The Daily Mail has this tidbit…
Leaked guidelines from the Bedfordshire force say that when officers raid Muslim homes they should remove their shoes, not use dogs and not mount pre-dawn raids because at that hour people might by ‘spiritually busy’.
Why Michaelle Jean?
At the Shotgun, commentor “ET” reflects my own reaction to Paul Martin’s appointment of a little known CBC journalist to the post of Governor General, and then fleshes out the political strategy behind it.
The position of G-G is, as head of state, supposed to be held by an individual who has worked towards and achieved, by some measureable criteria, the well-being of the majority of Canadians.
It is a national position, it is an honorary position, it is an awarded position, and should be based, therefore, on accountable merit. By accountable merit, I mean non-political; a government’s patronage appointments must be made with integrity, i.e., by the use of non-partisan standards and for no partisan political agenda.
These non-partisan standards, in the case of the G-G, must be for work done by that individual for ‘national committment’, for ‘national achievements’, whether in politics, law, economics, education, science, medicine etc. There are plenty of Canadian individuals whose lifetime work has been non-partisan, has been national and has indeed showed extraordinary commitment to the well-being of citizens.
Ms Jean fits none of these criteria. It is trivial and irrelevant to divert criticism of this choice to her being ‘ethnic’, ‘non-white’, ‘a woman’, even to her being ‘Quebecois’..blah blah. That’s all trivia and obfuscates and hides what should be the basic criticism of this choice of her as G-G. The criticism? She doesn’t fit what should be a standard for a patronage appointment of this stature; namely, a lifetime work towards the betterment of the well-being of the majority of Canadians. As I said – there are many in Canada who have worked over their lives, in their fields, -whether in medicine, politics, literature, science, law, education etc..whose work has made profound contributions to the well-being of people.
So- what are Ms Jean’s qualifications???? None of the above. She’s a local broadcaster. So what? There are lots of local broadcasters and journalists and sports writers and national news reporters. So what? There’s absolutely NO DIFFERENCE in qualifications between any of them..well, a lot of them are far more knowledgeable than Ms Jean. Far more knowledgeable. And a lot of them speak many languages as well. Hey- there’s Chantal Hebert, there’s Andrew Coyne, there’s Irshad Manji, there’s Don Cherry, there’s Peter Worthington, there…and so on. But – do any of them have that criterion of a lifetime of work resulting in demonstrable improvements in the well-being of many Canadians…such as would be found in a lifetime of work in law, in economics, in science, in medicine, in politics etc. No. So- they can be awarded OTHER acknowledgements of their status. National Newspaper Awards, Order of Canada, etc, etc.
So- what was this position appointment really about? Remember – forget the trivia. Don’t even mention the ‘non-white’, female irrelevancies. The appointment was made, as are ALL LIBERAL actions – for one purpose only. Votes for Power.
The agenda is for the Montreal city votes in the next election. That’s what it’s all about. The Liberals figure they could lose the rural votes, the outside Montreal votes, which will go to the Bloc. But, Montreal has usually been Liberal and the Gomery has badly damaged that Montreal base. This appointment is for both the ethnic votes – which are ALL in Montreal (how’s that for a diverse province…all the ethnics are only found in Montreal; they aren’t welcome elsewhere in the province)…AND – it’s for the Montreal city votes.
It’s all about Liberal Power. Nothing else.
(Not to mention the lingering warm fuzzies that will keep the CBC firmly on side.)
Supreme Court Puts Charter Of Rights On Hold
Via local radio: the Supreme Court of Canada has suspended their decision to strike down the Quebec private health-care ban case for 12 months.
Put your hand up if this surprises you.
update – and that isn’t all. They’re going to revisit the decision;
The Risk Takers
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In this era in which nanny-state politics endeavors to stifle their natural inclinations from the moment they take their first helmeted steps, we should pause a moment and say a prayer of thanks for the gift of the “risk takers”.
They are those children – boys, usually – who jump their bicycles from garage roofs, who taunt large dogs, who ride their motorcycles far too fast, who grow up to risk all and sometimes, to give all and in so doing contribute the tools and the techniques that save lives through innovative materials and technologies.
They become the race car drivers, the astronauts, the stunt pilots and their kind. By pushing the envelope for the envelope’s own sake, the risk takers discover the knowledge that trickles down to protect and improve our everyday lives.
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No Longer The Fringe
Snuppy The Clone
Those damned Koreans are at it again;
Like Dolly and other predecessors, Snuppy was created using a method called somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT.
Scientists transfer genetic material from the nucleus of a donor adult cell to an egg whose nucleus – with its genetic material – has been removed. The reconstructed egg holding the DNA from the donor cell is treated with chemicals or electric current to stimulate cell division.
Once the cloned embryo reaches a suitable stage, it is transferred to the uterus of a surrogate where it continues to develop until birth.
Dog eggs are problematic because they are released from the ovary earlier than in other mammals. This time, the researchers waited and collected more mature unfertilized eggs from the donors’ fallopian tubes.
They used DNA from skin cells taken from the ear of a 3-year-old male Afghan hound to replace the nucleus of the eggs. Of the three pregnancies that resulted, there was one miscarried fetus and one puppy that died of pneumonia 22 days after birth.
That left Snuppy as the sole survivor. He was delivered by Caesarean section from his surrogate mother, a yellow Labrador retriever.
Researchers determined that both of the puppies that initially survived were genetically identical to the donor dog.
Schatten said the Afghan hound’s genetic profile is relatively pure and easy to distinguish compared to dogs with more muddled backgrounds. But dog experts said the researchers’ choice of breed choice was disquieting.
“The Afghan hound is not a particularly intelligent dog, but it is beautiful,” said psychologist Stanley Coren, author of the best-selling manual “The Intelligence of Dogs.” He ranked the Afghan hound last among 119 breeds in temperament and trainability.
“Many people who opt for the cloning technique are more interested in fashionable looks,” he said. “Whenever we breed dogs for looks and ignore behavior, we have suffered.”
(Dog breeder’s aside; Why does the reporter inject this meaningless prattle from faux-expert Stanley Coren (who is to the world of canine science what Oprah Winfrey is to the study of subatomic particles) into this story? His ignorance is underscored by the very quotes they provide.)
Leon DeWinter And Paul Ausborn
Pieter Dorsman has translated portions of an interview with Dutch writer Leon de Winter on the difficult choices Europe is facing in confronting Islamic terrorism;
We have created a society based on laws in which our freedoms are anchored. The downside is that terrorists take advantage of these laws to organize themselves. If our existence is at stake, and that is the way I see it, than you shouldn’t be paralyzed by your attachment to your legal system, because that is precisely what the radicals are counting on. I do think that you should draw a line when it comes to applying physical violence to prisoners, but there are other techniques that have better results than violating someone’s physical integrity. I would lie if I said that we should reject them all.
[…]
We have to demand that the Muslim community will start to be open and honest. I really can’t imagine that you somehow fail to see that certain youths in your environment all of a sudden become fundamentalist. As a Muslim, you shouldn’t praise that, you should be afraid of that. Muslims will have to start co-operating with our police organizations, with people that do not believe in their God and who live in a very different world.
The quotes reminded me of a chapter in James H. Gray’s 1966 Canadian classic on the Depression – The Winter Years. Gray writes about Paul Ausborn, a “man who heard voices”, who had fled Germany for Manitoba when they told him that Hitler would lead the world to war ;
Through his old connections with the Social Democrats in exile, Ausborn obtained a large collection of pictures of the atrocities being committed by the Nazis in Germany. He rented a store on Logan Avenue to show his gallery of infamy to Winnipeg. Nazi sympathizers wrecked his exhibit. He started over and put another exhibition together. At the same time, he scoured the German Canadian community for supporters and could find only a handful. …. Unhappily, Ausborn was overwhelmed again and again by the force that the Nazis were exerting on the German population of western Canada, and by the lack of interest in his work on the part of other Canadians. He was beaten up by Bundists, and harried by city policemen who saw nothing wrong in Hitler, because the only people Hitler was bothering were Jews and Communists.
As an indication of Ausborn’s physical courage, he and two young friends once invaded a huge pro-Nazi picnic and distributed 6,000 anti-Nazi pamphlets and miraculously escaped unharmed. But in his efforts to rouse the city to the menace of Naziism, he lost every battle, every skirmish even. Nazi agents, on the other hand, infiltrated the university, the schools, the churches, and every other part of the German community. Ausborn was ostracized by the Germans, most of his family deserted him, and with his money gone he was reduced to living on relief.”
By the time hostilities broke out, “Ausborn’s stock rose”, albeit briefly. Germans, including some of his supporters, were being sent to internment camps. A piece of Canadian history that few have been told of, and that is well worth revisiting to help place current debates (and WWII revisionism) into historical context.
Remembering Stephen Vincent
Wretchard on the murder of Stephen Vincent, freelance journalist and blogger, in Iraq.
Whether Sunni killed Shi’ite or Shi’ite killed Sunni, Mr. Vincent knew murder when he saw it. It will be interesting to see whether the media will attribute Mr. Vincent’s death to “guerillas” or to “paramilitary death squads”. But in a sense it will not matter. He was witness to the necessity for honesty and the survival of outrage; conscious of how near death stands to all of us in the workaday world without watchful men ready to give the alarm with just words.
Michelle Malkin has an extensive roundup of reaction, while Ed Morrissey recalls his interview with Vincent a few months ago.
Via NRO; His family asks that donations be made in his name to Spirit of America.
Zubaida
“I’m Used To Being Naked”
These are naked Europeans celebrating sensual European art in a European museum, yet they still managed to turn the event into a rally against America!
I Used To Be A Communist, But I’ve Since Been Bitchslapped
David Terron hauls fourth year University of Waterloo political science student (and director for the Liberal Party of Canada in Kitchener-Conestoga) Mark Johnson back to class – by the ear.
(A sequel to “I Used To Be A Communist, But I’ve Since Woken Up”)
Chinese Bid For CPShips
Now that the attempt to grab Unocal is dead, the Chinese are setting sights elsewhere…. China E-Lobby;
….no piece of legislation actually passed, no action was actually taken by the Administration. A few hearings in Congress, a bunch of editorials, and some blogs (OK, perhaps that’s just an ego-stroking stretch) managed to scare of the Communists. That’s how hypersensitive the Communists are right now. Rather than risk a political tangle that could last long enough for the anti-Communist right and the anti-Communist left to form a lasting alliance – and that is the one thing in the American political arena that scares Zhongnanhai more than anything else – they will pull back and let everything die down.
Now we can see how well pressure works in Canada, where the Communist-owned China Shipping Group is going after CP Limited Ships. Like Unocal, CP has other bidders, including France’s CMA CGM. As observers of Canadian politics (and nearly all Canadian readers of this blog) know, Canada’s government is more malleable to the Communists than America’s. However, the opposition in the Great White North has quietly become the most anti-Communist party in the democratic world. With enough pressure from either side of the 49th parallel, Communist China will face a choice. Do they go ahead and had the opposition an issue (selling off of Canadian firms to a hostile foreign power) that could very well do what nothing else seems to have done: namely, get them elected to government? Or do we back off, save our buddies in Ottawa the headache, and try again when no one is watching?
This Is Jack’s Brain On Drugs
“Further, I’m angry [Jack Layton] did not even offer any message to me as someone who gave the NDP thousands of dollars in the last election – possibly up to about $10,000” – Marc Emery
Via a reader, who writes;
The interview was done for and broadcast POT-TV network in 2003, owned and funded by Emery, who now faces serious money laudnering chargers. POT-TV is an important plank of Emery’s illegal seed sale operation currently under investigation by the DEA. Rotating ads preceding Jacks sit down interview can often be seen with Emery in a full blown grow room boasting of his high quality marijuana seeds available for sale via his website.
More.
The Elections Canada unofficial search tool doesn’t support Emery’s claim – but in light of his alleged cross border sales, perhaps they’d be interested in where he found nearly $18K for the Marijuana Party.
Personally, having listened to him in a live interview, I think “Martin Luther” Emery is less effective as a marijuana advocate than he is a poster child for the argument that long term use of pot can result in serious cognitive impairment.
Passage To Kandahar
(from personal correspondance)
I leave Friday for sunny Afghanistan. This will prove to be quite an interesting eye opener of a trip. I will start out in Kabul and help teardown the camp to move to Kandahar, while doing my regular job. The ‘landlord’ has not extended our lease, so we are being evicted come December 1. Got to like that after all the work gone into setting it up. Making it so cozy. Or as cozy as a desert can be.
There are only ten of us from my unit splitting up in Afghanistan to cover the two sections. We have talked amongs ourselves and believe that this will be the most challenging of tours for us at the moment. Until the Congo and Sudan get up in full gear. We as Canadians have managed to take few casualties. There is a ‘saluting monument’ in the middle of Camp Julien, for the fallen. I don’t think our luck will hold out on this one. I hope I am wrong. More small incidents have occurred in and around both areas.
Kabul with the tearing down will become less secure and more vulnerable to the attacks. Kandahar with the setting up, is already vulnerable. Kandahar being so close to the mountains and border, is also right in the middle of the drug warlord territories. Maybe we can invite them in for a tea and a chat.
I have been reading your blog on and off, as I kill time till the deployment. This is my embarkment leave time. Time to get the last of my shit together before I leave for who knows how long. I was told anywhere from 4-6 months, depending on the elections and the assasination clause. Because the military, or maybe it is just our unit, is so short on new recruits, our deployments are being extended from 6 to 9 months in duration.
Once the word gets out, there will be a lot of releases put in. It is a long go at 6 months, working 24/7. Someone asked me if we get weekends off or two days a week off. What for? Where are we going to go? Not like you can take a stroll downtown Afghanistan.
I’ll take my camera and try to send a few ‘deconstruction’ pics.
Genetics Of Autism
More evidence of a genetic basis for autism;
Using DNA samples from 120 families likely to possess a genetic risk factor on chromosome 17, the team found 19 different SERT mutations ( or variants ) in families with multiple affected males, consistent with the well-known sex-bias seen in autism incidence.
Four of these variants were in ‘coding’ regions, or parts of the gene that get translated into protein. The other 15 variants were in ‘noncoding’ regions, which are edited out of the final protein product but may have important regulatory roles in the expression of the gene. “These coding mutations tracked with an increased severity of rigid- compulsive behaviors,” Sutcliffe explained. These types of behaviors are a common characteristic of autism and related disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorders.
The findings underscore the relationship between autism and disorders like OCD and may explain why SSRIs are effective in treating these conditions, he said.
[…]
Based on these findings, Blakely and Sutcliffe predict that there will one day be a way to test autistic children for these gene variants, similar to the testing done for cystic fibrosis, a disease linked to a single gene but triggered by many different mutations.
“Autism has such a high genetic risk, but these new findings suggest that there may be many variants of individual genes at work,” Blakely said.
With such genetic testing, said Sutcliffe, “you might be able to predict which kids would respond positively to particular SSRI medications.”
“We now have concrete evidence in our families that the SERT gene is a risk factor in autism,” Blakely said. “Perhaps more importantly, we also have new pathways that could have some therapeutic end points, and that, to us, is really good news.”
Denver
Greetings from Denver – or rather, way up in the Colorado mountains south of Denver. I see Sean and Stephen have popped in a couple of posts in my absence – thankyou guys! I’ll be heading to the airport in an hour or so.
My weekend here was devoted to giving a seminar to 15 or so people on “everything Schnauzer”, from genetics to grooming to understanding breed type and show handling tips. Days ran from 12 to 14 hours, so there was no time to even check mail, much less blog. I haven’t read a paper, listened to a radio or watched tv since I arrived – so I’ll be behind the curve for a few days.
All in all, I think that was a good thing. I was beginning to understand why so many bloggers “burn out” after a year or two.
You can entertain each other in the comments section on this post until I get back and recuperate a little.