CIVITATENSIS

The Oracle at Delphi didn’t always get it right. It understood that some of man’s fate is in his own hands, as Machiavelli acknowledged in Chapter 25 of The Prince two millennia later.  Fortune only governs half our actions when we exercise our skills.

One has to give some credit to Lawrence Martin here for acknowledging mistakes, though he denies that the mistakes are  his:  he does not grasp the proper relationship between fortune and skill.

Martin manages to summon enough continence to stop the venom inside his pen from flowing, ever so momentarily, to acknowledge that the prime minister has surpassed his expectations.

Moreover, Stephen Harper has proven him wrong. In large part, this is, Martin also admits, because the Liberal opposition leader has turned out to be Dion the Second, only worse.  But Martin refuses to entertain the notion that it might possibly be in some part the result of the prime minister’s skills.

A year ago, I forecast that, in 2009, we would probably see the end of Stephen Harper. Yep, he would be having such a dreadful time with the brutal recession, a new opposition leader and a liberal tidal wave from the south that he would likely step aside, pass the torch.

[...]

In 2009, he has put all the year’s suppositions to rest. The recession didn’t bury him; it buoyed him. Michael Ignatieff didn’t bury him, he buoyed him. The Barack Obama tide never hit.

The venom does eventually drip. Martin blames fortune for the prime minister’s success as much as he assigns to her his own divining failures. Damn fate for  interfering with Martin’s superior  visionary abilities.

It couldn’t be that Prime Minister Harper has abilities that Martin, having blindly decided that only Jean Chretien had political skills, could not possibly see.

It is rather unskilful for Lawrence Martin to blame fortune for his blind shortcomings. It reveals his weakness and inability to adapt and counter the random effects of fortune upon his own actions and divinations.

Fortune might not take kindly to such spurious accusations from an Oracle wanna-be. And since Martin’s visionary skills are rather thin, he may not be able to envisage and contain her ravaging power when she finally unleashes it upon him in punishment for assigning to her the weaknesses ensuing from his own myopia.

The Dalai Lama is on Canadian soil (in Calgary), and Count Michael Ignatieff, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, is “at an event celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China,”  according to his own tweet this afternoon.

How DO Tibet supporters in the Liberal party feel about that?

One can agree or disagree with David Warren, but it’s hard to walk away from his writing disappointed.  Here is a taste of his last piece on political correctness:

It is crucially important to fight back: to denounce those who try to silence us; to subject their intellectual fashion cults to public ridicule; to show solidarity with those who are being muffled and victimized; to give them encouragement, and prevent their isolation; to defy openly the edicts of the politically correct; to retaliate against every attempt to encroach upon academic freedom. (”Forgive, but retaliate,” was Prof. George’s formula, by analogy to Reagan’s old Cold-War detente formula: “Trust, but verify.”)

A good place to start would be with those orientation programs. They need to be exposed for what they are, and challenged in forensic detail. Professors of goodwill, regardless of their own political views, should go out of their way to uphold the honour of their profession, by assuring incoming students that the university is not a closed leftwing camp; that social and political indoctrination is not a natural expression of academic ideals, but a subversion and perversion of them.

See here for the whole thing.

Nicaragua may be headed for civil war for the first time this century. If we count conservatively (how else would I count anything?), they had three big ones last century, each worse than the first.

The Sandinistas under Daniel Ortega have just stolen the Nicaraguan municipal elections held November 9th (Doesn’t that sound like a reprise of 1984?) backed by Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin. There is mounting evidence of blatant and massive fraud. There is mounting evidence that Nicaraguans don’t want to roll over on this one. Ortega’s traditional domestic allies have abandoned him. For example, the man with whom Ortega stole the 1984 elections, Sergio Ramirez, broke off from Ortega years ago and founded his own party. Ramirez’ party has now been banned.

There is a new Cold War afoot in Latin America.  Chavez and his Latin American acolytes appear to be Cold War warriors from the Left.  They see the advancing American empire under every bed in the region. All of it at a time that the Empire has been so occupied in the Middle East that it has had trouble remembering where Latin America is. Nobody said that it had to be connected to reality, but the rhetoric does have resonance with their followers.

Looking at the 20th century civil wars in Nicaragua, the next one will be worse than the previous ones. Vladimir Putin is already supplying weapons to Daniel Ortega. The Nicaraguan opposition?: parties, NGOs and individuals are slowly and systematically being intimidated, beaten, persecuted and some journalists even assassinated. The Sandinista strategy prepares the ground for Ortega’s next move. The removal of the constitutional obstacle to his continuation in power.

The armed opposition will begin, if it has not already, like all the others did before. Quietly, a fed up group of individuals at the social and political margins of the country will pick up weapons and head for the hills.  The boiling point may already have been reached as more and more people become aware or suspect the Sandinista long plan, when they realize that Ortega and his wife have no intentions of relinquishing power at the end of their term in two years. Little by little, the urban elites will catch up to the rebels and join.

The rest just follows a well-established logic.

Michael Coren has chosen to be charitable in his interpretation of how Quebec journalists, politicians and members of the intelligentsia in general are reacting to the news that some of the candidates in the present election campaign have Christian beliefs of one sort or another.

Coren thinks that Duceppe is stupidly going after Opus Dei caricature, disingenuously detaching it from the Catholic Church.

 But Dan Brown is evidently big in Quebec and, much to the chagrin of the Bloc, so might be the Conservatives. Accordingly, Gilles Duceppe announced that the Tory candidate in Saint-Hubert-Saint-Bruno, Nicole Charbonneau Barron, was an Opus Dei member. Then Raymond Gravel, a Catholic priest and outgoing Bloc MP, opined that, “Social conservatives such as members of Opus Dei may be running for office in order to change policies concerning abortion and same-sex marriage.”

Earth to dotty separatist: It’s not Opus Dei but the Roman Catholic Church that teaches that life begins at conception and that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. You might know that if you weren’t suspended from almost all priestly duties. Indeed it is entirely likely that in a less liberal place than Quebec in the 1980s, this former prostitute who worked in Montreal’s gay leather bars would never have been ordained in the first place.

They are not at all detaching it from the Roman Church. They know very well that their smear of an Opus Dei candidate is also an attack on the Church. They also know well that there will be no backlash. Quebec is the same province in which a bunch of radical feminists desacrated Mary Queen of the World cathedral but the police refused to press charges.

Among journalists, academics and politicians of most stripes in Quebec it has for long been fashionable to ridicule Christianity, and Catholicism in particular. It is the bigoted fetish of their Intelligentsia to claim that the Christian faith renders one incapable of occupying and exercising public office. It’s what passes for intellectual enlightenment and sophistication. It’s as fashionable in Quebec as their anti-semitic cousins were in the nineteenth century. Quebec’s anti-Catholicism has become the last refuge for ‘enlightened’ scoundrels.

See also here for a peak on how Le Devoir reports the presence of Christians on the ballot as though they were announcing that candidates have cancerous moral failures (en francais). Barbara Kay examines the double standard.

It’s hard to dignify the risible but effected indignation of Citoyen Dion over Ritz’ tasteless joke, but we are in the middle of an election. In what was a semi-private conversation, Ritz cracked jokes. He has offered sincere apologies. That should be that.

Has there even been a Grit that didn’t make pseudo-comical remarks about their political opponents to their peers? So let’s get off the soapbox. Ritz apologised, but he doesn’t owe anyone his first-born daughter. Le citoyen francais says that

…Mr. Harper has no choice now but to fire the Minister.

“But now, Mr. Harper has no choice. He must fire this man because of his complete lack of sensitivity that he expressed himself by these unacceptable remarks. He must be fired right away,” Mr. Dion said.

There was a time when I could at least respect Professor Dion’s academic opinions. The professor of political science ought to know well that “sensitivity” or the lack thereof is not a recognised category of ministerial responsibility.  Neither is bad humour or lack of comedic ability. If it were, Dion himself could never have become a minister of the Crown.

In a similar contexts, Dion has probably said worse of others. We all have.

Garth Turner’s campaign (Liberal MP for Halton)  gets caught in a straight but crass attempt to manipulate the media. It’s worth it listening to Garth while he tries to peddle away.  The Grits wanted him; they have him.  See here and here.

How likely is it that Garth Turner didn’t know, as he has claimed in the interview that followed, who he was talking to? How likely is it that Turner does not know his campaign manager’s son? How likely is it even that the campaign manager’s son does not know Garth Turner?

Good for CPAC for showing Turner their displeasure.

Ed Stelmach and Rona Ambrose address the Alberta bashing coming from central Canadian politicians like Taliban Jack and Citoyen Dion.

Stephen Harper’s lady in northern Alberta, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Rona Ambrose, picked up where Stelmach left off.

“Political leaders like Jack Layton and Stephane Dion are going to use the good things coming out of Alberta and twist and distort them, and use them against us,” Ambrose spat.

“We cannot forsake the jobs of regular people across this country for a risky experiment like the Green Shift,” she continued.

And she concluded that Dion wants to “punish” Alberta.

Grandinite finely addresses the stupidity of the media (the Toronto Star) from the same region on the same issue:

I pity da fool who depends on the Toronto Star for balanced coverage of anything Alberta.

Anyone who watched MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican Convention last week knows that Keith Olberman appointed himself the counter spinner of whatever he decided needed to be counter spinned. Any appearance of balance went out the window.

While political counter spinning is not a crime, Olberman was openly hostile to Sarah Palin and to Rudy Guliani, sometimes making statements that were irrelevant and inappropriate. His silly comments were mostly designed to undermine them and their message. Any journalistic integrity pretty much left Olbermann in his open attempt to rebut and redirect impressions about the speeches. At that point, I switched channels. I voted with my remote.

There may have been a few other people who did the same for the MSNBC executives to pull him out of the anchor chair for such political events.

Throughout the primaries and summer, MSNBC argued that Olbermann and Matthews could serve as dispassionate anchors on political news nights and that viewers would accept them in that role, but things fell apart during the conventions.

Someone’s concerns were clearly well grounded about Olbermann abilities (or lack thereof). The lack of journalistic ethics didn’t get Olbermann fired though –which is too bad. One of the reasons may be here:

Olbermann has been a hero with left-leaning viewers and keyed MSNBC’s growth among coveted young viewers.

h/t: Dr. Roy

I ran into this piece by David Warren. The whole of it is really good, but this one paragraph caught my attention:

To them [regular folks], the stark facts of Mrs Palin’s reaction to a Down’s syndrome pregnancy, and to her daughter’s unseasonable one, shines as day to night against Mr Obama’s, “If my daughter makes a mistake, I don’t want her punished with a baby.”

What a way to look at children… And this is from a man who has two daughters.

Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista president of Nicaragua, elected again in 2006, is the architect of a nefarious constitutional re-arrangement in his country. The legal deal, or “el pacto” as Nicaraguans call it, divides most state powers between two corrupt signing parties, and squeezes out most other small and medium size political entities. It so happens that the delisted parties are the backbone of effective opposition.

The Arnoldo Aleman faction of the Liberals is not much opposition to the ruling Sandinistas at all. They are one of the contracting parties in el pacto, and their leader is a convicted felon, who siphoned millions from the public purse. His partner, Daniel Ortega, accused of raping his daughter for nearly a decade, has not faced justice for the crimes against a child. In short, the criminals are running the little Central American republic, and they have re-arranged the state powers to forestall prosecution against them.
Daniel Ortega and Robert Mugabe were the heroes of the North American and the Europeans Left during the 1980s. But there is a mounting wave of opposition against the rapist president in Nicaragua. Only recently having seen the light, many of his warring comrades and intellectual co-religionists are turning their backs on him in increasing numbers. Nicaragua’s youth have taken an active role. Ortega’s recent political campaign used a musical re-arrangement of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” A group of young Nicaraguans is asking Yoko Ono to demand that Daniel Ortega and his party cease and desist in the use of her husband’s music as an unofficial anthem for the Sandinistas. Here is a link to the video on youtube.

Update: From the above mentioned youth:

The song “Give Peace a Chance” is being used by a corrupt government in Nicargua as the Party’s anthem!!!

We plead all John Lennon fans and anyone else who is in favor of Democracy to please join this group and show your support!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21281645582&ref=mf

When Quebeckers complain about the price of gasoline, they often think that Albertans are ripping them off.

Well, Quebeckers may be getting ripped off at the pumps, but it’s other Quebeckers doing it.

Scott said the charges stem from an extensive investigation that showed gas retailers in the four markets phoned each other and agreed on a price.

“The evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of gasoline retailers in these markets participated in the cartel,” the Competition Bureau said in a news release.

[...]

Those who were charged operated in Sherbrooke, Victoriaville, Thetford Mines and Magog, cities that are all south of Montreal.

The companies that were charged are: Les Petroles Therrien Inc., operating under the Petro-T banner, and Distributions Petrolieres Therrien Inc. ($179,000), and Ultramar Inc. ($1,850,000). One individual, Jacques Ouellet, an employee of Ultramar, also pleaded guilty and was fined $50,000.

Green Idiots and Stupid reporters seem suddenly worried that there is a food crisis. They seem   surprised that their favorite “green” policies are causing a “global food crisis.”

Good Lord! How blind do you have to be? When you feed corn to your Hummer so that you can go buy a latte at Starbucks, people whose diet consist of corn are going to go hungry every where.     It’s called fundamental economics.

Parties in Parliament, the government included, are suddenly no longer in favor of foodstuffs being burnt by combustion engines.

Of interest.

The Sûreté du Québec is investigating after graffiti was found on the mausoleum that serves as the final resting place of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.A spokesperson for the Sûreté du Québec said it appears the graffiti was left sometime Friday night or early Saturday morning.

It was spray-painted on to different parts of the grey limestone mausoleum in St. Remi de Napierville, a town just south of Montreal in the Montérégie region.

[...]

The word “traitor” in French was also found on one wall.

This blog is no friend of Pierre Trudeau, but one doesn’t have to be a recipient of brown paper bags filled with money in the Montreal area to recognise tomb-desecrating, FLQ-sympathizing cowards for what they are.

Roman Catholics in industrialised countries are probably not done dealing with the repercussions of an open policy toward homosexuals that started some 40 years ago. The New York Times, for example, has found a way to mention abusive paedophile priests in almost every story covering the visit of Pope Benedict.

In the “less tolerant” developping world, where 4 out of every 5 Roman Catholics live, paedophiles in the priesthood have not been a problem. To put it in different words, the welcoming of homosexuals into its religious ranks just to let them pursue their sexual interests is not an inherent characteristic of Catholicism worldwide. It is a cultural manifestation of moral preferences in Europe and North America. Alas, Europeans and North Americans have  not yet began to ask many questions about the cultural connection.

Interestingly and eerily coincidental, The NYT celebrates here the recent enrolling and future “ordaining” of homosexuals into a conservative rabbinical school. The event is described as reaching the threshold of the Red Sea on one’s way out of Egypt.

Egypt can mean different things in different generations. And I felt like I was on the threshold of crossing the sea, of leaving that place of narrowness. I hadn’t reached the Promised Land yet, but I was on my journey.

But as many parishioners in the Boston area (just to pick one example) know very well, the 40 subsequent years after homosexuals took up their habits brought to their young boys all the suffering of the four decades in the desert but no promised land.

Benoit Corbeil has become the sixth suspect to be charged for activities in AdScam. Corbeil is one of the central figures in the Liberal-orchestrated plot to funnel tens of millions of dollars from the public coffers into the Liberal Party of Quebec and selected friends.

Corbeil is also accused of defrauding the Party that defrauded the country.

The Mounties, in a news conference Friday morning, announced charges against Benoit Corbeil, who ran the Liberal party’s Quebec wing from 1999 to 2001.

Corbeil was arrested Friday and charged with influence peddling, fraud and conspiracy against the party and the federal government between 1997 and 2000.

He is accused of conspiring to defraud the party of $100,000 during his tenure by authorizing payment of false invoices. He will also be charged with breach of trust in an unrelated federal land deal.

Liberal Party spinner Scott Reid, of “pop corn and beer” fame, immediately took distance from Corbeil, trying to make his party sound like the victim.

Scott Reid, a former senior advisor to Martin, noted on Mike Duffy Live that Corbeil is charged with “money he took from the Liberal Party.”

“Frankly, he’s no friend of ours,” he added.

Is it a sin to steal from those who steal from others?

When then Alberta Infrastructure Minister Lyle Oberg travelled to Calgary from Edmonton on March 8, 2007, he chartered an aircraft rather than take one of the government’s four planes or a commercial flight.

He and his executive assistant flew to Calgary on a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 twin-engine plane in the late afternoon. They stayed overnight and flew back the next morning. The plane’s pilots also stayed overnight in a Calgary hotel at government expense, at a cost to taxpayers of $3,030.

Had Oberg and his assistant flown last-minute on a commercial airline, it would have cost taxpayers no more than $1,000. The official reason for the charter flight? “Attend conference or event.” There was no further explanation.

Lyle Oberg has had it rough. Once touted as the conservative candidate who would defeat Jim Dinning’s Liberals, Oberg then crashed his own leadership hopes by behaving in the way that he does better, erratically and excessively dramatic. But he delivered his supporters to Ed Stelmach, thinking perhaps that he would be more powerful next to the quiet and understated Stelmach that he would be alongside the more decisive Ted Morton.

But that didn’t work out well for him. Oberg found that Stelmach is no pushover and that someone among Stelmach’s staff appears to have read Machiavelli’s Prince: they gave Oberg an emasculated Treasury and didn’t bow to Oberg’s every whim. He complained about the castration of the office, did some energetic shouting within mostly closed doors, and quietly resolved to leave sometime ago, much earlier than he announced his departure.

He felt shakled in a job with nowhere nearly as much power as he believes himself to be worthy of. So, the poor guy rented a plane and a crew and flew to Calgary with an aide for some overnight distraction, perhaps. Give him a break. He’s had it rough. For all we know, the trip could have been a medical emergency. Lyle Oberg might continue to have delusions and see skeletons in different places and yet remain equally incapable of identifying the spots where he has supposedly seen them. His vocal chords are clearly affected by the delusions he suffers from.

Oberg might be a victim: he might not have had a choice at all. Someone with so little power could not have avoided such behavior. All he might have had left to make himself feel better was an overnight shopping trip! Check his government credit card expenses for that day.

Stelmach promised honest and conscientious government. Nice. But he doesn’t understand culture. If thirty-seven years don’t make government ministers like Oberg entitled to their entitlements, I don’t know what would.

Those who expect an answer about the high-life trip from Oberg, we’ll get none.

The so-called human rights commissions in Alberta are not the only arm of the Leviathan that is intimidating and terrorising Albertans. A new report shows how Alberta’s former Social Services (SS), are taking children away from their parents and from their homes in record numbers.

Alberta children are being plucked from their homes and placed in government care at one of the highest rates in the industrialized world, reveals a new study out of England.

And native leaders are condemning the system - which they say targets aboriginal families - as the next generation of Indian residential schools, where for a century native children were taken from their homes and raised in boarding schools.

The study, by June Thoburn of East Anglia University in Norwich, analyzed child welfare data from 24 jurisdictions, including Australia, Japan, Wales and several U.S. States. In 2004, just over 8,500 Alberta kids were in care, or 111 out of every 10,000 children under 18 in the province.

Ontario’s rate was nearly half, at 64 per 10,000. Washington State’s rate was 58, the same as New South Wales, Australia. Japan’s was the lowest at 17.

An army of social workers has been unleashed on communities in Alberta, threatening and intimidating parents and often taking the children away. Last year in my neighborhood alone, the SS visited three families in the space of two weeks with nothing but false accusations and innuendo. At least one of the teams of social engineers coerced its way into one household and proceeded to interrogate a pregnant mother and their young children under false pretences (I have names, dates and all the evidence).

The new study seems to show that last year’s operation was part of a much larger attempt by social workers to impose their ways onto parents and their children. I am not suggesting that the state has no business in caring for abused children, but the numbers clearly show that there is something afoot in Alberta.

Alberta’s Minister of Children’s Services has either been asleep at the wheel, or the rising  social workers’ raids are being conducted with her approval.

If you have been a victim of Alberta’s SS, you should contact their elected commander:

Heather Forsyth, Constituency Office
Deer Valley Shopping Centre
#13, 1221 Canyon Meadows Drive SE
Calgary, AB
Canada T2J 6G2
Phone: (403) 278-4444
Fax: (403) 278-7875
calgary.fishcreek@assembly.ab.ca

It is very likely that the Stelmachistas are preparing the ground for a possible debacle in Calgary. The rumours of conspiracy flying around seem to point in that direction.

The scenario: Calgary’s Conservative power-brokers aren’t really Conservatives, but are Dinning-ites.

Their allegiance lies not with the party, but with the fortunes of former Conservative leadership candidate Jim Dinning.

When their man was beat by the Ukrainian farmer from Northern Alberta, they unleashed Plan B - to subtly (or not so subtly) discredit Ed Stelmach.

It’s in their interests - not the party’s - to see Stelmach emerge from this election with a greatly reduced Conservative majority, thus forcing a party leadership review. Then their man Dinning (or another anointed Calgary candidate) could return from exile to assume Calgary’s God-given right to rule the Conservative Party and hence the government of Alberta.

In other words, the Tories may do as badly as some people expect them to do in Calgary on election night this coming Monday because there is a vast left-wing conspiracy against Stelmach. It is headed by Paul Martin light, one Jim Dinning and his followers. Just when Hillary Clinton seems somewhat saner by virtue of the expectations placed on her in the primaries, the leader in Edmonton is going in the opposite direction in his own campaign, gripped by conspiratorial scenarios.

In this previous post, Stelmach decried how aggressive some Calgarians have become toward him –OMG, they are even using foul language. They are the big bad oil people who’d like to believe that the provincial resources are theirs and not owned by Albertans. That may be code for Dinning supporters since it was clear for all to see that Dinning was the status-quo candidate for corporate Calgary and big oil during the Tory leadership race.

On Monday night Stelmach is likely to win, if we follow what the pollsters are saying. But if he loses significantly in Calgary as many expect, he’ll be able to blame it on pseudo conservatives from Calgary: He’ll blame it on “Money and the Dinning vote.”

Ed Stelmach’s campaign is once again being distracted by gaffes or side events they could have controlled or foreseen. Now, it’s the issue of election Returning Officers. The story about one returning officer having close ties with the Alberta Conservatives broke on Tuesday, and that caught some attention.

Since then, reporters and opposition parties have had a chance to comb the PC party lists and matched them against the returning officers of the province. The result has been an alleged 50% of Alberta returning officers have ties with the ruling party.

Returning officers are officially appointed by Elections Alberta, but they are nominated by the government:

But Jacqueline Roblin, spokeswoman for Elections Alberta said the names of returning officers actually come directly from Stelmach.

“They come right from the premier’s office with these names that they are recommending that they be appointed,” she said Wednesday.

There is no expectation in the existing rules that they be non-partisan prior to the appointment, but they are expected to act in a non-partisan manner once they are on the job. Stelmach might have been able to defend one or two of such appointments. About half of them (out of 83) is a different story.

There has been nothing untoward, of course. But someone in the Premier’s entourage needs to learn a thing or two about the appearance of impropriety, and then teach the premier. Thirty seven years in power sure can make a party seem either incompetent or carelessly indifferent, or both.

Poor Brian. He never really did know how to pick his friends. How bad was his deficient judgment when it came to people?

In a much anticipated testimony at the Commons Ethics Committee, Norman Spector had nothing but his apparent desire to bask in the light, perhaps one last time.

One has to wonder why, only now, Spector had said nothing about the monies he claimed were entering 24 Sussex. One has to wonder about the motivations of a man who’d say nothing for more than 15 years. He said nothing before because he had nothing.

During his committee testimony, Spector was asked directly if he had any evidence of wrongdoing by any government official. He flatly answered that he did not.

Instead, he told the committee how to do its business and he criticized the social and spending habits of his former boss and his wife. How unseemly!

The Mulroneys like to live well! Stop the presses! There is revelatory news that only a man who lived in the Holy Land could really have received. That Mulroney is ambitious and had lousy judgment on selecting his friends and associates is not new either.

That the former Ambassador to Israel and former Chief of Staff would betray the former prime minister with such cheap trivialities for a few minutes of media attention truly is evidence of the depth of Mulroney’s deficiency in his choices of friends and aides.

That’s what’s new.

Even the Calgary Herald is drawing attention to Louise Arbour’s stupidity.

Once a local oracle and international muse of the Canadian Left, Arbour has recently shown what most of us on this side of reality have known for quite a while: She has no  compass. Once you set out to pursue and uplift all rights equally, traditional and newly created alike, one is bound to find oneself in a mess.

It was equally shameful for Arbour to be seen supporting a document which makes a mockery of Arab women’s rights with its backhanded acknowledgment of “positive discrimination” established for women “by the Islamic sharia (and) other divine laws.” Had Arbour never heard of how women suffer under sharia and other so-called “divine” laws, including everything from not being allowed to drive cars to the fairly common occurrence of honour killings of women by their own brothers and fathers?

Arbour should never have lent any stamp of legitimacy to this profoundly flawed Arab charter. True declarations of human rights advocate peaceful co-existence and equal rights for everyone. Arbour needs to re-read her copy of Animal Farm.

There are lost of things that Arbour should have never done. Rights can bring a temporary degree of order to chaotic situations. But they are not the order of the world. Rights can be a source of conflict and chaos too. When rights conflict –and they often do– one must have access to an external moral measure to sort them out. But like the local and international constituencies that she serves, Arbour’s moral measure always has been paper thin.

It is not entirely abnormal to see people leave and new people come in when a political party changes leader. The same is true for the public service in situations when the party in question is in power. But it has been more than a year and there are people still leaving the side of the Alberta Tories.

Lyle Oberg announced his departure a few weeks ago. Last week, David Gillies baled from the premier’s office. Today, MLA Hung Pham has announced his departure. To boot, Pham’s accuses the party of misappropriation of funds and accuses the party of callously leaving members of his constituency association holding the bag in a legal dispute. Not what one would term an amicable departure.

MLA Hung Pham won’t seek a fifth term as the Progressive Conservative candidate in Calgary-Montrose, blasting his own party on the eve of an election for lying, making “poor decisions” and taking “dishonourable” actions.

In a letter to his constituency board last weekend, the Tory backbencher scolded the party for doing nothing to help local volunteers with their huge legal bills — and accuses the party of having “lied” about its role in constituency politics.

There was buzz on the radio this morning that Ed Stelmach would be jumping ahead to call an election today. The rumour sounded improbable to me then, though such announcement would steal serious thunder from Pham’s accusations. Likely, circulating the rumour about dropping the writ today was the point. The radio programme said nothing about Pham. Mission accomplished.

Board Members of PC Alberta Constituency associations, beware. In the meantime, with an election on the horizon, there is a vacancy in Calgary-Montrose. Any takers?!

Once upon a time the NDP was so inclusive that it even allowed terrorists to run for the party in Quebec. For a while, thieves were welcome –and perhaps they still are.

Now, they don’t want transgendered candidates and Jack Layton is not commenting. Tommy Douglas, that great among the great Canadians, would be so prrrrroud! (Warning: Video content may not be suitable for "nice Canadian progressivists.").

We know what justice is, says Aristotle, because we have a sense of Justice. One can say the same thing about ethics.

In this piece, Don Martin recounts that three decades ago former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed had the immediate sense of keeping away from Karlheinz Schreiber after one single meeting whereas Mulroney did not:

Lougheed had an “uncomfortable feeling” about Schreiber as a shameless name-dropper, recalls former aide and current Calgary MP Lee Richardson. Lougheed ordered an immediate, government-wide ban on any association with the man. “In hindsight, I’d say Peter’s instincts were correct,” says Richardson.

With no hindsight at all, Lougheed’s sense was correct, actually. Lougheed does not have crystal ball and could not have known what would happen in the future. But he has the “instinct,”  he paid attention to it, and trusted it.

When one is in a position of power, all kinds of creatures come out of the woodwork. And what is more, the higher the position of power, the greater the number of political climbers, reptilians  and parasites one is likely to encounter. Mulroney was no political virgin at the time he decided to be associated with Schreiber. He would have known about the climbers and the reptilians in politics because he would have encountered plenty of them. He simply chose to ignore that experience, it would seem.

Peter Lougheed had Schreiber fingered as a high-risk political predator three decades ago. One can only marvel how Brian Mulroney spent a decade figuring this same shady character was a worthy friend and business associate.

I have not been following the Karlheinz Schreiber saga as close as many are, but I was surprised to see him on my TV screen yesterday, denying that he had given Mulroney money while Mulroney was in the PMO. Was that not one of the key allegations in the papers that he recently introduced in court?

Did Schreiber ever made those allegations under oath? Could he then be charged with perjury? It seems to me that Schreiber is willing to do just about anything to keep  himself out of Germany. I am wondering to what extent Schreiber may be spoiling to be charged with one or multiple violations of the Criminal Code in Canada. His hope may be that a criminal charge will keep him tied to Canadian courts for years before he gets shipped to his native Deutschland. He could be filing appeals for the better part of a decade and a half while friends like Marc Lalonde ($100,000), John Harding ($225,000), and Michael Cochrane($125,000),  “help” with legal fees and bail. By that point, Herr  Schreiber  might even be dead, or so close to it that clemency might keep him out of a German jail altogether.

Quite a big deal is being made of a single phrase expressed by His Majesty King Juan Carlos I of Spain to President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela at the Iberoamerican Summit in Santiago, Chile, this weekend. The media are quoting the King as saying “Why don’t you shut up?” That’s incorrect.

“Por que no te callas?”, which is what His Majesty said to His Excellency the president, does not mean to “shut up.” Callar means to be quiet or silent; there is a big difference but His Majesty made a big mistake.

The King climbed down quite a way, considering who Mr. Chavez, as the Globe and Mail likes to call him, really is. This is a political tempest in a tea pot but King Juan Carlos made the mistake of granting Hugo Chavez far greater attention than he deserves. His short intervention will be played on state TV in Venezuela, presented as evidence that the world hates Venezuela. Chavez and Ortega are being lionised in their countries.

Listening to Chavez own intervention before Rodriguez Zapatero spoke and to Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega after, it seems that Mr. Chavez and Mr. Ortega had orchestrated a strategy to attack the Spanish delegation for purposes of their own. The allusions of fascism against Aznar would have been aimed at King Juan Carlos, who received the Crown after Franco’s dictatorship came to an end in 1975. That it was the decision of Spaniards to restore the Monarchy is probably lost on Chavez and Ortega.

As men of the people that they fancy themsleves, they likely resented being in the same room with the King. The whole thing would have been crafted for the political markets in Venezuela and Nicaragua: to show that their leaders stand up to retrograde royalty. The Spanish King and his prime minister fell for it, and that’s unfortunate. Ortega’s words to his country’s press further ridiculed the King. The person who edited this video clip is more in keeping with the importance of the whole thing but a King should not be seen in this way.

I found it very funny when Mr. Chavez said that being a fascist –clearly not understanding what the word means– is disrespectful. Closing down independent TV stations and newspapers, a habit of the Chavez government, is actually closer to fascism but that’s probably respectful in Chavez’ world. To say nothing, of course, of the new reforms that Chavez is about to have approved, which would make Benito or Adolf to blush. Surely, Mr. Chavez’ provoking speech and his continuous interruptions showed how much the Venezuelan president is worthy of respect.

Rodriguez Zapatero had little choice. He too had to play for his country’s TV screens in reaction, and he did it well. Good for Rodriguez Zapatero for taking the opportunity to instruct Mr. Chavez about proper manners a little. That’s part of the story that the media won’t discuss. Chavez came from a humble background and he didn’t learn how to interact with Royalty and heads of state while he was a junior officer in the mighty Venezuelan army. Chavez simply is not equipped for that part of his job.

More noteworthy in the episode, I thought, was President Daniel Ortega’s accusations that the Spaniards don’t like him and are interfering with his new government –though he was a little short on evidence. Ortega may have a little more experience than Chavez, but he is also ill-equipped for these type of international fora. The poor man is not even comfortable wearing a suit jacket. Delicious conspiracies aside, who really likes a child rapist? Good for His Majesty the King for leaving the room when Ortega started to speak. That was a classy slap in the face but it only helped Ortega.

Social engineers seem always to dismiss the slippery slope argument but the same slippery reality often manages to meander back into the scene. Social conservatives once argued that getting the federal government involved in needle distribution and establishing law-neutral spaces where addicts could come to do their business in relative security would result in demands for other illicit activities to be made more secure. They were right.

A group of Vancouver prostitutes wants to open a “co-op” brothel in time for the Winter Olympics, saying it would help sex-trade workers by providing a safer working environment when the world comes to visit in 2010.

Susan Davis, a working prostitute, said she envisions as many as five co-operative brothels opening if the BC Coalition of Experiential Communities, which includes men, women and trans-gendered sex-trade workers, convinces the federal government to permit the first brothel on an experimental basis.

The group has support from some politicians, including Vancouver East MP Libby Davies and Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, who believe a brothel owned and run by sex-trade workers would help reduce violence against them.

Violence against any citizen is, of course, unlawful –and the state has a duty to protect its citizens against violent attacks. That much is true. Should the state then also promote the creation of coops for up and coming independent drug dealers on account that there is a great deal of violence directed at them by established gangsters (who already have their own club houses)? How do we correct these disadvantages to these small entrepreneurs?

On the demand side of the argument: The same folks who will come to Vancouver searching for olympic sex will not doubt want drugs to be served along side. Why should the state not accommodate that aspect of the tourist demands? And what about the regiments of pick-pockets who will work Vancouver during the same events? Little car thieves will need protection too. And what of entrepreneurial paedophiles?

So, let’s make it safe for all illegal activity conducted by the little guy: all people who have a claim to victim hood or disadvantage may apply. But it’ll be just for the Olympics, eh!?

Ultra sensitive, Disney-loving folks like this reporter are half scandalised over “gun-totting” Alberta hunters having “a day.” Worse still, there is at least one minister of the Crown among the hunters. Guns, by which they mean legal firearms, are a bad thing. Shooting game is even worse because killing is bad.

It’s a legitimate view, to be sure, but most always those who hold that view love to enjoy a fat, juicy steak or a chunk of white chicken meat. What is more, they are also the folks to sing high praise to gun-totting dictators like Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega or Fidel Castro, who have killed scores of their own people on more than one occasion to secure and to keep their political power.

There is no perspective in the critical remarks about a politician hunting. An Alberta minister killing a duck for food is a horrible act of barbarism, the enlightened reporter –whose name is ironically Remington– suggests. Shooting one’s own co-citizens for the sake of power, however, may be a cool thing.

I remember the time (yesterday!) when the word “manliness” was used in reference to character or qualities of a person. This insightful writer succesfully argued that some women can be manly and many men are not.

CanWest’s Megan Fitzpatrick has now recreated the meaning of manliness. Foolishly manly now means the presence of men, and thus manlier means a greater number or men, and the superlative manliest means the presence of the greatest number of men.

Fitzpatrick may need to read Harvey Mansfield’s book. She may indeed be correct that Alberta is manliest among Canadian provinces, but not for the reason that she states.