An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.
The boy’s school says he has violated the children’s rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.
Let’s just castrate every little boy at the age of 5, and be done with it.
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and today from the Ministry of Naughty Holes;
Officers collected information from businesses, obtained samples of fish and chips, measured salt content and ‘carried out experiments to determine how the problem of excessive salt being dispensed could be overcome by design’.
They decided that the five-hole pots would reduce the amount of salt being used by more than 60 per cent yet give a ‘visually acceptable sprinkling’ that would satisfy the customer.
The council commissioned Drywite Ltd – a catering equipment company based in the West Midlands – to make five-hole shakers and bought 1,000 of them at a cost of £2,000, giving them away to fast-food outlets in their areas.
Drywite confirms that it has since received orders for the shakers from at least five other councils, including Rochdale Borough in Greater Manchester.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday;
… that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.
The court’s 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.
The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
In embarrassing contrast, the Canadian Supremes opened for the human rights racket a whole new field of riches– the content of correspondence between a Member of Parliament and the constituent can now be assumed to fall under their jurisdiction.
Nine people complained that Pankiw made discriminatory comments about aboriginals in the pamphlet and the Canadian Human Rights Commission referred the matter to the tribunal.
The tribunal ruled it had the right to hear the case and the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal both dismissed Pankiw’s appeals.
The Speaker of the House of Commons sided with Pankiw’s argument that disagreements over political matters should be settled through the ballot box, not a rights tribunal.
And I can pretty much guarantee that three hundred plus of our elected members will decline comment on the grounds that their mouths are full of cud.
Today’s lead story in News of the Blatantly Obvious;
In the mobility category, consumption patterns were notably pronounced, with the footprint of top earners measuring almost nine times the size of the lowest-income households. The report said richer households relied more on private cars, vans, trucks and passenger air travel.
“At the low end of the income scale, motor vehicles are either not needed, not affordable or used sparingly,” the report said. “At the high end of the income spectrum, there are not only more motor vehicles per capita, but also more expensive vehicles that require a larger footprint to produce, maintain and operate.”
In terms of housing, the report noted richer households tend to have a higher footprint because they purchase larger, detached homes that consume substantial amounts of energy for heating, cooling and lighting.
I know. It came as a shock to me, too.
h/t to John L, (in the comments) and Charles Adler who apparently did not hear me screaming “You mean, like Al Gore?” into the truck radio.
h/t Wallyj
The Watermelons – strangling economies one industry at a time;
It was 2:30 am when I finally got my ten minutes to tell the provincial NDP government of Manitoba what I thought about Bill 17 the anti-hog, anti-farming, anti- business bill. It was the second time I was at the legislature this week and I think I waited 14 hours in total for my name to be called. This is what I said…
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and who turned out the lights?
Thanks to decades of neglect and wishful thinking by successive governments – and now the devastating impact of a directive from Brussels – we are about to see 17 of our major power stations forced to close, leaving us with a massive shortfall.
Even after 2010, the experts say our power stations cannot be guaranteed to provide us with a continuous supply, meaning that we face the possibility of power cuts far worse than those which recently – largely unreported – blacked out half-a-million homes.
[…]
Scaremongering? Just look at the hard facts. At the moment, to meet Britain’s peak electricity demand, our power stations need to provide a minimum 56 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.
Ten gigawatts, nearly a fifth, comes from our ageing nuclear power stations, all but one of which are so old that over the next few years they will have reached the end of their useful working life.
On top of that, however, we shall also have to shut down nine more major power stations – six coal-fired, three oil-fired – forced to close by the crippling cost of complying with an EU anti-pollution law, the so- called Large Combustion Plants directive.
This will take out another 13GW of capacity, bringing the total shortfall to 22GW – a staggering 40 per cent of the 56GW we have today.
It gets worse.
They were carelessly fishing on the target range;
Police have released the name of a man charged with careless use of a firearm after three men were shot at while fishing last month.
RCMP said Monday that Victor Nanatakapo, 55, from the Big River area, is charged in connection with the incident.
On May 18, a father, son and grandfather said they were fishing on Delaronde Lake, 190 kilometres north of Saskatoon, when a shot rang out, and a bullet splashed into the water near them. They said a man standing on a nearby hill yelled, “Get the hell off my lake.”
If people just had the sense to restrict their fishing to places like schoolyards where guns are prohibited, these accidents wouldn’t happen.
Pakistan has a helpful suggestion for the West – become more Islamic, and we’ll all get along.
Pakistan will ask the European Union countries to amend laws regarding freedom of expression in order to prevent offensive incidents such as the printing of blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the production of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch legislator, sources in the Interior Ministry told Daily Times on Saturday.
They said that a six-member high-level delegation comprising officials from the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Law would leave Islamabad on Sunday (today) for the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium and explain to the EU leadership the backlash against the blasphemous campaign in the name of freedom of expression.
Well, this is hardly news. Just as the answer to the Palestinian Question has always been crystal clear (eradicate every last Jew in the Middle East), the answer to Western Islamophobia has always been “submit to Islam and nobody gets hurt.”
They said that the delegation would also tell the EU that if such acts against Islam are not controlled, more attacks on the EU diplomatic missions abroad could not be ruled out.
They’re receiving a friendly ear in certain quarters as pro-censorship progressives have long seen the upside of religion-state partnerships in regulating expression. It does make perfect sense on a certain level – once one has accepted the logic that controlling guns will eliminate “gun crime”, it’s not difficult to see how regulating the use of words is the key to cultural and religious harmony.
I’m sure readers will spot the familiar supremacist assumptions and the consequent moral inversion. The deaths, riots and violence were, apparently, “unleashed” by infidels who drew cartoons satirising previous threats and violence by belligerent Muslims. Things of which we must not speak. Those actually doing the murdering, threatening and rioting are, it seems, “harassed”. Poor them. Thus, by the ambassador’s thinking, the fits of emotional incontinence and attempts to cow dissent become our responsibility and, conveniently, no-one else’s. And those who need to “reflect” on what has happened – and what will no doubt happen again – are infidels who are, as yet, insufficiently fearful. And, by the same logic, we must learn to pacify and accommodate people who are prideful, malevolent and insane. Or else.
Yes, poor them.
The Robson Square Witch Trials, as reported in the Washington Times. Elmasrey did not return their calls. Tarek Fatah did.
“If at all there will be a anti-Muslim backlash, it will be because the Canadian Islamic Congress and Mr. Elmasry contributed significantly to it,” Mr. Fatah told the Washington Times.
A practicing Muslim, Mr. Fatah accused the Canadian Islamic Congress of being agent provocateurs for Islamists by trying to provoke such a backlash.
“My feeling is – and I could be wrong – but they’re trying to trigger a backlash against Muslims, so that the imams and the Hamas and the Hezbollah people back in the Middle East can say: ‘Look, we told you that the West is at war with Islam,'” he said.
A newspaper located in a Liberal governed province in economic decline looks westward for ideas, licking its lips…
(screenshot)
But I will defend to the death your right to say it – and my right to publish it.
The kangaroo court judge in this case is a Tory patronage appointee, a divorce lawyer from Lethbridge named Lori Andreachuk, (pictured at left). That’s her expertise: divorce law. Not constitutional law; not freedom of speech or freedom of religion. And it shows.
Last November, she convicted Boissoin. Last week she ordered her “remedy”.
It is the most revolting order I have ever seen in Canada. Ever.
Related: The Canadian Scrubbed Transcript Commission.
We’re dining out at Jungle Junction.
First: if there is one pattern we see in the public policies the Cathedral produces, it’s that they tend to be very good at creating dependency. We can observe the dependency system by imagining what would happen if Washington, DC, out to the radius of the Beltway, is suddenly teleported by aliens into a different dimension, where its residents will live out their lives in unimaginable wealth, comfort and personal fulfillment. We here on Earth, however, see the Federal City disappear in a flash of light. In its place is a crater of radioactive glass.
What would happen? Many, many checks would no longer arrive. Children would go hungry – not just in North America, but around the world. Old people would starve. Babies would die of easily preventable diseases. Hurricane victims would squat in squalor in the slums. Drug companies would sell poison, stockbrokers would sell worthless paper, Toys-R-US would sell little plastic parts designed to stick in my daughter’s throat and choke her. Etc, etc, etc.
Washington has made itself necessary. Not just to Americans, but to the entire world. Why does Washington want to help the survivors of Cyclone Nargis? Because helping is what it does. It dispenses love to all. Its mission is quite simply to do good, on a planetary basis. And why does the government of Burma want to stop it? Why turn down free help, including plenty of free stuff, and possibly even some free money?
Because dependency is another name for power. The relationship between dependent and provider is the relationship between client and patron. Which is the relationship between parent and child. Which also happens to be the relationship between master and slave. There’s a reason Aristotle devotes the first book of the Politics to this sort of kitchen government.
Modern Americans have enormous difficulty in grasping hierarchical social structures. We grew up steeped in “applied Christianity” pretty much the way the Hitler Youth grew up steeped in Hitler. The suggesting that slavery could ever be or have been, as Aristotle suggests, natural and healthy, is like suggesting to the Hitler Youth that it might be cool to make some Jewish friends. Their idea of Jews is straight out of Jud Süss. Our idea of slavery is straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. If you want an accurate perspective of the past, a propaganda novel is probably not the best place to start. (If you want an accurate perspective of American slavery, I recommend Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll, which is a little Marxist but only superficially so. No work like it could be written today.)
[…]
We can see the answer when we look at the fate of politicians who have attacked the Cathedral. Here are some names: Joseph McCarthy. Enoch Powell. George Wallace. Spiro Agnew. Here are some others: Ronald Reagan. Richard Nixon. Margaret Thatcher.
The first set are politicians whose break with the Cathedral was complete and unconditional. The second are politicians who attempted to compromise and coexist with it, while pulling it in directions it didn’t want to go. The first were destroyed. The second appeared to succeed, for a while, but little trace of their efforts (at least in domestic politics) is visible today. Their era ends in the 1980s, and it is impossible to imagine similar figures today.
A long, interesting read. If you are in government (at any level) or media, you owe it to yourself to read it.
Just one more day before Steyn gets thrown in the drink.
My day is pretty much tied up with masking tape and a race Corvette, so you’re advised to seek Andrew Coyne for the gory details.
Update – I’m beat. 9 straight hours in the paint booth (I may have photos in a few days. Depends on what they send me.). A couple of items to wrap this up – Beyond the Twilight Zone, the written submissions from Canadian Association of Journalists and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Civil Liberties Ass’n., plus, we hear again from Tarek Fatah in Coyne’s comments thread;
Dear ‘Just Living,’
Try living a full and free life instead of hiding behind a cyber-burka and a name that tells all, viz., Just Living.
To label all people on this forum as ‘bigots,’ is not surprising as it is the only tool employed by Islamists hell-bent on upholding the jihadi doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada.
I know it is difficult, but is it possible that the only people contributing to Islamophobia in Canada are the mulla-elmasry duo?
What did these twits achieve other than to embarrass all Muslim Canadians, who appear to held hostage by the blackmail of community patriotism?
Last night one of these imams came on the Michael Coren Show to discuss polygamy and made such an ass of himself, waving the Quran at the host, mocking Christianity on a Christian TV station and then claiming there was Islamophobia in this country! When I defended my faith by explaining that polygamy was a medieval Bedouin tradition meant to take care of war widows, the Imam started reading from the Quran, screaming, “My religion allows me to marry four wives…Tarek Fatah knows nothing about Islam,” then he sneered at me with ugly facial gestures, waving hands and feminine accent, “Tarek Fatah is modern … moddderrrnnn Muslim…He is not a Muslim,” as if modernity itself was his enemy!
Dear ‘Just Living’, start living and while you are at it, if you are looking for bigots, chances are you will find them in Elmasry’s mosque or Dr. Habib’s clinic, definitely not on this Macleans forum. Sarcasm? May be. Anger? Yes and justifiably so. Islamophiobia? Not a shred of it in five days of discussion.
Dear ‘Just Living,’ the notion that the US or Canada are anti-Muslim does not withstand scrutiny. The number one selling author in both countries for over two years is a Muslim: Dr. Khalid Hossieni whose novel ‘Kite Runner’ has made so many Canucks shed tears on Go Trains and in their solitudes as they embraced the young poor boys of Kabul as their very own family. There is more.
The most sold poet in all of North America is the medieval Muslim poet Rumi. Why would Americans choose to read Maulana Rumi if they hate Muslims?
The most popular sportsman in US for decades is Muhammad Ali Clay. This mischievous boxer who titillated and entertained all of us with his sly smile and political wit. And who still stings like butterfly and floats like a bee! If Americans and the US hate Muslims, why do they love Muhammad Ali, Rumi and read the Kite Runner?
Why does CNN give Ali Velshi so much airtime prominence if it is anti-Muslim? Why, if the West hates Islam, is Farid Zakaria the editor of Newsweek magazine and why is permitted to host his own show on PBS and CNN?
Right in the heart of Vancouver where the boy-band is spewing hate against Canada and its free press, lives Senator Mobina Jaffer. Does her appointment to the senate reflect an anti-Muslim bias in the West or Canada? How doe we end up electing a young Muslim lawyer from Ottawa Centre if Canaucks are anti-Islam? And if your anger is directed at the Conservative flank of Canadian political spectrum, why them would the Reform Party, then the Alliance and later the Conservatives elect Rahim Jaffer as an MP since 1993. Or do you discount him to be a good Muslim simply because he is smart, good looking, dates a lovely MP and wears stylish suits, and heavens forbid, has sense of humour that borders impish naughtiness, a trait that would help such cry babies as Khurrum Awan and Faisal ‘Joseph’ to grow up and stop sucking on their thumbs as they utter drivel.
Dear ‘Just Living,’ please start living.
Indeed. (Thanks to Lori for the catch.)
Ezra Levant will be appearing later this morning as a guest on John Gormley Live on the topic of Human Rights Commissions. You can catch the show online at the link.
And watch this space for Andrew Coyne’s live reports from the Robson Square Witch Trials.
While we wait – NRO interviews Andrew Coyne about the proceedings.
Tourists were shut off from the B.C. legislature’s rotunda this week as work began to hide four historical murals behind walls.
MLAs voted in 2007 to remove the murals and display them elsewhere, because some people find the colonial depictions of aboriginal people to be offensive.
Since they are painted directly on the plaster walls of deep-set alcoves, the plan has evolved to covering them until some way can be devised to take them out without destroying them.
The four murals were commissioned in 1932 as a gift to the province from Provincial Secretary S.L. Howe. They were completed by artist George Southwell to depict Howe’s desire to illustrate the “establishment of civilization” in B.C.
• “Labour” shows the building of either Fort Langley in the 1820s or Fort Victoria in the 1840s.
• “Justice” shows colonial Chief Justice Matthew Baillie Begbie holding court in Clinton during the Cariboo gold rush in the 1860s.
• “Courage” depicts the meeting of captains Vancouver and Quadra at Nootka Sound in 1792 to turn over Vancouver Island territory from the Spanish to the British.
• “Enterprise” shows Hudson’s Bay Company official James Douglas landing at Clover Point to select the site of Fort Victoria in 1843.
Unconfirmed sources indicate that consideration is being given to replacing the murals with depictions of slavery, torture and ritual human sacrifice from early American “civilizations” that eventually succumbed to oppressive European influences such as “mathematics”, “written language”, and “the wheel”.
“10:55 AM They’re back, and they’ve decided they’re going to hear her evidence. Buffy scholars everywhere breathe a sigh of relief.“
Update: Let there be no mistake about the larger goal here:
“We anticipate that success in this case will provide the impetus for prohibiting discriminatory publications in the other provinces.”
Coyne’s commentors are scouring the net, of course. A previous quote from the expert witness for the plaintiffs, currently on the stand;
“It has a lot to do with the difference in belief about freedom … the essential difference is how freedom is understood. I believe that my freedom ends where the dignity and respect for all the prophets begins.” (—Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub)
More about Ayoub at tthe MIlitant Islam Monitor. “Temple University has rejected a suspicious offer of $1.5 million by a Saudi tied, Islamist organization called the International Institute of Islamic Thought [IIIT], to endow a chair in Islamic studies headed by current Temple religion professor Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub.”
Coyne has noted that Mark Steyn is in the room.
The day ends, not with a bang, but a wimp out… – “Wait! Porter in on his feet: “If Habib and Elmasry are afraid to testify, I don’t want them as my witnesses. They’re a pair of scaredy-pants, and…” I swear to God that’s what he said. The proceedings dissolve in even more confusion than usual…”
The Accused stands accused of time travel as the national embarrassment known as the BC Human Rights Tribunal picks up speed – the natural consequence of going downhill;
Uh-oh. The chair seems pissed. If you weren’t happy with their disclosure, did you bring an application for further and better disclosure? Well no. {Paraphrasing here.] If they’d given us a list, we’d have looked at whether they were clear enough. But they just said to us, we’re going to enter some documents that you have. As for UN reports, “I’m convinced they’ve churned out five or six in the last half hour. Probably more to come later today.”
Joseph cleverly rebuts: those may be the rules of evidence in a real court, but we’re not in a real court! He’s got a point there… (Well, he didn’t say “real court.” I beleve he said “at the appellate level.”
10:28 AM As for the irrelevance of reports on Islamophobia “across the pond,” well, “Islamophobia does not stop at the waters.” It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Reports were meant to illustrate the impact of Islamophobia, regardless of its precise location. “My friend wants you to judge the evidence before you receive it.” We’re breaking for probably half an hour or so while the panel considers the question.
Here’s my best effort at a direct quote from McConchie, after telling the tribunal how real courts work: that’s “how at least in my experience and my understanding of the law… I accept this tribunal is not bound by the same rules as a regular court, but there are boundaries, there’s a minimal requirement to prove the authority of the document that’s submitted to the tribunal that is represented to be some sort of academic study, and that would ordinarily be done through an expert witness, and not a lay witness who happens to have seen it.”
That’s how a polite man tells a tribunal they don’t know what the hell they’re doing.
Needless to say, not one of the Troika is paying much attention to him, and panellist Tonie Beharrell has her eyes closed for much of it.
(More here).
I suggest folks get busy forwarding both reports to the offices of every MP and MLA in the nation, along with Ezra’s three word solution.
Fire. Them. All.
Update Tarek Fatah writes in Coyne’s comments;
Does anyone remember Sheikh Younus Kathrada, the Imam who preached that Jews were “brothers of monkeys and swine”?
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/07/21/cleric-rcmp050721.html
Well, what do you know. The good old “monkeys and swine” imam is part of this convoluted Islamist alliance fighting Mackeans.
How, you ask? Relax. Since none of the esteemed reporters are digging deep enough, let me help them out from Toronto.
The National Post today suggests that Naiyer Habib, unlike Khurrum Awan, gives the trial a “local flavour.”
Most B.C. Muslims would beg to differ…
Naiyer Habib is from Saskatchewan and only moved to Vancouver recently. The Regional Director of the CIC in BC is Luay Kawasme. Where is he? Don’t know.
I am told Naiyer Habib is the father of Adnan Habib. Adnan Habib is a Vancouver lawyer, and the legal counsel for the BC Muslim Association.
Earlier this year the BC Muslim Association hired a new Imam. Guess who? None other than the discraced hate-monger Sheikh Younus Kathrada!
Thee Imam who preached that Jews were “brothers of monkeys and swine” is now lecturing at Masjid al-Iman in Victoria run by an organsiation whose legal counsel is the son of Naiyer Habib!
Convoluted assoications? yes. Guilt by association? Probabaly, but it is not me who is saying all Muslims are one organic body that weeps whenever the boy-band is insulted.
My apologies for not having this up sooner – except for a quick stop at the farm to crash a few hours, I’ve been on the road the last 19 hours or thereabouts. (And offline most of the past 5 days).
Andrew Coyne is liveblogging the Mark Steyn hearing today, as best he can;
9:45 AM PST
The Chair is reviewing the legal history of the complaint. Apparently they have no jurisdiction over the Maclean’s website. So that’s a relief…
9:48 AM
We have friends: the BC Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Journalists are here as intervenors.
9:54 AM
Lawyers for the two sides are wrangling now over what witnesses the complainants are going to call, and whether “my friend” had properly informed “my friend” as to what “my friend” (the first one) had planned…
I’ll update as I get caught up myself. Your related links and commentary are welcome in the comments. Most of you probably know more than I do at the moment. This is good, though –
10:59 AM
Just coming back from a break. Lots of media interest, it seems: CBC, CTV (I’m told), the National Post, local media, and a guy from the New York Times, who’s doing a piece comparing how the two countries’ legal systems deal with speech cases. Needless to say, he can’t believe what he’s witnessing…
Great discussion in the comments there;
2 June 2008:
Wow ! Heather MacNaughton, who chaired the three-panel BC Human Rights Tribunal in the mixed judgement of the Port Coquitlam Knights of Columbus v. two lesbians, is the same Justice who fined Christian printer Scott Brockie and denied an appeal by Christian teacher Chris Kempling.
This is bound to be interesting ! We couldn’t have asked for a more leftist judge.
Hey, its a “human rights” tribunal. They have no other kind.
Kathy Shaidle has lots and lots as does RJJago on the support rally. (The blank signs were my suggestion. Heh.)
Keith Martin has issued a press release:
“I just returned from the Canadian Association of Journalists AGM in where I attended a debate with a member of the CHRA. After the debate it became even more obvious that the Act needs to be modernized. The CHRA member had little understanding of the deep flaws and misuses of the Act by the Commission and the trampling of free speech that the Commission sometimes engages in,” said Dr. Martin.
Another big round-up at Free Mark Steyn
Update – What we pay them the big bucks for;
CBC journos asked me who I was with? Just an interested observer I replied.
Who is this Steyn guy they asked. Is he a journalist? Who does he write for? He’s right wing isn’t he?