“I have no more respect for “Alberta separatists” than I do for their Quebec counterparts.� But at times like this, I have to admit, I can sort of see where they’re coming from.”

It’s the title of an article in Macleans in which one anticipates learning that Stephen Lewis (of all people!) is turning on the UN to denounce the child prostitution scandals, the corruption in the Secretary General’s office, the betrayal of the Iraqi people by European and Canadian interests under the Oil-For-Food scheme….
It teases;

The United Nations and its agencies have endured their share of criticism over the years, but seldom has such a verbal shelling come from inside the tent. Stephen Lewis is Canada’s former UN ambassador, a special envoy to the secretary general on AIDS in Africa, an all-round humanitarian, and quite possibly the world’s most ardent multilateralist. But in a series of lectures to be delivered this week, he airs a good bit of the UN’s dirty laundry …

The chain rattles…

Lewis offers no apologies for dispensing tough love. “There is a tendency to think that dissent should be contained or that self censorship is to be applauded,” he writes in Race Against Time, a printed version of a text he’s to deliver at the annual Massey Lectures in Toronto. “I regard both sentiments as the last refuge of an intellectual wimp.”

Cry havoc!

The focus of his attacks: the world community’s failure to meet the so-called Millennium Development Goals, targets set by the world leaders five years ago to address the alarming spread of poverty and disease, especially in Africa.

…and let slip the poodle of women’s equality.

Lewis keeps a group photo of the UN secretariat, taken in 1985, on the wall of his study in Toronto; of 32 officials appearing in the picture, he observes, not one is a woman.

There is one passage in the piece that has the ring of leftist hypocrisy truth;

[…] over and over, he has left behind starving or disease-ridden children in squalid slums — often flying to the next international aid conference at some luxury hotel.

Lewis claims he felt an “underlying sense of guilt” about that – not enough, apparently, to bark about it at the time. Though, to be fair, that’s hard to do when the fangs are buried in expense-account foie gras.

Prepare* for the term “kleptophobe!” to emerge from the Canadian left.

…On being in Winnipeg: “The idea of being in the geographic centre of Canada appeals to me. On one side is the East. On the other the West. Two compass points that have shaped our country’s imagination.” …On Inuit stone carvings; “What a gentle image in such a hard material”

Tip of the hat to Raskolnikov who says of the media coverage, “This sounds like something out of the Onion.”

Bob Tarantino is smitten;

“You almost want to pat him on the head, he’s so cute.”

Update The SDA Quote of the Week, from the comments:

“Never an avalanche around when ya need one.” – Kathy Shaidle

Do you suppose the media would report on the actual comments of this three ring religious circus act had they uttered them on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s 700 Club instead of the National Mall?
Just asking.
Malkin has more.
Related, Thoughts on subsistance welfare at Nospeedbumps.

Reagan. Air traffic controllers.

To recap: the government legislated the teachers back to work, the strike was ruled illegal by the courts last weekend, the labour relations board confirmed that fact a few days ago in a separate ruling and yesterday everyone was expecting that during the penalty phase the judge would hand out some hefty fines to deplete the union coffers. The militant teachers union had anticipated this and maintained adequate reserves, so the ultimate ruling in which the judge did not fine but froze the union�s assets came as a thunderbolt on a clear day for a deeply perplexed union. The bottom line: it prevents it from paying strike pay and accepting funds from third parties to do so. Apart from neutering its ability to strike, it has given them a �way out� to end the strike without losing too much face, or so the argument goes. The unions remained very quiet today � still not sure what hit them � but nevertheless ordered a continuation of the illegal strike. Other unions may join later and launch a massive protest next week. To be frank, it�s not a pretty spectacle and it is increasingly reeking of anarchy.
As it happens I have just started reading Tammy Bruce�s The Death of Right and Wrong and the teacher�s strike here is another excellent example of the book�s theme: the way in which the Left has forced our society to abandon concepts of right and wrong and how it has succeeded in doing that with the help of a number of compliant institutions, most notably, the media. The situation here this week is really no exception and this morning I explained to the head teacher at our local school � who by virtue of her managerial role is not on strike � why this no longer is an issue about money or class size (the apparent action items that are driving this strike) but about what is right and what is wrong. Ignoring a pre-agreed conflict resolution mechanism and following it up by contempt of court would land you and me in jail, but organized labor is undeterred, raises the stakes unhindered and somehow gets away with it.

Read the rest at Peaktalk.

For those of you who may have been labouring under the delusion that Tony Blair’s Britain was a bastion of the Anglosphere and not a cesspit of lunatic statism, check out one of my favourite sites, Nanny Knows Best.

There’s a new TV show this fall featuring the worst Canadian drivers. I’m befuddled as to why the people described in the linked article are still on the road, at all. Is it because insurance companies can’t legally refuse to insure someone? Is it because our driver testing programs aren’t rigorous enough?
I know that here in Alberta, our bad driver problems have been caused, in part, by privatization. I had an opportunity to eavesdrop on two teens while riding the bus home from work last fall, and they were talking about which government licensed registry agencies to take a driving test at. Word gets around about the ones that are careful not to fail students and their business goes through the roof as a result. The licensed registries that actually do a good job of failing bad students are rewarded by having future customers go elsewhere once the news spreads. This is definitely one area where privitization failed. Badly.
Anyhow, what can we do to keep asshats who have no business being behind the wheel off our roads? My own preferred solutions includes bumper mounted gattling guns and heat seeking missiles that allow me to take out bad drivers.

My apologies for making SDA ‘all Svend all the time’, but I just couldn’t pass this up:

Svend Robinson, the former New Democrat MP who left office after he was caught stealing a diamond ring, says he will likely run again in the next federal election, a Toronto newspaper reports.

“I’m pretty close,” Robinson said in an interview with the newspaper.

“It would take something pretty significant for me not to go ahead now. And I just don’t see what that will be.”

He will make it official in two weeks’ time and when he does, Robinson will announce he’s running against Liberal MP Hedy Fry in Vancouver Centre, rather than his old riding of Burnaby Douglas, which has been filled by NDP Bill Siksay.

After winning six consecutive elections since 1979, Robinson was caught in April 2004 stealing a $64,000 diamond engagement ring, which he intended to give to his boyfriend.

He plead guilty to theft over $5,000 for stealing the ring, but revealed that he was suffering from a mental-health disorder at the time.
[link — h/t: Neale News

I’m not gay, but if I was, I would think that I’d be pretty horrified about having a known thief representing my particular interest group. It’s what the Chinese would call bad joss. Maybe it’s time for a law saying that someone convicted of theft, no matter how small the amount, will be permanently barred from obtaining a federal seat in this country. (I’m usually in favour of less laws, but I think I could live with this one.)

And what is it with the value of that ring he stole? It seems to bounce all over the place?

Apropos of the post immediately preceding this one, might I inquire as to the following: Must we resign ourselves to the inevitability of terrorism without end, due to the apparently inexhaustible supply of abysmally stupid young men – young men who would rather scatter their entrails, along with a dollop of schrapnel, over a room full of people, ostensibly their peers, than do a bit of drinking or screwing, as any normal young man would be more than happy to indulge in?
As a followup question – is there any hope that stem cell research will lead to a cure for islamist brain rot?

Remember that $10,000 ring Svend Robinson pocketed? It turns out that he could have afforded it if he had just waited a bit. The RCMP paid Her Majesty ten thousand smackers after his pants got torn and his leg got a boo boo during a scuffle at the 2001 Free Trade Summit:

Former NDP MP Svend Robinson received a cash settlement of $10,000 from the RCMP, government accounting ledgers show.

Robinson said his calf was cut and his pants torn during a protest at the 2001 free-trade summit in Quebec City.

Public accounts published yesterday show that Robinson received the money for “pain and suffering.”

Robinson, out for a walk with his dogs last night, said he couldn’t speak about the payment.

He declined to say whether the money had helped to ease his pain and suffering.
[link — h/t: Neale News]

Me, I’m thinkin’ that a person could buy a whole lotta nipple clamps with $10K. Which would perhaps explain why Svend not only couldn’t afford the ring, but also why he didn’t want to discuss ‘pain and suffering’.

…is that every time I hear someone singing God Save the Queen, I immediately think of Svend Robinson. It’s disturbing.

Come the next federal election, make sure you hide away any young children in the event a Liberal, NDP, or Bloc candidate comes to your door. Why? Because the MPs from those parties are mostly in favour of greasy older people bumping pelvises with your kids:

The author of proposed federal legislation designed to protect children from sexual predators is doubtful it will pass when MPs vote on it tomorrow.

Opponents of Bill C-313 — which calls for the age of sexual consent to be raised to 16 from 14 — fear the Conservative party is bent on “criminalizing puppy love,” Rick Casson, MP for Lethbridge, Alta., said.

“That is a weak argument,” he countered. “The right thing is a close-in-age exemption of three to four years.”

C-313 is opposed by the majority of MPs from the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP and Liberals.
[link — h/t: NealeNews]

It’s not bad enough that they lie to us and they steal from us, now the Liberals and their socialist friends are facilitating the predation of our children by sex offenders. It doesn’t get any lower than this.

I don’t care what the law says, any greasy older male caught laying a hand on my daughter before she reaches the age of majority will suddenly find himself feeling a draft where his diaphram used to be. And if I happen to bag a Liberal, so much the better.

D.J. McGuire;

Does Paul Martin know what his own government is doing? As Canadian rights activists lamented the deportation of Falun Gong practitioner Xiaoping Hu to Communist China – and try desperately to keep Canada’s Immigration Ministry from condemning fellow practitioners Fang Yaobin and Xiong Fengying to the same fate – Prime Minister Paul Martin chose to deny reality: “I can tell you that we are not in the process of deporting Falun Gong practitioners” (Epoch Times). I open the question to our Canadian readers: is Martin completely oblivious to what’s happening, or just a bald-faced liar?

In Nuclear “Accident” Just Asking To Happen News;

In a second day of bluster after its disarmament accord, North Korea accused the United States on Wednesday of planning a nuclear attack and warned it could retaliate.
North Korea “is fully ready to decisively control a pre-emptive nuclear attack with a strong retaliatory blow,” the communist nation’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in an English-language commentary carried by the state Korean Central News Agency.
At six-nation talks in Beijing on Monday, North Korea promised to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for economic aid and security assurances.

Where is Hans Blix when you need him?

I have resisted for some time writing about a certain obsessed “fan” of this site, primarily to deny her the attention she seeks. However, considering the influx of readers who were introduced to SDA via my interview last week with Peter Warren, and her “appearance” on his radio show by way of a somewhat libelous email that he read on-air, perhaps its time to bring new readers up to speed.
Who is Meaghan Walker-Williams? Good question. Though she writes and comments under a variety of “identities”, a google search on her real name will bring up this thread at the libertarian blog, No Treason. It’s lengthy, but the portrait of “MWW” is painted primarily in her own words. You can’t get better than that.
As you will glean from that discussion, Meaghan had been operating a site called “Blanked Out Times”, writing various diatribes and obvious libel under the psuedonym “Edward T. Bear”. When her identity was exposed she pulled the site, but not soon enough to avoid a solid whupping from the No-Treason folks.
Meaghan finally retreated to safer territory by, believe it or not – starting her own “No Treason” blog – devoted entirely to talking to and about No-Treason.com in a one woman rant spectacular.
She had had practice. For some months she had sought personal gratification in writing under a variety of names (including mine) at this site dedicated to SDA. Not satisfied with simply making posts, she also writes in her own comments section, agreeing with and congratulating herself.
One would think that commenting across the blogosphere into the wee hours of the morning, sending outraged emails to media and politicians, and running various “sockpuppet” blog sites is enough to keep one woman occupied, but no!
Meaghan Walker-Williams has now announced yet another– this one fixating on one of Canada’s best written and original blogs, Dust My Broom. Written by Darcey Jerrom, Shere Khan and Raskolnikov, they bring a mostly conservative-libertarian viewpoint to a variety of issues, including those relating to Indian and Metis culture and politics.
I should flesh this out a little. You see, Meaghan Walker-Williams is a self-declared Indian “activist”. But “activist” really doesn’t do her justice. You see, Meaghan determines on behalf of “her” people – nay, on behalf of North Americans of all races and recombinations – who is permitted to discuss aboriginal topics, and what views they may express. She is none other than the annointed, the one true keeper of the MWW Official Stamp Of Indian Authenticity And Approved Thought.

No others need apply.
Which brings me, in a round about way, to the reason I decided to make this post. Last night, at her newly spawned “Dustmybroom2”, the following literary achievement appeared, albeit briefly ;

Dear Adrian/Raskolnikov/Kate’s Beard
Are you capable of making a single essay or comment that doesn’t have anything to do with Aboriginals and how much you despise your own people?
I’m just wondering.
Or are you just a One-Trick Pony for the Blogging Tories?
Seriously… why don’t you try it some time. Write a post, that doesn’t involve your contempt, rage and disgust at Aboriginal Peoples.
If you hate Indians so much… why do you spend so much time doing nothing but thinking about Indians, writing about indians, bashing indians?
For somebody who seems to so despise “identity politics”, you are postively enamoured with playing the “Right-Wing Blogging Injun” thing to the hilt.
Don’t you know it’s boring.
Or are you both still searching for identity Having decided to first discard your own heritage, and then piss and shit all over it as well, as often as you possibly can?
You do know that you are nothing but a “token” to these right-wingers…
That if you dared to challenge them on any subject, on any topic, they will drop you like a hot potatoe, and treat you, with exactly the same contempt that they are applauding you for your snipes and attacks at other indians.
You may have fooled yourself Raskolnikov, into believing that if you can just bash indians
enough, that you won’t be associated with the bad stereotypes of indians in the minds of your new found friends.
But no matter how much you scrub your skin, you will never get the smell of “Indian” off of it these people will never forget who you are… even if you have.

As I said earlier, her portrait is best painted in her own words.
So, the next time you read a comment by someone using the initials “MWW”, or “Ann Coulter of Canada” or “Drugcop” or “Edward T. Bear” or whatever new personality may yet await to claw its way to the surface – quoting me as saying that “Canada needs institutions to lock up the Indian activists” (or variations thereof), you’ll have a much better idea what sort of institution I’m referring to – and the type of Indian “activism” I’m talking about.

Scotsman;

THE fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim. The man claimed the design resembled the Arabic inscription for Allah, and branded it sacrilegious, threatening a “jihad”.
The chain is being forced to spend thousands of pounds redesigning the lid with backing from The Muslim Council of Britain. It apologised and said: “The design simply represents a spinning ice-cream cone.”
The offending lid was spotted in a branch in Park Royal last week by business development manager Rashad Akhtar, 27, of High Wycombe. He was not satisfied by the decision to withdraw the cones and has called on Muslims to boycott Burger King. He said: “This is my jihad. How can you say it is a spinning swirl? If you spin it one way to the right you are offending Muslims.”

Via OTB
Update – picture here

Anonalogue isn’t impressed with the track record of Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro.

The one time would-be Prime Minister of Australia.

h/t Damian Penny