convicted for one offense, receiving a three-year sentence, then is convicted of another offense two years later, extending their sentence thusly:
As such in this particular case the offender would wind up serving a five-year sentence as opposed to merely a three-year sentence:
Note that this is a longer, not shorter, sentence.
In the case, specifically, of consecutive sentencing, the case turns out much differently:
The second sentence doesn't begin until after the first has expired, guaranteeing a much longer sentence regardless of how soon the offender was tried and convicted:
As such, not only is the most recent talking point from the pro-abortion lobby counter-factual, it's also a phantom of straw man arguments from days gone by, when it was suggested that instituting consecutive sentencing would increase support for capital punishment, when all the evidence suggests that consecutive sentencing decreases support for capital punishment.
But thus is the Orwellian logic of the Canadian pro-abortion lobby. Why would Bill C-484 result in shorter sentences for convicted offenders? Because the pro-abortion lobby says so, regardless of whether or not that's actually true.
Just as with the rather peculiar claim that the suggestion that Canada institute consecutive sentencing provisions in the criminal code is somehow proof that Bill C-484 is about abortion rather than justice, or with claims that pregnant women in the US have been charged under fetal homicide acts despite the fact that this has never happened. Why is it so? Because they say so.
It's rather characteristic of those who, in true Orwellian fashion, bank on the ignorance of the public.
Hopefully, the Canadian public will turn out to be a good deal less ignorant than the pro-abortion lobby is banking on.
One of the interesting subthemes to emerge out of the recent Mike Brock/Don Beemer chronicles is the revelation of creeping homophobia within the Manitoba wing of the Liberal party of Canada.
After all, when a party's vice president feels comfortable going online and making homophobic comments on a political opponent's blog, it suggests that maybe the party that as recently as two years ago was promoting itself on a gay rights agenda vis a vis same sex marriage isn't as much about equality as it would like us to believe.
Of course, Martin Rayner doesn't seem to understand how the comment "One wonders how Brock can bear to seperate Harper's dick from his mouth long enough to eat" could be construed as homophobic.
Apparently, Mr Rayner needs to have it spelled out for him.
So I'm going to share with my reading public -- however broad or narrow that may be -- an exercise shared with me by Byrad Yyelland, who currently serves as the chair of sociology at Lloydminster's Lakeland College. (In 1996/97 Yyelland won an Experience in Excellence award from the University of Saskatchewan Students' Union. Needless to say, he knows his shit, so to speak.)
Think about this for a few moments: write down a list of all the swearwords you can think of. Focus, in particular, on insults -- both in terms of shallow name-calling, and general insulting comments.
...
Done yet? Good.
Here's just a brief list of the numerous words you've probably just gone ahead and listed.
Looking down the list, an observant pupil may notice a few things -- namely that most of the insults on the list largely have to do with bodily functions. In particular, excrement (numbers one and two), sexual functions (of wide variety), body parts and various conditions of birth account for nearly all of these insults. An expanded list would also include various racial slurs.
To the uninitiated, one supposes that perhaps, sometimes, a word is just a word, and don't carry meanings any deeper than the idea they signify.
In this particular case, they would be wrong.
As Sally Raskoff shares with us, swear words and insults carry meanings much deeper than their semiotic meanings. They carry deeper social meanings. In particular, swear words and insults tend to convey the preferred societal hierarchy of their utterer.
Racial slurs are an obvious case. But consider the numerous swear words that deal with body parts. Then consider how many of them deal specifically with female bodyparts.
Many people will find that a majority of body part-related insults deal with parts of the female anatomy -- particularly vaginas.
There is deeper meaning in this. Let's let Raskoff explain.
"let’s consider curse words. Some are gender neutral, such as referring to one’s posterior. Some are specifically reserved for women, such as the short b-word indicating a crabby female (as opposed to a female dog) and the c-word or the p-word, which are references to women’s genitals. Even if the words are aimed at men or women, these terms often refer to women negatively.
Perhaps one’s mother is the target of the insult, whether through having a child outside marriage, another b-word, or as a willing or unwilling intercourse participant, as in “mother” f-word as an active verb. Or, as the f-word itself does, the word invokes the act of intercourse and ties the act of penetration as a potentially violent action."
By this particular line of thinking, the curse words and insults we use often denote a particularly misogynistic undertone of our society that has crept into one of our most basic -- even if into one of our most uncouth -- pervasities of language.
But there's more.
"The f-word in particular has many uses—both as a noun and a verb—however it does connects sex and violence, not just as a threat against women but also against gay men. Gay men have other words directed at them, many of which refer to them as feminine (or even female) or suggest violence.
Sociology helps explain these word choices. Rather than anomalies or coincidences, they reflect our society’s power structure."
Of course, as Raskoff explains, perhaps sometimes we don't really mean them as insults at all.
"Of course, curse words aren’t always intended as insults, since many people use them for fun or for teasing their friends. Some women use some of them as a term of empowerment (the c-word or the first b-word mentioned above).
But this only applies if they utter them, not if they are labeled with them by others (especially men). This is similar to the n-word and our current social debate over who (and if anyone) can use it; most recognize that when African Americans say it, it means something wholly different than when others, especially whites say it."
And even if they are used teasingly, or as a form of protest, they still reflect cognizance of society's hierarchical structures. Even if they aren't necessarily meant to demonstrate approval of it (such is surely not the case for those "taking a word back" in protest) it still implies a tacit acceptance of it.
"Why do curse words refer to body parts and pejorative references to women? Because in a society characterized by male power, one doesn’t insult a male directly, one must refer to inferior things, such as crude references to body parts considered “dirty” and to people who are less than masculine according to that society’s norms.
In dominant American culture, masculinity is defined as being assertive, aggressive, strong, a leader, and heterosexual. This is what Bob Connell refers to as "hegemonic masculinity" in his classic book, Gender and Power. Hegemonic masculinity insists that men be dominant over others in society to prove that they are “real men.”
“Emphasized femininity,” Connell’s counterpart to hegemonic masculinity, encourages women to be passive, nurturing, caring, mothering, and otherwise subordinate. Yes, our definitions of masculine and feminine change over time and place yet these ideals are primary in our media and in how we socialize children. Note also how gay men are equated with women thus they are set aside from the more powerful group of heterosexual men."
As such, not only does Don Beemer's man-on-man-fellatio-related epithet suggest that homosexuals rank lower on his internalized sense of the social hierarchy, but women do, as well.
"Our language reflects our society--the words I have discussed here all distinguish between men and women—all to reinforce and maintain the gendered hierarchy of power."
Words such as "bitch", "pussy", "cunt", and (the word that served as the genesis for this particular discussion) "cocksucker" certainly do help serve this function, regardless of whether or not those who speak such words intend to, or even bother to stop and think about it.
Curse words and insults that refer back to excrement also tend to take on deeper meanings, particularly when dealing with racial minorities (just consider typical skin colour of said minorities, refer it back to the colour of the aforementioned excrement, and this one becomes crystal clear).
So Martin Rayner may think that "dirty cocksucker" is just a word that he can carelessly fling at another person. He may think that it doesn't carry any deeper meanings that he should stop to think about it before he utters it.
But sociologists such as Byrad Yyelland, Sally Raskoff (and myself) know better. And it actually says a lot about Mr Rayner -- things he may not be entirely comfortable with admitting.
If one ever needed evidence that this kid rode the short bus to school, we just might have it.
"You're lying," he insists. "As [Liberal Supporter] suggests, why don't you quote Robert's actual statement in the proper context?"
Gee, Cynic. All you had to was ask.
What, after all, should one make of the comment, "I hope that type of sentiment comforts you the day you find yourself staring down the barrel of a 12 gauge shotgun, Mike"?
I'd say we can safely assume it wasn't out of concern for Mr Brock's well-being, that much is for damn certain.
Then again, we have to consider the fact that bringing this to the attention of an individual who threatens children may be more than a little bit of a waste of time.
Well, at least Cynic, or el douche as I'll be referring to him as from now on, has turned out to be good for a few laughs.
I just hope to god he won't force me to call him insufferably retarded, because I'm honestly trying very hard not to go there.
According to the Angus Reid poll, the Alberta Tories hold a 15 point lead (43% to 28%) over the opposition Liberals, and a 30 point lead over the provincial New Democrats (13%) among decided voters.
Among those voters describing themselves as merely "certain" the Tories hold a much slimmer lead over their Grit rivals, 39% to 30%. The NDP again register at 13%.
Yet, the poll isn't all candies and roses for the governing PCs. The poll determined Stelmach's momentum score to be a dreadful -13. Kevin Taft, leader of the provincial Liberals and NDP leader Gary Mason scored +5 apiece.
So while the polls seem to suggest Stelmach's best case scenario (Conservative majority), his worst case scenario (Conservative minority) may well be a reality.
But this may not be such a bad thing. With the Liberals offering the best education policy -- funding a $1,000 reduction in yearly tuition fees -- and the New Democrats offering a promising (although risky) housing policy -- offering interest-free homeowners' loans -- Alberta may benefit from a minority government that, by necessity, will have to address the growing concerns of many Albertans and remind the PCs that if they want to continue governing, they'll have to earn it.
Of course, it's hard to imagine Kevin Taft or Gary Mason as premier to be anything less than an absolute disaster. But a minority legislature will at least finally give the provincial Liberals and New Democrats to get their houses in order, and get back to the business of building alternative governments. They'll probably have to start by ditching their prospective leaders -- the Liberals in favour of Calgary mayor and alleged prospective Grit leader Dave Bronconnier and the NDP in favour of absolutely anyone.
In other words, even if today's election delivers yet another Tory government, it just may serve as the catalyst for a re-vitalization of Alberta politics.
All Albertans would benefit from a more competitive political system.
Let's take a quick survey here. Which of the following scenarios is sleazier?
Dragging an alleged big-money offer to a deceased politician out from the grave for partisan gain, or asking the people flinging those accusations the kind of tough questions that various confusing ambiguities regarding the situation demand?
Garth Turner, you're up first:
"The lowest and sleaziest moment thus far in a sad tale: Mike Duffy asking Cadman’s daughter, live on TV, if her dying dad was “fuzzy on drugs” when he told her about the Conservative offer. To her credit, she did not tell him to get stuffed."
At face value, Turner would seem to have a point. It seems like a fairly sleazy question.
Then one remembers that Cadman was, at the time, dying of skin cancer. He was literally within the last few days of his life, likely being administered pain killers to help him cope with the notable agony dying of malignant melanoma.
The question addressed to Jodi Cadman should be considered a tough question for a reason. Tough questions aren't obligated to be tough.
While perhaps dabbling on the side of the uncouth, the question warrants consideration.
Especially when one considers that the claims being made by Jodi and Dona Cadman actually contradict the public statements of Cadman himself -- who publicly denied being offered anything in return for his vote -- it becomes especially prescient.
Meanwhile, Turner and his colleagues in the Liberal party have been going to town on "Cadscam" (as its been dubbed by various partisan bloggers) despite all the confusing inconsistencies in the entirety of the tale.
(And if one doesn't suspect that Turner himself is eager for a little revenge after being thrown out of the Conservative caucus, consider these comments:
"When I was a Conservative member of parliament, before that party threw me out, I heard the prime minister call Chuck Cadman a poor MP The prime minister said Mr. Cadman was more concerned with ethics and with the country than he was with political organization and power.
Mr. Speaker, I have always wondered why the prime minister was so angry at the late Chuck Cadman, but now we know a lot more. Was it simply because he could not be bribed?"
Disgusting.
Was the offer of a million-dollar life insurance policy to a dying MP in exchange for his vote sleazy if it indeed happened? Absolutely.
But is dragging the entire allegation -- and Mr Cadman's memory along with it -- back through the mud again under extremely curious pretenses sleazy? The answer to this question is equally absolute, and the answer to this question is yes.
One has to remember that this is the same party that insisted a Commons Ethics Committee had to be called over rehashed (and extremely unconvincing) accusations against Brian Mulroney by Karlheinz Schreiber. Now, they're insisting that an Ethics Committee has to be called over another would-be scandal, this time based on rehashed (and extremely confusing) accusations.
It's pure sleaze. The situation itself is sleazy enough. One has to wonder how Garth Turner thinks he will benefit by heaping another helping of sleaze right on top it.
And another one bites the dust: another cowardly, vicious, anonymous online troll.
Over at his his blog, Mike Brock has given Canadian Cynic and his cowardly coterie of would-be rabble-rousers a little something to think about.
In a clever act of IP-tracing, Brock was able to trace Don who apparently thought "One wonders how Brock can bear to seperate Harper's dick from his mouth long enough to eat?" qualifies as legitimate political discourse and identified him as Don Beemer, Vice President of the Manitoba wing of the Liberal Party of Canada.
And of course he wouldn't. The remaining days of Cynic's own anonymity have been slowly ticking away ever since he conjured the gall to attack a grieving mother while cowering behind his veil of anonymity, flaunting it all the while. And while his reaction to all the absolutely justified criticism directed at him over the cowardly attack degenerated into little more than an extended online temper tantrum, it immediately became obvious what had to be done.
Somebody has to strip this little worm of his anonymity.
That day, a line in the sand was drawn, and the outrage amongst his compatriots and various partisan defenders was positively palpable. Individuals such as Canadian Cynic, they argued, are apparently entitled to their anonymity -- or, rather, entitled to attack people from behind that anonymity.
One would almost like to concede that these people are entitled to their anonymity. But unfortunately, we've seen what they do with it. And it's positively an atrocity.
So this is the line in the sand. And naturally, it's very unnerving to the would-be demagogues who want to disguise personal attacks and character assassination as political discourse. It's even more unnerving to the chickenshits who can't muster the guts to do so under the guise of their own identity.
Some of them have already been publicly identified. Those who are either too cowardly to stand up to these bullies or who simply lack the moral acumen to approve of their disarming can, quite frankly, stuff their disapproval.
This isn't about playing nice with people who won't play by the same rules -- it's about forcing them to, whether they like it or not.
We've already revealed a few of them. And if others don't clean up their act, more will follow.
In today's issue of the Star, Alan Kuperman proposes one of the most specious conspiracy theories ever proposed in a Canadian newspaper.
"When Canada's Parliament overrode the country's top nuclear-safety regulator in December, ordering the restart of a nuclear reactor at Chalk River in the absence of documented safety upgrades to guard against a core meltdown, most Canadians assumed such emergency action was necessary to assure a continued supply of vital medical isotopes.
But this assumption was false – a canard employed to persuade legislators to sidestep the safety officials, thereby protecting the profits of a private Canadian company at the expense of risking a nuclear accident.
The company, MDS Nordion, now admits that prior to the emergency legislation of Dec. 12, it already was receiving backup isotope supplies from a South African producer, NTP.
Two days later, Nordion started receiving isotopes from Europe, another backup that it knew was on the way prior to Parliament's action.
Such facts were not reported at the time, which leaves only two possibilities: The information was withheld by Nordion or by the government.
In light of these revelations, Nordion now insists that all potential backup supplies were inadequate to satisfy customer demand without also restarting the National Research Universal reactor at Chalk River."
According to Kuperman, the absence of an immediate isotope shortage in the wake of the Chalk River shutdown is apparently evidence that the federal government, Atomic Energy Canada Limited and MDS Nordion were colluding in order to protect the company's profits.
Kuperman is right about one thing: there was no immediate isotope shortage.
But virtually every medical professional in the diagnostic field disagrees with him regarding whether or not a shortage was imminent. In fact, in a 7 December, 2007 Medpage Today article (three days after the Chalk River shutdown was extended) Dr Edwin Palmer, nuclear medicine director of Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, said, "The crunch will come next week if the shortage persists and it looks as if it will."
Thus, it would seem that the impending shortage very much was of concern, but don't suggest that to Kuperman. He must think that Dr Palmer was somehow in on the conspiracy.
In fact, even in Boston, hospitals were deferring some diagnostic tests, particularly those requiring isotope technetium-99m, which has an extremely short half-life (a mere 66 hours).
Where possible, hospitals were conducting such tests with other isotopes, but to pretend that the isotope shortage was overblown is clearly counter-factual.
Then again, who needs facts when there's a good partisan smear to perpetrate?
" Says a Nordion spokesperson: "None of the other commercial isotope reactors have the ability to do more than increase their collective production capacity by 10 to 15 per cent in this type of an unplanned event. These producers collectively cannot mitigate this type of a precipitous event."
But this latest Nordion claim also is false, according to a definitive accounting of global isotope production capacity presented at an international conference in 2005 by Belgian scientists from one of the world's largest isotope producers, Institut National des Radioéléments.
The report documents that European and South African reactors typically operate well below capacity, which is why they together produce less than 60 per cent of world demand, while Nordion produces almost as much at a single reactor. But at peak operation, the non-Canadian reactors are capable of producing a collective 160 per cent of world demand.
In other words, these foreign sources can increase production not by a mere 10 to 15 per cent, as Nordion claims, but several-fold, sufficient to fully satisfy global demand even during a temporary Canadian shutdown.
Obviously, Nordion has grossly understated the foreign backup capacity, but it is equally important not to exaggerate it. Overseas facilities undergo planned and unplanned outages, so the peak capacity of non-Canadian reactors at any point in time could be somewhat less than 160 per cent of world demand. Still, under typical circumstances, they are able to satisfy global demand.
Of course, peak capacity cannot be sustained indefinitely. Therefore, a permanent shutdown of the NRU reactor at Chalk River, in the absence of new reactors, would adversely affect the global supply of medical isotopes.
But a short-term shutdown, such as the several weeks that were required to connect backup power to the NRU's emergency coolant pumps, could have been compensated for by a surge in operation of the foreign reactors."
About this Kuperman may well have been right. But just because they theoretically can, doesn't mean they can in actuality.
It actually comes down to the most basic principles of economics. Manufacturers acquire the necessary inputs suitable to their production plans. They can't simply be conjured at the snap of a finger.
Reactors abroad may have enough excess uranium (and the personnel necessary to oversee the reactor) to increase production to 10-15% as the spokesperson for Nordium suggested. To imagine that they can magically begin producing at full capacity? Pure fantasy.
"Another concern is that overseas production could be constrained not only by availability of reactors but by the capacity of associated facilities that process irradiated uranium to extract the isotopes.
Typically, however, such facilities likewise operate well below peak capacity, so they too can surge in a crisis.
Finally, money affects production capacity. If a customer asks the operator of a reactor or a processing facility to operate overtime or during a scheduled vacation, it may have to pay extra for the privilege."
Precisely. And if the operator of the reactor determines that the opportunity cost (what is foregone in order to produce at a higher level -- in this case, profit) exceeds the marginal benefit (what additional profit can be made by producing more isotopes) they will almost certainly make the decision to not increase production.
"Nordion insists that it tried and failed to obtain isotopes from Europe during the NRU shutdown, but some European facilities actually were sitting idle. So the real obstacle may have been Nordion's unwillingness to pay a premium, rather than any alleged inadequacy of European capacity.
Last month, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission announced a jointly sponsored investigation of their actions.
Certainly an inquiry is warranted by a series of missteps:
AECL falsely assured regulators two years ago that safety upgrades were complete."
Not to mention the obvious lack of proper inspection of the facility, which would have revealed the incomplete work. Simply more proof that AECL president Linda Keen did not do her fucking job.
"The shutdown of the reactor was not reported for 12 days to the responsible cabinet minister, who waited three more days to start addressing the issue.
The government then intervened heavy-handedly, waiving the requirement for a safety review and firing the official who had demanded it, even though the review would have delayed the restart by only two days, according to AECL's own estimates.
The proposed inquiry, however, hardly qualifies as independent or comprehensive: AECL is deeply implicated in the events; the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has been neutered by the demotion of its courageous president Linda Keen; and Nordion is strangely left out of the equation."
But Kuperman has done such a fantastic job of ignoring the facts up to this point. Why stop now?
"In light of the gravity of the public health, public safety and governance issues implicated by this scandal, a much deeper investigation is warranted by Canada's Parliament and independent watchdogs.
As the facts now appear, Ottawa quashed safety regulators to restart a potentially risky nuclear reactor, imperilling its citizens for the benefit of a private company, despite the availability of backup isotope supplies from abroad.
Then, of course, there's the question of who really exaggerated the isotope shortage, even if we accept the basic premise of Kuperman's conspiracy theory -- that is, that it was exaggerated.
A recent film by Geert Wilder, a Dutch Member of Parliament, has managed to provoke similar responses, although Muslims have not yet taken to rioting in the streets.
As the film concludes, an image of the infamous Muhammad cartoon (pictured here) appears with the fuse burning, as a timer started at the beginning of the film counts down.
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