(Now, there’s a subject line sure to draw a thousand Google search hits.)
Angry In The Great White North is hosting a Blogging Tory Audit, to see how well we measure up to WK’s description;

For those of you who, like me, are fed up with “Blogging Tories” – you know, the guys who use their “Blogging Tory” web sites to (as I have noted previously) defame feminists, gay marriage, the United Nations, bilingualism, immigration, anti-tobacco laws, liberals, fluoridation of water, the metric system and the Satanic subliminal pro-Stalinist messages used on episodes of The West Wing – it’s time for a little payback.

My turn:

The disappointment in the voices of the anchors during CTV news coverage was palpable. One got the sense they were hoping for an upset, and a politically correct “progressive” papal election angle to pursue. “The new pope, Wang Chung One, the first from China, standing alongside his same-sex partner as he appeared on the balcony at the Vatican, introducing himself to a billion Catholics by declaring a woman’s right to chooooooose… well, Lloyd, this is a turning point for the Church…”
There will be more of that in the coming hours. Watch for the negativity attached to the word “conservative”.
Speaking of which – did anyone else hear that waste of ovaries on CBC radio Sunday morning (with Michael Enright) fretting that the Pope’s election was decided by men?
She thoughtfully explained (in a voice admirably free of self-mocking) that simply adding women to the process wouldn’t resolve the issues, because… women don’t all think alike. No, she offered, garden variety women need not apply. Only women who had studied the issues and had the correct “intellectual” appreciation for them would be suitable. “Feminists” should be involved in the selection of the Pope.
There was no laugh track.
And speaking of insufferable twits – Professor Stephen Bainbridge takes Andrew Sullivan out behind the church for an ass whuppin’. Heh.
A Christophobic pagan weighs in;

Now, I’m no Catholic- and I ain’t really religious – but I suspect the point of following a religion in the first place is to actually believe in the thing.� And so were I gay, and you decided from your perspective as a Catholic that because I put my thingie into the Devil’s slot, I will burn in a lake of fire for eternity, that’s cool by me-just so long as you don’t drop a stone wall on me in order to hasten the process.

Eminently reasonable, I’d say.

Inspired by recent events,I’ve created a new category for “Blogging Libranos”,
I’ve chosen to make it an illustrated blogroll.
Just one link, so far.

The Conservatives might take a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook the next time the PM refuses to answer the perjury question in the House.
Mr Martin, tear down that clinic!

Jackson’s visit: Update.

Over 100 academics have signed a letter calling for the censorship of Daniel Pipes.
Globe And Mail;

A visit today to the University of Toronto by a controversial U.S. scholar of the Middle East is causing an uproar among academics and students, who say that “hate, prejudice and fear-mongering” do not have a place on campus.
[…]
In an unusual move, more than 80 professors and graduate students wrote an open letter pointing out that Mr. Pipes has a “long record of xenophobic, racist and sexist [speeches] that goes back to 1990.” […] “Genuine academic debate requires an open and free exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect and tolerance. We . . . are committed to academic freedom and we affirm Pipes’ right to speak at our university,” the letter states. “However, we strongly believe that hate, prejudice, and fear-mongering have no place on this campus.”

Signed by the Faculty of the U of T Dep’t for Intolerance and Censorship:
1. Prof. Jens Hanssen, Dpts of History and Near and Middle East Civilizations
2. Prof. Carol Chin, Dpt. of History and International Relations Programme
3. Prof. Rick Halpern, Dpt. of History and American Studies
4. Prof. Paul Kingston, Dpt. of Political Science and Near and Middle East Civilizations
5. Prof. Melanie Newton, Dpt. of History and Caribbean Studies

Continue reading →

A group of MPs studying Canada’s prostitution laws is seeking $200,000 in federal funds to visit European cities with red-light zones and legal brothels. The five-member justice subcommittee plans to visit Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden. Reno, Nevada, is also on the destination list.
“We want to go to Sweden because they have a particular model there where they decriminalize the sex worker, or the prostitute, and they still criminalize the customers,” said NDP MP Libby Davies.
“In the U.K. they actually allow women to work out of their own homes. The Netherlands, of course, is a well-known situation where they have a fully operating area for the sex trade, and I think we’re very interested to see what the impact of that is from various perspectives.”

I suppose that a little “impact” from the “bent over a chair” perspective of the Canadian taxpayer is too much to hope for …

[H]e said he believes he is just the latest of several “black luminaries” to be unjustly accused, citing former South African President Nelson Mandela and former heavyweight boxing champions Muhammad Ali and Jack Johnson as others.
[…]
Jackson also said he is in “intense pain” since falling in the shower earlier this month, although he said at another point that his health was perfect. He arrived late to court on March 10, wearing pajama bottoms, a T-shirt and walking stiffly, and his representatives said at the time he had been treated at a hospital for a serious back injury.
“I was coming out of the shower and I fell and all my body weight – I’m pretty fragile – all my body weight fell against my rib cage,” Jackson said. “And I bruised my lung very badly.”
He said the injury has caused him to cough up blood and was so painful that it brought him to tears in court one day when he was seen wiping his eyes with a tissue. He said he remains under a doctor’s care.
When Jesse Jackson noted how thin he is, the pop star replied that he has never been a big eater, something he said has always concerned his mother and others, including actress Elizabeth Taylor, a friend.
“Elizabeth Taylor used to feed me, to hand-feed me, at times,” he said.

Time to yank his feeding tube.

Via Kathy K;

Wyss�s boomerang litigation started in 2002, when he invited Carmelita McLaughlin to his office at 1600 Washington St. in Alton. Acting as her attorney when she bought a home in Alton and when she refinanced it, on both occasions she had chosen Centerre Title�a company that Wyss owned�to close her loans.

Next story: Nigerian taken in by scam artist

Last night’s on-air coverage of this story by CTV’s Middle East correspondant Janis Mackey Frayer was augmented with on-the-street interviews with Lebanese citizens who are clinging in dread to the skirts of the benevolent Syrians who may withdraw and leave them to the mercy of George Bush.
In the event that any doubts lingered about the depths to which Frayer will sink to weave a story to conform to her astonishingly transparent anti-Americanism, this money quote:

“While critics accuse the Baathists of terrible mistakes”

That’s right – “mistakes”.
In the parallel universe of rock hard stupid in which Janis Mackey Frayer has taken permanent residency, Baathist torture, murder, and mass executions are just good intentions gone terribly awry – like picking up a ceramic vase and having it slip from your wet fingers, or going a little too fast for road conditions.
Funny. That wasn’t the song CTV was singing when US immigration officials in New York deported Canadian Maher Arar to an uncertain fate and alleged torture in a Syrian prison. Or, wait. Now that I think back upon things, it was the same song -the US were the bad guys in that story, too.
To Frayar and her enabling editors, such crimes pale to mere misdemeanors when weighed against the sinister, hidden agenda of an American oil-hungry chimpanzee who has liberated 50 million souls from tyranny.

A manufactured contraversy is emerging over Monte Solberg’s satirical post directed at the “discovery” of new charter “rights” by “Paul Martin Luther King”. Not surprisingly, the rhetoric reads like parody – “Liberals aghast. Liberal MP Marlene Jennings said she was “left speechless after reading it.”
We should be so lucky.
Monte fires back;

there are those joyless people who spend their lives looking for reasons to be outraged. These are the people who are offended by everything. What an awful way to pass your days. I really do feel sorry for them.
Finally there are those who feign outrage. This is the camp that my friends Scott Reid and Marlene Jenning fall into. They are real pro’s at the outrage game. They actually get the joke but pretend that they don’t. They are outraged for the cameras and then they go back to their desk, eat a muffin and read the paper.

And, in what I only hope was the outcome of a planned strategy – every Liberal sympathetic journalist on the outrage beat is sending readers directly to his blog – where his response is there to read, without the media filters.
The gatekeepers have just stepped aside to let the hordes into the castle.
This is the power of the blogosphere, writ large.
Monte should be spending the next few days writing and linking like a maniac, to capitalize on the curiousity seeking traffic.
A flashback to remind us all of the double standard in the national media that makes it so important to remove them from the communication loop: Scott Brison, Liberal MP on June 28, 2004:

“There’s not a lot of room for Red Tories in a party with a lot of rednecks.”

This was not satire. This was not the fond self-deprecation so often used here in the west, when referring to our own.
This was Liberal MP Scott Brison, revealing the bigotry of the Liberal Party towards the very people who pay his expense account. A rhetorical club swung by a faux-elitist to drive home the point that, in Canada, there are some segments of society who are unworthy of a voice in the political process because they have committed the crime of being “unsophisticated”, hardworking, and rural.
And nobody raised an eyebrow.
More.

Has anyone seen any Canadian TV reports on this that mention that Sgrena works for El Manifesto, a communist paper? (I was otherwise occupied with my head in the toilet, after watching CBC report on the “sharp divisions” in the population in Lebanon, giving sympathetic coverage to chanting Hezbollah “activists”.)
The Moderate Voice pulls together developments, and OTB looks more closely at checkpoint protocols from a military perspective. Probably the most relevant new information to come out of this incident is that the Italians kept the ransom and rescue operation secret from the US – along with gross incompetence of US military personnel. Jay Tea;

An anti-American “journalist” for a Communist newspaper is allegedly “captured” by insurgents, then released. On her way out, our forces shoot 300 to 400 rounds at their car. And the result of all that firepower? One killed, three injured – none apparently very seriously. Then they treat them and send them home. Obviously all that money we’ve spent on training and equipment has gone to waste if our forces are performing that poorly.

To those Americans who mistakenly perceive our nuanced, sophisticated and uniquely Canadian world view as “anti-Americanism”, former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy (Liberal) would like to explain more thoroughly, in this open letter to the US Secretary of State, Dr.Condoleeza Rice.

Dear Condi,
I’m glad you’ve decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It’s a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.
I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile- defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.
But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can’t quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.
As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we’ve had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we’re going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.
Sure, that doesn’t match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a “liberation war” in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.
Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government’s role should be when there isn’t a prevailing mood of manifest destiny.
Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defence can be made openly.
You might also notice that it’s a system in which the governing party’s caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don’t want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada’s continental co-inhabitant. And that this leader actually listens to such representations.
Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.
Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire.
If you want to have us consider your proposals and positions, present them in a proper way, through serious discussion across the table in our cabinet room, as your previous president did when he visited Ottawa. And don’t embarrass our prime minister by lobbing a verbal missile at him while he sits on a public stage, with no chance to respond.
Now, I understand that there may have been some miscalculations in Washington based on faulty advice from your resident governor of the “northern territories,” Ambassador Cellucci. But you should know by now that he hasn’t really won the hearts and minds of most Canadians through his attempts to browbeat and command our allegiance to U.S. policies.
Sadly, Mr. Cellucci has been far too closeted with exclusive groups of ‘experts’ from Calgary think-tanks and neo- con lobbyists at cross-border conferences to remotely grasp a cross-section of Canadian attitudes (nor American ones, for that matter).
I invite you to expand the narrow perspective that seems to inform your opinions of Canada by ranging far wider in your reach of contacts and discussions. You would find that what is rising in Canada is not so much anti- Americanism, as claimed by your and our right-wing commentators, but fundamental disagreements with certain policies of your government. You would see that rather than just reacting to events by drawing on old conventional wisdoms, many Canadians are trying to think our way through to some ideas that can be helpful in building a more secure world.
These Canadians believe that security can be achieved through well-modulated efforts to protect the rights of people, not just nation-states.
To encourage and advance international co-operation on managing the risk of climate change, they believe that we need agreements like Kyoto.
To protect people against international crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing, they support new institutions like the International Criminal Court — which, by the way, you might strongly consider using to hold accountable those committing atrocities today in Darfur, Sudan.
And these Canadians believe that the United Nations should indeed be reformed — beginning with an agreement to get rid of the veto held by the major powers over humanitarian interventions to stop violence and predatory practices.
On this score, you might want to explore the concept of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ while you’re in Ottawa. It’s a Canadian idea born out of the recent experience of Kosovo and informed by the many horrific examples of inhumanity over the last half-century. Many Canadians feel it has a lot more relevance to providing real human security in the world than missile defence ever will.
This is not just some quirky notion concocted in our long winter nights, by the way. It seems to have appeal for many in your own country, if not the editorialists at the Wall Street Journal or Rush Limbaugh. As I discovered recently while giving a series of lectures in southern California, there is keen interest in how the U.S. can offer real leadership in managing global challenges of disease, natural calamities and conflict, other than by military means. There is also a very strong awareness on both sides of the border of how vital Canada is to the U.S. as a partner in North America. We supply copious amounts of oil and natural gas to your country, our respective trade is the world’s largest in volume, and we are increasingly bound together by common concerns over depletion of resources, especially very scarce fresh water.
Why not discuss these issues with Canadians who understand them, and seek out ways to better cooperate in areas where we agree — and agree to respect each other’s views when we disagree.
Above all, ignore the Cassandras who deride the state of our relations because of one missile-defence decision. Accept that, as a friend on your border, we will offer a different, independent point of view. And that there are times when truth must speak to power.
In friendship,
Lloyd Axworthy

For those who may not recognize the name, Lloyd Axworthy is the man credited with bringing about the sweeping economic, democratic and human rights reforms in Cuba in 1997.
hat tip – Greg
ouch.

…haunts the halls at the University of Colorado. Though, to be fair, I think even Archie Belaney would have been apalled by this latest installment of the Ward Churchill saga.

hat tip – Kathy Shaidle.

The Canadian Islamic Congress is now trying its hand at parody.

To date, the American-led invasion of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis and thousands of Americans. Iraq has been transformed from country with 100% employment and a stable public service infrastructure, into an impoverished nation in disarray, with more than half of its adult workforce jobless. From being one of the leading Middle East states in administration, education and health care, Iraq has fallen to one of the world’s most disadvantaged societies.
The CIC is charging that America’s aggressive Middle East policies are designed primarily to shore up Israel’s military power and economic advantages in the region, while attempting to divert world attention from Israel’s territorial expansion into the West Bank through illegal Jews-only settlements.

CIC national president Dr. “Anyone over the age of 18 in Israel is a valid target*” Elmasry can be contacted at np@canadianislamiccongress.com.
Via Uncle Meat.

The latest in the continuing “If Gwynne Dyer Looks Into The Face Of Victor Davis Hanson He Will Burst Into Flame” series, this quote from his new book Future:Tense;

The United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Even more urgently, the whole world needs the United States to lose the war in Iraq. What is at stake now is the way we run the world for the next generation or more, and really bad things will happen if we get it wrong.

Ah. Very thoughtful of him.
Amazon shows a November 2004 publication date. That’s the problem with books dedicated to current events – they have to be in to the publisher before anyone really knows the final chapters. In Dyers case, it hardly matters – he soldiers on, gifted with a knack for historical subjectivity and emboldened by a nearly perfect record of failed prognostications of military disaster.
Indeed, there is a case to be made for following Dyer’s analysis very carefully, and then, assuming the opposite will occur. He’s that good.
Speaking of Mr. Hanson, he does a tidy job wrapping up the “Dyer-isms” of the failed, frustrated left in this post of a few days ago. No one is spared.
(Via a reader, who pointed the way to the story and Damian’s take on it.)

Head Heeb has just the place for those looking for relief on school tax;

After Australia’s conservative government passed the Marriage Amendment Bill which prohibited Gay marriage, a group of Australian gays and lesbians set sail to the Coral Islands (on a ship called, inevitably, the Gayflower), planted the rainbow gay flag, and declared an independent state.

Let the puns begin!

Oh well. It is Groundhog Day. In the time honoured tradition of crawling out of a hole…..

The Canadian Islamic Congress is none too happy with this Report on Global Anti-Semitism released by the US State Department on Jan.5. Some exerpts from the news release;

1. The report is politically motivated, and lacks independently audited and verified statistics. The fact that this report has been issued by a government department and not an NGO; plus the fact that it addresses only one form of hatred against one specific minority (Jews); and that there were no other reports commissioned to address equally serious hate-issues against other worldwide minorities (e.g. Christians, Muslims, Blacks, First Nations, Aboriginals, women, the poor, the disabled, homosexuals, etc.), clearly shows that political motivation is a far higher priority for the U.S. State Department than human rights or social justice.

Translation: “Propoganda from the filthy Zionist Neocon Cabal in the Bush Administration”.

2. The report addresses only anti-Jewish hatred, completely ignoring the equally important issue of Islamophobia (hatred towards Muslims).

A little problem with word definitions, here. “Phobia” means fear of, not “hatred”.

Muslims around the world — especially in areas where they are in the minority — have been, and still are, victims of discrimination, harassment, physical and mental abuse…

They won’t get an argument from me on that.

Deepika Thathaal (search), or Deeyah, was born in Norway of mixed Asian roots. Her father got her into music and has supported her throughout her career. All was going well until she dared to show a little skin – and that’s when the threats started. “I would get very abusive phone calls,” she said. “I would get abused as I walked down the street. I would have people spit at me.”
At a concert in Norway, she was attacked on stage by angry Muslim men who thought she was degrading their culture. But Thathaal doesn’t flaunt her heritage. She’s just a European woman pursuing a pop music career – who also happens to be Muslim.

Canadian Islamic Congress media release contact:
Dr. Mohamed Elmasry
(519) 746-4107 (O)
(519) 577-2267 (Cell)
e-mail: np@canadianislamiccongress.com

COREN: So what are you saying?
ELMASRY: I’m saying that it has to be totally innocent, OK? Totally innocent are the children, obviously, OK? But they are not innocent if the army [inaudible] in civilian clothes, OK?
COREN: What about women?
ELMASRY: The same, if they are women in the army…
COREN: Anyone over the age of 18 in Israel is a valid target.
ELMASRY: Anybody above 18 is a part of the Israeli army…
COREN: So everyone in Israel and anyone and everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid target?
ELMASRY: Yes, I would say.
[…]
COREN: I’ve got to tell you I think you’ve just dug a very large hole for yourself there. I am not unsympathetic, and I do believe that Israelis use way too much force and I believe that Palestinians are blanketed with the term “terrorist,” which is very unfair, but what you’ve said there, I believe, is very dangerous talk. There’s a massive difference.
IRFAN SYED (LAWYER): I wouldn’t be so definitive as saying that everybody over 18 is a legitimate target. I mean obviously that goes too far. I mean even according to our faith belief, you have to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. That includes women, children, the elderly and all that.
ELMASRY: Everybody above 18 is a combatant.

Flashback Sept.8, 2004 – small dead animals prognostication:

Michael, Michael…. The Oscars are in February, darling – well past your “best by” date, if you know what we mean. And then, there’s that problem of you being an absolute pig. (Get a trainer, would you?) But be sure to say hello to those quaint little documentary people for us though.

Oscar Nominations: Moore shut out.