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Saturday, November 03, 2007

Another Job for John

What to do with John Tory?  The right-wingers want him gone, though they're very discreet about it and unlikely to do anything rash.  The left of the party wants to keep him, hoping a better run campaign, and a less green crew, will bring victory.  The weakness of Dalton McGuinty as both candidate and Premier, his lack of vision and personal charisma being only the most notable of his flaws, is very tempting.  For both camps within the Ontario PCs the fact of defeat and of a defeated leader remains.  Rather than looking at John Tory as a liability to be removed, minimized or "fixed" let's look at him as an asset.  In a previous post I characterized the PC leader as the "Jerry Seinfeld of Ontario politics."  It was a harsh description and I stand by it.  This doesn't mean that John Tory can't be about something, that he too can get the vision thing. 

Why bother?  Because John Tory has one ability no other Conservative in Canada today has, and perhaps has had since David Crombie was Mayor of Toronto; credibility in our urban areas.  Yes, John Tory lost to David Miller.  Imagine any member of the current federal cabinet, or any of the current provincial PC front benchers, scoring above the single digits.  He desperately wanted to lead the party back into urban Ontario.  He even ran, boldly or foolishly, in a downtown Toronto riding.  The typical charges levied against Conservatives, that they are out of touch with urban Canada and ethnic Canada, simply don't stick with Tory.  That is one of the reasons he was chosen to lead the Ontario party.  The problem is that Tory alienates the party's base.  His rhetoric, his policies and even his personal style do not animate a party whose soul was capture so perfectly by the phrase "common sense for a change."  John Tory as leader is a liability, unless he re-invents himself, which is not out of the realm of possibility.  As a follower, however, as prominent part of a strong team, he becomes a first class asset.

Continue reading at The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Posted by PUBLIUS on November 3, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBack

Friday, November 02, 2007

Sask. Party headed for huge win: poll

The Sigma Analytics poll shows the Sask. Party with a commanding lead of more than 20 points, capturing the support of 54.2 per cent of decided respondents compared with the NDP's 33.7 per cent.

About eight per cent of decided voters opted for the Liberal party in the telephone survey of 1,318 interviews conducted Oct. 26-30 -- the final day falling on the day of Tuesday's leaders' debate. The Green party trailed at 3.6 per cent, and 0.5 per cent selected "other."

If the article by: 

Angela Hall, Saskatchewan News Network; Regina Leader-Post

Published: Friday, November 02, 2007
remains up you can read it at  here:   http://tinyurl.com/2hehwn

Posted by Bob Wood on November 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

I Hate to Say It, But Hillary Looks Good
(relatively speaking)

In comparison with the pollyanna-isms of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton looks good. At least Hillary Clinton recognizes the foolishness of soft diplomacy with Iran. From the NYtimes:

Senator Barack Obama says he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran if elected president and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues....

Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.

In comparison, Hillary Clinton seems to have the situation scoped out pretty well:

The suggestion, which emerged as a flash point in the campaign, has prompted Mrs. Clinton to question whether such an approach would amount to little more than a propaganda victory for the United States’ adversaries and to question the experience of Mr. Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois. Other Democrats, in turn, have criticized Mrs. Clinton for an approach to Iran they call too hawkish, including a vote for a nonbinding resolution describing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran as a terrorist organization.

Given that nothing anyone could ever negotiate with the current regime in Iran would mean a thing, it is folly to talk about negotiations unless doing so is the only way to get others to recognize the present Iranian leaders as the lying scumbags skillful negotiators they are.

Tom Hanna and Rondi Adamson both have insightful additions in the  comments to this posting at EclectEcon.
 

Posted by EclectEcon on November 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (42) | TrackBack

Cruel and Unusual?

A man confesses to murdering two men, he is arrested, receives a fair trial and is sentenced to death. Man never denies he killed those two men and has been sitting on death row for twenty years. Man is a Canadian citizen, so what is a country to do? Nothing.

From Canada.com: Fate of Albertan on U.S. death row debated

Now there have been calls for the governor of Montana to commute Ronald Allen Smith's sentence to life in prison and for Canada to bring him back to serve his sentence in a Canadian prison. I say why? Why should we spend our tax dollars bringing back a man who is obviously guilty? Now I believe the death sentence should be applied to the worst of the worst; terrorists, serial killers and pedophiles, not some drunk. This guy deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail, but an American jail.
 

 

Posted by Leah Dowe on November 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (70) | TrackBack

Rules for Palestinians

In anticipation of the upcoming Annapolis Conference and preliminary peace talks, it is good to keep the following points in mind, by Barry Rubin [h/t to former student, AlanP]:

1. Palestinians cannot stop other Palestinians from attacking Israel.

2. He who is most militant is always right.

3. More violence is good and a victory if it inflicts casualties or damage on Israel.

4. No Israeli government can do anything good.

5. Since Palestinians are the perpetual victim they are entitled to everything they want and never need to give anything in exchange for Israeli concessions.

6. No Palestinian should be imprisoned for attacks on Israel one minute longer than required by international public relations' needs.

    7. Fatah won't discipline or expel anyone for launching attacks.

8. Wiping Israel off the map is morally correct.

9. While pretending to be nationalist, the movement sets as top priority the so-called "right of return," the demand that all Palestinian refugees or their descendents — several million people — must be allowed to live in Israel.

10. It is more important to be steadfast and patient with a terrible status quo than to make big gains by ending the conflict forever.

11. No speeches, no foreign aid, and no international plans or meetings have altered these basic rules. ... Even if a handful of top Palestinians want to reach agreement with Israel, they cannot — and even worse, dare not — violate these commandments.

For more on each of these rules, see this.

Posted by EclectEcon on November 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (71) | TrackBack

Thursday, November 01, 2007

"You use anything at your disposal."

We are today again reminded, albeit on a small scale, how a previous generation fought and won its wars with the death of Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay:

"Tibbets' historic mission in the plane Enola Gay, named for his mother, marked the beginning of the end of the war in the Pacific. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime.

The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the bomb, dubbed "Little Boy," on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others.

Three days later, the United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war."

For helping to end the bloodiest war in human history, and saving the lives of millions of Americans and Japanese, the then colonel, who retired as a Brigadier-General in 1966, was met with a hatred so fierce that he requested he be given no tombstone, lest his critics use it as a rallying point.

Tibbets own views on his actions that summer more than six decades ago were sober and straightforward:

"We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background," he said. "We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible."

"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did," he said in a 1975 interview.

"You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal."

"I sleep clearly every night," he said.

As the Iraq conflict drags on, prolonged by "humanitarian" rules of engagement that limit the ability of Allied forces to properly fight the Islamist fanatics that destabilize that country, we would do well to heed Paul Tibbets' words.  What makes his views poignant is not their insight, important though it is, but that once they were so common as to be virtually unquestioned.

Cross posted at The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Posted by PUBLIUS on November 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (107) | TrackBack

Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul is an odd mix of things -- an anti-war Republican; an economic libertarian who is hostile to any central economic planning, even in terms of monetary policy; and he's running for president.

He's nowhere in traditional opinion polls, but he has a growing indie presence on the Internet -- and at street rallies where most Republicans would fear to tread.

I didn't bother having an opinion on the man until I started seeing the crowd his message seems to attract: 9/11 skeptics who want to make their conspiracy theories bipartisan.

Posted by Ezra Levant on November 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

A snowflake, not yet an avalanche

A director of a provincial Tory riding association quit over Stelmach's royalty tax hike:

Derek Rolstone e-mailed a letter to Wood Buffalo Progressive Conservatives on Tuesday stating his intention to leave.

“It will come as no surprise to you that I feel strongly that, under the new premier, our party is on the wrong track,” he said in the letter, which was sent to the Fort McMurray Today newspaper.

That's just one director -- there are probably 1,000 Tories of that rank in Alberta. How many care about policy enough to make a statement like Rolstone? How many are just Tories for the partisan perks?

As another Tory said in reply:

“Derek’s got to do what he’s got to do... But both the Liberals and the NDP think the royalties didn’t go far enough. If he thought it was too much, where’s he going to go?”

Practically speaking, that's probably true -- the anti-tax-hike Alberta Alliance is only at 3% in the polls, if you believe polls. But having nowhere else to go is hardly an inspiring reason to stay with the Tories.

It's the kind of language that the federal PC's used in the late 1980s when Westerners complained about Brian Mulroney. "Where are you going to go?" was asked enough that an answer was soon furnished: Preston Manning's Reform Party. Funny enough, Preston broke his silence today and criticized Stelmach's regime as sowing seeds of unpredictability in the marketplace:

Manning said Stelmach's plan tears up agreements with two major oilsands players, is unlikely to be implemented before a general election and misses a big-picture view of energy policy.

"This creates long-term uncertainty, not about the sincerity or integrity of the premier but about the competence of his government to lead on major energy issues,"...

If the Stelmach Tories keep acting like the Mulroney Tories -- taking conservatives for granted -- they might just see an alternative rise from nowhere to fill the void. That's the Alberta tradition, actually. Manning himself would be a shoo-in to lead such a new movement; Gwyn Morgan, formerly of EnCana, would do well, too.

Even if no such party forms before the next election -- and, given the timing, none likely will -- Stelmach can expect to see hundreds of thousands of formerly enthusiastic Tories simply staying home come election time. Ralph Klein's last term was so uninspiring that even he lost 15% of the vote. With an uncharismatic Edmonton-area premier whose sole calling card is his demonization of the oil patch, expect those numbers to fall further.

Stelmach's "sack the rich" routine will alienate Tory voters, but it won't attract Liberals or NDPers over to him. At least when Bill Aberhart tried this schtick 70 years ago, he had the sense to demonize Eastern bankers -- not his fellow Albertans.

Posted by Ezra Levant on November 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack

TV listings

Tonight I'll be on CBC Newsworld's Politics with Don Newman, talking about the political fall-out of Alberta's new oil royalty regime. Tune in at about 3:40 MT/5:40 ET.

Then I'll change my necktie, and appear on CTV Newsnet's The Verdict with Paula Todd. The topic: Canadian judges and judicial activism. That's on at 7 p.m. MT/9 p.m. ET.

Let me know what you think -- not that our commenters feel the need to wait for an invitation!

UPDATE: Here's the CBC link. Fast-forward to 50 minutes into the broadcast.

Posted by Ezra Levant on November 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Unlike Muslims

When Christians find a freak in their midst, we call them out. We take them to court. We publicly denounce and vilify them.

Unlike the Muslims.

The brokenhearted father of a Marine killed in Iraq won a long-shot legal fight today after a federal jury in Baltimore awarded him nearly $11 million in a verdict against members of a Kansas church who hoisted anti-gay placards at his son’s Westminster funeral.

The jury's announcement 24 hours after deliberations first began was met with tears and hugs from the family and supporters of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, whose March 2006 funeral was protested by members of the Westboro Baptist Church with signs including "Thank God for dead soldiers."

It wasn't so long ago that the most wanted fugitive in America was Warren Jeffs. A Mormon, he believed in Christ, but practiced a dangerous form of religion that put women and children at risk of sexual exploitation. This man was hunted down like the dog he is, and now stands trial.

We're still waiting for the Muslims to hand over Bin laden and his ilk. But that day will never come, because more of them stand with him than against him. There is so much evil in Islam, that they have no reason to hold each other accountable.

We stood against Jeffs, and against Phelps.

Unlike the Muslims.

Posted by RightGirl on October 31, 2007 in Religion | Permalink | Comments (50) | TrackBack

Ed Stelmach, Montana Chamber of Commerce hero

The governor of Montana is suggesting Alberta energy companies unhappy with increased royalties may want to take a closer look south of the border.

Brian Schweitzer says his state already offers a better tax structure - even before the extra $1.4 billion annually the Alberta government plans to take in royalties by 2010.

Posted by Ezra Levant on October 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (44) | TrackBack

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

It wasn't global warming? Well, how about Blackwater?

The mainstream media blamed global warming for last week's wildfires in California. I'm no scientician, but in high school we learned that fires need three things: fuel, oxygen and a spark. It was never quite explained how a 0.06 degree annual increase in temperature, which is the rate the Earth has been warming since we started to emerge from the Little Ice Age 150 years ago, could "cause" wildfires.

The global warming theory has been grudgingly abandoned by the left as the cause of the fires, now that arson has been conclusively proved.

Not to be deterred, the American left has found a new culprit: Blackwater, the private-sector security firm that has done work in post-liberation Iraq.

According to Air America (yes, they're still on the air!), it's all a part of Blackwater's tricky scheme to build a new office!

This is the second spectacular fantasy this month from Air America's Randi Rhodes. Earlier, she implied that she had been mugged by right wing enforcers, when in fact she had simply fallen down drunk in front of a bar.

Besides the sheer weirdness here, there are two serious points:

1. Randi Rhodes is one of Air America's "stars", and Air America is the flagship liberal talk network. Are these kind of wild-eyed conspiracy theories really the best of liberal political discourse in the U.S.?

2. Why is it a characteristic of the left to turn every personal matter -- a slip and fall accident; a wildfire -- into a political moment?

Posted by Ezra Levant on October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBack

Survivor: Canada

Is it just me, or is this beginning to sound like an episode of Survivor?

Green Leader Elizabeth May says a dinner date with NDP Leader Jack Layton might provide the spark for a parliamentary plot to topple the minority Conservatives.

When the two leaders sit down, May is hoping for “an open-ended discussion about what we could maybe do to ensure that Harper loses the election.

“That’s the kind of conversation I had with (Liberal Leader) Stéphane Dion. I think it would be more effective if it was all three of us talking about it. Or four, including (Bloc Québécois Leader) Gilles Duceppe,” May said in an interview yesterday.

It appears that Elizabeth May is desperately running around trying to make deals with anybody who will listen, to find a way to vote the Conservatives ‘off the island’.  She even had to purchase the dinner with Jack Layton at a charity auction to get the chance to speak with him.

Unfortunately for Lizzy, it’s not the politicians that get to vote other politicians out of office, but rather the citizens of Canada, who at this moment favour the Conservatives more than any other party, and Stephen Harper more than any other party leader.

Rather than playing games to make deals with other parties, perhaps she should focus on her own party policies and get elected on her own merits?  With all of her games, I’m wondering just what she stands for, other than trying to oust the Conservatives and win a seat of her own?

Perhaps Lizzy would feel more comfortable in the Liberal party?

Cross-posted at www.exactlyright.ca.

Posted by Dave Hodson on October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBack

The Stelmach effect

Ed Stelmach's tax hikes haven't become law yet -- that won't happen for another year. But the effects are already being felt.

Notice that the pain isn't being felt by "Big Oil". It's being felt by the thousands of little operators who service Big Oil -- everyone from truck drivers to restaurateurs. The Exxons of the world can do business anywhere in the world -- they already do. But a five-person company in Red Deer can't suddenly move its operation to Colombia. That's one jurisdiction that's moving the opposite direction of Alberta and Kazakhstan in terms of rule of law, privatizing the oil sector and inviting foreign firms in.

I recently spoke with a senior oilman in Calgary who was down in Colombia looking at investments. He said he bumped into several other Albertans down there at the same time. To think that "Big Oil" can be trapped by Stelmach is simply not how things work. But Little Oil can be trapped -- and already is.

Posted by Ezra Levant on October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBack

Al-Jazeera's Back-Door: CBC Newsworld

As part of its 7-8pm International news digest "Around the World", CBC Newsworld has begun airing reports from Al-Jazeera's English news service. Honest Reporting Canada's Mike Fegelman has a great piece on this phenomenon, and an analysis of a recent greatly-biased report from Al-Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, here: "CBC Whitewashes Palestinian Prisoners" . You can watch the segment as broadcast by CBC here:

Al-Jazeera report on CBC Newsworld

Fegelman's article includes the e-mail address to CBC's audience relations department (audience_relations@cbc.ca) and a call-to-action to protest this type of programming. I highly encourage everyone to act, to ensure Al-Jazeera doesn't push through the mainstream opening it's made for itself by getting its foot in the door at the CBC.

(Cross-posted at Flaggman's Canada)

Posted by Neil Flagg on October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (87) | TrackBack

Toronto Star Doesn’t Understand (but that really isn’t news)!

Hearts over at the Toronto Star are bleeding so badly, not enough blood is available for the organs that provide common sense and intelligent thought.  Always out on a socialist crusade, today they editorialize that “Tax cuts carry too high a price”.

When the price of tax cuts is not fighting poverty and helping those who need it the most, the poor pay the price for the tax cuts that go disproportionately to middle- and upper-income groups.

Can’t you just hear the violins playing?  Give me a break!

First, the socialist editorial board at the Star must get over their misguided notion that the poor pay the price for the tax cuts.  The Star complains “tax cuts go disproportionately to middle- and upper-income groups”.  However, did they ever once consider that taxes are paid disproportionately by middle- and upper-income groups?  Tax cuts should benefit those who pay the tax!

Second, a tax cut is not a government expense–there is no price associated with it.  A tax cut simply means the government takes less hard earned money away from an already overtaxed people.

Finally, just because a government is collecting more money than it expected doesn’t mean the excess should be spent on social programs.  Current government revenues are high, in part because tax rates that are too high, and in part because we have a booming economy.  When the economy slows, so will the taxes collected.  Social spending should be set at a level that is sustainable over the long term.

Mr. Flaherty, ignore the crazy editors at the Star and bring on the tax cuts!  This is one taxpayer who has paid more than his share, and I’d really like a break.

Cross-posted at www.exactlyright.ca.

Posted by Dave Hodson on October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (45) | TrackBack

Monday, October 29, 2007

Family fare

The shrinking number of stable, two-parent, married families in Canada is a cause for concern. But I find it strange that "progressives" in this country don't think that it's all that important for kids to be raised by a married mother and father--strange, because the same "progressives" who downplay the importance of marriage were up-playing it (to coin an expression) when all the talk around marriage centred on homosexuals' access to it.

This and related subjects form the basis of my most recent Face to Face debate in the Tri-City News. Here's the full column. And here's that of my debating partner, Mary Woo Sims.

Posted by Terry O'Neill on October 29, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack

How to handle China

Despite threats from Beijing -- whose foreign policy pronouncements are still written in stiff Mao-era language -- Stephen Harper met with the Dalai Lama. Despite the recent meetings with the White House and Congress, it was still a bold move for Harper, considering the obsequious Canadian diplomatic tradition towards Communist China. I agree with the Post: Paul Martin's meeting with the Dalai Lama -- in secret, in a "neutral" location -- made the whole thing seem tawdry, in addition to cowardly.

Really, what could China do to Canada? Stop buying our oil? Or stop selling us a million cheap trinkets? Neither is particularly likely, nor troubling. According to these stats, China sells us five times as much as we sell them, and what we sell them are commodities. They should be careful that we don't impose sanctions on them, not vice versa.

Under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, Canada acted as if China was doing us a favour in trade. At least that seemed to be the public rationale. The fact that Power Corp. and Canadian Steamship Lines, companies in which the Chretien and Martin families had significant ownership, had large, politically sensitive investments in China may have also been a factor.

Posted by Ezra Levant on October 29, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBack

Mark Steyn: Life is not a movie

Well, I certainly don't know how you feel about Mark Steyn's columns but I do greatly miss his routine columns at the Western Standard magazine. It's true that his columns are absent but thanks to the internet, (not the one invented by Al-Gore) we can still have the opportunity to read his wonderful stuff here and there. And this new one "Life is not a movie" is a must read. I enjoyed it...

Mark Steyn: Life is not a movie

Posted by Winston on October 29, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Man Who Gets It

Mark Steyn nails the entire idiocy of the 9-11 "Truth" movement in a single sentence:

There’s a kind of decadence about all this: If 9/11 was really an inside job, you wouldn’t be driving around with a bumper sticker bragging that you were on to it.

Exactly.  If George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were as evil and ruthless as the nutroots often claim, there wouldn't be any nutroots - because their leaders would have long ago had then names jotted down on a list and then dissappeared or, alternatively, been placed on a list nailed to the door of the Capitol and proscribed.

Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 29, 2007 in International Politics | Permalink | Comments (40) | TrackBack

Jihadist Welfare Queen

Mama Khadr is at it again – demanding her and her family’s “rights” as “Canadians.” 

The quotation marks in the above paragraph are used advisedly.  The fact that we allow this woman and her odious family to continue to masquerade as citizens of this country is living demonstration of just how gutless we truly are.  That we haven’t yet run this Jihadist welfare queen and the rest of his disgusting family the hell out of this country tells me (and should tell you) pretty much everything one needs to know about why the Islamist advance against the West has yet to be checked or even effectively countered in most of the West.

For those who are late to the party, I’ll briefly review the history of the Khadr family.  Papa Khadr was a senior member of al-Qaeda who took his family to Afghanistan where they hung out with Osama Bin Laden.  During the 1990’s, he was arrested for his part in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan, but he was kindly sprung from jail through the intervention of Jean Chretien. 

Mommy and Daddy al-Qaeda raised their children to be good little martyrs.  The eldest daughter’s wedding was attended by Bin Laden – and she’s reportedly under investigation by the RCMP.  Two of the sons – Abdul and Omar – ended in Guantanamo Bay after being captured while fighting on behalf of the terrorists.  Abdul flipped and managed to get out of Gitmo by working for the CIA.  Omar, who killed an American in combat, is about to be tried for murder.  Another son is in jail in Canada, awaiting extradition to the United States.

Eventually, Daddy Khadr was killed while fighting alongside al-Qaeda forces.  In the same battle Abdulkareem, the youngest son, was seriously wounded.  It was at this point – with her son in need of extensive (and expensive!) medical care that Mommy Khadr discovered her secret affection for Tim Horton’s and the National Hockey League and began to first demand her and her children’s “rights” as “Canadians.”

So, to summarize: the elder Khadr came to Canada in the mid-1970’s and then returned to the Islamic world in the early 1980’s – thereafter returning to Canada only sporadically (most notably for a year of free health treatment when he was wounded by a land mine).  Since then he – and his progeny – have devoted themselves to waging war against the West.  But, somehow, we are supposed to simply accept that these people – citizens of convenience who have waged war against our nation and civilization – are legitimate “Canadians” and to grin and bear it while they, being natural parasites with no respect for our nation, suck tax dollars out of our system to pay for the surely expensive medical treatment for someone wounded while standing alongside our enemies.

Not only this – after all, this outrage has been allowed to pass practically unnoticed – but now we are supposed to have sympathy for (as the media and the left obviously does) an al-Qaeda solider who, while fighting as an unlawful combatant, treacherously wounded one Allied solider and killed another.  Indeed, we are not only supposed to have sympathy – we are actually supposed to devote time and resources (read: my and your money) into freeing him from a fate which is far less than what he has earned.  (Once again, I would emphasize the stupidity of, in dealing with terrorists, not simply following the traditional procedure established for dealing with pirates, bandits, spies, and other unlawful combatants captured in combat).

As I see it, if the Khadrs insist on being treated as Canadians, then they ought to bear the full consequences of their actions as Canadians.  If they insist that they are Canadians and subject to Canadian law – that is to say, if they admit that they owe a duty of allegiance to Canada – then the whole lot ought to be brought up on charges of High Treason for levying war against Canada and assisting our nation’s enemies.  Regrettably, the highest punishment for such a crime would be life (no justly earned rope in sight) and the odds are that our candy-assed Supreme Court would throw out the charges and that then some future government would end up handing each of them a cheque for $10 Million or whatever – so this course is obviously less than ideal.

Failing a successful treason prosecution, the next-best alternative would be to strip the Khadrs of their citizenship and to deport them to wherever we can get to take them.  I see no reason why this is impossible – after all, we still spend time stripping eighty-something ex-Nazi camp guards of their citizenship and shipping them off.

What kind of cowards are we?  These people are no more Canadian than I’m Armenian.  It may well be good that we are, as we are so often told, a kind and generous people.  But in this case we are being obscenely abused by some crafty people who understand that we don’t have the courage to act against people who wage war against us, insult us, and defile our country – if they happen t be able to claim the status of fashionable victims.

It makes my blood boil to thing that Abdulkareem Khadr gets to go to high school in Canada and gets “free” medical care (well, I suppose we can forget the quotation marks in this individual case – I somehow doubt that these people have much earned income) to treat the injuries he sustained as a result of his family’s active participation in the cause of our enemies.  Every time I think that even a cent of my money has been forcibly taken to go to this terrorist family I turn red with rage. 

Rights?  The only right that Omar Khadr deserves is that to a strong knot and a short drop.

Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 29, 2007 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (70) | TrackBack

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Blair Wilson exposed

Faithful Western Standard readers will remember my March 2006 story about the many financial questions hanging over the head of telegenic Liberal MP Blair Wilson of West Vancouver. I noted in my story that the msm had given Wilson a pass, even though there was ample evidence of big problems.

Well, the Vancouver Province has ended the msm's blackout with a four-page expose today, and promise of more tomorrow. In fact, today's story covers ground I did not know about, including allegations of spending irregularities in his campaign and his taking advantage of a rich mother-in-law. It's a great read, and should spell big trouble for the shifty Grit MP.

UPDATES: Stephane Dion has now stripped Wilson of his critic responsibilities and kicked him out of caucus. I can understand that the Grit brass didn't know of the allegations of Wilson's campaign-spending irregularities until now, but I can't fathom how they could have overlooked or excused his long and open record of business ineptitude and outright chicanery in giving him the position of national revenue critic. Dazzled by his smile and good looks, no doubt.

Meantime, here's today's second part of the Province's investigation into Wilson's affairs. Today's piece elaborates on ground I covered in my March 2006 story, and even includes an interview with former NHL player Tony Tanti, who I tracked down and interviewed for my piece, to drive home the moral of the story: that Wilson can't be trusted.

Posted by Terry O'Neill on October 28, 2007 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (47) | TrackBack