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.

I was raking the leafs in the backyard today as my eight-year old boy pranced around in military fatigues, his toy AK-47 in hand (he also has a toy M-16) and also sporting a balaclava. When I suggested that he looked like a terrorist, he shrugged me off.

After he finished helping me pick up some of the debris on the ground, I said: “Thank you, al-Qaeda boy.” “I am not al-Qaeda,” he said. “I’m from Alberta.” Thinking that he didn’t understand the reference, I pointed out that al-Qaeda sympathizers have been known to live in Canada. “I know,” he said, with an annoyed tone. “That’s exactly why I said I’m from Alberta.”

That shut me up!

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.

That's right. You don't need to readjust your reading glasses. Today is the first ever Louis Riel Day in Manitoba. It brings us closer to Riel's own dream to found a new religion, of which he would be center. We can look forward to the day when the Manitoba government declares St Vital to be the Third Rome, as Riel wished it.

Happy Louis Riel day one and all!

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?

Canada has withdrawn its support for a UN anti-racism conference slated to take place in South Africa next year, the federal government announced Wednesday.

The so-called Durban II conference "has gone completely off the rails" and Canada wants no part of it, said Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity.

Canada does have a tradition of standing against racists in South Africa. May the tradition continue.

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 Economist has picked up on the Mark Steyn/Maclean’s as Islamophobes story:

Maclean’s published 27 letters, many of complaint. That was not enough for some offended Muslims. Last spring a group of Toronto law students marched into the magazine’s offices demanding equal space for a rebuttal by an author of their choosing. Ken Whyte, the editor and publisher, told the group he would rather see Maclean’s go bankrupt.

That story here.

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.

For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:16

Last week a friend who helped and supported Ted Morton in the Tory leadership bid told me that he was pleased with what Morton has been doing this last year in office. Everything, he said, but for one thing: The metis hunting issue. And for that one reason alone he would not vote for Morton come next election.

We all have different reasons for voting or for not voting for someone. But it would seem that my friend in Ted’s riding will have the opportunity to re-examine his position very shortly:

Ted Morton, the minister of sustainable resource development, announced changes Friday to the subsistence hunting licence, a special licence for Albertans who rely on moose, elk or deer meat to feed themselves and their families.

[...]

The subsistence hunting licence was previously available only to people living north of Highway 16 and outside of towns and cities. It could only be used in winter.

Now the licence may be used anywhere in the province at any time of year.

Licence holders will have the right to kill one moose, one elk or two deer, depending on which species are in abundance in their area.

The licences are available without charge at Fish and Wildlife district offices.

Morton said changes will help Métis who haven’t applied for, or received confirmation of, their harvesting rights under new rules in effect since July 1.

Others might no doubt think that this is yet another instance in which the Stelmach government caves in to protesters. We all have different reasons for voting or for not voting for someone.

Youths rampaged for a third night in the tough suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late Tuesday as police struggled to contain rioters who have burned cars and buildings and - in an ominous turn - shot at officers. A senior police union official warned that "urban guerrillas" had joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were rarely used.

Read the rest here.

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.

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.

There is an old Soviet-era joke about voting that came to mind when I read the recent news about Elections Canada. It goes like this:

An old lady showed up at a polling station in Soviet Russia and was given a folded ballot. As she walked toward the voting booth, she started to unfold the ballot. At that moment, a Soviet official walked up to her and in a threatening tone he said:

- What are you doing?

- I’m trying to figure out the person for whom I am going to vote, the old woman said with an intimidated voice.

- Sorry, the official barked, but you can’t do that! Do you not know that it’s secret ballot?

The joke underscores the obvious lack of liberty in the USSR, but it also points out that secrecy can be abused. To a classical liberal like John Stuart Mill, voting was a public duty and a public duty should be exercised publicly. Mill was no friend of voting by secret ballot because of the inherent public nature of the activity.

The secret ballot was introduced, in part, to prevent abuses at a time when men voted publicly because voters could be monitored by those who offered them money and liquor in exchange for votes. The secrecy behind a screen made it difficult –if not impossible– for the payers to know who the payee had voted for.

Concealing the identity of voters, however, is not at all what was contemplated by Canadian lawmakers when they switched to secret ballot in the late 19th century. Identity concealment is in effect what Elections Canada is recommending that we do. With the decision to allow Muslim women to vote without having to confirm their identity by showing their face, Elections Canada opens multiple doors for corrupting the electoral process, which is antithetical to the agency’s existence, and creates a second category of voters not contemplated by the law.

The very purpose of Elections Canada, in addition, is to safeguard the integrity of voting and to insure that Canadians trust and respect the process. Elections Canada is corrupting both its own mandate and the electoral process. The agency has set out to promote a practice that will undermine trust and respect for voting. The short sighted decision will in fact achieve the opposite of what one suspects its intention to be: to make the process more attractive to voters.

Elections Canada is also violating the will of Parliament, as the PM points out. The decision amounts to a veiled coup. Unelected bureaucrats do not have the authority to violate the legislative will of Parliament. Let Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand know your displeasure with the new directives, if it the case. Click here and send him a word or two.

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaà «lle Jean, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D., Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada

Her predecessor once called herself the new Head of State. This Governor General believes that Rideau Hall is HER house and she is in command of Canada.

Michaelle Jean is hell-bent on changing not just the look but the texture and flavour of Rideau Hall as though it were her own private residence. In the process she wants to change Canadians. She is achieving that task in the name of Canada and Canadian art, though the motivation seems to fashion the Queen’s residence in her own image. Mostly, she is in the business of erecting a monument to herself.

The changes have continued, as a tour this week revealed, and are part of a deliberate effort by Ms. Jean to make the home more relevant, contemporary and a showcase for Canadian work that reflects stories about Canada. But as a result, Ms. Jean, who is an avid art lover, is highlighting paintings that draw less and less on the office's British traditions.

While the governor-general represents the Queen in this country, the increased emphasis on Canada means less on the royal family past or present. The Lemieux portrait is the only one of the Queen on display. "That's it as far as Her Majesty is concerned," said Fabienne Fusade, interpretation and exhibition planner at Rideau Hall. "We really want to create a Canadian interior. So some of the old furniture pieces, part of our history, they are very important, we don't want to get rid of them but … it is all about Canada."

The changes include a gradual shift to modernize the art that predates Ms. Jean's time in office. No longer in the residence: a more traditional portrait of the Queen, as well as images of the Queen's father, King George VI, and the Queen Mother that once graced the entrance. They are now in the Senate.

Where is the dignity of Jeanne Sauve, our fist woman governor general? Sauve showed that female governor-generals do not have to be consumed by personal preoccupations with fashion and interior decor. As usually, souls of significant depth do not concern themselves so highly with the world of appearance. Mostly, Sauve showed that a female GG does not have to be absorbed with oneself when one understand the purpose of the position.

Since Romeo Leblanc (who succeeded Mme Sauve), two consecutive Liberal prime minister have bequeathed to Rideau Hall, to the country, larger egos than our whole 10 million square kilometres of geography. Worse, these giant egos are closet republicans. Their republican souls render the last two GGs incapable of understanding the role of the Crown and Her Majesty’s position. They think of the Queen as arrogance, and arrogance is what they offer to represent her, so unschooled they are on what it means to serve, and how this Queen has lived her life.

Michaelle Jean the latest example: she is a half-breed born in Haiti. Today Haiti is the poorest and more backward country in the hemisphere, and it was no different then. She was born to privilege in a country where less black heritage usually implies better social status. There, her whiteness was emphasized, alongside a pretentious concern for the darker peasants. Now she is in Canada where more black is politically advantageous, unless one is driving a taxi in Montreal.

Jean was a separatist not all that long ago, but now she is Paul Martin’s legacy to represent our Queen. Jean is a chameleon with no recognisable publicly established image; she will change into whatever she needs to change in order to advance herself. As a separatist, she worked for the national broadcaster. As a republican, she represents the Crown in Canada. She now pretends to be concerned with the whiter Canadian peasant’s identity.

Jean thinks that by stripping Rideau Hall of British iconography and symbols she is going to make Canadians more Canadian. It presupposes that Jean knows what being Canadian means, of course, which she does not. Hers exhibits a republican attitude most typically found among Quebec dilettantes. It’s not distinctly Canadian. Being Canadian, for better or for worse, includes our historical ties to Britain as much as it does imperial France.

Being Canadian is in part being British; our very constitution is based on that premise. Not just the written one, but the one that accumulates our traditions and dispositions in our memories and actions. Jean’s project is a project that warps our collective civic memory, though there is a tradition of doing such things among Liberals since Pearson (fittingly we mostly name airports in central Canada after them). Her Canadian history probably goes that far. She ignores that a denial of our British heritage is a denial of our own selves.

Michaelle Jean’s understanding of being Canadian is not in keeping with the whole of Canada and is not in keeping with the political traditions upon which most of this country was based. The British Monarchy has been around for a millennium; Jean is a arrived in Canada in the late 1960s. Her arrogance toward Her Majesty and things monarchical is an arrogance against all Canadians who value our political traditions and historical roots. Jean’s souls is fundamentally trudeauvian: she would minimize the great institution of the Monarchy and the Queen herself in order to aggrandize her own self.

In the typical Canadian Liberal tradition, Michaelle Jean is a woman without tradition; she is a woman without a past; she is a woman without identity in search of making one up. In the absence of all these, much of what fills her soul is a concern for power. She suffers from what most condescending liberal politicians of this age are afflicted with: the assumption that they know better than the common Canadian peasant, a desire to improve us whether we want it or not, and a will to transform us or our country as a means to leave us “a legacy” –that “legacy” is a way to erect a monument to themselves in our warped civic memory.

More Michaelle and less Elizabeth amounts to less Canada. Monarchist and republican Canadians, we are all poorer for having self-importance incarnate presently dwelling Rideau Hall. It stands to reason that the man guided by nothing other than the single-minded aspiration of becoming prime minister would be the one who chose her to be our governor general. The void of substance recognized itself.

——————-

And now for some political gossip.

This anecdote has been circulating Ottawa for months: When Alex Himmelfarb, Paul Martin’s Clerk of the Privy Council, had finished briefing the Harper Conservative transition team on the Hill, he said his goodbyes and well wishes, grabbed his coat and his hat and headed toward the door. As he had crossed the threshold, he turned around retracing a few of his steps into the room and said something like: “Good luck with that woman. She is the most difficult person to deal with in this whole operation.” Stunned, people in the room asked “Who?” The one in Rideau Hall, he said, and off he went. A pearl of wisdom! That was the Clerk for the very liberal prime minister who chose her. One can only imagine what stories Kevin Lynch and others will have to tell.

Ibbitson’s column this morning sounds an apocalyptic trumpet; you’d think that the world is about to come to an end: “atavistic Quebeckers have bolstered the fortunes of a party of intolerance.”

What is visible here is an urbane Ontario view sorely and pathetically decrying last night results in the Quebec election as ugliness itself rearing its head in Canada.

In plain English, that’s just rubbish.

Dumont and his supporters represent a Quebec confident in the affirmation of their culture and their heritage. And they’re not afraid to voice their concerns. That there are a few unsavory characters in the bunch, may be granted. All newer parties attract their fair share of loonies, and even the established parties (I’m thinking of Carolyn Parrish in her hateful particularity) have them.

Quebec society, Mr. Dumont complains, has gone too far in placating the demands of immigrants, who should adapt to Quebec culture rather than expect Quebeckers to adapt to them.

What precisely is wrong with that? The essence of the Revolution Tranquille was about Quebeckers being maitres chez eux? That has not changed and should not change. Why should Quebec go back to being chained by a Canadian orthodoxy?

For a Globe liberal, reasonableness means agreeing with him. All else seems unreasonable. That is an intolerant position considering that Globe intellectuals who seek to have Quebec march at their enlightened Toronto beat are even fewer in numbers than those who voted ADQ last night.

If the ADQ were tyrannical, Ibbitson suggests that tyrannies of the many are bad, but the tyranny of self-inflated newspaper writers contemptuous of a democratic exercise is okay. Let’s get a grip. Dumont is no LePen, but even if he were, the sky over Quebec is not going to fall because of these election results.

Michael Ignatieff suggested that Israelis are war criminals; Ariel Cotler shredded her membership card for a reason; Liberal MPs went to Lebanon and assisted in propaganda against Israel;  Jean Chretien was confused about the Golan Heights; this cretin leftie boasts his pro-Palestinian stance, to say nothing of this one, while this antisemite NDPer boasts his antisemitism regularly. There are not many reasons why Jews should follow the left these days, but WK does not want to think about any of it.  He thinks he can persuade Canadian Jews to continue to support the left. Good luck.

What is also significant is that years ago there would have been no need to write a piece like Kinsella’s. Jews in Canada voted Liberal by instinct. But Jews have been abandoning the sinistre vote for some time now. They’re not willing to have their monetary contributions and their personal vote taken for granted any more. A cute little top ten list is not what’s going to get them back.

The list of words that should not be used, according the United Nations, has just increased. Ironically, the term visible minority, which was officially adopted in order to avoid the use of other words that were unpalatable to the politically-sensitive, has now been placed on the Index.

Canada’s use of the term “visible minorities” to identify people it considers susceptible to racial discrimination came under fire at the United Nations yesterday –for being racist.

Clearly, those who continue to use the term will be branded racist by the venerable international institutions.

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?

JOhn Ibbitson makes some good points in his column this morning regarding electoral boundaries in Canada. But calling for constitutional change is simply not a solution at all, to say nothing of doing it in the presence of a minority government.

Rural folks are a minority in this country. By Ibbitson’s own argument, is it just racial minorities who deserve good representation? Would it only matter then if farmers and ranchers were a racial minority?

That changes should be made to the boundary rules might easily be agreed upon. The point is how, and on that Ibbitson is silent. Gerrymandering for one thing instead of another is no solution. Arguing for individual rights on the basis of collective ones is equally silly.

it’s way too easy to throw the “racist” epithet and then run.

Visible-minority immigrants are slower to integrate into Canadian society than their white, European counterparts, and feel less Canadian, suggesting multiculturalism doesn’t work as well for non-whites, according to a landmark report.

The study, based on an analysis of 2002 Statistics Canada data, found that the children of visible-minority immigrants exhibited a more profound sense of exclusion than their parents.

Visible-minority newcomers, and their offspring, identify themselves less as Canadians, trust their fellow citizens less and are less likely to vote than white immigrants from Europe.

Why are these findings suddenly news to the Globe? People have been saying this sort of things for years. One can’t have a policy of cultural apartheid and then expect people to feel more at home.

With some consternation it was announced that an alleged Canadian academic showed up in Teheran for the world celebrations of hatred against Israel. It has forced the university to distance itself from antisemitism:

“anti-Semitism in particular is so abhorrent to what the university stands for.”

At best, this is a big deal in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where Shiraz Dossa, the supposed professor, is said to work: St. Francis Xavier University. No ties to Gritzbollah have been announced but Dossa is a self-proclaimed Chomski fan.

Dossa got a free trip to Tehran. Why? Nobodies are always trying catch some attention, whether in or outside the academy. The more people in Canada talk about the trip, the more the Iranians and the bonehead political scientist from UT get their kicks. Before this week, no one in political science circles had heard of this guy.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, one would have to conclude that Dossa is just a judgement-impaired useful idiot.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail published Wednesday, Dossa said he did not realize beforehand he would be part of an exercise in anti-Semitism, and repeatedly stated his belief that the genocide of six million Jews during the Second World War is a historical fact. Dossa called anyone who disputes the slaughter of Jews during the Second World War a “lunatic.”

Anne Applebaum has it right. Writing about the long string of notorious prophets of hate who congregated in Tehran, she says:

The guest list was selective: No one with any academic eminence, or indeed any scholarly credentials, was invited.

The alleged professor is no professor at all. Shiraz Dossa is likely an affirmative action graduate of the University of Toronto. Lending credence to a “lecturer” is a little too much. As a lecturer, the coward who hides behind his child daughter has less permanence in the university where he works than the mold found in the residences bathrooms.

It’s is not quite the white man’s burden that Justin Trudeau carries but if you put it in the context of the negres blancs and the multiculturalists, it gets you part of the way there.

“You win the lottery, and you can do two things,” Mr. [Justin] Trudeau, 34, said. “And when you look at it, I won the birth lottery. I got to be born to Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret Sinclair… You can either begin to feel guilty about it, and hide from it, or you can say, ‘Look, for some reason, I was given an undue amount of power and influence that I certainly didn’t ask for and didn’t earn.’ So then you say, ‘Well then I have to try and be worthy of it.’”

Let us all thank G-d that he was born!

Should Canada now start its own calendar on Justin’s birthday?

All the prime minister’s Chefs, Chiefs and CEOs this week.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees has joined a coalition trying to “save” the soon to be excised court challenges programme. I wonder if they will launch a court challenge.

After having taken money from minors and having sold memberships to the dead, why should it matter if some Liberal delegates don’t speak any of the official languages.

As well, “a lot of people don’t speak English as a first language,” he said, adding most names were Asian.

A few years ago, it was reported that a Chinese restaurant in Edmonton had been serving dog meat to unsuspecting customers.

Now comes this report:

Other cities routinely shut down dirty restaurants, fine the owners for repeated health violations or let the public know whether the kitchen is safe by posting inspection results on the front door and on the Internet.

But in Edmonton, even chronic health violations do not always trigger a written warning. Inspectors don’t have the power to fine. Dirty restaurants are rarely closed, and the health authority seldom takes owners to court.

Diners don’t know what is happening behind the kitchen door.

Duh!

What’s going on up there?

In reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s arguments about the importance of reason (logos) in scientific and spiritual pursuits and in mutual understanding among peoples, Islam has reacted with crude violence (a rejection of dialogue), and has orchestrated wide calls for apologies designed to humiliate Christendom as they see it.

The pope has apologised more than once, but it’s not enough. Muslims, or at least some of them, who would threaten the pontiff’s life and attack churches as a result, whatever their denomination, now would like a dialogue.

Some Muslims here in Connecticut say the Pope’s apology is a start, but what’s needed is a dialogue between Catholic and Muslim leaders both abroad, and here at home.

and another one:

“One of the major things in the Qur’an, that’s emphasized, is to respect people of the book, which includes Christians and Jews, having that dialogue is very important here.”

The calls beg the question: With whom would the Roman Catholic pope dialogue? The Taliban? Hezbollah? The Muslim Brotherhood? Al Qaeda? The arsonists who attacked churches in Palestine? The Iranian mullahs? Who among these are capable of dialoguing? The Connecticut Mulsims don’t quite get it. –and these are Muslims living in the west, who presumably can read and have access to western language documents.

A central portion of the condemned papal speech establishes that dialogue (literally from the Greek dialogos, across reason or across word) can only take place if there is acceptance of logos –reason. Since the speech at the University of Regensburg, the Muslim world in general has gone out of its way to prove Benedict right about the absence of reason and reasonable action. One of the quotes from 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos (which makes me think that the choice of texts is linked to the connection of the message and the name of the messenger) reads: “Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God.”

Not much logos coming from Islamic quarters these days, and there can be no dialogos without logos, let alone reasonable action.

In addition to the attacks to churches in Palestine, an Iraqi jihadi group has issued death threats (in Spanish from El Pais) against the life of Benedict XVI, the Catholic pope, for pointing out that Islamic ‘holy war’ is contrary to the nature of G-d. That outside the jihadi radicals, most thinking Muslims would agree does not matter.

But it’s not really about the substance of the statement made by the pope but about how it has been spun. The jihadis who hate the west because it is “Christian” are simply unable to enter into a discussion on the finer theological points of their own religion, let alone their justifications for wanting to exterminate all infidels. They fear ideas and discourse because all they have beyond ignorance is force, threat and terror.

To people whose notion of heavenly bliss is an eternal orgy among young virgins dedicated to each killer, the idea of a benevolent and loving G-d who is incompatible with violence is incomprehensible. And to the nihilist western press, the idea that jihadis can produce such violence in the name of a divinity that the secular press cannot grasp is a puzzle without solution. But in their respective ignorance, they are mates of sorts.

In the western culture of victimhood and liberal intolerance for traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs, the press sides with the killers because they are ‘victims.’ The jihadis and the secular west are partners in their demands for a papal apology, they are partners in their deconstruction of western virtue.

The pope has issued apologies, but they are doing little to placate the lust for hatred (en francais). The personal papal regrets to be offered tomorrow at the Angelus from Castelgandolfo will probably not find ears among islamists.