A radical anti-Israel hate group that goes by the name Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, along with the leadership of Toronto's Pride Festival, have been quietly lobbying Toronto's city councilors to secure funding if that hate group participates in the annual event. According to Martin Gladstone, the Gay activist lawyer who has been countering the fanatical organization that seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state, the anti-Israel group has enough votes lined up at present to win the vote.
The group was the source of enormous controversy last year when it threatened to participate and then later and withdrew from the Pride Festival, ostensibly to ensure the event didn't lose funding. The real reason for their withdrawal was more likely that the loss of funding from the city and corporate sponsors that their involvement would have spurred would make them pariahs in the Gay community to a greater extent than they are currently.
The year before, amid threats from the to withhold funding from Pride, the festival's organizers first promised that that anti-Israel group would not be allowed to [participate, then once they secured City funding scammed the City by reversing that decision to the outrage of many on City Council including the current mayor, Rob Ford.
Councilor James Pasternak had proposed a resolution last year that was adopted by Council that required Toronto's anti-discrimination policy to be revised,in order to address funding to events that include hate groups. By lying about the nature of the Jewish state, seeking its destruction by falsely labeling it a nation that practices crimes against humanity, singling it out and holding the only country in the middle east that respects Gay rights to a standard they hold no other country in the world, the so-called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is an anti-Semitic hate group. Yet Councilors such as Kristin Wong-Tam, who is the original owner of that group's website, along with City Councilors Gord Perks and others on the left wing of Council support the participation of the anti-Semitic group in Pride.
Pride and the anti-Semitic group have been effectively lobbying councilors such as the pliable Mary-Margaret McMahon with the deceptive and ironic claim that Pride is being held to a higher standard than any other city-sponsored event. As there is no other city-sponsored event that gives a platform to a hate group whose sole purpose is to vilify and demonize an entire nation and community, Pride's argument is clearly disingenuous.
Toronto City Council will vote on funding for the Pride Festival on Wednesday, June 6. Councillor Pasternak has proposed that funding from the city be withheld until after the event and submitted to Pride only on the condition that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is not a participant. Torontonians concerned about their tax dollars being used to subsidize the hateful anti-Semitism and anti-western fanaticism of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid should contact their councillors and hopefully sway them to act responsibly.
(A form that can be used to contact city council is available through Martin Gladstone's website, Reclaiming Our Pride)
EYE ON A CRAZY PLANET
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
Good News for sadistic tourists like those in the movie Hostel...
The UN just announced that its favourite African megalomaniac, Robert Mugabe, and his Zambian sidekick, Michael Sata, have been appointed United Nations international tourism ambassadors in recognition of the promotion and development of tourism.
The UN is a sick joke. Will Canada take the lead in abandoning the decrepit, morally bankrupt, useless, corrupt organization and help to form a World Organization for Democracies?
This is the kind of tourism Mugabe and the UN specialize in:
The UN is a sick joke. Will Canada take the lead in abandoning the decrepit, morally bankrupt, useless, corrupt organization and help to form a World Organization for Democracies?
This is the kind of tourism Mugabe and the UN specialize in:
Hezbollah leader threatens to launch missiles at Israel
Hassan Nassrallah, the sociopathic Grand Poobah of the Iranian-controlled Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah, praised the murders of US Marines in 1982 and threatened new missile strikes against Israel this week.
The Atlantic's review of P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters
The situation in Germany had come up for discussion in the bar parlour of the Angler’s Rest, and it was generally agreed that Hitler was standing at the crossroads and would soon be compelled to do something definite. His present policy, said a Whisky and Splash, was mere shilly-shallying. “He’ll have to let it grow or shave it off,” said the Whisky and Splash. “He can’t go on sitting on the fence like this. Either a man has a moustache, or he has not. There can be no middle course.”
Five years later, Wodehouse, residing at a posh hotel in Berlin, agreed to write and transmit a series of broadcasts for German radio about life as an internee. His hosts’ objective was to score a propaganda victory in the officially neutral United States, where Wodehouse’s books were extraordinarily popular. In the first broadcast, he said:
Young men, starting out in life, have often asked me, “How can I become an Internee?” Well, there are several methods. My own was to buy a villa in Le Touquet on the coast of France and stay there till the Germans came along. This is probably the best and simplest system. You buy the villa and the Germans do the rest.
In the half decade between the fictional conversation at the Angler’s Rest and his light-as-a-feather account of his own experiences, Wodehouse had, as he noted, experienced the German invasion of France, the loss of his house in that country, the separation from his wife and beloved dogs, and internment in Belgium and Germany. What ensued was a sustained public campaign against his “traitorous” behavior in the English press and Parliament, and his decision, once the war culminated, to permanently relocate to the United States.
Read the rest at The Atlantic
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Wonderful movie for a Saturday afternoon: The Great Race
Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Natalie Wood, lots of stars and loads of fun in this wonderful action comedy from 1965
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Commies, Union bosses, Terror enablers and other assorted morons convene in Toronto for Marxism 2012
It's convention time at the Ryerson University campus on the weekend beginning tomorrow.
A collection of idiots will celebrate the ideology that crushes individuality and individual rights and was responsible for the oppression of Eastern Europe for 6 decades as well as 100 million murders in the 20th Century.
Among the notable buffoons speaking at Marxism 2012 in Toronto this weekend will be:
Abbie Bakan, an Israel-hating socialist, editorial board member of terror-supporting, 9-11 conspiracist magnet The Canadian Charger, founded by Elmo "let's kill all the Jews in Israel" Elmassry
Brigitte de Pape, a former Senate page, whose crowning life achievement was to hold up a sign she made with crayons, and is known for bubble-headed pronouncements like "Canada needs an Arab Spring."
James Clark, useful idiot of the Iranian regime and buddy of the vicious hatemonger Zafar Bangash
Carolyn Egan, Steelworkers Union boss, which may help explain why local steel manufacturing is virtually nonexistent.
And a couple of token Native leaders and Islamists, just to feebly try prove that the virtually all-white event isn't just a bunch of over the hill white folk.
For the list of other clowns who want to bring totalitarianism to Canada, you can check it out here
A collection of idiots will celebrate the ideology that crushes individuality and individual rights and was responsible for the oppression of Eastern Europe for 6 decades as well as 100 million murders in the 20th Century.
Among the notable buffoons speaking at Marxism 2012 in Toronto this weekend will be:
Abbie Bakan, an Israel-hating socialist, editorial board member of terror-supporting, 9-11 conspiracist magnet The Canadian Charger, founded by Elmo "let's kill all the Jews in Israel" Elmassry
Brigitte de Pape, a former Senate page, whose crowning life achievement was to hold up a sign she made with crayons, and is known for bubble-headed pronouncements like "Canada needs an Arab Spring."
James Clark, useful idiot of the Iranian regime and buddy of the vicious hatemonger Zafar Bangash
Carolyn Egan, Steelworkers Union boss, which may help explain why local steel manufacturing is virtually nonexistent.
And a couple of token Native leaders and Islamists, just to feebly try prove that the virtually all-white event isn't just a bunch of over the hill white folk.
For the list of other clowns who want to bring totalitarianism to Canada, you can check it out here
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Quebec's self-entitled brats
Nobody has to like it when the price of a product goes up. One of the reasons that free-market capitalism is so good for consumers is that competition provides a natural incentive to maintain low costs.
But Quebec's post-secondary school system bears no resemblance to the free markets, nor evidently does it do a very good job of teaching it to the bulk of its students.
Quebec's self-entitled generation of spoiled students see their government sponsored university education as a right, not a privilege. It is a perceived right they expect the taxpayers of the province and the rest of Canada, through transfer payments to subsidize.
Quebec's youth have the inalienable right to be stupid, and tens of thousands of them have been exercising that right for the last month in street protests. Outraged that the lowest tuition fees in Canada will continue to be the lowest tuition fees in Canada but not quite as low, they have rampaged throughout Montreal, smashing property and clashing with police.
Feeling their right to be aggrieved supersedes the rights of those students who want to go to classes and receive an education, they have violently prevented the operation of universities. And while this domestic terrorism has been applauded by radical left party Quebec Solidaire, the spineless provincial government of Jean Charest has continued to cower in the face of mob rule.
That attitude explains why Quebec is a world leader in very few areas aside from the production of maple syrup.
There is a recent national culture of protest gripping parts of the Canadian spectrum and nowhere is it worse than in Quebec. These perpetual protests, be it about student fees or G20 meetings or the intellectually vapid Occupy Movement all have one thing in common. The protesters are for the most part ignorant people who do not understand the issues they are protesting. The best illustration of that was the declaration of wanna-be protest icon Brigette de Pape, the ridiculous former page who marched onto the floor of the Senate with a homemade "Stop Harper" sign. She subsequently declared to the media that part of her motive was the need for Canada to have an "Arab Spring," betraying that she did not comprehend that Canada has for generations already achieved and surpassed every democratic goal the so called Arab Spring is attempting to reach.
But that's all immaterial to what the protests are about, which is protest for its own sake. The protesters may hate the Harper government, they may hate capitalism, they may hate that most of them are destined to unsuccessful or mediocre lives, but that isn't why they are on the streets. They are there for the chance to be part of something. The fact that they don't understand what that something is makes no difference to them, but it should to the rest of us and the democratic governments we elected.
But Quebec's post-secondary school system bears no resemblance to the free markets, nor evidently does it do a very good job of teaching it to the bulk of its students.
Quebec's self-entitled generation of spoiled students see their government sponsored university education as a right, not a privilege. It is a perceived right they expect the taxpayers of the province and the rest of Canada, through transfer payments to subsidize.
Quebec's youth have the inalienable right to be stupid, and tens of thousands of them have been exercising that right for the last month in street protests. Outraged that the lowest tuition fees in Canada will continue to be the lowest tuition fees in Canada but not quite as low, they have rampaged throughout Montreal, smashing property and clashing with police.
Feeling their right to be aggrieved supersedes the rights of those students who want to go to classes and receive an education, they have violently prevented the operation of universities. And while this domestic terrorism has been applauded by radical left party Quebec Solidaire, the spineless provincial government of Jean Charest has continued to cower in the face of mob rule.
That attitude explains why Quebec is a world leader in very few areas aside from the production of maple syrup.
There is a recent national culture of protest gripping parts of the Canadian spectrum and nowhere is it worse than in Quebec. These perpetual protests, be it about student fees or G20 meetings or the intellectually vapid Occupy Movement all have one thing in common. The protesters are for the most part ignorant people who do not understand the issues they are protesting. The best illustration of that was the declaration of wanna-be protest icon Brigette de Pape, the ridiculous former page who marched onto the floor of the Senate with a homemade "Stop Harper" sign. She subsequently declared to the media that part of her motive was the need for Canada to have an "Arab Spring," betraying that she did not comprehend that Canada has for generations already achieved and surpassed every democratic goal the so called Arab Spring is attempting to reach.
But that's all immaterial to what the protests are about, which is protest for its own sake. The protesters may hate the Harper government, they may hate capitalism, they may hate that most of them are destined to unsuccessful or mediocre lives, but that isn't why they are on the streets. They are there for the chance to be part of something. The fact that they don't understand what that something is makes no difference to them, but it should to the rest of us and the democratic governments we elected.
Monday, May 21, 2012
NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies' East Vancouver by the numbers
Will NDP Leader Tom Mulcair let Libby Davies do for Canada what she did for East Vancouver?
4,600 intravenous drug users live in the Downtown Eastside
587 drug injections happen daily at the Supervised Injection Site; this includes people who return multiple times a day
20 per cent of people in the Downtown Eastside are homeless
87 per cent of the population has Hepatitis C
200 people died of drug overdoses in the Downtown Eastside in 1993, the worst year on record
1997 was the year a public health emergency was declared in the DTES
270, 000 tax dollars were given to VANDU – the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users – last year. VANDU advocates, among other things, for “the right to obtain, prepare and inject drugs, and to be intoxicated on drugs”
49 per cent of police contacts in the Downtown Eastside are believed to be with someone who has a mental illness
80 per cent of Downtown Eastside residents have been previously incarcerated
1 year is the new mandatory minimum jail sentence a repeat offender who is caught selling drugs; 2 years if they’re near a school or caught selling to youth
Check out more at the fascinating blog Eastside Stories: Diary of a Vancouver Beat Cop
4,600 intravenous drug users live in the Downtown Eastside
587 drug injections happen daily at the Supervised Injection Site; this includes people who return multiple times a day
20 per cent of people in the Downtown Eastside are homeless
87 per cent of the population has Hepatitis C
200 people died of drug overdoses in the Downtown Eastside in 1993, the worst year on record
1997 was the year a public health emergency was declared in the DTES
270, 000 tax dollars were given to VANDU – the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users – last year. VANDU advocates, among other things, for “the right to obtain, prepare and inject drugs, and to be intoxicated on drugs”
49 per cent of police contacts in the Downtown Eastside are believed to be with someone who has a mental illness
80 per cent of Downtown Eastside residents have been previously incarcerated
1 year is the new mandatory minimum jail sentence a repeat offender who is caught selling drugs; 2 years if they’re near a school or caught selling to youth
Check out more at the fascinating blog Eastside Stories: Diary of a Vancouver Beat Cop
The Worst Union in America
In 1962, as tensions ran high between school districts and unions across the country, members of the National Education Association gathered in Denver for the organization’s 100th annual convention. Among the speakers was Arthur F. Corey, executive director of the California Teachers Association (CTA). “The strike as a weapon for teachers is inappropriate, unprofessional, illegal, outmoded, and ineffective,” Corey told the crowd. “You can’t go out on an illegal strike one day and expect to go back to your classroom and teach good citizenship the next.”
Fast-forward nearly 50 years to May 2011, when the CTA—now the single most powerful special interest in California—organized a “State of Emergency” week to agitate for higher taxes in one of the most overtaxed states in the nation. A CTA document suggested dozens of ways for teachers to protest, including following state legislators incessantly, attempting to close major transportation arteries, and boycotting companies, such as Microsoft, that backed education reform. The week’s centerpiece was an occupation of the state capitol by hundreds of teachers and student sympathizers from the Cal State University system, who clogged the building’s hallways and refused to leave. Police arrested nearly 100 demonstrators for trespassing, including then–CTA president David Sanchez. The protesting teachers had left their jobs behind, even though their students were undergoing important statewide tests that week. With the passage of 50 years, the CTA’s notions of “good citizenship” had vanished.
So had high-quality public education in California.
Read the rest at City Journal
Fast-forward nearly 50 years to May 2011, when the CTA—now the single most powerful special interest in California—organized a “State of Emergency” week to agitate for higher taxes in one of the most overtaxed states in the nation. A CTA document suggested dozens of ways for teachers to protest, including following state legislators incessantly, attempting to close major transportation arteries, and boycotting companies, such as Microsoft, that backed education reform. The week’s centerpiece was an occupation of the state capitol by hundreds of teachers and student sympathizers from the Cal State University system, who clogged the building’s hallways and refused to leave. Police arrested nearly 100 demonstrators for trespassing, including then–CTA president David Sanchez. The protesting teachers had left their jobs behind, even though their students were undergoing important statewide tests that week. With the passage of 50 years, the CTA’s notions of “good citizenship” had vanished.
So had high-quality public education in California.
Read the rest at City Journal
Who is responsible for this paranoid, anti-democracy quote?
Democracy is a much used and abused term. It is essentially a tool in the hands of the rich and powerful to legitimize their ill-gotten gains
A) Karl Marx
B) Hugo Chavez
C) Mao Tse Tung
D) Zafar Bangash
E) Adolf Hitler
F) Fidel Castro
G) Libby Davies
For the answer, Click Here
Saturday, May 19, 2012
The Night Strangler
After the success of the TV Movie The Night Stalker, this sequel, The Night Strangler was made and led to the short-lived but iconic Night Stalker series starring Daren McGavin as investigative reporter Carl Kolchak.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Video games may save us from the generation of idiots that music videos produced
A few days ago, one of CBC Radio 2's hosts spoke about his childhood and how he used to rush home to watch music videos. That seemingly innocuous facet of adolescence in the 1980's and 90's and the culture surrounding it may have produced some of the more insidious problems that we're facing today.
The way people spend their free time has an affect on their intellectual development. Pastimes can play an important role in forming cognitive abilities and skills and if we do something often for pleasure, we're more likely to get good at it. Similarly, not using skills leads to atrophy. Looking at how people spent their relaxation time over the last century, it's easy to trace a link between some forms of entertainment and the decline in mental exercise corresponding to a celebration of mindlessness and lack of imagination.
100 years ago, children read. Before television and radio, when not outside playing with friends, they consumed adventure novels and stories for entertainment. That forced children to be more literate, to use their imagination and led them to explore the varied ideas that books contain.
Radio came along and while more passive, was not so compelling and encompassing an experience that it could command young listeners' primary focus for hours on end. So books didn't become obsolete. Perhaps radio even had a role in the rise of a new form of children's literature; the comic book. To young minds' benefit, the audio-exclusive nature of radio also required children to use their imaginations when hearing comedy or drama on it, which in its early days was a big part of that medium.
Then came the idiot box, as its cynical detractors call TV, and it was a mixed blessing. It had kids often vacantly watching inane nonsense, but it could also be an invaluable source of information and education, as well as presenting intellectually stimulating entertainment.
Even the less intellectual forms of children's TV entertainment in the 1960 and 70's produced some cognitive stimulation. Bugs Bunny cartoons and Three Stooges shorts, which were staples of children's programming, taught moral vales and even patriotism. They had dramatic structure, protagonists and antagonists, catharses and in essence, adhered to the timeless rules of Aristotle's Poetics.
But along came music videos. While the early ones had some vague story structure, even the best of them did so tenuously. The inescapable reality of music videos was that they were just commercials for songs and music acts that a generation of kids started watching as entertainment. Soon, most abandoned the attempt to even pretend to be anything other than a series of pretty, vacuous images accompanying the songs they were intended to sell.
It may not be a coincidence that the kids who were in grade school at the height of music videos' popularity and fed on its empty-headedness grew into the self-entitled generation of the Occupy Movement and the Quebec student protests.
While that lost generation of spoiled fools may inspire pessimism, there is reason to be optimistic about the future. Music videos are passé now and kids, at least boys, rush home not to watch mindless TV but to interact with it in the form of video games.
Anyone who's cynical about the merits of video games hasn't played one on a sophisticated platform recently. The medium has come a long way from the days of Donkey Kong and Ms Pac Man.
Contemporary video games have intricate story lines, some of which were written by Hollywood's top screenwriters, and are not mere passive entertainment or a series of adrenaline rushes invoked by virtual near-death experiences. They force players to solve complex problems and in online mode, to coordinate and cooperate with their peers in real time.
Like the best entertainment, video games contain engaging heroes and nefarious villains. Better still, unlike our public education system, popular games teach essential life lessons such as reminding youth that communism is evil.
Top games are produced like big-budget movies and for a few years now, the video game industry has out-grossed the movie business's earnings. All this adds up to reasons for encouragement. We may send our children to schools controlled by politically correct wanna-be social engineers. But when the boys get home, they usually rush to flip on the PS3 or Xbox and are exposed to traditional western values - and they do it because they want to.
clever
vs vapid
The way people spend their free time has an affect on their intellectual development. Pastimes can play an important role in forming cognitive abilities and skills and if we do something often for pleasure, we're more likely to get good at it. Similarly, not using skills leads to atrophy. Looking at how people spent their relaxation time over the last century, it's easy to trace a link between some forms of entertainment and the decline in mental exercise corresponding to a celebration of mindlessness and lack of imagination.
100 years ago, children read. Before television and radio, when not outside playing with friends, they consumed adventure novels and stories for entertainment. That forced children to be more literate, to use their imagination and led them to explore the varied ideas that books contain.
Radio came along and while more passive, was not so compelling and encompassing an experience that it could command young listeners' primary focus for hours on end. So books didn't become obsolete. Perhaps radio even had a role in the rise of a new form of children's literature; the comic book. To young minds' benefit, the audio-exclusive nature of radio also required children to use their imaginations when hearing comedy or drama on it, which in its early days was a big part of that medium.
Then came the idiot box, as its cynical detractors call TV, and it was a mixed blessing. It had kids often vacantly watching inane nonsense, but it could also be an invaluable source of information and education, as well as presenting intellectually stimulating entertainment.
Even the less intellectual forms of children's TV entertainment in the 1960 and 70's produced some cognitive stimulation. Bugs Bunny cartoons and Three Stooges shorts, which were staples of children's programming, taught moral vales and even patriotism. They had dramatic structure, protagonists and antagonists, catharses and in essence, adhered to the timeless rules of Aristotle's Poetics.
But along came music videos. While the early ones had some vague story structure, even the best of them did so tenuously. The inescapable reality of music videos was that they were just commercials for songs and music acts that a generation of kids started watching as entertainment. Soon, most abandoned the attempt to even pretend to be anything other than a series of pretty, vacuous images accompanying the songs they were intended to sell.
It may not be a coincidence that the kids who were in grade school at the height of music videos' popularity and fed on its empty-headedness grew into the self-entitled generation of the Occupy Movement and the Quebec student protests.
While that lost generation of spoiled fools may inspire pessimism, there is reason to be optimistic about the future. Music videos are passé now and kids, at least boys, rush home not to watch mindless TV but to interact with it in the form of video games.
Anyone who's cynical about the merits of video games hasn't played one on a sophisticated platform recently. The medium has come a long way from the days of Donkey Kong and Ms Pac Man.
Contemporary video games have intricate story lines, some of which were written by Hollywood's top screenwriters, and are not mere passive entertainment or a series of adrenaline rushes invoked by virtual near-death experiences. They force players to solve complex problems and in online mode, to coordinate and cooperate with their peers in real time.
Like the best entertainment, video games contain engaging heroes and nefarious villains. Better still, unlike our public education system, popular games teach essential life lessons such as reminding youth that communism is evil.
Top games are produced like big-budget movies and for a few years now, the video game industry has out-grossed the movie business's earnings. All this adds up to reasons for encouragement. We may send our children to schools controlled by politically correct wanna-be social engineers. But when the boys get home, they usually rush to flip on the PS3 or Xbox and are exposed to traditional western values - and they do it because they want to.
clever
vs vapid
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
They're back! Intellectually vapid hatemonger group al QuAIA threatens to derail Toronto's Pride festival (again)
The collection of hideous gargoyles that calls itself Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (al QuAIA) says it wants to participate in Toronto's Pride festival this year.
Contentious City Council hearings last year almost derailed the Pride festival as a whole, when the Mayor and a number of councilors threatened to withdraw city funding and in-kind donations to the festival, which would have effectively driven the festival into bankruptcy.
The vapid hatemongers whose sole purpose is to demonize the only liberal democracy in the middle east, and the only one in its region that respects Gay rights, because it is a Jewish state were expected to lay low until after 2014 when Toronto is supposed to host the World Pride festival.
But because of their fanatical, narcissistic self-interest, this year's Pride and Toronto's hosting the world festival will again be placed in jeopardy.
Al QuAIA's participation also has the effect of crippling Toronto Pride's ability to attract sponsors, since no credible organization wants to be associated with a venue that gives a platform to hateful fanatics.
Right now, only one hotel is listed on Toronto Pride 2012's sponsor list. Keep an eye on that page and if more appear, be sure to let the sponsor know what you think of them giving money to a platform for the bigots and hatemongers of Al QuAIA.
Contentious City Council hearings last year almost derailed the Pride festival as a whole, when the Mayor and a number of councilors threatened to withdraw city funding and in-kind donations to the festival, which would have effectively driven the festival into bankruptcy.
The vapid hatemongers whose sole purpose is to demonize the only liberal democracy in the middle east, and the only one in its region that respects Gay rights, because it is a Jewish state were expected to lay low until after 2014 when Toronto is supposed to host the World Pride festival.
But because of their fanatical, narcissistic self-interest, this year's Pride and Toronto's hosting the world festival will again be placed in jeopardy.
Al QuAIA's participation also has the effect of crippling Toronto Pride's ability to attract sponsors, since no credible organization wants to be associated with a venue that gives a platform to hateful fanatics.
Right now, only one hotel is listed on Toronto Pride 2012's sponsor list. Keep an eye on that page and if more appear, be sure to let the sponsor know what you think of them giving money to a platform for the bigots and hatemongers of Al QuAIA.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Movie for a Saturday Afternoon: The Time Travelers
Astronauts and a future world of mutants in this strange, fun B Sci Fi from the early 60's
Friday, May 11, 2012
Hate Madrassa Mullah says exposing their anti-Semitism makes you an enemy of Islam
Yeah, it probably does...
UPDATE: Khomeinist hatemongers furious at conspiracy to expose them as Khomeniest hatemongers
UPDATE: Khomeinist hatemongers furious at conspiracy to expose them as Khomeniest hatemongers
More conspiracy theories from the Muslim world - Turkish newspaper blames suicide bombings in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan on Israel and the US
One thing these idiots failed to observe is that Jews and Christians aren't promised 72 virgins in the afterlife for blasting themselves to oblivion in a murderous rampage.
The Turkish daily Aydinlik said that suicide bombings represent a way of incitement carried out by the CIA and Mossad agents in Iraq, and are applied now in Syria, Lebanese daily Al-Benaa reported.
(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - “CIA and Mossad agents have carried out - and still - various attacks in several countries including Iraq, Pakistan and Libya,” Aydinlik stated in a report published Monday.
The report made it clear that the agents have bombed mosques during the occupation of Iraq in order to incite Shiites against Sunnis and vice versa.
“Those agents have achieved their goal where most of their operations were targeting Shiite and Sunnite mosques. All bombings were declared suicide attacks, while the suicide bombers were announced killed, but the fact is contrary to what was claimed,” the daily added.
The newspaper pointed out that CIA and Mossad are adopting the same method now in Syria in order to thwart the plan of UN envoy to the country, Kofi Annan.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Multiculturalism bites back - Muslim Council of Calgary advocates hatred of Canadian culture
The Muslim Council of
Calgary (MCC) is behind the website Muslims of Calgary.
Its "Ask the Imam" section had a lengthy response on how to raise children in western countries like Canada.
The response included such helpful tips as:
Its "Ask the Imam" section had a lengthy response on how to raise children in western countries like Canada.
The response included such helpful tips as:
"You should instill a hatred for this culture and its ways in the hearts of your children"
"No matter how great the corruption in Muslim countries, it cannot compare to the kufr and permissiveness that exists in the west, except in a few rare cases."
"It is haraam for you to give your children free rein in forming friendships with the children of the kuffaar."
"It is not permissible for you to look forward to dilute the rulings of Islam and to make compromises in order to please the west and its people ... You see how the followers of deviant ideas and perversions feel proud of their principles and ideas and proclaim them openly with no embarrassment. "
Muslims of Calgary have deleted the post from the website today but fortunately, the blogger Blazing Cat Fur who exposed this, has a screen shot up for posterity.
Combined with the exposure of Toronto's East End Madrassa teaching hatred of Jews as part of its curriculum, and the Toronto District School Board's embrace of race-huckster Tim Wise's racialist garbage, highlight the need of a review of the hate and idiocy being taught in schools across Canada.
Combined with the exposure of Toronto's East End Madrassa teaching hatred of Jews as part of its curriculum, and the Toronto District School Board's embrace of race-huckster Tim Wise's racialist garbage, highlight the need of a review of the hate and idiocy being taught in schools across Canada.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Is Tides Canada scamming Canadian taxpayers?
It sure looks like it:
Researcher Vivian Krause has more at the Financial Post
And more about Krause's ongoing battle with Tides Canada here
h/t BCF
Maulana Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi: The Sargent Schultz Of Shia
Blazing Cat Fur broke a story this week about a Toronto Madrassa that was teaching its students to hate Jews and be contemptuous of western culture - now, unsurprisingly and unconvincingly, its chief mullah denies all knowledge of what was going on.Details here
Monday, May 7, 2012
The Toronto District School Board is putting the "cult" back in multiculturalism
I was at a cult meeting last Friday and Saturday. At least it felt that way being in a large hall with over 300 teachers from all over Ontario who were at the Toronto District School Board's "Futures" conference that was created to discuss and advance 'equity' in education.
Let's be clear about this, there are some very intelligent teachers that are out there every day dealing with the challenges of providing our children an education that will give them the tools for success in life. But the teachers predisposed towards the type of thought that led them to the Futures conference and the ideas espoused there make those challenges even harder.
Many of these well meaning, muddle-headed educators are people of at best average intelligence who have convinced themselves they are more intelligent, more enlightened, and should be the guardians of thought and speech for everyone else.
Anyone concerned with the direction of public education in Toronto should be aware that:
Hearing the attitudes of some of the people with the authority to decide how our children should be educated was a terrifying experience. It was made all the more alarming knowing it had the full support of the top levels of the Toronto District School Board and the Ontario Ministry of Education.
One of the keynote speakers was a race-huckster named Tim Wise, who blamed all of education's ills and inequities on "white privilege." Yes, racism still exists in our society. It's deplorable and should be exposed and rooted out wherever it's found. But it is not as pervasive and systemic as Wise says and it and white privilege is most certainly not, as he suggested, the sole explanation for inequities in society. As even TDSB Director Chris Spence acknowledged, socio-economic factors play the most significant role in determining a child's outcome. Unfortunately this admission came with a startling display of cognitive dissonance as he subsequently downplayed the role poverty has in outcome and reiterated Wise's call to focus on race and racism.
I have no idea if Tim Wise has ever held a real job in his life - he spoke about being a community organizer before his current career as polemicist and motivational speaker to organizations stupid enough to pay him (with your tax dollars). But in between insulting George W. Bush to the approbation of the TDSB Equity gang, and Marxist paeans to the lack of equality of outcome which he attributes to racism and white privilege, Wise betrayed a total lack of understanding of how the world of business and society work outside the bubble of the school system. That ignorance was reflected by all too many teachers at the conference.
As anyone who has worked in the real world knows, a lot of jobs come from personal connections and indeed, nepotism. From the employers' standpoint, having someone you know and trust recommend someone else serves as a measure of risk mitigation when taking on a new employee. The fact is that immigrants are less well established than people who have been here for generations and have had the opportunities to build that infrastructure of contacts through family and social circumstances. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture and socio-economic status. As proof, Wise's theory doesn't account for why certain non-white immigrant groups like Sikhs and Koreans, which place high cultural emphasis on education, family, commerce and community, fare far better than people from cultures that don't have those attributes, like Jamaica and Somalia, and parts of Latin America.
Either North America practices a very strange, selective racism, or Wise is full of hot air.
The problem is that the hot air Wise is blowing is being sucked up by and filing the heads of our top academic administrators. Watching Wise's speech get a standing ovation from a hall full of mostly white teachers whose white privilege and unacknowledged racism he blamed for the inequities of their students' performance was like being at an Orwellian show trial where accused thought criminals proudly confessed their crimes against Big Brother.
Even more appalling was the acceptance of Wise's proposal that race should addressed just as disability is in schools. According to Wise, we aren't blind to disability, so why should we be blind to race? And therein lies the problem and the best illustration of the dearth of insight possessed by such racist anti-racists. Being non-white is not a disability, and it demeans non-Caucasians to condescend to them by treating them as if it were. The disability is in the hatred and stupidity of those archaic people who judge others on the basis of their skin color. And the reality of today's world in North America is that if you are a racist, you will be deservedly shunned and ostracized by just about every intelligent, credible person. This is a lesson the full implications of which Wise and TDSB Director Spence regrettably have not learned.
But that's only one part of the problem. In our school system, which TDSB Director Spense said he wants "to esteem other cultures as much as our own," we actually are intentionally discriminating against the founding culture of our nation.
In one session titled Limits of the Law: Guidelines and Procedures for Religious Accommodation, the session leader, a former TDSB Curriculum Project Manager and Equity/ Human Rights Reviewer, admitted that the Toronto school board actively discriminates against Christianity.
That admission came about when she discussed a case study of a Toronto school where the Parent's Council wanted to put on a Christmas Concert, renamed to a Holiday Concert, since the school had also had celebrations of Eid and Ramadan. Even though every reference to Christmas and Jesus was excised from the program, it remained problematic after an organized campaign by Muslim parents to exclude their children from the event.
This led me to ask about the obvious discrimination against Christianity where Muslim holidays are actively celebrated but Christian beliefs and references to Jesus are verboten.
She said that it is true Christianity is discriminated against in the TDSB and her rationale was a 1990 Ontario Appeals Court decision, known as the Elgin County decision that resulted in a school board no longer being able to open and close the school day with Christian prayer.
The incredible thing about this is that it appears that the TDSB has grossly twisted their interpretation of the court decision into guidelines that only prohibit Christianity while embracing any other religious practice.
In another session, called Learning and Understanding; Cultural and Religious Differences/Faith and Inclusivity: An Equity-Based Framework for meeting the needs of Muslim Students, one of the seminar leaders named Kalpana Malkan, who works for the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario and said she works to help form curriculum, put up a powerpoint slide with the quote, taken from the online comments of a newspaper article, which said, "People once chose to come to Canada for things like prosperity and freedom. Now people come here because we accommodate to the point of self-sacrifice... This is not the Canada I grew up in. We used to have a culture, now we have none.."
Ms Malkan and a subsequent seminar leader in the session both identified the quote as "hate."
The debate regarding multiculturalism and the degree to which Canadian society should attempt to integrate immigrants as opposed to accommodating foreign cultures is an important public policy question. There are no identifiable groups or people in the quote targeted for hatred. But in the minds of TDSB sanctioned seminar leaders, questioning current multiculturalism policies qualifies as hate. The formation of school curriculum being placed in the hands of such thought totalitarians is a great deal more frightening than any of the so-called hate they described.
As is far too common among radical would-be social engineers, context was almost completely absent from the Futures conference. One of the keynote speakers, Uzma Shakir, the City of Toronto's Director of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights, criticized Canadian racism and this country's paternalistic prejudices against immigrants. There is always room for improvement when it comes to issues of fairness, but what was never mentioned by any of the speakers at the conference was exactly to whom Canada was faring so badly by comparison.
It couldn't be to Shakir's native Pakistan, of which she fondly spoke, where Hindus and Christians are routinely persecuted and subject to the death penalty for blasphemy laws. Nor could it be in Saudi Arabia, where no religion but Islam can be legally observed. In fact among all the pessimism of the conference, there was no mention of any country that was more progressive in its attitude towards race and immigration than ours. But that observation, were it to be made, may have been counterproductive to the pervasive pessimism the event appeared to intend to convey.
It needs to be said that TDSB Director Spence is an extremely intelligent individual, far more so than any of the senior Administrators at the head office or among the city`s elected School Trustees that I have yet encountered. He is obviously deeply committed to the well being of the city`s student population and wants them all to succeed. Every day, he hears heart-wrenching accounts from parents with disadvantaged children who are struggling to help them get a fair shot at life, and he knows that education is their best, if not their only chance at that. Spence seems desperate to do something to help his students in need.
There are innovative, equitable approaches to education that were never seriously discussed at the Futures conference, like Salman Khan`s idea for an academy of remote learning with classroom supports.
But by instead grasping at the poisoned, racialist straws that people like Tim Wise are offering for self-flagellation while neglecting to do more to instill knowledge of core subjects, far more harm will be done to both students and society as a whole.
UPDATE: Some interesting additional perspective on the TDSB's biases from writer and Ryerson Instructor Brian Henry at Harry's Place
Let's be clear about this, there are some very intelligent teachers that are out there every day dealing with the challenges of providing our children an education that will give them the tools for success in life. But the teachers predisposed towards the type of thought that led them to the Futures conference and the ideas espoused there make those challenges even harder.
Many of these well meaning, muddle-headed educators are people of at best average intelligence who have convinced themselves they are more intelligent, more enlightened, and should be the guardians of thought and speech for everyone else.
Anyone concerned with the direction of public education in Toronto should be aware that:
- TDSB personnel admit that they intentionally discriminate against Christianity.
- The TDSB feels we need to focus more on race, and that our system is debased by white privilege. (Although this will come as no surprise given the board has already created a racially exclusionary Afrocentric school and wants to create more.)
- Anyone who dares to challenge their notion of multiculturalism and questions their idea of integration for immigrants and the direction Canadian culture is taking is a hatemonger.
Hearing the attitudes of some of the people with the authority to decide how our children should be educated was a terrifying experience. It was made all the more alarming knowing it had the full support of the top levels of the Toronto District School Board and the Ontario Ministry of Education.
One of the keynote speakers was a race-huckster named Tim Wise, who blamed all of education's ills and inequities on "white privilege." Yes, racism still exists in our society. It's deplorable and should be exposed and rooted out wherever it's found. But it is not as pervasive and systemic as Wise says and it and white privilege is most certainly not, as he suggested, the sole explanation for inequities in society. As even TDSB Director Chris Spence acknowledged, socio-economic factors play the most significant role in determining a child's outcome. Unfortunately this admission came with a startling display of cognitive dissonance as he subsequently downplayed the role poverty has in outcome and reiterated Wise's call to focus on race and racism.
I have no idea if Tim Wise has ever held a real job in his life - he spoke about being a community organizer before his current career as polemicist and motivational speaker to organizations stupid enough to pay him (with your tax dollars). But in between insulting George W. Bush to the approbation of the TDSB Equity gang, and Marxist paeans to the lack of equality of outcome which he attributes to racism and white privilege, Wise betrayed a total lack of understanding of how the world of business and society work outside the bubble of the school system. That ignorance was reflected by all too many teachers at the conference.
As anyone who has worked in the real world knows, a lot of jobs come from personal connections and indeed, nepotism. From the employers' standpoint, having someone you know and trust recommend someone else serves as a measure of risk mitigation when taking on a new employee. The fact is that immigrants are less well established than people who have been here for generations and have had the opportunities to build that infrastructure of contacts through family and social circumstances. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture and socio-economic status. As proof, Wise's theory doesn't account for why certain non-white immigrant groups like Sikhs and Koreans, which place high cultural emphasis on education, family, commerce and community, fare far better than people from cultures that don't have those attributes, like Jamaica and Somalia, and parts of Latin America.
Either North America practices a very strange, selective racism, or Wise is full of hot air.
 |
| Tim Wise looking like Big Brother on the big screens |
Even more appalling was the acceptance of Wise's proposal that race should addressed just as disability is in schools. According to Wise, we aren't blind to disability, so why should we be blind to race? And therein lies the problem and the best illustration of the dearth of insight possessed by such racist anti-racists. Being non-white is not a disability, and it demeans non-Caucasians to condescend to them by treating them as if it were. The disability is in the hatred and stupidity of those archaic people who judge others on the basis of their skin color. And the reality of today's world in North America is that if you are a racist, you will be deservedly shunned and ostracized by just about every intelligent, credible person. This is a lesson the full implications of which Wise and TDSB Director Spence regrettably have not learned.
 |
| Chris Spence addressing the TDSB "Futures" conference |
In one session titled Limits of the Law: Guidelines and Procedures for Religious Accommodation, the session leader, a former TDSB Curriculum Project Manager and Equity/ Human Rights Reviewer, admitted that the Toronto school board actively discriminates against Christianity.
That admission came about when she discussed a case study of a Toronto school where the Parent's Council wanted to put on a Christmas Concert, renamed to a Holiday Concert, since the school had also had celebrations of Eid and Ramadan. Even though every reference to Christmas and Jesus was excised from the program, it remained problematic after an organized campaign by Muslim parents to exclude their children from the event.
This led me to ask about the obvious discrimination against Christianity where Muslim holidays are actively celebrated but Christian beliefs and references to Jesus are verboten.
 |
| TDSB says this is hate - others may think it's reasonable discourse about public policy |
The incredible thing about this is that it appears that the TDSB has grossly twisted their interpretation of the court decision into guidelines that only prohibit Christianity while embracing any other religious practice.
In another session, called Learning and Understanding; Cultural and Religious Differences/Faith and Inclusivity: An Equity-Based Framework for meeting the needs of Muslim Students, one of the seminar leaders named Kalpana Malkan, who works for the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario and said she works to help form curriculum, put up a powerpoint slide with the quote, taken from the online comments of a newspaper article, which said, "People once chose to come to Canada for things like prosperity and freedom. Now people come here because we accommodate to the point of self-sacrifice... This is not the Canada I grew up in. We used to have a culture, now we have none.."
Ms Malkan and a subsequent seminar leader in the session both identified the quote as "hate."
The debate regarding multiculturalism and the degree to which Canadian society should attempt to integrate immigrants as opposed to accommodating foreign cultures is an important public policy question. There are no identifiable groups or people in the quote targeted for hatred. But in the minds of TDSB sanctioned seminar leaders, questioning current multiculturalism policies qualifies as hate. The formation of school curriculum being placed in the hands of such thought totalitarians is a great deal more frightening than any of the so-called hate they described.
As is far too common among radical would-be social engineers, context was almost completely absent from the Futures conference. One of the keynote speakers, Uzma Shakir, the City of Toronto's Director of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights, criticized Canadian racism and this country's paternalistic prejudices against immigrants. There is always room for improvement when it comes to issues of fairness, but what was never mentioned by any of the speakers at the conference was exactly to whom Canada was faring so badly by comparison.
It couldn't be to Shakir's native Pakistan, of which she fondly spoke, where Hindus and Christians are routinely persecuted and subject to the death penalty for blasphemy laws. Nor could it be in Saudi Arabia, where no religion but Islam can be legally observed. In fact among all the pessimism of the conference, there was no mention of any country that was more progressive in its attitude towards race and immigration than ours. But that observation, were it to be made, may have been counterproductive to the pervasive pessimism the event appeared to intend to convey.
It needs to be said that TDSB Director Spence is an extremely intelligent individual, far more so than any of the senior Administrators at the head office or among the city`s elected School Trustees that I have yet encountered. He is obviously deeply committed to the well being of the city`s student population and wants them all to succeed. Every day, he hears heart-wrenching accounts from parents with disadvantaged children who are struggling to help them get a fair shot at life, and he knows that education is their best, if not their only chance at that. Spence seems desperate to do something to help his students in need.
There are innovative, equitable approaches to education that were never seriously discussed at the Futures conference, like Salman Khan`s idea for an academy of remote learning with classroom supports.
But by instead grasping at the poisoned, racialist straws that people like Tim Wise are offering for self-flagellation while neglecting to do more to instill knowledge of core subjects, far more harm will be done to both students and society as a whole.
UPDATE: Some interesting additional perspective on the TDSB's biases from writer and Ryerson Instructor Brian Henry at Harry's Place
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Libby Davies: As intelligent as she is beautiful
Micheal Coren and Brian Lilley discuss the NDP's resident useful idiot, the party's Deputy Leader Libby Davies
thanks to SDAMatt for the video
thanks to SDAMatt for the video
Friday, May 4, 2012
Friday Night Horror: Phantasm
A very good, campy but very creepy, seldom-seen low-budget horror movie from the late 70`s
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Canadian novelist Billie Livingston writes about her godmother, Sea Hitler Skank Karen DeVito
While the portrait Livingston creates of DeVito is sympathetic, like any honest rendition of the pathetic anti-Israel fanatics, it reveals more about their hypocrisy, intellectual deficiencies and emotional pathology than a supposed commitment to justice.
One notable vignette illustrates how despite disingenuous claims about being in danger, among themselves, the "activists" tacitly concede that Israel-bashing is the lazy, cowardly leftists' route to adulation while lying about their heroism and bravado to the media:
It was shortly after we moved in that the boat committee asked her to sail to Gaza. John would stay on land to act as a communications officer.
“You said you wouldn’t!” I hollered, bug-eyed with exasperation.
“Don’t worry, Binky,” she said. “The IDF doesn’t beat up women.”
Perhaps someday, if Ms Devito genuinely cares about social justice and human rights, she might travel to protest about the plight of women, democracy advocates, and minorities in Iran. Of course, that's unlikely since Ms Devito, who appears primarily concerned with trendy self-promotion while decrying relatively minor transgressions committed by a safe liberal democracy, is probably aware of the type of reaction she'd get there.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
City Councillor Stintz is covering up bad governance at Toronto Transit Commission
Toronto Sun's Sue Ann Levy wrote:
TORONTO - At the tail end of Tuesday’s TTC meeting, I asked chairman Karen Stintz why a series of highly critical internal audits on two TTC departments were released on Monday, instead of when they were first done a good year ago.
She initially tried to dismiss my question, claiming it was answered at Monday’s meeting of the TTC audit committee. (It was not.)
But when a media colleague pressed her to provide an answer, Stintz spewed off some absolute nonsense about the long-term need to “consolidate audit functions” between the city and the TTC — and that a proposal will be coming forward sometime in the fall.
...Despite Stintz’s assurances that the TTC “will take the (necessary) steps” to improve things based on the audit findings, history has already proven we can’t rely on her to shake up the organization.
Let’s not forget how Stintz behaved towards TTC whistleblower Cecilia Leung when she tried to meet with her exactly year ago to raise many of the same concerns highlighted in the newly-released audit reports.
Leung, who was fired shortly after meeting with the chairman, told me in February that Stintz not only treated her with disdain but followed up with a letter warning her that they’d be looking into whether she had breached her non-disclosure agreement
Read more in Sue Ann Levy's column in The Toronto Sun
'Tin Foil' Tom Mulcair`s NDP: Khadr good, Black bad
Law abiding Canadians concerned about their public safety have just had their worst fear realized.
We should be arming ourselves and barricading our homes at the terrifying prospect that convicted white collar criminal Conrad Black will soon be roaming the streets of Toronto and Ottawa. Black was convicted in a Chicago courtroom on fraud charges in a convoluted case that a great many Canadian lawyers believe was unjustified and unproven. Meanwhile, self-confessed murderer and terrorist Omar Khadr should be given free reign of of land, an apology, and a huge compensation package for the inconvenience of incarceration after he murdered a US Army Medic and permanently maimed another following his surrender to American forces upon loss of a firefight in Afghanistan.
At least that`s the way NDP leader Tom Mulcair seems to view things, showing that the NDP`s great new hope is no more competent than his predecessor, `Community Clinic` Jack Layton.
Conrad Black may be the personification of much that is bad about capitalism, from his raiding of the Dominion stores pension fund to the libel threats he would routinely issue to any journalist who tried to expose some of his shifty activities. But he has also made very real contributions to Canada in many ways, including raising the standard of journalism in founding The National Post, his authorship of historical works, and his often unheralded philanthropic contributions.
And the fact remains that while Conrad Black will likely continue to contribute to Canada, he most certainly has never or will never kill anyone or participate in an act of violent terrorism.
Contrast that with the unrepentant, violent Islamic terrorist Khadr, and the NDP's embrace of him, and it's easy to see how Mulcair and his party simply can't stop acting like idiots. As Libby Davies, the NDP's clownish Deputy Leader and resident 9/11 conspiracy theorist told CBC News, ""The whole situation has been quite a travesty since Day One in terms of the process that [Khadr] had to go through."
Most Canadians seem to think the travesty is that a murderous terrorist may soon have free reign to walk among us with the blessing of the Official Opposition.
The ridiculous example NDP leader Mulcair gave when complaining about the "double standard" applied to Black's request to return to Canada was to compare Black's case to that of a violent criminal convicted of shooting a police officer.
By failing to distinguish between a peaceful man with an admittedly mixed record and a violent, bloodthirsty criminal, the NDP isn't highlighting the hypocrisy of the Conservative government, they're reiterating their own incompetence and unsuitability to ever become the government themselves.
UPDATE: Never let it be said Tin Foil Tom has no sense of humour - with buffoonish Vancouver East MP Libby Davies at his side, Mulcair jokes, "we have the team to get the job done!"
I assume he means this job?
We should be arming ourselves and barricading our homes at the terrifying prospect that convicted white collar criminal Conrad Black will soon be roaming the streets of Toronto and Ottawa. Black was convicted in a Chicago courtroom on fraud charges in a convoluted case that a great many Canadian lawyers believe was unjustified and unproven. Meanwhile, self-confessed murderer and terrorist Omar Khadr should be given free reign of of land, an apology, and a huge compensation package for the inconvenience of incarceration after he murdered a US Army Medic and permanently maimed another following his surrender to American forces upon loss of a firefight in Afghanistan.
 |
| The NDP wants to keep this guy out... |
At least that`s the way NDP leader Tom Mulcair seems to view things, showing that the NDP`s great new hope is no more competent than his predecessor, `Community Clinic` Jack Layton.
Conrad Black may be the personification of much that is bad about capitalism, from his raiding of the Dominion stores pension fund to the libel threats he would routinely issue to any journalist who tried to expose some of his shifty activities. But he has also made very real contributions to Canada in many ways, including raising the standard of journalism in founding The National Post, his authorship of historical works, and his often unheralded philanthropic contributions.
And the fact remains that while Conrad Black will likely continue to contribute to Canada, he most certainly has never or will never kill anyone or participate in an act of violent terrorism.
Contrast that with the unrepentant, violent Islamic terrorist Khadr, and the NDP's embrace of him, and it's easy to see how Mulcair and his party simply can't stop acting like idiots. As Libby Davies, the NDP's clownish Deputy Leader and resident 9/11 conspiracy theorist told CBC News, ""The whole situation has been quite a travesty since Day One in terms of the process that [Khadr] had to go through."
 |
| while they want to let this guy in |
The ridiculous example NDP leader Mulcair gave when complaining about the "double standard" applied to Black's request to return to Canada was to compare Black's case to that of a violent criminal convicted of shooting a police officer.
By failing to distinguish between a peaceful man with an admittedly mixed record and a violent, bloodthirsty criminal, the NDP isn't highlighting the hypocrisy of the Conservative government, they're reiterating their own incompetence and unsuitability to ever become the government themselves.
UPDATE: Never let it be said Tin Foil Tom has no sense of humour - with buffoonish Vancouver East MP Libby Davies at his side, Mulcair jokes, "we have the team to get the job done!"
I assume he means this job?
Media Guide to the Occupy Movement
As the pinheads of the `Occupy Movement` (i.e. the International Socialists` attempt at re-branding) try to stage a return, this timely guide may be of help:
h-t Blazing Cat Fur
Hey Look! Rabble.ca`s dinosaur, Judy Rebick wants to be a cool Occupier too!
h-t Blazing Cat Fur
Hey Look! Rabble.ca`s dinosaur, Judy Rebick wants to be a cool Occupier too!
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Michael Coren's Heresy is a crusade against Christianophobia
In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell wrote "as with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."
Christianity is the most gentle of religions, based on the love of God and one`s fellow human beings. Unlike so many other religions, its founder was renowned not for putting people in their graves, but for raising a man out of one. Despite its message of universal love and the message of its founder who said "Judge not, lest ye be judged" Christianity, once established as the dominant religion in Europe, fell into the exiting paradigm for religions within the framework of governments in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. There was little and frequently no distinction between church and state. So for most of its history, Christianity was as much a tool of subjugation as it was a religion. Though not entirely historically accurate, the Canadian TV shows The Tudors and The Borgias convey the spirit of monarchs' and popes' use of their religious authority for temporal rule rather than spiritual enlightenment of their subjects.
Terrible things have been done by Christians in the name of Christianity through the ages; the Inquisition, the suppression of intellectual freedom, and countless untold deaths in more wars than most historians can recall. When measured against other religions, including Islam, Christendom fared poorly compared to most nations dominated by other religions.
Then something very important happened to change all that. The Enlightenment was the culmination of centuries of philosophical and political advances, based on Greek and Roman concepts of citizenship, individual rights established from the Magna Carta through the increased authority of the English Parliament and the establishment of the rights of common men. The culmination of these advances attained their pinnacle in a document that was as divinely inspired as any sacred text: The American Constitution.
That document inspired revolutions and change in the western, Christian-dominated world that set the world on a course for the next two hundred years and continues now. The Constitution guaranteed two changes that formed core concepts of western freedoms: that of the right of free religious practice without the domination of a state religion, and the prohibition of government censorship of free citizens.
These ideas liberated Christianity to be exclusively a religion, allowing it to be a moral and spiritual system rather than an adjunct to state control.
Since that historical watershed, Western Christian countries, more than others, have advanced furthest in technological innovations, social and political freedoms and cultural experimentation and developments. It is extremely unlikely that these advances are coincidental. There are components about Judeo-Christian traditions, history, and western values that has given it its advantages.
Yet in the last few decades a strange, poisonous, self-flagellating phenomenon has emerged in the west. It's manifested everywhere from devotees of Marxist-influenced philosophers like Noam Chomsky, to an education system dominated by the class-struggle ideology of Paulo Friere, to shallow-minded media executives and socialist political figures and even within soft, leftist branches of Christianity itself, such as the United Church. This rot can be summed up in a single term - cultural relativism.
In his new book Heresy, Canadian author Michael Coren tackles the lies and myths that try to tear down Christianity to put it on par with Islam, a religion which proscribes death for heretics and apostates, Indeed Christian leaders did the same centuries ago, but that was then and this is now. But that doesn't stop western cultural relativists from equating contemporary Christianity, which is at its core a pacifist ideology, with Islam, which emerged as an Arab nationalist movement designed to absorb or kill all its opponents and continues to reflect that approach in contemporary Islamic republics such as Iran and Pakistan.
Coren further explained the phenomenon and what led him to write Heresy now in a column he wrote for The Catholic Herald:
Among the myths Coren debunks are that Christians are opposed to science, that Jesus didn't exist, that they are stupid, and one of the most important lies he refutes is that Hitler was a Christian. That latter idea has very current applications. As Coren explains in the book's forward section, cultural relativists who were so anxious to defend Islam have repeatedly tried to identify the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik as a Christian extremist. But Breivik himself has professed no particular Christian belief and, unlike Muslim terrorists who shout "Allahu Akhbar" as a prelude to committing atrocities in the name of Islam, it was liberal values, such as free speech, abortion rights and Gay rights rather than a devotion to Christianity that motivated him.
Coren acknowledges that the likely readership for Heresy is for the most part people who already have Christian beliefs and who do not believe the lies he challenges. The value for them in the book is that while they intuitively knowing that the Christianophobia pervading the media and other institutions in society is unfounded and based on ignorance and bigotry, the book can serve as a tool to let its readers better articulate their defense of their beliefs.
But better still would be if those who believe the lies that Heresy takes on were to read Coren's book. Those of them with an open mind would find it a revelation.
HERESY by Michael Coren is available at major bookstores and online at Amazon.
Christianity is the most gentle of religions, based on the love of God and one`s fellow human beings. Unlike so many other religions, its founder was renowned not for putting people in their graves, but for raising a man out of one. Despite its message of universal love and the message of its founder who said "Judge not, lest ye be judged" Christianity, once established as the dominant religion in Europe, fell into the exiting paradigm for religions within the framework of governments in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. There was little and frequently no distinction between church and state. So for most of its history, Christianity was as much a tool of subjugation as it was a religion. Though not entirely historically accurate, the Canadian TV shows The Tudors and The Borgias convey the spirit of monarchs' and popes' use of their religious authority for temporal rule rather than spiritual enlightenment of their subjects.
Terrible things have been done by Christians in the name of Christianity through the ages; the Inquisition, the suppression of intellectual freedom, and countless untold deaths in more wars than most historians can recall. When measured against other religions, including Islam, Christendom fared poorly compared to most nations dominated by other religions.
Then something very important happened to change all that. The Enlightenment was the culmination of centuries of philosophical and political advances, based on Greek and Roman concepts of citizenship, individual rights established from the Magna Carta through the increased authority of the English Parliament and the establishment of the rights of common men. The culmination of these advances attained their pinnacle in a document that was as divinely inspired as any sacred text: The American Constitution.
That document inspired revolutions and change in the western, Christian-dominated world that set the world on a course for the next two hundred years and continues now. The Constitution guaranteed two changes that formed core concepts of western freedoms: that of the right of free religious practice without the domination of a state religion, and the prohibition of government censorship of free citizens.
These ideas liberated Christianity to be exclusively a religion, allowing it to be a moral and spiritual system rather than an adjunct to state control.
Since that historical watershed, Western Christian countries, more than others, have advanced furthest in technological innovations, social and political freedoms and cultural experimentation and developments. It is extremely unlikely that these advances are coincidental. There are components about Judeo-Christian traditions, history, and western values that has given it its advantages.
Yet in the last few decades a strange, poisonous, self-flagellating phenomenon has emerged in the west. It's manifested everywhere from devotees of Marxist-influenced philosophers like Noam Chomsky, to an education system dominated by the class-struggle ideology of Paulo Friere, to shallow-minded media executives and socialist political figures and even within soft, leftist branches of Christianity itself, such as the United Church. This rot can be summed up in a single term - cultural relativism.
In his new book Heresy, Canadian author Michael Coren tackles the lies and myths that try to tear down Christianity to put it on par with Islam, a religion which proscribes death for heretics and apostates, Indeed Christian leaders did the same centuries ago, but that was then and this is now. But that doesn't stop western cultural relativists from equating contemporary Christianity, which is at its core a pacifist ideology, with Islam, which emerged as an Arab nationalist movement designed to absorb or kill all its opponents and continues to reflect that approach in contemporary Islamic republics such as Iran and Pakistan.
Coren further explained the phenomenon and what led him to write Heresy now in a column he wrote for The Catholic Herald:
"For the media and the establishment to admit that different religions lead to different assumptions about pluralism and different approaches to human dignity would lead to the invincible conclusion that there is a qualitative distinction if not hierarchy involved. That, to the moral and intellectual relativist, is heresy itself. That they contradict themselves in their very belief system and that equivalency is an imploding theory because to embrace it proves one believes in exclusive truth and thus is an opponent of equivalency is hardly even the point here. When we combine this with the racism of lowered expectation – the grotesquely patronizing phenomenon of white atheists forgiving bad behaviour on the part of brown and black Muslims simply because of their race and religion – we make anti-Christianity almost inevitable."
Among the myths Coren debunks are that Christians are opposed to science, that Jesus didn't exist, that they are stupid, and one of the most important lies he refutes is that Hitler was a Christian. That latter idea has very current applications. As Coren explains in the book's forward section, cultural relativists who were so anxious to defend Islam have repeatedly tried to identify the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik as a Christian extremist. But Breivik himself has professed no particular Christian belief and, unlike Muslim terrorists who shout "Allahu Akhbar" as a prelude to committing atrocities in the name of Islam, it was liberal values, such as free speech, abortion rights and Gay rights rather than a devotion to Christianity that motivated him.
Coren acknowledges that the likely readership for Heresy is for the most part people who already have Christian beliefs and who do not believe the lies he challenges. The value for them in the book is that while they intuitively knowing that the Christianophobia pervading the media and other institutions in society is unfounded and based on ignorance and bigotry, the book can serve as a tool to let its readers better articulate their defense of their beliefs.
But better still would be if those who believe the lies that Heresy takes on were to read Coren's book. Those of them with an open mind would find it a revelation.
HERESY by Michael Coren is available at major bookstores and online at Amazon.
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