CIVITATENSIS

Poor David Ahenakew is back in the news:

“Everybody says ‘I’m a Jew-hater,”‘ he said. “I don’t hate the Jews, but I hate what they do to people.”

Some one, any one if not his lawyer, should ask David Ahenakew the wise question now immortalized by Su Alteza Real (His Royal Highness) the King of Spain:

Por qué no te callas?

Of interest: Lessons from the [first] Ahenakew trial.

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.

Writing for the Glob, Lysianne Gagnon makes several arguments pointing to the sham of the official Canadian multicultural policy. Her arguments are incidental to her point against the Bloc’s phony desire to see Quebec exempted from the official federal policy. Her piece is evidence of how sound arguments can be used to marshal fallacious conclusions.

Never mind the official ideology of “multiculturalism,” a gimmick set up by Pierre Trudeau to facilitate the adoption of the Official Languages Act. At the time, some ethnic groups, especially in the West, were furious at the privilege bestowed on French Canadians, whom they considered to be just another ethnic group. Very well, said Mr. Trudeau - we’ll promise that these groups will also be able to retain their cultures of origin.

In effect, this policy turned out to be nothing more than another way to pander to ethnic communities. While their folk-dance troupes received generous grants, young Italians, Ukrainians and Chinese were quickly integrating. Multiculturalism is just another word for tolerance and reasonable accommodation. Cultural practices that go against basic Canadian values - arranged marriages, genital mutilation, polygamy, sharia-based family law - are actively discouraged.

Contrary to another myth circulated by anglophone Canadian nationalists (who want to distinguish themselves from the Americans as much as the Quebec nationalists want to be distinct), the integration of immigrants into the Canadian mainstream has followed the same pattern as in the United States. The second generation of immigrants is integrated and the third is assimilated.

In most cases, the original language is lost. What remains are certain family and culinary traditions. When some ethnic groups are ghettoized, it is not because they are encouraged to do so by some crazy multicultural authority. It is either because they are religious fundamentalists or because they belong to poverty-stricken communities.

Let’s leave the assumption that there is such thing as “basic Canadian values” for now. Let’s focus on the political “gimmick.” Gagnon’s piece goes no further than suggesting that Quebec should not be allowed to set up its own brand of multicultural gimmick because their gimmick is not really distinct from the federal gimmick. The federal gimmick is thus good because it is federal. Long live provincial autonomy!

That’s one heck of an argument. If it occurred to her to erase the gimmicks on both sides, it is not apparent in this piece. Against the very logic with which she makes her argument, she goes on to conclude that both societies live under an artificial, calculated political gimmick, as though it were a virtue:

English Canada integrates its immigrants pragmatically, without much fuss, while Quebec, true to its Cartesian tradition, has developed plans and theories about the issue. But the end result is the same. Quebec is a multicultural society, just as Canada is.

At least Quebec’s policy typically acknowledges that what they seek is cultural integration. It’s a more honest gimmick.

In the end, Gagnon just muddies the waters on this one. It really would help Ms. Gagnon to learn to distinguish more clearly between the official, fragmenting “multicultural” federal policy and the sociological reality on the ground of mixed cultural variety that leads to ultimate integration, whether in Quebec or in the RoC.

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.

I have been meaning to draw the attention of my readers to the Alberta Property Rights Initiative.

Founded in 2006, the Alberta Property Rights Initiative is a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy group headquartered in Calgary, AB. Its aims are to provide a common central organization for various concerned property groups who wish to promote entrenchment in law, the full protection of property rights for the benefit of all Albertans. The Initiative will actively build political support to pass a property rights clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in order to guarantee that if private property is taken for public use, the owner will receive full, fair and timely market compensation. The Initiative will actively promote an Alberta Property Rights Preservation Bill to protect property owners through provincial legislation.

This is an excellent endeavor spear-headed by the very dynamic Neil Wilson. To any and all interested in property rights, check them out and join.

It’s nobody’s fault: Some of us are simply not as quick on the uptake as others…

Syed Soharwardy, who withdrew his HRC complaint against Ezra Levant, has made some interesting confessions today. Levant is the former publisher of the now defunct Western Standard, which reproduced some of the Mohammed (peace be upon him) cartoons from Denmark (see one of the horribly offensive images below). Here is some of what the Imam had to say:

“Over the two years that we have gone through the process, I understand that most Canadians see this as an issue of freedom of speech, that that principle is sacred and holy in our society,” said Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.

“I believe Canadian society is mature enough not to absorb the messages that the cartoons sent. Only a very small fraction of Canadian media decided to publish those cartoons.”

Can Soharwardy be so thick that it took him two whole years to figure out the free speech angle? I can not know, but the important thing is that he has. But he has veered so far the other way now as to declare free speech to have religious characteristics. In the same amount of time, he reflections have led him to figure out that free speech is “holy”!! Free speech as holiness is not even a western belief, let alone a Muslim one. To Soharwardy, it seems clear, nothing that could be historically held in such high regard could possible be secular. I wonder if Soharwardy will now recommend such holy a thing to those who attend his Mosque.

Soharwardy still sees the mere cartoons as evil that would be absorbed by Canadians, were they to see them (so don’t look). Except that he has kindly changed his mind about the maturity of all of us. Two years ago and until yesterday Soharwardy seemed to have believed us all to be immature. His apparent desire to impose his superstitious views about depictions of the prophet (peace be upon him) was nothing but an attempt to save Canadians from our own immaturity. In the last two years though, he figured out that we are not as immature as he imagined. So he has now decided that it’s okay because we are okay.

Indeed it’s not easy for the immature to identify maturity, but Soharwardy has now turned the corner after two years. It takes some a life time to do so; so two years is not so bad. Congratulations Syed! Well done!

Note: Soharwardy is also spelled as Suhrawardi, Suhrawardy, Soharwardi, Sohrawardy, Soharvardy, Suhravardy, Sohravardi, Sohrawardi, sohravardi, etc:

Related posts:

• Censure others, not yourself
•  Pens or artillery?

I do not know enough about the specific accusations against Mr. Levant, Mr. Steyn and Macleans to give an opinion in their individual cases. However, I do know enough about the law to understand that their cases will be tried according to constitutional and legal principles. If they have been wrongly accused, then they will be vindicated and they might even be compensated. That is a matter between them, their lawyers, the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the courts.

I am not in the habit of commenting on other bloggers political opinions –not anymore. But I do make exceptions for professional opinions such as the one above. The person who wrote them is a practicing lawyer. Someone did give Cherniak a law degree so that he could come up with that kind of legal insight! A high school student might do better than that. Wasted tuition: no one ever gets accused wrongly who is convicted, no one ever uses the law to gain personal advantage, contrary to the principle of the rule of law. That’s amazing.

Jason sees himself clearing things up for the legally-illiterate with this post. But I have not seen infantile rhetoric like that outside my children’s room for quite a while –not to mention an inability to articulate the terms of the debate (hate, for example). In addition to the meaningless hot air quoted above, the gist of the post is that “Good liberals” are the ones he agrees with, and all those who disagree with him on Human Rights Commissions and free speech are “ignorant.”

Picture yourself as a judge in front of that Cicero!

h/t: SDA

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.

In a heated and emotional debate yesterday about the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, the former chief of staff of Jean Chrétien, Eddie Goldenberg, accused former Quebec premier Bernard Landry of comparing Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.

In his speech delivered to law students in Quebec City, Mr. Landry quoted the late Liberal prime minister and driving force behind the patriation of the Constitution as saying at the time: “This Constitution will last 1,000 years.”

The pious Trudeauvian hordes can throw their arms up in the air and cry foul all they want. Goldenberg, it is evident, objects to the comparison to Hitler, but does not dispute the fact that the then prime minister used those exact words in that exact context. They just happen to be the same words that Adolf Hitler often used in reference to his Third Reich, the new regime and its constitution.

Goldenberg downplays Trudeau’s words in the same way that they did decades ago: “The media reported that this sentence had already been used (by Hitler) and that it was a bad choice. That’s it,” he said. None of it addresses the crucial question as to how Trudeau found himself repeating Hitler’s words. Was it a coincidence?

It’s more than just about Hitler and it’s no mere coincidence. The use of that formulation is part of a long tradition of prophets and messiahs which places Pierre Trudeau in good company. St. John the Evangelist uses the same formulation about 1,000 years in the Book of Revelations, chapter 20. This is what John has to say:

¹ Then I saw an angel come down from heaven with the key of the Abyss in his hand and an enormous chain.

² He overpowered the dragon, that primeval serpent which is the devil and Satan, and chained him up for a thousand years.

³ He hurled him into the Abyss and shut the entrance and sealed it over him, to make sure he would not lead the nations astray again until the thousand years had passed. At the end of that time he must be released, but only for a short while.

⁴ Then I saw thrones, where they took their seats, and on them was conferred the power to give judgement. I saw the souls of all who had been beheaded for having witnessed for Jesus and for having preached God’s word, and those who refused to worship the beast or his statue and would not accept the brand-mark on their foreheads or hands; they came to life, and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

⁵ The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were over; this is the first resurrection.

⁶ Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection; the second death has no power over them but they will be priests of God and of Christ and reign with him for a thousand years.

⁷ When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison

St. John was writing about the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgment. The image of a thousand years in St. John conveys the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God and the perfection of human existence upon the final defeat of Evil. At least since then, there have been hundreds of political leaders of this type who have borrowed John’s language in reference to their own rule.

Bernard Landry is more correct than he knows it in comparing Pierre Trudeau to Adolf Hitler. They were both millenarian leaders, though they used different means. They were both charismatic prophets in the technical sense of the term. They believed themselves to be the chosen tools of History for the transformation of their world. They both believed they were engaged in a project that would bring about the final perfection of human society.

Bernard Landry can sometimes be a despicable character, and he himself has said lots of really stupid things. But when it comes to this, there is nothing for which Bernard Landry needs to apologise. When Pierre Trudeau used those words, he made himself the object of the comparison with Hitler, and with many similar transformative political and religious leaders (Ayatollah Khomeini, Louis Riel, Pol Pot, Augusto Sandino, Louis Farrakhan, Osama bin Landen, David Koresh, and many others).

The Globe reports that Citoyen Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, and his current sidekick, Michael Ignatieff, are in Afghanistan. They are there to consider pulling the Canadian presence out of combat roles in the near future and stay exclusively to help with organisation and development projects.

Liberals say that the present mission is unbalanced. If it is, that’s an acknowledgment that they sent Canadian soldiers to a lopsided mission when the were in government and accepted to move our soldiers from Kabul to Kandahar. But no matter, the Liberal change of heart would have Canadians build schools and clinics and then wait for the Taliban to come destroy them, placing more people at risk, including more Canadians. Better to have Canadians killed while they hold no weapons in their hands!

"We must be realistic about our ability to continue such a mission. The [Canadian Forces ] simply cannot continue to engage in an extremely dangerous combat campaign of this scale for an indefinite period of time."

Instead of a counterinsurgency combat role, Liberals suggest Canada could re-focus on development work, diplomatic efforts, building a justice system, and alleviating water shortages in Afghanistan.

By this rationale, we should send social workers and boy scouts instead of soldiers to deal with the suicidal islamists who want to kill  little girls to stop them from being educated.  By the same rationale, we should have never sacrificed our soldiers on the beaches and fields of Europe last century. We should have just sent social workers to deal with the Nazi killing camps.

The Grits are in dire need of picking a leader who can talk to his dog and to his dead mother these days.  In the past, such Grit leaders have had more sense in international affairs than the whole lot of latte-sipping central Canadians they  presented to themselves in the last leadership contest.

Mark Steyn comments on the silliness of Human Rights complaint against him. That there are people offended by some of what he writes should not be a surprise, but Steyn is livid about the Human Rights Commission accepting and thereby legitimising political idiocy.

If you examine Dr. Mohamed Elmasry’s formal complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission about my article, Grievance #16 objects to the following assertion:

“The number of Muslims in Europe is expanding like ‘mosquitoes.’ ”

That claim certainly appears in my piece. But they’re the words not of a notorious right-wing Islamophobic columnist but of a big­­shot Scandinavian Muslim:
” ‘We’re the ones who will change you,’ the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. ‘Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.’ ”

Given that the “mosquitoes” line is part of the basis on which the HRC accepted Dr. Elmasry’s complaint of “Islamophobia,” I’m interested to know what precisely is the of­­fence? Are Mullah Krekar’s words themselves Islamophobic? Or do they only become so when I quote them?

A third grade child would know what the appropriate answer to the last question is. As Steyn sees it, the Commission has demonstrated an efficiency rivalled only, perhaps, by the Soviet Show Trials in the 1930s.

Nonetheless, even in this craven environment, Canada’s “human rights commissions” are uniquely inimical to the marketplace of ideas. In its 30 years of existence, no complaint brought to the federal HRC under Section XIII has been settled in favour of the defendant. A court where the rulings only go one way is the very definition of a show trial. These institutions should be a source of shame to Canadians.

The whole piece is here.

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.").

Cuba’s system of social and political control at the grass root level, the neighbourhood watching committees known as comites de defensa de la revolucion, has been eroding for years, but it’s still there.  Almost 50 years later, they’re still bent on totalitarian control and the creation of the new New Man. What is it that they say about insanity and beating one’s head into a wall?

“We want to always have a proud and independent homeland instead of a Yankee colony,” Castro said.”We must save the Revolution. We must save socialism. This is the task we urge the 7.5 million CDR members to undertake.”

Every Cuban is expected to join the local CDR and participate in committee activities whether or not they are Communist Party members. Each CDR has a popularly elected president and separate secretaries of security, volunteerism and education.

Some Cubans don’t join or don’t participate, but at great risk of being labeled an “enemy of the Revolution.” CDR presidents can organize “acts of repudiation,” in which neighbors stand outside the homes of those suspected of illegal activity and scream insults — sometimes for days.

When a Cuban wants a job in the lucrative tourism industry — where a worker can earn three or four times the usual state salary — the CDR president’s imprimatur is essential. Applicants labeled “anti-social,” code for transgressions such as dissident activity or lack of interest in volunteer projects, are almost assured of being turned down.

If a child is born, active CDR presidents pay a visit to the parents.

“We start to attend to the political development of a child, in a gradual way, from the time they are born,” said DeLeon, a veteran of the Revolution who has a photograph of Fidel Castro in his living room.

As the child grows, DeLeon is watching. He stops by to make sure children are attending classes, especially the courses on Cuban history that recount Castro’s triumph.

“We’re creating something,” DeLeon said, “Something called a ‘political conscience.’ “

These people are flogging a comatose horse and they don’t seem to know it.

As the Museum Just Pour Rire (Just for Laughs) shows, comedy is a component of our culture. Comedy and satire have been imprinted in Western culture all the way back to the Greeks. But Elections Canada will have none of it in today’s Quebec by-elections.

This [electoral] provision allows women who wear veils for religious reasons to vote without revealing their faces. However, Elections Canada advises those obviously mocking the law by wearing Halloween masks or the like will be turned away.

Can’t mock bureaucrats any more, eh?! Is Rick Mercer about to have his right to vote revoked? Not likely, but the humourless mandarins will need to decide who is funny and who is not: they’ll  probably lobby for a new mandatory federal license to practice comedy.

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.

According to Elections Canada, there is nothing in the current law requiring Canadian voters to show their face when they exercise their right to vote. Right in public view, Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand has killed common sense by choosing to interpret the legislation in the narrowest possible sense.

“It can be observed, therefore, that there are various methods provided for by this legislation allowing people to vote and that some of these measures do not require visual identification of the voter and it’s the voter that has the choice of which method to use,” Mr. Mayrand said.

I am thinking of wearing one of these come the next election. I am choosing this particular one because it’s called the Baffin Balaclava, furthering the Canadian theme.

While Rosalie Abella sat as an Ontario Superior Court judge before Paul Martin made her a Supreme Court Justice, Abella accepted the argument in the Carmen (1993) case that homosexual relations between an adult and a minor are part and parcel of homosexual expression and fundamental to homosexual identity.

The same Ontario court today does not accept the argument that lap dancing is a form of expression that deserves the protection of the Charter of Rights.

Morris Manning, acting for the group, made numerous arguments, including that the city didn’t have the power to ban the rooms, the bylaw was discriminatory against club owners and dancers, and that lap dancing was a form of expression and protected under the Charter of Rights. But the appeal court upheld Judge Hackland’s original ruling and sided with the city, which was represented by Michael Rankin, when it dismissed each of the group’s arguments.

What an intolerant bunch. (;

Are there no justices with the ambition to get to the Supreme Court among current members of the Ontario Court of Appeals?

For Bishop Henry who once let it be known that if Joe Clark showed up to his Cathedral in Calgary, Clark would not be given communion, this is encouraging.

Arriving in Brazil on his first visit to Latin America on Wednesday, the 80-year-old Pope said the Church “will not fail to insist on the need to take action to ensure that the family, the basic cell of society, is strengthened.” This followed his remarks earlier in the week in which he backed Mexican Church leaders who have threatened to excommunicate Catholic lawmakers for voting to legalize abortion on demand in Mexico City.

“This excommunication” was not an arbitrary decision but one foreseen by the Church. “The killing of an innocent human baby is incompatible with being in communion with the body of Christ,” the Pope said during a news conference on the plane taking him to Sao Paulo.

Bishop Henry has been at the forefront of Canadian Roman Catholics, calling attention to public figures who openly declare to be Catholic while conveniently sidestepping the Church’s doctrine on life.

During the 2005 campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Canada, Fred Henry, Bishop of Calgary, said if it were up to him he would excommunicate Paul Martin, the then-prime minister. The bishop added that Mr. Martin’s political views clashed so severely with Church teachings he no longer deserved to receive Communion. Yesterday, conservative Catholics were thrilled to see the Pope simply use the word excommunication.

Charles Krauthammer, that old Cold War Warrior, remembers Boris Yelsin’s great achievement. It is worth noting that Krauthammer begins by undermining the popular view that Mikhail Gorbatchev was the man who took the USSR down.

Credit for the fall of communism usually is given to two sets of actors. On the one side, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II, whose relentless pressure caused a hollowed-out system to collapse. On the other side, conventional mythology credits Mikhail Gorbachev.

This is quite wrong. True, Gorbachev inadvertently caused the collapse of communism. But his intention was always to save it. To the very end, Gorbachev believed in it. His mission was to reform communism in order to make it work. To do that, the Soviet system had to become more human — i.e., more in tune with real human nature — and thus more humane. Gorbachev’s problem was that humane communism is an oxymoron.

The man who brought down the Soviet Union from the inside was Boris Yeltsin. In the mid-1980s, he turned decisively against communism and, fully intending its destruction, performed one of history’s great acts of liberation.

Yeltsin, who died this week, did this without turning to the guillotine. “For the first time in Russian history,” notes Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov, “the new ruler did not eliminate the losers to consolidate control.” What distinguished Yeltsin “was something that he did not do when he took power” — “wipe out the other side.”

The rest of the piece is found here.

I do have something of a quarrel with one of Krauthammer’s sentences:

Outside of college English departments, no sane person takes Marxism seriously.

Frankly, the comment bestows underserved sanity to English departments.

Rights and priviledges under the law are not absolute in a free society, a principle that is recognised by the CCRF. Some clown trying to use the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act for her own purposes against Grant McEwan College in Edmonton recently was made aware of this important principle.

Grant McEwan was granted a reprieve from Information and Privacy Commissioner Frank Work. A person had submitted a barrage of FOIP requests with the sole purpose of obstructing and paralysing College staff. The reprieve will allow the College not to have to reply to her requests for a period of three years.

In what has become a pattern in the course of this provincial election, the Parti Quebecois does not seem to get a break. It has been mostly ignored by its Liberal and ADQ opponents, though Boisclair continues desperately to try to catch up.

To the PQ’s chagrin, when it has managed to make waves in the news, it has not always been on the positive side of things. A new report in La Presse (en francais) today focuses on PQ candidate Robin Philpot, whose book Ça ne s’est pas passé comme à §a à   Kigali (It did not happen like that in Kigali) rejects the use of the word genocide in relation to the extermination of 800,000 Tutsis. In fact, Philpot disputes the generally-recognised figures of the 1994 massacres in Rwanda.

I have not read Philpot’s book, nor have I seen the unfolding of his arguments, much less his evidence. But he’s not applying for an academic position in the National Assembly. He’s running for office in opposition to well-established academic and public views. The fact that the press is talking about his thesis as a new variant of a holocaust-denier, whether he is correct or not, detracts attention away from the political message of the PQ. It does not help.

Another news cycle of missed opportunity for the PQ as the ADQ of Mario Dumont chucks along rather well.

Often the hypocrite when it comes to free speech, Warren Kinsella has taken an Ontario blogger to task in his NP column this morning for the blogger’s (repeated) antisemitic remarks. The blogger in question is well-known for caustic and crass remarks against Jews and more than once he has also shown his hatred of Albertans.

Among the many cranks who blog on the web, this Robert McLellan is notorious for blogging with the apparent sanction of the NDP.

Robert McClelland (if that is his real name) is a blogger in the London area. For years, McClelland has posted some of the most offensive — and stridently anti-Semitic — material in the Canadian blogosphere. He has repeatedly called Israelis “murderers;” and he has written that “Jews act like Nazis.” McClelland has become notorious for his hateful views, and he clearly revels in it, on his own site and on a much-read group blog called “Blogging Dippers.”

Despite his clear anti-Semitism, McClelland has somehow been permitted to promote the NDP for many, many months. His site features links to the official NDP Web site, photos of Mr. Layton, and even (ironically) a tribute to David Lewis. It has been long believed that he is a sanctioned online voice for the NDP.

Until this week, that is. On Sunday afternoon, there was a discussion on McClelland’s Web site headlined: “When the State starts rounding upmy Jewish neighbours, I’ll speak up.” Mc- Clelland’s response — which also caustically referenced this writer and a Liberal pro-Israel blogger, Jason Cherniak — was as follows: “Not me? When next they come for the Jews, I doubt I’ll even be able to muster up a ‘what a shame.’”

Within 24 hours, the blogosphere had exploded in outrage over McClelland’s comments — and not just from the right, either. On innumerable blogs, pro-NDP activists demanded that McClelland apologize, and withdraw his appalling statements. He adamantly refused.

On Monday afternoon, Cherniak and I were contacted directly by representatives of the federal NDP. They were appalled by what McClelland had written, they said — and by the notion that anyone would think McClelland is associated with the NDP. In a letter to the Canadian Jewish Congress, New Democrat party president Anne McGrath made clear that McClelland’s comments were “highly offensive” and “repugnant.”

What is peculiarly consistent about McClelland is that he seems to hate everyone almost equally. As an individual, McClelland is not deserving of the national attention that Kinsella gives him. But on account of his seemingly official ties to the NDP, only just now repudiated, WK ’s efforts to expose McClelland’s links to the NDP are probably necessary.

For many years, GSA meant graduate students association to me.

But that meaning is now challenged by what is called genetic sexual attraction. This is the stuff that people used to joke about in reference to trailer parks in places like Alabama. Now, it’s spilling to shopping malls, websites and work places. Half-brothers and half-sisters building intimate, romantic, carnal “marriages” and “families”.

They believe their attraction is actually heightened by their genetic similarities. “It’s like kissing myself,” Rachel says.

Before you think that the whole thing is yucky!, backtrack a few years ago when many people might have used the same expression in relation to the new changes in the definition of marriage. Pushing the boundaries of marriage and family, these folks are not presently allowed to marry. But such crudely discriminating practices might be challenged in courts soon. Our Supremes, the Charter, and many parliamentarians have already established precedents from which to attack tradition and the parochial beliefs of the majority.

None of this is really new. But as the numbers of single-parent families have grown, as relationships between and among single-parents continue to shift, and as the traditional-family norms become more and more challenged, there is greater and greater likelihood of more of these “experiments in living,”as John Stuart Mill would have called them. This Jocastian character is clearly in full knowledge of the identity of the object of her desires:

“If I can’t be his mother, who can I be?” she asked herself. “So I started to feel more romantically towards him that I did motherly.”

Gonyo was sickened by her feelings and feared she was crazy. But she soon began to understand [ed. please note that a leap of consciousness takes place here] her feelings to be genetic sexual attraction. She believed she had feelings of attraction because she had missed out on bonding with her son.

We’ve already had something similar in Ontario. If proclaimed love and sexual attraction alone are the accepted measurements of what constitutes a marriage and a family, there is no reasonable excuse to deny these romantics:

“I apologize to everybody out there that’s a nonsibling couple, but you will never have what we have:ever, ever, ever,” says Rachel. “It just simply cannot exist outside of what we have.”

A piece in the Guardian (where else?) dating back three years ago concludes:

But one thing seems clear: GSA is neither a horror, an illness, nor a perversion. Indeed, given what we already know, might it eventually prove to be not that much of a mystery?

Wonkipedians have an entry with a series of “examples” from media and arts that is seemingly designed to portray the rather natural aspect of such relationships.

Alvaro Orozco has won a reprieve, and the Canadian gay mill is working over time to paint Nicaragua as a grand inquisitor against homosexuals.

Painting the rapist president Daniel Ortega as a would-be paragon of Catholic morality has got to be the funniest spin I’ve seen in a long time. But precisely because it’s so unlikely and because many are disposed to believe that a) all Catholics hate gays, that b) all Latin American macho types hate gays, and c) that all them folks down there are unenlightened  anyway, the attempts at painting the little Central American country as a second Saudi Arabia will likely succeed.

For the touchy-feely progressives, it should be pointed out that Nicaraguan had the first woman elected head of state in the Americas (Canada 0, USA 0) and that homosexuals have populated the upper echelons of power. No Nicaraguan head of state, on the other hand, has been known to communicate regularly with his dead mother or sought political  advise from his canine companion.
Canadian ignorance is on Orozco’s side.

The 21 year-old Alvaro Orozco’s refugee claim on the grounds of his alleged homosexuality has been rejected and he has been ordered removed. His appeal to federal court is not likely to go any better.
In the country where Sandinista vice-president Sergio Ramirez’ nick name was muà ±econa (the big doll) and Sandinista foreign minister Miguel Descoto’s was monja voladora (the flying nun) in reference to their open homosexuality, Orozco wants Canadians to believe that his country is the epitome of hatred against homosexuals because Latin Americans are Catholic. Miguel Descoto, or Fr. Descoto, by the way, was a Catholic priest. Rumours also existed about Ernesto Cardenal, the Trappist Sandinista Minister of Culture.

“Gay people in Latin America have to act straight to hide their (sexual) identity because people there are Catholic and are very conservative. I was afraid,” he told the Toronto Star. “The (refugee) judge [sic] just didn’t think I was gay enough and I didn’t qualify to be gay.”

The sweeping description of all Latin Americans as gay bashers because they’re Catholic sounds awfully gay Canadian. The same accusation was often made when the Calgary Bishop openly objected to the SSM legislation. Orozco has been badly coached by his newly-found Torontonian friends. To boot, the Sandinista president under whom the gay cabinet ministers served, Daniel Ortega (himself fingered by his own daughter as the man who raped her in her own home for a decade), is now back in power.
Orozco’s Canadian lawyer is trying to argue that the expectation of homosexual relations at age 14 is outrageous (though Orozco is now 21).

“Did (Lamont) expect all gay teens to be sexually active at 14, 15, 16 years old? That’s horrid,” said Khaki, who will file a motion in federal court tomorrow to stay the removal, reports the Star. “In my view, the refugee board has failed to recognize that my client is a victim of violence, a victim of abuse. He’s simply vulnerable, whether he’s gay or straight.”

Clearly, Maitre Khaki (Orozco’s lawyer) has never heard of R v Carmen (Ontario Superior Court, 1993), a case presided by the now Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella.  In that case, Abella along with judge Marie Corbett lowered the age of sexual consent for homosexual intercourse to 14. All three judges in the case agreed that there was age discrimination and homosexual discrimination in rendering their decision. In Carmen,  Abella extend the expectation that children aged 14 can be homosexually active.

The gay Sandinista precendents and their return to power in Nicaragua, along with the Carmen case in Ontario, don’t work well for Orozco.

About a year after the second wave of islamist protests over the Mohammed cartoons published in Europe, Charlie Hebdo (en francais), the satirical French publication, has to defend itself in court. The alleged crime is to have reproduced the infamous cartoons from Denmark. The motivation for reproducing the cartoons, the claimants say, is racism.

Not much of this is really news. Islam is not a race, even if freedom of expression is not an unlimited and absolute right. Given that a Canadian magazine published the cartoons and in light of this report in the NP this morning, the French court case may teach us a few things here in Canada.

Part of Charlie Hebdo’s defence is that people have the right to laugh; they should have the right to laugh at terrorists too. The right to laugh ought to be considered in Canada since Joe Volpe had a website shut down and threatened to sue over the Librano$ poster. In fact, Volpe, like the radical but hypersensitive Islamists, argued an offence against race.

Polls claim that a significant amount of Canadians want homosexual rights and property rights added to the CCRF. If we’re going to re-open the whole constitutional Pandora’s box to include stuff, not that we should, we may as well learn from the experience of Charlie Hebdo in France. In addition, Liberals keep saying that they will form the next government. That would bring the corrupt and power-abusive Joe Volpe to cabinet again.

Why not give the right to laugh a serious look?

Prostitution is not illegal in Canada. It is not legal either. Prostitution has the legal status of, say, scratching your cheek. It’s neither a legal or an illegal thing.

Prostitution enthusiasts in the NDP, however, are shamefully trying to use the Pickton trial and the victims in BC to advance their cause.They are trying to pave the way to make prostitution respectable by removing the legal proscription against communicating for the purposes of prostitution.

NDP House leader Libby Davies, whose Vancouver East riding includes the Downtown Eastside, issued a statement Monday saying sex-trade workers are endangered by Canada’s law prohibiting communication for the purposes of engaging in prostitution.

The move, however, would not legalise prostitution. It may make hiring a prostitute easier, but it would not legalise it. It obscures things even further. The NDP suggestion is that Pickton, or whoever is responsible for killing prostitutes in Vancouver, would not have killed the prostitutes if communication for the purposes of availing oneself of a prostitute was legal. That link is untenable. One thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other, but as long as they get to open access to prostitution, it doesn’t matter.

Making matters even worse, CanWest writers appear not to be clear on what precisely the issue is by making reference to the “legalisation” of prostitution.

In the veritable spirit of equality of opportunity, the pro-prostitution lobby elsewhere says:

Everyone should have access to reasonable priced sexual relief of that normal sexual tension or sexual variety that is natural, from professional, caring, honest providers.

It’s a mixture of a natural market arguments with sexual warm-fuzzies. The issue has become improving access to markets, but you can already see the next step when the word “access” will be replaced by the expression “the right.”

If Cubans flee in droves when Fidel Castro dies, those intercepted at sea will likely wind up at this base where nearly 400 men captured in the war on terror are held, creating "an incredible challenge" for US forces, the base commander said.

The Supreme Court of Canada has clamped down on a funding lifeline for would-be litigants who lack the resources to mount important legal challenges.

In a 7-2 ruling, the Court refused to order advance funding to a Vancouver gay and lesbian bookstore, saying the challenge to Canada Customs is too narrow and insignificant to the broad public interest to justify such an unusual move.

"Public interest advance costs orders must be granted with caution, as a last resort, in circumstances where their necessity is clearly established," said reasons supplied by five of the majority judges.

Not on my dime, thank you very much.

It took a trinity of writers (Patrick Lagacé, Caroline Touzin and Émilie CÃ ´té) this morning in LaPresse (en francais) to complain about the multiplication of businesses with “English names” in Quebec. The verb they use for multiplying is “pulluler” –which sounds awfully close to “polluer,” to pollute. No wonder these folks are upset about Alberta’s prosperity.

The intimation is that English business are polluting the Quebec atmosphere. To drive the point further, the article’s title bemoans the impotence (impuissance) of Quebec’s Bill 101 [Bill 178, really but they say 101 for dramatic purposes]; that is, they are upset that nothing can be legally done about it because of international conventions. The expression of regret suggests that they would, if they could.

But that’s not enough, the cartoon accompanying the article suggests that the quebecois are also unhappy that the same English named companies are making money in Quebec.
That antagonistic union mentality toward business is culturally engrained in Quebec: even the premier attacked Wal-Mart during a spat about a unionised store in the Saguenay.

But the French Self-Defense Brigade went as far as to plant bombs in three Second Cup coffee shops in 2000. The company’s crime simply was that it had not francisized its name to, presumably, La deuxieme tasse. These journalists are slightly more civilised.

The language NAZIs from LaPresse (not to be confused with the Tongue Troopers) hope that the francophone public will bring the companies to yield. The article is essentially a subtle call to pressure and boycot these business. Boycott becomes Quebec’s political viagra. Look out for unintended consequences.