The Shotgun Blog
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Saturday, January 19, 2008
Greetings, and a new feature.
Greetings, Western Standard readers and fans!
My name is Terrence Watson, a Canadian and a doctoral student in the philosophy program at bowling Green State University (in Ohio.) At this point, I'll be writing an article or three for the Western Standard, and I'm also helping out with the website whenever I have a chance.
Thus, you may notice that Western Standard articles now have nice, shiny Digg buttons on them. That's my doing. Hopefully, we'll be able to link the WS into other social networking kind of websites soon. Please give them a try. I'm pretty confident everything is in working order, but there's nothing like a live test to reveal the truth. Let me know how things go.
Here in America, the Toledo Blade published an op-ed I wrote on Ezra Levant and his inquisition before the human rights commission. I have been telling every American who will listen (and they all do: Americans are great) about Ezra's ordeal and the state of free speech in Canada. Every one of them is shocked, even the lefties. I may have the only left-wing significant other who doesn't view Canada as a liberal paradise.
Thanks for reading!
Posted by Terrence Watson on January 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Socialism can be deadly
"Critically ill patients rushed to U.S. for care" the Globe & Mail reports today. And that's exactly why I've always believed that Socialism and government funded health care could very well be deadly and this is another proof of it...
Posted by Winston on January 19, 2008 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBack
Meet NDP'er Pat Martin...
The Coal Miner's Daughter of Canadian politics.
"Who's to say the lumpenproletariat can't enjoy good linen?"
Well... apparently not Taliban Jack Layton.
*
Posted by Neo Conservative on January 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Mike Brock's adventures among the pro-censorship Muslims
"The most appalling of the entire thing, is these people are calling to expand the powers of the Human Rights Commission and prosecute more cases like this, especially towards media targets."
PS: he taped 30 minutes of this one-sided "public forum" on the Steyn/Maclean's case.
Posted by Kathy Shaidle on January 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Friday, January 18, 2008
New on the WS
J.J. McCullough was, and is, the Western Standard's resident cartoonist. This week, J.J. takes his pen to Marc Emery.
Posted by Western Standard on January 18, 2008 in Western Standard | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Thursday, January 17, 2008
And now... the utterly ridiculous
Osama bin Laden's son, Omar Osama bin Laden, wants to be an "ambassador for peace." I'm not making this up.
"The 26-year-old does not renounce his father, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, but in an interview with The Associated Press, he said there is better way to defend Islam than militancy: Omar wants to be an "ambassador for peace" between Muslims and the West."
A blogger at the quarterly Catholic publication First Things suggests a one-step process for helping Omar's cause: "Cough up your father." Precise GPS coordinates will do.
h/t First Things
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Texas: The Canada of America
So if Canada were a state in the Union, which one would it be? Going by GDP, we'd be Texas.
h/t Hit & Run
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
A little detective work
Anybody know who painted the painting, and what the name of the painting is, hanging at the Alberta HRC office?
I've been doing a little bit of my own detective work, but I've had no luck.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack
The Chinese Communist Party explained
I know it's been a while since I retooled and broadened my blogospheric regimen, but I still have the same concern about the Chinese Communist Party that I've always had. So, when someone like John Derbyshire effortlessly debunks many of the "reform" myths about the ChiComs, I still pay attention:
(Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Professor Carsten A.) Holz is pretty blunt about the state of affairs in China now:
Our use of language to conform to the image the Party wishes to project is pervasive. Would the description “a secret society characterized by an attitude of popular hostility to law and government” not properly describe the secrecy of the Party’s operations, its supremacy above the law and its total control of government? In Webster’s New World College Dictionary, this is the definition of “mafia.”
Read the whole thing here.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on January 17, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Don't look now, but a Democrat said something smart about national defense
There is a smidgen of sanity in the Democratic Party after all, and it comes from, of all people, Jim Webb:
“Three hundred thirteen (naval vessels) can’t do it, I can’t see, in the long run,” Webb said. “We’re building one (submarine) per year and the Chinese are building three per year."
Unfortunately, as Jim is a Democrat, the wisdom has to be covered with inane and petty nonsense:
. . . the president “has got to realize that if he wants any kind of legacy at all, (the administration) has to start cooperating,” Webb said. “He better step up.”
I demolish that ridiculous claim here.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on January 17, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Mr. Levant goes to the Commission
We've compiled the video of Ezra's testimony before the "HRC" in "Mr. Levant goes to the Commission."
We are also receiving plenty of letters. To read a sampling of them, head on over to "Letters to Ezra."
Posted by Western Standard on January 17, 2008 in Western Standard | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack
The Monorail Song
MARGE: But Main Street’s still all cracked and broken!
BART: Sorry Mom, the mob has spoken!
“A town with money is a lot like a mule with a spinning wheel,” smooth-talking conman Lyle Lanley tells the people of Springfield. I don’t know why, but that makes a lot of sense to me at the moment. It’s easy to see how the people of our fair province could benefit from learning the story of how the people of Springfield were suckered into buying a Monorail system they had no real use for. Oh, and before any wags write in – yes, I’m aware that the Skytrain isn’t actually a monorail.
My response, on hearing of the B.C. government’s $14 Billion plan for the expansion of public transit over the next dozen years consisted of two words and seven letters (I’ll leave you to sort out the configuration). “Transit Plan to Help B.C. Reach Greenhouse Gas targets” read the press release that crossed my iPhone – you do that if you want, but leave me the hell out of it. What we have here is the worst of all possible outcomes – a government that I voted for (and whose campaigns I donated to) promising to spend thousands (and probably tens of thousands, before all is said and done) of my money on something that I don’t want in order to further a cause that I don’t believe in.
My position on public transit is that I’m against it. If you want to get around on wheels, go and buy your own damn car – or patronize the private transit services which would spring up in the aftermath of a round of transit privatization. Indeed, were it not for excessive government regulation and taxation I could have bought something newer than three years old (which is now five years old) and I could have bought a more expensive car. The choice between me buying a brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee and some shmuck getting to drive the bus really isn’t a choice at all, so far as I’m concerned.
There’s a rational argument in here somewhere. It isn’t all just fun and fulmination. The truth is that, for the most part, public transit isn’t an economical form of transportation. Even now, to get from my home to Vancouver and back would cost me $11.75 during the day and take me around two hours. By way of comparison for me, a single individual, to drive from my home to Vancouver and back would cost around $5 in gas plus a combined $11ish in car and insurance payments – and, depending upon the traffic, could be done in half the time.
Now, that might sound like a win for transit (setting aside the intangibles) until you read the fine print. Total revenue from transit fares totalled roughly $310 Million in 2006. The total cost of transit operations for the same year was over $545 (these figures both come from the 2006 Translink annual report). The rest was paid for through taxes, notably fuel taxes and, for some bizarre reason, a tax on BC Hydro bills.
In other words, the actual cost of that transit trip is hidden by taxpayer subsidies and the real cost of the car trip is inflated by taxation. Using a back-of-the-envelope calculation (not 100% accurate, but a useful thought experiment), we discover that the real cost of that bus trip would be $20.66 and the cost of the car trip lower trip, minus gas taxes for transit, probably would be somewhere in the fifteen dollar range. And even that’s a false accounting for the car – since it assumes that the car is using only for the purpose of commuting to and from Coquitlam to Vancouver. If you, on the other hand, calculated that the car was used for commuting, say, 2/3’s of the time and otherwise for other purposes, the cost of that trip becomes $12.26.
Frankly, it boggles the mind as to how it costs Translink as much as it does to carry passengers around. Of course, where there’s a will, there’s always a way – and no one is better than government when it comes to wasting our money.
Of course, even If this was to work, it would depend upon the project being completed in a form at least somewhat on-time and on-budget. Count me as sceptical on both counts. I grew up in the area where the planned Evergreen line is supposed to end. I recall my parents taking me and showing me where the Skytrain was supposed to go in two decades ago. Knowing how these things work, I think that we can expect that the transit system will be completed by a garrison of People’s Liberation Army engineers just in time to inaugurate the Canada Two-Two-Five celebrations of their fraternal allies in Ottawa.
Alas, we’re well beyond the point where these is anyone left other than myself to speak for me on this issue. For some strange reason, we’ve all just blithely accepted that it’s your and my responsibility to pay for the grotesquely expensive wet dreams of transportation central planners without complaint and with perfect good cheer. Perhaps that’s not the most public spirited of sentiments – but I, for one, would be of much better cheer if I were the proud owner of a $50,000 car, rather than the proud wage-slave of some concrete monstrosity that I will ride a maximum of fifteen times during my lifetime and then only while in such a state of heavy intoxication that I will only fleetingly recall the experience. And, given that I’m already twenty-four and this isn’t supposed to be completed until I’m thirty-something, I doubt I’ll even get that much use out of the system.
Seriously, folks, $14 Billion (and really $20 Billion or $30 Billion or whatever by the time all is said and done) is a lot of money. We could find plenty of better things to do with it. While I admit that burning it all in a giant bonfire might marginally contribute the global warming-induced end of the human race, at least it would be kind of pretty and cause fewer traffic headaches. Or, we could get really creative. For that kind of money would could buy some little country in Africa and get its people to give us all piggy-back rides to work. Or, we could dispense with work altogether – for that kind of money we could buy ourselves a nice-sized army and use it to conquer a few small and resource-rich areas and subsequently live off of them. Or we could build a nuclear arsenal and get rich by demanding that assorted countries pay us not to kill them all.
I can only hope and pray that this is the only folly the people of British Columbia ever embark upon. Except for the popsicle-stick skyscraper. And the 50-foot magnifying glass. And that escalator to nowhere…
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on January 17, 2008 in Canadian Provincial Politics | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Syed Soharwady, the accused
Another human rights complaint involving Syed Soharwardy – but this time he’s the accused.
After bringing a human rights complaint against Ezra Levant and the Western Standard, Soharwardy and others associated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada now face their own AHRC complaint. The complaint against Soharwardy et al contains serious allegations of discrimination and mistreatment directed against three women from the Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre.
Ezra broke this story on his blog. I found it reported on LifeSite.
I don't want to sound unsympathetic to the women who bravely stepped forward, but a mosque is a private institution. If you don't like the way you’re treated, find somewhere else to worship. (If you don't like the Western Standard, find something else to read.) The allegations of physical threats and harassment are a different matter entirely. These are real crimes.
I take no pleasure in this madness.
Posted by Matthew Johnston on January 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Seeding Sovereignty
Canada's Prince of Pot agrees to five years in a Canadian prison. The Western Standard digs in to report on the activities that got Marc Emery in trouble with the U.S. government in Seeding Sovereignty.
William Hopper, reporting on the Emery story for the WS, had a talk with U.S. Assistant Attorney Todd Greenberg, the man who was going to prosecute Emery in the U.S. in our Question Period.
Posted by Western Standard on January 16, 2008 in Western Standard | Permalink | Comments (154) | TrackBack
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Stories on the WS
A couple of stories are up on the Western Standard's website.
The feature is a long look at the Canadians who love, and hate, rebel Republican Ron Paul. Check out the caricature provided to us by J.J. McCullough:
In the news, we have a story about the trans fat ban in Calgary, as well as the folks who have had enough of Ontario PC leader John Tory.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Is Mitt Romney the front-runner now?
That's the discussion on Fox News, now that Romney made me three for three on picking GOP winners (not that keeping me perfect mattered a whit to him).
As Sean Hannity noted, Romney has more delegates, more actual votes, and more money than anyone else. So he's the front-runner right?
I say no, at least not yet.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on January 15, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Transit derailed once again
Please allow a suburban Vancouver resident a moment to vent some steam about a local issue:
I've lived in the northeast sector of Greater Vancouver for almost 30 years now, and for at least 25 of those years, various transit authorities (all of which derive their power from the provincial government) have promised some sort of rapid transit to my area. The only government to actually deliver anything was Glen Clark's NDP administration, which implemented a rush-hour-only commuter-train system, running into downtown in the morning and back to the suburbs in the late afternoon.
Throughout all this, we've been promised a Sky-Train extension so many times I've lost count. Most recently, the promise was downgraded to a ground-level street-car-like system (which I actually prefer over the obtrusive Sky-Train), to be called the Evergreen Line, due to be completed by 2011. This Translink web page has all the details.
But wait. Yesterday's big "$14-billion" transit announcement by the B.C. Liberal government (the $14 billion is in quotes because, as Vaughn Palmer reveals today, the government is actually budgetting only $4.75 billion over the next 12 years) contains a little-noticed detail: the Evergreen line is now scheduled for completion by 2014. That's three years later than the date still on the Translink web page. And yet another delay for this long-promised, oft-postponed, studied-to-death project.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on January 15, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
"Ezra Levant eats live cougars sprinkled with Jack Bauer..."
Posted by Kathy Shaidle on January 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Mark Steyn: "You need this book"
"By the way, Kathy Shaidle has a new e-book out. I'm so square I'm not sure I quite know what that is, but I've read it, and it reads like an old-fashioned non-e-book, only better. You should get it.
"She has fans around the world: in the course of the last year, I've sat in a restaurant on the beach at Malibu and at the Savoy Grill in London and listened to various long-distance admirers regale me with favourite examples of her prose..."
Posted by Kathy Shaidle on January 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Monday, January 14, 2008
More predictions: Michigan
For the Republicans (where I've been perfect so far): Mitt Romney
For the Democrats: No one
For the details: Click here
Posted by D.J. McGuire on January 14, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Over Stelmach's shoulder
The Vancouver Sun notices the "fledgling" Wildrose Alliance party today. The publication of this half-page, second-section feature suggests that the soon-to-be-one party might be getting some badly needed traction, a situation that would doubtless improve if Preston Manning were to emerge as leader. A joint meeting of Alliance and Wildrose executives is set for January 19.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on January 14, 2008 in Canadian Provincial Politics | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
The mind of an inquisitor
Mary Woo Sims, the head of the B.C. Human Rights Commission during the NDP years, can't see why so many people are upset with such commissions' attacks on free speech. In fact, Sims says in her side of our most recent Face to Face debate in the Tri-City News that Canadians should be thankful they have an institution that gives them a forum in which their complaints can be worked out.
Although the spark for our debate about the commissions was the free-speech issues raised by complaints against Maclean's magazine and Ezra Levant, Sims completely avoids talking about speech rights in her column. Perhaps she believes such rights are inconsequential.
You can read my column here. Its content won't surprise anyone who has been following my writing for the past 15 years -- since the time the NDP first amended B.C.'s human-rights law with the so-called Doug Collins clause, which specifically allowed those with hurt feelings to drag journalists before the commission; and specficially allowed those commissions to convict journalists of "discrimination", even if what they wrote was true and hadn't actually caused any harm.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on January 14, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (58) | TrackBack
Even Iraqi politics are improving
I know the liberation of Iraq is basically a punchline anywhere north of the 49th (except this space, of course), but one of the bigger fallacies to come out of it was the notion that the Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites could never get along, and that we were fools to think otherwise (the now unspoken caveat is the callous assumption of people spouting the above that it would have been better to let Saddam kill them all).
Well, Iraqi politicians are no longer following the doves' script:
New York Times - "The Iraqi Parliament passed a bill on Saturday that would allow some former officials from Saddam Hussein’s party to fill government positions but would impose a strict ban on others. The legislation is the first of the major so-called political benchmark measures to pass . . ."
I particularly liked how the Times' reporters knocked the legs right out from under the editorial board.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on January 14, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Dropping in
Just dropped by to wish everybody luck in the new year. I am no longer associated with the Western Standard online project. If anyone would like to see the type of project I am interested in, you can read about it here.
Posted by Kevin Steel on January 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
A Tale of Two Cities
In Surrey, British Columbia, the mob rules. Laibar Singh, an admitted criminal hides behind the walls of a temple, confident that the authorities will not bring him – or his lawless defenders – to account. In Calgary, Alberta the state demands that Ezra Levant, a free-born citizen of the West provide them with an account of his thoughts and opinions and threatens to punish him if they deem them to be unacceptable. Two cities, two stories – but one tale. For some it is the best of times but or free men and women they are the worst of times.
The best of times: For race hustlers. For grievance pimps. For politicians dependent upon votes from ethnic blocs. For foreign fascists. For guilty white liberals. For the idle and the useless. For bureaucrats. For meddlers.
The worst of times: For the productive. For the righteous. For the spirited. For those who want this country to survive. For those who want our civilization to prosper.
This is a tale of how we lost our country. My Grandfather fought ’39-’45 to defend freedom and to uphold the rule of law. We – or more accurately those older than myself – have tossed it away. I shouldn’t dodge the blame myself. I’ve talked and voted, debated and donated – but that’s all. If I were half the man my Grandfather was, I’d take a flamethrower to this place.
What happened in Surrey – and what’s happening in Caledonia – is the most grotesque manifestation of how liberalism is a disease of civilization. In the past I have said that liberalism – and by that I mean left-liberalism as it is practiced in the West – is like AIDS. It does not, by itself, attack the body or kill the carrier. Instead, it destroys the ability of the infected person’s body to defend itself against other contagions – both mild and major. Thus do humans with AIDS die from colds. Thus do civilizations with liberalism find themselves dying from minor complaints.
We all know the story of Laibar Singh. He’s a criminal who entered this country illegally, who made an abusive refugee claim, and who was rejected. He was ordered deported from this country. After that happened, he suffered a stroke. Now his supporters make the absurd argument that we ought to let him stay now that he’s going to be an even-greater burden upon taxpayers and honest citizens. When the government rightly rejected this claim and sought to proceed with a removal already delayed for too long, a mob assembled at the airport and stopped the execution of the law. The authorities, rather than uphold the law, meekly accepted the will of the mob. We used to know how to handle such things. The phrase “read the riot act” passed into everyday speech for a reason. But, with other mobs howling over the accidental death of an out-of-control man, the government was hardly ready to use force to defend the law. Any threat of force would, in any case, not be terribly credible. The mob knows this. We don’t have the Indian Army of British India. They knew how to deal with mobs.
So, this man allowed to retreat behind the walls of a Surrey temple. When the authorities made another attempt to deport him, again they were obstructed by a mob – this time one howling about the supposed sanctity of their temple. The government, rather than offend the sensibilities of these people, backed down again – and seems disinclined to act further. Most people think that they’ll find some way of backing down. I agree – there’s not an Indira Gandhi among our leaders. Just like in Caledonia, they will opt for the path of ease rather than that of right. The mob wins – we lose.
When the government kow-tows to mobs, we no longer have a government to call our own. When our government does not defend us – and we fail to defend ourselves – we cease to be a nation and instead become little more than an accumulation of people warily sharing accommodations.
I wish I could say that the mere breakdown of the rule of law was all that we had to deal with.
It is not enough for some that our government has ceased to defend us. Now it is conspiring with petty grievance-mongers across the land to actually attack us.
Watching Ezra Levant’s breathtaking performance before the drone-like human rights bureaucrat, I was reminded of something that the journalist Michael White wrote about Labour’s campaign in the 1983 general election: there was something magnificently brave about it – but it was like the Battle of the Somme. This is a show trial – the result is all but pre-ordained and, even if it isn’t, the process is a punishment in and of itself.
What is his crime? His magazine published the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed – which were the subject of an international uproar in which Islamists committed many murders and other acts of violence. He is not accused of slander. He is not accused of inciting people to riot. He is not accused of anything more than telling truths which hurt the feelings of some random jackass.
Like Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant is on trial for telling the truth. They are being attacked for defending our civilization. Honest men – men prepared to risk to tell the truth – are the lynchpin of our defense and the disease is coming for them.
Mobs protect criminals from justice while truthful men are threatened for their honesty. That is Canada.
We are besieged. Our most sacred rights are under attack. Enemies wish to deprive us of our liberty – indeed, have already deprived us of many liberties by declaring certain thoughts to be proscribed and declaring arbitrary punishments for them. They attack our very lives by bowing to the rule of the mob, when the mob is made up of the right sort of people. Today the mobs want criminal aliens allowed to stay at my and your expense and want to seize out-of-the-way public lands. What of tomorrow, when they want other crimes excused and when they want other lands? Will we resist then, or will a public long-acclimatized to tyranny meekly accept their fate?
I am reminded of Robert Graves’ book, Claudius the God. In it the Emperor Claudius wishes to restore the ancient freedoms of the Roman people, only to find that a people long-accustomed to the monotony of dull tyranny are incapable of liberty. In keeping with the ambitions of Orwell’s Oceania, our governments and our cultural masters have left most of us unable to resist by depriving us of the ideas necessary for resistance and rebellion.
What is to be done? There are, perhaps, options open to us still. But, frankly, I don’t believe that most of you care enough to listen. Most people – even most so-called conservatives – are content enough to hold onto whatever they can for as long as they can as we slide into the abyss.
I am filled with despair. Whatever tactical victories we might achieve – we are losing the war. Anti-retroviral treatment might extend our lives by many years but the disease is still going to get us in the end unless we find a cure – or unless something else gets us first.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on January 14, 2008 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Everything I know about the GOP race today . . .
. . . will be dead wrong by tomorrow.
Why do I say that? Because everything I knew about the race on Friday looks to be dead wrong today.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on January 13, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Now, I can't prove this, but...
I think they might be Quakers...
Posted by Kathy Shaidle on January 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
More Ezra
You're entitled to your opinions. (You're just not allowed to express them in public):
"...I simply won't comply...":
The videos, by the way, have gone viral, racking up thousands upon thousands of views from people all over the world. Should the hrc be worried about this? Of course they should. Not only is it making Canada look bad as a bastion of speech prohibition, it is also making the hrc look ridiculous.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (34) | TrackBack