34 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  2. on the subject of laws intended to regulate what people think, say or write: things seems muddled in germany
    “Can You Call Someone ‘Anti-Semitic’ on a Blog? Not in Germany – A recent court ruling protects hate speech from those who condemn it.”
    http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/german-courts-protect-anti-semites/
    imho, the courts there cannot deal coherently with laws* that, however well-intentioned at the outset, deem audiences incapable of discerning the difference** between opinion with substance*** and opinion without substance. with the recent ruling the courts will (maybe) insist (in vague terms) on opinions being presented like so many labels**** on your new ladder*****.
    *not intended to hurt anyone’s feelings – just curtail free speech
    **not necessarily the authour’s
    ***apparently not everyone has one after all
    **** et cetera
    *****right on germany – maybe you could use some of our canadian human rights crowd – they should be looking for work soon.

  3. There was a letter in the Toronto Star on Saturday from someone who is either clueless or cynical (and I bet I know which), a history prof at the U of Ottawa who shall remain nameless to protect the repulsive.
    The important part is the last paragraph, which reads:
    “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Court Challenges Program set in motion a difficult and expensive reversal of our long sordid history of discrimination. Yet, there are political leaders and their supporters who are eager to weaken the Canadian Charter and dismantle the Court Challenges Program so as to restore the full and unfettered power of the state to do as it wishes with Canadian citizens and our minority communities. Shame on them.”
    The problem, of course, is that he has it exactly backwards: The anti-discrimination portions of the Charter, as they stand, have unleashed the “full and unfettered power of the state to do as it wishes with Canadian citizens”. The full frontal assault on freedom of speech at the Human Rights Commissions is the most glaring example. Shame on this letter-writer for trying to twist the truth for pernicious purposes.
    Section 15(1), the anti-discrimination part, should be narrowed only to apply to government officials acting in the performance of their duties. And section 15(2), the affirmative action part, should be scrapped.

  4. Also in the Saturday Star, an article by the infamous Bill Ayers. He notes that he served on the board of the Woods Foundation along with Barack Obama, and in 1996 made a donation of $200 to Obama’s campaign for the Illinois state senate. Okay, that by itself doesn’t do much to tarnish Obama, but some of his other comments do a lot to impugn himself.
    Here’s one quote from Ayers: “[E]very day I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful and irresistible movement for peace and social justice.”
    Let’s be thankful that he isn’t participating in the same manner as he did in the 1960s, which included planting bombs that could have or did harm innocent people. More than once his butter-fingered associates blew themselves up.
    “Social justice” is the mother of all anti-concepts, a contradiction along the lines of “square circle”. Justice means reaping the consequences of one’s actions (something quite different from going on the lam for a couple of decades, it should be noted). It is not “social” in the least, and adding this modifier destroys it. What “social justice” really means is that all wealth belongs to the state to distribute among its favourites, usually the “politically correct”. The call for “social justice” will be resisted by those of us who advocate genuine justice.
    Another quote, referring to the extreme left-wing movement generally: “We might find hope in the growth of opposition to war and occupation worldwide”
    Let us not forget that the main instigators of war and occupation were socialist governments that clothed their policies in the rhetoric of “social justice”.
    And one more: “We might be inspired by the growing movements for reparations and prison abolition”
    Either one of these, if implemented, could set off the Second American Civil War. Reparations would mostly be paid to people several generations removed from slavery; it’s just another attempt to stir up trouble, and on the sensitive issue of racism yet. Meanwhile the abolition of prisons would mean many mass-murderers and psychopaths running around and causing havoc, which in turn would lead to vigilantism (which, let us note, also could not result in prison). Maybe that’s the only way Ayers feels he’ll be guaranteed to stay out of jail for any future incidents he might be considering …

  5. A conference attended by thousands of Muslim clerics, scholars and community leaders in India has endorsed a religious ruling against terrorism.
    The ruling or fatwa was issued earlier this year by an Islamic seminary.
    It said that Islam rejected all kinds of bloodshed and the killing of innocents for selfish and politically motivated gains.
    This is the first time the Islamic scholars have come together to give their backing to the measure.
    The fatwa was issued in May this year by the religious school, Darul Uloom Deoband.
    Coming from one of the most respected Islamic theological schools in the region, the fatwa is significant, correspondents say.
    Abdul Hameed Nomani, one of the organisers of the conference, which was attended by more than 6,000 Islamic scholars, said: “Some people are involved in terrorist activities in the name of Islam and some are defaming Islam by involvement in terrorist activities.
    “We condemn both. The country is facing a challenge. We must fight it together without calling it as a Hindu-Muslim problem.”
    news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7719059.stm

  6. “Does anybody really know what garbage is?
    Globe and Mail”
    …-
    “Journalist received call threatening to kill abducted CBC reporter
    CBC.ca”

  7. (Via SWJ) Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries
    The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.
    These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States…

  8. (Via SWJ) C.J. Chivers, G.I.’s in Remote Post Have Weary Job, Drawing Fire
    Once a hunting lodge for Mohammad Zahir Shah, Afghanistan’s last king, the castle is home for a year for an American cavalry troop, an Afghan infantry company, a Navy corpsman and two American marines. In the deadly contest for Afghanistan’s borderlands, it plays what might seem a singularly unattractive role. The position lies exposed near the bottom of a natural amphitheater deep within territory out of government control…
    First Lt. Daniel Wright, the executive officer of the American cavalry unit — Apache Troop of the Sixth Battalion, Fourth Cavalry — put things in foxhole terms.
    “Basically,” he said, “we’re the bullet sponge.”

  10. File this sucker under ‘Argentina Here We Come!, or ‘Ain’t Socialism Grand?’
    From http://www.carolinajournal.com/articles/display-story.html/?id=5081
    ‘Dems Target Private Retirement Accounts’
    ‘The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci ….proposed that the govt eliminate tax breaks for 401k and similar retirement accounts, such IRAs, and CONFISCATE (my Argentinian caps) worker’s retirement plan accounts and convert them into universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration.’
    Blah blah.
    ‘Another justification for Ghilarducci’s plan is to eliminate investment risk. In her testimony Ghilarducci said, “humans often lack the foresight, discipline, and investing skills required to sustain a savings plan.”
    She cited the 2004 HSBC global study on the Future of Retirement, in which she claimed that “a thrid of Americans wanted the govt to force them to save more for retirement.”‘
    So there you have folks.
    Under the progressive Big Owe, the new majority will be 1/3 of the population.
    Gee maybe she could make ‘Don’t Cry For US Argentina’ the new national anthem while she is at it. Although she will probably wait to see how high this lead ballon will fly first with the new minority 2/3s of the population.

  11. Wesley J. Smith, Assisted Suicide: The Wind in Their Sails
    Beyond the politics of the thing, the passage of I-1000 begs a far more fundamental question: Why now, when for the first time in human history the pain and discomforting symptoms of serious illness can be substantially alleviated, do so many find mercy killing and suicide so appealing? Think of it as a symptom rather than a cause. The euthanasia movement reflects a profound nihilism that has been spreading like a cancer throughout the West for the past hundred years.
    The extent of our societal illness was described succinctly several years ago by the Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne. Writing in the wake of widespread public support for Robert Latimer, a Saskatchewan farmer who murdered his twelve-year-old daughter Tracy because she was disabled by cerebral palsy, Coyne wrote: “A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured.”

  12. Charles MacDonald:
    The program under the National Socialists started out small and did away with the disabled; commonly known as Aktion T4 or to use CRA’s terminology the “T4 Program”.
    Whenever one starts buying into the the ‘life is not worth living mentality’ this stuff begins to rear its head.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4
    Action T4 (German: Aktion T4) was a program, also called Euthanasia Program, in Nazi Germany spanning October 1939 until August 1941, during which physicians killed 70,273 people[1]specified in Hitler’s secret memo of September 1, 1939 as suffering patients “judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination,”[2] but described in a denunciation of the program by Cardinal Galen as long-term inmates of mental asylums “who may appear incurable.”[3] The Nuremberg Trials found evidence that German physicians continued the extermination of patients after October 1941 and evidence that about 275,000 people were killed under T4[4].
    The codename T4 was an abbreviation of “Tiergartenstraße 4”, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten which was the headquarters of the General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care (Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Heil- und Anstaltspflege).[5] This body operated under the direction of Philipp Bouhler, the head of Hitler’s private chancellery,[6] and Dr Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician. This villa no longer exists, but a plaque set in the pavement on Tiergartenstraße marks its location.
    The euthanasia decree, written on Adolf Hitler’s personal stationery and dated 1 September 1939, reads as follows:
    Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with the responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians, to be designated by name, to the end that patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen] of their state of health, can be granted a mercy death [Gnadentod].[7]
    How appropriate for a Remembrance Day prelude.
    Cheers
    Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht,Commander in Chief
    Frankenstein Battalion
    Knecht Rupprecht Division
    Hans Corps
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  13. When there’s votes to buy, nothing gets in the way of a politician needing green…
    Ottawa switches tracks on funding rules to aid ‘Petit Train’
    Harper government to provide $2-million to fix rails of the Wakefield Steam Train, a major tourist draw in Tory riding
    DANIEL LEBLANC
    Globe and Mail
    November 10, 2008 at 5:08 AM EST
    OTTAWA — The Harper government rewrote the rules of an economic development program in order to pay for a $2-million project in a Conservative Quebec riding that would otherwise have been left out….”
    Not ethics, not self-respect, nor ‘conservative’ ideology either. You go Cons!!!

  14. Remembrance Day
    Here is an amazing vid that i posted last yr. this is of a 4yr old boy in Holland & his tribute to our troops. He is dressed in a WW2 Canadian regt attire. Really quite touching what this little boy does in his salute to the Canadian Contingent @ the Hoofdplaat-Knokke Memorial March Nov. 04/2007
    Please check this out
    We Will Remember Them
    http://users.skynet.be/fb730011/salute.htm

  15. Just in case you thought Toronto Star readers never got beyond buying fashionable eyewear and mochachinos…..
    thestar.com Poll
    Do you think the federal government should increase aid to the auto sector?
    Yes 26%
    No 67%
    But, what does our ‘conservative’ finance minister plan to do about corporate welfare????
    [Star Poll]
    thestar.com Poll
    You’ve already voted, but here are the results anyway.
    Do you think the federal government should increase aid to the auto sector?
    Flaherty favours aid for long-term auto plans
    HEATHER SCOFFIELD AND GREG KEENAN
    November 9, 2008 at 10:41 PM EST
    SAO PAULO, Brazil, TORONTO — Ottawa is willing to go to the aid of teetering auto companies, but will consider help only for plants that are thought to be “sustainable,” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Sunday.
    “The key is sustainability, a look to ensuring that the industry is sustainable long term, not in short-term fixes,” he said in an interview after meeting in Brazil with finance ministers and central bankers from around the world….”
    Ahh, nothing like picking winners and losers – with other peoples money eh Jimmy?

  17. Thanks, Hans. A useful reminder that some doors are best never opened.
    I was rereading Martin Gray’s autobiography, For Those I Loved (1972), last night. He was 14 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and, as the son of a wealthy Jewish family in Warsaw, his life became extremely precarious. He survived by smuggling food into the Warsaw Ghetto; then he survived Treblinka; then he survived fighting as a partisan and later in the Red Army. After the war, he found a measure of happiness until his wife and all his children were killed in a wildfire. If Job/Iyov wasn’t already in the Bible, Martin Gray could have written it.
    He describes an unsatisfactory interview with a journalist:

    I haven’t yet read what he’s going to write. It will be nothing out of the ordinary, because he doesn’t dare admit what he thinks: that it’s scandalous to have survived, that he doesn’t understand. Too bad. He’s the kind who can’t understand why hundreds of thousands of us, from the ghettos of Warsaw, Zambrow and Bialystok, went to their deaths, and why we still kept fighting, and how, in spite of everything, some of us survived. He wouldn’t understand how we could have buried or even how we could have touched the thousands of dead bodies in Treblinka, the children with staring eyes and lolling heads, on whom we threw spadefuls of yellow sand. He wouldn’t understand how, in spite of that, I and others got away, and found the strength to start living again, and had children. He wouldn’t understand why I’m still alive today… If he seems to understand, it’s just on the surface. I forgive him. I’ve no quarrel with him. He’s never known suffering, and I hope he never does.

    Today they’d probably tell him that he was being obtuse by insisting on survival and believing that life is precious. “You’re old and broken — you’re a burden on the medicare system! You know what you must do…”.

  19. “They kill people, they keep them in misery.”
    “This upset the greens to no end.”
    “FP: And it was easy to rock the boat on global warming?
    Durkin: Very easy.”
    …-
    “The Great Global Warming Swindle”
    “Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Martin Durkin, the producer of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.”
    http://tinyurl.com/6abj5w

  20. Next: The Suzuki Network. SN is 100% owned by the Canadian taxpayers.
    SN is a charitable foundation.
    SN is “media-savvy”, Tonto. Ughly.
    …-
    “CBC partners with Gore to bring Current TV to Canada
    Current TV, the interactive television network with one-third of its content created by media-savvy viewers, is coming to Canada.”(cbc)

  21. A well stated consideration of the Progressive takeover of the Conservative Party…..with willing Cons as well…
    Maybe they aren’t that different after all
    Robert Silver, November 9, 2008 at 12:21 PM EST
    The best thing the Conservative Party of Canada has going for it is a loyal, devoted membership that volunteers and as importantly, donates money to the party in huge numbers. I have been plenty critical of the Liberal Party of Canada for its efforts to develop that type of relationship with our members – existing and new.
    It must warm the hearts of these thousands of Conservative militants to read how the Conservative party brass really views the upcoming policy conference. Leave it to Ryan Sparrow to find les mots juste: “They’re just like any other consultation you would have with any stakeholder group.”
    Ryan Sparrow, of course, doesn’t work for the government of Canada. He works for the Conservative Party of Canada and by extention, is answerable to Conservative Party members. He has now set out that the party’s policy conference is no different than any other consultation – in other words, something the Conservative Party of Canada can ignore if it doesn’t like the result and in fact, may demonize at its will if any members say anything PMSH doesn’t agree with. Nice.
    Conservative Party members? Why, your views are just as coveted as those the Plumbers Asssociation of Canada might provide. (And no, I don’t have anything against plumbers – one fine fella saved my basement from a flood this week.) You are just a stakeholder to the government – to be managed, to be used.
    But please don’t forget to send us our cheque next month.”
    I wonder if this guy is getting his ideas from me?!? (blush)

  22. bud IMO
    hardboiled = Scott Reid (everything he posts fits right in with his agenda and he has the same MO as a Librano)

  23. The National Snow and Ice Data Center is one of the more alarmist Climate Change organizations. A quote from the home page of their website
    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
    “Read timely scientific analysis year-round below. We provide an update during the first week of each month, or more frequently as conditions warrant.”
    The last post was from October 2nd. Since then, the arctic ice cover has grown substantially quicker than expected. Why has the NSIDC failed to report this?

  24. Snow Squall Warning for Grey/Bruce
    enviroment Canada
    this is Grey/Bruce’s first for the season & iam sure we will have plenty of more, Damm global Warming.

  25. Tories convene for first time since 2005 but policy not priority
    1 day ago
    OTTAWA — It’s been over three and a half years since Conservative partisans convened to chart their party’s future course at a founding policy convention in Montreal. A great deal has happened to Stephen Harper’s unite-the-right movement since March 2005 – including a pair of election victories and the longest running continuous minority government since Confederation. “This is at best a brokerage-party style convention,” Ellis said of this week’s gathering.
    “Policy, and even governance of the party, is not what it’s about.”….
    At least one failed, divisive motion has been reprised from 2005. It’s a proposal by Ontario MP Scott Reid to change the party constitution to weight riding participation at conventions by membership numbers. MP Peter MacKay argued vehemently in 2005 that the change would abrogate the PC-Alliance merger deal, which gave equal representation to all 308 riding associations and prevents the merged party from being dominated by delegates from Western Canada….”
    The notion of one person, one vote. So completely foreign to those in the Party with bright pink centres. Well, hey, if a guy’s gotta keep a populace down, whatcha gonna do?
    Let Party members decide? Hardly. Just like the Libranos.
    Whether Liberal or Tory, it’s the same old story….

  28. Not a red cent for the automakers from government!
    Nada, nothing, zippo, zilch unless and until the union comes forward stating what they are prepared to give up and it better be substantial.
    Otherwise, make good use of the over-bloated EI fund.

  29. Find the experts at the MSM saying: “widely-better-than expected”.
    Look what that >>>>> con-neo Harper is up to now.
    It’s a policy priority; part of the wision of the same old con-neos.
    Same old same old.
    “It is the second month in a row that CMHC figures have come in widely-better-than expected.”
    …-
    “Home construction beats expectations, while prices rise
    Canada’s housing market showed some resiliency through September and October, as national new home prices unexpectedly rose two months ago while the rate of construction on new homes was higher-than-expected in October, a pair of reports said Monday.”
    http://www.financialpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=946249

  30. CHRC to lay wreath tommorow at the National Service……..
    See it all at five feet and ezra.

  31. “Anchors aweigh
    Here’s how the Navy rescued an American hostage high in the mountains of Afghanistan according to the Navy Times. (Hat tip: the Jawa Report)
    “I heard the latch rattling and somebody came in,” he said. “The first guy came in with a LED light, and I just presumed that somebody was coming to visit. I didn’t think of it anymore until the second guy came in and I saw the silhouette of the first fellow. Then I knew it was U.S. mil that was coming in. I don’t know how many guys actually came into the room, but it was soon filled up, and it was soon obvious that I was being rescued.
    “I don’t know what I said in English, but whatever I said I said it rather loudly evidently, because they said ‘Quiet!’ ””
    http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/
    …-
    “Exclusive: Inside a U.S. hostage rescue mission”
    “Spec ops conducts night raid in Afghanistan mountains
    The American businessman lay shackled in a mud hut 8,000 feet up a remote mountain in Afghanistan, armed captors posted inside and outside to prevent any escape attempt.
    Earlier in his captivity, he had made a run for it, but — barefoot and much older than the insurgents who held him — he was snatched back before he could get far.”
    http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/11/military_air_rescue_110708w/

  32. Michael Coren show tonight has an activist by the name of Andrea Culver who proves by her explanation of why she is not wearing a poppy that Canada is a very tolerant country.Her convoluted reasoning is that she does not support the troops now, therefore our veterans do not deserve her blessing.I’ll bet 10 to 1 that she loves Layton as much as Warren loves Obama.

  33. My bad. The asshat’s name is Andrea Calver,full-time social engineer,another mouth on the taxpayer’s teat.

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