The Shotgun Blog
« September 2, 2007 - September 8, 2007 |Main| September 16, 2007 - September 22, 2007 »
Saturday, September 15, 2007
$100,000 cartoon contest!!
Remember when this was the kind of thing you'd find at the back of a newsprint magazine, offering you the chance to draw Woody Woodpecker or Betty Boop for a $25 prize and a cartooning instruction book? Geez, I remember stuff like that at the back of my Archie comics when I was little.
Times have changed, though, and $25 doesn't buy quite as many Sea Monkeys as it used to. Nowadays a book of art instruction goes for more than that! Heck, you'd be lucky if you could buy 5 Archie comics!
Now the cartoon prizes are much bigger, and the rules have changed. No longer do you submit your attempt along with a proof of purchase and a $1 entry fee. No, now you have to go out and slaughter another artist like a lamb.
The purported head of al-Qaeda in Iraq has offered a reward for the murder of a Swedish cartoonist over his drawing depicting the Prophet Muhammad.The $100,000 (£49,310) reward would be raised by 50% if Lars Vilks was "slaughtered like a lamb" said the audio message aired on the internet.
The speaker, said to be Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, threatened a new offensive during the holy month of Ramadan.
Last month's cartoon showed Prophet Muhammad's head on a dog's body.
Several Muslim countries protested.
Hmmm... wasn't more than two or three years ago that the Religion of Peace was telling us that violence during the "Holy Month of Ramadan" was haram, or verboten. I guess they noticed we weren't buying into that bullshit, dropped the charade, and went back to what they do best: Threats and killings.
But Saturday's taped message said the militants were announcing a "call to shed the blood of the Lars who dared to insult our Prophet"."During this generous month we announce an award worth $100,000 to the person who kills this infidel criminal," the speaker said.
He also announced a $50,000 reward for the killing of the editor of the newspaper.
Yup, Islam is a generous religion indeed.
Posted by RightGirl on September 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Family disintegration
The Vancouver Sun editorializes today that we should all just "move with the times" and quit worrying about the family-formation figures released on Wednesday by StatsCan.
But Sun columnist Pete McMartin, who is the closest thing to a populist the paper has on its full-time payroll, advances a distinctly different position on the matter. In his column today, he summarizes what is essentially the paper's official line on the matter, and then declares it is all "a heaping load of crap."
That's telling it like it is, Pete!
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 15, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Lax Justice
Sex offender arrested at Vancouver airport
A Prince Edward Island sex offender who is considered a high risk to reoffend was arrested at the Vancouver airport Friday, just hours after his release from prison, the CBC has reported.
Thane Moore, who has called himself a "walking time bomb," was released from Dorchester Penitentiary early Friday after serving his entire sentence in the New Brunswick prison.
Ticking time bomb? Not rehabilitated? Danger to re-offend? Why does the "justice" system keep doing this? They know these sex offenders will commit more crimes and they know that rehabilitating them is a waste of time, so why? Oh wait, because he served his sentence and it would be against his rights to hold him any longer or restrict his freedom. What about his victims rights? Or the publics for that matter? Yes the RCMP arrested him, but they can't hold him forever. I'm beginning to think that is what we have to do with sex offenders; hold them in prison indefinably.
Posted @ Ranting Owl
Posted by Leah Dowe on September 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Brian Mulroney GST Claim Proves Earlier Promise Broken
So now Brian Mulroney claims that it was the GST that eliminated the deficit.
Hmm ... If that is true, then I guess the GST was not revenue neutral, the way Mr. Mulroney and Michael Wilson promised it was. Kind of hard for a tax both to be revenue neutral and (amid rising expenditure) to close the gap between revenue and spending.
According to reports, Mr. Mulroney said, "The truth is, Michael Wilson and Don Mazankowski planted the garden and Paul Martin got to pick the flowers."
I am not sure I would label the GST a "garden." But there is widespread agreement among Canadians about who fertilised it.
Posted by Guy Giorno on September 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Quebec terrorist suspect: Un-Muslim
The Globe and Mail portrays suspected Quebec al-Qaeda terrorist Saïd Namouh as somewhat of a victim. The poor terrorist, hard Canadian life made him that way!
Reading through the rhetoric the summary is that he married to get into the country five years ago, had a few un-Muslim odd jobs (they said it) in between sitting on the internet and collecting welfare:
A Moroccan-born man arrested in Quebec in connection with a bomb plot had tried several times to immigrate to Canada but wasn’t successful until he married a Canadian woman nearly 18 years older than him, an ex-girlfriend says.
Saïd Namouh, 34, was detained this week on a conspiracy charge. The prosecution alleges that he plotted to detonate a car bomb in Austria, in concert with a pair of alleged al-Qaeda sympathizers in Vienna.
Mr. Namouh grew up in the coastal city of Kenitra in northern Morocco. He came to Quebec after marrying a waitress from Maskinongé, Que., who was visiting his country. She then sponsored his immigration application.
This came after Mr. Namouh had an Internet relationship with another small-town Quebec woman who tried in vain to get him a visa to Canada, said the woman, a resident of Grand Mère. Both Maskinongé and Grand Mère are in the Mauricie area, midway between Montreal and Quebec City.
For the past five years, Mr. Namouh has been in the Quebec hinterland, taking un-Muslim jobs such as washing trucks that transport pigs.(Globe and Mail)
I wish the Canadian media would stop referring to them as al-Qaeda sympathizers when the trail shows that they were heavily involved in promoting al-Qaeda. How can you sympathize with killers? Your either with them or your not.
Somebody from the Globe and Mail peeked in welfare recipient Said Namouh’s car:
Inside, a Bible, a Jehovah Witnesses’ booklet and Arabic-language printouts could be seen.
Maybe that’s why he was capable of doing the un-Muslim odd jobs… he was becoming an infidel.
Related on the Broom: Courtroom sketch of Quebec terrorist suspect | Shaking the Canadian cyber-jihad tree | Alleged al Qaeda terrorist captured in Canada
Posted by Darcey on September 15, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack
You can only be biased towards Christians
This is a friggin’ beauty - Calgary:
Three potential jurors said they might be biased against an accused killer because he’s Muslim, and were excused from duty Friday.
Although it’s not believed religion will become an issue during the Calgary trial of Mohamed Karim — the alleged hitman in the shooting death of a Calgary businessman — three people told the judge the accused’s race or religion could affect their impartiality.
The rarely used procedure that allows questions about race and religion during jury selection disturbed some in Calgary’s Muslim community.
Karim, who is Egyptian, is one of two men charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of 49-year-old Calgary businessman Jack Beauchamp early last year.
The four-week trial begins Monday.
Karim, 25, is alleged to have been hired by Robert Deer, 54, to kill Beauchamp, who was found shot to death in his downtown office on Jan. 16, 2006. Deer is also charged with first-degree murder.
Karim’s lawyer initiated the procedure, which has only been used a couple of times in Calgary in recent years.
Steve Jenuth, a Calgary criminal lawyer and president of the Alberta Civil Liberties Association, said it weeds out potentially biased jurors.
“People admitting that is important,” Jenuth said. “We’d be more disturbed if people who had a (race or religion) problem didn’t admit it.”
“It may be you want to be careful, particularly in this month with the anniversary of Sept. 11, and based on other things we hear from that religion. Canada is at war and we’re certainly in an armed conflict against some people who claim they are of the Muslim faith,” Jenuth said.
However, Muslim Council of Calgary president Nagah Hage said he was surprised and disturbed it was deemed necessary to ask the question.
“Do they ask anybody else that (question), based on religion?” he asked.
“If you’re up on murder or some other charge, religion doesn’t have to come into that. We’re confident in this justice system in Canada. … Racism exists everywhere. It doesn’t mean all white people are racist.”
The race and religion question was put before 76 people, called from a pool of about 240 prospective jurors. Three admitted the man’s background would affect their ability to remain unbiased. They were dismissed, along with four others who had direct or familial connections with either the victim or witnesses scheduled to testify.
Eight women and four men, plus two alternatives, were eventually selected. (Calgary Herald)
Further folly begins here:
After 1,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators–”angry and chanting,” according to the Calgary Sun–”surged” towards the Harry Hays federal building and then the U.S. Consulate April 5, march organizer Nagah Hage pleaded with them. “Islam means peace,” he said. But “Islam” does not mean “peace,” and it was reported that the mob chanted “Death to the Jews.”
Maybe there was another reason the potential jurors were biased.
c/p Dust my Broom
Posted by Darcey on September 15, 2007 in Religion | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Friday, September 14, 2007
Liberals: Losing Outremont; Below Greens in St-Hy
Oof! Looks like the "native son" theory pushed by giddy MSM pundits at the conclusion of last year's Liberal convention was dead wrong - Quebecers are hating the Liberals with Dion as leader more than ever! Heading into Monday's three Quebec by-elections, here's the latest polling from Unimarket-La Presse. First, the "safe" Liberal stronghold of Outremont:
NDP 38%, Liberal 32%, Bloc 14%
Next, the small-town riding of Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean:
Conservative 43% Bloc 37% Liberal 12%
Finally, the absolute kick-in-the-ass, rural/ex-urban Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot:
Bloc 49% Conservative 32% NDP 7% Green 6% Liberal 5%
If the Liberals cannot hold Outremont, and get beaten back to fringe-party status just half an hour's drive east of Montreal, they are an absolutely spent force in Quebec for the forseeable future. Smarter minds than Dion's understand this - and the long knives are coming out. From CTV's story:
Supporters of former leadership rivals Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae are already unhappy with Dion, he said, although a movement to ouster Dion before the next federal election is unlikely.
Translation: If we can't get him to resign on his own, we'll consider a move to ouster.
Meanwhile, if you want to know precisely why Harper is licking his chops at the possibility of Dion and company voting down the upcoming throne speech and triggering an election, just watch this train wreck of an interview of Steffi by Peter Mansbridge, from last night's The National (well worth the 6:18):
http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/23745/thenational/archive/dion-091307.wmv
A leader of men, he can never be.
Posted by Neil Flagg on September 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
How Can Anyone Take the Greens Seriously?
For years, the Green party has been trying to get the message out that they are not just a party of tree huggers. The Green party keeps repeating that they have a serious economic platform as well. However, after reading this, I have to ask, are they really serious?
If elected, [Green Party leader] de Jong plans to introduce legislation to make Ontario more European.
Oh dear! I’ve been to Europe, so already I don’t like how this is starting.
He plans on doing away with “excessive overtime” and adding a panoply of annual days off, including Ontario’s birthday on the first Monday in March, Earth Day in April, the Friday before the first Monday in August and Remembrance Day in November.
In all, the Green Party proposes to add a whopping six more statutory holidays to the eight we already have! This from a party that wants us to take their economic policies seriously.
Let’s flip the page for a moment and see what else is going on in Ontario.
It should come as no surprise to anybody, that Ontario’s economy is facing some big challenges. With a rising Canadian dollar, our manufacturing sector, the traditional engine of Ontario, is shedding jobs.
If Ontario is to attract businesses and jobs to the province, I have a feeling the Green Party plan to add another six statutory holidays to the calendar is not going to do it!
Frank de Jong thinks “we’re working too hard”, and he’s advising us to “conserve a little energy of our own”. “We can do that by working fewer overtime hours and enjoying six more statutory holidays a year.”
Our economic challenges are very serious, and should be the biggest part of the Ontario election campaign. Meanwhile, the Green party is proposing we all take a step back and chill out. De Jong thinks if we relax a little more like the Europeans, we’ll all be better off.
Of course, if we take de Jong’s advice, we’ll all be unemployed and his precious six holidays won’t mean a damn thing!
Cross-posted at www.exactlyright.ca.
Posted by Dave Hodson on September 14, 2007 in Canadian Provincial Politics | Permalink | Comments (49) | TrackBack
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Stirling Street
Hamilton Spectator: Natives occupy hill near Caledonia
McHale at caledoniawakeupcall.com has been following this all day. He's reporting that the man who confronted the occupiers was was beaten senseless. A video has just gone up on YouTube (which may not be immediately viewable as it is still resolving as I write).
Posted by Kevin Steel on September 13, 2007 in Aboriginal Issues | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Point taken
I think the questions I raised in my posting last week -- about the implications of the appointment of former Indian chief Steven Point, who has headed two aboriginal "nations," as lieutenant-governor of B.C. -- are more germane than ever now that Canada has voted against the big UN declaration on aboriginal rights, on grounds related, in part, to the impossibility of giving more rights to the country's 650 "First Nations."
Where do you stand on the "nation" issue, Mr. Point? Do you believe that distinct aboriginal bands are "nations" with nation-like powers? If so, do you consider yourself part of one or more of those nations? And, if so, do think that this nationality is on a par with your Canadian nationality? In other words, to which "nation" do you give your highest alliegance?
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 13, 2007 in Aboriginal Issues | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
New doubts in Stonechild case
Will justice finally be served in the Neal Stonechild case? It's looking more likely now that an official commission is looking into his controversial 1990 death, which has long been pinned on two Saskatoon police officers. The commission was told yesterday by a street-connected criminal that the police had nothing to do with Stonechild's death.
Western Standard readers will remember that the first major re-evaluation of the case came in this magazine in late 2004, when my tenacious former colleague, Candis McLean, published a brilliant investigative story into the events surrounding the death. Candis has subsequently produced a documentary about what she says is another similar miscarriage of justice in Saskatchewan.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 13, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Negotiating with the Taliban
Looks like President Hamid Karzai might be meeting with the Taliban in an effort to end the six year insurgency. What does the Taliban want in exchange for peace? Well, making Afghanistan a more Islamic friendly "democracy." No kidding folks, Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi said, (exact quote)
"The United States brought democracy to Afghanistan, but it was un-Islamic, we need democracy, but under the laws of Islam."
Is there such a creature, I ask you?
Read it all here: What the increasingly confident Taliban want in exchange for peace
Posted by Leah Dowe on September 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBack
OFF quickie
BBC: Texan 'gave millions to Saddam' on the trial of Oscar Wyatt related to the Oil-for-Food scandal.
The OFF scandal get brief mention in a post "Lucky Maurice" about Moe Strong in China on the the Far Eastern Economic Review blog, Travellers' Tales. Moe's now honorary chairman of the Peking University Environmental Fund. That post promoted a follow-up, Strong Class Background.
Posted by Kevin Steel on September 12, 2007 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
McGuinty Declares War on Handguns to End Violence in Ontario Schools
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is afraid of an “American-style” school system with metal detectors and security guards. Of course, Liberals are afraid of anything “American”. According to Liberals, if something is done in the US, then there must be a better way!
“I would be very reluctant for Ontario to embrace the Americanization of public education,” McGuinty told reporters at a Toronto press conference.
If he doesn’t want to employ security to control violence in some schools, then I suppose McGuinty would prefer to allow the gun carrying thugs to roam the hallways of our schools freely, inflicting their violence on students and teachers unabated?
Well, not exactly. McGuinty does have a plan to remove the gun problems from our schools. Instead of using security guards to catch the gun carrying thugs as they enter the school, he is renewing calls for a handgun ban.
Phew! I feel safer already. Security guards are not needed, because McGuinty wants to ban handguns from Canada instead. It’s like posting a sign on the school doors telling students to leave their guns at home. I’m sure it will be very effective!
Cross-posted at www.exactlyright.ca.
Posted by Dave Hodson on September 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBack
Harvest Moon
Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker: New York Local--Eating the fruits of the five boroughs
The above article is from the New Yorker's Food Issue (Sept. 3), an annual publication event always worth the price of admission (Bill Buford's "The Pasta Station," Sept. 6, 2004, is one of the best articles I've ever read). The Gopnik piece is on localism;
The point of localism is to encourage sustainable agriculture by eating things that nearby friends and farmers grow or raise and that don’t have to be shipped halfway around the world, guzzling fossil fuel, to get to your table. The rules generally involve eating within a radius of a hundred or sometimes three hundred miles. . .
People who practice this are called "locavores." Here's a website, locavore.com and an article on the lefty Common Dreams site reprinted from Seattle Times: "Time to Become a Locavore." Localism came up in a casual conversation I had recently with an MP's executive assistant while I was writing about tainted food products from China. The EA suggested localism might be an answer to my panic after I told him how I had rummaged through my cupboards, reading labels, and chucking everything marked Product of China. (I typically overreact to food scares since I am by nature an inattentive and careless shopper. Reading the labels on things I had been eating for years was something of a revelation. I nearly wept as I threw out the tinned smoked oysters.)
Localism is not new. It might be new to some urbanites, but it's been going on in the countryside for pretty much . . . well, it's always been going on more or less informally and without strict distance limits. Go with what you know; if you know the producer is a decent person, chances are you're going to get something decent.
I'm not a big follower of fads, but on first blush localism looked like one I could adopt. I like the idea of food self-sufficiency. My town, my city, my province, my country should be able to support its own table. Why do I think that? I'm not sure. Perhaps it’s an attitude I inherited from my depression-era, "scarcity is just around the corner" parents. Anyway, for me now, in this place, being something of a "locavore" is a no-brainer. I live in British Columbia's lushly irrigated Okanagan Valley. My morning bike ride takes me past large commercial gardens and orchards, the latter at this time of the year bursting with apples and nectarines, etc. Local food is everywhere. It's tough to avoid buying local.
Growing up in suburban Edmonton, I recall my mother--a farmer's daughter--directing our bi-annual family treks to a Hutterite colony near Bruderheim where we loaded up the car with freshly slaughtered chickens and dirt-covered root vegetables. "What are we going to do with all those carrots?" mother would say on the drive home, and dad's answer was invariably a blank stare. Then there was sausage from Mundare, cheese from Bashaw, Taber corn. Locavore events dotted my early life, and I'm sure I'm not unique in this. But the more I think about it, though, the more I realize these dots were exclamation points, highlights. The main hunting-and-gathering place was still the supermarket. Why? Distribution. Everything in one place brought there as efficiently as possible because business is not in the business of being inefficient. You can spend a lot of time and energy, as the Gopnik article demonstrates, gathering up enough local food to live on, especially when you are feeding a family of six as my parent did.
In the Gopnik article, I'm still puzzling over these two paragraphs;
It is even perilously easy to construct a Veblenian explanation for the vogue for localism. Where a century ago all upwardly mobile people knew enough, and had enough resources, to get their hands on the most unseasonable foods from the most distant places, in order to distinguish themselves from the peasant past and the laboring masses, their descendants now distinguish themselves by hustling after a peasant diet.
This may be so; but the fact that one can explain everything in social life as a series of status exchanges does not mean that social life is only a series of status exchanges. It was cool to be a liberal in 1963, but that did not make liberal attitudes to race foolish. All human values get expressed as social rituals; we place bets on which of the rituals are worth serving.
The first of these 'graphs is a fairly straight-forward observation; society's betters are trying to find a way to remain better, or at least different. But that second paragraph, where the betters become bettors, I just can't figure out. First of all, I'm not sure "one can explain everything in social life as a series of status exchanges." The writer goes from status changes, to coolness, to race, to foolishness, to gambling, to social rituals, to worthiness, and seems to disappear up his own butt much like a Lewis Lapham editorial in a 1990s issue of Harper's. ". . . we place bets on which of the rituals are worth serving." There's a leap of faith here, but it's not clear where it lands. And I can't shake the niggling notion that maybe this localism with food might just a nicey-nice way for urban trendoids to redirect and repress their xenophobic anxieties; "I don't trust those foreigners--excuse me, I mean 'forces of globalization'--with my food, but let's hitch this bandwagon to the fresh pony of climate change ("guzzling fossil fuel") and liven the ride." Maybe after a few more cups of coffee I'll figure it out. You can bet I won't be giving up my ritual of morning coffee, and I know for a fact the coffee ain't grown within 300 miles of this place.
Posted by Kevin Steel on September 12, 2007 in Trade | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Regrets, they have a few
The Daily Mail is marking the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Abortion Act in Britain in a manner that would likely shock Canadians who have grown accustomed to the pablum served up by our mainstream print media: the paper is running full and frank stories about the impact of the legalization of abortion.
Here's the latest feature, delving into the feelings of women who have aborted their unborn children.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 12, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Poor parent, poor child
The small number of self-identified homosexual couples reported today by StatsCan isn't the biggest story in today's much anticipated release of family-related numbers. Rather, the continuing growth of one-parent families is an important trend that should concern the country.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 12, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Celebrating 9/12
Happy ViV day everyone. Victory in Vienna, that is.
It was 324 years ago today that western European forces, led by the King of Poland, Jan III Sobieski, turned back an Ottoman invasion at the gates of Vienna, ending the last great military threat from the Muslim east against the Christian west.
The noted Catholic writer Hilaire Beloc (1870-1953) wrote that this date ought to be among the most famous in history (although he and others pinpoint the noteable date as September 11 (!), the start of the epic battle, not Sept. 12, its conclusion).
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 12, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
September 11th
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: September 11 was not the first and won’t be the last terrorist assault on our citizens and culture. “Lessons in War”
MELANIE PHILLIPS: Have we learned nothing? “Denial, England”
Posted by Winston on September 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Peace out
Who doesn't love peace? I love peace. You love peace. We all love peace together. Give peace a chance. Except when those who advocate it are actually scuzballs.
New Criterion: The swindle of "peace studies"
"Peace Department"? Where is George Orwell when you need him? Why not just call it the "Ministry of Peace" (right next door to the Ministry of Love and down the street from the Ministry of Truth) and be done with it?
This is not just an American phenomenon. Canada's big into the peace racket. U of T has its Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. The University of Calgary has peace studies. There's even a Calgary Peace Prize. Who knew? And there's to be a stomp around Eau Clair market on Sept. 21, the International Day Peace ("Join the worldwide movement to create a Global Ceasefire and day of peace and nonviolence. We have 10 days to make it happen!" Well, good luck with that. How's it going in Darfur? And did you manage to get the Taliban onside?)
The modern peace racket was all started by a Norwegian Marxist named Johan Galtung, a fellow full of praise for Mao Tse-Tung (Zedong). Galtung "also originated the concept of Peace Journalism, increasingly influential in communications and media studies" according to this Wikipedia article. Peace journalism? My, my. This must be an example of peace journalism--Haaretz, Sept. 10: Ingredients for a true peace process
See also, Bruce Bawer in the LA Times, Sept, 2: The peace racket
Posted by Kevin Steel on September 11, 2007 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
The first great YouTube video of the Ontario campaign
Dalton McGuinty tries to diss John Tory's plan to limit homework . . . but even Liberal stuntchildren can't be fooled.
Mega hat tip to Christian Conservative.
I'm guessing this little gem is getting cut from Premier Pinocchio's stump speech as we speak. John Tory's plan to limit homework for young children to 10 minutes per grade level is set out in his platform, Leadership Matters.
Posted by joantintor on September 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Calgary mayor says 'no' to supporting the troops
CALGARY/AM770CHQR - A bid to have "support our troops" decals allowed on city vehicles has been shot down again.
Alderman Ric McIver introduced the motion, but Mayor Dave Bronconnier told council it was a matter of reconsidering the issue.
McIver took exception to that and challenged the Mayor's ruling which resulted in a vote.
Council voted down the challenge and the motion was turfed.
It was reported that Mayor Bronconnier called the troop decal issue "the flavour of the month" and brushed aside any further reference to it.
Alderman McIver suggested that this ought to be a political issue, as indeed it is.
I am working for mayoral candidate Sandy Jenkins, a local businessman and community leader, who is to announce this evening that if elected he will support city workers who wish to place "Support our troops" decals on their vehicles. Further to this, Jenkins will also advocate for those who sport veteran designs on their plates to be able to park on the city streets for up to two hours for no charge whatsoever.
Any Calgarian who supports these two initiatives are encouraged to attend Sandy Jenkins' campaign launch tonight at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 264, located at 1910 Kensinton Road NW, at 7:00 pm.
Join up with Sandy's team and show the mayor that our troops are far from being "the flavour of the month".
Posted by Rob Huck on September 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBack
When life is all doom and gloom
The World Health Organization reports that suicide rates have increased 60 percent in the last half century, and that suicide is now one of the three leading causes of death among people aged 15-34.
Why is this happening? The Vancouver Sun's Pete McMartin might have inadvertently identified one of the causes in his column this morning.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 11, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBack
Red chamber in Tories' sights
This sounds like a coordinated strategy:
1. The prime minister launches a blow at the Liberal-dominated Senate.
2. The federal government releases a new poll that shows that four of five Canadians want an elected Senate, and two-thirds want term limits in the upper house.
If it walks like an election issue and squawks like an election issue, it's probably an election issue.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 11, 2007 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Monday, September 10, 2007
If the glove doesn't fit
John Fund in OpinionJournal: A Bundle of Trouble
The rumblings on blogs that compare the Norman Hsu fundraising scandal to Chinagate in the 1990s are making it into the mainstream. Not surprising, considering no one seems to be able to figure out where Hsu's money came from in the first place.
My small contribution to the story is to simply point out a strange coincidence stemming from Hsu's original conviction back in 1991 in San Mateo County, California. If you've been following the saga, you'll know that Hsu was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme, starting in 1989, in which he collected money from investors supposedly to buy latex gloves from Asia and resell them in America.
The coincidence is this (and at this point it appears to be nothing more than that). A decade later, and approximately 350 miles to the south, a fellow named Larry Osaki started the same Ponzi scheme with a company called Wallenbrock, in Pasadena. This was the scam that eventually led to the downfall of Edmonton gad-about Michael Ritter, which I wrote about in the June 19, 2006, Western Standard: The mandarin, the mogul and the missing millions.
Osaki's scheme was a little more sophisticated than Hsu's--but only slightly--because his pitch was that he was investing in a company in Beijing, Ya Die Technologies, that was "factoring" on latex glove sales from Malaysia. (Factoring means buying at a discount invoices due and collecting at full value, the difference representing the profit.) Wallenbrock started operating in 1995, and the scheme began in 1999.
Kind of a weird coincidence, this latex glove thing.
One of the more curious aspects of Osaki's case is what he did with his profits. I didn't get into this in my WS story because it didn't involve Ritter. Osaki didn't spend lavishly on luxury items like cars and houses as you might expect. According to the court-appointed receiver James Donell, Osaki took a lot of it and transferred it to a company called Citadel Capital Management Group, Inc. With the ill-gotten cash in Citadel--one step removed from Wallenbrock--Osaki started investing in start-up companies. He plowed money into everything and anything it seemed; movies, transport companies, loans to individuals, dot coms (this was during the dot com boom). He invested and loaned out money without keeping any written records. In all, he funded 178 new companies before it all came crashing down in February 2002.
Norman Hsu did that as well, though apparently not during his Ponzi scheme era. More recently, he started up what appear to be dummy companies and made loans to individuals.
With this latex glove coincidence in mind, and still mystified by Osaki's behavior, I started wondering; did any of the money that Osaki collected and invested end up as political contributions? I phoned up James Donell in California since he was responsible for contracting the forensic accountant that went through Osaki's books, and asked him. The short answer is; Donell is not aware of any.
When I told him about the latex glove coincidence, he was surprised because he wasn't closely following the Hsu case. I asked if he had ever heard of another latex glove scam besides these two, and he said no. He had thought, until I told him about Hsu, that the Osaki-latex glove thing was unique.
(Added) LA Times: FBI looks into disgraced donor's business
Posted by Kevin Steel on September 10, 2007 in International Politics | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Check me out – please – at TVO’s Ontario election blog
I have been asked by the Ontario PCs to represent the John Tory campaign on the "Election Battle Blog" hosted by TV Ontario’s "The Agenda."
I understand the first postings will appear sometime today, with bloggers from the PC, Liberal, NDP and Green parties answering the question: "What do you think will be the most important issue of the 2007 Ontario election campaign?" Members of the public will be able to comment on the posts (free registration required).
Thanks all. Joan Tintor
Posted by joantintor on September 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
The hollow heart of multiculturalism
The Montreal Gazette is expressing confusion today over what it sees as contradictory results in its new poll on the attitudes of Quebeckers.
Here's what has the paper scratching its head. On one hand, Quebeckers see themselves as tolerant and open-minded, and think immigration is a good thing and that minorities have a strong role to play in the province. On the other hand, Quebeckers have deep-rooted fears about the changes that immigrants, especially non-Christian ones, are introducing to the province. And a majority feel that Quebec should adopt a code of conduct for newcomers.
(The paper's use of some key words and phrases, such as "the flip side... was less encouraging," reveals its utopian bias throughout, but that's beside the point.)
The poll reveals what the paper calls "a passive double standard:" a large majority of Quebecers disapproves of open expressions of religion, unless it's Christian. How to explain this? "There's a large reservoir of guilt among French Canadians about the rapid rejection of Catholicism during the Quiet Revolution - that's a fact," says sociologist Morton Weinfeld, who runs McGill University's Canadian ethnic studies program.
Interesting and crucial stuff. I'll make two points on all this.
First, because of Quebec's stronger sense of "national" identity, its citizens are most acutely sensitive to the challenges and dangers posed by immigration of people from distinctly different religious, social or cultural backgrounds.
Two, the tension between the "let's give everyone a big hug" mentality and the harsher reality of clashing cultures is at the core of multiculturalism's innate contradictions. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 10, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (71) | TrackBack
It's the people, period.
In Russia, they're promoting "Family Contact" day to boost flagging birth rates. In Germany, a new book, called the Noah's Ark Principle, extols "values like the family, children and motherhood" (and, unfortunatelly, is making headlines for the wrong reasons). And, finally, in Vienna, Pope Benedict is urging European leaders to raise birth rates and make their countries more family friendly. (h/t to Bourque and Drudge for links.)
Seems that more and more people are falling into line behind our Mark Steyn and his identification of demographics as the 21st Century's paramount issue.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on September 10, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Louise Arbour: Kickin' it with the Mullahs in Tehran
(cross-posted to Flaggman's Canada)
Louise Arbour - product of Osgood Hall Law School in the late 1960s, Liberal Party appointee to the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada - is now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. What does this mean? It means trafficking in moral equivalency, self-delusion, arbitrary justice, and lending legitimacy to thugs, dictators, and Islamo-Nazis around the world.
Comrade Louise's latest outrage: Joining Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the psychopathic inner circle of the Islamist regime of Iran in the front row of the Cuban-chaired "Non-Aligned Movement" at a "human rights" conference in Tehran. For the details on this outrage by one of our most contemptible expats, I highly recommend reading this enlightening column by Anne Bayefsky, Editor of "Eye on the UN":
While Arbour was hobnobbing with anti-semites, butchers and anti-democratic forces from around the world, Iranians were being prepared for public hangings. Arbour was reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency as having "expressed pleasure with being at the NAM meeting and described Iran's representation office in the UN in Geneva as "very good." In an unusual move, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has so far neglected to put her official statement on their website.
The day after Arbour left Iran the government felt sufficiently buoyed by their UN stamp of approval, that they executed 21 prisoners. People are executed in Iran for charges like "enmity against God" or "being corrupt on earth."
Iran need not worry about the UN reaction after-the-fact either. Arbour is quoted by Iranian news sources as telling participants: "The new method of considering issues related to human rights is comprehensive and not selective and the UN Human Rights Council is ready to present technical and consultation assistance to Iran." "Non-selective" is UN code for refusing to name states that violate human rights, let alone taking action to stop them. "Technical assistance" is UN code for helping the state avoid criticism by pretending the problem is some kind of infrastructure glitch. It has been clear for some time that the new UN Human Rights Council is bent on eliminating all country-specific criticism, (not directed at Israel of course). Now, apparently, Arbour agrees.
...
The disservice that has been done by High Commissioner Arbour's trip to Tehran is enormous. A disservice to the families of the dead, and the tortured and the dead to come. A disservice to the real human rights advocates struggling to withhold credibility from the frauds. And a disservice to the principles, which have been torn up in the presence of the very individual charged with their care.
(H/T to LittleGreenFootballs and Canadian Coalition for Democracies)
Posted by Neil Flagg on September 9, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBack
Tories unveil green 'showroom tax' on cars
Tories unveil green 'showroom tax' on cars
In addition: "Under the Tory plan for a greener world, all electrical goods, such as plasma screen televisions, that exceed precise limits on the permissible level of energy they use could be banned from sale."
See also: Tory green package targets short-haul flights and landfill and Tories plan to ban plasma screens in new green reforms package
Interesting to see how this pre election policy will be received.
Posted by Guy Giorno on September 9, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Masked
Federal government will now allow Muslim women to vote in all federal elections while in disguise.
Veiled women will be able to vote in the upcoming Quebec byelections — and all future federal contests — without showing their faces, Elections Canada says.
“It applies throughout the country,” said spokesman John Enright. “It applies to all federal elections, byelections and referendums.”
Posted by Winston on September 9, 2007 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (42) | TrackBack