A heartwarming tale of radical feminism: "I Aborted My Baby – Because it was a Boy"

This reads like a fantastic parody of the idiocy of extremist, 3rd wave feminism.

But if you've been paying attention, you know that no parody comes close to approaching the absurdity that is the reality of these things. If you have any doubt, just check this out for yourself:

...One of the more alarming incidents happened while I was on my way to San Francisco to participate in an Occupy Wall Street rally. I sat down in my seat on the plane, which happened to be extra full for that day, and a particularly well dressed man happened to be sitting in the seat beside me, in the aisle. After takeoff, he asked me what I was going to San Francisco for, while I generally wouldn’t talk to a man sitting next to me on an airplane, I told him I was going to the OWS rally.

The man literally scoffed when I spoke those words and leaned in and quietly said to me “B****** like you need to learn their place”. Stunned, I screamed “ASSAULT!” ...

*Trigger warning* – Extreme patriarchy

By this time, a male flight attendant was on the scene and I told him to have the man moved. The woman-hater just laughed as the flight attendant continued to press me on if he made any physical contact with me. For a moment, I contemplated bending the truth in order to get the woman-hater away from me. His words had violated both my feelings, and my trust, perhaps as much of a violation as actual physical touch. In the end, I confirmed that no physical contact was made, to which both flight attendants told me they couldn’t make him move.

I was flabbergasted, and then betrayed as they recommended that I move to one of the empty seats. This left me in tears. I knew the only way to get away was to move seats so I did so tearfully and having felt as though I had been verbally and emotionally raped...

Today, my doctor, who I will call “Sandy” did an ultrasound and everything appeared to be fine. “Would you like to know the gender?” Sandy asked. I thought to myself “That machine is an ultrasound, not a crystal ball, you couldn’t tell me the gender of my baby even if you wanted to” 

“Sure” was my response.

“It’s a boy”…..…… 

“What?” I managed to sputter. Sandy then showed me on the ultrasound how exactly my body had betrayed me even worse than the misogynistic suit jockey on the airplane so many months before. I was in shock, I started crying, weeping at the thought of what I was about to curse the world with.

On my way home, my driver asked if I was ok and if I needed anything. “JUST STOP RIGHT HERE” I yelled. Deciding to walk the 4 blocks back home. My home became my prison and my fetus became my warden the next 48 hours. Crying, sobbing, uncontrollable weeping, mental anguish the likes of which may only be experienced by those who have had their lives destroyed by war, I was a refugee, and my home was my refugee camp, an unfamiliar place that was just….sheltering me.

By the third day, I started regaining some of my mental strength and knew what I had to do. I couldn’t bring another monster into the world. We already have enough enemies as it is...

...I stand by my decision to abort my baby because it was a male...

h/t Barbara Kay & The Pundit Press 

Lawrence H. Silberman: The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’

In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.

The intelligence community’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject... 

Obama lawyer has egg on face after defendant in what he said was a "politically-motivated persecution" pleads guilty to supporting terrorism

Former Florida college professor Sami Al-Arian’s epic, nearly-20-year struggle with U.S. authorities came to a low-key end this week as he was deported to Turkey...

...The Kuwaiti-born Al-Arian ultimately pled guilty to a single count of supporting a terrorist organization and agreed to be deported...

In 2010, Obama White House lawyer and envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Rashad Hussain initially said he had no recollection of statements attributed to him at a 2004 conference decrying Al-Arian’s prosecution as one of several “politically-motivated persecutions” by the Bush administration. However, after POLITICO obtained a recording of the event, Hussain acknowledged the remarks and said they “were ill-conceived or not well-formulated.”

Read it all at Politico.com

Two Calgary academics won't be invited back to Thompson Rivers University after their speech makes students "uncomfortable"

...Howard felt the presentation was mischaracterized. He said it looked at how lawyers take advantage of funding put aside for aboriginal people.

"We were trying to convey the existence of an aboriginal industry that has developed around the huge amounts of money that are being transferred in the interests of native people and are intercepted by a whole layer of people, the largest component of which is the legal element," he said.

"Aboriginal people today are living in poverty…lawyers are making a fortune in keeping them there — keeping them in need of their services and the services of other people in the industry."

Howard said he was approached by some students who appreciated his perspective, but the law students that spoke to the CBC felt differently.

"The language they used and a lot of topics they said and addressed and a lot of things they had up on the projector screens were certainly a lot more shocking and dramatic than that," said second year law student Blake Tancock.

Howard said he feels he is being censored because his views don't line up with those of the TRU faculty. He said he plans to "expose" the university's approach by bringing his concerns to the Society of Academic Freedom and Scholarship.

"I found that one rather strange thing was that we kept being assured of how accepting they were of a wide range of views, open discussion — how they welcomed a range of opinions and freedom of speech and so on, and I thought, I take that for granted at any Canadian university contemporarily," he said...

h/t Bob O

Ryerson University is tops!...for sexual assault. In other news, CBC thinks there aren't enough rapes on Canadian campuses

It could more or less boggle the mind at how the State Broadcaster decides how to angle their news stories. At least it could if you've never met any of the clowns in CBC news (some of whom are very good, bright reporters, but are far outnumbered by the uninformed, heavily-biased dolts).

In a new item, the CBC is alarmed that there aren't enough rapes being reported on Canadian campuses. It never seems to occur to them that it could be that after generations of education about the wrongs of inappropriate sexual behaviour, the number of rapes might be declining.

...Overall, experts say the number of sexual assaults reported to Canadian post-secondary schools is surprisingly low, and an indication that they are doing a poor job of encouraging students to come forward. 

"I find [the numbers] laughingly low," says Lee Lakeman with the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter and a leading voice on the issue of violence against women.  

"It’s just not that possible that they're that low..."

However, in what will no doubt bring joy to the CBC newshounds, Toronto's Ryerson University has a very high rape rate:

...Over that five-year period, more sexual assaults were reported to Ryerson University in Toronto than any other university or college in Canada, according to the survey conducted by CBC News...

I would think it far less than coincidental that Canada's most prolific student rapists come from an institution where the student body has a particularly large contingent of anti-Israel fanatics. After all, isn't rape one of the favorite tools of the Islamic State terrorists?

h/t Sassy

Inept Toronto District School Board Trustees forced to vote to curb their own powers under threat of provincial takeover

...In a surprisingly civil, even cordial scene, the 22 trustees grudgingly agreed in vote after recorded vote, to trim their own powers, vacate their offices, slash their expense accounts and fire their beloved constituency assistants, all on orders from Queen’s Park designed to dial back their clout to that of other school boards.

It was a historic, if controversial surrender of power, done with the clock ticking and under threat of provincial takeover. Whether it was the fresh dynamics of 11 new trustees or the incentive of a political pressure cooker, the school board long seen as dysfunctional seemed to function.

Director of Education Donna Quan was upbeat. “I love the tone I’m feeling and seeing in this room; I appreciate the collaboration and the questions you trustees are raising because you care,” she said.

Quan’s own strained relations with some trustees, as recently as December, and her refusal to make public her contract, were part of the turmoil that prompted Education Minister Liz Sandals to send in troubleshooter Margaret Wilson.


When Trustee Robin Pilkey proposed the board add a “conflict resolution mechanism” to the director’s contract to deal with potential future tensions with trustees, Quan heartily agreed. Noted Pamela Gough: “If we’d had this mechanism last year, we might not be in this situation today. It’s very forward-thinking.”

Since Wilson issued her scathing report card Jan. 16 and Sandals slapped the board with 13 marching orders, senior staff members have scrambled after hours to rewrite the rules as Sandals wants.

“It’s been a 29-day challenge, but I’ve never been more proud of staff and how they’ve risen to it,” said Quan. “We’ve reached a tipping point and a turning point, and that will be positive.”

Yet Gough said it’s no mystery why trustees are following provincial orders to curb their powers.

“We’re doing all this so we won’t be put under provincial supervision, because that is the alternative,” she warned...

SpongeBob was the weekend champion!

SpongeBob rules!

Coming in ahead of industry projections, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water soaked up an estimated $56 million from 3,641 theaters in its North American debut, giving new life to the family franchise and wresting the top spot from American Sniper. 

The performance of the Paramount and Nickelodeon Movies sequel, combined with the blockbuster success of The Lego Movie on the same weekend a year ago, firmly establishes February as a home for animated fare (Lego debuted to a whopping $69.1 million). And overseas, SpongeBob is doing five times more business than the first film, grossing $26.8 million to date from 25 territories — including $11.1 million in Mexico — for an early worldwide total of $82.8 million...

Rex Murphy: In Obama’s impulse to absolve Islam, he offers a rebuke to Christianity

The President of the United States is an interesting theologian. He has taken to declaring that Islamic terrorists, who by their own emphatic insistence are Islamic, and who conduct their merciless operations in Nigeria, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and fitfully in many countries around the world explicitly and defiantly under the banner of Islam, are not what or whom they say they are.

His purpose can  been seen as vaguely worthy — making the point that not all Muslims subscribe to the violent actions and tenets of the numerous radical factions, but saying “not all” does not erase a worryingly large “some.” Some, in these dreadful cases, is very, very many. But who really blames, or has been blaming, “all Muslims” ever? Western world leaders to a person have been insisting it is not all Muslims since the morning of the 9/11 attacks. This is a tired, and by now needless, rhetorical gambit.

But Mr. Obama treads travels much further on this dubious ground. On Thursday, two days after Jordanian pilot Muath Al-Kassasbeh was horrifically murdered by ISIS, Mr. Obama, speaking at a prayer breakfast, went through the usual theatre — these people are not Muslims, Islam is peace, etc., but then took a strange sideswipe at Christians...

See also: Michael Coren - Obama dodges tough questions of Islam

Hey Tom Mulcair! What was that again about Stephen Harper being "Islamophobic" for linking mosques to terrorism?

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair decries prime minister's comment as a form of Islamaphobia: Mulcair says Muslim groups are right to ask Prime Minister Stephen Harper for an apology for a comment Friday that linked mosques to radicalization

Meanwhile....

Edmonton imam posts video of al-Qaeda’s Anwar al-Awlaki, Asks Allah to give victory to mujahideen around the world

Imam Jamac Usman Hareed, a native of Somalia, studied Islamic studies and Shariah law in New Castle, South Africa and Arabic in Yemen. He serves as the Imam of the MAC Islamic Centre (Rahma Mosque) in Edmonton, Alberta and regularly is invited to lead prayers in many mosques across Canada....

and more HERE

Damian Thompson: The march of the new political correctness

...If Chait had been a conservative, no one would have paid any attention. But he’s a liberal who wants climate sceptics banned from public office. So by attacking political correctness — and even indulging in a little light mockery of ‘mansplaining’, ‘straightsplaining’ and other neologisms — he showed himself a traitor.

The reaction was comedy gold. Accused of hypersensitivity, the gender vigilantes shrieked their tits off. (That’s a figure of speech, by the way, not intended to exclude people without breasts.) ‘First things first,’ wrote Voxmagazine’s Amanda Taub. ‘There’s no such thing as “political correctness”.’ She then launched into a virtuoso display of this thing that doesn’t exist. Chait was endangering marginalised groups by ‘shutting down the conversation’ — a ludicrous charge, given that Taub’s ideological soulmates on both sides of the Atlantic have always specialised in shutting down conversations.

In the first wave of political correctness, the word ‘inappropriate’ was enough to shame a speaker into silence. The new, digitally remastered PC draws on an ever-expanding lexicon of victimhood. Terf stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminism — i.e. ‘transphobic’ feminists. Swerfs are sex worker-exclusionary radical feminists who think prostitution oppresses women.

For right-wing pundits, these antics are a gift — fresh ammunition for the culture war. For more thoughtful British and American writers, such as the young conservative journalist Robert Wargas, the revived PC is frustrating and creepy. ‘People must understand that PC works like a conspiracy theory,’ he says. ‘The more vigorously you argue against it, the more its proponents see the need to affirm it. That’s because, under their rules, logic and free speech are tools of oppression, at least when used by non-favoured groups. They’ve created this perfectly circular, perfectly sealed universe, packed with bizarre terms and theories that explain why they’re always good and their opponents always evil. By definition, reason will not work against this. PC is like a church whose only sacrament is excommunication.’...

h/t Blazing Cat Fur 

We are dead stars, looking back up at the sky

Canadian campus Muslim Student Associations as terrorist recruitment centres

 

MONTREAL - Eleven of Canada's highest-profile jihadi terrorists, terror suspects and alleged extremists have ties to the Muslim Students Association, a security conference has heard. 

The data was presented on Thursday evening by the Canadian Military Intelligence Association in Ottawa, where three men were charged Tuesday with terrorism-related offences.  

Suspect Awso Peshdary, 25, was an invited speaker of the Muslim Students Association at Ottawa's Algonquin College last year. He's accused of financing efforts to send recruits from Canada to Syria to join the Islamic State.  

A second man, Khadar Khalib, 23, was a member of the same MSA and the third suspect, John Maguire, 24, attended MSA events at the University of Ottawa. The latter two are believed to be in Syria.  

The 11 named at the security conference range from people, like Maguire, who reportedly attended a few MSA events, to top executives like former MSA leader Salman Ashrafi of Calgary...

Jihad E. Coyote - When terrorists buy mail order ACME weapons

Funny terrorist fails.

Don't tell the CBC this can be done! Non payment of BBC license fee remains criminal offense

Non payment of the BBC licence fee will remain a criminal offence thanks to Peers in the House of Lords rejecting a government attempt to make it a civil offence. 

Lord Grade, a former BBC Chairman conveyed concern that there were “dark forces at work”, amid fears throughout the chamber that watering down the offence would lead to thousand of households not paying the fee, blowing a hole in the BBC’s budget. 

In the event, Lords voted 178 to 175 in favour of an amendment that retained the criminal penalty for non payment of the fee, which currently stands at £149.50 per household per year. The money goes directly toward funding the BBC. 

Andrew Allison of the Freedom Association’s ‘Axe the TV Tax’ campaign said: “A number of Peers spoke in the debate, and these included Lord Grade (former BBC Chairman), Baroness Benjamin (Floella Benjamin, former BBC children’s TV presenter), Lord Cashman (former EastEnders actor), and Viscount Colville of Culross, a BBC producer. For the record, all of them declared an interest. 

“It was a tight vote. If you took away those who have either earned a living out of the BBC, still work for the BBC, or have a BBC pension, the vote would have gone the other way.” 

During the debate, Lord Grade warned his colleagues: “I would love to see the licence fee decriminalised, but there are risks in doing that. 

“There are risks the enemies of the BBC will see it as an opportunity to then move the compulsory element of the licence fee and move the BBC to a subscription model which would completely undermine the whole concept of public service broadcasting. I think there are dark forces at work..."

Fight back against politically-correct extremism and support Andrew Lawton

There aren't many, if any, countries in the world that are better than Canada to be a gay person.

It's not just that our Supreme Court has ruled that Gay people should have marriage rights and that most of our anti-discrimination laws prohibit discrimination against a person on the basis of sexual orientation. Beyond that, homophobia has become as socially unacceptable as racism, and the mere accusation of it is sometimes enough to devastate the reputation of the accused.

In Canada, we're well past the Seinfeldian "not that there's anything wrong with that," disclaimers and have come full circle to where it's politically and socially advantageous to be gay. Hell, I'm ready to come out of the closet, and I was never in it.  At the Pride festival last summer, I was waived past a line-up into a crowded club while two beautiful women standing beside me were kept outside, and inside gay bars, I've been bought drinks by men trying to ingratiate themselves to me. I'm not gay, but with privileges like that available, why would I want to volunteer the embarrassing and disadvantageous admission that I'm straight?

As far as I'm concerned, that's all very positive progress. I've written before that not only is gay marriage something we should tolerate, but something we should all support, because it's good for everyone in society. In fact, the only gay wedding I'd be opposed to is one without an open bar.

But we've also fallen into a deplorable trap. Because being seen as pro-Gay is considered a badge of "progressiveness," a typical gang of insecure, vacuous characters now fall all over themselves to form witch-hunting mobs seeking out the slightest perceived heresy.

The latest victim of this narrow-minded intolerance and totalitarianism-of-thought is my friend Andrew Lawton, who hosts a radio talk show on London, Ontario's AM980.

Andrew, in reaction to a group trying to demonize London as being hostile to the gay community, which he considered both false and a slur to his town, wrote something that was distorted and leaped upon by hysterics trying to portray him as a "homophobe."

He wrote:

 "Emerging Leaders used a push poll to try to paint Londoners as intolerant of the LGBTQ community.   

Number of sexual-orientation motivated hate crimes in Canada per year: 185

Number of HIV/AIDS infections from men having sex with men in Canada per year: 1450 

Who is the real enemy?

It may have been clumsily expressed, but Andrew is not anti-Gay and what he wrote are facts.

His point was not homophobic. Indeed, it was the opposite, that Canada in general, and London, Ontario are bastions of tolerance and we live in a society that is so tolerant that statistically, a gay man is in more danger from being harmed by another gay man than from becoming the victim of a hate crime. Even so, Andrew publicly apologized for the way he expressed himself on facebook.

However, because of an orchestrated campaign, Andrew has been suspended from his show.

Andrew Lawton is an outstanding radio host, who gained national attention just a few days before his facebook comment from an interview he did with Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau.

Unlike other interviews that Trudeau has faced, Lawton asked detailed, tough questions, which analysts on all sides of the political spectrum acknowledge was not a "gotcha" inquisition, but in which Andrew insisted on getting complete answers. The interview proved to be a serious failing for Trudeau in which he floundered on his responses to Canada's role in fighting the Islamic State terror group. It's even been speculated that the Liberal party's support for the Conservative government's new Anti-Terror Bill was a result of trying to mitigate Trudeau's poor performance on Andrew's show.

That has made a lot of people very angry at Andrew and they have been looking for a chance, any chance at getting revenge, and distorting Andrew's facebook remark proved to be it.

The irony of this is that these people so outraged and Andrew's inadvertent offence are remarkably silent about actual murders of gay people in the Islamic world, or the overt homophobia that is promoted in virtually every mosque in Canada.

It is an absolute disgrace that AM980's program director Nathan Smith capitulated to the witch-hunt that sought to burn Andrew at the stake.

Andrew's show is described as "Canada's most irreverent radio talk show." The bosses at AM980 should be aware of that, since Andrew would say it following just about every other station break. Perhaps the people who run AM980 aren't actually aware of the meaning of "irreverent," so I'll help them out with its dictionary definition, which is, "showing a lack of respect for people or things that are generally taken seriously."

Think about it. AM 980 was boasting about having a show that shows a lack of respect for people or things generally taken seriously. That is, until someone complained that they showed a lack of respect for people or things taken seriously.

In my books, that pretty much equals cowardice and hypocrisy on the part of AM980.

But I could be wrong. After all, a radio station is a business, and there's no profit in offending advertisers and listeners.

However, by suspending Andrew, they may have done just that.

Perhaps, in the politest, most civil way possible, it would be a good idea to remind AM980's Nathan Smith that until Andrew is reinstated, listeners will stop buying products and services advertised on the station. It might also be a good idea to remind some of the station's advertisers of that.

You can email Nathan Smith at: nsmith@am980.ca

----------------------


Update: Just so you have an idea of the type of hypocrites and weirdos who are braying for Andrew's blood, here's one of his most vociferous detractors on Twitter:

Get that?  According to Scott Sproul, Andrew Lawton is a bigot for his facebook remark about facts regarding the ratio of hate crimes directed against gay people versus the gay HIV infection rate.








Hmm... Bigot, eh? The same Scott Sproul who spouts the "n' word and compares African Americans to monkeys:

So who's the bigot?????!!!

Clifford D. May: Some "Victims" Deserve Blame

There are victims and then there are victims. Too often, I think, we worry about the wrong ones.

Start with some of the most powerful politicians of Argentina. They are feeling sorely aggrieved by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). He had the temerity to suggest that Secretary of State John Kerry support the creation of an “independent, internationally assisted investigation” into the case of Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor who attempted to bring to justice those responsible for the worst terrorist attack in Argentina’s history. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his apartment the night before he was to deliver testimony implicating Argentina’s president in a plot to cover up Iranian and Hezbollah involvement.

Argentine Chief of Cabinet Jorge Capitanich complained of Mr. Rubio’s “imperialist behavior.” TeleSur, a pan-Latin American television network controlled by the governments of Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela (with Qatar-based Al Jazeera as a content provider), objected to “US Republican meddling,” denouncing Mr. Rubio as a “right-wing Senator” who has long “spearheaded the push for hostile policies towards left-leaning governments in Latin America.”

Those beleaguered governments have a new ally in the Old World: Elections in Greece last month brought to power the Coalition of the Radical Left. Syriza, the Greek acronym by which the party is better known, told voters their economy has not been ruined by profligate borrowing and spending, bloated bureaucracies and corruption. No, the blame lies with wealthier Europeans who have imposed “humiliation and suffering” upon the Greek people and, adding insult to injury, now urge stringent austerity measures as the remedy.

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s new finance minister, “fresh from teaching at the University of Texas at Austin,” last week called such measures “fiscal waterboarding.” Which might raise the question: Should he and his colleagues be seen as fiscal Khalid Sheikh Mohammads? ...

More at Foundation for Defense of Democracies

CGI Animatied Short: Johnny Express

Obama's Comparison of Christianity to Radical Islam Defies Logic

...It is perverse that Obama feels compelled to lecture the West about not getting too judgmental on our “high horse” over radical Islam’s medieval barbarism in 2015 because of Christianity’s medieval barbarism in 1215. 

It’s also insipidly hypocritical. President Obama can’t bring himself to call the Islamic State “Islamic,” but he’s happy to offer a sermon about Christianity’s alleged crimes at the beginning of the last millennium...

Defending Leo Strauss

From The National Interest:

IN RAVELSTEIN, his last novel, Saul Bellow paid tribute to his friend and longtime University of Chicago colleague Allan Bloom, the political theorist whose Closing of the American Mind remains one of the great polemical tracts of the Reagan-era culture wars. A roman à clef executed with Bellow’s usual delight in the gritty particulars of place and person, the novel traces the final days of Abe Ravelstein (the Bloom character) and describes his peculiar relationship with the intense, brilliant circle of his followers. Ravelstein, we are told,

knew the value of a set. He had a set of his own. Its members were students he had trained in political philosophy and longtime friends. Most of them were trained as Ravelstein himself had been trained, under Professor Davarr and used his esoteric vocabulary. Some of Ravelstein’s older pupils now held positions of importance on national newspapers. Quite a number served in the State Department. Some lectured in the War College or worked on the staff of the National Security Adviser. 

The action of the novel, it should be noted, takes place around the time of the first Gulf War, in the years leading up to Bloom’s death in 1992. The mysterious “Professor Davarr” is, of course, a stand-in for Leo Strauss, the great German Jewish political theorist who was Bloom’s teacher at the University of Chicago and whose writings and influence even now generate angry critiques and impassioned defenses. (Davarr is a bit of wordplay—in Hebrew, it means word, speech or argument, like the Greek logos.)

For the Bloom character in Ravelstein, the teachings of the Great Books—Thucydides, Plato, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Locke, Rousseau, Nietzsche—are inseparable from the drama of Great Politics, stretching from the Athens of Pericles to the Cold War and beyond, very much including the headline-grabbing events of his own time:

What [Ravelstein] loved was to have the men he had trained appointed to important positions; real life confirming his judgments. He’d go aside with his portable phone and then he’d return to tell us, “Colin Powell and Baker have advised the President not to send the troops all the way to Baghdad. Bush will announce it tomorrow.” 

In Bellow’s telling, the source of this “inside dope” about the Gulf War is a highly placed Pentagon official whose biographical details make clear that he is modeled on Paul Wolfowitz. “It’s only a matter of time before [the Wolfowitz character] has cabinet rank,” Ravelstein/Bloom declares, “and a damn good thing for the country.”

Bellow’s Ravelstein is a useful prologue for approaching Robert Howse’s worthy but painfully academic Leo Strauss: Man of Peace. Howse’s volume is the most recent addition to a growing bibliography devoted to assessing Strauss’s difficult ideas, not only in relation to the defining ideological controversies of the past century but also as they have (or have not) affected the foreign policy of the United States...

The Case for Deadline-Triggered Sanctions on Iran

From The Foundation for Defense of Democracies:

To date, the Iranian government remains unwilling to come into compliance with its international obligations. At the same time, as the Obama administration has lowered its nuclear demands, U.S. negotiating leverage has diminished. If anything, the administration has accommodated the red lines laid out by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. The administration deserves credit for its attempt to find a compromise with Iran through a diplomatic process. However many of its specific overtures have only hardened Iranian nuclear intransigence, as the search for a comprehensive agreement between the West and Iran enters the sixth year for the United States and the twelfth year for the Europeans.

The largest obstacle to a deal right now, after Iranian intransigence, is the Obama administration’s assumption that it has sufficient leverage to conclude an acceptable final deal. After a successful period of escalating congressionally-mandated sanctions targeting the Iranian economy, passed over the objections of the Obama administration (which subsequently embraced them), the White House has provided a financial lifeline to Iran in the form of sanctions relief. After receiving what will be about $12 billion in repatriated oil revenues by June 30, 2015, and many billions more in ancillary benefits, Iran’s economy has stabilized and is on a modest recovery path. This comes after a severe sanctions-induced recession of 2012 and early 2013. The Iranian economy has undeniably benefited from both the direct and indirect economic relief provided as part of the November 24, 2013 Joint Plan of Action, which is on its second extension to June 30, 2015. This has reduced Iranian regime fears of another economic crisis and increased economic resilience against future pressure...

See also, the outlook from Iran's state-controlled, English-language propaganda service suggests the Iranians have lost all  fear of, and respect for America under Obama :

A senior Iranian commander has dismissed as “meddlesome” the recent US claims that Tehran’s defense might would be part of the nuclear talks with six world powers, saying Iran’s missile capability is non-negotiable. 

“Iran's missile programs and defense capability, irrespective of their purpose, are not negotiable in any foreign circle,” Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri said on Wednesday ...

...“Gone are the days when the US was a superpower, but some still haven't realized it,” he said.

Nabokov and the Movies

From The New Yorker:

The axiom that great novels make bad movie adaptations has not been entirely true for Vladimir Nabokov, whose books depend to a surprising degree on plot-heavy narratives (not to say cravenly pulpy story lines) that lend themselves well to the screen. Take “Lolita,” with its tale of the Humbert Humbert, who marries the mother of the twelve-year-old girl he covets and plots his new wife’s murder, only to see her die accidentally under the wheels of a car minutes after she discovers his secret diary of pedophilic lust, whereupon he embarks on a cross-country road trip with his orphaned stepdaughter, all of it culminating in an extended murder scene when Humbert tracks a shadowy pursuer who stole the girl away from him. Stanley Kubrick’s masterful 1962 movie version, starring James Mason as Humbert, compressed all of this into two hours, and also captured the novel’s tone of suave irony—which makes “Lolita” as much a satiric indictment of mid-twentieth-century American mores as it is a study of a pervert...

Ethics and honesty of al Qaida terrorist Omar Khadr's lawyer called into question

Brian Lilley wants an apology from creepy Muslim organizations

I have no words... (the insane Randy Quaid having sex with "Rupert" video)

Former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet claims Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated all the U.S. National Security Agencies under Obama

Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons (U.S. Navy, Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated that under the leadership of Barack Obama the Muslim Brotherhood have infiltrated all of the National Security Agencies of the United States.

Salim Mansur's presentation to the House Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs

From Professor Salim Mansur's presentation yesterday in Parliament to the House Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs:

... if the West, including Canada, is unwilling to invest in a coherent strategy to contain and defeat Islamism, then the public needs to know. In our contemporary world, the West is not insulated against the war raging within the world of Islam. Islamists and apologists for Islamism are in our midst in the West, and have duly infiltrated Western institutions to degrade and subvert liberal democracy. They have been skillful in manipulating the West’s liberal democratic values for their aims; they have exploited multiculturalism to push their agenda of Shariah-rule in Canada, Britain, France and elsewhere in the West. 

We may not want to be involved against Islamism and Islamists, and declare none of this is our problem. History is, however, merciless in pointing out those who appeased the enemies of freedom and democracy in the hope that they would be saved from the impending peril, for instance, of Nazism or Communism, only made the cost of eventually defending freedom and democracy immensely greater than it would have been if more robust actions were taken sooner rather than later.

Canadian Islamic groups abandon even the pretense of plausibility

Because we all know there's no link between mosques and Islamic radicalization...

Two national Muslim organizations say they are troubled that Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week drew a link between radicalization and mosques. 

Harper made the remark last Friday when he was answering a question about the Canadian government's new anti-terrorism legislation. The measures unveiled in Bill C-51 include criminalizing advocacy for or promotion of a terrorist act. Another measure lowers the threshold needed for police to arrest somebody they suspect may commit a terrorist act. 

Asked how to distinguish between teens messing around in their basements and someone who is radicalized, Harper said it would be a serious offence "no matter who you are."
"It doesn't matter what the age of the person is, or whether they're in a basement, or whether they're in a mosque or somewhere else," Harper said Friday in Richmond Hill, Ont. 

The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and the Canadian Muslim Lawyers' Association (CMLA) said in a press release Monday that they are "deeply troubled" Harper "implicated Canadian mosques as venues where terrorism is advocated or promoted." In a press release, the groups demanded Harper apologize...

By the way, what ever happened to the law suit the National Council of Canadian Muslims said they were launching against the Prime Minister's Office when his spokesman said the organization "had documented ties to a terrorist organization"?  Funny how that just seems to have gone away.

Documents Found in Murdered Prosecutor’s Apartment Showed Intent to Arrest Argentina’s President

Documents found in the garbage of Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s apartment show that he had intended to ask a judge to arrest Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, according to a report (Spanish link) yesterday in Clarin, a Spanish-language newspaper in Argentina. 

Nisman died of a gunshot wound to the head two weeks ago, the night before he was scheduled to present his case before a before a closed-door session of an Argentine congressional committee against Kirchner and Timerman for covering up Iran’s role in the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing...

Douglas Murray: Why does the battle for gay rights stop at the borders of Islam?

...In the newspapers today we can see photos of events in the Syrian town of Raqqa.  There Isis have just carried out another ‘execution’ of someone accused of being gay.  The victim – this time a man in his 50s – was thrown off the top floor of a seven-storey building.  He appears to have survived the fall and so was stoned to death by the crowd on the ground. 

What are right-thinking people to do about this?  For most of them it isn’t easy because they don’t even know where to begin thinking about this and have been taught to be almost fearful about speaking about it. 

I think we can probably say with some confidence that if an evangelical Christian group threw gays off towers in the Deep South, gay media outlets would currently be lambasting the Christian churches for a history of homophobia which had led to this pass.  There would be demands for every prominent and obscure Christian pastor to condemn this brutal act.  And they would.  If a group of group of deeply extrovert Jews did a similar thing we could, I think, expect a similarly stern response.  But the most that can be done with Isis is simply to report the facts and let them sit there, as though they come from nowhere... 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper discusses national security in an exclusive interview with Andrew Lawton

What John Baird's Resignation as Foreign Affairs Minister Means for Canada

Reports are all over the news this morning that Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird will resign from Cabinet today and will be leaving politics. International Trade Minister Ed Fast will take over the Foreign Affairs portfolio, at least for the time being.

As far as Canadian Foreign Affairs policy goes, the change is only likely to mean a change in style but not substance. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a keen understanding of the directions he wants Canada to take in its dealings with the world, and regardless of who heads the Ministry, the Prime Minister will keep a firm hand on the tiller of the ship of state.

Baird's style was brash, blunt, and often confrontational, making him sometimes sound like the vocalization of the publicly staid Harper's unspoken thoughts.

Canadian foreign policy has shifted sharply during Baird's term in Foreign Affairs and that shift has pleased those who want Canada to take principled stands on global issues as much as it has infuriated those who wanted previous governments' stances of moral and cultural equivalence and equivocation.

Not since Brian Mulroney's Conservatives took the lead on opposition to South African Apartheid has Canada seen such international leadership in Foreign Affairs. Under Baird, Canada has stood at the forefront of its support for democratic Israel against the barbaric dictatorships that surround it in the middle east. Under Harper and Baird, Canada has been outspoken in his criticism of persecution of gays in Uganda and Russian expansionism in Ukraine.

The last few years and the Conservative government's policies have represented a drastic shift from a Foreign Affairs approach based on expediency to one based on principle. That shift has driven some people apoplectic with rage, particularly the apologists for Islamist totalitarianism that infest the media and academia. The government's approach has also presented tremendous difficulty for Canada's opposition parties in Parliament, who when attacking the government's policies often seem stupid, weak and confused.

That happened again just last week, when Justin Trudeau floundered and seemed almost incoherent in an interview with London radio host Andrew Lawton, in which the Liberal Party leader tried to play both sides of the issue of Canada's involvement in the fight against the terrorist Islamic State forces.

It took the Liberal Party's erudite Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau's forceful presentation to Parliament to salvage yet another of Trudeau's public blunders.

Garneau made it clear his party is behind the fight against ISIS, but wants the government to be forthright on what level of military support Canada provides. That left the NDP in a disadvantaged position of reinforcing the image of its leader Tom Mulcair, whose persona is one of a politician who is perpetually angry, reflexively obstructionist, and incapable of leadership in times of serious security challenges.

The change at the top post at Foreign Affairs also reiterates another advantage that the Conservative party has which the Liberals and NDP do not. That of having deep benches.

MPs like Jason Kenney, Chris Alexander, Lisa Raitt, and Tim Uppal, are all exceptionally bright and capable, each of whom could stand as national leaders in their own right.

NDP Deputy Leader Megan Leslie

The Liberals only have Marc Garneau, who is an outstanding, principled parliamentarian. But that of itself presents a problem for the Liberals, since every time Garneau speaks, he makes his own party leader look so much weaker, unintelligent, and incapable by comparison.  The Liberals' other supposed "stars" are gaffe-prone mediocrities like Andrew Leslie and Chrystia Freeland who only escape that characterization because of the little scrutiny they get from a sympathetic media. Worse still for the Liberals are the swarm of liabilities in their ranks of MPs and candidates, like Omar Alghabra, Darshan Kang, and Judy Sgro.

But that's nothing compared to the NDP, who have an intelligent and articulate if inconsistent leader in the person of Tom Mulcair, but effectively, the party has no one else ready for prime time.  The NDP has such a dearth of talent that it has had to employ utter dolts as its deputy leaders. It has the soon-to-retire Libby Davies from the west coast, who has made it her business to say idiotic things and champion deranged causes throughout her career. On the east coast, Mulcair's Deputy is Halifax MP Megan Leslie, whose level of seriousness might be suggested by the oral sex enhancer she had implanted in her tongue. As appealing a modification as that may be, it leaves something to be desired as a confidence-builder for national leadership.

Unfortunately for Mulcair, he has more than one MP in his caucus who has had their tongue pierced, but none who have done him the favor of having it totally surgically removed.

Despite John Baird's departure from Foreign Affairs, Canada will retain strength and good judgement in its international relationships and standing. The concern Canadians should have is the lack of gravitas and talent in our weak opposition parties should they ever form a government.

The common theme of our foreign affairs via @Baird: if you stand for individual liberty and the rule of law you will have an ally in Canada.
— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) February 3, 2015

The Hill

This remarkable movie directed by Sidney Lumet features a sensational performance by Sean Connery and a tremendous supporting cast

This week in Canadian Campus idiocy, featuring McGill University

Apparently Queer McGill thinks they can create a "safer space" if they hold the event "free from the presence of white folk."...

Social Darwinism Strikes Again: US toddler accidentally shoots father, pregnant mother

Social Darwinism Strikes Again:

..."On the kid's side, it's a horrible accident that happened, but the parents are still culpable," Mr Drobik said. 

"They should have secured the gun." 

The couple could face felony negligence charges but the child will not face criminal charges, Mr Drobik said. 

He said the woman told police she had purchased the 9mm gun the day before the incident. 

The man is not legally allowed to have a firearm because he has previously been convicted of a felony crime. 

The family, including a two-year-old girl and the children's grandmother, had been living in a motel for about a week with their two pit bull dogs when the incident occurred...

Egyptian court lists Hamas' armed wing as terrorist organization

(Reuters) - An Egyptian court on Saturday banned the armed wing of Palestinian group Hamas and listed it as a terrorist organization, a ruling in keeping with a systematic crackdown on Islamists by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. 

Sisi said on Saturday Egypt faces a tough, prolonged campaign against militancy. "(It) will be difficult, strong, evil and will take a long time," he said in comments broadcast on state television after meeting top military officers. 

Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which the authorities have also declared a terrorist group and repressed thoroughly since the army ousted one of its leaders, Mohamed Mursi, from the presidency in 2013. 

"We reject the Egyptian court's decision against Qassam Brigades. It is a political, dangerous decision that serves only the Zionist occupation," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, referring to Israel's control over Palestinian territories. 

The ruling came days after Egypt was hit with some of the bloodiest Islamist militant attacks on security forces in years...

"Free Gaza" leader makes it clear that Jew-hatred motivates so-called "pro-Palestinians"

Ken O'Keefe is one of the leaders of the so-called "Free Gaza" movement, which is a very active enabler of the Hamas terror group which rules Gaza and is dedicated to the eradication of Israel. In his depraved speech filled with enough demented conspiracy-nonsense to suggest he is mentally ill, O'Keefe makes it clear he hates Jews and supports violence to achieve his ends.