The Shotgun Blog
Friday, May 09, 2008
Rally? What rally?
A massive anti-abortion protest clogged Ottawa streets yesterday afternoon in one of the largest, most visible signs of public discontent with Canada's abortion lawlessness seen in years.
Meanwhile, in more than half a dozen centres across Canada, thousands more pro-lifers were marching and rallying to protect the lives of the unborn.
None of this ring any bells? That's because (according to my Google News search) only one story about the mammoth, cross-country March for Life campaign appeared in the mainstream press, this one, here, in the Ottawa Sun.
I took part in the March for Life in Victoria yesterday, an event which attracted about 1,000 peaceful but determined participants. Here's a photo I took.
It was a highly unusual affair, and not the sort of tree-hugging, business-bashing march and rally that normally ends up on the lawn in front of the B.C. Legislature. That alone should have made it newsworthy. But I saw not a single TV camera, radio reporter or newspaper journalist during the entire event.
That's one stinking, steaming piece of media bias, if you ask me.
Continue reading "Rally? What rally?"
Posted by Terry O'Neill on May 9, 2008 at 09:50 AM
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Meanwhile, the Audacity of Hype is whining again
He doesn't like people mentioning that he is Hamas' favorite. FWIW, I also explain why this is so.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on May 9, 2008 at 09:18 AM
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Is the occupation of Tibet all about the water?
I must confess, I have trouble seeing water as a political or geopolitical issue (it doesn't register at all down here, except perhaps for all the gallons now being wasted on ethanol, but that's another story), but I do understand it's a different story north of the 49th. Therefore, perhaps some of you may be interested in an analysis I found on Tibet, Communist China, and the Himalayan water supply (see News from the occupied nations).
Posted by D.J. McGuire on May 9, 2008 at 07:30 AM
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Thursday, May 08, 2008
Henry Morgentaler's pointed pen
University of B.C. history professor George Egerton has unearthed a rather sinister letter sent by arch-abortionist Dr. Henry Morgentaler to then-PM Pierre Trudeau in 1973. Some people who have read the letter feel it contains an implied threat of blackmail. Read the following and decide for yourself:
Maclean's story on the missive, in which I am quoted.
My detailed analysis on Lifesite.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on May 8, 2008 at 10:58 PM
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Steyn debates critics, critics offended
Here's Mark discussing his articles, his book, his critics, the HRCs, the Western Standard Shotgun Blog, and–at last–debating the three remaining Osgoode Hall Law School student-complainants on The Agenda with Steve Paikin on TVO. It's not short, but it's an entertaining watch.
Posted by Kalim Kassam on May 8, 2008 at 02:34 PM
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It's like ra-ee-ain on your wedding day
It's not just the Tibetan flag factory in Guandong, ironies abound in the People's Republic of China. "China's ancient capital, Nanjing, is about to become
the bible printing centre of the world with the opening of a press
capable of producing one million copies of the Bible per month" reports CathNews, noting that "until 30 years ago, Christianity was banned and Bibles were confiscated.
" Though religious restrictions have been loosened, official anti-Christian policy is more than just a distant memory. The three officially sanctioned Christian organizations (two Protestant and one "Catholic") are tightly regulated and all others are prohibited. The "Catholic" organization, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, for example, does not recognize any authority of the Church outside of China after 1949 when the Communist Party of China rose to power. The Pope is rejected as a "foreign agent," declarations like Vatican II and new canonizations are not accepted, and clergy are prohibited from speaking out on social issues like contraception and abortion. As you might imagine, all this regulation leads most Chinese Christians to practice their religion outside of the purview of the state in illegal unnafilliated "house churches." As DJ pointed out, the crackdown on these illegal religious organizations is very active, recently 46 Christians attending Bible classes and church services were arrested in Xinjiang.
While in some spheres of life, China hurdles quickly towards capitalism, property rights, and freedom, in many others individuals are subjected to the arbitrary whim of the state. The goverment's lack of respect for religious freedom, whether for Protestants, Catholics, Uighur Muslims, Falun Gong, or Tibetan Buddhists is a particularly dark stain. The fast growth of Christianity in China is one of the forces which threatens the Chinese government's total hold over the minds and bodies of the Chinese people–of course the fact that religious organizations compete with the ruling Communist regime for the loyalty of individual Chinese is the main reason behind the supression of religion domestically and abroad. The PRC government press agency Xinhua reports that there are 70 million members of the atheist governing Communist Party (5.5 percent of the population), while independent estimates of China's Christian population range from 40 million (3 percent) to 130 million (10 percent).
(H/T Joshua)
Posted by Kalim Kassam on May 8, 2008 at 02:13 PM
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Mark Steyn in Toronto
Mark Steyn gets out and about in Toronto to promote the new paperback of his US bestseller (and Canadian hate crime).
You can find a couple of accounts of his Indigo/Chapters appearance here, here and here
Posted by Winston on May 8, 2008 at 01:25 PM
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Watch for this sleight-of-hand by American politicians
As it's election time down here, you're going to hear a lot about "ending our dependence on foreign oil." In a lot of cases, this is just protectionism or radical environmentalism in disguise.
How do I know? I can tell from the rantings of the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in my state (Virginia), Mark Warner. Warner is pulling the "foreign oil" nonsense, knowing full well that when Americans think "foreign oil," we think the Saudi royal family.
So I'm going to spend this year (among other things) counting the number of politicians who will actually name our biggest outside oil supplier since 2004 (hint: most of you, dear readers, live there). I doubt I'll need more than one hand.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on May 8, 2008 at 08:18 AM
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Speaking of Vancouver . . .
. . . the city that is arguably the most leftist in Canada (I know, I know, it's not for lack of effort from Toronto) has found a protest group worthy of a crackdown.
Why am I not surprised that it's an anti-Communist protest (see Long Arm of Lawlessness reference).
Posted by D.J. McGuire on May 8, 2008 at 06:51 AM
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Oh Vancouver!
I picked up (for $4.99!) Byron York's 2005 book, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, in a clearance bin at Save-On Foods the other day, and am finding it to be a useful guide to the Left's expensive and ultimately futile "new media" effort to unseat George W. Bush in 2004.
York, the National Review's White House correspondent, puts forward the thesis that the Left conducted an extravagantly expensive and well coordinated campaign to defeat Bush, a campaign that almost certainly broke election-spending laws. However, the campaign ended up being for naught, because, despite many claims to the contrary, it ended up reaching only the converted--hardcore Democrats who would have voted for John Kerry anyway.
Nowhere was this truer than in the reception to Michael Moore's anti-Bush propaganda film, Fahrenheit 9/11. York looks closely at actual region-by-region figures and reports that the movie did best in highly liberal cities, and bombed most everywhere else. The film performed very well in Canada, and was especially boffo in Vancouver, where it attracted almost double the number of paying customers as would be expected from a city its size. In fact, the rate at which Vancouver area filmgoers exceeded viewership expectations was, at 96 percent, the highest in North America.
And I guess that's why they call it the Left Coast.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on May 7, 2008 at 11:44 AM
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Hug a bear
h/t to Kate for bringing this video to my attention.
Ya gotta love the idiot editor who spliced in stock footage of PENGUINS to illustrate a story about the Arctic. Check it out at the 29-sec mark.
And ya just gotta love our heroine, who, after her training session with a rifle (to learn how to protect herself from polar bears), said she'd rather hug the creatures instead. Right. One Brit popsicle treat for mamma polar bear coming up!
Posted by Terry O'Neill on May 7, 2008 at 11:25 AM
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How do I respond to being so throughly wrong on last night's vote?
By distracting all of you with today's post on Communist China.
Although I am forced to ask: What's the best sauce for crow?
Posted by D.J. McGuire on May 7, 2008 at 07:31 AM
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Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Record oil profits, regular profit margins
Crude oil prices approached a peak of $123 a barrel yesterday and record oil profits continued to inspire populist attacks on Big Oil from the Democratic presidential contenders. "We need to go after the oil companies" says Clinton while Obama contends that they are (gasp!) "pocketing the money themselves." In light of these facts and shocking revelations, perhaps we should be taking a closer look at these oil profits. In this interview with Headline News’ lonely capitalist Glenn Beck, Shell Oil president John Hofmeister has some interesting analysis on the solution to energy woes (more drilling) and the consistency of 1st quarter oil profit margins on capital invested with historical numbers (around 7.5%).
(H/T Wladimir)
Posted by Kalim Kassam on May 6, 2008 at 11:59 PM
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Hurrah, the Death Penalty is Back!
Georgia today had the honour of being the first state to execute a criminal following the Supreme Court's lifting of a temporary death penalty moratorium. I realize that some here have religious or ideological objections to capital punishment but, I suspect it goes without saying that I am not among those individuals.
Indeed, I am for the death penalty not only on practical grounds ("no dead criminal re-offends") but on philosophical grounds as well. The refusal to use the death penalty to punish criminals - a tool used by pretty much all known human societies since the beginning of time - is a sure sign of civilizational decadence and decline. The death penalty isn't merely about the offender and the victim - it is the recognition that there exist absolute and unforgivable offenses which are not merely against human law, but against natural law as well.
No one will miss this sub-human trash:
Lynd, 53, was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, three times in the face and head two decades ago. After he buried Moore's body in a shallow grave near a south Georgia farm, authorities said Lynd fled to Ohio, where he shot and killed another woman who had stopped along the side of the road to help him.
When we kill a criminal such as this, we reaffirm our own belief in humanity and civilization. Killing someone like this is a way of expressing our own self-confidence - it is a way of saying, "yes, we are certain enough of ourselves and our collective morality that we are going to write you out of the human race." It is the judgement of civilization that such people should die.
The real pity is that we can't use the death penalty for more offenses. Look, for example, to the case of Josef Fritzl in Austria. It is regrettable that Europe has abolished the death penalty - and that the death penalty has been more-or-less abolished for crimes other than murder in the United States because, quite frankly, I can think of few creatures who deserved to die more than this... thing... does. Killing him would be a collective reaffirmation of our own humanity.
Now, of course, there are many - and I'm sure many here - who aren't comfortable with such power being in the hands of the state. I thoroughly disagree here. Given that the death penalty would - even if I was allowed to extend it to rapists, child molesters, and some other criminals - be fairly narrowly applied. It is a power which will only touch upon the vilest things which walk the Earth. The use of the death penalty - as authorized by the will of a jury of one's peers - is one of the narrow powers that the state ought to have.
After all, the state - at least in a libertarian state - is a repository for those functions - contracts, law enforcement, national defense, international relations - which cannot (or should not) be exercised on an individual level. If you assume that, in the state of nature, mobs would simply kill rapists, child molesters, murderers, and the like then it is fair to say that the obligation of the state to carry out this function is implicit in the social contract.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on May 6, 2008 at 07:27 PM
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Grant Brown: "Diaper duty revisited"
In 2007, the Alberta Court of Appeal refused to recognize the validity of a written agreement between common-law partners John and Jane Doe which stipulated that John had no parental responsibilities towards Jane's child. In this week's column "Diaper duty revisited," Grant Brown asks "why must Alberta men pay for sex whenever a child is in the offing?" An excerpt:
"If John Doe were a favoured uncle who lived in the same home as the mother of a newborn child, or a gay house-mate or renter, or a live-in nanny, then surely, he would have all of the duties of care for infants in distress that members of society at large have, plus whatever additional duties were specifically contracted for with the mother – <i>and nothing more</i>. Furthermore, in that case, rather than John owing support obligations to the child, Jane might well owe John remuneration for his invaluable daycare services. Why, on the mere basis that John and Jane share a bed, is the flow of entitlement to financial support reversed by the Alberta Court of Appeal? ...
The Alberta Court of Appeal’s decision at least has the virtue of being consistent with a long line of family-law cases in Canada which interpret the supposed “mutuality of rights and obligations” arising from these relationships so as to presumptively assign all of the rights to the mothers and all of the obligations to the fathers. "
Posted by Western Standard on May 6, 2008 at 05:43 PM
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Kos Deludes Himself
Looking at the exit poll numbers, Kos writes:
Um, it doesn't look like Obama has an "elitism" problem, no matter how much the media, Clinton and her current Republican allies might say.
Let's look at some of the numbers in the full exit poll - remembering, as I've said before, that exit polls consistently over-value Obama's numbers:
- 33% of the voters - remembering that this is in the Democratic primary - don't believe that Obama is honest and trustworthy.
- Clinton and Obama's "share your values" numbers AMONG DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS are identical.
Obama's negatives look good only in comparison to Hillary Clinton's.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on May 6, 2008 at 05:37 PM
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IN/NC Live Thread
Ok, I'm starting two minutes before the polls close in Indiana. I'm already prepared to make a call - Clinton wins Indiana. Probably big. The first results have her up by sixteen points. The first results don't ever tell everything - but that's not going to be overcome.
Fox didn't make a call on the hour but, in an interesting statistic, they revealed that the Republicans who voted in the Indiana primary favoured Clinton. Operation Chaos is working - indeed, Fox even mentioned it. Go Rush!
The networks don't seem to want to call the state because the exits seemingly have it as a tie. Once again, though, we're seeing the Bradley Effect in action - Obama is grossly over-polling both in phone polls and exit polls. If I was going to guess, I'd say that Clinton wins by at least ten points in Indiana.
UPDATE: Now, I'm going to call North Carolina for Obama. No real surprise there - I'm pretty sure that Fox is going to do it in a few minutes here. The exits show a huge Obama win. I don't think it'll be close to the twenty points that the exits say.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on May 6, 2008 at 04:59 PM
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