Its eyes really were bigger than its stomach

Secret Agent Obama to Russia: "After the election, I'll bend over and take it up the butt for America"

Actually, Obama told the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that after his presumed reelection, he'll have more flexibility. I assume the headline is what he plans on doing with that flexibility.

Former UN Ambassador Bolton accuses Obama White House of leaking Israel's plans to attack Iran

Is Canada equiped to deal with Islamic radicalism?

Three of Canada's most knowledgeable intelligence analysts had a public discussion on March 28 about Canada's ability to deal with Islamic radicalism coming out of the middle east and from a public security standpoint, the prognosis was less than encouraging.

Ray Boisvert, Assistant Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Doug Best, the RCMP's National Security Section Head both expressed the fear that "radicalization" was Canada's greatest national security concern. As senior members of government agencies and being consummate professionals, both men had to be circumspect about their language and neither mentioned  "Islam" once. Fortunately, the Mackenzie Institutes's John Thompson was also on the panel assembled by Advocates for Civil Liberties and The Atlantic Council of Canada for their "Canada and the New Middle East" conference in Toronto. Thompson observed that as a private citizen, he did not have similar constraints limiting him to the politically correct and proved that point quickly by saying, "if you look at the history of Islam, they've managed to pick a fight with everyone they've met."

Boisvert and Best reiterated the concern of "lone actors," individual terrorists who act by themselves or in small group being difficult to predict or track. But in a nod to multicultural sensitivities,  Boisvert equated Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer who acted on his own based on his own psychotic self-idealization of his being a Knight Templar with Mohammed Merah, the Jihadist murderer of three Jewish children in France earlier this month. The difference that the CSIS official didn't note is that Merah was not acting out a fantasy involving a centuries-dead Crusader Order but of a very much contemporary Islamic philosophy of terrorism in the name of religion. Far from being  independent, Merah travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to study how to actualize this ideology of murder under the tutelage of a well-structured system.

One of the challenges Canadian multiculturalism faces was articulated by Thompson's observation of a facet of Islamism that Canada has not seen from other communities. Where other communities and cultures have worked towards integrating with Canadian society, Islamists work within their community to try to prevent integration.

Yet the silver lining to all this is that while Islamism presents Canada's greatest security threat, RCMP Superintendent Best noted that eighty percent of the cases where police thwarted Canadian terror rings, the information that foiled them was provided by members of the community. In other words, Canadian Muslims are our best asset in fighting domestic Islamic terror. Thompson provided the explanation for this apparent paradox; mosques are centres of radicalism due to their being controlled and funded in a great many instances by Saudi extremists . The disconnect between Canadian Islamic leaders and the majority of Canadian Muslims is encouraging, but that trend is not absolute and radicalization at mosques does occur.

One of the disappointments encountered by young Canadian Muslims who do become recruited to radical causes abroad is that the reality of being a Islamic fighter is starkly different than the portrayal of an exciting, noble adventure that they are being sold. CSIS' Boisvert compared it to the famous South Park cartoon episode where, after watching the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, Eric Cartman and his friends went off to join Somali pirates, only to find their swashbuckling fantasy bore no resemblance to the depressing, grotty truth of their situation. Unfortunately, in the case of radicalized Canadian Muslims, by the time they find what they have gotten themselves into, they are usually past the point of no return.

Let us hope Canadian multiculturalism has not yet reached the point where we cannot find solutions to the ongoing threats posed by Islamism inside our borders.




Coming soon: How new energy finds will change Canada, the middle east and the world, creating new hope and new conflicts.

Some of the greatest comedy ever from Eddie Murphy

Failed NDP leadership candidate Brian Topp thanks media sponsor of "Israeli Apartheid Week" for all their support

Ugh..Topp was closely tied to the vermin at rabble.ca

see also: What Next for the NDP? and this for background

Ontario gets international attention...for legalizing brothels

more at CNN.com and at Time.com

UN Watch exposes the laughable hypocrisy of the United Nations "Human Rights" Committee

What Reason TV saw at the Reason Rally

Reason.tv headed down to the National Mall for the Reason Rally (no affiliation!) in Washington, DC. The March 24 event was billed as the "largest gathering of the secular movement in world history" and drew a several thousand-strong crowd of damp, enthusiastic unbelievers (and a few protesting believers) .

Belladona Rogers: 8 Mistakes Men Make About Women

Or, more reasons why it's amazing the human race hadn't become extinct eons ago.

1. BELIEVING THAT A WOMAN IN TEARS IS THE FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT OF A URANIUM-ENRICHED PORCUPINE

Personally, I would have added "rabid" to that description..

 2. NOT UNDERSTANDING THAT WHEN IT COMES TO EXPRESSING OUR THOUGHTS, MEN ARE FROM HEMINGWAY AND WOMEN ARE FROM PROUST

B. If you ask a woman a question, don’t interrupt her response by saying, as you impatiently tap your fingertips on the nearest table, “Get to the point.” The point you don’t get is that our intricate narratives — interlaced as they are with our multi-layered interpretations, embroidered with the richness of our subtle observations, and enhanced by our exquisite cascades of details that might well have entirely escaped your notice, and without which your understanding of life would be the poorer — are what an answer is to us. As Walter Cronkite used to say, “And that’s the way it is.”


There's plenty more of this very amusing and possibly informative (what do I know?) piece at PJ Media

Mulcair won. What next for the NDP?

Leadership contests are, by their nature, extremely divisive contests. They force parties to highlight their own divisions and in the process, provide ammunition to other political parties that they can save for elections.

The NDP is conscious of that and for the most part, the leadership convention that just elected Thomas Mulcair with over 57% of the vote was a restrained process. The one candidate who faced the harshest criticism from rivals was the one who emerged victorious.

So the first order of business under such circumstances is always to consolidate the victory. The fact that it took four ballots for Mulcair to win means that he will want to shore up support. That in turn means that there will be no drastic changes in the short term. To hammer home that point, Mulcair, in his first major interview as NDP leader, told the CBC's Peter Mansbridge that he will retain Vancouver East MP Libby Davies as Deputy Leader.

The relations between Davies and Mulcair could be described as toxic. Many sources indicate the rotund Health Critic Davies despises Mulcair as a "neo-liberal" Blairite, while the Outremont MP is contemptuous of Davies, whom he considers an unintelligent, radical fanatic that is a liability to the party's ability to reach beyond its base. Davies launched vicious proxy attacks against Mulcair  through rabble.ca. That radical website is published by Davies' same-sex spouse, Kim Elliott. Mulcair is keenly aware of the rabble/Davies connection and he was the only one of the NDP leadership candidates who refused to be interviewed by that neo-Marxist online outlet.

Once Mulcair's grasp on the party tightens, look forward to Davies being consigned to the back benches within two years. The decline will be gradual, with her first being shifted out of the Deputy Leader and Health Critic positions to a lesser portfolio. Depending on her ability to refrain from a major blunder, a degree of restraint that Davies has seldom exercised for long, she may hold on to a job as Critic of a minor Ministry., But just as likely, once Davies, who frequently behaves like a petulant child in public, contradicts and criticizes the new leader, she'll be roosting up in the Opposition bleachers.

The interesting developments will be where people like Nathan Cullen end up. His surprising 3rd place performance in the leadership race means that he has party support, but despite Cullen's expressed desire to move the party to the centre, his policies are even further to the left of Jack Layton's, suggesting the bald man from British Columbia is not someone to be trusted.

The next general election isn't likely to be before late 2015, so in that time, the NDP caucus who can act like centrists and behave intelligently will be moved closer to the top. Look for more of a say from the Quebec caucus, who though fresh now, will under Mulcair's tutelage show more gravitas and leadership. Whether the NDP and its new leader have the talent and skill to give Canadians confidence in their ability to govern depends largely on whether the party purges the Davies faction and shows it is finally being run by grown-ups.

What fear does Stephen Harper share with Judy Rebick? That Libby Davies will be shut out of power under Mulcair

Frumpy and hysterical, prone to "eat the rich" and "politics of oppression" style rhetoric, Vancouver East MP Libby Davies is a walking caricature of 1970's style radical politics that has rendered the New Democratic Party unelectable and non-credible among an overwhelming majority of Canadian voters.

But the antiquated, white, middle class, neo-Marxist faction of the NDP Davies personifies is the core of the activist base that has been at the centre of the party for the last four decades. With the Quebec breakthrough the party had in the 2011 election, there may be a coming  marginalization of the radicals who continually look to re-fight old victories like abortion and health care, and to push divisive, unappealing policies like cozying up to Islamist radicals and 9-11 conspiracy theories rather than looking ahead to forming responsible economic policies.

And so that, in a nutshell, sums up the current angst faced by the old-school NDPers like Ed Broadbent and Judy Rebick, who are seeing their treasured, ineffective values threatened by the modernity represented by current leadership frontrunner Thomas Mulcair.

One aspect of the race and the potential loss of Mulcair's leadership bid is the possibility that the NDP's support in Quebec could totally collapse along with it. As Chantal Hebert wrote in an article in the Toronto Star earlier this week, no one is hoping for a Mulcair loss more than Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois, who sees Mulcair as being a force for federalism in Quebec and someone who could grow federal support in the province.

Conversely, a Mulcair loss would be seen as a slap in the face to Quebec and would almost certainly create an anti-NDP backlash there.

Interestingly, that fact was acknowledged by the ancient lefttist radical Judy Rebick in an interview on CBC Radio`s The Current a few days ago. But Rebick`s main area of concern is not for the future of the NDP as much as it is for maintaining the influence of Libby Davies` extremist brand of politics within the party.

Rebick who has been actively pushing an `anyone but Mulcair` ticket said her greatest fear is that Thomas Mulcair will shut Libby Davies out of the NDP.

Coincidentally, that is probably Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Bob Rae`s greatest fear too. Because by so doing Mulcair would make the NDP a viable, credible party in the eyes of the broader Canadian electorate.

UPDATE: Mulcair is consolidating his victory, but is it a matter of time before Davies is relegated to obscurity within the NDP to limit the damage she can do to the party?

Bizarre Baylor prof accused of sexual harrassment to give anti-Israel speeches in Canada

Baylor University's Marc Ellis is a very strange man indeed. Ellis' supporters,and reportedly he himself  claims he has a "prophetic voice." Whether that was the voice he used during his alleged sexual harassment of one of his graduate students remain unknown. What is known is that he is currently undergoing dismissal proceedings at Baylor.

Ellis, a Jew whose anti-Semitic statements like "Put simply, "Jewish" has taken on an imperial and colonial flavor" are more suggestive of his being a prophet of Karl Marx than Jehovah. "The great exemplar of social justice" are the actual words Ellis has used to describe the author of The Communist Manifesto.

An anti-Israel group calling itself  The Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation of Canada is presenting this anti-Semitic Jew on a 3 city lecture tour next week on Canadian universities with endorsements from the usual cast of Jew-hating, terror-supporting suspects.

Maybe his tiny audience will get to hear some "prophetic" comments about the article from New York Magazine regarding his alleged gross abuse of authority:

The details of the charges against Ellis have not been fully disclosed, but the events under investigation date back nearly a decade, to when the complaining witness was Ellis's graduate assistant, a fortysomething Ph.D. student who became a “close friend of Marc’s," as Ellis's lawyer, Roger Sanders, puts it. After completing her Ph.D., the woman came aboard as a Baylor faculty member. According to a letter sent to Starr by the American Association of University Professors, in March 2011 the woman filed an EEOC complaint of sexual harassment against Ellis.

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Jack Layton: A political failure, but a master of "Raffi Socialism"

Toronto Life has a harsh assessment of Jack Layton's dubious legacy written by Stephen Marche:

Raffi socialism is not wrong; it’s much worse. It’s content in its impotence. Its constituent parts are feel-good, conventional, childlike ideas about how the world should work, substituting bike lanes or an empty critique of capitalism for practical policies that would actually improve the lives of Canadians. Today’s left-wing leaders, following in Layton’s footsteps, like to whine—about whether the head of the CRTC is bilingual or not, or about why we don’t have more bike lanes, or about the need for a hockey concussion registry.

Raffi socialism is downtown Toronto’s cheerfully useless contribution to national politics, born from the dysfunction of city hall. To become a councillor or mayor, you have to win a lot of votes, and then when you do, you’re only one decision maker out of 45. The OMB and the province make all the substantial decisions anyway, so it’s quite easy to praise public transit and parks without ever having to go to the trouble of finding the money to build them, and it’s equally easy to shout your respect for taxpayers and commuters while doing nothing to alleviate congestion. Rhetoric, alongside basic constituency business, is the job; the innovators of city hall invent new modes of political symbolism. As a councillor, Layton mastered Raffi socialism. Ford is inventing gridiron conservatism.

The Conservatives loved Layton; they loved his tireless impotence. No doubt Harper would like Layton’s legacy to live forever. The Conservative prime minister, elected with barely 40 per cent of the vote, faces no real Opposition caucus.

The importance of attack ads in our political process

A silly debate that never disappears from the political scene is whether "attack ads" should be allowed.

Aside from the free speech component of the matter that make attack ads constitutionally protected, the motives of people opposed to them is rather transparent. It's because the candidates they support are vulnerable to them. The previous two Liberal leaders were particularly harmed by attack ads in Canada's last two national elections.

Stephane Dion was the target of a very effective Conservative ad campaign leading up to the 2008 election that portrayed him as "not up to the job" of being a leader. Michael Ignatieff was similarly harmed in the 2011 election by being successfully characterized as an elitist who was "just visiting" Canada for the sake of  personal ambition.



The raucous nature of political campaigns are really about pointing out not just the advantages of one side, but the deficits of the other. This relatively minor test of fire is an important element of the election process for a very basic and obvious reason. If a candidate who wants to lead a country is incapable of dealing with an attack ad from a fairly benign domestic political rival, how could they possibly function as a leader on the world stage, dealing with potentially hostile foreign interests?

In that sense, attack ads are the most basic test someone who wants to be put in a position of power and responsibility should be able to overcome. If they can't, they have no busness asking millions of Canadians to entrust them with that responsibility.

Emotionally unbalanced Jews aggressively campaign to have NDP reject Thomas Mulcair

A group founded by a 9-11 conspiracy theorist and comprised largely of emotionally unbalanced Jews is aggressively lobbying the NDP to reject the front-running candidate, Thomas Mulcair, at its upcoming leadership convention because unlike his rivals, he is a supporter of the Jewish state.

Independent Jewish Voices was founded by Diana Ralph, who has argued that the September 11, 2001 attacks perpetrated by Muslims belonging to the al Qaida terror organization was actually a US government 'inside job.' The group itself is mainly made up of white, middle aged, bitter, childless Jews desperate for attention.

The way they have chosen to feed their narcissism is to try to "stand out from the herd" by being Jews who publicly declare their hate for the Jewish state and anyone who supports it. Independent Jewish Voices lets anti-Semites in the Marxist and Islamists movement use them as cover to deny their desire to see the destruction of Israel is a manifestation of Jew-hatred. In exchange,  the useful idiots of Independent Jewish Voices welcome feigned adulation from people who are secretly contemptuous of them.  But any sort of attention is welcomed by such people whose unimpressive talents would otherwise not afford them notice of any kind

Not coincidentally, this group of Jewish socialists has chosen to make their announcement at rabble.ca, published by the spouse of Israel-hating NDP MP Libby Davies, herself a supporter of Brian Topp, one of Mulcair's rivals for the NDP's top spot.

UPDATE : The "progressive" Jew-haters that Independent Jewish Voices serve at rabble.ca are upset that the murder of 3 Jewish children in France is being "privileged" above other deaths this week. Employing an insidious moral relativism, the Libby Davies Fan Club ignores that three very young, innocent children were specifically targeted and executed by an Islamic radical expressly for their religion. As is not uncommon for them, these radicals tied to the far left of the NDP have descended into outright anti-Semitism.

Robocalls hysterics do their opponents a favor every time they open their mouths

Jon Allen was one of the main organizers of a clownish rally demanding new elections and a Parliamentary inquiry on the basis of robocalls made during Canada's 2011 election campaign, which evidently did not prevent a single person from casting a vote. The allegations of callers misrepresenting themselves as Elections Canada officials suggests a crime which merits police investigation. But the ridiculous hysteria of people like Allan, while professing devotion to "democracy," is clearly motivated by nothing other than an intense hatred of the Conservative government and conservatives in general.

And how do we know that? Because they tell us so.

Sun TV host Michael Coren and Allan have become embroiled in a war of words in the last couple of days, in which Coren mocked Allan for his histrionic idiocy of suggesting the robocalls were the beginnings of a fascist Canada.

Allan responded with a facebook posting that while meant to refute Coren, actually helps reinforce the conservative pundit's case. Aside from a dispute over the numbers where Allan inflates the attendance of his gathering by a factor of about 3 times the actual amount, the real meat of the dispute comes from the perceived value of rally co-organizer Zafar Bangash. While accusing Coren of "mental disabilities" Allan praises Bangash, a fierce advocate of the Holocaust-denying Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as "an exemplary citizen." Some of Bangash's exemplary citizenship includes implicitly threatening the lives of Jews in Iran, his racist reference to American President Barack Obama as "this black man in the White House," his call for war and the imposition of Islamic law in Israel, and his support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

While he might be able to credibly profess ignorance about Bangash, since ignorance is obviously an area in which Mr. Allan excels, his claim that his wishes are for "democratic accountability, regardless of the party in power" are undermined by his inability to keep himself from making statements revealing his partisan biases.

In response to one of his online cheerleaders in his posting's comments, Allan replied, "I hate Sun media, and I hate that they;re (sic) buying up all the small town newspapers in Canada because now they are propagating this filth to the small towners... no wonder the Conservatives are gaining support."

Aside from betraying an astonishing contempt for the intelligence of small town Canadians by assuming their political leanings could be so easily affected, Allan conveniently lets anyone interested know that his real motivation is hatred of the Conservative party.

Mr. Allan is not unique in his dissembling. This profession of concern for democracy, which he paradoxically wants manifested in the form of the rejection of a valid election because of the objections of a few radical activists, is a position shared by the partisan LeadNow organization. The difference between Allan and LeadNow's intelligent Executive Director Jamie Biggar is that the latter is smart enough not to publicly boast about his more obvious motives.

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Newt Gingrich tries to prove that conservatives can be as humorless as liberals

WASHINGTON - In a country that asked itself just four short years ago if it was ready for its first black president, a joke by famed actor Robert De Niro at a star-studded Manhattan fundraiser for U.S. President Barack Obama has caused a curious stir.

"Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now, do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?" the actor said to roars of laughter from a crowd that included Michelle Obama.

When someone in the audience yelled: "No!" DeNiro continued, "Too soon, right?"

But in a nation where hot-button race issues loom large, Obama's re-election campaign team was quick to distance itself from the remark while Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful with a fondness for hyperbole, demanded the president apologize for it.

"We believe the joke was inappropriate," Olivia Alair, campaign press secretary to Michelle Obama, said in a statement.

Gingrich went much further, calling it "inexcusable."

"On behalf of my wife and on behalf of Karen Santorum and on behalf of Ann Romney — I think that Robert De Niro's wrong," Gingrich said at a campaign stop in Louisiana. "I think the country is ready for a new first lady and he doesn't have to describe it in racial terms."

...De Niro's publicist, meantime, said the actor had no intention of responding to the criticism, calling his remarks "obvious satire."

Natasha Fatah: Allah in the Classroom

Gender segregation may happen in mosques in this country, but the idea that it was happening—and going unchallenged—in a place of education appeared to be a violation of the Education Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The furor over the cafeteria prayers was all the louder because it was perceived as a slippery slope, part of a pattern of controversial accommodations of Muslim culture and religion in this country.

At Valley Park, the school’s administration had entered into a simple deal with Muslim parents and students. It never anticipated an explosive reaction.

h/t Scaramouche and Sanwin

The people pushing the "robocalls" scandal have their own credibility issues

From a small office in Vancouver,  rented in a shared space with the Canadian branch of PBS station KCTS, Jamie Biggar and the people behind LeadNow.ca want to undo the decision reached by almost 15 million voters in Canada's 2011 election.

Biggar, LeadNow's Executive Director,  is a thoughtful, personable young man who was once the Chairman of the Sierra Club of British Columbia, the provincial branch of a US-based environmental group. In a talk last week,  Biggar pointed out that his organization is not partisan in that it doesn't endorse any particular political party and its goal is to hold the government, any government, to account for its potentially destructive policies. The goal, he said, is to serve the interests of democracy.

However the campaign to have democratic elections undone based on conjecture and unsubstantiated allegations would not appear to support those goals.

Biggar acknowledged that the much vaunted "31,000" number of complaints to Elections Canada were not actually people complaining about receiving calls misdirecting them to non-existent poling locations. That number, which has now grown to over 43,000 is merely automated messages of pre-written "concern" that are generated from LeadNow's website with the ease of clicking a "send" button. As we now know, the actual number of complaints to Election Canada about 700. But more significantly, not a single one of those complaints, on the basis of which LeadNow suggests new elections should be held, alleges that they did not cast their vote because of those calls.

In fact, LeadNow's campaign to delegitimize the 2011 election is based entirely on stringing together a bunch of ifs, could-haves, and maybes, without a solitary piece of solid evidence of wrongdoing by the Prime Minister of any senior Conservative Party member. One such piece of so-called support that Biggar referred me to was a report produced by Simon Fraser University Professor Anke Kessler which is based entirely on guesswork, corollaries and false postulations, such as the figure of 31,000 complaints being from people having reported receiving the robocalls rather than the actuality of that number only being LeadNow generated emails of "concern."

If one is going to make reasonable guesses based on corollaries, something more indicative of reality can be inferred from the people involved with LeadNow. Biggar was adamant that media reports of financial involvement from far-left activist funders like George Soros and the Tides Foundation were not true.

But LeadNow's Advisory Board reads like a who's who of vociferous enemies of the Conservative government, who have been known to become hysterical in their opposition to not only almost anything the Harper government does, but its very existence.

Zafar Bangash speaking at
robocalls rally in Toronto
(photo by Blazing Cat Fur)

People like Judy Rebick, who founded the fanatical website rabble.ca, which is financed almost exclusively by public service unions and NDP-linked organizations, Ian Capstick, a former top-level NDP backroom fixture, Jim Stafford, an economist in the employ of the Canadian Auto Workers union. The LeadNow-inspired rallies decrying the government over the robocalls issue went so far as to involve people like Zafar Bangash as organizers. Bangash is a Khomeinist propagandist and notorious hatemonger who advocates Sharia-Law and supports the Iranian dictatorship of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One of the many absurd ironies that the robocalls hysterics have produced is a criticism of Canadian democracy supported by the radical left coming from one of the most brutal, undemocratic regimes on earth. That came in the form of Rebick's rabble.ca republishing a report from Iranian state-owned Press TV condemning Canada's so-called election fraud.

Whilke LeadNow may not be dishonest in any outright, planned way, their zeal and hatred of the Harper government has made their commitment to honesty highly suspect and what they purport to be facts to be false. As an investigation proceeds into the robocalls matter, LeadNow's efforts to damage the credibility and validity of the Harper government may just have the reverse effect and discredit LeadNow and those associated with it.