The Miss Marprelate Tracts

Same-sex adoption

2011-11-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

Over at the Prince Arthur Herald, my new baby, we have had a lot of controversy about an article speaking against same-sex adoption. It caused a major uproar and the resignation of 15-20 of our staff members. I went on the Michael Coren show to talk about what happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SESdE6c_n0&feature=youtu.be

Free Trade and the Developing World

2011-06-22T12:33:00.001-07:00

Originally published at MercatorNet.com

Last week I considered the effect of free trade on families in developed countries. This week I want to complete that analysis by analyzing the effect of free trade on families and children in developing countries.

Critics such as Greenpeace and other anti-free trade activists point, with great justice, to many abuses that are at best uncorrected, and at worst caused by free trade. It is hard, and indeed would be wrong and unnatural, to be unmoved by the arguments of these activists, who contend -- while holding up pictures of child slave laborers living through horrors no adult, much less a child, should experience -- that we cannot reduce morality to a simple equation of dollars and cents. Elizabeth Barrett Browning in a 19th century poem encapsulated the force of these arguments in her compelling but chilling warning about the child labor of the day: “But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper, Than the strong man in his wrath.” How can we celebrate “free trade” sustained by children labouring in chains? Freedom for whom?

And yet, is stopping free trade the answer? Will these children be any better off if the factories close their doors, the industry moves offshore, and their families are left to starve for lack of income, in a country which now lacks the tax base to assist them? Are their living conditions likely to be any better if trade is stopped, and ethically minded consumers and governments in developed countries are unable to lobby and boycott rogue businesses and nations into changing their ways?

In 1999 the World Trade Organization wrote a report entitled “Trade, Income Disparity, and Poverty”. In the report they found that, in general, poor countries and rich countries were not experiencing convergence; rich countries were getting richer and poor countries were getting poorer. The exception to this was the case of trading partners. When a rich country and a poor country trade with each other, both get richer, but the poorer country improves its situation more rapidly than the rich country, leading to a closing of the income inequity gap between the two countries.

More recently, a Brookings Institute study released the happy news that we have just experienced the “most dramatic” reduction in poverty ever seen in history. The authors estimated that the “United Nations Millennium Development Goal to halve the rate of global poverty between 1990 and 2015 was probably already achieved by 2008 - seven years ahead of schedule”. A reduction, the report confirms, that was largely caused by economic growth in developing countries, not Bono concerts or swanky summits on global poverty.

If, as is predicted, income poverty in China basically disappears by 2015, and the average Chinese income is $85,000 by 2040, child labor in China will almost certainly experience drastic reduction in a way more permanent and straight-forward than any charitable foundation could devise. Quite simply, parents who are making $170,000 a year send their child to university, not a factory. Naturally this is no reason to stop campaigning against child labor until the economy reaches that point of evolution where child labor is less “necessary”, but is an argument against destroying (rather than attempting to reform, for example by forcing countries who wish to trade with us to address the most outrageous of labor abuses) the very institution that is likely to eventually bring reform and prosperity to these disadvantaged families.

There is no doubt that every economic change will result in, especially short-term, winners and losers, but as the WTO rather dryly puts it, “While growth may not benefit everyone in an economy, the growth process must be strongly biased against poor people to produce perverse outcomes on poverty.” It also notes: “There is little reason to fear that growth associated with freer trade will fall systematically into this class, and the argument that openness stimulates long run growth has a good deal of empirical support.”

The best we can do is try to mitigate damage in the short-term. I am not convinced that the alternative, of forcing poverty stricken countries into economic isolation, will yield better results for families or the cause of human dignity around the world.

Free Trade and the Developed World

2011-06-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

Originally published at MercatorNet.com

Last year I read a book with the curious title A Year Without ‘Made in China’. At least, the title might have sounded curious to an average reader some decades ago, when international trade was a much smaller part of our lives, and when objects made in China might have been a rarity, rather than filling Wal-Mart shelves across the country. In the book, Sara Bongiorni’s decision to boycott Chinese products resulted in sometimes major struggles to complete even the simplest of purchases. Children’s sneakers? The only alternative to Chinese shoes were Italian ones out of a catalogue - at almost $70 a pair.

Bongiorni’s struggles to find products manufactured anywhere but China, much less Made in America or Made in Canada, reflects the growing encroachment of international trade into our daily lives. But is this encroachment a good thing or a bad thing for families?

There can be little doubt that liberalizing trade has resulted in lower prices for consumers. And, while some contend that is hardly a clinching argument -- after all, what price another cheap t-shirt? -- lower prices have contributed to increased living standards for low-income families in developed countries. One study found that during the period of 1999 to 2005, inflation was seven percentage points lower for low-income people than for the wealthiest Americans.

While cheaper clothes and toothbrushes at the Walmart and Target checkouts are undoubtedly good for families, it hardly seems a great deal if the trade-off is higher unemployment, or, at best, lower paying jobs -- if you are lucky enough to get one. Globalization has certainly wreaked havoc in many North American industries. But will this always be the case? And is it reason enough to curtail freedom of trade?

In the United States, the decline of manufacturing jobs, which have traditionally paid a decent wage for workers without higher education, has almost certainly contributed to increased short-term hardship for many working families. On the other hand, so has almost every improvement in efficiency and technology, from steam power to automation. While these eventually led to incredible advances in the quality of life of all Americans, in the short term the buggy makers almost certainly resented the “job stealing” automobiles.

In the global economy America has a comparative advantage in many areas (economist-speak for “they still do some things better than their competitors”) and this is a principal reason why US industry still continues to produce many items and services it could theoretically import from overseas. As wages rise in developing countries (economist Robert Fogel from the University of Chicago predicts that the average per capita income in China in 2040 will be $85,000 -- more than double the income predicted for residents of the European Union, making Chinese labor twice as expensive as French labor) and the US dollar declines (as it is already doing), America will once again become an attractive destination for manufacturing and industry. There will be the added bonus that this time they have not only the North American and to a certain extent European markets to cater to; they will also have newly rich consumers across the globe eager to purchase their products. Even today, in an ironic reversal of the recent stereotype, Indian companies are taking advantage of low wage rates in certain American states to outsource call centres to America.

In short, we may reasonably conclude that free trade is good for consumers, and is at worst rather ambiguous in the long-run for workers in developed countries.

I agree with Heather Mallick

2011-05-09T19:22:00.000-07:00

Let me sit down and catch my breath for a minute here, I'm not used to such stunning inversions of the known universe.

However, as I tend to criticize her quite freely on most occasions, I think it only fair to give Mrs. Mallick her just due when she writes something that exudes a rare streak of common sense. And I promise this is entirely sincere and non-satirical. (Although that's not going to stop me from calling her Mrs. instead of Ms.)

She has written a blistering article about William Melchert-Dinkel, the nurse who persuaded several people to commit suicide, including Nadia Kajouji, a young Ontario woman. Or to be more precise, she wrote a blistering article about the idiot, out-of-touch judge who had the nerve to sentence the man to a grand total of a year in prison. Melchert-Dinkel admits to conning seven people into their deaths, five of them shrouded in anonymity, apparently he isn't telling the authorities who they were.

The man is sick. He is twisted, broken and evil. He should be spending at least the 15 years in prison that the prosecuters asked for, if not more. Oh, to make it all better, he will be spending the birthdays of his two victims whose names we know in jail for the next ten years. Before he goes off and plays another round of golf or lectures in the nearest school on the dangers of the internet.

But Mallick says it better than I could:

"In fact, Melchert-Dinkel had found a fresh new way to murder, far beyond the ken of a 61-year-old rural judge. To understand this killer, the judge had to grasp the dark side of online anonymity, instant messaging and complete unfettered freedom, how words are like loaded guns appearing on a screen.

Depressed people live in a personal blackness soaked with anxiety and despair. They are limp. They don’t have the strength to be suspicious or even alert...

Depression isn’t new. Melchert-Dinkel’s murder weapon is.

He didn’t hold Nadia underwater with his hands, he did it with his typing fingers. One crime would easily earn a 15-year sentence, the other gives the killer a year in jail and a pointless probation where the killer can still use the Internet for work and may speak to groups about the dangers of the online world. The mind reels. Imagine Melchert-Dinkel coming to your child’s high school.

The judge still lives in a world where blood drips from the knife the accused threw in a dumpster and arsenic dregs still sit in the coffee cup. Online is different....

The sentence is a travesty and should be appealed. Far from sending a warning to Internet predators, it encourages them. Melchert-Dinkel has been killing from a distance since he first got his monstrous hands on a computer. He’s laughing now"

Justice - Not Served

Institute for Marriage and Family Canada Conference Blog

2011-05-05T22:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the event blog for the Institute for Marriage and Family Canada Policy Conference 2011, "Transforming the Way Canadians Think About Family".

Held at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa, the event presents research on the state of marriage and the family, in Canada and around the world. The crowd was somewhat smaller this year than last, but the speakers remained excellent and the material fascinating. So without further ado, I bring you Dave Quist, Executive Director of the IMFC opening the event.

Please Note: This is a summary of the events and speeches in my own words for educational, information, and entertainment purposes only. It is not the speakers' exact words and should not be taken as such. It also may contain errors due to the nature of the medium. I am not responsible for any of them, use at your own risk.

Dave Quist took the opportunity to introduce the theme of the conference, "Transforming the Way Canadians Think About the Family" and the purpose of the conference, which was to consider the best way forward for Canadian families.

Following this there were various housekeeping announcements, and introductions to the speakers of the day, Jonas Himmelstand, Greg Fleming, Brad Wilcox, and Mark Regnerus (Bios here http://www.imfcanada.org/Default.aspx?go=article&aid=1854&tid=8). He also noted the various websites owned by the IMFC, www.imfcanada.org and familyindex.net, their archives containing over 4000 research articles.

He noted the variety of people in the room, coming from many different backgrounds and professions, and that while we all have challenges before us, collectively we can address these issues.

IMFC Research by Peter Jon Mitchell

2011-05-05T22:50:00.001-07:00

IMFC "Marital Mindsets, Current Realities, and Possible Futures"

2011-05-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

Please Note: This is a summary of the events and speeches in my own words for educational, information, and entertainment purposes only. It is not the speakers' exact words and should not be taken as such. It also may contain errors due to the nature of the medium. I am not responsible for any of them, use at your own risk.

The first keynote speech was by Mark Regnerus on the subject of Marital Mindsets, Current Realities, and Possible Futures. The primary topic was discussing how “emerging adults", in their late teens and early twenties think about marriage and intimate relationships.

Many people assume that what young people want is to “hook up”, however it seems that 90-95% of emerging adults actually want to get married.

Just… not now.

There has been a slow increase in the age of marriage to 26 for women and 28 for men in the United States. Inevitably, this has lead to a change in the purpose of dating. Most dating relationships do not end in cohabitation or marriage. However, many of these emerging adults do want to get married right now, 20-30% of single young people and 40-50% of young people who are cohabitating (percentage depends on gender. Women are more eager to get married than men, although men tend to appreciate marriage more once they are married).

Why don’t they get married then?

For one thing there is the attitude that if most of their peers are cohabiting, then it must be the right thing to do.

In Canada the median age of marriage is even older, 27 for women and 29 for men. Will this continue going up? Not indefinitely, the average age of first marriage probably has a ceiling.

What about those who have never married?

In 1970, 35.8% of men and 54.7% of women age 20-24 had never been married. In 2010 the numbers were 88.7% and 79.3%. For those 25-29, the percentage was 10.5% of men, and 19.1% of women. In 2010 it was 62.2% of men and 47.8% of women. In delaying marriage people are ignoring fertility, which peaks before 29. Indeed, many people, at least partly due to the pill, are very ignorant of and out of touch with issues of fertility.

There has been a dramatic drop in marriages per 1000 unmarried women from 2000-2004. People are not just getting married later however, as the rates are dropping at every age, not just younger ages. There is a flight from marriage.

Why are people getting married later? Some of the issues are economic and structural, others are cultural.

Economic and structural issues,

Children are no longer producers, they are consumers, they just cost money. (However this does not explain why marriage rate did not decline in the earlier part of the 20th century, as children have been consumers not producers for a long time now)

Increased educational and employment opportunities for women.

The low cost of sex. In many ways this is an exchange between men and women, and in the past men have had to “pay” much more in terms of demonstrating commitment and earning power to get it. These days, they do not have to pay much.

The high cost of living in metro areas, where young people prefer to live. Would affordable housing increase the marriage rates? Likely not, however.

Cultural issues.

Religious people are more likely to marry, but on the other hand they also want to go to college, etc.

Motivations for delaying marriage are couched in cultural narratives. Emerging adults hold marriage in high regard. However they see it as a trade, you will only give up the freedom of single-hood, if you get something better in return. In the past there were less perks to being single that they had to trade for marriage.

They receive little help in preparing them for marriage, home economics for example, has been largely dropped, so that they do not know how to do basic things like balance a chequebook that would prepare them for marriage. They have also no help in understanding their early relationships.

The cultural stories that encourage later marriage.

There is no rush. If you believe that you are likely to stay married to one person for the rest of your life, many people (especially men) feel that there is no rush to get into that.

Be your own person. Emerging adults want to experiment, to “find out who they are”. Marriage is like a full time job, it would interfere with their life. One young woman was quoted talking about how the main thing is to make sure you are your own person. You don’t know who you will be in 10 years if you get married young, you could be a different person.

Lots of young people think they don’t know who they are or what they want, so they use dating to find out what they like.

Another reason people give for delaying marriage is that they believe it is “too soon” to have children. For middle-class emerging adults marriage=children, indeed there is an almost pre-contraception mentality that the two are a package deal. Again, this doesn’t take peak fertility into account.

Many believe that the 20s are the time to travel. It is unclear why this would be prevented by marriage, indeed in his experience marriage, and the combining of resources, actually opens up the possibility of travel. But this is part of the freedom narrative.

Parental resistance is another issue. Parents warn their children that marriage is hard work. They discourage marriage by financially assisting their single, but not their married, children. If mothers want their daughters to delay marriage, this has a significant impact on the age at which their daughters marry.

Another reason is the belief that you must find sexual chemistry, and that this will be an instantaneous thing that cannot improve. In reality, such things take time and communication. That is why they believe that abstinence before marriage is foolish, and a risk factor for divorce. In reality, the more pre-marital partners a women has, the less chance they have of getting married.

These cultural narratives discourage early marriage, but are not in line with the data.

Emerging adults esteem marriage, but they have lost confidence and trust in it as an institution. For example, 60% of children born to mothers 24-29 are born to unmarried women. It also seems that those who need the benefits of marriage the most, those who are poor or less educated, are the least likely to get married.

Marriage is not disappearing. It is getting deinstitutionalized. People want the kind of things that destabilize marriage, but the unintended consequences are high.

Emerging adults believe that marriage is a “story” that belongs to the late 20s and 30s.

There are two ways of viewing marriage, there are those who are marriage naturalists - you become an adult when you get married, and marriage is a natural progression in life. Marriage planners believe that you get married when you have become an adult, marriage is something you plan into your life.

It seems that people love choices, but hate choosing.

A strong predictor of early marriage for men is their level of interest in religion. This does not seem to be the case for women.

In the past people were channeled into marriage by many institutions, now it seems that the only the church is channeling them towards marriage.

What will happen in the future?

Average age at first marriage will hit a ceiling. However marriage rates (and with them divorce rates) will decline. The price of sex seems to have stabilized at a a low rate. The number of stay-at-home dads will quickly hit a ceiling. As fertility declines inter-generational relationships will grow more difficult as the gap between grandparents and grandchildren widen.

Will cultural conservatives win out by having lots of children? Probably not, there are many cultural pressures that discourage this, and most people are eventually pragmatists.

There is a moral hazard, as independence from marriage is seen as a right, which the government must support.

Question 1: Do you think the wedding of Prince William and Kate, and the excellent sermon given at that marriage, is likely to have any influence?

Answer 1: Not optimistic that it will have any long run affect on marriage.

Question 2: On the comments that inter-generational relationships will suffer. Has four children, only one is married. Is worried that we have lost the sense of the sacrament of marriage. How can they encourage their cohabiting children to marry? Should they withdraw financial support?

Answer 2: Sounds like questioner is a marriage naturalists, yet somehow that generation has given birth to marriage planners. Talking about sacramental aspect of marriage is a foreign language for many. And with the low price of sex due to the pill, why marry? You can have all the benefits of marriage without actually getting married. Women like the idea of marriage. Men are already getting the benefits of marriage without the costs. Withdrawing financial support may help to channel them towards marriage.

Question 3: Why do you think the number of stay-at-home dads will peak?

Answer 3: Doesn’t think that men on average feel like being stay at home dads. Stay-at-home dads are more likely to be between jobs or underemployed, it is not the plan, it is an interim situation.

Question 4: Is a pediatrician and mother of two young children. He doesn’t address issue of helicopter parent phenomena. But it would be related. Children are still attached to their parents at older ages, so they feel like they cannot marry because they are not their own person yet.

Answer 4: That makes a good deal of sense. It is also connected to the issue of fewer children, parents focus more on the few children and expect more from them.

Question 5: The percentage of men who remain unmarried has gone up much more than the percentage of women at the same age. Who are the women marrying?

Answer 5: Men are marriageable later, and there tends to be an age gap between men and their wives. So you can’t just look across the chart, as older men are marrying the younger women.

One last thing to note, is that emerging adults begin cohabiting today at the same age as they would have gotten married in earlier years.

IMFC Research by Andrea Mrozek

2011-05-05T22:40:00.001-07:00

IMFC "Busting the myths of Swedish Family Policy"

2011-05-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

Please Note: This is a summary of the events and speeches in my own words for educational, information, and entertainment purposes only. It is not the speakers' exact words and should not be taken as such. It also may contain errors due to the nature of the medium. I am not responsible for any of them, use at your own risk.

The second keynote speaker was Jonas Himmelstrand from Sweden, who spoke on the Swedish family model.

Swedish family policies were implemented in 1975. At that time 10% of children were in daycare, today it is over 90%.

Selective statistics can be chosen to paint a beautiful picture of the affects of this policy, but if you look at the reality of life in Sweden, the picture is more alarming. As a management consultant he began to see problems, but didn’t know why. He was on the political left, but then he grew up, had a family, and started a business. His conclusions are also not religiously motivated, Sweden is a very secular country.

In 2000 he went into a school to give some lectures, and was quite surprised by the comments he heard from the Head Master and teachers about the terrible decline in the mental health of children. Sick leave absences are also very high in Sweden, it raises the question, why are so many sick in such a wealthy country? Women would tell them how painful it was to leave their children in daycare. So he started to study and write about these issues.

Positives in Sweden

Low infant mortality
Very high life expectancy
Relatively high birth rate
Low child poverty
Universal daycare
High levels of education spending
High level of income and gender equality
16 month parental leave

There are no babies in daycare in Sweden due to parental leave. However by 18 mo 92% of children are in daycare. This daycare is heavily subsidized, you will never pay more than $300 a month regardless of number of children or income, most pay more like $150. This costs the government about $20,000 a child per year. There are no national benefits for those who would stay home and look after their children however, and what is available is only available some places and is hard to use.

Because putting children in daycare and being a dual-earner family is seen as a very good thing, the government actively tries to make it almost impossible to be a one-earner family with high taxation. Staying at home is discouraged, and marginalized.

Home education is in effect illegal (He is a homeschooler however), only about 100 children in Sweden are homeschooled. Dominic Johannesson is an example, he was seized from his parents because of homeschooling, and the court said that since he missed daycare and the first year of school he has been harmed. As of July 1st, homeschooling will be illegal, although it is almost illegal now.

What were the envisioned family outcomes?
More equality
Better child social and academic development
Better school preparation
More adult life satisfaction
They had a “work policy” everyone should work full time to give them freedom.

Actual Outcomes
Strong decrease in the psychological health of youth (compared to comparable European countries). 30% of 15 year old girls have mental health issues. High levels of unemployment are found in the young as young men exhibit mental health issues by under-performing. It is ironic that mothers are being forced to work while the youth, who really need jobs, suffer unemployment.
Sweden went from top in the world in school performance 30 years ago to average today.
Classroom order is amongst the worst in Europe.
High rates of sick leave and early retirement among women. They are forced to work while children are young, and get burned out early from working two jobs.
Day care staff top sick leave stats.
Deteriorating parental abilities, even in the middle-class. Parents believe that the daycare workers are the experts and they lose their confidence in their ability to parent. They become activity coordinators not parents.
The quality of daycare is deteriorating. Cannot be said to be high quality anymore. 1/5 of daycares have more than 21 kids. For children under 3 group size is 10-17, 3-5 yrs it can be as large as 30. Child:Staff ratios are 5:1, 7:1, even 10:1. There is no regulation of group sizes or child:staff ratios.
Fertility rates are high compared to the rest of Europe, but low compared to other Nordic countries (which have home care allowances).
A very gender segregated labor force, women work in daycares, schools, and healthcare. Men are in the business world.

What explains these outcomes?

A lack of adult attachment when a child is young leave them with a low threshold for stress throughout their lives.
Large peer groups where children are “raising each other” encourage late maturation. Too much peer orientation leads to disinterest in learning, bullying, gangs, promiscuity.
There is a lot of stress on parents which leads to worse outcomes for them.

Political/Social Outcomes
There is little debate on these issues as there is so much guilt about leaving children etc.
Daycare is seen as a good part of normal life, every child has a right to daycare.
Housewives are bullied.
The very word “family" is politically incorrect.
Civil society is dying as the government takes over.
Child rearing becomes a matter of politics rather than an individual decision.

What do Swedes want?

60-80% want the ability to stay home with small children, up to the age of three or so at least.

Sweden’s family policies have negative effects and are not emotionally sustainable. We need to protect the parent’s right to choose. The institution of family needs support.

Q1: What is the state of homeschooling in Europe in general, and is it getting better or worse?

A1: Europe is not united on the issue. In Sweden it is very bad.

Q2: Why is the quality of daycare deteriorating.

A2: It is getting too expensive to maintain, and there are no regulations.

Q3: Canada’s figures on mental health are very poor, yet we do not have universal daycare. What other factors may come into play?

A3: In Sweden they don’t have many of the indicators such as child poverty that may explain many of North America’s problems.

Q4: What impacts on these statistics does widespread Muslim immigration cause? Is there a difference in outcomes?

A4: There is some trauma to be certain, from arriving in the country, or from the country they came from. But this goes way beyond immigration.

Q5: Noted that said undiagnosable mental illness on rise, what about diagnosable ones?

A5: They have also risen.

Q6: What is the next closest control country for use in comparing Swedish stats.

A6: Probably Denmark or Norway. But it is a very complex issue, and it is hard to find control groups for this sort of study.

Q7: If people want change, in a democratic country, why can’t they bring political change?

A7: One party does advocate for these issues, and gets about 5% of the vote. People believe that women will become “trapped” if they try to stay at home, so the government must prevent this. Politicians will say they are concerned about these issues but do nothing.

Q8: How do you homeschool if it is illegal?

A8: You get ready to flee the country immediately, and at any time, What they do is apply for permission to homeschool at the beginning of each school year. When this is turned down they continue to appeal it to higher and higher courts. By the time they have exhausted their appeals the school year is over. Then they repeat it the next year. They are hoping that the case may go higher yet, and that the European Convention on Human Rights will support their right to homeschool.

Q9: Could this issue be addressed through the harm to businesses of increased sick leave, early retirement?

A9: Connection isn’t made by businesses, and the government is just responding to the issue by trying to push even sick people back to work.

Q10: To what extent is this problem caused by feminists trying to impose their views on other women?

A10: 100% Feminism is very protected and celebrated in Sweden.

Q11: They seem to advertise that they have equality but don’t respect women’s choices.

A11: Women are respected, when they act like men. It is a problem.

IMFC Update

2011-05-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

IMFC Research by Derek Miedema

2011-05-05T22:25:00.000-07:00

IMFC Gender in Parenting

2011-05-05T22:23:00.000-07:00

Please Note: This is a summary of the events and speeches in my own words for educational, information, and entertainment purposes only. It is not the speakers' exact words and should not be taken as such. It also may contain errors due to the nature of the medium. I am not responsible for any of them, use at your own risk.

Brad Wilcox spoke on Gender in Parenting - Vive La Difference.

He opened by noting how he ends up traveling all over the world, and using elaborate social science to prove that Grandma was right.

In California, a court said in a decision that it was beyond a doubt that the gender of a child’s parents was irrelevant.

Jennifer Aniston spoke about how women don’t have to settle with a man to have a child anymore, they can use sperm donors.

However regardless of this “elite wisdom”, social science shows that being in a relationship with their biological parents is very important to children.

What do Mothers bring to Parenting?

Breastfeeding
- Lowers cancer rates for the Moms
- Is emotionally rewarding for the Mother
- Helps protect children from many maladies
- Helps cement biological foundations of Mother-Child bond

Understanding Children
- Are better at understanding physical language, emotions, infant cry types
- Reading non-verbal cues in infants and older children better than men

Communicating with Children
- Moms use more words
- They speak more precisely
- They are better at interpreting tones
- Remember conversations better

Biological reasons for this are; more cells in their left brain, a larger corpus callosum, and more dopamine in their language centre.

Nurturing Children
- Are better at interpreting children
- Are more emotionally attached to children

Biological reasons for this are; more estrogen and oxytocin. Young children tend to prefer Mom when they are in distress.

This all helps to explain why the role of motherhood is more strongly tied to childcare all over the world.

What do Fathers bring to Parenting?

Providing - Money matters for families
- After having children Dads work more and Moms work less.
- In the U.S. ⅔ of family income typically comes from the Father in married families.

Discipline
- Fathers are better at discipline, as are more physically intimidating due to strength, size, toughness.
- More assertive, less willing to bend rules
- Especially good with teenage boys

Biological basis for this: Testosterone

Play
- Fathers better at engaging their children in physical play
- Engage children in rough games
- Bring children excitement
- These promote social skills, self-control, teach children how to deal with aggressive impulses, how to regulate emotions.
- Kids who play with their Dad are more popular in school.

Challenge their Teens
- Encourage novel activities
- Encourage independence, fortitude, temperance, confidence
- Introduce children to the outside world

Loving their Mom
- Mothers who are happily married are better Mothers
- Boys are more likely to treat girls/women with respect if they see it modelled.
- Girls are more likely to expect to be treated respectfully if they see it modelled by their Father.

Negative effects when a Father is missing:

Teens in single mother homes are 2-3 times more likely to experience serious negative outcomes. That is not to say that single Mom’s can’t do a good job, he was raised by a single Mom, but generally speaking children do better in intact families.

Crime and Fatherless Boys

If boys never have a good relationship with male authority, to learn self discipline and self control, they can engage in self-compensatory masculinity, where they try to be extremely masculine and reject anything gentle or feminine.

Controlling for other variables, they are almost twice as likely to be in trouble.

Teenage Pregnancy and Dads

Dads protect daughters from teenage pregnancy by providing them with positive male attention, setting boundaries, etc. Fathers actually give off phonemes that delay puberty, sexual maturity in their daughters.

35% of girls who’s fathers left before they turned six will have a teenage pregnancy, 10% if the father left between the ages of 6-18, and 5% if Father stays with the family.

Sperm donor kids of single Moms are 2.46 times more likely to be in trouble with the law. 2.77 times more likely to engage in substance abuse.

The best evidence, biological, psychological, and sociological shows that men and women bring different talents to parenting. We should take advantage of these differences. Equity does not mean that both genders have to have the same duties.

We need to cast aside the “elite wisdom” for the wisdom of Grandma. This is not a religious claim, it is a human claim. Children do best in families with their married biological parents.

Q1: A bill is before Parliament to enshrine gender expression/identity in law. What is the best way to discuss this issue.

A1: We recognize that people don’t always conform to these patterns. At the same time, on average, these are the patterns for humans, for primates even. Science is on our side.

Q2: In courts the nurturing skills of Moms are used to argue that they are better parents, especially at early stages while Dads are more helpful later on. But should Dads be involved from early on?

A2: Moms have an advantage in the early years while Dads do play a bigger role later on. Unfortunately the breakdown of marriage means that we must often pick one parent, this is a great tragedy. Moms do more day to day nurturing, Dads are more distant, allow children more independence. These things need to be balanced. In a divorce, we need to make sure that Dad stays connected.

Q3: You did a study that the Family that Prays Together has positive outcomes for marriage. What is the impact of this on kids?

A3: Families that go to church, pray together, and share beliefs have more positive outcomes. However praying together was most connected to marital happiness. Haven’t done research on impact on children, but someone else did and reports that children do better when their parents go to church together.

Q4: Are there data differences between western and more traditional countries?

A4: There seems to be a trend that some countries have low fertility and strong marriages, while other countries have high fertility (at least near replacement) and weak marriages. No developed countries are strong in both categories.

Q5: Has the court decision that says a parent’s gender has no impact on children been challenged?

A5: It is being appealed

Q6: Are homosexual families similar to single parents in outcomes

A6: That is the $100,000 question. Many same gender households do a division, where one parent is more masculine and the other more feminine. However studies are not very rigorous so far.

Q7: Would assume that you were in favour of government support for one-income families, do you know of any movements that support this?

A7: Don’t really know of movements like that. Most Mothers want to either stay home with young children or work part-time when their children are young. One-income isn’t the only option.

Q8: Are there studies on the roles of others in raising kids, like relatives, heroes, etc.

A8: That is certainly something worth studying. There have been some on the role of Grandmothers in helping out single moms, which isn’t that great as it can confuse children. However it is quite possible that the best thing fro children is to have not just an intact parental unit but also an extended family.

IMFC "The Kids are all Right... or are They?"

2011-05-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

IMFC "Free to Choose"

2011-05-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

Please Note: This is a summary of the events and speeches in my own words for educational, information, and entertainment purposes only. It is not the speakers' exact words and should not be taken as such. It also may contain errors due to the nature of the medium. I am not responsible for any of them, use at your own risk.

Greg Fleming spoke on “Free to Choose: The Consequences of the atomized individual in New Zealand”

New Zealand is often at the forefront of change. He is going to particularly address the decriminalization of prostitution in NZ and the criminalization of spanking.

The notion of the free and isolated individual as the foundation of society, rather than the family, is deeply imbedded in the NZ psyche. We see the image of a liberated unrestrained individual forming their own truth.

One way to measure the soul of society is to watch their advertisements. (Shows advertisement for university which emphasizes that our world now has no boundaries, no traditions, no one path. Everything is fluid. If we understand these things than the world is infinite. A second ad for telecommunications talks about all the choices we have today, we can have a virtual second life, men can stay at home while women work.)

He experienced the slant our system has towards divorce when his sister was going through a rough patch in her marriage. She had a great deal of support, but one day she took the advice of a friend and went to government social services, who told her that they would give her enough money to start a new life so that she could find happiness. There was no material, no resources in the office on how to keep a marriage together, only on how to get divorced. She found that their family could make more money if her husband moved out. He did, and at first he visited, but eventually the separation became permanent.

They view marriage merely as a product to be consumed. However social science shows that it is actually very important.

Our views of the world really shape the way we view evidence, he was on a show once and a professor in all seriousness said that the professor’s research showed that family form had no affect on children.

There is very little reliable information on legalized prostitution, it is really too soon to see the full affects. However there is some anecdotal evidence and polling.

Prior to the change in law prostitution was illegal but readily available. Police would use their discretion as to when to prosecute. Some people, who didn’t necessarily support prostitution, believed that things would be better if prostitution was legalized because it would be regulated and would be able to protect vulnerable participants. Others believed that prostitution is good and healthy, and that criminalizing it is what is responsible for any negatives in the trade.

The issue that really needs to addressed in the prostitution debate is one one of fundamental worldview. However it was not worldview or facts that decided the legalization of prostitution in NZ, but an emotional speech from a former prostitute.

In practice legalization has tied the hands of local authorities in containing or addressing issues with the trade. One big issue is the location of prostitution, many people object to its incursion into the suburbs.

Police report that there are now more under-age workers, more street workers, more gang activity than before.

Polls were done, and show that 66% of people want to ban it in residential areas, while 50% (64% of men) want to ban street prostitution.

There are two assumptions that were made in the legalization of the trade.

1. That women were freely choosing the trade.

2. That there were no negative external effects from the trade.

Both are wrong.

Legalization legitimizes something. We say that choice has the prime place in society, and yet the government has no trouble restricting choice when it comes to smoking.

Either way, laws are not the answer. The only real answer is community based help for these women, to get them off the street and off drugs.

The criminalization of spanking.

NZ had a bad history of child abuse. However the MP who sponsored the bill, did so because she saw no difference between children (mini-adults) and adults. And therefore if it would be assault to do something to an adult, it should be assault to do it to a child. Children are just another oppressed class to be liberated.

There were also calls for lowering the age of consent and the voting age.

In the past, children were seen as part of a family, innocents in need of protection. Now they are seen to have rights like adults, and need to be emancipated from parents and their support structure.

Assault is defined as the use of force, or the threat of the use of force. In this case, even punishments like timeout could become illegal if you need to restrain the child using force.

Formally minor correction (like a light smack) was legal. Currently it is not, but police have discretion in prosecution.

There was a referendum on the issue and 87% of voters supported the decriminalization of spanking. However the referendum was not binding and was ignored.

Parents now report feeling less confident, and 32% say their child has threatened to report the parents to the authorities if they are spanked.

However there is hope in NZ. There has been positive progress in devolving social services to the community level. The Maori have had a very positive influence, they have not been affected by the notion of the supremacy of the individual, but still hold family in very high regard. As their culture is greatly respected, some progress may be made there.

The story of individual supremacy is unraveling, and he has real hope that in 20 years New Zealand may be a model for Canada, rather than a warning.

Q1: What is some positive news?

A1: That there are ceilings on many of these statistics which NZ has probably hit.

Q2: How is the anti-spanking law working, are the police using discretion?

A2: About 300 people have been charged under the law, 30 have gone to court, and 6 have been sentenced. The biggest impact of the law has been on parental confidence and clarity on what their rights and duties as parents are.

Q3: How do parents, such as Christian parents in particular, deal with that?

A3: Isn’t sure that spanking is really necessary. But parents do need physically authority. Basically there aren’t enough police to prosecute everyone, so his advice to parents is just keep doing what you were doing.

Q4: Police are allowed to lay charges unless it is in the public interest not to. Shouldn’t Parliament be deciding on the public interest?

A4: Yes they should be. The court ultimately decides public interest in these cases. But it does leave too much discretion, too much decision making in the hands of the police. The problem is that it is harrowing to be investigated, whether or not you are finally convicted.

Q5: What forces do you think will change things?

A5: Strategic planning, it is a small country, things change fast.

Q6: Did they end up changing the age of consent?

A6: No.

And that mostly wraps up the IMFC conference. It was a great day and if you weren't there, you should have been. I believe I heard something about audio/video of the conference being available later on, you may want to check out the IMFCanada.org website in the coming weeks for that.

ELECTION RESULTS

2011-05-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

And the Conservatives have swept to a...... Majority of 167! Cue fireworks.

The Bloc has been decimated, worse than decimated. They dropped from 49 seats to a humiliating 4, and lost official party status.

The NDP have swept into the Official Opposition position with 102 seats, more than triple their previous mediocre position of 29.

In a campaign that reminds me of the cartoons where someone runs off the side of a cliff, does a stationary bicycle routine in thin air for a minute, and then plummets to the depths, the Liberals went into something like free-fall from 103 seats to a third place 34. Only, unlike in the cartoons, the Liberals do not appear to have survived the fall without a scratch.

In some of the most dramatic news of the evening, Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe couldn't even win seats in their own ridings. Ignatieff lost to a Conservative, swept away in the flood that crumbled Fortress Toronto where the Conservatives picked up 32 out of 47 seats by one estimate. Up from their previous low number of absolutely none. Gilles Duceppe lost to an NDPer, by good fortune not the one who went holidaying in Los Vegas during the campaign.

Pundits learned that they didn't know as much about Canadian politics as they thought they did, and pollsters learned that they can be quite wrong, very few polls put the Conservatives as high or higher than they actually performed.

And Cheryl Gallant's "controversial comments" did not sink her victory in our riding, unless you consider a lead of around 17,851 votes over the next candidate (an independent) to be a close win. And for a certain relative of mine who shall remain nameless but knows who he is, the Blue Guy in your riding won by a margin of around, 25,251 votes.

In other news, I would like to uncharitably dig up an article Heather Mallick wrote on the subject of what if Harper get a majority.

Old-tyme religion will reign, and our spiritual leader will be Harper's favourite evangelical, Charles McVety... I used to decry the concept of tenure, suspecting it made professors coast in class, but now I see it as a fence standing between us and the intellectually primitive. In Harperland, your students would turn you in for Wrongspeak and you would lose your job...
Guns on the street, gated communities, rampant drug use, unlimited anonymous corporate political donations, no government safety standards for food and medicine, classrooms that resemble holding pens more than civilized safe rooms for the young to learn . . .Individuals would be in trouble.... The Conservative hate machine will swivel toward you like a Dalek and advance. You're doomed. A Harper majority government wouldn't just lash out generally. It would hunt down its enemies.
Fear these people. Don't get sick. Don't grow old. Don't have children. Make yourself invulnerable.

I suspect the Toronto Star columnists, if they were gathered together in a huddled enclave watching the election results coming in, may have had their keys collectively taken away as a result of their pain mitigation techniques.

Miss Marprelate's Favourite Party

2011-04-25T20:59:00.000-07:00

Miss Marprelate's official "favourite party of the election", The Peoples' Political Power Party of Canada. They appear to have some costing issues, I am at present unsure of how they are planning to pay off the deficit and create a massive budget surplus while eliminating income tax, the GST, and returning all corporate profits to the workers. Oh yes and while eliminating poverty, war, terrorism (through compassionate listening), cleaning up the planet (through love for children), emptying the prisons, making it a criminal offence for agencies (undefined) to neglect people and make the sleep on the street. Cutting healthcare by 50% as people’s immune systems improve due to the elimination of fear under their policies should help.

Unfortunately as their “father” just died they aren’t fielding any candidates this election. But his Spirit (in italics) continues to guide them and "by this Spirit that the PPP will continue…by Love, Respect, Equality and Truth until everyone is happy.” so you may be able to vote for them next election.

I mean really, what is not to love? At least for the entertainment value.

They have a very nice flip book of all their policies you can read online. The link to their downloadable policy book appears to be broken. http://peoplespoliticalpower.ca/home/index.html

Ottawa Events for May

2011-04-21T19:16:00.000-07:00

(Partially written for the Prince Arthur Herald)

There are essentially two kinds of people in the world, those who would prefer to hit themselves on the head with a hammer rather than go to a political conference, and those who plan their entire lives around making sure that they will always have the time and money to go to political conferences.

While the primary purpose of these events may appear to be listening to lectures, something most students have had quite enough of by the time school ends for the summer, for dedicated conference goers political events are about much more than just listening to fabulous speakers lecturing on such entrancing subjects as socio-economic statistics, constitutional law, political philosophy, or dead politicians, they are about networking.

Networking is one of the most important skills that any politically-interested student can acquire. Actually, if I may amend that, that any student can acquire. In a generation that is increasingly known for its tendency to slouch against the wall texting while listening to its iPod, simply taking the time to pocket the cell phone, volunteer, mingle with other attendees, ask questions, shake hands, and dress professionally, can stand out and get noticed. Potentially by the very person who will be reviewing your internship application the next time you apply. Even student conferences, although they may be devoid of future employers, are worthy networking events, as you build contacts that can last a lifetime. While networking may be difficult, especially at first (as I can testify from personal experience, not being naturally outgoing), it does become easier as you get to know other conference regulars, and become more comfortable with the social mores of political events.

However, with all the best will in the world, sometimes it can be difficult to find out about every interesting event that is happening. Is the Free Thinking Film Society showing a movie this month? Or perhaps more relevantly, what is the Free Thinking Film Society anyway and why would I want to go to one of their events?

In the interest therefore, of connecting students to the events they would care about, I have collected a small sampling of such events for the month of May. If there are more that I have missed, as I am sure there are, please feel free to send them to me at missmarprelate@gmail.com and I will do my best to make this column a monthly event tracker.

May 2nd: VOTE!!! http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=ele&dir=41ge&document=index&lang=e

May 5th: IMFC Policy Conference 2011 - Transforming the way Canadians think about family, put on by The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada. Held at the Lord Elgin hotel in Ottawa,

confirmed speakers are sociologists Dr. Brad Wilcox and Dr. Mark Regnerus, Greg Fleming of New Zealand's Maxim Institute and Jonas Himmelstrand of Sweden's Mireja Institute. Conference lasts for a full day, and costs $125. http://www.imfcanada.org

May 11-13th: The National March for Life. Beginning on the evening of the eleventh with services and a candlelight vigil at the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights monument, the event really gets going the next morning with the annual March for Life. With over 12,000 attendees last year, the March is an event to remember. That evening there are two separate banquets, the Rose Dinner banquet and the student banquet. On the 13th, is a youth conference, with various speakers and music. The cost for the youth banquet is $40, and the conference is $45. http://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/index.php?p=March+For+Life

May 17-19th: Canada Student Forums. Come out and experience this 3 day forum that will facilitate dialogue between young adults, aged 16-25, and Christian politicians. Network and gain valuable information about how you can achieve your career goals without compromising your faith. Tour Parliament, meet MPs, attend the National Prayer Breakfast, and more. Some of this year's speakers: Colin Mayes, MP for Okanagan-Shuswap; Hon. Jack Murta, former Member of Parliament, chaplain on Parliament Hill and President of The Ottawa Mission; Dr. Victor Ling, Vice President of Discovery BC Cancer Agency and BC Cancer Research Centre;

Pastor Lyle M. Notice, B.A. MDiv, and Special Assistant to David Anderson, MP. Cost for all events, $175. http://www.canadastudentforums.com/

I would like to give all of these events Miss Marprelate's personal seal of approval, as I have been to all of them in the past and found them absolutely wonderful.

The IMFC conference is undoubtedly aimed at a more mature crowd, in fact some of the material, at least in the past, may be unsuitable for younger audiences. Although their topics may appear to be slightly dry, I remember them as being very interesting, and highly recommend the event for social conservatives interested in the research behind their beliefs, and fiscal conservatives who are interested in the fiscal implications of social policies.

The National March for Life is, of course, an event for all ages, although in my personal opinion the youth conference the next day is aimed a little more towards high-school than university students. There are vendors, music, and speakers at the conference, and while as someone who is very politically interested I found some of the lectures a bit on the basic side (I really didn't need to be told that I should write to my MP), they are great for the audience, and some of them should be interesting for anyone.

The Canada Student Forums is a terrific event aimed primarily at university students. I enjoyed going to Question Period for the first time (and didn't find it half as bad as expected, although as a blogger I may just be hardened to political rhetoric. My biggest disappointment was that everything they were talking about was six week old news.), found the prayer breakfast and especially the sessions afterwords interesting, but most of all loved the speakers who specifically came to the student forum, and networking with other students who shared the same interests as me. We heard from human-trafficking activists, a panel of aboriginal youth, people from a variety of professions, had a chance to sit down and talk with Members of Parliament, and had plenty of opportunity to talk with each other in between (and even, I must admit, for a couple of us girls to sneak out and do some shopping while we were supposed to be eating lunch. For some reason none of the guys wanted to join us.).

So, if you can make it out to one or all of these events, please do so. I think a lot of political events planned for May are having some trouble with attendance etc due to the election, the Manning Centre Networking Conference for example was, sadly, canceled, so if you have been thinking about going to a conference "sometime", this would be a good year to try to make it.

Budget: Part 1

2011-03-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

So the budget is out and despite many concessions to the NDP they are not mollified that Harper hasn't fully metamorphosed from a blue caterpillar to an orange butterfly.

And Harper probably looks like the cat who stole the cream.

Why wouldn't the conservatives want an election right now? Their poll numbers are better than they have been almost ever, including a last minute poll which showed that Canadians trust the conservatives to lead an honest government more than anyone else, and by a margin of 13% over the Liberals. Ignatieff, who plans to run on an "ethics" platform, apparently still prefers mass telepathy to polls. In other news voters also believe that the conservatives would do the best job at handling the economic recovery, keeping taxes down, and spending taxpayer money wisely by margins of 17, 19, and 17%. Those are all, incidentally, bigger leads than the Liberals have over the back runner, the Bloc.

Ignatieff today, "I would love to fight an election over the economy."

Definitely still telepathy.

But, since the Conservatives obviously tried (or tried to appear to be trying) to placate the NDP in the budget, they get to come out looking like the good guys who tried to spare Canadians an unnecessary election, while the NDP, Liberals, and Bloc get to look like the petulant opportunists who wouldn't accept a reasonable compromise.

Why wouldn't they accept a compromise? Because they want an excuse to form a (drumroll please) COALITION after the next election.

At least that is what the Tory campaign ads will be saying for the next month.

Have a fun election season everyone.

Bits and Bytes

2011-03-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well... here I am, back again after my inexcusable leave of absence from the blogging field, I really have no idea why any of you keep reading me considering the shameless way I neglect you. I wouldn't tire you with my excuses, but they are relevant to a couple of points.

First, I am busy because I am working for the Prince Arthur Herald, that fledgeling conservative student newspaper you should all know and love. Gems coming from the editing desk of the Marprelate include Samantha Lui's analysis of Rebecca Black's supposedly (haven't actually watched it myself) horrible Youtube by the name of Friday, and the intensely negative reaction she is receiving. For my comments? The reaction to Rebecca Black's song, considering her age, is nothing short of a mass cyber-bullying campaign. These people need to think a little bit about the fact that they aren't just criticizing a song, they are potentially devastating a young girl who didn't know any better than to release the song, and doesn't know any better than to take the sarcastic comments at face value. If anyone's head should be on the chopping block it should be the idiots who helped her produce the monstrosity.

Japan and Libya are eating up the headlines these days. Our condolences to the people of Japan in their time of need, and in particular profound applause for the heroes who are still in the nuclear plant.

Libya, fewer condolences, especially to Gaddafi. Canada has finally declared war on him, just as we are trying to get out of Afghanistan. Question of the day, will liberals still be able to fault conservatives for meddling with the freedom and sovereignty of Libya after everyone gave the go-ahead and it was properly approved by all the relevant international authorities. A. Of course they will, stop asking stupid questions.

Things you thought were safe, that aren't. Your iTunes account. Unless someone in my very uni-lingual family bought those Chinese proverb apps (Chinese proverbs in Chinese that is) and isn't fessing up our account was unceremoniously hacked and our gift-card money pilfered by some unscrupulous proverb aficionado. One is forced to conclude that either they have not studied their proverbs with sufficient diligence despite their desperate measures to obtain them. On a more serious note, we were fortunate to have not had our credit card attached to the account, or the damage might have been more serious. iTunes did do a "one-time" refund and disabled the account, but you may want to think twice before letting them get their sticky little mittens on your credit info.

In one of the more irritating stories of the week (And no it doesn't even involve Heather Mallick, well actually now that I mention it there might be a toss-up for most irritating story) a landlord had his buildings seized because someone was running a grow-op in the house. Are they all mad? They have made it almost impossible to evict tenants and very difficult to properly screen them. Everyone knows not to give bad references, as they can come back to haunt your bedside with a libel suit in hand. You aren't allowed to discriminate on so many different grounds, that if you deny someone a least based on the fact that you just know they are probably a small time criminal you can be making yourself vulnerable to a Human Rights lawsuit with all the joy that involves. Now granted that in this case the landlord was accused of being willfully blind, if not actually in the know that his houses were being used for the production of illicit flora. But surely a $240,000 odd thousand dollar fine is extremely hefty for being live and let live about the less than above board activities of your tenants, especially considering how difficult it is to evict bad tenants should one wish to.

I don't know about the rest of you human, or non-human, critters, but I believe grading inspires me to work harder, learn more, and explore issues more deeply than projects which carry neither positive nor negative consequences. (Point in fact, I have been neglecting blogging to focus on my economics courses). Grading - good. No objective standard to judge personal achievement by - bad.

And no, that was not responsible neutrality.

Perspectives

2011-03-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

I wanted to find a word that could accurately describe the kind of shameless cynicism that goes into such marketing, but was worried it'd break the thesaurus. The idea that there are commercial breeding operations creating "shelter dogs" as a product to be sold to well-meaning prospective pet owners is so repugnant the first reaction isn't horror -- it's often disbelief, even anger toward the messenger. In fact, this is a subject we are very careful about bringing up, because it is so hard for a decent person to wrap their head around. "Nobody could do something that despicable! How could you say such a horrible thing?" NAIA

Well quite frankly that was NOT my first reaction. My first reaction was something along the lines of doubled up laughing, combined with a certain admiration for the enterprising souls with the imagination to cash in on such an obviously lucrative and gullible market.

And anyway, the dogs will probably have a great life with a Madeline Bassett as owner, and the owners will get a disease free (probably) animal. Or do these breeders deliberately infect the animals to increase their sympathy value? The questions, the questions.

(Not that I am unsympathetic to shelter animals or anything, but a little sense of proportion would hardly be amiss here)

The PAH Seeking Conservative Columnists

2011-03-03T14:05:00.000-08:00

Would you like to write for a national student newspaper?

Conservative students and groups often complain about being treated inequitably on campus, or feeling like they are all alone in their convictions. The Prince Arthur Herald, Canada's only center-right national student newspaper, aims to change that by giving conservative students a voice and community that will respect their opinions and stand up for their rights, along with the rights of all Canadians.

Started by a group of predominately McGill students, The PAH in less than two months of operation has received tens of thousands of hits from across Canada. As a result, the editors have decided that a nationally-read newspaper deserves to be written by students from across the nation. As an Ontario Desk Editor, I am recruiting students who are interested in writing a regular 500 word column. Columns don't just have to be about politics (although they can be) as the Herald also addresses subjects ranging from campus life to culture, finance, sports, health, law, and more.

Those who control the message, control the debate. Without a friendly media presence that values excellence in communications while addressing the hard issues of our day, conservative students will continue to struggle to be heard and respected on campus.

This is a fantastic opportunity for conservative students to make their voices heard, while gaining valuable experience working for a national student newspaper. If you are interested in being part of this, please contact me at missmarprelate@gmail.com or through Facebook.

Rebekah Hebbert
Ontario Desk Editor,
The Prince Arthur Herald
missmarprelate@gmail.com
www.princearthurherald.com

Please feel free to repost, forward, or link this message to anyone who might be interested.

What Harm Does it Do?

2011-03-03T14:03:00.000-08:00

My latest article on MercatorNet.

Oh, I would sing and dance with rejoicing if celestial [polygamous] marriage was no longer considered criminal. I believe in my religion and way of life. Our family could all take the same last name. We would be able to have the benefits of Canada as other Canadians have. We would use the money we spend on fighting for our religion to build nice housing for the families… We would be able to live in peace.

That was Witness Four , speaking in the British Columbia (Canada) Supreme Court about the alleged religious rights of a breakaway Mormon sect to practice polygamy.

According to the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and others on the side of decriminalizing polygamy, Canada, the land of hope and freedom, is persecuting some of its most vulnerable citizens -- men and women who choose to peacefully express a minority religion, who ask nothing more than to be left alone and not live in the daily fear of being jailed and harassed for their faith.

Is this possible? In a country that takes minority rights so seriously that entire institutions are dedicated to weeding out even the smallest hints of prejudice? What have we become?

But wait a minute, this religious minority is also accused of involvement in the trafficking and abuse of young teenaged girls, subjecting children to dysfunctional and abusive families, exploiting young men, trapping women in a world of pain, the flagrant and public breech of laws that would protect the most vulnerable. Is it possible that Canada has turned a blind eye to all of this?

And what will happen now that the judiciary has to decide which should prevail: freedom of religion, or some of the most basic values and norms of Canadian society?

The question pits Canada’s anti-polygamy law, section 293 of the Criminal Code, against the Canadian Charter or Rights and Freedom guarantee to “freedom of conscience and religion” -- in this case the freedom of a FLDS/Mormon offshoot community in Bountiful B.C. This community believes that “plural marriages” are necessary in order to reach the Celestial Kingdom. Opposing that claim is a collection of organizations who contend that the abuses of polygamy are so grievous, and the harm to individuals and societies so great, that the law is a justifiable infringement on religious and individual rights.

What kinds of harm? Allegations against FLDS members include the water torture of babies (holding children face up under a running tap if they cry when spanked), marriage of girls as young as 12 or 14 (statutory rape), sexual, mental, and physical abuse of children, immigration fraud , unfair treatment of young men (due to shortage of brides), forced/coerced marriage, and more.

Perhaps some of the most affecting testimony came from Witness Four, quoted above. She learned the identity of her much older husband thirty minutes before she married him as a just turned 17 year old, crossed the Canadian boarder under false pretences, and came to live with him and her other three “sister-wives”. Six months later, with no prior notice or consultation with his other wives, her husband married a 15 year old girl, who enrolled in grade nine that year as a married woman. It never occurred to anyone involved that this might be in any way improper. No one called the authorities. The marriage must have been a revelation from God and, therefore, it was right.

Another tragic story is told by a woman who refused, as a 13 year old, to marry the prophet Rulon Jeffs, then in his 80s. For this she was sent to work for a Bountiful lumber business. Laboring in sub zero conditions without proper protective clothing, she was reminded again and again by the “authorities” that if she would just submit to an arranged marriage it could all end. Trapped, terrified, and abandoned by her family she finally gave way and agreed to married, at the age of 17.

But is this kind of harm, or any harm, inherent in polygamy? Surely monogamy has its own problems?

Dr. Margaret Somerville, Samuel Gale Professor of Law at McGill University, in an interview with MercatorNet suggests that while not all alleged harms are inherent in polygamy, some indeed are.

“My primary objection would be for the children... I believe that family units are primarily for the benefit of the children. Of course they are for the benefit of the adults involved as well, but if there is a clash between what adults want and what children need I give priority to the children.”

“Children are best off with their mother and father, preferably their own biological parents unless an exception is justified as being in the best interests of a particular child... Polygamy is an alternative adult arrangement, which is also difficult for some of the children who become adults within that arrangement.” (Note the abuses chronicled above.)

Others contend that the abuses chronicled in Bountiful, by both supporters and detractors are best fought by the legalization of polygamy. Some point to the idyllic picture of peace, love, and cooperation painted by many of the polygamous women, and suggest that the needs of the vulnerable would rather be served by bringing polygamy into the open, where abuse could be reported by women no longer afraid of prosecution for polygamy, and where justice and freedom of religion could coexist peacefully.

But does society have a larger interest in banning polygamy? If some of these abuses are inherent to polygamy, can even legalizing it help? What could this do to the moral fabric of our society?

Margaret Somerville again speaks of the danger of redefining marriage, particularly for children. She has contended for years that allowing same sex marriage (as has been done in Canada), would make it difficult to justify shutting the door on polygamy.

“If you say that marriage is simply a social or cultural construct, which is what same-sex marriage says it is, and it has nothing to do with giving a child his own biological parents, then you could say that we could design marriage however we like. It could be four men and three women, or whatever you want to have.

“What a monogamous relationship, one man and one woman, does is that it builds marriage around a biological reality. Actually, unlike same sex marriage, polygamy also builds marriage around a biological reality too but it doesn't do it equally between men and women.

“I think it’s a matter of both biology and cultural values, and our western democratic societies’ cultural values are most definitely [in favour of] one man and one woman, and polygamy threatens that just as same sex marriage threatened that. Polygamy threatens it on the monogamous level, same sex marriage threatened it on the biological level.”

“Once you move away from that fundamental monogamous procreational relationship... you start designing marriage however you like it, whether it is same sex marriage, whether it is polygamy either in the form of polygyny (one man with many wives) or polyandry (one woman with many husbands).” Or, indeed, what some of the sexual avant garde are calling “polyamory ”.

The children and women of Bountiful tell stories of wrenching abuse, and peaceful contentment. The Supreme Court is given a simple but difficult and critical choice. To choose to restrict the religious practice of some in the interests of preserving the traditional values of Canadian culture, or to accede to another redefinition of marriage and accept the collateral damage of broken lives in the name of freedom.

Freedom, we may ask, for whom?

Liars Figure

2011-02-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

I do not like to attack someone who is obviously a fellow conservative, but the truth is not served by covering up well, I might not be able to call it lies, but it isn't exactly straight forward either. Let's just be really charitable and call it sloppy writing.
Take this chart and explanation here.

As tens of thousands of U.S. factories get shut down and as millions of our jobs get shipped overseas, the number of unemployed Americans continues to go up and up and up
As you can see from the chart below, there has been a long-term trend of increasing unemployment in the United States. In fact, there are about 3 and a half times as many unemployed workers in the United States today as there were when 1970 began. These jobs losses are going to continue as long as we allow our corporations to pay slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe. All of the major trends in global trade are very bad for the U.S. middle class. For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China for 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990. How long will our politicians stand by as our nation bleeds jobs? (Source)

What is missing from this chart? Anyone who says, "The numbers aren't controlled for population increases and thus aren't worth a plugged nickle" hits the bell and gets their choice of coconut or honey doughnut.

Obviously we have no interest in knowing whether the absolute number of unemployed people is increasing, that number can't prove anything whatsoever. What we would like to know is this, has the unemployment RATE consistently increased since 1970 as a result of overseas outsourcing?

Answer: No.

Here is the appropriate chart, compiled by yours truly, using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Funny enough, until 2009-10, the unemployment rate in the United States seems to have been decreasing, not increasing since the mid 1970s. Just to confirm that, average unemployment rate per decade.

1950s: 4.51%
1960s: 4.78%
1970s: 6.21%
1980s: 7.27%
1990s: 5.75%
2000-2008: 4.61%

What we seem to see here is not a steadily increasing unemployment rate, but rather an unemployment level that increased to a peak in 1982 and has been declining, more or less steadily, ever since to lower levels than even in the 60s (pre-recession).

Is that a result of overseas outsourcing? Well one way to test that would be to look at imports as a percentage of GDP. That will tell us what percentage of goods and services that Americans consume were imported, a measure that will likely tell us something relevant about American companies moving overseas.

Doesn't really look like it declines after the 80s, in fact it seems to be pretty steep in the 2000s, while unemployment was very low.

So, combine a misleading graph with a not particularly defensible explanation...

Lesson for the day: Never believe a graph you can't prove yourself from the raw data.

Supreme Court Speech Decision

2011-02-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

In one of the more under commented on stories of the week:

The Supreme Court of Canada has come down 6-1 on the side of freedom of speech, and not just freedom in a disputable case, but freedom in quite an extreme case. Andre Arthur, a radio host, delivered a rant about Arab and Haitian cab drivers, saying that,

[translation] Why is it that there are so many incompetent people and that the language of work is Creole or Arabic in a city that’s French and English? . . . I’m not very good at speaking “nigger”. . . . [T]axis have really become the Third World of public transportation in Montreal. . . . [M]y suspicion is that the exams, well, they can be bought. You can’t have such incompetent people driving taxis, people who know so little about the city, and think that they took actual exams. . . . Taxi drivers in Montreal are really arrogant, especially the Arabs. They’re often rude, you can’t be sure at all that they’re competent and their cars don’t look well maintained.

The Court ruled that while the speech was racist, it was impossible to prove that it had caused personal harm to all the members of the class action lawsuit.

Apparently one of the things that Courts look for when deciding group defamation suits is the size of the group and how homogenous the group is. The smaller and more homogenous the group, the more likely a group libel action to succeed. For example, remarks about "women" or "lawyers" (or "Muslims" or "homosexuals" presumably) in general cannot constitute defamation, because the group is too large and diverse for the remarks to personally affect every member of the group.

The Court also decided that context was important (HRCs take note) and that Andre Arthur's reputation as an over the top "shock jock" meant that an "ordinary person" would be very unlikely to take the remarks as literal reputable truth (Note to self, cultivating reputation as controversial can help in defamation suits. Interesting.)

In general the Court decided that it was obvious the remarks were over the top, that no "ordinary person" would assume that they applied to each and every Arab and Haitian taxi driver in Montreal, and therefore it could not be said to personally discredit and damage every Arab and Haitian taxi driver in Montreal.

In other words, the Court soundly rejected the idea of any sort of corporate damage or group defamation. Defamation law only protects individuals, not groups.

Since the right to the protection of reputation, which is the basis for an action in defamation, is an individual right that is intrinsically attached to the person, only those who have suffered personal injury become entitled to compensation. The requirement of proof of a personal injury contributes to maintaining the balance between freedom of expression and the right to the protection of reputation, and also applies where the defamatory comments are made about a group. However, an individual will not be entitled to compensation solely because he or she is a member of a group about which offensive comments have been made. The member or members of the group who bring an action must have sustained personal injury.(Bolds mine)

Whether the Supreme Court will extend this idea that rights belong to individuals, not groups, to human rights complaints I do not know. However I think it is clear from this ruling that the Supreme Court is not necessarily an enemy of freedom of speech, even in shocking cases, and thus the cases like Whatcott's that are heading towards the Supreme Court have, in my opinion, considerably better than a 50:50 chance of winning.

Other interesting comments coming out of the ruling:

Freedom of expression is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s. 2(b), and the Charter of human rights and freedoms, R.S.Q., c. C‑12, s. 3 (“Quebec Charter”). It is one of the pillars of modern democracy. It allows individuals to become emancipated, creative and informed, it encourages the circulation of new ideas, it allows for criticism of government action and it favours the emergence of truth... Freedom of expression is essential in ensuring that social, economic and political decisions reflect the aspirations of the members of society. It is broad in scope and protects well‑prepared speech and wrath‑provoking comments alike... However, it is not absolute and can be limited by other rights in a democratic society, including the right to protection of reputation.

Rather well put if you ask me. Also, contrary to what might seem to be the case, the Supreme Court appears to view defamation law as evolving, towards a more full protection of freedom of speech.

What was an acceptable limit on freedom of expression in the 19th century may no longer be acceptable today. Indeed, particularly in recent decades, the law of defamation has evolved to provide more adequate protection for freedom of expression on matters of public interest.

Indeed.

All quotes from CanLII

Iranium 2

2011-02-08T18:27:00.000-08:00

So after the first shut down (see original story here) Iranium went on last night under the watchful eye of 17 security officers and some heavy duty police hanging around very conspicuously. It was all very boring, no protest, no teargas... but in compensation we did get to see a very interesting film. I think there were some youngsters their with disruptive intentions, they were sitting in front of me and were noticeably not applauding at the appropriate intervals. One of them was also holding a big mike on her lap. However in the end, whether due to the fact that the police were too intimidating or the movie too convicting, or both, there were no disruptions.

The crowd in general were very much on the side of the Free Thinking Film Festival, applauding at every available opportunity during the speech. There were several government officials there, MPs, Ministers, Senators. Some of them, including Heritage Minister James Moore, got up to speak (He got a standing ovation before he even said anything).

Deborah Gyapong has some pictures up of the event.

For those who missed it, I believe you can watch it free online for a limited time here.

I got a recording of the Clare Lopez speech and Q and A which will go up just as soon as Blogger decides to cooperate with the upload.

Ways to Describe a HRT Adjudicator's Words and Actions

2011-02-03T18:42:00.000-08:00

"Patently unreasonable", "illogical", "unsupportable in law and fact", "legal errors", behaved "inexplicably", a "breach of principles of procedural fairness and natural justice", "it is simply not possible to logically follow the pathway taken by the adjudicator", "unsupported by factual findings","unfair", "failed to apply... legal principles", decision "fatally flawed", makes apparently contradictory findings, the decision "cannot be said to be rational or logical".

Who said all of that?

A) Ezra Levant

B) Mark Steyn

C) The Ontario Superior Court of Justice

The answer is, C, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in a review of a HRTO decision.

Who was this patently unreasonable ruling against? Maxcine Telfer, a Toronto immigrant businesswoman who runs an organization devoted to helping immigrant women settle in Canada.

Result of original patently unreasonable ruling? A $36,000 fine and an attempt to seize Ms. Telfer's house in payment that was only foiled by the Superior Court's ruling.

Why? In the course of her business operations she hired Seema Saadi a legally-blind, Bengali-Canadian, Muslim social worker. But, less than six weeks after Ms. Saadi started work Audmax, Telfer's organization, let Ms. Saadi go for cause. She sued, and the HRTO found that Ms Saadi had been discriminated against on the grounds of ancestry, ethnic origin, creed, and sex largely on the grounds of their microwave and dress codes.

You lose a house for enforcing rules about what you can put in a microwave? Apparently that is what the HRT now considers reasonable.

What happened?

Audmax had a strict environmental sensitivity that restricted the use of scented products or the heating of strong smelling food in the microwave. By even the admission of the Tribunal this microwave policy was strictly enforced on everyone, to the point that other people had just stopped using the microwave rather than risk running afoul of it. Apparently however, because Ms. Telfer couldn't provide a list of acceptable ingredients this "ambiguity leads to arbitrariness and the conditions for discriminatory enforcement." and therefore discipline resulting from violating the code was discrimination on the grounds of ancestry and ethnic origin although Ms. Saadi was not singled out for adverse treatment in this way and others were adversely affected by the rule as well. Indeed as the Superior Court pointed out, "It would appear from that factual conclusion (that she continued to use the microwave where others didn't) that the policy had less impact on Ms. Saadi than on others." Also the food was apparently not even hers, which shoots down the only remaining argument, that reheating strong-smelling food was an integral part of her ethnic identity. " I do not see how the ethnicity and ancestral rights of a Bengali-Canadian Muslim are adversely affected by being prevented from reheating somebody else’s Tunisian food."(Superior Court)

All in all the Superior Court said it best, " In short, the reasons do not disclose a rational basis for the conclusion that there was discrimination against Ms. Saadi in respect of the microwave policy. "

Dress code then? Was this a Hooters masquerading as a social work agency?

Apparently Ms. Saadi always dressed in a "religiously appropriate" manner, and this never caused a problem indeed "Ms. Telfer often complimented the applicant on her fashion style." according to the HRT. However one day she came in wearing an outfit which, from the sandals and anklet, to the short skirt and leggings, to the weird hijab (unlike the traditional one she usually wore) Ms. Telfer considered unprofessional. This was apparently also discrimination, as a woman has the right to wear any form of headdress she wants if her religion mandates that she wears a headdress. In other words, Muslim women have the inalienable human right to show up at the office in a baseball cap or Mickey Mouse ears, and win tens of thousands of dollars if anyone suggests that is unprofessional. Gotcha.

The Superior Court pointed this out in vivid language.

"In my view, the adjudicator proceeded on an illogical, and legally incorrect, course of reasoning. First, he held that what Ms. Saadi was wearing on the day in question was consistent with her religious requirements. Second, he held that what Ms. Saadi was wearing was, at least according to the employer, inconsistent with the dress code. He therefore concluded that the dress code violated Ms. Saadi’s religious rights. The logical step that the adjudicator missed was a consideration of whether it was possible for Ms. Saadi to comply with the dress code without compromising her religious requirements. There was nothing about Ms. Saadi’s religion that required her to wear the particular form of hijab she was wearing on the day in question. If it was possible for her to wear a religiously acceptable form of hijab that was fully consistent with the dress code (as indeed she had done every day for six weeks), her religious rights were not affected. All that was affected was her sense of style, which apparently was in conflict with that of her employer.....
If she chose, for example, to wear a battered old sweatshirt and baggy flannelette pants, the requirements of her religion would likely be met, but surely her employer could legitimately complain that this was not suitable attire for a professional office environment.
[88] The adjudicator in this case made an irrational decision by concluding that discrimination had been established any time an item of clothing was questioned and that clothing complied with the requirements of the complainant’s religion. He ought to have considered whether the dress code, or the employer’s enforcement or interpretation of it, conflicted with what the employee was required to wear as part of her religion."

Wow, did you see that wizzing by the left hand window? Logic! Savor the moment kids, you may not see that again for a long time.

The Superior Court has also determined that it is not de facto discrimination if a man is in the room during a discussion of acceptable female business attire. Good to know.

There were other matters in the ruling but these were the primary ones.

One of the most grotesque errors on the part of the HRT was drawing negative inferences from the absence of a key witness, and thus working on the assumption that there was no reason to believe the accusations against Ms. Saadi which led to her termination. What the HRT left out of their ruling but the Superior Court caught and harped on, was that the key witness was going to testify until he was called away by a family emergency, tried to submit his testimony via sealed envelope which the tribunal refused to even open, and that Ms. Telfer, being unrepresented, was too ignorant of her rights to request an adjournment until he could testify. The Superior Court considered all of this horrifyingly unfair, especially as the Tribunal arguably had a duty to inform Ms. Telfer that she had the right to adjourn, and the fact that they decided that Ms. Telfer was lying about Ms. Saadi because she failed to produce testimony that Ms. Telfer had tried to produce but the Tribunal had disallowed just compounded the travesty of the entire ruling.

The National Post and The Star had a lot to say about the fact that Ms. Saadi had her lawyers paid for by the government, while Ms. Telfer was unrepresented because she couldn't afford a lawyer. That the deck was stacked against Ms. Telfer by not letting her key witness testify. And that the government is now paying Ms. Saadi's fine while Ms. Telfer would have lost her house to pay hers.

As Ms. Saadi said, presumably after the Superior Court overturn, "I am a little bit surprised and a little bit confused about how the justice system works,”.

Aren't we all.

Although I think she and I would be referring to different aspects of the "justice" system.

And yes Faisal Bhabha, I am talking about you, and all your HRTO buddies.

As I always say, when The Star and The Post agree that the Human Rights system is out of control, it must be really, really, out of control.

The Star

The Post

The Superior Court of Justice

The HRTO ruling

Good News in Egypt

2011-01-23T14:29:00.000-08:00

As with most current events blogs it seems that bad news frequently predominates over good news. However it is nice, every once in awhile, to be able to produce a heartwarming story of unity and solidarity in the midst of trouble, especially when it transcends frequently divisive lines.

Egyptian Muslims turned up for the Coptic Christmas Eve services, surrounding the churches as "human shields" to protect them from attack as the mass was celebrated.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.... “This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly Street. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.” In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. (Link)

Our thanks to the brave Muslims defended the right of Copts to worship peacefully in their nation. Let's keep this up, together.

I Survived Roe v. Wade

2011-01-22T19:23:00.000-08:00

Roe v. Wade - 38 Years

For a Future without abortion.

And because it deserves to be resurrected at least once a year,

The Street of the Dead Fetuses

Iranium

2011-01-22T11:26:00.000-08:00

I'm sure most of my Canadian readers are by now well aware of the Iranium shut down, but for those Canadians who might have recently come out of a coma and my international readers I will repeat a few of the more important points.

The Free Thinking Film Society was due to show the film Iranium, about Iran and its nuclear ambitions, with a Clare Lopez speech at the National Library and Archives, their usual venue of choice. Following a formal complaint from the Iranian embassy (cue sputtering indignation from anyone to the right of, say, the Canadian Charger staff) and complaints and threats from members of the public (or perhaps rather "public") the Archives canceled the screening.

Heritage Minister Moore intervened, and the Archives agreed to reinstate the screening, only to cancel it again at the last minute due to more threats.

This made front page news on just about every newspapers in Canada, commentators wanting to know since when the Iranians dictated Canadian culture events, etc. Finally the Heritage Minister intervened again and ordered the Archives to honor their obligation to show the film at a later date, now Feb 6th.

So, to all those in the area, or not in the area, the National Library and Archives is the place to be on Feb 6th to see Iranium and hear Clare Lopez (who is flying in again).

Put your money where your mouth is. Tickets available online. http://www.freethinkingfilmfest.ca/

Arizona Shooting

2011-01-10T14:54:00.000-08:00

Our condolences to Gabrielle Giffords, the victims, and families of the victims, of the Arizona shooting.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-06T20:59:00.000-08:00

To start this post off with the obvious, Happy New Year! Hopefully you all had as good a time I did, fantastic food, great friends, and Pirates of Penzance, on top of some very nice exam results (Perfect score on modern middle east, wonder why) which are my excuse for not blogging as much as might have otherwise been advised. My excuse for the next two weeks of slack posting are precalculus, statistic, and calculus. Did I mention that I haven't really started studying for statistics or calculus yet and I am supposed to know them before I start econometrics on the 18th? You can forgo the comments questioning my mental sanity, I've questioned it enough myself recently.

On that subject, the BC NDP are in a bit of a fix because their new leader must be a woman due to quota rules, and all their candidates are men. At this point I would usually talk about the negative social effects of ruling out great candidates due to the rather irrelevant fact that they are men, but I won't. It might, actually, cause me to rethink my stance on gender quotas. Because honestly a bad leader for the NDP doesn't really make my list of negative social outcomes. What fate more just then to fall upon the rocks of their own bigotry?

The first American Baby Boomer has turned 65. Welcome to the new world. Hope you like it. This seems to me like the perfect moment to resurrect one of my older posts (that had people questioning my emotional stability, caused a local scandal, and resulted in people wishing violence against me. So I knew it was pretty good.)

To continue the first half of my post some days later.

My Mother has been "encouraging" me to put up a Paypal donation button on my blog. I resist on the grounds that I do not blog often enough or well enough to justify anyone paying me. But on the slight off chance that I am wrong and I do have devoted fans who would love to support me, you can check out this little thingamajig. It is a reminder of an important, if too often overlooked, period of history, sometimes called a civil war, but having a rather one-sided outcome (let's just put it this way, their numbers today are still half what they were in the 16th century). The Huguenots, my ancestors among them, were discriminated against, forcibly converted, massacred (70,000 in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre), driven into exile. But those fortunate ones who managed to escape France alive were immensely influential in the spread and foundation of much of Protestant Christianity (John Calvin being perhaps the most famous example). One beautiful symbol, immensely rich in meaning, that they left us is the Huguenot Cross (aka the Protestant Cross)

The cross as the universal symbol of Christianity.
The base is a Maltese cross, because we are soldiers of Christ.
It is also a lily, symbol of purity and of France.
The four petals/arms symbolize the four gospels.
The eight points symbolize the beatitudes.
The hearts are to symbolize that our hearts are to be centered on Christ, and they are connected to John Calvin's seal.
The fleur-de-lis represent France, again.
The 12 petals of the four fleur-de-lis represent the 12 apostles.
The ring of points represents Christ's crown of thorns.
The dove represents the Holy Spirit. In times of persecution it was replaced by a dove, symbolizing tears.
(I know, minus several hundred points for tact, alienate all my Catholic readers and still hope to build my readership. But I do love the Huguenot story, and the Huguenot cross, and it deserves to be told. After all, bloggers aren't into political correctness right?

CBC and Kathryn Joyce may believe that "The Demographic Winter" is a piece of racist, anti-women, Christian, etc (you know the list) propaganda, but the million dollar question is this, will their ideological purity preserve them if Canada eventually goes Europe and starts seizing private retirement savings in order to boost public pension funds? H/T RuralRite

And a little late, but none the worse for that. The New York, oops sorry The New Jerusalem Times has a cover story on the birth of Jesus. Best headlines in my opinion. "Planned Parenthood's Success Story: Herod's administration implements ultra-late-term post birth (up to two years or 8th trimester) abortion regimen" and "Who Killed the Dead Sea? Large Roman-made chariots most commonly blamed for the disaster".

Favourite Pictures 2010

2010-12-27T10:44:00.000-08:00

I thought this picture was a dead winner for best political picture of 2010

Until I saw some of the other pictures from the Ukrainian Parliament smoke bomb/egg fight. The contest suddenly became too close to call.

Note flying egg.

The moment when you realize that Canadian politics really is too tame, journalistic howling about political incivility aside.

So what are the bets on Harper v. Ignatieff scrum fight?

Assange Leak Round 2

2010-12-24T09:09:00.000-08:00

For the record, I think it is not only extremely funny but altogether just that Julian Assange has been the victim of a leak of confidential police reports.

And the irony of his indignation is just perfect.

Leftists never do get it do they?

Motivation and Marriage

2010-12-24T09:06:00.000-08:00

My article, first published on MercatorNet Family Edge Blog.

For most people large, tight families who do just about everything en masse is the stuff of legend, or reality TV shows. But as the oldest of ten children I live with it every day, this article for example was interrupted to rescue a precious stuffed bunny from the new puppy, and mediate who got to wear the princess dress.

So you can imagine the results when two such families, with eight and ten children respectively, are brought together by a courtship and later engagement. Actually, unless you were brought up in a similar family you probably can’t. Suffice to say that it includes insane amounts of food, folk dancing, practical jokes involving balloons, chicken slaughtering (honest!), and a home-grown film company to make a documentary of the whole relationship. But the slaughter of innocent chickens has not been the only result of this engagement.

For my brother (19) it has also meant that adolescence, and an era of low responsibility, is officially over. While a little while ago he could afford to hesitate about committing to a particular career, now getting, and keeping, a stable, good paying job as a tradesman’s apprentice has suddenly become of vital importance. After all, if he looses his job he is going to have a very hard time convincing his fiancee’s parents that a 2011 wedding is a good idea. A reliable car has become more than a luxury, and he suddenly has no interest in spending money on computers or other non essentials. Marriage has been a great motivator.

I know my brother isn’t alone among young people when it comes to falling in love, but while it has driven him to grow up, complete milestones in education and employment, and save money, for many people the pressures that created those achievements are lacking. Last week the Institute for Marriage and Family Canada released a report on the causes of delayed adulthood. One of those, they suggest, may be co-habitation.

It would be very simplistic to suggest that co-habitation is the only reason for delayed adulthood, and in fact it may be more of a symptom than a cause. But it does rate some thoughtful consideration. If few people were willing to live together before marriage, we could reasonably expect marriage rates to climb dramatically, most people aren’t willing to wait forever for intimate companionship. And with an increase in marriage rates, young adults would be highly motivated to “get going” with their lives. While Mom and Dad may be willing to subsidize your apartment while you are going to college, with or without a clear notion of who your roommate is, they are probably less likely to do so once you get married.

Without a doubt there are myriad reasons for the lengthened period between adolescence and independent adulthood that we are seeing today, but cohabitation cannot be helping. When my brother gets married next year he will have to assume all the responsibilities of an adult, and he has risen to that challenge. But what if that challenge didn’t exist? We have been asking, “Why won’t they grow up?” Maybe we should be asking, “Why should they grow up?”

Are you obsessive and troubled?

2010-12-15T20:10:00.000-08:00

Though so.

I mean, I really hate to pick on Heather Mallick (Actually, I don't. So what I lied, sue me) but sometimes (always) she deserves it.

Abortion rights across Canada are like computer-generated word clouds, or to use a more old-fashioned analogy, ordinary sky clouds. Abortion availability is good and prominent in bigger cities in bigger provinces, wispy in small towns and the more backward provinces like New Brunswick. And in P.E.I., as always, it’s a heartless and empty sky.

Stop the presses. You mean that abortion is like everything else in Canada, more readily available in urban centres than in small towns? Who woulda thunk?

You can talk Anne of Green Gables all you like but imagine this country containing a province that treats its women the way the Irelands do. You must gather cash in your apron from kind friends and leave the island for the 10-minute procedure that’s easy to get in Toronto but would send you straight to hell in Potato Island, you filthy slut. So no change there then.

Heather Mallick, whatever her innumerable faults, has a gift for evocative language. Or at least would-be evocative language that comes across as rather humorously manipulative unless you happen to agree with her anyway. The kind motherly (oops) woman, bravely defying the judgementalism of her backwards and faintly sinister community, tearfully gathering money in her apron, deposited there by kind friends who look like Judy Dench in a period film. Oh, it tugs at the heart strings. And yes I can easily imagine living in a country like Ireland. Apparently I do anyway, but I will consider Ireland as a backup destination if something ever gets into the water supply and a certain person becomes Prime Minister.

New Brunswick is continuing its torment of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the bravest man in Canada, by dragging its heels on his lawsuit that would make the province actually obey health-care laws. Abortion is legal and covered under medicare, therefore free. But since timely abortions are extraordinarily difficult to get in the only two provincial hospitals that do them, women have to go to clinics where they pay upfront.

Well I'll be dipped in butter and rolled in breadcrumbs, the bravest man in Canada is he? And I never even knew it. Next they'll be telling us all the marijuana protesters are the bravest men (Ed: people Marmalade, no sexist language) in Canada too, after all they risk going to jail for their deeply held beliefs, and they aren't even risking having to make an acceptance speech when they get an honorary doctorate! One swoons at such manly courage. (and maybe Captain Kirk can step aside long enough for Morgentaler to become the next GG write in)

The province is clearly waiting for the good doctor, who is 87 and not in good health, to die. In his boyhood, my dear friend Henry also distressed people by not dying. They happened to be Nazi soldiers in Auschwitz, and no, I am not making a link. I am, however, pointing out an irony.

No we wouldn't be making that link now would we? We would just be making that link and then saying we didn't make that link from which people can draw their own links to match the linkage of their hearts to the gates of heaven or hell (because we all know that only pro-choice people get to choose heaven). Actually speaking of irony, the pro-lifers have a great deal to say on the irony of a holocaust survivor leading the charge to kill babies who are "unwanted", "imperfect", and "nonpersons". Did I mean to make that link? You judge for yourselves (for the more obtuse, the answer is yes).

There are now three women in the Conservative New Brunswick cabinet. One would hope they’d extend a generous hand to their youthful rural sisters and push for abortion care in the province. Thinking of you, Attorney General and Minister of Justice Marie-Claude Blais!

The SisterhoodTM! (Mutually exclusive with the deviant category defined as pro-life individuals of the gender "female")

Calgary has seen more anti-choice clamour this year, although the protesters at the University of Calgary appear to be the same as those who protest at other universities too, reports the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. This rather dilutes the local effect. Calgary is a sophisticated city. I won’t compare its new mayor to ours, as it hurts too much.

Oh shoot. I had an open mind on the subject of Naheed Nenshi (alright I know nothing about him whatsoever, but I was prepared to approve if the evidence supported such an endorsement) but now I am afraid I must irrevocably turn my back on any thoughts of considering the man anything but a Calgary tragedy. Unless of course Mallick really only supports him because she thinks a Muslim mayor in Calgary just sticks it in the eye of Alberta (Disregarding the fact that they voted for him) and thus her support is purely racially and religiously based and has nothing to do with policy. Hm, could be. Maybe I better continue to keep an open mind on the subject of Mayor Nenshi.
And wonder of wonders, pro-life students manage to simultaneously enroll in U of O, U of C, and several dozen other campuses across Canada. Where are they getting that money? Where is the CRA? Why aren't they auditing these miraculous students?

Another issue is Bill C-510 on “coerced abortion.” Priests for Life loves it, and is passionate in its desire for women to bear more children, even unwanted ones.

One assumes that, by definition, coerced abortions were not unwanted by the women. Who then? The men in their lives? Mallick thinks that if a man doesn't want a child he should be able to force a woman to abort it, and kill her if she refuses? Before she sues me I know she doesn't, but that interpretation aside I am at some loss to understand what exactly the above sentence meant, if anything.

As always, I see political debates in graphic terms, mainly because I translate debates on principle into the suffering they cause to actual humans. And I remain disgusted by the continuing efforts of anti-choicers to figuratively stick their fingers into the uteri of women, as though they have a right to set up shop there.

In which case I am sure she absolutely loves the fact that public displays containing images of aborted fetuses allow us to move the debate into the realm of graphic human suffering. After all, that is her chosen battle ground right? Right?

They do not. A person’s body is their own fenced-off area and it is their choice what they do inside it.

Except put it in front of an abortion clinic.

And yet we have hard-right Canadian newspapers and magazines debating whether women should be allowed even to have caesarean births or to cut back on the number of embryos that survive implantation during IVF procedures. No, a woman shouldn’t have twins if she doesn’t wish to. No, she shouldn’t have to be an octomom if her IVF has been badly handled.

And, incidentally my dear Mallick, we have every single letter to the editor on the subject professing horror and disgust that anyone would murder a child's twin as a measure of convenience. Do you really enjoy living in that kind of Canada Mallick? Knowing that the person you say "hi" to every day shudders at the thought of killing a twin so that the remaining child can have more new clothes? Actually, I take that all back. As you have yourself admitted to not knowing anyone who is a serious Christian I assume you live in a fairly sheltered Canada and don't have to deal with that. My mistake.

Women will find it almost impossible to be self-supporting or have satisfying careers until they can direct their own reproduction. So childbirth must often be delayed till their 30s. As usual, Quebec is at the forefront, paying for IVF procedures but with the goal of a woman ending up with one healthy infant as opposed to six damaged ones (which is what happens in private clinics that charge enormous fees and roll the dice on infant health).

Because most women love to live through the pain of infertility and IVF because no one told them that glib statements about delaying childbirth have less than glib realities. I'm not forcing anyone not to use birth control. I just prefer that we don't kill children already in existence. I also, for the record, oppose mothers being able to kill their dependent children when they realize a year after cute Suzy was born that being a single Mom really puts a damper on education and career.

It will never end, this need for troubled obsessive people — the Harperites of Canada — to take ownership of others, to prod inside the female body — and into the stuff of our souls — for control. Should Stephen Harper win a majority in a possible spring election, every right women have won over the decades will drift into the ether, like clouds.

And here we are again, back at Harper and the conservatives. It's always the Harper, isn't it. I sure hope for Mallick's sake that liberals, or worse yet NDP, don't take over Canada. She'd be out of business overnight. Unless you count several years of victory cheers business.
But just savor this passage for a moment, to prod into the "stuff of our souls - for control" because we just know that under a Harper majority women would lose the right to vote (honest, that is what that says. Read it), and before you knew it every woman in Canada would have invested in a Julia Child pearl necklace and be scrubbing floors all day long for 50 cents an hour, if they were allowed to work at all.

You almost have to feel sorry for someone who's entire security and assurance of freedom is nothing more than clouds, to be whisked away by malevolent men at the drop of a hat if a few seats tip the wrong way. Actually one really does feel sorry for her, it must be hard to live in such an angst ridden "reality".

But I'm still going to laugh at her if she insists on parading her paranoia to the world of Star readers.

Heroine of human dignity: Mildred Fay Jefferson

2010-12-14T10:37:00.001-08:00

So the new (or new to me) email feature of blogger works! Cool. Anyway, my latest article on MercatorNet.
Heroine of human dignity: Mildred Fay Jefferson Source: mercatornet.com The first black woman to graduate from Harvard medical school used her position to defend the humanity of the unborn.

missmarprelate@gmail.com sent this using ShareThis.

Not ALL the British are Crazy

2010-12-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

Just most of them.

However one sane judge still seems to know what the phrases "religious freedom" and "freedom of speech" mean. And that they actually apply to Christians too.

Talk about judicial thoughtcrime.

Maybe they should put up posters about that.

When Quoting Orwell Feels Like a Broken Record

2010-12-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

Maybe I am the only person in the world who feels like this, but the huge flat-screen TVs at Wal-Mart checkouts really get on my nerves. It is bad enough that you are trapped in a line up like a hamster in a too small cage, but then they have to gratuitously rub it in by playing advertisements at you the entire time. Talk about adding insult to injury.

I just refuse to look.

Now, in the States not only will you be forced to endure perky advertisements featuring smiling families selling you trashy clothing or electronics, you will also be forced to watch ads (either perky or ominous, no news on that yet) encouraging you to report "suspicious behaviour" to the authorities in order to fight terrorism and crime. While the CNN story doesn't elaborate on what constitutes "suspicious behaviour", we may be able to gain some insight from British anti-terrorism campaigns.

British radio-ad transcript:

Female Voice over:

How d’you tell the difference between someone just video-ing a crowded place and someone who’s checking it out for a terrorist attack?

How can you tell if someone’s buying unusual quantities of stuff for a good reason or if they’re planning to make a bomb?
What’s the difference between someone just hanging around and someone behaving suspiciously?
How can you tell if they’re a normal everyday person, or a terrorist?
Male voice over:
The answer is, you don’t have to.

Or, my personal favourites, the parodies.

The HRCs - Crazy or Evil? Discuss.

2010-12-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

I thought I was past being surprised, if not angered, by the Human Rights Commissions, I really did. I have seen them make stupid decisions, I have seen them make not so stupid decisions. I have seen them on innumerable occasions spill mind-numbing quantities of time, money, and ink on the process of dismissing vindictive and fabricated complaints.

But they managed it. Oh yes, did they ever.

The Quebec HRC has just awarded a pilot by the name of Javed Latif $319,000 in compensation for racial discrimination by Bombardier when it refused to allow him to take pilot training at one of their facilities.

Why did Bombardier do this?

Because, as it turned out, the United States considered him to be a "threat to aviation or national security" and refused to allow him to train in the United States.

Bombardier, after thinking about this for probably less than thirty seconds, decided that if an individual was on the United States' no-fly list (or at least no-flying-training list, reports are a little vague) they probably didn't want to train him to fly jets.

Reasons 1-30 for this decision probably read, "Bad idea for really obvious reasons that no one should have to explain", number 31 was that if they trained him their training facility could be decertified as a training center for US pilots (For this reason alone I would expect them to win the HRC complaint on the grounds of undue hardship), and number 32 was, to quote Bombardier “If there’s a threat, in good conscience… it ends there. It’s a business call. It’s a decision. It’s a safety call.” (As a potential flyer, thank you)

We won't even go into the consequences of if, God forbid, anything had happened and it turned out that Bombardier had ignored clear warnings of potential trouble, can anyone say Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? Methinks $300,000 is suddenly starting to look very small indeed.

But far worse and more sinister than the $300,000, which is probably Bombardier's annual paper clip budget, is the other order the Quebec HRC handed down. They have ordered Bombardier to “stop applying or considering the standards or decisions of American authorities in terms of ‘national security’”.

Read that again, then continue.

The Americans say, "This person is a potential terrorist". Bombardier says "I never heard that, are you ready to start flight training yet?"

And we have to go through naked scanners and "enhanced pat-downs" on the less than million to one chance that a random person pulled out of an airport lineup is going to be a terrorist.

Why must they ignore American information when deciding whether or not to train a pilot? Because according to a Canadian law professor, American security laws "are based on stereotypes and racial profiling, and identify these groups (Muslims and Arabs) as national security threats.”

Indeed.

A few closing facts for the record. As soon as Mr. Latif was taken off the list as a security threat in 2008, Bombardier happily provided him with all the training he wanted. Bombardier has also trained a number of Muslim and Middle Eastern pilots since 9/11, just not ones that were considered a security risk. So obviously this was no pattern of systematic racial profiling on Bombardier's part.

Also, one may feel sorry for Mr. Latif if, as seems more than likely, he is an innocent person who got put on the list by mistake. But that's not Bombardier's fault, and they made the only responsible decision. After all, what if he wasn't innocent? And even if Bombardier had checked with the Canadian government (as they were faulted for not doing) and the Canadian government didn't have anything on him, there would still exist a significant question mark.

There is security that is over the top, and there is security that just makes sense. Not letting the mouse guard the cheese, or the potential terrorist fly the plane, seems like common sense to me.

Tasha Kheiriddian
National Post
CTV
The Star

Just for Fun

2010-12-05T21:08:00.000-08:00

So for the record I have no idea what this is supposed to be advertising, but it is a pretty cool movie. Does your subway turn into a roller coaster?

H/T Samuel Kordik

Petition on Human Smuggling

2010-12-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

JJ Honasan, someone I know from the Canada Student Forums (Great event by the way, one which I highly recommend attending if at all possible), has put up a petition in support of a "National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking in Canada" as put forward by MP Joy Smith, one of the speakers at last year's CSF.

"It is quintessential that Canada have a National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking. According to the US Department of State’s 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report, Canada is a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking.

The RCMP estimates that 600-800 persons are trafficked into Canada annually, predominantly for sexual purposes, and that an additional 1,500-2,200 persons are trafficked through Canada into the United States. "

Sign it.

Drip, Drip, LEAK!!!

2010-12-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

In Yes Minister, the incomparable show of "Why politicians are idiots and bureaucrats are the enemy" they depend a great deal on leaks. Drip this here, drip that there, embarrass so and so here. "The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top down".

As far as I can see the reason for freedom of speech is that there is always a tension, or the possibility of tension, between the rulers and subjects. Even in generally contented and peaceful nations, in which category I would put Canada, has issues in that regard. Sometimes as a result of the government trying to encourage too much contentment and peace, hate speech legislation springs to mind.

So to my mind there is a continual war, a great game, a gentleman's duel between the government and the people. They try to keep us in the dark about things, we try to find out about things. They try to play their games, we try to make a decent life for ourselves and ignore them as far as possible. They try to leak us the info they want leaked, we try to get more. Sometimes we cooperate with the government, we help them suppress information, we follow the laws, usually when we believe it is our best interest to do so or we can't be bothered resisting.

So I don't really see the point of getting too upset about the wikileaks affair. Maybe we scored a point, maybe the ship of state leaked again (unlikely I suppose but...), maybe no one scored a point and it was all just meaningless. (We learned that Canadians have an inferiority complex re the States, a pond is also wet and the Sahara is also dry.)

But I don't get the free speechers saying this shouldn't have happened. Why not? The claim about costing lives is very sketchy at this point, and the same could be said, is said, with potentially more credibility about "hate speech".

It embarrassed a lot of people. That's called life. I don't like having my country embarrassed more than the next person, probably less than the next lefty. But, if the truth will set you free, then what are we afraid of?

And if the truth is too much for us to take, do we deserve to continue?

And if it is all lies, well the great refrain of free speech is combat bad speech with good speech.

Do we believe that when it really matters?

"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security" Ben Franklin

Go for it Mr. Franklin.

And don't kill Julian Assange.

Postscript to Hats

2010-12-02T17:54:00.000-08:00

As a commentator has mentioned that my last post on hats is not as comprehensive, or inclusive, as might be desired. To remedy that I present Hats - Male.

1 megawatt of power = 5 jobs lost

2010-11-28T16:26:00.000-08:00

Spain, once heralded as the model for the future of green economies has proposed slashing subsidies to solar and wind power by 30%, and is expected to withdraw financial backing for renewable power plants after economists discovered, too late, that every megawatt of renewable power generated cost five Spanish jobs (Ontario, having cribbed Spain's model, is just now confronting its own electrical cost reckoning).

Just what we need, more jobs lost in Ontario!

Thanks McGuinty and Smitherman.

Hats

2010-11-28T16:06:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know I have a thing about hats. I like hats. I love hats. So you can imagine that even if I wasn't a monarchist already, the news that the royal engagement is likely to cause an upsurge in hat popularity would have filled me with the warm and fuzzies. And yet, on the other hand, what do you do when you find your personal fashion statement becoming a popular fad? Drop it in the interests of staying unique? Follow along and let everyone think you are a mindless trend follower? The questions that women have to grapple with.

Hat picture from my favorite hat shop, Beau Chapeau in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Quote of the Day

2010-11-26T14:31:00.000-08:00

I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. ... I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1943

Money, Money, Money by the Pound

2010-11-22T18:06:00.000-08:00

Is required to keep the wheels of revolution turning. (Cue evil laugh)

But we will refrain from imposing crop seizure on any peasants who may be reading my blog. We will just turn the thumb screws on your conscience and point out that if you really believed in freedom of speech you would support those on the front line...

"Fee Speech" Fundraiser for arrested Carleton Students.

JDL Chanukah Party to support Blazing Cat Fur on December. Honestly I'd like to go, but only if they have the purple kitty menorah.

And any spare cash you have lying around could go to support the great and wonderful Binks. Either that or some strategic purchases on his Amazon account.

Oh yes, and if you like Miss Marprelate and know of any spare jobs lying around, you could chuck them this way. There, that is my shameless pitch for the month. Got it over with, back to politics.

Airport Security

2010-11-18T17:35:00.000-08:00

Look it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when the Toronto Star is campaigning for the "Israelification" of airport security, that maybe this would be a good idea. It isn't like that kind of statement comes naturally to them after all.

And it also doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that evacuating Pearson terminal as a first response to a suspicious bag is not really a great idea. Actually let me amend that, it doesn't even come up to the level of an idea.

It also shouldn't come as a particular surprise to anyone that some people aren't crazy about getting sexually molested in order to fly on an airplane. Think I'm exaggerating? How would you describe this? “I was wearing shorts at the time – between the underwear, right on the skin, all the way around the back, all the way around my front, 360 degrees, touched inappropriately,”

And no it doesn't make me feel much better that it is same-sex pat-downs. After all, I have this sneaking suspicion that they aren't allowed to discriminate against gay and lesbian TSA officers. And frankly I don't want anyone touching me there regardless of orientation.

But it is wonderful to know that apparently Muslim women who wear hijabs don't, or shouldn't, have to go through a pat down. According to CAIR anyway.

Before you are patted down, you should remind the TSA officer that they are only supposed to pat down the area in question, in this scenario, your head and neck. They SHOULD NOT subject you to a full-body or partial-body pat-down.

Instead of the pat-down, you can always request to pat down your own scarf, including head and neck area, and have the officers perform a chemical swipe of your hands

That would be after you demanded to know why you were selected for screening, if it had anything to do with your wearing a hijab, and probably threatening to sue for discrimination.

Web page complete with contact info for CAIR, apparently in case these guidelines aren't followed by the TSA.

CONTACT: CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, or 202-488-8787, E-Mail: ihooper@cair.com; CAIR Communications Coordinator Amina Rubin, 202-488-8787, 202-341-4171, E-Mail: arubin@cair.com

The ACLU, in one of it's rare fits of usefulness, supplies a handy form for you to file a complaint.

In related news a woman is suing because she was publicly exposed during a search, and experienced crude jokes from airport staff.

And to make it all better, you have as much chance of getting cancer from the naked scanners as being a victim of a terrorist bombing.

But you can sue and send the TSA people to jail for up to three years if you can prove they acted inappropriately.

That's nice.

But I'll bet nearly impossible.

So how far is too far in the name of security?

Discuss.

Caledonia Part 2

2010-11-17T05:52:00.000-08:00

Not only did law and order break down in Caledonia due to political correctness, those who want to speak about it are shut down by political correctness.

Christie Blatchford, a Governor-General award winner, wrote a book on Caledonia and got shut down by students at the University of Waterloo in an Ann Coulter reprise, presumably without the "Go back to America" slogans.

Remind me again why ANYONE thinks that universities are bastions of free speech, diversity, or intelligence?

Interestingly, no one shut down George Galloway, the students just protested in the designated areas, even though many strongly disagreed with him.

Buy Helpless: Caledonia's Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us

Fix the United States Budget

2010-11-15T19:54:00.000-08:00

Ohhh I like fun little toys. And right now, the New York Times has the funnest little toy of all fun little toys on their website called..... Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget. Cue little squeals of delight and hand rubbing from all the political geeks and junkies who like nothing better than a five minute fix to vital questions of international importance.

So here you go ladies and gentlemen, how would you fix the budget? Do tell in the comment section. I am almost scared to put my results up, because I didn't take a great deal of time doing this and I am sure everyone will disagree with my answers, if for completely different reasons. However I did manage to eliminate both the short and long term deficit while ringing up a surplus.

My results.

Marmalade's Report on the FTFF

2010-11-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

Miss Marprelate attended the First Annual Free Thinking Film Festival this weekend and parachutes back to give a full report, or at least a full report of the movies she watched, due to overlapping schedules she regretfully missed some.

First off, great event and very glad I went. Some wonderful movies, terrific discussion panel, and I liked the Havarti and grapes.

The first evening got off to a rocky start with the movie Kalifornistan, which elicited a mixed response. Most of the (few) people I talked to hated the thing, myself included. It was an avant-garde movie based on the premise that the cause of terrorism is sexual repression and mental insanity (Not, for example, a religious devotion and worldview), featuring an exotic dancer and deranged terrorist. It was, to be really frank, stupid, offensive, liberal, and disturbing.

One sentence review: Worst movie I ever watched, don't even think about buying it.

The next morning things improved drastically with the movie Katyn, about the massacre of 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviets. It followed a few of the officers and their families in a gripping award-winning narrative film, which was nominated for an Oscar. I found it to be extremely powerful, moving, and actually very Christian movie. It did have some moments of very intense violence for those who are concerned about that, for example when they were executing the officers one by one as the officers were reciting the Lord's Prayer.

One sentence review: Not for children, but incredibly powerful and superbly crafted.

I changed gears for the next movie, a Michael Moore style documentary called Mine Your Own Business. It covered three proposed mining projects in Romania, Madagascar, and Chile which have all been virulently opposed by environmentalists. Meanwhile the local people are looking forward to getting a decent job at the mine and climbing out of poverty, a dream that is in peril due to environmentalists pressure. One notable moment in the movie was when an environmentalist who makes about $100,000 a year claims (not exact quote) that in this little village success is not measured in things like money, health, nutrition, or education but in smiles. And as rich people are more stressed and less happy these people don't want better jobs.

One sentence review: Good movie, interesting, not kind to environmentalists.

Afterwards Ezra Levant and Elizabeth May squared off on the oil sands. Ezra focused on how we should increase Canadian oil production because it is so much more ethical than other oil sources. Elizabeth May thought that was like coming up with better child labor conditions. She preferred to talk about our lack of a national energy strategy and how we need more manufacturing, less oil, and a way to get oil to the Maritimes without building a pipeline through green areas (alternative not expounded upon). CPAC was there recording it, so it will probably be broadcast by them at some point.

Generation Zero opened up Sunday afternoon with probably the most important documentary I saw at the festival. It focused on cycles of culture in history, and how the current economic collapse (which is just beginning) is a failure of morality. They cover a lot of stuff like the bank's completely irresponsible lending, which the governments (right and left) happily bailed them out of. In other words, we have privatized profits and nationalized risks, but capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell, it doesn't work.

One sentence review: Very important documentary vital to understanding why we are where we are, and where we are going.

Mr. Conservative went on my list of not so great films. In the interests of full disclosure, I watched about ten minutes of it, decided that this was going to be a waste of time, and skipped out to watch one of the other movies. However I got the report afterwards from someone who did stick it out, and was glad I didn't. Apparently Goldwater was a libertarian, not a conservative. His wife started Planned Parenthood in their state, he was pro-gay, and very anti the religious right.

One sentence review: Not my cup of tea, could be yours.

The panel discussion afterwards with Terry Glavin, John Robson, Karen Selick, and Joseph Ben Ami was great however.Unfortunately I missed the first part of Joseph Ben Ami's speech but liked what I heard. I also loved John Robson's definition of conservative as "metaphysical sanity" because we don't demand more of the universe than it can give. And he quoted Chesterton, so two thumbs up. I have to read him much more, he is fantastic (Robson, I already knew Chesterton was fantastic). At the very end they were talking about the connection between conservatives and libertarians, how we can dialog, etc, and Ben Ami and Robson both said that abortion is the litmus test, basically if we can't agree on that we can't agree on anything and we can't even really come to the table together. Which was a surprising thing for them to say there. They also said you cannot be a conservative without being a social conservative (at an event hosted by a gay conservative), or at least Robson said that straight out, Ben Ami was slightly more convoluted but that is what he believes. VladTepes blog was recording that, and he says it will be on his blog and probably the free thinking film website eventually.

We Need to Talk, which I watched in between Mr. Conservative and the panel discussion, was an interesting pro-abstinence, pro-father, pro-life, pro-Christian movie about ten black women from Chicago who had made some mistakes in their lives, and were now giving advice to younger women on how to avoid falling into the same traps. They spoke about how having intimate relationships outside the covenant (yes they used that word) of marriage was like an amputation, giving parts of yourself away to multiple guys. How they regretted their abortions more than anything else, how the loss of their fathers led them to search for male affirmation in all the wrong ways, and how that desire for love and affirmation can never be filled outside of a relationship with Christ. The only thing I regretted was that the message seemed incomplete, because they showed the negatives of a broken life well, but were weak on the positives of a whole life.

One sentence review: Due to my last regret I cannot quite rave about the movie, but otherwise excellent.

All in all I am glad I went. It would be unreasonable, I suppose, to expect that I would love every movie. My strongest regret was that I had to miss so many of the other ones due to overlapping schedules, but that is not a bad regret.

The FTFF left me wanting more. Good job to you all.

Remembrance Day

2010-11-11T16:33:00.000-08:00

A link back to last year's Remembrance Day post, featuring my brother's amazing WWI serial story that was published in the Pembroke Daily Observer.

Shock in Oklahoma

2010-11-09T08:18:00.000-08:00

The ACLU Oklahoma is supporting a lawsuit that would allow US judges to make ruling with reference to Old Testament/Torah law and ecclesiastical traditions.

Or rather, that is, as they are reflected in Sharia law.

A recent Oklahoma constitutional amendment that prohibits judges from taking international law or sharia law into consideration has been put on hold as it may violate the US Constitution. It has been denounced as Islamaphobic, and discriminatory because it will prevent Muslims from participating in things like getting married, writing wills, forming contracts, etc if they want to incorporate Sharia elements into those things (Personally I strongly doubt that, actually I am sure it won't.) Alternately they also denounce it as unnecessary because no Oklahoma Muslim has ever dreamed of wanting Sharia taken into consideration by courts. Not sure which story they will eventually stick with.

A lawsuit against the amendment is being brought by CAIR.

http://www.edmondsun.com/local/x1364884942/Anti-sharia-measure-faces-legal-challenge

The Very Model of a Modern US President

2010-11-08T17:24:00.000-08:00

I often try to avoid traipsing into the morass of American politics and endless Obama jokes. But I do like Gilbert and Sullivan.

Link if the crazy thing doesn't want to show up properly. Don't ask me why it won't. Things I am not good at. Anything computer related. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y54FRMedT_s

Heather Mallick Call Your Pollster

2010-10-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/881542--mallick-voters-were-filled-with-largely-pointless-rage

Question: After Monday's elections, are you more optimistic about your city, or less optimistic?

If even the Star cannot get more than 50-51% of their readers to be less optimistic, in a poll featured on a Heather Mallick column no less that starts with the profound point "Mayor Rob Ford, Oh dear" and draws to a close with the stellar observation that "Within the next four years, our rage will be scented by rotting garbage and we’ll be riding burros to work.", no wonder Rob Ford won the election.

Then again, maybe the only people who read Heather Mallick aren't left-wing, maybe they are all right-wingers who find her funny. Always a possibility.

Or maybe even some liberals hate government corruption and waste enough to vote for Rob Ford.

On second thought, I think I'll go with hypothesis one. I don't think Heather Mallick knows anyone who voted for Rob Ford, except maybe her manicurist.

Coming Up, and Up, and Up

2010-10-26T19:37:00.001-07:00

I tried to think of what I could say about Ontario Hydro that was simultaneously bad enough, and wouldn't get me into trouble with either the law or my Mother (who reads my blog regularly in order to keep me alive and out of court), but came up blank. On second thoughts, make that just the law, my Mom could probably think of her own things to say on the subject of Ontario Hydro worse than any insult I could dream up.

Over 10,000 people make more than $100,000 a year, including CEO of Ontario Power Generation who made $2.15 million and his successor who made $1 million, as well as $975,000 for the CEO of Hydro One. Meanwhile Hydro has doubled since 2003. And thanks to renewables and George Smitherman, not likely to go down. Margaret Wente suggests that anger over this could bring down the Ontario Liberals. Why not? Do you know anyone who doesn't hate Ontario Hydro? Anyone? Anyone? (Hydro employees are NOT invited to stuff the vote on this one)

And my economics textbook tried to tell me that electrical companies are examples of monopolies that don't exploit people.

Yes, you with the Latte.

2010-10-26T19:20:00.001-07:00

Kelly McParland writes the far and away funniest commentary on the Rob Ford election.

For Toronto’s urban sophisticates, it was a wipe-out. Total repudiation. Worse than the time they ran out of well-oaked chardonnay at Vintages. What are they supposed to do now, move to Calgary? Buy a leaf blower, for .....? Any day now they’ll be erecting barriers at Pusateri’s, checking IDs. No one gets in without a credit card from Home Depot.

Wearily they munched their almond biscottis and totted up the devastation. Someone would have to contact the holistic, non-profit communal bike-sharing project and warn them the grand opening, scheduled for January, would be delayed.

But you really must read it, every line is hysterically funny.

While the Canadian Charger, as usual being more Marxist than Muslim, endorsed Smitherman. Why do I have this funny feeling that a large number of Muslims actually voted for, wait for it, Ford. The non-gay guy. And the one who doesn't believe in wasting immigrant's hard-earned tax dollars on wasteful and extravagant programs that cater to the already rich.

BTW, one suspects it was a really great day for crisis psychiatrists in Toronto Monday night. Just the Star office alone would have provided employment for about ten.

Upcoming Ottawa events this weekend.

2010-10-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

International Pro-Life Conference on Oct 28-31.
Canada's Immigration and Refugee System: What's Wrong and How to Fix It? on Oct 30th.
Ezra Levant Tribute Dinner with Mark Steyn, Oct 30th.

Alberta, Free Speech or Free University?

2010-10-26T16:59:00.000-07:00

Freedom of speech is very, very important.

Almost as important as institutional autonomy.

Or private property.

An Alberta judge has ruled that universities, in their dealings with students, are government agencies, and thus are subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Thus, the U of C was out of line when it put two students on probation for starting a Facebook group criticizing one of their professors. Some people are seeing this as a victory for freedom of speech, and an especial boon for pro-life students who frequently face opposition, discipline, and arrest for putting forward their view on campus.

But this is not necessarily a victory for freedom. Universities enjoy autonomy for a reason, several actually. And even though this autonomy can and is abused, very often at the expense of right-wing and/or pro-life people, that is not necessarily a good reason to flush it down the tube. Do we really want universities to be government institutions, subject to all government rules and regulations? Really? As George Jonas says:

Institutional autonomy is one of the pillars of liberty. Societies are free to the extent that their institutions — family, church, university — are off limit to the state. This doesn’t sit well with the state, which often uses the sword of justice or “protection” to cut through institutional autonomy in its warfare upon liberty. Using the Charter to sharpen the sword is a bright idea — bright enough to obscure its function.

It's not that I particularly trust university administration to guard freedom of speech. I don't. But given a choice between the government and the university setting the rules, I think I would go with the university.

At least it is easier to switch universities than nationalities. (And at this point, I'm not sure what other country to run to)

Roundup: Shriveling Weeds and Catching Horses

2010-10-21T18:58:00.000-07:00

It was a traumatic moment, the time I found out that I agreed with Warren Kinsella on something. A phrase I'm sure he won't sue me for because he would probably be just as aghast at the though of agreeing with me, a blogger who actually likes Ezra Levant. It forced me to take a closer look at my position, study it from all angles, but I eventually had to reach an uneasy truce with my original opinion and decided that the reason we agree is because no marginally sane person on the face of the planet could disagree. In the entire list of crazy, insane, and just plain wrong things that I have read about over the last little while the arrest of David Chen stands out as one of the worst. The man did a citizen's arrest on a shoplifter. And the shoplifter gets a reduced sentence to testify against the store owner on charges of assault, kidnapping, carrying a concealed weapon (aka box cutter), and forcible confinement, although some charges have been dropped. The best argument the crown can come up with is the suggestion that maybe the store owner was going to beat him up later. Unlike the last time he arrested a shoplifter and didn't. Personally I would vote that Chen gets a medal. It isn't, after all, like the cops were going to do anything about it on their own. Probably tell you to fill out a form. Because that stops crime.
P.S. Just in case you were still in some doubt as the level of mind-numbing incompetence down there in Toronto, they had months to get this case to trial but somehow or other couldn't get a Mandarin interpreter. In Toronto? That's got to be like saying you can't find a French interpreter in Montreal.

Speaking of Toronto, and incompetence, and Toronto incompetence, etc. Miss Marprelate hereby endorses Rob Ford. Yes, she is a little sketchy on some of his exact policies except for the cut spending bits, Toronto municipal elections do not come very high up on her list of "issues and events I need to follow", but has several sound reasons for coming to this conclusion.

Heather Mallick really hates him. This alone was enough to secure my endorsement. If any of my readers have not read her piece on the gun registry, DO SO NOW. You will not regret it. Personally, I believe I shall remember the phrase "rare orchid of exquisite life-saving beauty" until the day I die. It's not that I object to flowery prose, but, honestly? And then this on the subject of how Toronto could consider Ford (And America Bush). Cue eye rolling smilie:

Voters, they’re like babies. They don’t change, can’t change. They repeatedly swallow buttons and emit eternal rivers of drool.

Actually that analogy is wrong. Babies are canny. They have a deep drive toward self-preservation (this explains smiling and gurgling) and they know where their interests lie. If they could choose parental units, they’d choose wise, patient ones with an understanding of the GTA’s transit needs, the importance of libraries, trees and good architecture, what keeps a city functioning and just how far you can push unions.
His sense of style.
He wasn't endorsed by Justin Trudeau. Also enough to secure the endorsement of MM on its own.
There is no love lost between Ford and Unions. Even the construction worker's union is switching its vote to Smitherman from Pantalone to get in on the "Anyone but Rob Ford" bandwagon. A particularly interesting choice since I would be willing to bet very large amounts of money on the fact that the majority of construction workers are probably going to vote for Rob Ford.
He's actually a conservative, in Toronto. Its like seeing Northern Lights in Florida. You just have to like it. (Unless you are an environmentalist who would see this as absolute proof of global warming and die of heart failure.

My friend who is not a blogger but should be Ben Hicks points out that accusing all Muslims of being backward, terrorist, abusive, haters on the basis of the actions of a few is remarkably similar to accusing all Americans of being backward, hostile, intolerant, discriminatory, thugs on the basis of the actions of one man. Funny how liberals never think of these things isn't it.

Those who wish to get in a sighting of teh Marprelate and or teh Marprelate's Hat will have the opportunity to do so at the First Annual Free Thinking Film Festival. (And no I haven't gone atheist, someone should tell them that isn't really the world's best name considering possible audience. But it will probably be an interesting event.) Tickets on sale here.

Mark Steyn has been banned from speaking at a government owned conference centre in London ON, after the facility received pressure from local Islamic groups. Incidentally and seemingly unrelated, a public announcement from Faisal Joseph that the Islamic response to Steyn will be to drown his speech in the compassion and charitable good works of Islam.
P.S. And for the record, I don't believe that freedom of speech means freedom of venue or medium, when the venue and medium belong to someone else who doesn't want you. Albeit things get sticky when you have a government owned facility.
P.P.S. Also for the record, everyone has the right to protest just about anything, and that includes Muslims.
P.P.P.S. I'm not sure if Faisal Joseph realizes this yet, but you can either be one of two things. You can have your name linked with the CIC, or you can have people listen to you and give you their respectful attention. Not both. Just ask Delic.
P.P.P.P.S. That last postscript obviously does not include United Church pastors and Star opinion columnists. But then when one person in the asylum tells another that they are made of glass, "Napoleon" is very likely to believe him.

Government fat police, Japan style, B.C. style. Which do you prefer?

The Quest for Ethical Oil

2010-10-18T06:04:00.000-07:00

My latest article published by MercatorNet, lots of hyperlink references in the original at MN.

Oil sands: satanic horror, or priceless jewel? To describe the extremes of the debate over Canada’s large bitumen deposits thus is barely to exaggerate the positions taken up by opponents and supporters of exploitation of this rising source of crude oil.

For environmentalists, oil sands, or as they are technically known, bituminous sands, are the epitome of everything they hate: big business, oil, greenhouse gas emissions, oil, water wasted and polluted, oil, governmental indifference or collusion, oil, threatened animals and trees -- oh yes, and oil as well. A boycott of fuel sourced from Canadian fields is under way and gathering traction.

For many Canadians, however, and indeed for investors worldwide, oil sands represent an entirely different set of circumstances. For young men in depressed rural Ontario, poverty-stricken communities in Atlantic Canada, and job-scarce northern reserves, this resource represents hope of a future, a down payment on a house, and career training they might never otherwise get.

Alberta's riches, at least partly due to this unconventional oil, funds equalization payments and helps to build schools and hospitals in have-not provinces. Ontario alone stands to gain about 55 billion dollars in oil sands related manufacturing and other economic activity over the next 25 years. Even local communities, whom environmentalists like to put forward as victims of commercial poisoning and exploitation, cannot but benefit economically from a massive employment centre in an area which might otherwise be mostly barren.

These considerations aside, there is no question that the optics are not pretty. Strip mining, massive equipment, oil slicks, flaring smoke stacks and dead birds are not warm and cozy images. Questions being raised about environmental impacts, pollution, water contamination, and so forth are legitimate. Extracting crude bitumen produces more greenhouse gases than conventional production, and a recent study alleges that the oil sands are unacceptably polluting Alberta’s Athabasca River.

As a result, there has been a strong push by environmentalist groups to encourage boycotts of oil extracted from bitumen, the people involved with or investing in oil sands, and the entire province of Alberta, greenies and all. One corporation that has taken up the challenge to shun this demonic fuel is Walgreens, a major U.S. drug store chain of 7,500 stores. Levi Strauss, Gap, and Timberland were also reported to have boycotted the oil sands, but have since clarified their stances to avoid the word boycott, possibly in response to calls for a counter-boycott by Canadians. Walgreens, with no Canadian business to lose, has proven more staunch in its commitment to environmentally-conscious corporate ethics.

Corporate ethics is a rather popular buzz word, and not just with humourists at dinner parties. Bending to public pressure, aka the squeakiest wheel, corporations have been inspired to boost their image by reforming overseas labour practices, promoting equal opportunity hiring, aspiring to places on lists of top ethical companies, and funding/donating everything from children’s playgrounds to condoms. Looking after the environment, however, seems to be a popular ethical issue among companies whose brands have become household names through large retail chains.

Especially if it is not likely to cost them anything. Walgreens admits that the oil sands boycott as it currently stands is likely to have little economic effect on the company since they do not use much fuel from that source to start with. The main point of such gestures might seem to be the opportunity to get an image -- and hopefully sales -- upgrade as a result of their “enlightened ethics” rather than out of a disinterested commitment to environmental issues. In an ironic note, critics have also suggested that those who are involved should first take a look at their own morals: Gap has been caught using child labour in Delhi and Walgreens have come under fire for fraud involving Medicare.

But even if we are to take them at their word, that the boycott is a result of an honest commitment to sustainable and ethical business, is boycotting the oil sand industry really ethical? Assuming Walgreens isn't going to switch their trucks to solar or wind power, how ethical are the alternatives? While it may be more carbon intensive (with about 5-15% more emissions based on “well to wheels” analysis than the American average), the oil sands have advantages in other ways.

For one thing, the industry supports a progressive democracy that cares about things like environmental standards and human rights. In contrast, Saudi Arabia's “cleaner” oil, it can be argued, supports tyranny and terrorism. And, while Canada requires ever tighter environmental regulations, other countries ignore such issues; Nigeria, America's fourth largest supplier, has even hanged environmentalists for speaking out against oil interests.

Ezra Levant, author of Ethical Oil, also points out that, metaphorically speaking, every barrel of oil from Sudan contains a teaspoon of human blood, based on the UN death count of 300,000 for the Darfur genocide. He continues to argue that the oil sands are the ethical choice on the liberal grounds of economic justice, minority rights, freedom and, believe it or not, environmentalism.

No one doubts that environmental issues can be very serious, and deserve thoughtful consideration. A convincing argument could also be made that oil sands extraction is not as clean as it could be, and that efforts should be made to remedy the problem. But if, in our assessment of ethics we desire to put the needs of people first, and I would argue that we should, perhaps dragging crude oil out of sand is not the biggest villain in the story.

The industry will ultimately be none the worse for the spotlight on its activities; few honest things are the worse for sunlight as long as a sense of proportion is kept and facts aren't twisted or falsified on either side. But that sense of proportion and honesty has been too often lost in the debate. Even James Cameron, director of the movie Avatar said, "[The oil sands] will be a curse if it's not managed properly, (but) it can also be a great gift to Canada and to Alberta if it is managed properly."

If corporate ethics means anything, it means the application of moral principles to business. If corporations can maintain a culture of honesty, transparency, justice, respect for human dignity, and accepting responsibility for harm they cause, then their actions will indeed deserve to be called ethical. Otherwise, piecemeal efforts to satisfy the most powerful advocacy groups of the moment, with no foundation in a truly ethical worldview, will be in continual danger of achieving little real good, or at worst, of backfiring badly.

What should we say to Walgreens and the other boycotters? Criticize the oil sands if you please, but remember what the alternatives are. The law of unintended consequences is one of the most unforgiving and dangerous we know, and you may be in danger of falling prey to it.

Back from Sabbatical

2010-10-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

Dear All My Readers Who Have Probably Wandered Off And Are Getting Into Trouble Elsewhere.

I am back from Sabbatical. I know, it was wrong of me to go away without giving notice. But I am here now. Aren't you all thrilled? Don't answer that question.

I don't promise posting will be very often. I am now studying for my economics bachelor degree through accelerated distance learning (Hope to be halfway through my sophomore year in November, started studying in August) and hopefully I will at some point or other have a job to help pay for this college thing now that my summer job is over (Anyone know of any nice conservative organizations with tons of money just dying for a student employee who lives in the middle of nowhere? Alternately, anyone know of any good local jobs at Walmart?)

But you didn't want to know about my life. What you really wanted to brighten your day was this quote out of the material I am studying for my sociology exam,

Economic inequality inevitably exists in capitalism as represented by large wealthy and poor classes and a shrinking in the percentage of individuals in the middle class.

Followed by this one:

The economic system known as communism is actually an evolution of socialism into a society of political, social, and economic equality.

And then they expect me to ace history?

For Canada Day

2010-07-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

Roundup: Shriveling Weeds and Catching Horses

2010-06-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

What we do not want to have happened, didn't happen.

And that includes Churchill's cigars.

As long as we have the airbrush.

Finito.

Annoying as it must be to such cigaraphobes, in Canada things like being a tobacco addict is a prohibited ground of discrimination and, were the HRC consistent which helpfully it never is, anti-tobacco rhetoric (and air-brushing) would be in trouble for marginalizing disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals. I mean really, if someone had in a fit of anti-disability fervor airbrushed out FDR's wheelchair on a schoolbook in order to make the case that disabled people can't do anything worth while, would that be acceptable? So why can we air-brush tobacco products out of famous pictures in schoolbooks (another case not Churchill)? You are discriminating against a disability in each case!

Why I object to rights inflation.

And this assumes that cigaraphobia is not also a protected disability.

Silly assumptions.

Speaking of silly and assumptions and silly assumptions and assumptions that aren't silly but are nonetheless rather hysterical...

"Fox News North" has generated its fair share of all of the above. Don Newman who some time ago "impolitely told him (Teneycke) what he could do with the idea" is of the opinion that Sun News is a very, very bad idea. In an article that rather ADDishly is about the NDP/Lib merger rumours and Sun News, and tries to bring it together by talking about how much Teneycke must love the merger talk, he asserts, more or less, that Fox News (US) is :

Polarizing
Drive-by attacker
Liars
Orwellian
Propaganda
Dangerous
And "The parts that aren't wrong are, in some ways, just as dangerous, since they tend to make people comfortable in their prejudices."

Such a pity when reality is dangerous. It might confirm people in the belief that liberals can't handle the opposite point of view having a voice, or that they object to writing the truth if it might be "misinterpreted" by conservatives.

Ezra Levant has a round up of reactions. From those worried about competition to those who find it frightening to those who welcome the new voice to those who think it should be illegal. P.S. to my Winnipeg readers, Pat Martin probably finds you frightening and creepy, maybe you should return the favour.

As for me, I am updating my resume today on the one in ten million chance that they want someone with no experience. I know, but delusions are fun. Anyway, everyone needs an intern, right? Right?

In other news, or actually not "news" per say but a rather clever piece of satire masquerading as news, Paul McCartney apologizes for the "pro-American lyrics and compulsive right-wing behavior" demonstrated by his song "Freedom" written after the 9/11 attacks in which he says "I/We will fight, For the right, To live in freedom" The People's Cube "story" also "reported" his to have said that

"I have disgraced myself with that song and have taken necessary steps to ensure my return to conformity," McCartney said, announcing that he is embarking on an "ongoing self-criticism program" to battle his relapsed jingoism and wants to meet with community leaders to help him "discern the appropriate path for healing."

"I am in the process of understanding where those freedom-loving words came from, and I am asking the progressive community, whom I have personally offended with my pro-Americanism, to help me on my journey through recovery,"

Also from the People's Cube:

Albert Mohler discusses Steve Jobs sensationally (for the computer/internet industry) stance on porn which may be summed up in one word, no. No porn apps on iPhones and Pads. This stance may have something to do with parenthood, Steve Jobs' in particular and parents in general who will feel safer letting their kids use the app store if it doesn't allow pornography. Although for the record, judging from what I see flipping through the app store titles, there is some pretty racy stuff up as of now. I don't know if it will be coming down or if the stuff they are banning is so much worse (hair-raising idea).

David Warren, who I am sure would celebrate Jobs' decision, does advocate letting kids do dangerous things, have adventures, and act like Abigail Sunderland.

Your book recommendation for the week is "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough". While on the face of it the book is something of a female self-help dating book, it is in many ways a cultural critique and deals with some difficult issues. Lori Gottlieb the author became a single mother through a donor because she didn't want to settle for "Mr. Good Enough" as a husband. She wrote a positive article called "The XY Files" in The Atlantic about that experience, but now feels that the joke is on her. "Marry Him" is a call to women to become less picky and more realistic when it comes to picking men because the alternative, living as a lonely single, is no fun. Neither is trying to survive daily life and find a date as a 41 year old single mom. The XY Files (caution slightly graphic at parts)

Related a new study has come out suggesting that children of sperm donors are more likely to have issues and are quite likely to have concerns related to their conception.

Nearly half are disturbed that money was involved in their conception. More than half say that when they see someone who resembles them, they wonder if they are related. About two-thirds affirm the right of donor offspring to know the truth about their origins....As a group, the donor offspring in our study are suffering more than those who were adopted: hurting more, feeling more confused, and feeling more isolated from their families. (And our study found that the adoptees on average are struggling more than those raised by their biological parents.) Slate
Donor offspring with single mothers also are much less likely to report that they can rely on their family. Fifty-six percent of these offspring said they depend more on friends than on family, compared to just 29% of young adults born to two biological parents.
Such a sense of loss may help explain why the study found that adult offspring of single-mothers-by-choice were 177% more likely to report having had trouble with drugs and alcohol than children born to two biological parents. Perhaps in part because they did not enjoy the love, discipline and example of a flesh-and-blood father, young adults conceived through donor insemination to a single mother were also 146% more likely to report having been "in trouble with the law" before age 25. WSJ

44 percent agree, “It is wrong to deliberately conceive a fatherless child;” and 48 percent agree, “When I see friends with their biological fathers and mothers, it makes me feel sad.” AJC

It seems that Canadians are potentially supportive of the G8/G20 summits despite the cost.

Three-quarters of respondents to The Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll said this week's G8 and G20 summits in Ontario are important and worth the expense of their country hosting.

Although it is worth noting that:

Of those polled who expressed awareness of the summits, 61 per cent said they were "too expensive to be worth it," while 32 per cent said the summits' costs were justified. TELUS

I predict that once they start Canadians will forget the cost and will focus on the prestige and fun of having all those world leaders in our country. It will probably be a lot like the Olympics, dogged with controversy and unpopularity before, then turning into an incredible moment of Canucki pride and national bonding. Well, alright, the summits aren't likely to be as popular as the Olympics (unless they start handing out best ballroom dancer, biggest eater, most annoying self-righteous hypocrite awards to all the world leaders) but I'm willing to bet the same principle will apply. H/T Tory Dr. Roy

Speaking of Olympics, thankfully we didn't realize that cheering for Canada was racist unlike... Three guesses first two don't count. Oh yeah, England. Who'd a thought.

In better new from England, a church vicar revived an old law that allowed the vicar to call all the men in the village for archery practice. Now that sounds like my kind of law.

If some people have their way there will be no people to call for archery practice soon enough. Peter Singer (who else) has an article where he talks about the possibility that there is nothing as cruel as having children and that the ideology of mass sterilization so that we can all party ourselves into oblivion in one generation without having to worry about the environment is an idea to be thoughtfully discussed. Thankfully he comes down, at last, on the side of having a next generation. Whew, close call there.

Turns out, the means to the end of not having babies might be running into some trouble. Women are suing a birth control pill manufacturer for downplaying the risks and side effects. This is probably only the tip of the iceberg. H/T Socon or Bust

Blazing CatFur and Mark Steyn report on the troubles and travails of Jennifer Lynch head of the the CHRC who is not appreciating the misinformation being spread around by bloggers. According to BCF she is very sad about all of this

Jennifer Lynch is very sad that virtually every media outlet in the country has spoken against this evil law and the Kangaroo Kourt she ran to administer it. She's sad that a parliamentary enquiry, a senate enquiry, and a private members bill were launched to either investigate or repeal section 13 (1). She's sad that civil liberties associations have spoken against her vile playtoy. She's sad that NGO's as diverse as Gay's and Catholics have spoken against this anti-democratic monstrosity.

I want it down for the record that I am not completely ignorant when it comes to human rights cases. To say that I have read dozens of tribunal cases on everything from physical and mental disability to race, pregnancy, and hate speech would be an understatement. It will probably top hundreds in the not too distant future if it hasn't already. The vast majority are some variation of angry employees who are upset because they got fired and want a little extra money or good old fashioned revenge. It would surprise me if one case in a hundred awards over a few thousand in damages and an enormous majority award nothing and find in favour of the defendants. So their social good may be somewhat questionable. Especially since nearly the entire job could be done by Labour Relations or Landlord and Tenant Boards since the latest Supreme Court decision that such boards can rule on human rights issues.

You know what really annoys me more than anything? When people sue charities and non-profits for discrimination that turns out to be bogus. That is really irritating because you are taking money out of the pockets of those who are providing for vulnerable or needy people. In many cases the alleged discrimination (eg. mental health) is charged against an organization that specializes in helping people with that condition.

Why do you need a government grant of $10,000 to fly paper airplanes in a library where for the time cost of setting up a facebook event you could get a flash mob to do it for free. Oh, let me guess, flash mobs aren't art.

In sober news, most Christians don't have a clue why Christianity is like, you know, true. Josh McDowell, a well known apologist, says that he asked over 4,000 parents, pastors, and leaders why they believed the Bible. "A mere six “came close to giving an intelligent answer,”". Not encouraging. No wonder Christianity is having problems.

Now, as SDA would say, is the time when we juxtapose.

"Is journalism 100 unpaid bloggers all talking and yattering at once, or a city filled with amateur citizen journalists uncoordinated in all their efforts? Those bloggers and citizen reporters are as close to real reporters as karaoke is to Frank Sinatra live and in person." Michael Cooke, editor of the Toronto Star

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

Prior to Britain's Got Talent, her (Susan Boyle's) main experience had come from singing in her local Catholic church, Our Lady of Lourdes, in local choirs, and in karaoke performances at pubs in and around her village. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Boyle

Just trying to speculate as to why bloggers keep getting scoops that newspapers ignore.

It seems that if you ask Lesbian mothers if their children are all above average, they are. Cool.

Tea Parties = Social Justice Movement?

Deborah Gyapong with pictures and videos from the National Forgiven Summit

On Eywa, Libertarians, and No Niqabs in Court

2010-06-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

I would love to live in a world where being really, really bad at something means that you win. Like what couldn't I do? Win a multi-million dollar grant for software programming research? Get paid to develop a cure for cancer? Win an Olympic medal? Positively critique post-modern environmental feminist literature?

Actually maybe I could do that last one, "She eviscerates my soul with a heart wrenching drama exploring and extrapolating the contours of the female personification of divine uncertainty. Only in suffering this loss. By understanding not with the feeble flutterings of the mind but with the typhoon of truth that lies, swelling but stifled in the breast of every daughter of Eywa as they suffer the torture of conformity to a world determined to destroy their fabric of being. To destroy it so that they, the oppressors, can latter satiate their greed for destruction, while the guardians of the earth, those who were born of our Mother to protect her, the sisterhood of priestesses, stands by with silent, bowed heads. They are empty....." Did I do well? Alright you can all stop laughing. Some people make real money spouting that stuff, which is more than I do.

Speaking of which the people who said that Avatar was Dances with Wolves meets Pocahontas were right. They forgot to add the bit about "...meets Michael Moore". As far as I can see the movie was a call for Greenpeace to buddy up with the Taliban (and the pantheists, what do we call God now, Allah-Leaf? Or is that the drugs that are apparently bankrolling the terrorists. Hm, I get it! The sacred tree is really an opium poppy and the sacred floating milkweed...okay skip it) So therefore the movie was a call for Greenpeace to buddy up with the Taliban and the Mafia to wage armed war for the purpose of destroying the western, Christian, environment-raping, anti-science, war-mongering, capitalist people who want to fight "terror with terror" since we all know that the "terrorists" are gorgeous, peaceful, in tune with nature, good guys. The "baddies" and "goodies" in this movie have seldom been more predictable since nursery fairy tales. They couldn't even vary the stranger meets daughter of chief and falls in love thing. Don't strangers ever meet the daughter of the garbageman and fall in love? For the record, if there was any amazing twist at the end of the movie I missed it. I had a headache and didn't think that watching a bunch of aliens attack heavily armored spacecraft with bows and arrows, and win, was going to help.

But can I have a personal flying bird-thing and a glowing forest? That was cool.

Now if you really want to see a good movie, watch The Book of Eli. That was cool and thoughtful. Well alright, way more thoughtful than cool unless you enjoy post-apocalyptic scenes shot in one colour, gray, with lots of grime, violence, and chronic poverty. I don't. So I'll erase the cool bit and just call it thoughtful. Mentally cool. Christian movies as they should be. Also R rated.

Also on my list of cool things, the Binks . Master compiler, fashion expert (he noticed my hat, what can I say), encourager of little blogs, resource extraordinaire, etcetera ad infantum has another post up. Shove along and read it. You can find some juicy stuff on Gaza peace activist knives, Ayn Rand the Big Sister, oil in the gulf, and the Toronto Police tricycle brigade. Do go read up.

I am a conservative, not a libertarian. Indeed I believe that libertarianism has some fundamental flaws. (this should provoke some unprintable stuff in my comment section. The fact that it is true nothwithstanding. For the record, I even met one card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party of Ontario who freely admitted to me that many of his fellow party members should be in jail. His name shall not be released. The fact that I don't know it is a complete aside.) As Chesterton said,

"Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat." (Orthodoxy)

That is really the fundamental flaw with radical Libertarianism. They deny the cat. That said, libertarians have a tendency to make some remarkably good points on a not infrequent basis. I think slimming down the government is a very good idea. Step one, defund any and all interest groups and subsidies to private businesses and corporations. That should go a long, long way. I promise that I will actually dialogue with any comments this time, I know I have been bad for that in the past. P.S. I am not a libertarian, keep the comments clean. I censor.

David Warren for a good read on Tea Parties and coming problems (and why we need a balance to the "ornery know-nothing libertarians" without capitulating to the "pointy-headed intellectual control-freaks").

Speaking of doing what you want to do, no you can't wear a niqab when you are testifying in court. Yes, it may be painful and difficult to take it off. If it comes to that retelling the story of an assault or abuse may be very painful and difficult, but we don't put people in jail for years without hearing the evidence and testimony against them. Likewise, we want to see your face when you are giving testimony, it is important in deciding whether or not you are telling the truth. And no, we don't have some stereotype that we have to get over about women in niqabs being likely to lie. We have this belief that everyone in court is a potential liar. That's why we have things like cross-examination for instance.

Speaking of which, the article I wish I wrote on the Israeli raid on the "humanitarian" ships written, once again, by our own dear D. Warren. Of course it was nothing but a publicity stunt of the more hypocritical and nasty type. Look, if even I knew that the ships were going to sail before they sailed, it was not a covert attempt. It was provocation.

Stats, I Love Stats

2010-05-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

I found this cute little map online, it tells you all the "International Number Ones: Because Every Country is Good at Something". Now I was going to post this as a little politically incorrect satirical joke, until I discovered that it was true.... But leaving all the politically incorrect bits aside (as I know my readers won't when they follow the link) do you want to know what Canada's number one is? Fruit juice consumption! I mean really how, utterly bland, effeminate (I speak as a woman), and just generally Canadian blah is that? It sounds like something a PSA would celebrate. For the record we are also number one in oats consumption (something my parents dutifully support every morning, did I mention that I hate oatmeal?), are half as fat as the States, and have the lowest daily smoking rate. Alright already, we've settled the fact that we are health freaks. (And no dear children I do not support that nasty, dangerous habit of smoking, it makes your hair smell and then you have to have lots of baths where the water gets in your eyes so never, ever do it)

We are also really good when it comes to unpaid diplomatic parking fines (????), horrible when it comes to registered voter turnout , but good when it comes to length of time people spend in school (so we are educated and apathetic, I'm sure this should tell me something). We do produce a lot of books (Thank Canadian government subsidies for useless trash) and have the biggest houses (use the low smoking one on the liberals and sneak this past when they are still beaming about that.). In other news we have the shortest prison sentences. (Which won't stop wining about how we are so mean to criminals)

At 60% we are #4 when it comes to being very proud of your country only beating out Ireland, Australia, and the United States (duh). So much for the Canadians not being patriotic thing (Although the fruit juice and oats stats gave my patriotism a nasty hit), also so much for the German nationalism thing, they hit last with 20%. In a move that doesn't surprise me, Canada ties for last place when it comes to considering people of a different race as undesirable neighbours and ties for next to last when answering the same question about immigrants with 5 and 6% respectively. In a move that does slightly surprise me and is probably completely bewildering to the anti-America pro-Europe people, America scored better than some of our progressive and socialist betters like Norway, France, Belgium, and in one case Finland. Incidentally 17% of Fins and 14% of Norwegians don't want to live beside someone of another race, rub that in the faces of all the people who want to tell us how progressive, liberal, and compassionate Norway is (memo to my Norwegian aunt, don't read this post okay?).

We love to boycott and petition and we are pretty good when it comes to being interested in and talking about politics but we don't join political parties or, as I mentioned earlier, vote. Interestingly we trust the armed forces, church, police and companies more than we trust the civil service. Which makes me wonder if a proposal for a forcible take over by the armed forces and police of the civil service and a subsequent hand over to private corporations with oversight from the church might reawaken interest in politics. Never know. Oh, and the only thing we trust less than Parliament? Trade unions. (You really are fighting a losing battle here Layton)

In stunning news, only 8% of women believe they have equal rights (Time to start defunding a few more grievance-mongering "think" tanks Harper) and we are number one for lone-parents families, thus besting the UK (More ???s) at 11%. We also have lower personal income and property tax than the US (but higher income tax than the UK) and more known terrorist organizations present than the US, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh (one really assumes that this is not based on, say, deadliness and group membership numbers) and has the same number as Iran. We are also number five in arms exports, which calls into slight question the assumptions about arms exporting nations (Or doesn't depending on how much you like Canada, I like Canada) mind you the numbers fall off pretty sharply once you get Russia, the US, and France out of the way.

Isn't Trivial Pursuit fun?

NationMaster

Note: Not all stats have the same number of countries involved...

Negligent? Never

2010-05-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

No not negligent exactly... just juggling the National Student Forum (5 stars by the way), the National Prayer Breakfast (attached to said Forum), work (in real life I actually have a job to pay for college since blogging declines to pay, I'm not just a formless vapor inhabiting a computer keyboard), The National March for Life (awesome!), the Campaign Life Coalition Pro-Life Youth Conference (and heard Lisa Rose live), and working for the Family Coalition Party (great party by the way) as a writer/researcher/youth person....

But live in the wide world has gone on with the good and the bad. Here are a few things for you to get good and miffed, or good and excited about. Depending on inclination and orientation.

From the world of "duh" we get this gem, politicians would rather you not know how they spend their (our) money. However, Canadians are expressing a lively curiosity to know the answers to certain questions. Namely, who gets to resign first? And will so many people resign that we are forced to call a general election? Actually that may be the only credible reason to keep the books shut, from the perspective of the public which is, or so received wisdom tells us, tired of elections. As for me? Well I am a political geek and all political geeks enjoy elections so open them us says I. Taxpayer.com has a petition on the subject so all those notorious troublemakers, who would like nothing better than to see a few dozen heads (or a few hundred) explode all over the Hill and make a big green slimy mess a la Men in Black (which is high on my list of Absolute Worst Movies Ever Made FYI) and an election called where three quarters of the current sitting parliament aren't allowed to run, can make their voices heard.

I know this isn't popular to say in some Canadian conservative circles but Barbara Amiel has a tendency to really annoy me. In fact she not infrequently either inspires visions of throwing magazines at hard walls or inspires snores and/or incomprehension at the high level of complete "You wasted words on that?!". Her sympathy and advocacy for perpetrators of sexual abuse is what tends to inspire the first reaction. Why am I writing this? Do I have to have a reason? Well I just saw something about a petition to release Roman Polanski signed by all manner of Hollywood peoples (which tells you everything you need to know about Hollywood), and I remember something Amiel wrote about him that was really, really annoying...

This is the really important bit. The bit where we prove, yet again, that Canadian judges have brains and HRT don't have, like, any. Or should I say, Canadian judges have half a brain. The Ontario Divisional Court has ruled that you can still be a distinctively Christian organization and serve people with disabilities regardless of their faith. However they ruled, confusingly and contradictorily to some, that Heintz shouldn't have been dismissed. It seems that you can impose moral codes on people who might be in places of influence or evangelism, bathing and feeding people don't count. Could have been worse, could have been better. The first part especially is a vitally important ruling for faith organizations. What were the options? No Christian aid or charity organizations? Would the Salvation Army be forced to drop any religious requirements for officers? Or would they have to make sure that every homeless person they help is a Christian before they can give them food? Would a foreign aid agency have to ask the person screaming in pain and trapped under a fallen building in an earthquake zone if they were Christian, and be forced to leave them if they weren't? That is basically the position that Christian charities were left in after the OHRT ruling that they couldn't discriminate (for example require workers or board members to be Christians) if they served people who weren't Christians.

In other news that will be important soon, or soonish knowing the speed that Tribunals work at, mediation has failed in the case of the gay alter server and the Catholic church. $20,000 because you complained to the priest about whether someone is an appropriate choice for alter server? Are you kidding me? Talk about expensive opinions. He also wants the government to force the Bishop to preach a sermon about the dangers of rumors and innuendo in creating hate and discrimination. Let me repeat that. He wants the government to force the Bishop to preach a sermon. Do I need to repeat that?

Like? You Think?

2010-05-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

A fantastic video, vimeo instead of YouTube for a change. I sometimes suffer from this myself, I think. You know? Do you think so because I think but maybe I don't and I just don't really know but I qualify too much maybe?

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Roundup: Shriveling Weeds and Catching Horses

2010-05-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Miss Marprelate's Rare and Wonderful Roundups of News that You Should Know.

After considerable time spent telling us that the attack on Times Square was not necessarily the work of Islamist terrorism and could very well be the work of a homegrown terrorist, someone mad at the healthcare bill, ad nauseum they have finally managed to arrest someone who is, wait for it... an Islamist terrorist. Gee, that I could have never forseen. Not of course that I could find the word Muslim or Islamist in either of two NP articles I read, but I'll take any bet going about the motives. BCF

Returning again to the quest for bigfoot, also known as a conservative women who's accomplishments and toughness feminists will respect. Yes, you guessed it, the sighting turned out to be another oddly shaped tree trunk, or rather a woman who is being forced by a man (and consenting to participate in a cringing display of lap dog subservience) to bully other women. Was that a little unclear? Let's reword it. Senator Nancy Ruth, in what I might otherwise expect feminists to call a strong vindication of the belief that women can be just as tough in the world of politics as men, told some activists to "Shut the **** up" and stop pushing the abortion funding in foreign aid question because it had just turned into a political football. In other words she was putting into practice this stirring observation,

"I think women have been told too often to be quiet, be good and then you'll get what you want, I guess my argument is when have women ever made progress and got what they want by keeping quiet?" (NP)

Except of course that this was said in opposition to the Senator by one of the attending Liberals in a room that was apparently gob-smacked by hearing a woman use such language. So why is said Liberal telling the conservative woman to be quiet and good because it is so henious that she told liberal women to be quiet and good (actually more like telling them not to be idiots). And this bullying was apparently at the behest of the really evil Stephen Harper, not the action of an independent woman. Can't you just see the PMO memo, "Use f word here"? Not to defend swearing of course (use that language in my comment section and I'll censor you faster than you can blink) or to advocate for radical feminists and/or Nancy Ruth who seems to be no true conservative (read anthem change here) and probably a first rate pest, but do we not sense a little, I don't know, double standard, irony maybe? Business as usual, again.

Disabilities I feel perfectly happy discriminating against, especially in employment. Alcoholism and drug use. Don't tell the BCHRT. Then again, considering the "crops" grown in B.C., this may be necessary to ensure employment for a large portion of the population....

Objectifying women as sex objects and baby making machines? Enter British welfare system.

It didn’t take long for people to work out the sums. Our neighbour has a 20-year-old daughter who babysits for us. When I suggested to her mother that she should get a full-time job with children, she disagreed. She desperately wants her to get pregnant. If she trains as a nursery assistant she would have a disposable income of less than £61 a week. If she has two babies she could “earn” £131 a week with accommodation thrown in. (TO)

And then they pour vast amounts of money into analyzing things like why we have so much unwed motherhood and social breakdown. Now I am all into helping moms stay at home with their children, but making marriage and jobs financially worthless and counterproductive? No wonder they are heading towards bankruptcy.

But you know that Brit-Bashing these days is starting to feel more and more like picking on the disabled kid at school. Except that the Brits should know better. So they give a 61 year old a criminal record for having a fruit cutting swiss army knife in his car. Yikes. Even when my brother, used to country life where going out without a knife is fairly similar to going out without your underwear on, accidently took a knife to Parliament Hill they only took it away temporarily. We didn't bother to ask for the caps back (You know, the boom-boom gunpowder kind). (WK)

Then we have children banned from dissecting animals for fear that they will turn the scalpels on each other (Bigger fear, this ban is based on a legitimate fear and makes sense). Swimming goggles are also banned for safety reasons. Two year old has cheese sandwich taken away because it wasn't healthy enough. Children have to wear heart rate monitors that beep when they get angry. Oh sorry, mine just went off. Try putting that on me and I'll smack you a good one. Try that on for size. And I am writing this while watching The Island (Chronic multitasking I know, is that illegal too?) it is horrific what is happening. Btw, for any new readers who didn't notice when I said so before or ignored me, watch the movie!

Britian is also busily engaged in protecting public safety in another way. Making sure that saying homosexuality is a sin is illegal and arresting pastors who mention the matter. Then again, inquiring minds want to know, why wasn't he arrested for preaching against drunkenness. We know that alcoholism is a disability, isn't that illegal? (DM)

Suggesting that the Pope open an abortion clinic, launch a line of Benedict condoms, sing a duet with the Queen, bless a gay marriage, and apologize for the Spanish Armada (Before the Brits apologized for beating the Armada I guess) is a government document on the other hand. Yes I'm sure they are sorry. That it got press. There was no need to be so blatantly obvious about what they are up to.

According to the fount of wisdom, the Lynch Mob Preceptor J Lynch herself, the House of Commons Committee that was investigating Section 13 is no longer doing so and the cause is now languishing in, somewhere. This is striking a damaging blow to my views on media and popular influence on politics. If basically every journalist of every stripe is against a law and still can't get it repealed, what can? On a related note, I heard the new leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, the one who campaigned on getting rid of the Human Rights Commission speak at the Manning Conference. Now this was probably the most anti-HRC room full ever collected in this nation. Ezra Levant himself was present, shaking hands, and even appeared in a couple PowerPoints by other speakers. Talking about getting rid of the HRC probably would have gotten a standing ovation. However in his speech he never seemed to get around to the subject, hard as he was milking every other issue for brownie points. We shall see what he does if he gets elected. If he doesn't do away with the HRC you heard it here first. (Ex)

Snapshot of my life, younger brother just walked into the room and informed all and sundry that frozen bananas defrosted in the microwave are yucky. All readers take warning.

A Little Advertising

2010-05-01T16:01:00.000-07:00

And no I'm not getting any money, free samples, and/or any other type of compensation for any of this. Mind you, if someone wants to offer...

Apathy is Boring: I mean seriously, where else can you vote on what song your ideal politician would have on his iPod?

Free Canuckistan: Miss Marprelate's secret source for, a lot. Besides, he noticed the hat.

Sermon Audio: AKA the one stop shop for all things Christian... and it is all, or almost all free! (I even got to meet the founder in Cincinnati)

SDA Matt: Political videos of the most Corenish type.

Wintery Knight: To appease broad hints.

Ezra Levant: What do you mean you don't know who he is?! You, you, U of O student type you!

Blazing Cat Fur: Who has a fiendish cunning when it comes to tracking down people's identities and Facebook affiliations.

Albert Mohler: Because his daily email of links keeps me up to date. And because he runs a great show.

Small Dead Animals - The Roadkill Diaries: For the most eminently unforgettable name ever, and interesting content.

Deborah Gyapong: One of the bloggers I have met in person.

This is a small list of some sites I like. More to come later... (Like the next time I need to write a post and don't want to)

AWOL

2010-04-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

I have been very badly AWOL, writing research reports and rebuilding a website. And meanwhile all kinds of interesting stuff was happening that I have barely even covered.

The Euthanasia bill in the Canadian Parliament was defeated 228 to 59, which is only a close vote if you like Da Vinci Code genre history. Perhaps euthanasia gets less traction then abortion because everyone voting on abortion is in no danger of being aborted, whereas aging politicians...

I hate people who manufacture frivolous human rights. It is like some of the more PETAish animal rights activists. Do they not realize that they are not bringing animals up but dragging humans down? Do these human rights people not realize that by creating human rights that violate any iota of common sense they are only discrediting real human rights. And we thought that the human right not to be offended was extreme. What about the human right to go on government subsidized vacations? The human right! Not, this will stimulate the economy so we are going to invest in tourism. No, this is saying that people, especially students, the elderly, and those in difficult situations have the human right to go on vacation. You know there is a psychological phenomena that people who are in deep economic trouble tend to start spending more money under the rationalization that they will never get out of this pit anyway so they might as well spend whatever they have left before the creditors come flocking in. I wonder if that applies to nations too. We are so decadent and so indebted that we can think of nothing better to do than throw more money at nonsense. Worse than nonsense. Harmful nonsense. This kind of mindless socialism is like the ideological version of heroin. Expense, unsustainable, destructive, deadly... and addictive.

In better news, Ontario has decided to rethink their new sex-ed policy due to the Catholic Schools breaking into open revolt. So for the time being you will not have to worry about your eight year old receiving government mandated lectures on the warm fuzzies of homosexuality. You will just have to worry about him getting taught that anyway. Cheers all.

Stop the Presses, Ezra Levant is saying extraordinarily nice things about Ujjal Dosanjh. It's a regular little love fest over at ezralevant.com and, I must say, not undeservedly. Even if Mr. Dosanjh didn't seem to be exactly on our side in the Section 13 hearings. Oh, and in other news, Levant has written a new book due to come out soon on the Oil Sands.

Harking back to my Zerbisias for Coulter post... The Zerb will no longer be writing her column at the Star having migrated to Features. Whether that is better, worse, or just equally ghastly I don't know. Jonathan Kay does take a moment to note, and indeed almost lament the fall of the radical left columnist. Something he attributes at least in part to bloggers and their fact checking and satire fetishes. Why lament? What good is a conservative columnist unless the left is busy spouting their ideas? We'd have nothing to make money laughing at anymore. (P.S. That's why conservatives are into freedom of speech. P.P.S. I laugh at liberals, can I get some of the money too?)

Ignatieff, in a frenzy of equal opportunity sanctions, is coping with being put on (political) suicide watch by trying to regulate everyone else's guns too. For the record, in case any liberals are poking around, the previous sentence is called satire, kinda. However Ignatieff is busy trying to save the gun registry by any means possible. How fun. I shall enjoy watching the Liberals lose every rural and semi-rural seat they still have left (Do they have any left?). I like this article on the subject. For the record, I live in a riding which was Liberal for 60 years. Until the gun registry came along and it is now one of the safest Conservative seats in the province.

Speaking of guns and suicide watches. It appears that Allan Rock, who was originally responsible for the gun registry, authorized Houle's letter to Ann Coulter. Some people never learn.

Speaking of Conservatives and my riding and specifically Cheryl Gallant MP who is NOT winning any brownie points on my desk. I received a letter from her today which says, in full.

Dear Rebecca,
Thank you for your phone call of March 29 in which you inquired about Section 13 of the human rights code.
Together with my colleagues in the Conservative government we believe that freedom of expression is a basic tenant of our law, and within appropriate limits, must be respected.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Tribunal are independent agencies that administer the CHRA without interference from the government.
Cheryl Gallant

If she really didn't want to say anything she could easily have saved herself the bother of writing it out. Perhaps it is not possible for Conservatives to be more emphatic (like saying anything that Francois Houle wouldn't applaud) right now, but then again, when 99.9% of the media is being very forthright about how much they like freedom of speech and how much they don't like the fact that it is being eroded how much more encouragement do you need? Which part of "Parliament can abolish Section 13" is difficult for these people? Will saying, "You are making it very hard for me to want to vote for you" make it easier for them to understand? Coward.

Very interesting Westminister 2010 Document. Over 35,000 signatures in 20 days.

We the undersigned are Christians who believe that protecting human life, protecting marriage, and protecting freedom of conscience are foundational for creating and maintaining strong families, caring communities and a just society.

In signing the Westminster 2010 Declaration of Christian Conscience we commit ourselves to worship, honour and obey God, to exercise social responsibility in working for the common good and to be subject to all governing authorities and obey them except when they require us to act unjustly.

We call upon all parliamentary candidates to pledge that they will ‘respect, uphold and protect the right of Christians to hold and express Christian beliefs and act according to Christian conscience’.

The Calgary Herald makes the good point, relevant to my earlier post, that the U of C is not quite a private institution since taxpayers foot the majority of the bill. Whether that forces them to support freedom of speech I don't know. But threatening to cut funding as long as they fail to fulfill their mandate could be quite appropriate. Another, if unlikely, tactic to consider.

For your viewing pleasure
http://pajamasmedia.com/andrewklavan/2009/11/23/limbaugh-and-coulter-and-beck-oh-my/

Interesting post by SoCon or Bust on 10 wedges to bring down abortion. He may be right, banning sex selection abortion, stopping government subsidies, and bringing in informed consent laws would probably be more palatable than banning abortion outright. We shall see.

I'm Voting Never

2010-04-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

“There will always be voices who claim we’re not ready, we’re not there yet, the time to end discrimination is next year, or next session. But victims of discrimination should not have to wait.” link

Yes.... well.... personally I was going to vote NEVER on this one. You see, call me outdated, puritanical, and a raving bigot, but I have this thing about seeing men in the ladies washroom. I don't take to the idea so well.

Although I have to admit that's really nothing to the way I feel about guys in the girls' locker room.

And what about the guy who keeps doing really well... on the female sports team?

Some people, read Maine Human Rights Commission, are willing to allow transgender people to use whatever gender "stuff" they "need". The case rose out of a transgender twelve year old who was asked to use a single stall bathroom rather than using the girls' bathroom. (And anyway, a transgender 12 year old? Do his parents have serious problems or what? How does he even know the word?) Sounds like reasonable accommodation to me. Not to some people evidently.

The funny part of the case is the other kid, who was given permission by his Grandfather to use the girls' bathroom as long as the other boy/girl did. The Maine HRC had no sympathy for him, he was appropriately punished because he was heterosexual.

That said, according to our dear MHRC you don't need any documentation to declare yourself transgender.

I predict a wave of fifteen year old boys suddenly becoming transgender. Who knew it could have so many perks?

U of C, Free Speech I Think Not

2010-04-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

In truth, the University of Calgary would have been more than human if it hadn't taken full advantage of the University of Ottawa's misfortune re Ann Coulter to parade around as the cowboy riding out of the sunset, sweeping up to the forlorn damsel in distress, and saying "Need any help honey?". Opportunities for the West to avoid a great deal of bad press, get some good press, and make a fool out of Ontario all at the same time are too rare to be squandered lightly.

Alan Harrison, Provost of U of C, avoided the fate of Francois Houle (Has he come out of hiding yet by the way, anyone know? Anyone?) by issuing a statement of his own. “If we try to suppress people’s views simply because we don’t agree with them we’re doing two things, we’re acting contrary to what the university stands for, and also frankly, we’re providing increased publicity for the person who’s spreading those views. That’s not our purpose. Our purpose is to give her the same respect that everybody else deserves.”

Beautifully put. All any Ann Coulter supporter, or just interested person, could want. Quite true too, the increased publicity bit anyway.

But now dark rumours are beginning to swirl around the U of C campus. Was it all a bit of grandstanding? Are they really, deep down, worse censors than even U of O? Have they, gasp, fallen into the mysterious and deadly web of Ontario intolerance and liberalism? Are they a bunch of pious self-righteous hypocrites?

"On Thursday, Campus Pro-life, the University of Calgary’s pro-life club, set up a pro-life display on campus - the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP).
Last year, the university charged the pro-life students with trespassing for erecting the same display, which has been displayed on campus peacefully and without incident twice per year since 2006. The crown prosecutors withdrew the charges prior to trial, however.
But in an e-mail sent to the students' lawyer Thursday, the university against stated that it “requires that Campus Pro-Life turn the Genocide Awareness Project signs inward so that the University community does not have to view them," and threatened the students with sanctions for non-academic misconduct.
The pro-life students say that at Thursday’s event campus security initially appeared as if they would not intervene, simply standing on site as the group's exhibit went ahead without incident. However, in mid-afternoon that changed when U of C security went around the exhibit handing out notices to pro-life students, indicating that if they refused to turn their signs inwards, they could be subject to a fine up to $2,000 ($5,000 for further trespass), arrest, civil action, or non-academic misconduct" LifeSiteNews

The University of Calgary says,

This is not an issue about Freedom of Speech; the paramount issues for the University are the needs to uphold its legal right to manage activities on campus, and to ensure the safety and security for the thousands of students, staff, faculty and community members on campus each day.

(The highly annoying and disingenuous "safety and security" bit aside) Perhaps so, the university does have a right to manage what appears on its private property. I moderate comments on my blog after all, post something using half a dozen swear words and I can promise you it will never see the light of day. However regardless of whether they have a legal right to manage what is shown on their property and how it is shown, it doesn't manifest a great willingness to, how should I put it, tolerate other points of view because “If we try to suppress people’s views simply because we don’t agree with them we’re doing two things,we’re acting contrary to what the university stands for, and also frankly, we’re providing increased publicity for the person who’s spreading those views. That’s not our purpose. Our purpose is to give (them) the same respect that everybody else deserves.”

So out of curiosity, has the university ever allowed graphic anti-war protests on campus? Have they ever allowed graphic pictures of torture or other genocides? Did those people deserve respect? What is their policy on graphic or disturbing images on campus? If they have a blanket ban on any image that anyone might find offensive then fine. That is the rule they have put in place to preserve public decency and to keep everything neutral, bland, and safe. You may disagree with that policy, and that is something the media, students, parents, public, and donors can discuss.

But if they do allow other potentially disturbing images on campus but are trying to get rid of pro-life images then we have a problem. Not a legal problem, they have the right to regulate their own campus, but a cultural and moral one. And they should get the same shaming that U of O got. Double, because they are lying hypocrites. Triple, come to think of it, because they were self-righteous lying hypocrites.

This is a secular university, they pride themselves on allowing all sides. Student protests are, as far as I can tell, part of what being at university is about. Let the protesters protest Ann Coulter, I support their right to do so. Let them have Israeli Apartheid Week as long as they don't break the law. I support their right to disagree about whether Israel is a good guy or a bad guy. And let the pro-life people present their point of view. If the pro-aborts want to put up a display next door showing pictures of dead abortion doctors or women who died in childbirth, go ahead. I won't like it, but I don't have to. Let's not censor one side of the debate.

Personally, to forestall any accusations that we are just as big hypocrites because we supported Macleans defiance of Elmassry, who wanted them to publish the other side, I would support Elmassry's legal right to campaign against Macleans, try to sway public opinion so that Macleans would be forced by subscribers to publish the counter-view, and protest all they liked about the issue. They shouldn't have gone to the government to solve their problem and honestly unless there is some law I don't know about I don't think these students should try to get the government to force U of C to keep the signs up either.

But after all, what are we talking about? Disturbing images of lynching and the holocaust? Welcome to an eighth grade history textbook. Disturbing images of violence and genocide around the world? Front page on the coffee table newspaper. Disturbing images of abortion? BANNED, BANNED, DOUBLE BANNED YOU NASTIES.

Ann Coulter got respect (sort of) but she isn't a pro-life student. She has money, lawyers, and a media just waiting to lap up any further news stories about out of control students. As they say, you have to be famous like Levant, Steyn, or Coulter to beat the censorship rap.

It's just not cricket.

Coulter for Zerbisias

2010-04-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

If I was a little less of a free speech advocate than I am, I might be willing to strike a deal with the liberals. You get to kick Ann Coulter out, and we get to kick Antonia Zerbisias out. Deal? Sounds fair to me, morality aside which good leftists don't believe in anyway, right?

Oh, for the record, millions of women are in danger of dying because Conservatives won't fund abortions in third world countries. However we are not to worry because "But then, what's a woman's life?".

The conditions under which leftists would oppose abortion...

And incidentally...

H/T Big Blue Wave

If You Can't Get Behind Our Troops, Get in Front of Them

2010-04-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

Well, personally I kind of like the line. Rather pithy and thought provoking if you ask me, which no one does.

I also rather like the idea of providing soldier's orphans with scholarships. Sure it would be nice if we had a national merit based scholarship but failing that can anyone really object to giving extra help to kids who have lost a parent serving their country.

I mean really, would even the Grinch do that?

Here is the list of the Professors who do oppose it. Partly, so they say, because there is nothing heroic about our war in Afghanistan and we shouldn't be glorifying militarism.

They also don't think people should be sending them "threats" like, if you can't get behind our troops, get in front of them.

Well it isn't a threat, not from me anyway. It is just something worth thinking about. And by the way, it isn't the soldiers' fault that we are in a war you don't like. Take it up with the politicians. And if you don't like war that much surely you should be the first to advocate compassion for the victims of war, starting with our soldiers.

Nice little editorial from the Globe and Mail.

Protest letter from one of the signers.

And as SDA says, "Since you feel that strongly about it, RESIGN" Or don't you feel that strongly?

Carol.Schick@uregina.ca;
william.arnal@uregina.ca;
Ken.Montgomery@uregina.ca;
Andre.Magnan@uregina.ca;
warnockj@hotmail.com;
Garson.Hunter@uregina.ca;
Meredith.Cherland@uregina.ca;
darlene.juschka@uregina.ca;
Annette.Desmarais@uregina.ca;
david.webster@uregina.ca;
jeffery.webber@uregina.ca;
Emily.Eaton@uregina.ca;
John.Conway@uregina.ca;
joyce.green@uregina.ca;
George.Buri@uregina.ca;
John.Warnock@uregina.ca

Do please be civil. No threats, alright? Try to use logic instead, I know it doesn't work for lefties, but feel free to add your letters in the comments here and we can enjoy them.

Free Speech in the Senate

2010-03-31T05:31:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from a press release of a speech given by Senator Finley in the Senate calling for an inquiry into the erosion of freedom of speech in Canada.

Actually I was going to excerpts but I couldn't find any bits that I wanted to cut out. Therefore I give to you the complete speech in all its glory.

H/T Blazing Catfur. Follow up speeches by Senator Duffy and Senator Tkachuk, which are also free speech doozies, are available at BCF too.

For immediate release Senator Finley Opens Up Freedom of Speech Inquiry
March 30, 2010

“Honourable Senators,

“I rise to call the attention of the Senate to the erosion of freedom of speech in Canada." “There could scarcely be a more important issue than this. “Freedom of speech is, and always has been, the bedrock of our Canadian democracy.

“The great Alan Borovoy, who was the head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association for more than forty years, calls freedom of speech a “strategic freedom”. “Because it is the freedom upon which all of our other freedoms are built. “For example, how could we exercise our democratic right to hold elections, without free speech? “How could we have a fair trial, without free speech? “And what would be the point of freedom of assembly, if we couldn’t talk freely at a public meeting? “It is the most important freedom. Indeed, if you had all of your other rights taken away, you could still win them back with freedom of speech.

“Benjamin Franklin once said that “Without Freedom of thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such thing as public Liberty, without Freedom of speech” “Freedom of speech is embedded in Parliament’s DNA. The word Parliament itself comes from the French word, parler – to speak.

“And as Parliamentarians, we guard our freedom jealously. No Member of Parliament or the Senate may be sued for anything he says in here. Our freedom of speech is absolute. “And yet just last week, only a few miles from here, censorship reared its ugly head.

“Ann Coulter, an American political commentator, had been invited to speak at the University of Ottawa.
“But before she even said a word, she was served with a letter from Francois Houle, the university’s vice-president, containing a thinly-veiled threat that she could face criminal charges if she proceeded with her speech. “And on the night of her speech, an unruly mob of nearly 1,000 people, some of whom had publicly mused about assaulting her, succeeded in shutting down her lecture, after overwhelmed police said they could not guarantee her safety. “Colleagues, it was the most un-Canadian display I have seen in years.
“It was so shocking that hundreds of foreign news media covered the fiasco, from the BBC to the New York Times to CNN.

“It was an embarrassing moment for Canada, because it besmirched our reputation as a bastion of human rights, a reputation hard-won in places like Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach, and Kandahar. “More important than international embarrassment is the truth those ugly news stories revealed. “Too many Canadians, especially those in positions of authority, have replaced the real human right of freedom of speech with a counterfeit human right not to be offended. “An angry mob is bad enough. That might be written off as misguided youths, overcome by their enthusiasm. “But such excuses are not available to a university vice president who obviously wrote his warning letter to Ms. Coulter after careful thought.

“Ann Coulter is controversial. She is not to everyone’s taste. But that is irrelevant. “Because freedom of speech means nothing if it only applies to people with whom we agree. To quote George Orwell, “Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” “In a pluralistic society like Canada, we must protect our right to peacefully disagree with each other. We must allow a diversity of opinion – even if we find some opinions offensive.“Unless someone actually counsels violence or other crimes, we must never use the law to silence them.

“Freedom of speech is as Canadian as maple syrup, hockey and the Northern Lights. It’s part of our national identity, our history and our culture. “It is section two of our 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, listed as one of our “fundamental freedoms”. “And it’s in the very first section of Canada’s 1960 Bill of Rights.

“But our Canadian tradition of liberty goes much farther back than that. “In 1835, a 30-year-old newspaper publisher in Nova Scotia was charged with seditious libel for exposing corruption amongst Halifax politicians.
“The judge instructed the jury to convict him. At the time, truth was not a defence. “But the publisher passionately called on the jury to, quote "leave an unshackled press as a legacy to your children”, unquote. After just ten minutes of deliberations, the jury acquitted him. “That young man, of course, was Joseph Howe, who would go on to become the Premier of Nova Scotia.

“Our Canadian tradition of free speech is even older than that. It is part of our inheritance from Great Britain and France. “Les Québécois sont les héritiers de l’article 11 de la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789. “L’article stipule que : « La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l’homme; tout citoyen peut donc parler, écrire [et] imprimer librement … »
“La France a produit le défenseur de la libre expression le plus réputé dans le monde, François-Marie Arouet, mieux connu sous son nom de plume, Voltaire. “Voltaire était un provocateur, qui usait de la satire et de la critique pour faire pression en faveur de réformes politiques et religieuses. Il en a payé le prix personnel, face aux censeurs et aux menaces de poursuites.
“Voltaire put it best when he wrote “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” “His passionate advocacy helped shape liberty on both sides of the Atlantic.

“English Canada has an impressive legacy of free speech, too. Like Voltaire, John Milton, the great poet who wrote Paradise Lost, was constantly hounded for his political views. “His 1644 pamphlet on free speech, called Areopagitica, is perhaps the greatest defence of free speech ever written, and it is as relevant today as it was 350 years ago. “In it, Milton wrote, quote, “let [truth] and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” and “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature… but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.”

“Yet, despite our 400 year tradition of free speech, the tyrannical instinct to censor still exists. “We saw it on a university campus last week. And we see it every week in Canada’s misleadingly-named human rights commissions. “This week, in Vancouver, a stand-up comedian named Guy Earle goes on trial before the B.C. human rights tribunal for the crime of telling jokes that someone didn’t find funny. “An audience member who heckled him is suing him for $20,000 because she found his retorts offensive.

“They may have been offensive. But what’s more offensive is that a government agency would be the arbiter of good taste or humour. “Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years of hard labour for telling a joke about Stalin’s moustache. It’s a disgrace that Canada is now putting comedians on trial, too. Earle has already spent $20,000 defending himself.

“There is not a lot that the Senate can do about the B.C. human rights tribunal. But our own Canadian Human Rights Commission has egregiously violated freedom of speech – without any shame.
“In a censorship trial in 2007, a CHRC investigator named Dean Steacy testified[1] that, quote “freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value.” “He actually said that. The Canadian Human Rights Commission actually admits they don’t give free speech any value.

“That’s totally unacceptable.

“Freedom of speech is the great non-partisan principle that every member of Parliament can agree on – that every Canadian can agree on. “I will never tire of quoting the great Liberal prime minister, Wilfred Laurier, when he said “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.” “And I will readily give credit to Keith Martin, the Liberal MP from British Columbia, who, two years ago, introduced a private member’s motion to repeal the censorship provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

“Fellow Senators, I called for this inquiry to accomplish five things:

1. To reaffirm that freedom of speech is a great Canadian principle, that goes back hundreds of years;

2. To put Canada’s censors on notice that their days of infringing upon our freedoms with impunity are over;

3. To show moral support for those who are battling censors;

4. To inquire into the details of what went so desperately wrong at the University of Ottawa, to ensure those awful events never happen again;

5. To inspire a debate that may lead to a re-definition of Section 13.1 of the Human Rights Act;

“Colleagues, there are times for partisan debate, when the parties must naturally be at odds with one another. This is not one of those times. “Freedom of speech, and respect for differing views, is the foundational principle of our entire Parliamentary system – indeed for our entire legal system as well. “I look forward to the constructive comments of my friends on both sides of the aisle, to build on the bi-partisan history that Canadian free speech enjoys. “If we can rededicate our parliament to protecting this most important right, we will have done our country a great service. “But if we fail to stop and indeed reverse this erosion of freedom, we will have failed our most basic duty – the duty to uphold our Constitution and the rights it guarantees for all Canadians.
“I know that, like so many generations of Canadians before us, we will meet the challenges of our time, and live up to our responsibility to pass on to our children the same freedoms that we inherited from our parents.

“God keep our land, glorious and free.”

FYI Facebook Group

2010-03-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

Action Alert!

2010-03-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

Phone/Write your MP about freedom of speech.

I phoned my MP Cheryl Gallant today to ask what her position on free speech/hate speech was, and the person who answered the phone didn't know! After a week of heavy press about freedom of speech and Ann Coulter her own office staff have no idea where she stands on the issue.

Obvious conclusion. She has NOT been getting enough phone calls about the matter.

Please take the time to contact your MP (Particularly if your MP is named David McGuinty), let them know what you think about the issue, and ask what their stand on freedom of speech is. (hint: if they are against it, inform them that they just lost your vote)

Upcoming Senate Inquiry into Free Speech?

2010-03-29T08:29:00.000-07:00

Senator Doug Finley, former Conservative campaign manager, has announced his intention to bring the matter of freedom of speech, or rather the erosion thereof, before the Senate.

Doug Finley is apparently one of Harper's right hands (or so the Star says...) so this might be some indication that free speech is an issue for conservatives. Albeit perhaps one that they are willing to have an unelected Senator take up. Less risky perhaps?

Erosion of Freedom of Speech

Notice of Inquiry

Hon. Doug Finley: Honourable senators, I give notice that, two days hence:

I will call the attention of the Senate to the issue of the erosion of freedom of speech in our country.

From the Hansard.

H/T Stephen Taylor

Good work Doug Finley. The issue may come up either today or in the next few days.

Brains in the House.

2010-03-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Mr. David McGuinty (Ottawa South, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, Ann Coulter, the intellectual leader of the North American reform-conservative-republican movement, has the right to make her views known. In fact it is important for Canadians to be exposed to her obscene, radical and intolerant thinking, which underpins the extreme right.

Given her views are completely out of step with mainstream Canadian values, will the Prime Minister stand here today and, without equivocation, publicly denounce her views while explaining to Canadians the link between his party and Ann Coulter?

It reminds me a great deal of a scene I remember from a Martin Luther movie. Luther was asked to renounce his writings and replied that he could not do so because many of them were uncontroversial works that even the Pope himself had approved. As for the others, he was willing to renounce any that could be proven wrong from the Scriptures.

McGuinty here wants Ann Coulter's views unequivocally denounced. Which ones? Does the Honourable Member really support the 9/11 attacks? Does he believe that black people shouldn't serve in government? Does he believe that having sex with interns is normal behavior? Or that single motherhood is the best option for children? Or that dangerous criminals shouldn't go to jail?

Presumably he only wants the "controversial" bits denounced. And that would be controversial as defined by a liberal. Glad to get that sorted out. It sure is a relief to know that Harper won't have to apologize for the fact that Coulter supports torture. Or it would be if I supported torture. Then again, I don't, so I'm not sure where that leaves me.

To the relief of all McGuinty sorts out the confusion later on my explaining exactly what he wants denounced.

Mr. David McGuinty (Ottawa South, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the darling of the reform-conservative-republican movement really outdid herself last night in Calgary. By addressing Canadian diversity, Ann Coulter said that diversity is not an advantage to a country like Canada. “It’s not a strength”, she continued. Then she went on to compare diversity to cancer. From organizing speeches to putting on cocktails, the Conservative Party’s dirty little fingerprints are all over her Canadian tour.
Will the Prime Minister immediately and publicly condemn Ann Coulter’s outrageous and intolerant views?

You know I, unlike a lot of my elders and betters in well never mind, don't like to believe anything unless I've got the original documents. As far as I know the original documents are not available in this case (can we fix that problem, pretty please, Coulter in Canada people?) so I spent exactly five seconds on Google looking up "Ann Coulter diversity is not a strength" and found an article called "At the end of the day, diversity has jumped the shark, horrifically" wherein she makes comparisons between diversity and cancer.

Its worth a read. At least you won't have to rely on a tenth hand clip taken out of context to make up your mind on whether you like Ann Coulter.

And for the record, I don't think that FGM, honour killings, abortion, gay marriage, or university hooligans pulling fire alarms is a "diversity" that "strengthens" us either.

So I agree with Ann Coulter that some diversity doesn't strengthen us.

But even Ann Coulter believes that diversity in some things is good (read the article).

So we all agree, "diversity" as "diversity" does not strengthen us. Some diversity can strengthen us, some diversity can weaken us.

Would you like Stephen Harper to condemn me too David McGuinty?

At least Pierre Poilievre (the inspiration for the title of this post) had a brilliant repartee ready.

Mr. Pierre Poilievre (Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, the member has raised a very important question about an American commentator who has come to this country with some outrageous comments: comments supporting the Iraq war, comments supporting the use of torture, and comments referring to Israel as a war criminal. But enough about the leader of the Liberal Party.

Sit back and savor it, my friends. Sit back and bask in the thrills.

P.S. To Contact David McGuinty. To Contact Pierre Poilievre. You know what you want to say to them.

P.P.S. Many thanks to The Phantom Observor for Hansard quotes.

Interesting Fact

2010-03-24T21:06:00.002-07:00

Apparently after Francois Houle wrote that letter Ann Coulter and co. were told to pay out another $1,200 for additional security.

Point 1: Much good that did.

Point 2: Isn't that admitting that your letter might cause violence? After all they knew that she was coming long before.

Point 3: Will they get a refund?

The. Best. Quote. Ever. Period.

2010-03-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

Posted by who else but Kate at Small Dead Animals.
"See? You can yell "fire" in a crowded theatre after all!"
(Context for those not familiar with free speech issues. The big argument against "unlimited free speech" is that you have no right to yell fire in a crowded theater. Then the students pulled the fire alarm to silence free speechers.)

Lotsa Coulta Linkses

2010-03-24T20:00:00.005-07:00

The Web Elf, excellent as usual.

Blazing Catfur, take a peep at some of his other posts as well, very informative.

Five Feet of Fury, according to Ann Coulter the most complete links out there, has too many posts to link individually so just read.

Steyn Online has some commentary.

Ann Coulter herself!

Link to Michael Coren's interview with Ann Coulter. Also available on youtube, see here at Wintery Knight. Watch it everyone, especially if you have never heard/read Ann Coulter and are relying on second hand information from "unfriendlies".

One of the most thorough accounts of the protest.

Very, very funny piece in the Ottawa Citizen. An absolute MUST read.

Deborah Gyapong has some stuff.

My Letter to the Editors

2010-03-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

Letter to the Editor I sent to The National Post, The Ottawa Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, and The Toronto Star. We shall see who, if anyone, publishes it.

Dear U of O students.

That was brilliant.

Last night I, as a young Canadian, was ashamed for my country. Ashamed of how pitiful, petty, and totalitarian we were going to look on the world stage because of your actions. We pride ourselves on being polite and courteous, then we welcome a visitor to our nation by threatening them and shutting down their attempt to speak.

You don't have to like Ann Coulter. I don't necessarily agree with everything she says either (although when I hear her explain what she said as opposed to what people said she said I tend to agree much more). But you didn't have to trample on freedom of speech to do so. There are appropriate ways to deal with speakers you don't like. Vote with your feet, either don't go or walk out if it gets outrageous. Protest peacefully. Use the Q&A session to ask hard questions. Write articles or invite speakers of your own to give a counter perspective. Yes I know that some of this stuff takes more brains and effort than shouting slogans like "Free Speechers go home" but you are in university after all!

Francois Houle is looking for hate speech. I suggest he look at his own desk. Ann Coulter was not going to say anything that would actually incite people to violence. Mr. Houle came within half an inch of doing so. Is that a criminal offence Mr. Houle? Inquiring minds want to know.

What happens, dear students, when you want to host your own controversial speaker? Would you enjoy a much anticipated feminist speaker not being allowed to speak for fear that she might say something offensive to men? Would you enjoy having hordes of angry men outside pounding on the door, threatening your safety, and forcing you to sneak out the back?

Maybe you don't think you need freedom of speech because you think that any liberal ideas are automatically nice, politically correct, tolerant, non-offensive, unanswerable, and self-evidently true. Your own bigotry reveals your need to hear Ann Coulter, if only to find out that your ideas are controversial too. Maybe Ann Coulter could have shaken some of the smug complacency out of you. Maybe not. It would have been nice to find out.

We all need free speech. We need it, you need it. What do you think gave you the right to protest against Ann Coulter?

Free speech.

Rebekah Hebbert
missmarprelate.blogspot.com

Ann Coulter Non-Show Pictures

2010-03-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

More to come if my dial-up internet will HURRY UP.

More on Ann Coulter Shut Down

2010-03-24T07:15:00.000-07:00

More updates are coming up on the Ann Coulter event.

Macleans has a piece, "Coulter, the she-devil in her own words".

The police, Coulter says, “had been warning my bodyguard all day that they were putting up [messages] on Facebook: ‘Bring rocks, bring sticks, you gotta hurt Ann Coulter tonight, don’t let her speak.’ And the cops eventually said, we’ve got a bad feeling, this isn’t gonna happen. And they shut it down.”

CFRA has a poll up, apparently 86.6% of people disapprove of what the protesters did.

Socon has some more pictures and video.

There were definitely issues with the organization I would say. The venue was far too small for one thing, they didn't allow for last minute attendees who made up about 70% of the crowd by some estimates. However in the end it very likely wouldn't have mattered.

There were a lot of people there who probably didn't agree with Ann Coulter. The person standing next to me in line frankly admitted that he didn't like her. But when he heard about the reaction of the University he decided to come anyway because he believed in freedom of speech. Someone else I heard was commenting that if offending people is your talent and you can make money doing it, go for it.

They wanted to hear her. They wanted to support freedom of speech in Canada.

They wanted a dialogue.

Who's intolerant?

Shut Down

2010-03-23T20:12:00.001-07:00

As just about everyone knows by now, the Ann Coulter event was shut down by a bunch of U of O students.

I arrived at the university around 5:30. At that time there was only about a dozen people waiting in the vestibule and the only people that I noticed hanging around outside looked a lot like the CBC. The line started out fairly rag-tag but gradually the place filled up and by the time the doors were supposed to open the vestibule was jammed full and the line extended out the door and around the corner.

No one was doing any yelling or protesting before the event that I noticed. The only controversy seemed to be whether people who hadn't pre-registered would be allowed in. (Answer, probably not. The auditorium was not very large. I estimate something over 300 seats) My brother was in the vestibule until around 7:15 and he reports that all was fairly orderly at that point.

The whole thing started very late. Not sure what the issue was there. It was supposed to start at 7 but the doors only opened around then and due to checking everyone's ID and registration it was not filling up very fast. I managed to get into the auditorium fairly early on. The atmosphere in there seemed to be both excited and rather tense.

Then the fire alarm went off. Do you know how loud industrial fire alarms are? Do you know what they sound like when they go on for about ten minutes?!

People in the auditorium seemed to be very confused about what was going on. It was impossible to tell what was happening outside. The rumors that I collected (true or not I'm not entirely sure) indicated that there were protesters outside yelling "No hate speech on campus", they had barricaded a door, they were pounding on the auditorium door. Deborah Gyapong who got stuck outside has more to say about what happened there. You need to read her account for a complete picture of the night.

My notes at the time read "We're trapped in here. No bathroom... This might get REALLY interesting."

At about 8:09, over an hour after the lecture was supposed to begin Ezra Levant finally got up to speak. He said that there were 2000 protesters outside and that it would not be physically safe for Ann Coulter to appear. Levant did however give a little mini-speech which included some stinging words about Francois Houle.

He noted that at Western Ontario the President had said that regardless of whether he agreed with Ann Coulter or not he welcomed the diversity of opinion and that although there were many students who disagreed with Coulter and some heckling it was under control and they were able to have a good dialogue. Here Houle basically gave the students the green light to make trouble for Ann Coulter and the whole thing had to be shut down. A fish rots from the head down. He also noted that this event will expose the rot in our Canadian culture when it comes to free speech.

The head of the International Free Press Society also spoke about how they took Kurt Westergaard to Yale and Princeton and never had to fear for his life there.

These speeches were regularly punctuated with cheers, clapping, booing, and cries of "We want Ann" at the appropriate moments. A smaller number started to chant telling us to go home. They chanted so loudly that the man trying to tell us how to leave the building safely couldn't make himself heard.

We were able to file out a side door past lots of policemen into an alleyway beside the building. By the time we exited, probably close to 8:30 there were only about a few hundred protesters and the people from the audotorium were able to slip away or join in some counter-chants according to inclination (I'm sure I heard something that sounded a lot like "No more Commies on our campus"). I was able to catch a glimpse of some nice "This is a Safe Space" and "Love" posters. The fact that we had just been police escorted out of the building because the protesters were such a danger seemed lost on them.

Relistening to my audio recording of the demonstrators it sounds like "Freespeechers go home." I know there were other slogans as well.

Well this freespeecher went home, and decided to call up the International Free Press Society tomorrow and offer my services in any way possible. I believed in free speech before, in fact it was Ezra Levant's campaign that first really got me interested in politics. But now, it's personal.

You know there are appropriate ways to deal with speakers you don't like. Vote with your feet, either don't go or walk out if it gets outrageous. Protest peacefully. Use the Q&A session to ask hard questions. Write articles or invite speakers of your own to give a counter perspective. When the Parliamentary Committee was having hearings about Section 13 I went to hear Levant/Steyn and Jennifer Lynch/Bernie Faber/Richard Moon.

Just for the record, I don't agree with everything Ann Coulter says. I don't agree that Muslims should be banned from flying (If she actually meant that seriously) and I quite agree that to say that is offensive. However, she does have a lot to say that is at least worth thinking about.

And after all she is a satirical, polemical speaker. If you want to hear Floppsy the Bunny Rabbit telling us to love the world don't go to an Ann Coulter speech. You go to an Ann Coulter event to hear things said in an over the top, satirical, funny, outrageous, but interesting way. You may or may not agree, but that's fine.

I wanted to hear what she had to say. Hundreds of people wanted to hear what she had to say. They were denied that opportunity by people who thought that they had the right to shout "freespeechers go home" and force us through threat of violence to do so.

Francois Houle is looking for hate speech. I suggest he look at his own desk. Ann Coulter was not going to say anything that would actually incite people to violence. Mr. Houle came within half an inch of doing so. If it wasn't for the presence of nine police squad cars who knows what might have happened. He gave his students a license to stop Ann Coulter and they ran with it.

What happens when those students want to host their own controversial speaker. Will they enjoy a much anticipated feminist speaker not being allowed to speak for fear that she might say something offensive to men? Would they enjoy having hordes of angry men outside pounding on the door, threatening their safety, and forcing them to sneak out the back?

Didn't think so.

They are trashing freedom of speech and they do not even realize it. They don't understand that they need free speech too because they think that their positions are unanswerable, nice, politically correct, tolerant, and self-evidently true. Maybe Ann Coulter could have shaken some of the smug complacency out of them. Maybe not. But they need to learn sooner or later that their positions are offensive to many people and they are not self-evidently true.

We all need free speech. We need it, they need it. What do they think gave them the right to chant outside?

Free speech.

Make My Day

2010-03-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn takes on that very charming letter written by Francois Houle Vice-President Academic and Provost of the University of Ottawa.

In it Mr. Houle pulls down the corners of his mouth, tips up his nose and droningly lectures Ann Coulter in the behavior expected from good little girls at this school. Little girls who don't want them to call Mommy in anyway.

He got Ann Coulters age and/or receptiveness to veiled threats wrong but other than that it was very well written if you don't mind smug condescension mixed with a trickling contempt for Coulter's home country.

It only helped out Ann Coulter of course. The publicity was probably (certainly) most welcome to both Coulter and her supporters (Yes! They're mad at us! Look at the front page publicity! Yahoo! Yippee!). The Toronto Star (and we all know what the Star is...) described the letter as "pure oxygen for the fire". They even admitted that there was about 800 people present. Tory Dr. Roy estimates about 1000 with people turned away.

Steyn wrote,

"I've no idea what Ann Coulter's reaction to this letter is, but I suspect it's "Go ahead, Princess Fairy Pants, make my day." M Houle would have a very hard time persuading the Ottawa police or the RCMP to lay criminal charges over an Ann Coulter speech because they realize, even if he doesn't, that Canada doesn't need to become even more of an international laughingstock in this area. More likely is a complaint to the Canadian and/or Ontario "Human Rights" Commissions. But you know something? I don't get the feeling they'd be eager to re-ignite the free speech wars on a nuclear scale. Think of Ezra's and my appearance in the House of Commons, and then imagine the scene when Miss Coulter testifies. So the threat is an empty one and M Houle seems to be being - oh, what's the "respectful and civil" way of putting it? - a posturing *******."

Follow the link to the National Post, Steyn has more, plus Houle's letter.

Now just for the record I don't agree with everything that Ann Coulter says. Just start with the fact that I like universal healthcare and you could probably go from there. I have read some of her books though and quite a lot of what she writes is solid, and entertaining, good sense. That is at least a better track record than, say, the Young Green Party just to take an example (Go ahead, read their platform).

I, however, am mature enough to listen to people I don't necessarily agree with. Unlike some university educated people.

Banning the Coulter

2010-03-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

Sooo.....

Our tolerant, diverse, free-thinking, yadda, yadda leftist student friends at the University of Ottawa actually have a line past which they don't tolerate anymore.

That line happens to be Ann Coulter.

Not, as has been pointed out, Israeli Apartheid Week with it's colourful and welcoming posters. In fact the very people who are objecting to Ann Coulter (in at least one university) are the same people who organized IAW.

According to the Ottawa Citizen the Student Federation has prohibited people from putting up posters advertising the event within their jurisdiction. The university administration has not done so.

'Scuse me? The university has more respect for freedom of speech and student activities it may or may not agree with than the other students? Why doesn't that surprise me? Why do I have this nagging feeling that it should? I though students were supposed to be the "no rules" people.

So needless to say I will be going to see Ann Coulter and Ezra Levant with great interest. Do you think I should take some pepper spray just in case some students decide to express their views in a less than incredibly mature and articulate way? Perhaps not. I won't forget a couple of good bodyguards (they wanted to go anyway) and my iPhone video recorder though. To make sure that any off-key nursery rhymes get recorded for posterity.

As Michael Coren who will have her on his show said "What fun".

Oh, and by the way, Israeli Apartheid Week poster 09.