Richard Dawkins Says It's Wrong to Indoctrinate Children...

...Unless he's the one doing the indoctrination

One of the interesting things about fundamentalist atheism is their tendency to accept the pontifications of hypocritical people at face value.

Richard Dawkins is a brilliant example of this. His vaunted "lying for Jesus" argument has become a central weapon in the rhetorical aresenals of many fundamentalist atheists despite the fact that he's been caught being dishonest using it.

Likewise, Dawkins' argument that children shouldn't be indoctrinated into religion has gained some evident traction amongst fundamentalist atheists. Why, even ABBA member Bjorn Ulvaes thinks so.

So indoctrinating children into religion is bad.

...Oh, unless it's Dawkins' and Ulvaes' religion. Then it's A-OK.

Aside from starting work on a children's book, Dawkins has sponsored a summer camp for atheists.

Dawkins says that the camps are intended to "encourage children to think for themselves sceptically and rationally."

But interestingly enough, Dawkins has made it plainly evident that, to him, thinking for oneself "sceptically and rationally" entails thinking exactly what Dawkins wants them to.

Naturally, Dawkins and company are going to pretend that the camps in question aren't about atheism, but rather merely about secularism.

"There is very little that attacks religion, we are not a rival to religious camps," says camp organizer Samantha Stein. "We exist as a secular alternative open to children from parents of all faiths and none."

So says "atheist rock star" Samantha Stein.

One wonders if Dawkins and Stein realize the extent to which the entire matter defies credulity. An "atheist rock star" accepting funds from Richard Dawkins attacking religion? Apparently we're supposed to perish the thought.

Of course, all of this is aside from the point. There's nothing wrong with parents sending their children to Dawkins' and Stein's camp if they are intent upon raising their children as atheists -- or perhaps even legitimate free-thinkers.

There's nothing wrong with teaching children about evolution or leading them in sing-alongs of "Imagine". In fact both of these -- teaching kids about science and about great music -- can be very good things.

But the least Richard Dawkins could do is stop pretending that he isn't indoctrinating these children in his religion -- atheism, which people like himself have very much transformed to a religion.

Just imagine that kind of honesty from someone who so enjoys vacuously accusing his opponents of "lying for Jesus".

The Pipe Dream is (Almost) Over for Lizzie May

Green leader concedes she can't win in Central Nova

In competing with former Liberal party leader Stephane Dion for the title of Canadian politics' greatest flip-flopper, Elizabeth May might finally have found the edge.

The leader of Canada's Green party has recently advised that she probably won't run against Conservative party deputy leader Peter MacKay in the next election. Despite previously stating she'd never run anywhere but Central Nova, May seems ready to move on to what she imagines may be greener pastures (pun intended).

It isn't as if it's any great shock. Not only has May already long been looking for another riding to run in, she had previously run in a by-election in London, Ontario.

It makes her insistence that she'd never, ever, eeeeeeever run anywhere other than Central Nova seem rather meaningless.

"I’m never running anywhere but Central Nova," May had insisted. "This is where I live and where I will always run."

Of course, this general meaninglessness is nothing new for Elizabeth May. The famed Red-Green coalition that May hatched with then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion wasn't based on any great principle. It was based on meaningless partisanship.

Certainly, May publicly espoused a desire to run against MacKay based on his party's environmental record. But considering that she was forming an alliance with a party and a leader with a worse environmental record than the Conservative party, it was impossible to take her seriously.

Even her claims to pretext were utterly meaningless.

Even May's decision to finally get (somewhat) realistic and look for a more potentially-fruitful riding to run in reflects her previous meaningless insistence that she's her party's greatest asset.

"The decision has been made that, for the next campaign, electing the leader is the top priority," May wrote to supporters. "I have agreed to run where the party decides the potential Green support is the strongest."

Even that May, as Green party leader, would decide that getting her elected is her party's top priority, is in itself utterly meaningless.

In the end, it isn't likely to manage much. Elizabeth May's dream of finding a riding in Canada where she can be elected is little more than a pipe dream. Nowhere in Canada is May likely to find a plurality of citizens willing to vote for a fringe political leader who so often insults the intelligence of Canadians.

It's simply a shame that the Green party -- an organization that very well could find a place of value within Canadian politics -- remains, and seemingly will remain, stuck with such a valueless and meaningless leader.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Calgary Grit - You May Be Seated

Mark Taylor - "There is Only One True Option"

The Not-So-Fine Art of Keeping Your Fucking Story Straight, For Fuck's Sake

Pro-abortion zealots can't seem to stick to one reason to try to label all anti-abortion activists as terrorists

The sad, sad story to emerge out of the assassination of Dr George Tiller only continues to unfold. Perhaps this man's martyrdom will continue into perpetuity.

In the immediate aftermath of Dr Tiller's assassination, various pro-abortion bloggers tried to pin it as squarely on the anti-abortion movement as a whole as they possibly could.

Their argument at the time was that the "abortion is murder" rhetoric employed by so many members of the anti-abortion lobby was responsible for encouraging -- perhaps even mandating -- Dr Tiller's murder.

Consider this particular passage from Mike from (ir)Rational Reasons:

"I cannot express in words the rage I am feeling right now.

Not just at the fact that Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider specializing in medically-necessary late-term abortions, was murdered today. No, I am enraged by those who whipped the hatred against this man, who did everything to encourage his murder, are suddenly pretending they had nothing to do with it.

Damn them all. All of them.

Randall Terry. SUZANNE. The Catholic Church. The Army of God.

All of them. They are the same. They purposely espouse violent rhetoric, celebrate past perpetrators of violence and murderers as 'martyrs' and try to create false moral equivalence with a medial procedure and a planned premeditated murder of a 67-year-old professional, father and grandfather."

Interestingly enough at least one of the individuals Mike points his spiteful finger at denounced Dr Tiller's murder in no uncertain terms.

But for Mike, it didn't matter. Suzanne Fortin had, in the past, argued in the "abortion is murder" vein, and so was responsible for Dr Tiller's murder.

JJ from Unrepentant Old Hippie, at the time, echoed those sentiments.

Yet when one considers a post from Unrepentant Old Hippie today, one has to recognize the extent to which their story has changed. Now, the anti-abortion lobby isn't responsible for Dr Tiller's murder as a result of "abortion is murder" rhetoric. Now, they're being held responsible because not enough anti-abortion activists have denounced the act:

"While it would be oversimplification to suggest they’re all terrorists, there’s no doubt that the anti-abortion movement harbours a disproportionately high number of them, and too few who unequivocally condemn the violence and actively work to marginalize such people. Some call that 'giving safe haven'. I call it 'being onside'."

Naturally, that brings one to the recent case of the vehicular assault on James Canfield.

As with prior incidents of violence perpetrated against anti-abortion activists, JJ herself has failed to condemn this act.

In fact, it's much, much worse than that. Compare what actually happened:

"According to witness statements gathered by police, Haver allegedly tried to strike 60-year-old protestor James Canfield with a 1991 GMC sports utility vehicle at the Planned Parenthood office on Vallombrosa Avenue. "

With JJ's description of it:

"Following in the footsteps of the infamous Ed Snell, a couple of days ago in Chico California yet another old fetus fetishizing fart, writhing in the throes of an indignance high in front of the local Planned Parenthood he was harassing, was uninjured but shaken after an SUV passed in his general vicinity."

Apparently, not only will JJ not condemn the violence against Canfield, but she won't even discuss the incident honestly for what it was.

So herein lies the problem with JJ's particular line of argument: if the anti-abortion movement is responsible for the murder of Dr Tiller because too few of its members denounced the violence, how can it be that JJ and her cohorts would expect to argue that they aren't at least partially responsible for the violence against James Canfield?

They've not only failed, but refused to denounce that kind of violence in the past. They attempt to minimize it terms that are nothing less than absolutely shameful -- imagine their outrage if some anti-abortion dingus had suggested that the bullet that killed Dr Tiller had just "passed too close to his general vicinity".

But therein lies the rub. The outrage over abortion-centred violence seems extremely selective to this particular crowd. If the violence is being perpetrated against them, they milk it for maximum rhetorical advantage.

If the violence is being perpetrated against their opponents, they cheer it.

The saddest part of all is that they can't even keep their fucking story straight while they're doing it.

Christine Elliott and the (Alleged) Nadir of Red Toryism

Despite Elliott's leadership setback, red toryism will survive

If politics were merely about being nice, Christine Elliott probably would have won the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership hands-down.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal's endorsement of Elliott reinforces this. Segal has often focused on praising the humanity and civility of political leaders. To Seal, these are important values.

Of course, politics is not merely about being nice. Few Canadians, inside or outside of Ontario, would pretend that former Premier Mike Harris is an implicitly nice individual. Yet his endorsement of now-PC leader Tim Hudak certainly went a long way toward establishing his credentials as a "common sense conservative".

Mike Harris won two majority governments in Ontario. Hugh Segal wound up runner-up to former Prime Minister Joe Clark in the 1998 federal Progressive Conservative leadership contest.

Perhaps the lesson is that perhaps, in politics, nice guys really do finish last -- or at least that in politics, as in life, people who are too nice invariably finish last.

In the wake of Elliott's defeat in the Progressive Conservative leadership contest, many people -- like the Globe and Mail's Adam Radwanski --- are wondering if conservatism in Ontario, formerly a bastion of Canadian red toryism, has irrevocably taken what Brooke Jeffrey once referred to as a hard right turn.

(Jeffrey, for her own part, actually seemed perplexed by her inability to win election by labelling all of her would-be constituents in a riding she was parachuted into as racists, so maybe one should carefully consider the source.)

Hudak's ascension to the leadership of the Ontario Conservative party has many people wondering if perhaps speculation that harder forms of conservatism are needed to prevail in Ontario.

In recent years, the failures of leaders such as John Tory have largely spoken for themselves. There's a real question regarding whether or not red toryism can flourish in Ontario -- or Canada -- any longer, or if it's simply become too "Liberal-lite" to be palatable to conservative voters.

Yet those reputed to be red tories who have gotten closest to the Liberal party have shown their true political colours. In the case of Garth Turner, those colours turned out to be red. In the end however, it turned out that he wasn't a Tory.

When the former Halton MP joined the Liberal party in 2007, then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion crowed that "Tories were becoming Liberals".

Yet, as it turned out, Turner was far from a proper red tory. He lacked that key combination of fiscal conservatism and social principle that has forever properly characterized the red tory. When he finally got his first opportunity to campaign against the Harper Conservatives he chose to embrace divisive fear-based campaigning.

Prior to that, Turner attempted to divide Canadians by attempting to invent a separatist threat in Alberta.

Red toryism has forever held at its core an organic conceptualization of society -- one wherein social tradition is balanced against the public good.

Fear mongering and the creation of artificial -- and largely non-existent -- enemies is as great an insult to the principles of red toryism as one can possibly manage.

Turner had been preceded in joining the Liberal ranks by David Orchard, who had his nomination in a Saskatchewan riding overturned by Dion in favour of a hand-picked candidate who subsequently lost to Conservative Rob Clarke. When Orchard finally got his own turn in 2008, he lost as well -- and lost amidst his own fear-based attempts to campaign against the RCMP.

David Orchard, as many may recall, conceded the federal PC leadership to Peter MacKay only under the condition that MacKay wouldn't discuss unification of that party with the then-Canadian Alliance.

Orchard, for his own part, failed to recognize the value in allowing an organic political bond to develop between Canada's conservatives, and would have rather allowed the Liberal party to govern Canada in perpetuity than be caught dead dealing with the "wrong" conservatives.

If Canadian red toryism has truly reached its nadir it isn't in the defeat of Christine Elliott. Rather, it reached that nadir when those who consider themselves red tories failed to put their political principles ahead of their political vanity.

Whether or not Elliott will turn the tide of this unfortunate trend by working together with her party's new leader, and whether the hard conservatism of Tim Hudak and Mike Harris can lead the Ontario Progressive Conservative party to victory in the next election has yet to be seen.

If Hudak possesses the wisdom to make Elliott a part of his leadership plans for the party, and if Elliott can, in turn, soften the hard conservatism of Hudak and company also has yet to be seen. But it will be interesting to see.

Politics may not necessarily be merely about being nice. But it couldn't hurt to have a nice guy -- or gal -- on side, either.

Sizing Up Conservatism's Challenges

Conservatives in Canada, US and UK face very different challenges

In a blog post on the National Post's Full Comment blog, Hugh Segal makes the case that the challenges to conservative parties being posed by elections are largely immaterial compared to the challenges being posed by the current economic times.

At a time when even conservative administrations are instituting lavish Kenyesian economic policies, it's easy for fiscal conservatives to wonder precisely what this means for conservatism and the free market:

"Imminent elections focus the mind. But the global intellectual challenge to those of us who consider belief in free markets an integral part of our conservatism is larger than the next or last election.

The fact that parties of the left and centre left did not do well in recent European elections is a hint that voters do not see either an ideological culprit for the collapse of over-engineered credit structures or an ideological saviour from anti-free market apostles. What is apparent is that balance and fairness do matter and are not outside the conservative political realm."

Segal is making an important point by noting this.

While the election of Barak Obama as US President is being viewed by many as the nadir of conservatism, perhaps not even merely in the United States, it's important to note that other left-of-centre parties are not enjoying the same level of success.

"The political geography of each of the UK, US and Canada is vastly different. Americans have just come off two terms of Republican prominence. The UK is at the point where a Labour Finance Minister who managed during good times finds special challenges managing in different times. In Canada, what is still a fledgling Tory minority faces a more competitive Liberal opposition. So the short-term challenges for conservatives are genuine but not insurmountable. The American Republicans must be credible and engaged by the mid-terms in less than two years. Both David Cameron in the UK and Prime Minister Harper here face more pressing moments of truth."

In Canada, Stephen Harper may be facing a fall election opposing a strengthened and (at least temporarily) re-engergized Liberal party led by Michael Ignatieff.

In Britain, David Cameron isn't expected to have to fight an election against Gordon Brown and the Labour party until 2010, but the expectation is that he may win a Tony Blair-style majority government.

What remains to be seen for Harper is whether or not he can keep is majority government alive at all, let alone manage to win a majority. For Davoid Cameron, the test will be whether or not he can successfully defeat the Labour party during what is expected to be a time of economic recovery.

In the United States, meanwhile, Republicans are facing an althogether different challenge -- the challenge of not shooting themselves in the foot:

"In the United States, the Obama presidency, while not flawless, is sophisticated in ways the United States has not seen before. Some conservatives, doing themselves and the Republican Party's mid-term election prospects absolutely no good, have chosen an arch ideological scream over reasoned and thoughtful engagement. With the US government now owning large chunks of the financial and industrial United States, the intellectual challenge for Republican conservatives is defining the new balance between social and economic opportunity, necessary stability and the market freedom vital to rebuild the US economy."

If one reduces conservatism to the preservation of the status quo, one has to realize that government ownership of formerly private enterprise -- General Motors clearly being the most prominent example -- will have become part of that status quo.

If one subscribes to a far more nuanced definition of conservatism, one still has to realize the scope of the challenge that government ownership of financial and industrial industry poses.

One way or the other, conservatives will have to address the issue of this ownership. Privatization of these industries would be a simple solution for conservatives to pursue.

Yet when government privatizes public assets or enterprises one thing that is undeniably part of the transaction is a depreciated return on the public's investment. Privatized government assets have proven to be a bargain for many private buyers for this very reason.

But considering the scope of the public investment in ownership of these industries, government has the responsibility to recover the maximum value of that investment. As Benjamin Barber pointed out to Tim Geithner, the public has absorbed a great deal of risk in helping these companies effectively "start over" (something that has made GMs batch of PR ads on this very topic very much insufferable). The public has the right to expect a return on that risky investment.

For some conservatives, this may seem far too much like government reaping profits better left for private investors. This is market conservatism ad extremis -- one that denies the reality of this particular matter to the extent of being nearly self-destructive.

Conservatives the world over, meanwhile, should be as lucky as the British Conservative party's David Cameron:

"In the UK, Tory leader David Cameron, in embracing decentralization and more popular restraint on government excess, is true to both the Thatcherite and 'wet' side of Britain's Tory spectrum and the core centralizing myopia of 'big Government' Labour party approaches. The fact that this is done with a strong tilt to 'compassionate conservatism' provides both a spectrum-broadening base and intellectual frame for an eventual victory. But the intellectual challenge for British conservatism is being embraced head on.

At home, the universal kudos among critical international bodies like the OECD and World Bank for Canada's handling of the credit meltdown and US prime mortgage collapse speaking well of how Stephen Harper has managed to date. But the conservative intellectual challenge will also have to be met during the next election."

In facing the strengthening federal Liberal party, Stephen Harper will face a very different challenge than Cameron's.

For one thing, the Canadian Liberal party hasn't managed to burn nearly as many bridges as the British Labour party. And, as Barry Cooper points out, the Conservative party isn't nearly as adept at exploiting bureaucratic survival instincts for its own political advantage as the Liberals have been.

Even beyond this particular disadvantage, that the Canadian Conservative party has embraced stimulus economics with a fervour that seems to put the lie to fiscal conservatism, many of the challenges the Tories will face will be a result of their own emergency economic policy:

"That challenge might best be described this way. If stimulus and corporate stability investments have, along with economic downturn and tax cuts, produced a short-term deficit, what are the values Tories want to sustain through this for which they seek a mandate? This is not about what any government is doing or seeks to do in the future. This is about why we want to do it."

The Conservative party has provided a solid roadmap out of the current economic crisis for the country at large.

What the party has not produced is a solid roadmap for its own return to the fiscal conservative principles its expected to embody. This is certainly a problem, as it leads to a glut of policy deficiencies on numerous issues:

"National security is about domestic social and economic opportunity as well as a robust foreign and highly deployable defence capacity. It is about market freedom as an instrument of economic expansion and environmental competence. Ceding any of this ground to other parties weakens the Tory claim to a new mandate. Embracing it with clarity and intellectual integrity is what Canadians have the right to expect; it is what Conservatives under Prime Minister Harper have done when at their best. The argument to do it again has never been more compelling."

Of course, therein lies the rub.

It's easy for conservative political parties to be at their best during times of economic prosperity. They can move ahead on fiscally conservative programs without seeming callous or careless.

When times are bad, however, is when left-of-centre political parties tend to shine brightest. Canada's Conservative party hasn't led the country on any kind of a national project since sir John A MacDonald's ambitious railroad building project. This is a real problem for the party, as it leaves these opportunities to its left-of-centre opponents, who have led Canadians on national projects such as public health care.

Sadly, something in the conservative imagination tells conservatives that national projects are, in and of themselves, left-wing social engineering projects that undermine conservative values.

Yet an ambitious national project conceptualized and completed under the public-private partnership model embraces the principles of conservatives such as Segal. Such a project could be nation and enterprise at its best -- if only Canadian conservatives can muster the courage to attempt it.

There could even be opportunities to attempt such projects on an international scale:

"Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, recently called for an economic and social contract to ensure that the recovery does not make things worse for developing countries. In every country, the way out of the recession will be bracketed by concerns about market freedom and social justice. The challenge for Tories in the anglosphere is the same--a coherent plan for the way ahead that embraces both pillars underlying successful societies, market freedom and genuine equality of opportunity. Deserting either of these is not a rational way ahead in any industrialized country, and certainly not appropriate for conservatives of any variety."

As the world navigates its course out of the current economic crisis and its accompanying recession, we will also be confronted with opportunities to change the way we have approached policy issues such as foreign aid.

Jeffrey Sachs will certainly be first in line to attempt to re-start his (mostly) failed policies in the developing world. But conservative governments in countries such as Canada and (by then) Britain could -- and should -- quite easily bypass individuals such as Sachs and employ the wisdom of economists such as William Easterly, whose proposed policies vis a vis foreign aid call simply scream out for the P3 model.

The various industrial and financial firms that governments now find themselves owning significant portions of could even be offered the opportunity to work off their debt to the state by investing in these kinds of programs, allowing people in developing countries to shape aid programs through market forces and helping themselves out of poverty, as opposed to waiting to be saved.

It's on this note that one must remember something that Hugh Segal would certainly want Canadian conservatives to recognize: the current political and economic climate poses serious challenges to conservatives. But with difficult challenges come fantastic opportunities.

Conservatives, in Canada and elsewhere, can benefit greatly from these challenges if they can only prove able to grow into them.

Tim Hudak Pulls Out Ontario Conservative Leadership

Debate over Human Rights Commissions should intensify with new Tory leader

The leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party has been decided today, as Tim Hudak has emerged the winner.

The new leadership of the party began to take shape earlier this afternoon when Randy Hillier was eliminated from contention.

At that time Hudak had been leading, with Frank Klees in second place. Projected front runner Christine Elliott collected the third most first-choice ballots.

The principal issue in the leadership race turned out to be the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Hudak and Hillier favour abolishing the OHRC. Elliott and Klees prefer to reform them.

Elliott and Klees were adamant that a call to abolish the OHRC would give the next election to the Dalton McGuinty Liberal party. Hudak had pulled no punches in denouncing such sentiments as "Liberal-lite".

"If you want to put the election on a platter for the Liberals, the best way to do so is to run from our conservative principles and try to be Liberal-lite," he told Klees during a debate. "If you take on McGuinty's position, then you're Liberal lite."

Klees, at the time, cautioned that wedge politics have been and would continue to be, disastrous for the party.

"I don't want to go back to those days when wedge issues were the flavour of the day, when we were picking fights with every stakeholder group in this province," he explained. "That's why we're not in government today."

Apparently, neither Elliott nor Klees, who had both denounced Hudak's plans to abolish the OHRC, considered the issue pivotal enough to bow out of the race in order to ensure the other reformist candidate a path to victory.

That may speak volumes about how seriously either of these candidates considered the OHRC. Both had come out in favour of reforming -- as opposed to abolishing -- the Commissions, although only Klees had actually outlined a program for reform.

Elliott may have also had any fiscal conservative credibility she wanted to lay claim to kneecapped by the deficits currently being run by her husband, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Regardless of whether or not these deficits are his fault -- and they aren't -- he will, nonetheless, have to wear them for a long time to come.

Perhaps his wife will as well.

One can only hope that Tim Hudak heeds Frank Klees' warning about wedge politics, and that Hudak finds a suitable place for Christine Elliott within the new party leadership.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Russ Campbell - "Tim Hudak Wins Ontario PC Leadership Race"

Dr Roy Eappen - "New Tory Leader in Ontario: Tim Hudak"

Brian Gardiner - "Hudak Wins"

One Imagines That Feeling of Responsibility Will Set in Any Time Now

Accountability for "hateful rhetoric": it's only for the anti-abortion lobby

The murder of Dr George Tiller was a terrorist atrocity.

This was a line of argument that some, including Robert Peter John Day, fell absolutely in love with.

In this case, it was rightfully so. They were right to denounce Dr Tiller's murder as terrorism. They would be right to denounce all instances in which abortion providers had been attacked as terrorism, even if they were extremely show to that particular punch.

But the pro-abortion lobby started to significantly overreach when they started to insist that the entire anti-abortion lobby was to blame for Tiller's assassination.

The argument was that the anti-abortion lobby had spread hateful rhetoric that had encouraged overzealous activists to murder Tiller as retribution for allegedly murdering unborn children.

Numerous Canadian bloggers wrote about Dr Tiller's assassination in this very vein -- individuals such as Mike from (ir)Rational Reasons, Robert PJ Day, JJ from Unrepentant Old Hippie.

Yet one would have to wonder: if the rhetoric of these particular pro-abortion bloggers could be argued to have encouraged attacks against anti-abortion advocates, would they apply that sense of moral outrage and responsibility to themselves?

Nope.

That's Lulu mocking Suzanne Fortin for questioning whether or not the pro-abortion lobby should be held responsible for encouraging attacks on anti-abortion activists.

The case in question deals with the matter of James Canfield, a 60-year-old anti-abortion protester. Last week, 40-year-old Reid Haver attempted to run him over with an SUV at a Planned Parenthood protest.

Unshockingly, the pro-abortion movement wants nothing at all to do with this particular assault. Certainly they don't feel as if they did anything to provoke it.

In the specific cases of Robert PJ Day, Mike and JJ, however, the truth could be argued to be very different. They may have done every bit as much to encourage the assault on Canfield as the anti-abortion lobby did to encourage the murder of Dr Tiller.

If this seems extremely similar to anyone, all one needs to do is remember the assault on then-69-year-old Ed Snell, who was pushed off a platform he had built on the top of his car by a man more than 40 years younger than him.

The pro-abortion movement's response to the assault on Snell was a textbook case of condoning violence because the victim of said violence was on the "other side" of the issue -- in their mind, the wrong side.

From JJ:

"D'oh! Someone finally had enough bullshit from the fetus fetishists:

'Pro-lifer Seriously Injured: Clinic Receptionist Shouts: “He got what he deserved!'

*snicker* Ahem. Bad receptionist! Bad!"

From Lindsay Stewart:

"I wouldn't be surprised to find that Ed Snell got a little too bellicose for his own good and in his insane fervor to interfere with other people's private lives, the stupid fuck wandered off the edge of his platform and sucked pavement."

And from Mike:

"Gotcha. Pushing an an annoying old man is THE EXACT SAME, morally, as assasinating a doctor who performs legal, medically nescessary operations in his church."

It becomes plainly evident precisely how these particular individuals -- themselves hopefully not actually representative of the pro-abortion lobby as a whole -- view assaults on anti-abortion activists.

According to JJ, it's worthy only of mock condemnation. According to Lindsay Stewart, they probably do it to themselves and then lie about it, and according to Mike they're just annoying anyway, and so deserve it.

Yet somehow they clearly want to pretend that this kind of rhetoric wouldn't encourage someone like Matthew Reid Haver to carry out assaults on individuals like Canfield.

Even in a case like Snell's, where his assailant, Nathan Richardson didn't actually have any demonstrable links to the pro-abortion movement, it's shocking the extent to which the pro-abortion movement embraced Richardson's act. An act that was inherently non-political in its commission eventually became very political in its consequences.

The Canfield assault, just as with the Snell assault, really demonstrates how utterly disingenuous these particular pro-abortion bloggers have been about the murder of Dr George Tiller.

They didn't really give a shit about Dr George Tiller, they only care about the opportunity to brand their opponents as responsible for murder. And now that an assault has been perpetrated against an anti-abortion lobbyist, one that their rhetoric has arguably encouraged, one can ensure that they won't accept any responsiblity for the matter.

If anything, they'll applaud it. It's what they do.

Winning The Greed Game

Presented in a style similar to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Super Rich: The Greed Game chronicles the methods by which the super rich have become super richer.

According to BBC documentary maker Robert Preston, the secret to this has been leveraging -- the act of borrowing in order to invest. Leveraging allows individuals and businesses to quickly flip their investments for quick profit, allowing individuals and businesses to generate a tremendous amount of profit off of comparatively small amounts of money.

Preston offers as his test case the example of buying a house. If an individual pays 10,000 pounds sterling down on a house that costs 100,000 pounds, he can effectively double his money by selling the house if it increases in value by only 10%. Clearly, the more money one has to invest in this process -- and clearly, possessing more money brings with it additional borrowing power -- the more one can profit. Leveraged investments of thousands of pounds offers the prospect of thousands of pounds. Leveraged investments of millions of pounds offers the prospect of millions of pounds in profit. If one has the ability to borrow billions, this process quickly begins to speak for itself.

By paying off the loans taken out for these leveraged investments quickly, these investors pay a minimum of interest on those loans. Leveraging allows investors who otherwise wouldn't be able to invest so lavishly to maximize the profitability of investing comparatively small amounts of money.

The eagerness of exporting countries to loan their money led to an environment in which cheap credit could quickly be obtained to invest in increasingly expensive commodities.

With credit flowing so freely, debt quickly accumulated. Low interest rates set by Alan Greenspan at the US Federal Reserve enticed many otherwise cautious investors to play their hands more liberally.

The same pressure applied by the most zealous supporters of market economics on Bill Clinton in order to get him to scrap his promised reforms was applied to the British Labour Party's Gordon Brown. Brown, who had once promised tax reforms to shift tax burden toward the super rich (which, one should keep in mind, is a comparatively tiny fraction of any country's population) instead embraced policies that have favoured the super rich.

There is, of course, an economic risk that comes with adopting tax policies that provide a country's wealthiest citizens with an incentive to leave for countries with more favourable policies. That being said, however, it's important to keep in mind that the wealthy primarily have a single rule: invest where profit can be made.

Tax policies that no longer favour the super rich as stringently as before do little to change the mean economic value of any particular country. So long as a country remains prosperous and its economy vibrant, the incentive for the wealthy to invest will remain. After all, not even the super rich can increase their rich if they decline to invest where profit can be made.

In many cases, leveraged investments produce little in the way of new wealth. In many ways, leveraged investment is a predatory practice that simply takes advantage of immediate opportunities.

One perverse element of leveraged investments is the transfer of risk from investors to lenders. An investor who gambles and loses may seek refuge in bankruptcy, which will significantly reduce a creditor's ability to collect that debt.

Low interest rates didn't merely make leveraged investing more attractive. It also reduced to incentive to save money -- after all, saved money accumulates interest at the same rate that borrowed money increases. With little money being saved, the subprime loan scheme was introduced in which loans and mortgages were extended to people with few borrowing prospects -- sometimes using predatory practices -- then sold off to other investors for profit.

In many cases, these deals were structured in ways that only one or two investors would see any return on their investment. This has become known as the derivatives market. Only under the best-case scenario would all of these investors recieve a return on their investment. In most cases, someone was bound to take a loss. In the worst-case scenario, however -- the one that eventually emerged -- everyone loses, except for the initial lender.

It's hard to feel sorry for many of these individuals. Any informed investor buying in to mortgage derivatives should know full well the magnitude of the risk they're accepting. Then again, considering the deceptive and predatory practices of many subprime lenders, it's questionable how many details many of these investors were privy to.

Manipulation of investment rating systems -- which could be better described as willful negligence -- contributed to the deception of many investors. Investments that due to their very nature were extremely risky were instead promoted as risk-free.

The costs to investors has been fairly minimal compared to the costs to the borrowers who were enticed into taking out these subprime loans. Many subprime borrowers have given up hope of things as comparatively simple as home ownership.

In the wake of an economic collapse precipitated by these practices, it's perhaps insulting to realize that the luxury goods market hasn't been affected by the recession. The super rich enjoy spectacular degrees of security because the scale of their investment renders them "too big to fail" (in the increasingly unpopular parlance), legislators are obligated to issue bailouts in order to avoid a complete economic evaporation.

To add insult to injury, many of the same investors who have helped precipitate the current recession are actually in a position to profit from it. The need to correct a regulatory deficit in the global economy is beyond evident.

Michael Ignatieff Gets It

Michael Byers probably never will

As the world is momentarily distracted from the events occuring in Iran by the death of Michael Jackson, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff took some time to address a rally in support of the Iranian protesters and protesting the Iranian theocracy's treatment of them.

"The Iranian regime did not anticipate you," Ignatieff told the assembled crowd.

"They thought they could suppress democratic rights and bully, beat and intimidate the people of Iran and the world would not care, the world would not watch," he continued. "They did not anticipate you."

"I'm proud of Canadians who understand that when others cannot stand up we must stand up for them, and when they cannot speak we have to speak for them."

"Canada has known for a long time this was a regime with which we could not have normal relations," Ignatieff announced.

"This is a regime that allowed Zahra Kazemi to be beaten to death in prison. This is a regime that has denied the reality of the Holocaust, that's attempted to develop nuclear weapons, Long before the election we knew this was a regime with which we could not have normal relations."

Ignatieff spoke volumes about the wisdom of Canadians. Indeed, Canadians have long known that we cannot afford our full respect to the Iranian regime.

Well, not all Canadians know this. University of British Columbia Political Scientist and erstwhile NDP candidate Michael Byers doesn't know this.

Some may recall Byers' January 1, 2008 op/ed article in the Toronto Star, in which he criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper for recalling Canada's ambassador to Iran.

The reason for the recall was Iran's incredibly malfeasant handling of the Kazemi case. Zahra Kazemi, as many Canadians will recall, as a Canadian-Iranian dual citizen who was beaten and raped to death in an Iranian prison for the grievous crime of photographing a political protest.

Michael Ignatieff gets it. He knows that Canada cannot have a regular diplomatic relationship with this country.

But Michael Byers doesn't. Michael Byers believes Iran should be able to rape and beat Canadian citizens to death, develop nuclear weapons for the purpose of threatening its neighbours, hold Holocaust denial conferences, whip homosexuals while insisting they don't exist, and brutally stamp out political dissent without so much as a hiccup in diplomatic relations between our two countries.

Michael Ignatieff knows better. Michael Ignatieff gets it. Michael Byers probably never will.

You Say "Redneck" As If It's a Bad Thing

Gilles Duceppe helps rehabilitate an old slur

In the wake of Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois' recent four-point plan for Quebec sovereignty, only Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe would dare criticize opponents of Quebec sovereignty for not agreeing to stick their heads in a noose.

As some may recall, one of Marois' plan points was to accrue extra power to Quebec over language policies.

Speaking at a St Jean Baptiste day event, Duceppe decried the Grit and Tory leaders' unwillingness to do precisely that by extending the powers of Bill 101 over federally-regulated industries in Quebec.

"They acted like rednecks," Duceppe complained.

"[Ignatieff and Harper], two leaders of the most important political parties in Canada, refused to admit that French should be the working language for institutions under the federal jurisdiction," he sniffed.

Of course, nothing could factually be further from the truth. In fact, Harper and Ignatieff have actually remembered what Duceppe has forgotten: that Canada has two official languages, French and English, from coast-to-coast, and that Quebec is no exception to this.

This is a point that likely isn't lost on Duceppe, but merely one that he chooses to overlook.

"They should take the example of the political leaders in Quebec who stand up for the rights instead of playing rednecks in Ottawa like they did a few days ago," Duceppe would later add.

Although Duceppe would decline to add what he really seems to be thinking -- that the federal government should decline to stand up for the rights of Canadians in Quebec if they should just so happen to be English-speaking Canadians.

Seriously, fuck them.

If standing up for the rights of all Qubeckers, French- and English-speaking alike, makes Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff rednecks, then Duceppe clearly has a skewed image of that stereotype: not of rednecks as ignorant or racist, but as individuals who don't pick and choose whose rights they stand up for. It's a label that they can wear with pride.

The racist ideology that lays at the heart of Duceppe's party, meanwhile, is a wart that he doesn't display with much pride, even on St Jean Baptiste Day. Unshockingly, Duceppe wants that to remain one of Quebec's better-kept secrets.




Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Chucker Canuck 2.0 - "Gilles Duceppe is a Sour, Old Geezer Who Needs the Pastures"

The Complex Puzzle of Canadian Federalism

Daifallah suggests more "sex" is the answer for federalism

Writing an op/ed on the National Post's Full Comment blog, Adam Daifallah hits on what amounts to a key observation about the continuing battle between separatism and federalism in Quebec:

Federalism, he concludes, simply isn't glamour enough to compete with separatism on an emotional level:

"With apologies to Lisa Raitt, the biggest problem with federalism in Quebec is that the arguments in its favour are inherently unsexy. Who isn't at least mildly intrigued by the idea of founding a new country? It conjures up all sorts of romantic notions and fuzzy feelings. Defending federalism is defending the status quo -- which is almost always more difficult.

In the debate over Quebec's place in Canada, federalist forces will always be starting a few steps behind. In politics, emotion moves people, not ideas. Federalism is the greatest system of organizing government the world has seen. Yet Quebec federalists have continually failed to put forward an emotionally compelling alternative case to compete with the idealistic discourse of the sovereignists. 'Look how great things are' can't compete with 'Think of how great things could be.'"

Sadly, the appeal to "how great things could be" may not only be lacking in federalists in Quebec.

Earlier this year, Ken Dryden gave a series stirring speeches during a speaking tour in which he urged Canadians to be ambitious.

But that Canadians would need to be urged to be ambitious at all is, in itself, a troubling prospect. Canadians have been raised being told about the innumerous accomplishments of their country: in wartime, in science and technology, in art, and just in the act of building a country in one of the most inhospitable climates in the world.

Of all the things Canadians may lack, ambition shouldn't be one of them. But if federalists outside of Quebec can't muster that level of ambition, one cannot fault federalists within Quebec for failing to aspire to the same standard.

"I attended law school in Quebec City for three years. Part of my reason for doing so was to better understand Quebec and its political dynamic. I had been told that in order to truly appreciate Quebec politics, one must recognize that it is really two provinces: Montreal, and everywhere else. This proved to be true.

Quebec City is an ethnically homogeneous, culturally conservative city that sees itself as the epicentre of francophone North America -- and it is. It is confident in itself and in the status of the French language; there are so few English speakers that the Anglo 'menace' is not apparent. I'm convinced this fact is partly the source of its conservatism."

But one also has to keep in mind that the conservatism of Quebec City and its locales has been badly perverted.

That conservatism, especially in the post-Duplessis era of the province, has been transformed into a fervour for separatism. The Bloc Quebecois and Parti Quebecois have earned their bread and butter by assembling a fragile electoral coalition of socialist progressives and cultural conservatives with nationalism acting as a glue to bind them. They've managed to seduce each with disturbing ease.

But even more disturbing is the blatant partisanship of many federalist organizations in Quebec. The director of one pro-Liberal federalist group recently lauded the decline in Conservative polling numbers as a good thing -- even though the Bloc Quebecois has made gains at the Tories' expense.

Somehow, partisanship between Canada's two political contenders has somehow come to mean more than fighting separatists -- otherwise, such individuals would be plenty content to combine forces with the Tories and fight the Bloc together.

But this would forget that many Quebeckers consider themselves Quebeckers first, and Canadians second:

"The francophone students I encountered at law school were generally confident, proud people who, while firmly attached to Quebec, were not strongly motivated by the sovereignist cause. It would be inaccurate to say they felt a strong attachment to Canada. Their loyalty first and foremost was to Quebec and likely always will be. But I never got the impression that there was a burning desire to forge ahead with the sovereignist project and hours of discussions confirmed this. Indeed, I only encountered one student who openly admitted he would take up arms and was willing to die for Quebec sovereignty.

These young people didn't grow up knowing Rene Levesque and don't hold grudges toward English Canada. Like many young people today, they are less attached to borders and the concept of nationality in general. With the rise of the Internet and social networking websites, the link between language and culture and territory has been broken. One can correspond, watch and read news and live in French just about anywhere now, not just on Quebec territory."

Yet, while the conditions that may spark cultural agitation between Quebec and English Canada remain low, Daifallah notes that the risk of such agitation is almost always present:

"In theory, then, all this should be good news for federalism. However, support for sovereignty in the polls remains constantly at 40% and above. Linguistic and political tensions have been low for at least the past decade. But the next time there is any sort of provocation or crisis, that number could easily grow to over 50% again. Why?

The reasons are many. Nationalist sentiment in Quebec will never completely die. Respect for the federal and provincial division of powers can keep passions at a low ebb. But the federalist camp has never made a serious and gripping case for Canada in Quebec. They have been too timid, too lazy or unwilling to tackle the sovereignist storyline head-on. Until this changes, there will never be a serious dent in support for sovereignty. The intensity of the passion for the sovereignist cause may be dissipating, but sovereignty continues to be the default option for disgruntled Quebecers. Making Quebecers realize that both federalism as a form of government and Canada as a country are sexy -- in part due to Quebec's being a part of it -- is the only way to change that."

Simply put, federalists in Quebec spend far too much time appealing to the rational intellects of Quebeckers -- not in and of itself a bad idea -- and not enough time appealing to emotion.

Federalist Quebeckers left themselves vulnerable to charges that Canada was simply an economic relationship between the various provinces. As Lucien Bouchard and Jacques Parizeau seemed to suggest in 1995, such a relationship could be reestablished with something so simple as admitting Quebec into NAFTA -- even if they simplified the ease with which Quebec could be admitted.

Only when it became apparent that the Referendum campaign was sliding disastrously in the direction of the separatists did federalists -- from across the country -- appeal to the emotions of Quebeckers with a massive rally in Montreal.

Daifallah clearly makes the case that in the complex puzzle of Canadian federalism, one key piece -- emotion -- is clearly missing.

In order to put Canada's separatist demons to bed for good, Canadians have to find the will to be a little more emotional about their country -- at least at a few times when an international hockey championship isn't on the line.

And They Wonder Why No One Takes Them Seriously

PETA promoting "revolutionary veganism" with Guevara's granddaughter

When an organization is as cozy with domestic terrorists as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has been, one shouldn't be shocked when they cozy up to the grand daughter of one of history's most infamous terrorists.

In one of the most recent examples of how radical an organization it really is, PETA has tapped Lydia Guevara, the granddaughter of Che Guevara -- of T-shirt fame -- to pose semi-nude in an ad campaign promoting a "vegetarian revolution".

One may be tempted to suspect that PETA is just another bunch of hucksters seeking to profit Guevara's revolutionary legacy without really knowing anything about it.

But considering the organization's past, the likelihood is that they know exactly what Che Guevara was about, and simply doesn't care.

The innumerous atrocities perpetrated by Guevara are well known by those who haven't been seduced by a romanticized version of the man. When Guevara died in 1967 he died with the blood of hundreds of people on his hands. He summarily executed 156 Cuban officials upon the overthow of the Batista regime. He was known for jailing and murdering homosexuals. He ordered rock music banned in Cuba, and opposed free elections under any circumstances whatsoever.

(He, like Fidel Castro, knew he and his ideological cohorts would lose.)

A historical record like that would dissuade almost any self-respecting organization from appealing to his image.

PETA, however, has never been an organization that respects itself. Nor have they ever shied way from supporting terrorists themselves.

Anyone who has ever seen the PETA episode Bullshit! knows all about the story of Rodney Coronado, an individual who has been involved in many incidents of violent protest. PETA donated nearly $50,000 to Coronado's defense fund, an amount that amounts to nothing less than complete condonation of his activities.

PETA either tacitly approves of the tactics that Guevara used to help establish communism in Cuba, or is simply naive enough to buy into his image.

One expects that kind of naivete from Lydia Guevara. She certainly didn't fail to deliver.

“I talked about it with my family before hand," Guevara says. "The name of my grandfather means I can fight for worthwhile causes which I believe in.”

Which apparently includes appearing in a PETA ad wearing nothing but camouflage fatigues, a red beret and a bandolier of carrots. She's attractive enough to pull off the look, but one would wonder how Guevara would feel about her raised fist in the ad if she stopped to think about the intimidation tactics Guevara used against those amongst his own relatives who didn't share his revolutionary fervour.

Oops.

Not that one would expect PETA to have retained any capacity for shame at this point, but the tragedy of 24 years of Lydia Guevara's brainwashing is absolutely palpable.

The Whininess of Whiners And Their Enablers

Liberal party unwillingness to accept responsibility for its own defeat reinforced by "experts"

One of the disappointing institutional character traits to emerge out of the Liberal party's christening of itself as "Canada's natural governing party" has been an unwillingness on the party's part to accept responsibility for its own defeats.

Over the past three years, the Liberal party and its supporters have rarely hesitated to blame its last two electoral defeats on something other than itself -- anything other than itself.

They blamed the NDP for competing against them and winning seats that would otherwise be won by Liberals. They blamed the RCMP for announcing an investigation into a leak involving a taxation decision on income trusts. They blamed CTV for airing an interview which revealed Stephane Dion's inability to use the English language functionally.

But an opinion article appearing in the Victoria Times Colonist written by Carleton University's Andrew Cohen reveals a disturbing tendency by partisan "experts" to peddle these excuses under the guise of their expertise.

Cohen's article is a feverish mish-mash of what-ifs, ands, or buts, suggesting that Dion may have won the election if not for that dastardly Mike Duffy, just as Paul Martin may have won the 2005/06 campaign if not for the dastardly RCMP:

"The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council conducted a review. The council is a self-regulatory body comprising more than 720 Canadian radio and television stations. It administers the industry's broadcast code of conduct.

Its two reports, which were released recently and largely ignored by the media, criticized CTV for breaching the code, a finding CTV strenuously rejected. That was revealing.

But what's more revealing is what this little saga tells us about how things are done in this country. It's about politics, ethics and maybe ambition, too.

On CTV Atlantic, the council concluded that Murphy asked a question that was 'confusing, and not only to a person whose first language is other than English.' It said that Murphy mixed tenses (past and present) and moods (subjunctive and indicative). In other words, Dion was justifiably puzzled.

In light of the badly worded question, which Murphy could have clarified, the panel called the restarts "a courtesy" to Dion. It also said repeating questions isn't unusual in broadcasting and particularly justified here, given Murphy's convoluted question.

Moreover, because Murphy never refused Dion's requests to restart the interview, Dion had reason to believe that the embarrassing footage would not be used.

On Duffy's broadcast, the council's judgment was harsher. It called his performance unfair and unbalanced. It said that Duffy misrepresented the views of one of his guests, Liberal MP Geoff Regan. In the end, Duffy breached the industry's code of ethics.

Is all this a grammarian's revenge, Miss Thistlebottom in full flight? A silly parsing of sentences? A regulator's punctilious dressing down on decorum? Does it really matter how Dion was treated by CTV, particularly by Mike Duffy?

Actually, yes, particularly in a country where the RCMP might well have determined the outcome of the 2006 election, when it announced an investigation, in mid-campaign, into allegations of irregularities on the part of finance minister Ralph Goodale. It caused a sensation. The Liberals lost that election; no charges materialized.

Last October, polls suggested the Liberal party's ascent stalled after the interview. While we cannot say if Dion's momentum would have brought his party victory, it isn't impossible.

In other words, CTV may have thrown the election to the Conservatives. In running the embarrassing outtakes, it reinforced an image of Dion as incomprehensible and indecisive."

The fact that millions of other Canadians understood Steve Murphy's question to Dion perfectly well seems to be lost on Cohen. As does the fact that if one of the political leaders running to be Canada's Prime Minister is severely hampered in his ability to use of one Canada's official languages, the public has the right to know about this.

Cohen seems to overlook the fact that Paul Martin and Ralph Goodale had declined to launch an inquiry into the allegations. When one considers that criminal charges were laid in the affair, Goodale and Martin's decision was grossly irresponsible. It took the NDP's Finance Critic, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, writing a letter of complaint to the RCMP to get the investigation launched.

If Goodale and Martin had done the responsible thing and launched a probe before the election, the RCMP investigation would have likely already been underway by the time the election began.

In other words, even if the RCMP investigation was the Liberal party's undoing, it was their own doing in the first place.

This is before one even mentions the fact that the Liberal party was already extremely vulnerable to charges of corruption after the ground-shaking revelations of the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship Scandal. They knew it well enough to threaten then-Opposition Leader Stephen Harper with a lawsuit for so much as speaking about the implications of the scandal for the Liberal party.

Harper wisely told the Liberal party to stuff a sock in it.

Likewise, Cohen seems to overlook the fact that, as it pertains to Dion's language issues, Canadians -- citizens of an officially bilingual country, and Cohen may want to remember that -- had a right to know. When the matter was discussed a few days later on Mike Duffy Live, the story was Dion's language issues.

Cohen, himself a Journalism professor, would know full well that if the false starts were the story, the rest of the interview is not part of that story and would be discussed later, if at all.

Cohen goes on to lob accusations that Duffy received his Senate seat as a reward for the allegedly-scandalous Dion segment -- Green party Elizabeth May, herself no stranger to self-indulgent whining, has also suggested that Duffy received his seat as a reward for a media hit job on her. He tries to bolster his case by noting that Duffy has been particularly partisan since being appointed, attending various party fundraisers, and noting that Pamela Wallin hasn't done the same.

Yet Cohen would also be overlooking the fact that Duffy realistically showed no such fervour for partisanship during his career as a journalist, although he was often accused of partisanship by each side of Canada's partisan divide.

It isn't at all as if Mike Duffy ever wrote an op/ed column making excuses for the Conservative party's electoral defeats -- which is more than can be said for certain journalism professors.

As If You're One to Fucking Talk

(Not-so-) Shorter Robert Peter John Day:

"Shorter weaselly wankers: "Given that it's my blog, I have the right to run it any way I want, including posting ignorant, sexist, racist and libelous and defamatory swill, scientifically illiterate nonsense or just plain eliminationism, then dealing with feedback by, perhaps, not allowing comments at all, or moderating them and being deliciously selective about who gets their say and accidentally dropping others on the floor, or editing comments to misrepresent their contents, or maybe inviting feedback only to jerk people around by turning on moderation without warning when things get uncomfortable, followed by banning people who don't agree with me and describing as "trolls" anyone with the effrontery to show up and try to engage me intellectually, dredging up irrelevant two-year-old slights to discredit someone's opinion, denigrating perfectly reasonable contributors as "sock puppets" simply because of how they arrived at my blog, perhaps culminating in referring to any critics as "stupid righty retards, HA HA" or something similar and responding to any reasoned, thoughtful and nuanced analysis of my position with, "LOL! ROTFL! OMFG, sweet Jesus, Oh dear Lord!!!!", then claiming "victory!" and cutting off any further discussion just as I'm getting my ass handed to me on a plate. And maybe even dropping the whole damned thing down the memory hole when no one's looking because it made me look like an utter twatwaffle and I don't feel like ever apologizing, retracting or correcting the record after it turns out I've been a horrific dumbshit and all those critics were right after all. Because it's my blog and I can run it ANY WAY I WANT!!1!11!1"

"On the other hand, someone else on their own blog revealing my identity so that I may have to face up to the slander, libel, and psychotic quests of personal destruction is totally unacceptable behaviour. That shouldn't be allowed."

Except that it already happened.

Once again, that's Robert Peter John Day. And the lack of self-awareness is absolutely hilarious.

Piano cat! Play this whiny piece of shit off!

The Inherent Contradiction of the French Foreign Legion

The French Foreign Legion is one of the great dilemmas of the military world.

The Foreign Legion is considered an elite force, yet it's made up of various misfits and adventurers from around the world. Made up of would-be adventurers and various individuals seeking a second chance at life, the Foreign Legion is the ultimate military luxury: a highly-skilled, highly-trained force that, for all intensive political purposes, is entirely expendable.

Ralph Klein Should Shut Up

Klein's criticism of Ignatieff contradicted by fact

Speaking recently in Calgary, former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein had some words for Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff:

Kindly shut up.

"Ignatieff, I think he's playing a game," Klein speculated. "He says all the right things, especially when he's in Alberta and in British Columbia, he says whatever the population desires.

"So what I think he should do is keep his mouth shut," he added.

Klein insists that Ignatieff is talking out of opposite sides of his mouth on opposite sides of the country -- particularly as it relates to the Alberta oilsands.

"For instance, [in the West] he says the oilsands are a good thing," Klein later continued. "In Ottawa he says something different."

Yet when one examines Michael Ignatieff's actual statements regarding the oil sands, one finds a very different trend.

On January 22 of this year, Ignatieff spoke about the oilsands in Montreal, defending them to a Quebec audience.

"The stupidest thing you can do (is) to run against an industry that is providing employment for hundreds of thousands of Canadians, and not just in Alberta, but right across the country," Ignatieff said.

Ignatieff went on to explain the amount of influence the oilsands give us with our closest neighbour. "We provide more oil to the United States than Saudi Arabia. That changes everything," he mused. "It means that when the Prime Minister of Canada goes into the White House, he gets listened to, in ways that Canadian Prime Ministers have not been listened to before."

Before Ralph Klein starts denouncing Michael Ignatieff as duplicitous on the issue of the oilsands, the least he could do is actually get acquainted with what Ignatieff actually has to say on the issue.

The Not-So-FIne Art of Keeping Your Fucking Story Straight

Canada's hateful left squirms in the light of day

The events that have transpired ever since Canadian Cynic, the spiritual leader of Canada's hateful left -- the bizarre collective of borderline fascists who define their left-wing political identity not according to their political beliefs, but rather by their hatred of those who don't share them -- have all at once been incredibly amusing and disturbing all at the same time.

The disturbing: Robert Peter John Day -- now outed as Canadian Cynic -- seems to be every bit as terrible and sociopathic an individual as his "CC" character was. Perhaps one shouldn't be surprised.

The amusing: Mr Day has taken his outing with the bizarre dignity of a person who doesn't realize that a very big smack is headed his way. His campaign of libel, criminal harassment and character assassination are set to bite him in the ass in a very big and very costly way.

But all Mr Day seems to want to do is attempt to lob around accusations that he'll take legal action of his own. Oddly enough, the hill he's chosen to die on is none other than that of the episode in which he encouraged his readers to go after Richard Evans' children, very literally asking his readers to stalk them to their school.

Mr Day seems to be all about intimidating Wendy Sullivan with legal action for so much as speaking about this.

But what's even more interesting is the extent to which other formerly-reputable bloggers -- such as John "Dr Dawg" Baglow -- are willing to surrender their reputations trying to defend Mr Day by saying things that they know full well aren't true.

One merely has to watch Baglow commit reputation seppuku:

"If I may say so, this is dirty pool. First you allow illiterate hacks to insist that CC’s concern for Dick’s kids is an attack on the kids–when we both know he was stating, clearly, that people might want to contact the school–not the kids, the school."

No one with any shred of honesty would even dare make an argument like this.

In fact, it's absolutely striking the extent to which Day's own words contradict this argument:

"“But, technically speaking, does that really prove that Dick is into child sex? To which the proper response would be, of course, who cares!?!? Normally, I’d be terribly concerned about accuracy but, given that Dick seems willing to publish defamatory accusations that come only from his demented imagination, I figure I should get to play by the same rules."

Interestingly enough, those who remember the infamous "CanadianCynic.net" redirect should also remember that it only stated that Day believed it was OK for older men to have sex with young boys. It never overtly stated that he was a pedophile.

That being said, Day's words speak for themselves. He couldn't say one way or the other whether or not there was a real cause for concern. His only interest was in disrupting the home life of Richard Evans (a textbook case of criminal harrassment) and counselling his readers to help him do it (a textbook case of conspiracy).

Now, those who have played close attention to Mr Day and Mr Baglow know a few things. One of them is that Mr Day and Mr Baglow are fairly good friends.

The defense that Mr Baglow offers in defense of Mr Day could only be offered by someone so intent on defending a friend no matter what manner of moral evil he's committed that he's willing to make a farce of himself in order to do it.

But one knows that wherever Day's honour is at stake, so goes the clowncar brigade -- a collection of internet trolls dedicated to making taking Mr Day on so annoying that it isn't even worth the trouble.

Amongst its membership are none other than individuals such as Ti-Guy, CherniakWTF, Kevron, liberal supporter and the individual who decides to act as Baglow's second in seppuku, Sparky:

"On the surface, the information on these here intertoobs implies that Richard doesn’t care about his kids. I’m sure that real life is completely different on this topic but–
It was Richard that posted his kids name on-line, on a very public website
It was Richard that purchased domain names and directed them to NAMBLA
It’s Richard that’s adamantly stating that there’s no problem with either of those two points.
Those are the facts that we know about…
It’s not up to cc to care about Richards kids here on the internet, it’s up to Richard. And, as shown, it appears that he isn’t doing well on that point."

First off, the sheer stupidity of Sparky's comments -- the one thing that this individual has a gift for -- is positively astounding.

How Richard Evans writing about his children on a website promoting his bid to be elected an Alderman of the City of Calgary and redirecting a domain name to NAMBLA -- while claiming that Mr Day stated that he had no problem with older men having sex with minors -- amounts to a conclusion that Evans doesn't care about his kids is probably understood by Sparky alone.

But it's amazing that someone like Sparky, who normally prides himself with never, under any circumstances, allowing his expressed opinions to deviate from those from whom he takes his marching orders, could fail to keep his story straight with Baglow.

It's a turn of events that only someone like Sparky could be embarrassed by -- responding to the revelation that a claim that Robert Day was only acting out of concern for Richard Evans' kids is fallacious by saying "well, he doesn't have to care".

No sooner had John Baglow driven the wakizashi into his reputation than Sparky swooped in for the decapitation.

One has to wonder if this is going to become a general state of affairs for the hateful left. Once upon a time, they seemed awfully focused and organized. Now that Robert Peter John Day no longer has his anonymity to cower behind, it seems that the clown car brigade doesn't have their standard to rally behind any longer.

Joyce Arthur Says the Anti-Abortion Movement is Drinking Champagne...

...Yet she's the one making a toast

Let it never be said that Joyce Arthur doesn't have a gift for arriving late to the party.

This evening in Vancouver, Arthur's Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada will join with numerous other pro-abortion groups in order to rally in the memory of the assassinated Dr George Tiller -- only a mere three weeks after he was killed, and 12 days after his funeral.

But the protest isn't merely about Dr Tiller's death. It's also about promoting the opening of more facilities that will offer late-term abortion in Canada.

“It’s a scandal that women are forced to travel to Kansas for these procedures,” Arthur says.

Arthur insists that the idea that late-term abortions are ever performed on healthy fetuses is a misconception. “People think there are women out there who are having late abortions so they can fit into their prom dresses,” she says.

One would expect -- one would certainly hope -- that there aren't any women making the decision regarding late-term abortion frivolously. But one would also wonder if individuals like Arthur would be in favour of placing legal restrictions on late-term abortion.

You know, just to make sure these women aren't just in it for the prom.

But, as anyone who has followed the abortion debate in Canada knows, this is apparently a non-starter. Joyce Arthur and her fellows in the pro-abortion movement would never accept any law in regards to abortion.

Oddly enough, not only do Arthur and her cohorts oppose setting any kind of legal limit on late-term abortions, but they also oppose legally protecting a doctor's right to refuse to perform abortions they deem unethical. They do this even as they propose measures that would make that protection necessary.

But there's a deeper issue underlying the Vancouver rally aside from just Arthur and her cohort's unwillingness to accept legislation that they insist would actually change nothing.

Arthur has joined a chorus of crazed voices -- including this tool -- who blame the entire anti-abortion movement for Dr Tiller's murder.

“We thought it was import to honour [Dr Tiller] here because it’s not just an American issue. We had shootings here in the 1990s. We see similar hateful rhetoric here," Arthur insists. “They might be condemning the murder in public, but privately they’re drinking champagne. There’s a lot of that sentiment around that he deserved what he got.”

Yet interestingly enough, though Arthur insists that it's the anti-abortion movement who are drinking champagne to Dr Tiller's death, it seems that Joyce Arthur is proposing a toast to his memory.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But one has to wonder if Arthur is also secretly proposing a toast to the rhetorical club the pro-abortion movement wants to transform his death into.

On the Count of Three, Everyone Pretend to Take PZ Myers Seriously

Myers predictably rides to defense of outed blogger with a pure work of fiction

Posting on Pharyngula yesterday, a friend -- or at least acquaintance -- Robert Peter John Day, PZ Myers, finally weighs in on his outing as Canadian Cynic.

He doesn't like it.

In fact, Myers attempts to portray Day as merely the victim of reactionary right-wingers, who have exposed his identity because they can't handle his ideas.

Unfortunately for Dr Myers, few things could possibly be further from the truth.

The litany of Day's offenses and abuses against his detractors has been sung long and loud.

Myers cannot honestly pretend that this is simply a matter of "pseudonymous blogger annoys right-winger who can't cope, right-winger lashes out by revealing the name behind the pseudonym". No, In fact, the matter is very different.

Rather it's a matter of pseudonymous blogger attacks detractor in some of the most pernicious and vicious manners imaginable, and is eventually stripped of the anonymity -- or pseudonymity -- behind which they cowered while doing so.

That is the true story of Robert Peter John Day. That is the true story of Canadian Cynic.

One has to wonder how precisely to judge Myers' sentiments. One has to wonder whether his decision to sweep Day's disgusting acts under the rug represents a tacit acknowledgement of them, and a deep discomfort with them, or if his willingness to publicly pretend as if these things never happened is actually a de facto expression of condonation.

One would hope for the former, but cannot ignore the possibility of the latter.

Beyond that, one has to recognize what Myer's insistence that Day will not change his behaviour really says about Mr Day.

Once upon a time, it was possible that Canadian Cynic was simply a character -- a charade played out for the sake of stirring up controversy and outrage in the interest of advancing Mr Day's blogging career.

One could at least accept then that perhaps some of the most outrageous of Day's acts didn't genuinely reflect his true personality.

Myers' insistence that Mr Day will not change his behaviour is actually an admission that Mr Day is as terrible a person in real life as he was when he cowered behind the anonymity of his online character.

It's also incredibly amusing that Mr Day actually failed to live up to the moral lesson that Myers attempts to apply to Wendy Sullivan: "If you know that something is wrong, since you admit to avoiding doing it, and if you know that there is no point to it other than to try to hurt someone personally and materially, there is a simple rule to follow: don't do it."

Mt Day, on many occasions, pretended that he wanted to avoid doing some of the things that he did. In his mind, he knew all along that the only purpose in doing those things was to hurt someone personally and materially.

And what was it that Mr Day did?

He did it.

"If you do it anyway, that just means you're a self-confessed douchebag."

Unless, of course, you're a good friend and atheist bossom-buddy of Dr Myers. In that case you're somehow morally exempt to the extent to which your misdeeds will not even merit acknowledgment.

Perhaps that's the nice thing about living in the bubble that Myers has been living in through his blog. While every so often some Humanist organization comes out of the woodworks to give you a meaningless shiny bauble, you can keep company with some of the most despicable individuals imaginable, and the same groups that honour you will roll out the red carpet for them, and pretend for two seconds that they aren't lionizing a vile twit.

Then again, perhaps all one needs to do is consider the source of this condemnation, and maybe spare a little chuckle.

Myers insists that those who outed Cynic are "not geniuses". But it was PZ Myers himself who lost to creationist Kirk Durston in Edmonton. Durston is far from a genius, but at least understood the topic of debate that Myers' hosts were charging spectators money to see.

So maybe taking PZ Myers seriously isn't the wisest decision.

Once Again, the Difference Between Correlation and Causality

Many Canadian atheists don't seem to understand the difference

Writing in an op-ed article appearing in a recent-ish issue of the National Post -- a position that oddly enough certain individuals would insist is reserved for recpients of "wingnut welfare" -- Center For Inquiry Executive Director Justin Trottier writes about the recent work of the University of Lethbridge's Reginald Bibby and attempts to link key attitudinal changes in teenagers to a rise in atheism among that same age group.

Unfortunately, Trottier makes the same error that many of his atheist compatriots made when they fell head over heels with a study that alleged that regions ranking high in religious belief also ranked higher on indices for various social ills.

Namely, he mistakes correlation for causality.

The article starts out simply enough, with Trottier asking an age-old question.

"Can we be good without god?"

This is an easy enough question to answer.

Many, many atheists live perfectly moral lives. Many, many atheists are excellent people. This question essentially answers itself.

Of course, this isn't enough for Trottier. He'd rather ask if atheism actually makes people morally better. And as many people have managed before him, Trottier manages to find more or less precisely what he so wants to find:

"This may become a defining question for our time. University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby has written a new book, The Emerging Millennials, which, while clear on the unprecedented rise of atheism, seems to suggest two irreconcilable answers to this fundamental question.

Bibby polled Canadians on the significance they placed on certain key values, and found that believers rated as more important values like forgiveness, patience and trust. But at the same time, he found that teenagers — the demographic group that has witnessed the highest rise in non-belief since 1984, from 12% to 32% – are increasingly less permissive and more mature regarding issues like alcohol and drug use, smoking or sex."

Trottier seems awfully quick to suggest that these changes in values are due to increasing levels of atheism.

But Trottier is clearly mistaking correlation for causality -- one of the most basic mistakes anyone makes in interpreting any phenomena.

These numbers could be placed in greater context by examining any number of the other things that have changed in the same period of time, from the increase of expendable income for teenagers to the ever-increasing spread of consumer electronics.

Not to mention that in the time period in which Trottier specifically alludes -- post-1984, there have been a lot of other social changes in the world. Teenagers during this period were growing up in an era in which AIDs was becoming a global pandemic.

Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" anti-drug program became something of a standard of anti-drug education.

It shouldn't be said that atheism absolutely cannot or is not a factor in the changes that Trottier and Bibby are referring to. But it certainly isn't the sole factor, and to attribute causality to it is hasty in the extreme.

"The question then becomes: Is the rise of atheism among youngsters going to lead to civil anarchy, or are we actually improving? As Bibby himself said: 'The thing that really surprised me were the positive results that point to the fact that we're making a lot of progress with teens.'

To reconcile these two patterns, let me suggest that actions speak louder than words. As unlikely as it sounds, perhaps those polled do not live up to their own high standards. A person can claim to be any number of things; televangelists, for example, would certainly score high on Prof Bibby’s test of values."

To top that off, one wonders if the values of which Bibby and Trottier speak are even values that Trottier wants to attribute to atheism or secularism.

Less permissive attitudes toward sex, drugs and alcohol have historically been associated with religious conservatism. In many cases -- such as 1920s prohibition -- these were a reflection of regressive attitudes amongst those who promoted these policies.

Making alcohol illegal was looked at by some as a method of clamping down on the feminist "flapper" movement of the roaring '20s. That particular brand of feminism may seem quaint and even anti-feminist by today's standards, but there['s little question that the religious conservatives of the day were extremely troubled by this new breed of woman who drank and had sex casually.

These don't seem like the kind of values that a secularist movement would want to embrace. One has to expect that Trottier almost certainly wouldn't. This is mostly because of the nature of the values he describes as "secular values":

"When comparing the values of an atheist to those of a believer, one must bear in mind just which values we are talking about. Many, including Bibby, who claim religious upbringing is necessary to guarantee social values consistently choose exclusively biblical values on which to base their statements."

But it's amazing how quickly Trottier actually fails this particular test:

"Kindness, politeness and courtesy are important, but so are social justice, equality, freedom of expression, accountability and commitment to democracy. These are the sorts of secular values I would wager atheists would score high on. But they are rarely used for such comparisons."

Certainly, many atheists would score high on these values. There is simply no question about that.

We also know that many atheists, both today and throughout history, would not.

For example, would Joseph Stalin have scored high on these values? Absolutely not. Many atheists continue to sputter in outrage every time Stalin and his atheism are mentioned within the confines of the same sentence, even at the expense of historical fact.

Furthermore, to describe "social justice, equality, freedom of expression, accountability and commitment to democracy" as secular values -- a thinly-veiled attempt to appropriate these values to atheism -- over looks the historical context of action in favour of these values.

Tommy Douglas was a Baptist Minister for whom the foundation of his political action was the Protestant Social Gospel.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr -- apparently unbeknownst to atheist rapper Greydon Square -- was also Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. Dr King used religiously-inspired prophetic language in his campaign to win civil rights for African Americans.

Benazir Bhutto insisted that democracy was divinely mandated by God in the religion of Islam.

If individuals such as Douglas, King Jr and Bhutto -- each in excellent company to say the least -- can find inspiration for these values within their religion, to describe them as "secular" values is more than just a little bit of a fallacy. These are values that virtually all but the most extreme people on either side of the modern ideological divide value. They are neither inherently religious or inherently secular values.

But although Trottier stumbles over the conclusions of Bibby's work, there is little question that his ultimate conclusion is both sound and admirable:

"Instead of wondering where society would find its ethical moorings in the absence of religion, the more interesting question is where our youth are already finding such alternatives and how they can be encouraged. As church membership fades, society should grant the same funding opportunities to secular and humanistic community groups who can fill the void in a way that ignores religious differences."

Those distressed by the rise of atheism -- whether cloaked as secularism or otherwise -- don't seem to understand that those who are increasingly turning to atheism are doing so for a very good reason.

It's clear that many people are finding that their own spiritual needs are not being met by traditional religions. This doesn't change the fact that they have spiritual needs, but rather reflects the fact that their own spiritual needs are different from those of Christians, Muslims, Jews or members of any other religion.

"Let us also not forget that many atheists do not need a building with a partisan logo on the front to engage in building strong communities. Many parents sit on school councils, coach sports teams or form community groups at animal shelters, blood clinics or food banks, and in other countless ways atheists blend anonymously into the secular volunteer community. Atheists have always found ways to improve society while passing on civic virtues to the next generation. It’s time those researching society’s trends figured out how to measure that."

If secularist organizations are going to provide the same level of community service as religious organizations -- and the Centre for Inquiry very much does, providing services such as substance abuse programs specially-tailored to atheists, they very much should receive the same treatment as religious organizations under Canadian tax law.

Justin Trottier may not firmly understand the difference between correlation and causality -- or at least seems to have properly applied it to the phenomena he discusses here -- but when it comes down to one of the most important secular values -- the equal treatment of all religions, as well as nonbelievers, before the law -- he certainly is on the right track.

The Faceplant of the Week

The hateful left refuses to relinquish Tiller-bomb

The sad tale of the pro-abortion lobby's efforts to transform the murder of Dr George Tiller into a permanent rhetorical advantage seemed to have slowed recently, but sadly, some members of the radical pro-abortion lobby insist on continuing the effort.

Their argument has been, more or less, that the anti-abortion lobby is complicit in the Tiller murder by virtue of the numerous anti-abortion extremists who describe abortion as "murder".

Even in the face of the actual positions of their opponents, the hateful left simply refuses to relinquish the death of Dr Tiller as a club with which they can beat anyone who dares disagree with them on the topic of abortion.

One merely has to consider the sheer depth of the effort that the most recent would-be scion of the Temple of Sychophantic Groupthink, Audrey II, went to in a recent post at her blog, Enormous Thriving Plants to attempt to delete Suzanne Fortin's denunciation of Tiller's murder:

"Facepalm of the week goes out to SUZANNE FORTIN of "Big Blue Wave". While her defense of Muslims suffering post 9/11 discrimination is certainly admirable, it's not really a reasonable analogy. The moderates that she (and Flowers) laughably compare themselves to don't similarly spew the same violent, wide-eyed, hysteric, extremist filth that Bin Laden and his band of zealots do, nor do they subscribe to the same set of premises. The same cannot be said for the relationship between Roeder's positions on abortion and the violent, inflammatory word-choice of a goodly lot of the anti-choice movement. In addition, most religious moderates overwhelmingly reject the Divine Command subscription of devout fanatics that holds that any action can be potentially be morally justified as long as some sky-being demands it.

Since SUZANNE and Flowers have adopted the comparison, it begs correction: A whole lot of radical religious zealots "did not kill" anyone on 9/11. That alone does not absolve many of them from the culpability of their rhetoric and the part it played in contributing to the massacre. Words matter."

Now, if only this were so.

Many Canadians -- particularly those on the far-left -- would insist that Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress is unequivocally not a terrorist, and not complicit in terrorist attacks.

Yet it was Elmasry who, during an appearance on the Michael Coren show, declared that any Israeli over the age of 18 is a legitimate target for attack.

While many of those who insist upon casting Elmasry as a moderate would note that each non-Arab Israeli citizen is required to complete a mandatory period of military service, although they forget that exceptions are understandably made under physical, psychological or religious grounds.

Of course this doesn't hold up under virtually any of the criteria most people use to designate a legitimate or illegitimate target. Under the Just War principle, those who are not a threat are generally deemed to not be a legitimate target. This would eliminate the elderly, the infirm, or pregnant women as legitimate targets. As well, any conscientious objectors killed by rocket attacks or suicide bombers would most certainly not be legitimate targets.

As such, Elmasry's remarks are certainly not those of a moderate. Yet Elmasry himself denounced 9/11 and has written articles condluding that the Quoran doesn't sanction violence (although it does sanction violence in self-defense).

It's only fair to mention that Audrey hasn't written anything about Muhammad Elmasry, so it would be unfair to insist that she thinks of him as a moderate.

But regardless of her views on Elmasry, she's wrong about the extent to which Muslim moderates believe in the notion of Divine Command.

Benazir Bhutto, for example, fought for democracy in Pakistan -- at the terrible expense of her eternally-promising life -- because she firmly believed that democracy in the Islamic world was ordained by God's divine command.

It isn't at all that Muslim moderates don't believe in divine command. Rather, they draw different conclusions about what, precisely, that divine command entails.

Naturally, this does lead one to the question of whether or not one would consider Fortin herself to legitimately be a moderate. But the facts of this particular comparison speak for themselves.

If Mohammad Elmasry is a moderate, then Suzanne Fortin is no less moderate, and Fortin's comparison of herself to various Muslim moderates much less unreasonable.

Even if Audrey doesn't consider Elmasry to be moderate, she must still come face-to-face with the fact that some of her compatriots do.

But by the same token, one simply doesn't expect the apparentness of these facts to hold in the mind of those who are bound and determined to hold the entire anti-abortion movement culpable for the murder of Dr Tiller -- and, yes, his murder very much was a terrorist act.

It isn't that they cared deeply about Dr George Tiller. Rather, it's that they simply recognize a rhetorical advantage they can gain from exploiting his murder.

Hope For Iran

The desire for democracy is Iran's best-kept secret

If one were to believe the tone of some of the coverage of the protests against Iranian President Mahmould Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election, one may think that a second Iranian revolution is underway.

Today hundreds of thousands of Iranians protested against what they insist was a corrupted election, one fixed so that Ahmadinejad could win.

Challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi promised to "pay any cost" today, even though he fully expects that his challenge to the results of the election will fail.

When compared to the number killed when Chinese troops crushed a student pro-democracy rally in Tiananmen Square, the single protester killed doesn't seem inconsequential. Many critics of the Iranian theocratic regime will still seize upon it as proof that the regime there is horribly repressive.

And it is.

But when critics of Ahmadinejad and his regime focus on events such as the killing of this protester, or on the censorship of music, or on beating of women's rights activists one can quickly overlook the true significance of these events.

It's incredibly significant that Iran has such a powerful pro-democracy movement that it can mobilize hundreds of thousands in opposition to what Mousavi rightly describes as the "selection" of Ahmadinejad as President. It's incredibly significant that there is a heavy metal scene in Iran for the government to ban. It's incredibly significant that Iran has a women's rights movement that is perceived as threatening enough that Iranian police would beat them.

In focusing on these images -- as deplorable as they are -- we overlook the signs of hope in Iran. And as dark as things may seem in Iran, those clouds have a democratic silver lining.

One way or the other, democracy is coming to Iran. The Iranian people's thirst for it may not be quenched by anything less.

How They Rush to Discredit Themselves

You can tell that he probably wrote this description himself.

That's Robert Peter John Day to you.

Someone's Life Is About to Get Extremely Uncomfortable

In a certain sense, it's actually a little embarrassing to be breaking my own personal rules for the second time in a week.

Earlier this week, I noted the amount of effort I've gone to in order to avoid addressing the issue of Canadian Cynic in a personal sense.

The idea has always been that my issue with Canadian Cynic has never been personal. Rather, it's been about preserving legitimate progressive political values from those who would, through their own behaviour, defame them while cowering behind a veil of anonymity.

But today things have changed. That veil of anonymity is no more.

The Canadian Blogosphere finally knows Robert Peter John Day for precisely who he is -- even if those who worship him at his Temple of Sychophantic Groupthink refuse to admit to it.

The litany of Day's offenses, abuses, and general stupidities have been laid bare -- again, even if his mindless toadies refuse to admit to it.

Now, he can no longer attack people from behind his veil of anonymity and arrogance. He has a lot to answer for.

Amongst these things, most certainly, is the vile and pernicious slander perpetrated against me at length by Mr Day. The work of the enterprising bloggers who uncovered his identity will certainly make it much easier to pursue libel damages from Mr Day, who has now been directly issued notice of libel and instructions to cleanse the internet of it.

Certainly, Canada's hateful left will sputter with outrage at the revelation of Mr Day's identity.

They can save it. We are speaking, of course, of an individual who has never shied away from attempts to utterly destroy the lives of his detractors. In each case, he has failed utterly.

There is no reason in the world why Robert Peter John Day shouldn't have to face the most comprehensive responsibility for his actions: having to face himself in the mirror each and every morning, knowing full well the number of people who now know precisely who he is, and precisely what he has done.

Hopefully Day's other detractors and victims will have the moral decency to draw the line far short of posting his personal information anywhere on the internet: home address, phone number, personal email addresses should all be treated as off-limits.

Almost everyone walking God's green Earth is a better person than Robert Peter John Day. Whether they recognize it or not, they are obligated to act like it.

It's on this note that the book on Canadian Cynic can now be closed for good.

But fortunately, it's been brought to my attention that Robert Peter John Day has provided fresh manna from heaven -- countless other writings that one can scour for his trademark intellectual dishonesty and hatemongering.

The book on Robert Peter John Day has now been opened.

And you don't have to worry much about me, Robert: if anyone posts any of your personal information it certainly will not be me. I've drawn my line in the sand. Although I fully expect you to cross it, I will not.

It's all part of that "better than you" thing that you resent so much.

The Slow Rebuilding of Stephen Harper's Reputation

Harper rides to Obama's defense

Writing in an update of Harper's Team, Tom Flanagan makes some interesting points regarding Stephen Harper's actions which -- at least according to the arguments of opposition leaders -- precipitated the move to defeat his government and replace it with a Liberal-NDP-Bloc Quebecois coalition government.

In November of 2008, Harper moved to strike subsidies for political parties from the federal budget. The result was a Constitutional Crisis of potentially-monumental proportions.

“Before the fall fiasco, [Mr. Harper] wasn't exactly loved by the public, but he was widely respected by political observers as a competent manager and shrewd strategist. After his misadventure with the political subsidy issue, many are saying that his strategic sense has been overrated,” Flanagan writes. “This is a dangerous development, for if you are not to be loved you must at least be respected.”

Flanagan also notes that many of Harper's reversals of policy -- fixed election dates and Senate reform being obvious examples -- have significantly tattered Harper's image.

“This is a major loss for a political leader ... once seen as a man of conviction," he continues. "How long will voters continue to support someone who is thought to be mainly a cunning tactician, especially if a run of mistakes makes him seem not even particularly cunning?”

As it regarded his (actually sensible) move to eliminate subsidies for political parties, Harper was said to be "playing silly political games" (by Liberal Gerard Kennedy), and attempting to destroy the opposition.

While the many Canadians who question whether or not the government should prop up political parties that can't raise their own funds may reject this particular treatment, there's little question that the optics of the situation lend themselves to that.

So it's against the backdrop of a need to rehabilitate his image that Stephen Harper took a calculated political risk while appearing on FOX News.

Harper defended US President Barack Obama -- an individual that many Candians expected to treat as a cross-border political opponent -- during an interview on the FOX Business News.

Harper not only refused to condemn Obama's stimulus spending, but he defended it. "We need stimulus spending now, and I say that as a conservative," Harper said.

"When the house is on fire ... you have to bring the hoses and spray water all over it, you can't worry about the basement," he continued. "The reality is, the fiscal situation in the United States is very worrisome, but that said, President Obama came into office with a deep structural deficit position, at a time when fiscal stimulus is actually required economically."

"There are a lot of similarities between what we're doing in Canada with stimulus [and] what President Obama is doing, what many other countries are doing," he added.
"In relative terms in the G7, we are actually able to have the biggest stimulus package and we're actually in the best position to return to surplus with the recession is over."

Harper certainly is taking a risk in defending Obama on FOX News.

The treatment of many of the United States' most fervent right-wing commentators at anyone who dares flirt with any sort of defense of Obama has been well documented.

Although the Canadian version of conservatism is generally far more moderate and restrained than its American counterpart, an unfortunate number of Canadian conservatives seem to hang on the every word of individuals such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

Should individuals like these decide to attack Harper for not joining in an obligatory right-wing dog pile on Obama, the rupture within the Canadian conservative movement may not be catastrophic, but it will be noticeable.

Whether Stephen Harper's defense of Barack Obama was actually calculated as an attempt to try to reach back to moderate Canadian voters or was sincere will almost certainly be the matter of significant speculation, but in the end will ultimately be known only by Harper himself.

In the meantime, the efforts to rehabilitate Harper's image are obviously underway.

Moving Beyond Tolerance

Mere tolerance is not enough

When Kevin Smith directed Chasing Amy in 1997, his career had fallen on hard times.

His first movie, Clerks, had become a critically-acclaimed indie-cult hit. But the follow-up, Mallrats recieved a tepid response from critics, tickets sold poorly at the box-office, and it would take years for his film to find its audience.

If not for the presence of the iconic Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith himself), it may never have had.

But Chasing Amy did more than simply revive Smith's flagging career. It imparted an important message for those preoccupied with the nature of the identity politics at the heart of relations between heterosexuals and homosexuals.

In the film, Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) is a rising star in the comic book industry, courtesy of his popular Adventures of Bluntman and Chronic series. HIs partner in crime is Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), a spastic inker resentful of those who look down on his profession as "tracing".

McNeil has a tenuous relationship with the women in his life. When he meets Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) he becomes instantly smitten with her. But this is a problem.

Alyssa, as it turns out, is a lesbian. Or at the very least bisexual.

McNeil embarks upon an awkward friendship with Alyssa in which he hammers out his own attitudes toward not merely homosexuality, but human sexuality in general. The relationship eventually blossoms into a romance, but eventually crashes and burns on the revelation that Alyssa had participated in some extremely "interesting" sex acts during high school.

The film eventually concludes that McNeil may not have really known and loved Alyssa for who -- or what -- she truly is. He sought out to change her, and then, having accomplished this task, became insensed when the illusory Alyssa he thought he had created turned out to be just that: an illusion.

McNeil was prepared to accept Alyssa's bisexuality, but never really accepted it. And therein lies the rub.

Many Canadians believe they can prove their tolerance for homosexuals by supporting token political causes like same-sex marriage. But tolerance alone isn't enough.

First off, the notion of tolerance has a dark undertone to it: that something may be wrong (in the numerous senses of the word) and should merely be tolerated or endured. It doesn't translate into any deeper acceptance of the individuals whom one is tolerating.

When many cities hold their annual Gay Pride festivities -- as Edmonton did today -- one can draw the distinction between acceptance and tolerance. Those who accept gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trannsexuals for who they are can be seen at these events (at the very least at the parade). Those who don't fully accept homosexuals are likely at home, merely tolerating them.

Perhaps they tolerate the presence of the LGBT crowd in their community. But given the opportunity, perhaps they would want to change them.

That is not acceptance. It's barely even tolerance. In producing a just society for Canada's LGBT community, Canadians must move beyond mere tolerance and accept the LGBT community for who they are.

It doesn't necessarily mean that one should show up to their local gay pride events. But it's a good symbolic start.

One Crazy Ride

Bill Hicks could be seen as the prototypical South Park conservative: an individual who promotes conservative -- in his case, libertarian -- values in a manner that offends conservative sensibilities.

Hicks, who died of cancer in 1994 at age 32, used a style since emulated by comedians like Denis Leary and Dennis Miller to rage against what he perceived as the injustices of American society. He railed against censorship, political correctness, and government waste.

Some of his ideas seem to veer outside of the traditional American conservative program. For example, he once suggested that the money spent on nuclear arms could instead be spent feeding and clothing the world. That, coupled with his criticism of the 1990 Gulf War, seems to be out of step with conventional American conservative values. However, think of both in terms of a criticism of government wastefulnes, and there is certainly a conservative flavour to Hicks' comedy.

That, of course, is the most intriguing element of South Park conservatism. It offends many of the values of traditional conservatives, particularly valuing a morally cleansed society. However, South Park conservatism recognizes that, today, it's liberals who often take -- or at least feign -- offense at the comments and ideas of their political rivals.

In this way South Park conservatism acts as a back door for politically incorrect sentiments to flourish within a conservative movement. Many social values that are otherwise considered ill at ease with conservatism can -- and do -- sneak in through that back door and effectively try their hand within the conservative movement.

The likelihood that Hicks' anti-war message would ever find traction within American conservatism may at first seem remote. But then one considers the number of Republicans who have come to oppose the Republican-initiated war in Iraq.

While many American conservatives have embraced this new breed of conservatism -- the recent rash of anti-tax tea party demonstrations is a prime example -- individuals such as Hicks certainly helped plant the seeds.

The True, Unforgettable Face of Quebec Separatism

Parti Quebecois forever awaiting the next crisis

Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois was forced to do some damage control yesterday, as she insisted that the Parti Quebecois would not make a move to provoke a national unity crisis in its bid to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada.

This follows comments by Jacques Parizeau, the old warhorse of the Quebec sovereigntist movement, insisting that "to bring about sovereignty, there has to be a crisis. Clearly, a referendum on a specific subject can create a crisis."

These comments certainly don't bode well for Marois, whose recently-revealed four-point plan for Quebec sovereignty includes calling referendums on the repatriation of various from the federal government.

Quebec's Liberal Premier, Jean Charest, took full advantage of Parizeau's comments.

"The real intention of the Parti Québécois is to provoke a crisis, to harm Quebec," Charest insisted. "It is unacceptable. It would hurt Quebec. We will expose it."

Recent polls have suggested that a crisis would be necessary just to make sovereignty seem feasible to Quebeckers. A recent Angus-Reid poll determined that 74% of Quebeckers felt that Quebec's chances of attaining sovereignty were slim to none.

To make matters worse for Marois and Parizeau, only 28% of polled Quebeckers stated that they wanted independence for Quebec.

Perhaps of the two prayers for Quebec sovereigntism, increased autonomy (favoured by another 30% of Quebeckers) and a crisis, the former would be more fruitful than the latter. Marois seems to have a sense of this, with a sovereignty plan that would try to hedge increased autonomy into an increased fervour for independence.

That is what makes the Parti Quebecois more dangerous than ever -- that Pauline Marois has finally realized that it's the Quebec preference for autonomy and de-centralization that could get Quebeckers thinking about sovereignty again.

Jacques Parizeau may be good for reminding Quebeckers -- in fact, all Canadians -- about the true face of the Pari Quebecois.

The true face of the Parti Quebecois is not that of a progressive political party. It's that of a retrograde borderline-revolutionary party founded on a racial ideology.

Pauline Marois may want Quebeckers to forget this. Sadly for her, Jacques Parizeau could never allow them to.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Angry French Guy - "Could a People that Can't Build a Highway Ever Build a Country?"

A Fair Language Policy for All Canadians

...From the North down

When Preston Manning's Reform party broke through in Western Canada during the 1993 federal election, many other Canadian political leaders -- notably, the leadership of the Liberal, New Democratic and Progressive Conservative parties -- quickly moved to condemn the party as a threat to Canadian unity.

Many mused that the party may have been an even greater threat to Canadian unity than the Bloc Quebecois or Parti Quebecois -- ironically on the eve of a 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum that would nearly tear Canada to shreds.

Oddly enough, one of the fronts on which the Reform party was attacked was that of language policy. Opponents of the party insisted that the party would introduce regressive language policies, and overturn official bilingualism.

This, in one sense, was true. Preston Manning was prepared to overturn official bilingualism.

But Manning also had a far more progressive alternative in mind. Manning had promoted a Fair Language Policy, in which government services would be delivered not merely in French or English, but in any language appropriate, where appropriate.

Manning noted that many communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan still had significant Ukrainian-speaking communities, and questioned why government services in those communities should be obligated to deliver services in French, but not in Ukrainian. Manning noted that there were many such under-served language groups across Canada.

These groups range from Chinese- or Japanese-speaking Canadians in Vancouver to Farsi-speaking Canadians in Montreal. Manning firmly insisted that all of these communities should be able to be served in their first language.

With the recent passage of Nunavut's Official Languages Act, it seems that Manning's fair language policy is a good idea whose time has finally come.

In order for the act -- which will establish five Inuit languages, primarily Inuktitut and Innuinaqtun, as official languages in Nunavut -- to take effect in Nunavut, it must pass through Parliament.

Upon its introduction by Conservative MP Leona Aglukkaq, the House of Commons quickly passed the legislation. Now, the Senate may refer the bill to its legal and constitutional affairs committee for some scrutiny.

"We are as much concerned for the other aboriginal languages, to help them to have the tools and the books and teaching materials needed to promote the use of aboriginal language by aboriginal people," noted Liberal senator Serge Joyal. "That's why we want to make sure that we know what we are voting on, and it is our role and duty by the constitution to review that kind of legislation. But we want to do it expeditiously so that nobody is waiting, you know, being frustrated that it's not happening."

Joyal noted that some scrutiny is necessary to find out how the act will impact federal agencies providing services in Nunavut.

"I believe that if this chamber has an abiding principle, it is that we do not consent lightly and without examination to the diminution, however slight, of minority languages because that precedent can come back to haunt us, our children or our grandchildren. I do not want to go there," added fellow Grit Senator Joan Fraser.

Whether or not the Liberal party's Senate caucus is going to attempt to block the bill remains yet to be seen. While there was no partisan divide on the issue in the House of Commons, many Conservative Senators -- such as Hugh Segal and Gerald Comeau -- seem to think the act is ready to be passed in Parliament.

When this act finally does pass -- provided that Michael Ignatieff exerts some control over his Senate caucus -- it will have been a very long time coming. It could prove to be the first step in reinforcing official bilingualism -- itself a satisfactory first step in terms of language policy -- with a policy that will provide a Fair Language Policy for all Canadians.

Progressive Conservatism Is Not "Standing for Nothing"

Randy Hillier embraces small tent conservatism

When the Ontario Progressive Conservative party leadership candidates locked horns in a leader's debate at the University of Ottawa, it couldn't have possibly become any clearer that the 2009 Ontario PC leadership race is a battle for the very heart and soul of the party.

The battle lines seem to be drawn: Tim Hudak and Randy Hillier firmly favouring the socons, and Christine Elliott and Frank Klees carrying the banner for procons.

Perhaps no one in the field has embraced this apparent internal culture war as Hillier, who told Elliott that "watered-down conservatism" will not lead the party to victory, and power.

"When we stand for nothing, we lose everything," Hillier insisted.

Elliott had previously described herself as a "compassionate" conservative.

Hillier seemed to be thinking in a similar vein as Tom Long, who recently gave a speech to the Manning Institute's Networking Conference in which he took note of the fact that, in recent history, hardline Mike Harris' fiscal conservatism has been more successful than its more progressive counterpart -- as recently represented in leadership by John Tory.

Such ideas stand in stark contrast to the widely-disseminated beliefs of Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, who continues to insist that building consensus between the various strains of conservatism -- usually defined in Canada as fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, democratic populism, progressive conservatism, British Toryism and libertarianism -- in order to be truly successful. Segal has often added that the best way to do so is within a "nation and enterprise" model in which government collaborates with society's various institutions in order to produce an environment in which free markets can provide for the needs of Canadians.

As Lloyd Mackey noted of David Orchard -- who ceded the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative party to Peter MacKay only under the condition that he refused to merge the party with the stronger Canadian Alliance -- people like Hillier and Long represent a sense that their particular brand of conservatism is the only truly "pure" brand of conservatism. Consider the rhetorical implications of Long's description of his favoured strain of conservatism as "unhyphenated" conservatism.

Mackey brilliantly describes individuals with such small-tent notions of conservatism, such as Orchard and Hillier, as virtual mirror images of each other.

Hillier's particular brand of conservatism is best described as a fusion of fiscal conservatism with libertarianism -- a stark contrast to Elliott's mix of fiscal conservatism and progressive conservatism.

Whether Hillier agrees with it or not, Elliott's progressive conservatism is necessary to strike a balance with his particular brand of conservatism. Even though Long may disagree, the only conservatism that has ever proven sustainable in Ontario was a conservatism respectful of progressive values.

Though Long may not understand it, Mike Harris' hard fiscal conservative coalition was not sustainable without its progressive counterparts. If it had been, Ontario wouldn't be governed by the Dalton McGuinty Liberal party right now.

Randy Hillier's and Christine Elliott's strains of conservatism need each other. It's rather unfortunate that Hillier doesn't seem to have the wisdom to recognize this.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy - "Randy Hillier for Premier"

We Know How to Crack the Sri Lankan Nut

Time for Canada to support Sri Lankan High Commissioner

In the wake of Sri Lanka's move to deport Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae, some Canadians may be unsure as to how to proceed with the matter.

They shouldn't. It's time to pack Sri Lankan High Commissioner Daya Perera on a plane and send him back where he came from.

Rae has been accused of supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers. While Bob Rae had given speeches questioning Canada's lack of involvement in the humanitarian crisis that accompanied the escalation of hostilities between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, to suggest that Rae supports the Tamil Tigers is precisely how he describes it:

Absurd.

"Basically, I was told when I got to the airport I was a security risk," Rae says. "To describe me as 'an LTTE supporter,' as an army spokesman has done today, is a lie, pure and simple. I have been a steady critic of the abuses of human rights that were part of the LTTE's tactics."

In fact, Bob Rae has always been a steadfast opponent of terrorism while favouring programs of reconciliation. Whether it was opposing Hezbollah terrorism while calling for a substantive peace process between Israel and the Palestinian government (as well as its neighbours), or opposing the extremist groups that perpetrated the Air India bombing -- an act that Rae speculates may have adversely affected his 2008 Liberal leadership bid -- Rae's bonafides vis a vis terrorism are as sound as anyone's.

Rae did write a blog post criticizing the Sri Lankan government's alleged lack of attempts to reconcile with the Tigers, writing:

"'The war is over,' the crowds will shout.

But there is a difference between a war ended by agreement and a war ended by death and destruction.

If there is no magnanimity in victory there is no victory. I think of the possibilities of peace in the years after 2000 and I weep at the lost opportunity, the lost lives. So many dead now that were once alive, debating the possibilities of peace."

That is a far cry from supporting the LTTE. The Sri Lankan government's slandering of any Canadian Parliamentarian cannot be tolerated.

Beyond Rae's treatment, the diplomatic impacts of the Sri Lankan government's behaviour are deep and profound. Rae isn't even the only Canadian Parliamentarian to be denied entry into Sri Lanka. Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai was told that the Sri Lankan government allegedly couldn't accommodate his visit.

Making matters infinitely worse is the recent attack on the Canadian High Commission in Colombo.

It's evident that the country of Sri Lanka has no intentions of continuing diplomatic relations with Canada in good faith. There is no reason in the world why we shouldn't oblige them.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Dan Shields - "Go Away, Bob Rae"

Vijay Sappani - "Sri Lanka Deports Bob Rae. Did the Conservatives Plot It?

Russ Campbell - "Rae banned in Sri Lanka"

Charting a Tenuous Course for Human Rights Commissions

From Alberta and Ontario: different conservative visions for the CHRC

From across Canada, different courses are being proposed for the country's contentious Human Rights Commissions.

Some, like Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership candidates Tim Hudak and Randy Hillier, are proposing that such commissions should be abolished.

Others have proposed a radical new course for the HRCs -- a course that Alberta's Progressive Conservative government has chosen to follow with the passage of Bill 44.

Certainly, there are many practical issues with Bill 44. As some have noted, teachers could find themselves facing charges in an Alberta Human Rights Tribunal if a parent decides that they didn't receive sufficient warning about an upcoming lesson on almost anything. This is a serious problem with the legislation.

But as Lafleche notes, Bill 44 is only the most recent move in a political chess game over how Canada's Human Rights Commissions should function -- or if they should exist at all.

In Ontario, as Lafleche notes, the Ontario Human Rights Commission "has been all about the right not to be offended". In many cases it's been the same in Alberta. But in noting that Bill 44 seems to reinforce the "right to be a dullard", Lafleche misses one key point: the "right to be a dullard" seems not only to be about "the right not to be offended", but also about a parent's right to make decisions about their childrens' education.

Parents have long been lectured about the need to manage what their children are or are not exposed to. Disclaimers on television shows warning parents that "viewer discretion is advised", film rating schemes and parental advisory stickers on CDs have long been part of efforts to empower parents to control the extent to which their children are being exposed to violence, foul language or controversial subjects.

Now, for good or for ill, parents are being given an opportunity to make similar decisions in regard to their childrens' education.

Not all Canadians -- and certainly not all Albertans -- will empathize much with the religious conservative who pulls their children out of class because they insist that their children be given abstinence-only sex education. Nor should should they.

But many would agree that morality should not be taught in the classroom. If anyone has the right to teach morality to their children, most people would agree that a child's parents are the only ones who possess that right.

Yet many attempts have been made to smuggle left-wing morality lessons into the classroom. Most Canadians would almost certainly roll their eyes at a religious conservative's complaints regarding a tolerance-minded lesson plan that may try to teach children that homosexuality is normal. But it's impossible to overlook the fact that teaching children that homosexuality isn't immoral -- and in this author's opinion, it most certainly isn't -- is still teaching morality in the classroom.

Any parent uncomfortable with this -- whether most Canadians agree with their reasons or not -- has the right to blow the whistle on this.

But there is a flip side to the entire affair. Bill 44 could be used by parents in Catholic school divisions to pull their children from classrooms in Catholic Schools whenever they are taught that Catholic doctrine dictates that abortion is wrong -- certainly a right that one would expect moderate Catholics to exercise. The same parents could use Bill 44 to pull their children from any lessons in which homosexuality is said to be wrong. Similarly, atheist parents could use Bill 44 to pull their children from lessons related to religion.

Again, Bill 44, in its application, could turn out to be a stalemate, in reality favouring neither side of the so-called "culture war".

This is how it should be considering that liberal democratic governments have no business taking sides in social or cultural affairs.

For Hudak and Hillier, meanwhile, their proposal to abolish Ontario's Human Rights Commission has opened a fissure within their own party. Some, like Christine Elliott -- who is now leading the leadership race -- have insisted that the commissions should be maintained out of political considerations. Others have reminded Ontario Tories that it was a Progressive Conservative government that instituted the HRC in the first place.

Elliott has joined fellow PC leadership candidate Frank Klees in calling for reform of the OHRC. Elliott has yet to articulate any concrete proposals for that reform. Klees, meanwhile, has proposed repealing Section 13 and taking away the Commission's ability to effectively act as a censor, and allow it to focus on clear cases of discrimination.

Of those out to chart a new course for the HRCs, Elliott and Klees are certainly the least radical among them. Alberta's Bill 44 may have charted a course into a pragmatically-tenuous position, but at least the Alberta PCs haven't charted them a course to oblivion.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Richard Shih - "Alberta's Bill 44"

Four Strong Winds - "Why Alberta's Bill 44 Represents a Blow for Alberta's Democracy"

A Newer, More Dangerous Parti Quebecois

"Incremental" separatism on PQ agenda

In its fight to cleave Quebec loose from the rest of Canada, the Bloc Quebecois and Parti Quebecois have often shot themselves in the foot by relentlessly pursuing the goal of separating from Canada in one fell swoop.

Quebeckers have proven themselves on two previous occasions -- in 1980 and again in 1995 -- unwilling to opt in to abruptly leaving the country.

After years of following an all-or-nothing approach, the Parti Quebecois has finally decided to pursue an incremental sovereigntist agenda.

PQ leader Pauline Marois outlined a four-point plan to incrementally pursue Quebec sovereignty. That plan called for minimalizing the federal government's involvement in areas of provincial jurisdiction -- such as education and health care -- exercising more authority over issues related to culture and language, extend the power of the French Language Charter, and continue to "encourage" immigrants to Quebec to speak French.

"It shows our resolution to take up the fight and focus on Quebec sovereignty," Marois said of the plan. "We will use all of our abilities to advance the interests of Quebec."

"There are great things we can do right now," Marois added. "And I hope this dynamism will help revive the flame of sovereignty so we can hold a referendum as soon as possible."

Portions of this plan are already in play. Some may recall that Marlene Jennings, one of the Liberal negotiators of the Liberal-NDP-BQ coalition government -- had previously spilled the beans that strengthening Bill 101 to apply to federally-regulated firms in Quebec had been rejected in the course of those negotiations.

(Canadians still don't know what Jennings and her fellow Liberals had given the BQ in exchange for their support, but that is another matter entirely.)

Yet it seems that Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe has not seen fit to let that particular issue go. Duceppe has been campaigning to strengthen Bill 101 so it will apply to industries regulated by federal labour laws in Quebec, something that the Liberal party has steadfastly refused to support.

"[Michael Ignatieff] said it would impede business," Duceppe complained. "There's no justification for him saying this. The fact [the Liberals] voted against Bill 101 being applied to the Canadian Labour Code is a clear illustration that recognizing Quebec as a nation is nothing more than a symbol."

The extent to which Ignatieff is embracing Quebec nationhood -- and one should add that recognizing Quebec as a nation is not the same as recognizing it as a nation-state -- aside, one thing Ignatieff is certainly doing is something that his predecessor wouldn't when it really mattered: fight separatists.

Rather, Stephane Dion was more than willing to hatch a secret deal with the Bloc when it would deliver him a government -- and certainly saw fit not to tell Canadians what he had given the Bloc in return.

Michael Ignatieff, at least, isn't playing into the hands of the PQ and BQ on their new four-point plan on Quebec sovereignty -- one that will certainly make for a more dangerous Parti Quebecois and Bloc Quebecois.

Quebeckers have proven unwilling to separate from Canada in a single spasm of nationalistic fervour. A slower, more deliberate process of seeking sovereignty will likely yield better results for Quebec's sovereigntist movement, and will require all Canadian federalists -- Liberal and Conservative alike -- to be much more careful in how they handle the issue of Quebec separatism.

Who's Galactus Now, Bitch?

You can taste the difference that automatically-generated makes

I have long tried to avoid, under any circumstances whatsoever, to write in a personal tense when blogging about the full-out intellectual abortion that is Canadian Cynic and his pack of equally-dishonest sycophantic harpies.

Today, I find myself forced to break this personal policy for a very important reason.

Nexus readers have been extremely patient and indulgent in regards to the topic of Canadian Cynic, and it's time that I reward that patience and indulgence. Canadian Cynic has, as of today, officially jumped the shark. By now, anyone who doesn't understand what an extremely disingenuous and dishonest individual Cynic is are those who fervently worship at the Groupthink Temple -- those who know full well that this individual is willing and eager to lie through his teeth for rhetorical advantage, but applaud it out of vacuous ideological solidarity.

As it turns out, there's very good reason why a search of the New York Times website returns almost no hits for Canadian Cynic.

The link he crows about actually no longer exist.

One merely has to take a look at the topics that Canadian Cynic -- an individual narcistic enough to take screencaps of these links -- to see why.

These links actually no longer exist. They've long been supplanted by other links.

Examining the very pages Cynic alludes to -- yet, oddly enough, won't link to -- confirms this. New York Times topic pages on abortion, Canada, same-sex marriage and Ethiopia confirm this.

As it turns out, the links to Canadian Cynic posts on the New York Times website were never deliberately selected by New York Times editors. Rather, they were automatically chosen by Blogrunner.

Now, Cynic and his sycophantic cronies are almost certainly going to argue that because Blogrunner is run by the New York Times that this still demonstrates some sort of favour from New York Times editors.

The truth, as it turns out, is actually rather different.

One merely has to look at some of the company Canadian Cynic shares at Blogrunner -- none other than Small Dead Animals, the brainchild of perrenial Cynic target Kate MacMillan -- to understand how meaningless this all is. We all know what Canadian Cynic thinks of MacMillan (yet, curiously enough, has never realized that MacMillan is really just a right-wing version of himself).

If MacMillan were really as bad as Cynic insists he is, it would seem that the selections of New York Times editors place him in some rather poor company.

Canadian Cynic would like everyone to behold his precious, automatically-generated links from the New York Times and believe that some Times editor read his blog, gasped "genius!" and linked to it.

Rather, these links were generated by a computer program designed to search blogs chosen based on largely-arbitrary criteria and link to them based on the topics of each post. If New York Times editors were actually reading the garbage that typically appears at the Groupthink Temple, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they wouldn't want to be caught dead linking to them.

After all, what reputable news publication would want to have anything at all to do with a blogger who encourages his groupies to stalk the children of a blogging rival?

The answer, almost certainly, is "not many". As in "none".

Which, naturally, brings me around to the hilarity of Cynic labelling my post which revealled his base dishonesty as "pathetic" and "self-indulgent".

Who, other than a pathetic and self-indulgent individual would even dream up this post, in which Cynic declares himself to be Galactus, and insists that he is one of the most-feared figures in the Canadian blogosphere?

Which is amusing when one considers the frequency with which Cynic runs away from me whenever he's caught outside the confines of the Groupthink Temple. If Cynic's so terrifying, why's he the one running away?

Cynic even goes so far as to insist that the "list of the afflicted is long and getting longer -- Hunter, Neo Conservative, Sandy Crux, mahmood, Patrick Ross, JoJo -- all incapable of coherent conversation or rational discourse when caught in the grip of the CCness of it all, all reduced to blubbering, sophomoric insults and playground taunts".

Yet, naturally, there's a major problem with this statement. It's as if Cynic wrote that particular passage while staring directly and uncomprehendingly into a mirror.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize the warped sense of reality that this reflects.

If anything, there's an ever-growing list -- Cynic, Lulu, Sparky, Audrey II, Mike, Liberal Supporter -- all incapable of coherent conversation or rational discourse as soon as I show up to lay the party down. All of them reduced to blubbering, sophomoric insults, playground taunts, and gun threats even as they absorb ass-kickings so complete that they spend entire weeks away from the blogosphere, licking their wounds from their last crushing defeat.

It's become evident that there's a reason why Canadian Cynic is so terrified to engage with me anywhere outside of his blog. It's because he knows that he can't win. He knows that he needs a small army of mindless trolls to back him up and sing his praises so he can declare himself the victor of any engagement, no matter how deeply he actually knows he lost.

It's one of the reasons why Canadian Cynic simply cannot be taken seriously. Not ever again.

This is an individual who has proven that there are no depths of dishonesty to deep for him to stoop to. This is an individual who has proven that he cannot admit defeat, no matter how apparent that defeat is. This is an individual who actually has the temerity to demand honesty of others even as he weaves a web of some of the most vile lies his sociopathic mind can muster.

At the end of the day, the question must be asked: if Cynic's adversaries are so dishonest, why's he the one lying?

There is nothing more to be gained from continuing Canadian Cynic's humiliation. Those with the intellectual or moral clarity to recognize a coward and liar have recognized that in Canadian Cynic long, long ago.

Anarchism: An Autobiography of an Ideal

Anarchism is best understood by many people to be associated with punk rock music and mass chaos.

But as Anarchism in America explains, Anarchism is very different. Anarchism is actually a political philosophy based on the complete absence of government and the violence that so often proves necessary to maintain it -- and often employed even when it's unncessary.

It's remarkable to note how many people can't seem to provide any kind of defninition of anarchism at all -- let alone a correct one.

More than anything, anarchism is based on a social ideal that can never be achieved.

Anarchism depends on the ideal that people will always act in the best interests of society without the organizing capacity of authority.

The film recounts the Spanish Civil War, and notes that fighters in the anarchist militias came and went as they pleased. Without any kind of authoritative system to ensure effective fighting groups to oppose General Franco's fascist forces little question remains as to at least some of the better reasons why the anarchists lost.

Anarchism is a political philosophy that is utopian and revolutionary. It represents a fusion of the ideas of positive freedom and negative freedom that Adam Curtis presents in The Trap. It asserts that positive freedom -- the freedom to transform oneself through the incessant pursuit of self-fulfilment -- can only be achieved through the pursuit of negative freedom.

A close parallel can be found in libertarianism, anarchism's conservative-leaning cousin.

Like anarchism, libertarianism presents an ideal. While anarchism's ideal is the absence of government in any way, shape or form, libertarianism is the vision of government as small as possible. While libertarians may not favour the abolition of government, they tend to prefer its reduction to a size that can be drowned in a bathtub.

Like anarchism, however, libertarianism makes assumptions that are at odds with social realities. Libertarianism fails to recognize many of the things that government is necessary to do. Taxation -- denounced as "theft" on the cover of a pamphlet displayed in the film -- is necessary for the maintanence of social infrastructure necessary for the orderly function of society.

For example, the current financial crisis shows us that deregulated banks -- an ideal of libertarianism -- lend themselves to economic disorder, to the detriment of the vast majority of a society's members. A strong, effective, democratic government is necessary to maintain financial infrastructure, which is necessary for a free society.

It's because of their overreliance on utopianism and idealism that neither anarchism nor anarchism can ever truly be achieved.

Holy Fuck, They Lie. All the Time.

Canadian Cynic:

"I'll try to cope with the emotional devastation of your disapproval. I'll just use my regular links from places like CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post to console me. I figure I'll do just fine."

Reality:

Game, set, and match.

Two links from the New York Times from 2005 counts as "regular links" from all three outlets?

Good fucking God. There's nothing more to be said about this.

World Shouldn't Hold Its Breath Over Tiananmen Square

Lawrence Cannon calls for "public accounting"

In a statement on the eve of today's 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon joined the chorus of voices calling for a public accounting of the massacre.

"The 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square tragedy provides an opportunity for China to remember those who lost their lives at that time while calling for political and economic reforms in China," Cannon said. "Twenty years later, we hope that they will be able to examine these events in an open and transparent fashion -- including the public accounting of those killed, detained or missing."

Cannon shouldn't hold his breath -- nor should anyone else in the world.

The Communist Party regime in China will certainly not hold any kind of public accounting into Tiananmen Square unless they need to do so in order to hold on to power. As sad as it may be to realize this, they simply don't.

In Mediapolitik, Lee Edwards outlined how the Chinese government micro-managed coverage of the massacre. In 1989 China was a very different country than it is today. While today the amount of coverage that the massacre received in the international media -- partially through the efforts of Canada's own Jan Wong, who witnessed the massacre from the relative safety of her nearby hotel room -- would almost assure that Tiananmen Square would be common knowledge throughout China, the average Chinese citizen didn't have satellite television or the internet in 1989.

Instead, the Chinese government repressed coverage of Tiananmen Square within China's borders. Even today when many Chinese citizens learn about the massacre it's in the history books published in other countries.

Even when the Chinese government acknowledged -- on a very limited basis -- the occurrence of the massacre, they played it off as necessary to contain "violent militant anti-revolutionaries".

Yet Wong's own reflection of the event, as told in Red China Blues, tells a different story. Rather, much of the Chinese student movement's fervour was staged for international cameras. Wong recounts witnessing one student in particular furiously waving a pro-democracy banner when television cameras were on him, then slumping over and smoking a cigarette when they had moved on.

Whatever the Chinese student movement had planned to accomplish at Tiananmen Square, taking up arms against the communist government wasn't one of their goals.

To make matters worse, comparatively few foreign leaders are willing to hold the Chinese government responsible for what occurred at Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. When former Prime Minister Jean Chretien toured China in the 1990s he refused to so much as utter the words "human rights" and instead referred to "good governance and the rule of law".

When the rule of law allows the government to run over its citizens with tanks, there's little question that whatever governance exists in that country is not "good".

Yet even Cannon is willing to to echo similar statements when he refers to China's economic development -- achieved at the direct expense of more than 100 million Chinese citizens who were dislocated from their homes in order to serve as a mobile labour force -- as an advance for human rights.

Anyone expecting the Chinese government to suddenly be forthcoming about the events of June 5, 1989 shouldn't hold their breath.

The Unintentional Hilarity of the Intentionally Intellectually Dishonest

The attempts of Canada's hateful left -- a parochial collection of demagogues whose left-wing politics are defined not by any definable beliefs, but rather by their hatred of those with whom they disagree -- to transform the assassination of Dr George Tiller into a centerpiece of their efforts seem to have slowed in recent days.

For those mourning the murder of Dr Tiller for legitimate reasons, this should certainly be a welcome prospect.

But even as they continue to demonstrate that they don't understand their own base hypocrisy on the issue, there is still far more hilarity afoot than the degree to which these individuals simply cannot be taken seriously, or granted so much as an iota of credibility.

The unrepentant leader of Canada's hateful left, Canadian Cynic, provides yet another keen example of the intellectual vacuity underlying the hateful left's desperate attempts to transform Dr Tiller's murder into a club with which they can beat anyone who has ever opposed abortion.

Canadian Cynic and his fellows at the Groupthink Temple have never encountered a slander against those who disagree with them that they didn't instantly fall in love with.

That certain explains this, a post in which Cynic creams himself over an op/ed column in which Ann Friedman weighs in on whether or not the murder of Dr Tiller was terrorism.

Cynic's conclusion is that Dr Tiller's murder certainly is a terrorist, and that they should be treated accordingly.

But on this note, this idea seems rather familiar. Where could one have seen it before?

Oh, yeah. Right.

Hmmm. It's interesting that one would find a denunciation of anti-abortion violence as terrorism, and only a mere 13 months before Cynic himself ever tuned in to this particular idea. It's even more interesting that one would find that denunciation on the blog of an individual whom both Cynic and Mike have insisted supports the murder of abortion providers.

They both know this is a lie, but it has never stopped either of them before.

So then one may wonder precisely how it is that Canadian Cynic can crow about enjoying an allegedly-dominant position within the Canadian blogosphere when he so devotes himself to running away like a chickenshit every time your not-so-humble scribe shows up to take him on.

(For the record, this was a particularly fun thread, where not only Cynic, but his slavering stooges Sparky, and Liberal Supporter got their asses utterly handed to them.)

Of course, what else does one expect from an individual as deranged as Canadian Cynic, who devotes so much time ranting to anyone slavish enough to agree with him about his own awesomeness?

It's simple. One actually expects nothing else, and nothing more.

Not only does Canadian Cynic not have much of a nose for reality, but he can't even figure out precisely whose ideas he's so enthused about.

For Whom Might Fontaine Run?

Retiring Assembly of First Nations chief may run for Parliament

Phil Fontaine's retirement as the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations may be the precursor to a run for Parliament, CTV reports.

Apparently, the Liberal party has asked Fontaine to consider running for them in the next election.

Yet interestingly enough, it may be within the Conservative party that Fontaine may find the most productive home. Certainly, his most productive achievements as National Chief of the AFN were negotiated with Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

In 2005, Fontaine and then-Indian Affairs Minister negotiated the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a settlement worth $1.9 billion to victims of the Residential School system and their families.

In 2007, Fontaine and Prentice again collaborated on a land claims plan that would allocate $250 million per annum over ten years to settle many outstanding claims. The plan also introduced a new independent tribunal to rule on these cases.

Last but certainly not least, Fontaine was present when Prime Minister Harper finally delivered the long-overdue apology for the abuses in Canadian Residential Schools.

This isn't to say that Fontaine's relationship with the Conservative government has been nothing but smooth sailing. Fontaine has noted that the cancellation of the Kelowna Accord was greatly disappointing to him.

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre also sparked a brush fire between the two with some ill-timed remarks last year -- although the outrage surrounding his comments was largely manufactured, and really reflected the dominance of political paternalism toward Aboriginals in the face of the need to reevaluate Canadian policies toward Aboriginal Affairs.

Within the Conservative party Fontaine could forge a potent partnership with Senator Patrick Brazeau -- whose tenure as a Senator has, to date, been productive if not untroubled -- in order to find new ways to help the government help meet the needs of Canadian aboriginals, both on- and off-reserve.

Of course this is all just speculation. While it remains unknown whether the Conservative party has made any attempts to recruit Fontaine -- although they will if they are wise -- it also remains to be seen whether or not Fontaine will run for office at all.

The Perils of the Politics of Patriotism

Stephen Harper, Frances Russell demonstrate dangers at the heart of politicized patriotism

There's something extremely shameful about the spectacle that too often surrounds the politics of patriotism.

Various political figures and commentators can often be seen spinning fervently about, trying like hell to rip the flag off the shoulders of their opponents while they try to wrap themselves in it.

That spectacle is at the very heart -- in any number of ways -- of an op/ed column written by the Winnipeg Free Press' Frances Russell, in which she suggests that Stephen Harper and the Conservative party have "nothing to teach on patriotism".

Russell begins by reflecting on the shameful and irresponsible "Just Visiting" ads the Harper Conservatives have been airing against Michael Ignatieff.

Russell notes that, on the eve of the release of Ignatieff's most recent book, True Patriot Love, the Harper Conservatives attempted to counter-brand Ignatieff as unpatriotic at best (and at worst impugned his citizenship in an extremely irresponsible fashion):

"The Conservatives' attack ads seek to 'frame' Ignatieff before he has a chance to do so himself. They're claiming he's unpatriotic because he repeatedly led people to believe he was an American during his years at Harvard University teaching, writing and broadcasting.

Toronto author and columnist Rick Salutin says Ignatieff owes Canadians an explanation, and he's right. If Ignatieff is smart, he'll provide one. Salutin suggests he admit 'it was immature and dishonest but I thought it would help me get ahead in the U.S.'"

Yet, as it turns out, Russell herself isn't above the politics of patriotism either, as she seems to define Canadian patriotism as strict adherence to a very narrow ideological view:

"But the ads are almost as risky for the Harper Conservatives. Canadians may well ask themselves who is more unpatriotic: Ignatieff, for passing himself off as a American citizen while living and working in a country that doesn't much like or listen to foreigners; or Harper, for his determination to jettison Canada's societal, political and governmental institutions and adopt those of the US?"

This particular passage is nothing more or less than the old "hidden agenda" smear again trotted out for deployment against Canadian conservative leaders.

Oddly enough, Michael Ignatieff himself has previously noted that there's nothing hidden about the Harper agenda, noting that the Harper agenda is as simple as changing Canada's course in a more conservative direction (which, apparently, only Ignatieff and Russell seem truly shocked at -- a conservative party wanting a more conservative Canada? Quelle Suprise!).

This, naturally, has led the Harper government in the direction of tax cuts -- in this case the GST and Income Tax cuts that Russell insists have led to a structural deficit, but declines to mention that this "structural deficit" is actually only present under conditions in which the government spends lavishly on whatever pet projects it may decide to pursue -- such as a superfluous long gun registry that runs billions of dollars over budget.

"With a system of government that has fixed elections every two (Congress), four (White House) and six (Senate) years, the US invented the perpetual election campaign and its ugly offspring, perpetual attack ads.

Animated by their Reform party base, Harper's 'Republican' Conservatives have never hidden their contempt for Canada's parliamentary democracy or stopped trying to twist its institutions beyond recognition to fit American forms: fixed election dates; elected senators; state (provincial) rights; perpetual campaigns: personal attack ads rather than debates on issues; the embrace, during last winter's parliamentary crisis, of American populist ideas about direct democracy with a strong (presidential) leader orchestrating and responding to spasms of popular will; the adoption of the American right's agenda of law and order, guns, social and religious conservatism, militarism."

In her fervour to denounce Harper as "un-Canadian" for finding anything of value in the American political system, Russell overlooks numerous facts.

First off, if any political party pioneered the state of permanent campaign in Canadian politics, it was the Liberal party. It was the Liberal party who spent the better part of their 13 years in government -- and the three years since -- taking any opportunity to portray their opponents as extreme, dangerous, and "un-Canadian".

Secondly, Canada's provinces are not a creation of the federal government. Rather, confederation -- and with it, the federal government -- is a creation of the provinces. As such, provinces very much do have rights. As a matter of fact, those rights are clearly outlined in the Canadian Constitution, a document that previous Liberal governments never hesitated to shred just a little whenever they had eyed a matter of provincial jurisdiction they wanted to tread upon -- such as natural resources, as they did with the National Energy Program (for just one example).

Furthermore, as deeply personal as the current Conservative attack ads are, they barely hold a candle to Liberal ads that suggested Harper would declare martial law over Canadian cities if elected Prime Minister.

Last but not least, Canadians have expressed their support for both fixed election dates and an elected Senate. (Sadly, Stephen Harper declined to stick by his guns on either issue, calling an election well ahead of his fixed election date law, and appointing 18 Senators when it appeared that he might lose government to an ill-conceived and undemocratic Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition government.)

It's on this last note that one may question the patriotism of Russell herself -- after all, how patriotic could someone who clearly has so much contempt for the opinions of her fellow citizens possibly be?

While one may question the patriotism of Russell, however, one shouldn't.

Patriotism, most simply defined, is simply love for and devotion to one's country. This doesn't necessarily mean that one will spend their entire life living in their country, or that they will always guarantee with the direction of their country.

In fact, one would argue that time abroad -- even as long a period as 32 years -- should strengthen the patriotism of anyone who truly loves their country. In fact, one should argue that a patriotic individual should wish to correct the course of their country if they feel it has gone awry.

A patriotic citizen should never be completely satisfied with their country. Their love of their country should continually drive them to seek ways to improve it. If a citizen believes that adopting certain features of another country's political system within their own would benefit their country, a patriotic citizen should prefer to have tiny-minded individuals like Frances Russell call them unpatriotic than to see their country proceed without that benefit.

To tell a citizen or a leader that whatever improvements they want to make to their country must fall within a specific ideological boundary under penalty of being branded unpatriotic is nothing less than the act of a selfish demagogue -- one who is unwilling to compromise on their narrow vision of the country so that it may grow and improve.

While the Conservative party's "Just Visiting" ads very much are incredibly irresponsible, so is Russell's rhetoric. She, no more than any other Canadian, has the right to impugn the patriotism of any Canadian who would seek to make Canada a better place.

It's Frances Russell who has nothing to teach Canadians about patriotism.

The Missing Link of Canadian Research & Development

Private sector oddly missing from Canadian R&D

Writing in an op/ed column in the Globe and Mail, Preston Manning makes some very interesting points about research and development funding in Canada.

Manning wisely portrays the decision over how the federal government's $13 billion will be distributed as a fusion of science and economic policy, and equally-wisely notes that how the government spends this money will have important impacts on the health, economic prospects, and life quality of Canadians.

Interestingly enough, Canada's total expenditure on research and development is dwarfed by the total expenditure of other OECD countries. Yet Canada's public research and development sector -- taking place in universities and hospitals -- is among the best financed in the world.

Instead, the questionable state of Canadian R&D seems to actually be the result of lax financial commitments by the Canadian private sector.

Too many private sector companies, it seems, lack innovation strategies that will lead to the development of new products and technologies that overall improve the value of the Canadian economy, making Canada more competitive in the global economy.

This is actually quite a different tale from the one told by many who insist that the Conservative government actually cut science funding in the 2009 budget -- whereas, in fact, the government merely shifted money between funding agencies.

Manning also noted that there seems to be confusion between the government and researchers regarding how the government will distribute science funding -- an issue that Manning recently addressed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"When [researchers] don't understand the process and the structure, I think there's suspicion," Manning noted. "Was somebody else lobbying better than I was lobbying, or do they like this more than that? I think when you don't know the process or the structure, you can misinterpret motives and why things happen the way they do."

Another obstacle to collaboration between government and private research, however, seems to be a notion that the private sector has no obligation to invest in R&D because the government will do it for them.

Those companies that have embraced this idea certainly aren't doing themselves any favours. A company that declines to develop new technologies and new products are companies that will instead be chasing new developments by their competitors -- far from an ideal situation for any profit-seeking company.

It's troubling to think that a surplus of Canadian companies don't seem to understand the importance of investing in R&D, even through public/private partnerships.

Without involvement by private companies it becomes difficult to transfer new technological developments from the laboratory to the market, as Manning alludes.

Not only do companies that don't invest in R&D not do themselves any favours, but they don't do the market any favours either.

There is a public solution to Canada's research and development dilemma, and interestingly enough it doesn't lay with government. It lays with individual Canadians and Canadian investment funds to invest in Canadian R&D companies, and favour investment with companies that conduct R&D in Canada.

Although investors may not be as powerful at this specific point in time as they once were -- the stark decline in investor confidence has clearly taken some of the punch out of the clout of various investment funds -- Canadians can still look to the future and future opportunities to speak with their investment dollars, and use those dollars to vote in favour of Canadian R&D.

Simply Too Close to Call

No clear front-runner in Ontario PC leadership campaign

As Ontario Progressive Conservatives weigh their leadership candidates ahead of the leadership convention later this month, it seems that the jury is still out on the matter of leadership.

In a recent poll of Ontario Tories Tim Hudak narrowly leads the pack with 26% of decided voters, with Christine Elliott trailing by four points, at 22%. Frank Klees is sitting third with 17% and Frank Hillier trails the pack with 14%.

19% of Ontario's Progressive Conservatives remain undecided.

Considering that no one candidate has enough support to break the 50% barrier on the first ballot even if all undecided voters were to gravitate to their candidacy, second choices will become very important in this contest.

Christine Elliott is the top second choice with 17%, leading Hudak by a single point in this category. Klees follows by yet another single point at 15%, and Hillier again trails the pack as the second choice of 7% of decided Progressive Conservatives.

In the closest position that passes for front-runner status in this campaign, Hudak enjoys the benefit of an endorsement by Mike Harris, the last Progressive Conservative to lead his party to a majority government in Queen's Park -- even if the first of the two was an unlikely majority.

Yet the National Post's Dan Arnold notes that Hudak may be suffering the same affliction that Alberta PC leadership candidate Jim Dinning succumbed to. Dinning, along with Ted Morton, eventually compromised the campaign to Ed "Stalemate" Stelmach.

As the presumed frontrunner, Hudak's campaign has suffered from a lack of tangible policy. Hudak's policy centrepiece, a bid to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission, is believed to have driven support away from his campaign to that of Elliott, his presumed primary rival in this contest.

With these particular conditions, one can likely expect a stalemate to emerge at the June 27 PC leadership convention. Under those kinds of conditions, one may expect Frank Klees to replicate Ed Stelmach's feat, and emerge as a brokered leader.

This may not be such a bad thing. Stelmach went on to win one of the most dominant majority governments in the history of Alberta.

Then again, Ontario is an incredibly far cry from Alberta. As Tory leader Frank Klees may have to struggle to find life, let alone be assured a long tenure in the Premier's Office.

The Begining of the End of the Alberta Conservative Party

When Ralph Klein stepped down as Premier of Alberta and leader of the Conservative Party of Alberta, I thought to myself “Thank god, that drunken asshole of a leader is finally gone.” Two years later I find myself thinking “Wow at least under Klein things were fun."

It’s difficult to admit that Klein is a better leader then Stemach. I mean, looking back on his history the honorable Klein had these gems under his belt.

-Barging into an Edmonton Homeless shelter, then telling homeless man, Mark Shea, to “get a job” while throwing money at him. It turned out Shea had a job, but was unable to afford a home in the Edmonton Area.

-Throwing a book at legislative paige Jennifer Huygen while yelling the immoral phrase “I don’t need this crap”. This incident becomes 100 times worse when people meet Huygen and realize that she is possibly the nicest person on the planet.

-Showing off a paper from a communications class in the legislature and bragged about the grade he received. Later people found out that Klein copied and pasted important sections of the paper from various sources. Since then Albertan students have had to deal with stricter anti-plagiarism laws.

Any one of these incidents would have ended most political careers, so it’s not surprising that Premier Stelmach acts as if Albertans will continue to vote for the Conservative Party till the end of time. However, Stelmach doesn’t seem to understand this simple truth about Albertans – they are a pragmatic people.

So long as his the books were balanced, cash continued to flow, jobs were created— Albertan’s would continue to support the Conservative Party. Klein could have sacrificed Jennifer Huygen to Satan on national television, then throw Mark Shea into a tailings pond and so long as he doled out another “Prosperity Bonus Check” he would have gained another majority government.

The thing when King Ralph began to indicate certain controversial political views such as private healthcare or banning gay marriage – he would eventually back down. He understood that while Albertans would support him on the managing of the economy, if he ever acted on his right wing rhetoric, he’d find a revolution on his hands.
Ed Stelmach doesn’t seem to understand this fact. Since he has taken the reigns he’s managed to redo the royalty system in such a way that he’s managed to anger corporations that felt the increase was unfair AND people that wanted an increase in royalty rates in the first place. Instead of convincing Albertans that nuclear power is safe and emphasizing the economic benefits of it, it feels like the government is ramming it down Albertans' throats. And then there is Bill 44, a bill that is an embarrassment to the Albertan Education system.

The recently passed Bill makes it possible for parents to withdraw their children from classes if a “controversial subject” is brought up— sending fears down everyone’s spine that it will be used to allow parents to pull their children out of class when subjects like evolution, homosexuality, and others are brought up with the justification of protection “human rights”.

Environmentalists, The Teachers' Union, Gay Rights Activists, Athiests, The Oil Industry, all are amazingly being systematically infuriated by the Stelmach Government. And while an election is still years away, legislation like Bill 44 will only serve to rally people against their government.

Conservatives and The Sex Offenders Registry

It's with a great amount of pride and excitement that I welcome Victor Vargas, an alumnus of my not-so-humble Alma Mater as a new contributor here at The Nexus. Victor is extremely well-travelled, extremely intelligent and has a way of saying things that embodies the very meaning of the word "unique".

With great pleasure I welcome victor to what will hopefully be a long-time venue for his unique "Victorspeak".

Conservatives promise to overhaul sex offender registry

At long last, a review panel of Canada's Sex Offenders Registry has decided it's "ineffective". To emphasize how ineffective this registry is, lets go over some of the highlights:

- Since it's creation five years ago, it has not been responsible for solving a single sex crime.
- Police say they are not permitted to tap the registry to prevent crimes — only to solve ones that have already occurred.
- David Truax, Ontario Provincial Police superintendent, says Ontario's sex registry gets 475 hits daily. The review committee was told that the Federal Registry about 165 times a year.
- The Ottawa registry is, to it's credit, only costing $2 million dollars in start up costs, and has an operating budget of $400,000.
- The National Registry is not mandatory. A prosecutor must apply for an order, and a judge can refuse. It also means that prosecutors can use inclusion in the registry as a bargaining chip in deal making.

Now if this was new information that the federal government didn't have access to, I could understand that it was able to go on as long as it did. However this Maclean's article, "Canada's Sex Offender Registry a National Embarrassment" by Michael Frisolanti had already figured this out by January 14, 2008.

In that article (an excellent read), Frisolanti had uncovered most of the points that were brought up to the review panel. One of the parts that interested me the most was when Macleans asked the Conservative government to comment on it and got this response.

Maclean's wanted to discuss some of those questions with senior officials in both the federal Department of Justice and the Public Safety ministry. Both interview requests were declined. Instead, [Stockwell] Day's press secretary, Mélisa Leclerc, provided an email response to a list of written questions. "Concerns related to the limitations in the legislation have been raised by law enforcement," she wrote. "Issues that were known at the time of drafting Bill S-3, and on which there was national consensus, were addressed."

As for specific shortcomings (no proactive use, the 15-day rule, discretionary inclusion), she wrote: "These are important and valid concerns. Our government is prepared to examine options to ensure that any loopholes are closed ... While the previous government may have seen the registry as primarily a public relations exercise, we regard it as a critical tool and will work with law enforcement agencies and the provinces and territories to strengthen it as required."

Now had the Conservatives addressed these concerns June of 2008 as opposed to June 2009 I would be ecstatic, but letting this amount of time elapse between when they realized the problems in the system till finally addressing them is just irresponsible.

And strangely this was a golden opportunity for the Conservatives last year. Stephen Harper could have rode onto the scene on a white horse and immediatly amended the Liberals' pathetic registry system, showing that he's a great leader and that the Conservatives were going to be a good and responsible government. Heck, he could have made it one of the points of his election campaign last year that would have earned him considerable support from parents accross the nation. Fixing the issue now feels like the Conservatives either didn't understand the importance of fixing the sex offender registry or were simply being lazy.

The Deadliest Terrorist

Taliban judged second best to IRA

For a show that was expected to generate an overwhelming wave of controversy, Spike TV's recent episode of The Deadliest Warrior pitting the Taliban against the Irish Republican Army has actually resulted in a rather meager response.

In a show that compared the training and weaponry of the two organizations -- comparing the AR-18 assault rifle to the AK-47, a flame thrower to an RPG rocket launcher, a landmine to a nail bomb and a slingshot to a bayonet -- the conclusion drawn, via computer simulation, was that the IRA was the superior terrorist force.

The show's analysts judged the AR-18, the RPG rocket, the nail bomb and the bayonet to be the superior weapons.

The results of the show leads one to even more deeply suspect that one of the key mistakes in NATO's prosecution of the war in Afghanistan was the American and British decisions to draw their focus away from Afghanistan and apply it to Iraq. In particular, British forces who had experience dealing with the IRA "troubles" in Ireland would have made for a tremendous asset to NATO operations in Afghanistan.

Then again, there are obvious questions about whether the desert theatre of warfare -- as opposed to the mostly-urban theatre in Ireland -- would have minimized the benefit of the lessons the British learned fighting the IRA.

All the same, the season finale of The Deadliest Warrior leads one to conclude that one of the worst errors made in Afghanistan was getting too ambitious in opening another front in the War on Terror.

Waiting for the Worm to Turn

Those following the sad story of the murder of Dr George Tiller on the Canadian Blogosphere have certainly noticed one particular trend.

The foul stench of hypocrisy wafting forth from the Canadian Cynic Temple of Sycophantic Groupthink has been unmistakable.

Cynic, who in the past has actually applauded abortion-centred violence -- but selectively, only when it's addressed against anti-abortion activists -- has tried to turn Dr Tiller's murder into a smoking gun denoting the culpability of the entire anti-abortion movement in the doctor's murder.

But, as it turns out, that is only the tip of the hypocritical iceberg. In the deepest and most damaging instance of that hypocrisy yet, is Cynic noting that many Blogging Tories have not only failed to denounce Dr Tiller's murder, but have failed to take note of the story at all.

Naturally, the mind of a crazed demagogue demands something to denounce his ideological opponents for. If it wasn't for what his ideological opponents were writing about Dr Tiller everyone knew it was going to be for what they weren't writing about Dr Tiller.

Yet Cynic seems to be remarkably silent about the comments of Kevron, one Cynic's most devoted mindless toadies, who actually mustered the temerity to suggest that he believes murdering opponents to abortion is actually part of the pro-abortion agenda:

"'the shooter was acting on pro-choice philosophy'

then why didn't he murder an anti-choicer?"

It's certainly a definitive statement. In fact, it simply begs for the word "if" to be slapped in front of it, whereupon it actually reads more like this:

"If the shooter was acting on the pro-choice philosophy, then why didn't he murder an anti-choicer?"

Interestingly enough, those who have had the misfortune of ever encountering Kevron, anywhere have long noticed that this is an individual who has literally never had an original thought of his own.

In fact, Kevron proves to be especially keen to act on the marching orders issued by Canada's premier blogging psychopath. So much so that one wonders whether or not Kevron's particular slip, his espoused belief that murdering abortion opponents is part of the pro-abortion philosophy, is a belief that actually originated with Canadian Cynic.

After all, this is an individual who has proven perfectly willing to embrace and applaud violence against anti-abortion activists. One almost hates to continually drag the Ed Snell affair back out of the grave, but it's utterly amusing to witness the extent to which Canadian Cynic and his fascist cohorts don't understand the extent to which this utterly decimates their credibility.

While Cynic may believe that the extremely closed-loop denizens of his blogging community represent the mainstream of Canadian society, the truth is that mainstream Canadians have very little patience about those who demand that violence against their ideological brethren be denounced even as they applaud violence against their ideological opponents.

It's in this particular vein that Canadian Cynic has yet to denounce Kevron's belief that the murder of anti-abortion advocates is part of the pro-abortion philosophy -- a belief that the vast majority of the pro-abortion movement would actually denounce, just as the vast majority of the anti-abortion movement has denounced the murder of abortion clinic doctors.

Even if Kevron's statement is actually a misstatement, and doesn't actually represent his views on the matter -- and with an individual who embodies a peculiar mix of vapidness and ideological fervour to the extant that Kevron does, one could never be certain -- one would expect Cynic to treat that individual's statements the way that he would treat a misstatement by an anti-abortion activist.

Considering that Cynic will gleefully resort to lies and the fabrication of a position in order to smear his opponents, one knows it doesn't take much.

It's amusing, but to invest too much time and energy in this particular little foible is to give Canadian Cynic far more credit than he actually deserves -- it risks taking him far more seriously than this incredibly hateful and dishonest individual is actually entitled to.

ADQ Searching for New Leader, Pronto

ADQ speeds up quest for new leader

As the May calendar flips into June, the Action Democratique du Quebec has decided to accelerate its leadership contest.

The party will vote for its new leader on October 18, 2009. The vote had previously been scheduled for February 2010.

This happens as a fourth candidate, Chauveau MNA Gerald Deltell, seems prepared to take to the field. Deltell has been the subject of a "draft Gerald" movement which could make him an instant contender for the leadership of the hobbled party.

“Many people have asked me to be a leadership candidate,” Deltell recently admitted. “I don’t like politics. “I love it.”

Deltell would join Gilles Taillon, Christian Levesque and Eric Caire in the race to become the next ADQ leader, and only the second leader the 15-year-old party will ever know.

Deltell was previously a journalist, and had covered Quebec's National Assembly for TQS.

Janvier Grondin, the man behind Mario Dumont's accelerated departure from the ADQ leadership, has welcomed the prospect of Deltell joining the leadership race with enthusiasm. “I really like his style,” Grondin noted.

Ironically, Deltell's current riding was formerly the home of Gilles Taillon, who in December 2008 ran and lost in the riding of Chapleau, which may give Deltell a serious head-up over Taillon -- Mario Dumont's former deputy leader -- in the contest.

This, of course, is all assuming that Deltell decides to run.

A Killing Joke for American Conservatism

Many American conservatives don't get Stephen Colbert

There is no doubt that Stephen Colbert is a comic genius.

In just a few short years on the air, the Colbert Report has managed to eclipse Jon Stewart's Daily Show in popularity, and has endeared itself to many people around the world -- within the United States and outside of it -- as a masterful parody of American arch-conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and "Papa Bear" Bill O'Reilly.

Yet for concerned American conservatives -- those who probably love Colbert's show as much as anyone -- a recent study conducted by the University of Ohio has revealed a disturbing factoid about the show. It seems that a majority of American conservatives may believe that Colbert is actually one of them.

Colbert's parody may be more stunningly close to the genuine article than many people had realized.

"I'm thrilled by it!" Colbert says of the study. "From the very beginning, I wanted to jump back and forth over the line of meaning what I say, and the truth of the matter is I'm not on anyone's side, I'm on my side."

"The important thing is that the audience laughs," he adds.

The audience has, indeed, laughed, including at Colbert's appearance at the 2006 White House Correspondant's Dinner, when it seemed that then-US President George W Bush may not have understood Colbert's parody until it was utterly too late for him.

But this revelation should be especially disturbing to American conservatives who have become concerned about the direction that individuals like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and others have drug American conservatism -- into the fringes of lunacy and extremism.

The self-glorifying, barely-functional image Colbert portrays on the show is not one that embodies the finest intellectual traditions of American conservatism. American conservatism, it seems, has come a long way down since the days of William F Buckley.

Buckley had always insisted that conservative political parties should support conservative movements, as opposed to conservative movements supporting political parties. Buckley's brand of conservatism was one that stood by its principles and thought for itself -- a stark contrast to the parodic conservatism of the Colbert Report, in which Colbert issues marching orders to the "Nation" and the Nation complies.

Buckley's conservatism was one that would stand against the Republican party when necessary -- Colbert's parodic conservatism would never dream of such an act.

Buckley's conservatism was very close to the "nation and enterprise" conservatism advocated by Canadian conservative patriarch Hugh Segal, wherein the role of the government is to maintain society's institutions at a level that ensures a maximum level of freedom for a country's citizens, and allows the market to function unimpeded enough that it can meet society's needs.

At what many people consider to be a historic low for the GOP, the American conservative movement is said by many to be effectively wandering in the desert. Those intent on rebuilding both the Republican party and American conservatism are in desperate need of an influential new intellectual and spiritual leader -- someone prepared to pull the strands of intellectual and populist conservatism together again to find a new balance for American conservatism.

This exercise remains at the heart of the activities of the National Committee for a New America -- an organization that, if allowed to function as intended, should manage to re-constitute American conservatism just as the Reform party eventually managed to re-constitute Canadian conservatism.

But so long as many American conservatives are unable to tell Stephen Colbert from the genuine article of American conservatives -- Colbert's character seems to implicitly reject any efforts to re-organize American conservatism -- it will be extremely difficult for any genuine intellectual or spiritual leader to emerge.

Then again, one remembers that Preston Manning's efforts to re-constitute Canadian conservatism took sixteen years to come to fruition, and eighteen years to bear political fruit.

The efforts to re-constitute American conservatism may take a long time to culminate, but with any luck, will be successful enough that American conservatives could look back on the Colbert Report and laugh, understanding the joke.


Watch Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Parody That (Forever) Continues to Write Itself

"Progressive political thought" - UR are doing it wrong

As the story surrounding the tragic murder of Dr George Tiller continues to develop, members of the portion of the Canadian blogosphere that purports to be "progressive" has proven relentless in its efforts to wrest any possible rhetorical advantage out of the entire affair.

As has tended to be typical of Canada's most extreme left-wingers, their tactic is to portray anyone who has ever opposed abortion as directly responsible for Dr Tiller's killing.

An always-amusing case is that of Mike of Rational Reasons -- who, for the record, is not above threatening those who disagree with him with gun violence -- who insists that he's angry with individuals who "purposely espouse violent rhetoric, celebrate past perpetrators of violence and murderers as 'martyrs' and try to create false moral equivalence with a medial procedure and a planned premeditated murder of a 67-year-old professional, father and grandfather."

Interestingly enough, one of the individuals he identifies as espousing this violent rhetoric is Blue Wave Canada's Suzanne. Yet when one checks in with what Suzanne actually had to say about the murder of Dr Tiller, his diatribe -- so beloved by his fellow members of the lunatic fringe -- immediately begins to ring hollow.

Yet Suzanne's unqualified denunciation of Dr Tiller's murder isn't nearly good enough for those who only care about Dr Tiller to the extent to which his murder can gain them rhetorical advantage. Thus, Mike's refusal to accept the denunciation:

"Apologists for murder, and yet have the temerity to call themselves 'pro-life'.

If you don't think your non-stop idiotic 'abortion is murder' rhetoric isn't a direct cause of this crime, they you are only confirming your acceptance of this crime.

How many pro-choice people have killed anyone in the 'pro-life' camp?

None. Zero. Ziltch.

You disgust me with your backpedaling and pretending not to be a part of the problem. Damn you all to hell.

The least you can do is admit that your constant babbling about murder has finally led someone to act on it.

Take some personal responsibility."

Certainly, the "abortion is murder" rhetoric peddled by many anti-abortion activists is troubling, and for many reasons. In the case of a medically-necessary abortion -- one necessary to save the mother's life -- the denial of an abortion could very well be argued to be murder.

But beyond this, when one takes a closer look at Suzanne's comments on the matter:

"I want the culprit caught, prosecuted and jailed for life.

Predictably, the opposition will use this to smear all pro-lifers as violent, even though when a small number of people in any other group are violent, they denounce generalizations."

One recognizes precisely how desperate Mike's rhetoric truly is.

Not only did Suzanne denounce the murder in no uncertain terms, but she also managed to predict what demagogues like Mike and Canadian Cynic would empty every barrel attempting to do -- smear anyone who has ever opposed or criticized abortion with responsibility for Dr Tiller's murder.

It becomes even more amusing when one circles back around to the very incident that Mike tries to hard to minimalize in his post -- the assault on 69-year-old Ed Snell by 23-year-old Nathan Richardson.

Mike raises the argument that Suzanne is responsible for Dr Tiller's murder because she has "celebrated past perpetrators of violence". Yet, amusingly enough, Mike and his cohorts in the pro-abortion movement celebrated the violence perpetrated by Richardson -- an act which came perilously close to killing Snell. Mike himself did not hesitate to participate in that celebration.

So how is it that Mike expects that anyone outside of his extremely closed loop should take him seriously in the wake of his own attitude toward abortion-centred violence -- violence he isn't merely willing to applaud, but even participate in himself?

It would be hard for many people to do so.

But what continues to dwell in that grey space between amusing and alarming is the extent to which many self-professed "progressives" continue to take this individual seriously.

History's most influential progressive leaders -- individuals such as Howard Zinn and Dr Martin Luther King -- rejected violence. Yet Mike not only seems to celebrate violence, but even embraces it on his own -- under a bizarre fantasy of being "seargeant at arms", nonetheless.

Not only that, but Mike denounces opponents of abortion as spreading hatred for people like Dr Tiller -- and yet the very purpose of his efforts to rhetoricize Dr Tiller's murder is to spread hatred for those who oppose abortion. The irony, thick as Mike's skull, somehow remains lost on him.

Even more ironically, there have been groups throughout history who have, as Mike nd his cohorts have, embraced violence. They weren't progressives.

At this point there is no question that individuals such as Mike and Canadian Cynic are not only a parody of progressive thought, but are actually a discredit to progressive politics so long as they remain unopposed by real progressives.

Sadly, those in Canada's blogosphere who come closest to being real progressives just won't do it. It seems they'd rather cuddle up to these fascists.