Exploring Alberta’s “Glass Ceiling”

A new poll conducted by COMPAS Research for the Financial Post shows that Canada’s business community believes that separatist support in the province may be on the rise.

This week’s web poll of Canadian CEO’s and business leaders indicates that there is growing concern that high oil prices and Alberta’s growing economic strength may foster further divisions within Confederation:

According to most respondents, a major fallout from Alberta’s petrol wealth will be increased conflict between Edmonton and Ottawa… The panel as a whole assigns a 70% probability to this taking place. The panel assigns an approximately 50% probability to

• Alberta’s becoming more influential,
• An Alberta separatist party surpassing 20% in provincial polls,
  and
• Several large financial institutions moving to Calgary.

Respondents are not quite convinced that Calgary will surpass Toronto in the number of head offices its hosts. Yet, the panel assigns an average probability of 41% to this happening- a probability of less than 50% and yet sizeable nonetheless.

The poll also asked respondents on a 100 percentage point probability scale ( zero meaning “it definitely won’t happen”, and 100 meaning “that it will almost certainly happen”) to score the likelihood of a number of Canadian scenarios occurring within the next decade. Those polled assigned a mean score of 70 to the likelihood that “conflict intensifies between Alberta and central Canada”. Alberta becoming Canada’s most influential province scored a 51, and “An Alberta separatist party gets 20% of the vote in a provincial election” scored a 49. Significantly, those surveyed thought it was more likely that separatism would take off in Alberta (49) than having an Albertan-led Conservative Party form the government (44). The following responses from two of those surveyed may give us an indication as to why this is the case.

• By an Alberta leader of the Conservatives, if you are referring to
  Stephen Harper, it won’t happen. He may be a great guy, but he
  lacks charisma and warmth, and the remake is making things worse.
  It highlights his discomfort with being Mr Congeniality.
• Alberta definitely has the winds at its back. However, its population is
  only a quarter of Ontario, which will limit its influence to some extent.

With attitudes such as this, it seems almost a certainty that those people who run in to a “glass ceiling” attempting to increase Alberta’s influence inside Confederation will look more favorably upon going outside of it as entirely more realistic .

Cross posted to Dispatches From The Western Alien Nation

Deepak Chopra will lead you straight to hell

Perusing the morning news, I noticed that Yahoo now offers Arianna Huffington’s crazy news for paranoids and other nut cases. Looking at the headlines I was intrigued by Deepak Chopra’s latest mystical brain fart, “The Absolute Break Between Life and Death is an Illusion.” Now, if you have ever read C.S. Lewis’s “The Great Divorce”, you are likely drawn to such an idea. But the problem here is that Deepak talks in circles and gets it wrong, and considering he is a popular motivator for the spiritually disenfranchised (which goes for most people these days), no wonder we see the current state of politics in secular societies as egomaniacal in the name of selflessness and completely blind to the greater purposes in life. In example, take the sanctity of marriage or the rule of law, neither of which, as demonstrated in Canada, are greater purposes easy to maintain.

Let us deal a death blow to Deepak, his mystical brain fart that is.

1.) Losing your body is something to be feared because of your ego wants continuity: Has it ever occurred to Deepak that some people want to lose their body? What about the fat, the crippled, or the ugly? In many cases, losing one’s body can be a good thing, and death is but a release from one’s mortal coil. And who’s to say the fat, the crippled, or the ugly don’t have huge egos. Maybe they are really smart or better yet, maybe they have spent years feeling sorry for themselves. Whether people want to keep their body or not, the ego knows that time in life can be wasted. So the fear of losing one’s body is not the only thing that defines death, but also that death entails an end to our current state of affairs, a moment of consequence. Our time as we know it is up!

How about this Deepak? The reason people fear death is because they want to know with certainty what “lay on the other side” but they exist in a reality that does not give them this information. And this, they don’t want to live with, they just haaaave to know. Maybe people should think about why they have to know and feel humbled by the fact they can’t. Maybe people should realise their dependent position in reality, instead of whining about it; stop thinking reality is all about them and consider that they are part of bigger story; or better yet, use their ego to take responsibility for the choices they make, rather than thinking they need to conquer life so that they no longer have to make hard choices. Deepak cleverly ignores death as something that “seems” like an interruption in what WE want to do, and thereby justifying, by covering over the significance of death, doing what we want to do anyway, regardless of our circumstance and responsibilities. Deepak should admit that death really is a moment of consequence, and from there, ask what are we to do about it.

2.) New “images” and “desires”, the realisation of infinite possibility, is traumatising: This is called “stepping out”, or to put it another way, the anxiety you feel when you realise that you are loser and want to get a life. Unfortunately, I guess for Deepak, when you exist in a reality that is not just about you existing, and you finally wake up to the fact that life is full of times that will make you feel uncomfortable, how you react will make you either a better or a worse person. If you decide feeling uncomfortable is a bad thing, then Deepak is there for you. But if you aim at becoming better, especially because you are uncomfortable, don’t always make yourself or those around you, especially not Deepak, the measure of being better. And in finding this measure, look at what people do rather than what they say, don’t be flippant with tradition (especially revelation), and consider all the ways goodness finds you even though you are an idiot.

3.) Death is a total illusion, you are dead already: Who knew? Life and Death is just language. Not! Life presents us with a future that is unknown, but that does not mean we need to feign our past because “real death” is being stuck in the past. As we all know, not knowing is the call of faith in life; faith that reality is ordered, that there is truth to be pursued, that while I don’t know what lay ahead, God does. In faith the ego strikes a balance between the past, present and future, the ego finds life because it can see, by the fact that reality is ordered, that God first loved it. Living in the past is not what death really means; life is active existence in physical reality while death is the unknown end of it. Living in the past is not always good because it binds one to regret and lack of foresight, but we cannot ignore the past unless mistakes are to be repeated.

4.) Surrender: Not what most people mean by surrender but Deepak wants us to surrender like the French, that is surrender responsibility so we can still win and still conquer. But as any eight year old in Sunday school will tell you, if eternity is anything, it is a gift. There is nothing about death that can be conquered, but the approach of death makes clear the need for divine grace to deliver us unto eternity. If taking responsibility for how you react to the gift of eternity means anything, surrendering to a state of “nonjudgement” and “absence of ego” simply will not do. Life means short and eternity means forever, so get off your ass, stop feeling sorry for yourself, be thankful for God’s grace in giving you eternity, and see that not everything is relative and somethings really do matter.

In the final analysis, Deepak is full of shit. And people who are full of shit will lead you straight to hell because they don’t really care what they are talking about. They hope that you are the same sort person, easily swayed by rhetoric with no concern that rhetoric actually matters. They want you to believe that words are “just words”, that they do not give meaning to action in our lives, that in politics words do not direct purposes either good or bad. As Lewis reminds us:

For a damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouth for food, or their eyes to see.

Admittedly, mysticism is not a bad thing, as long as you can remember common sense. To offer a final thought that I once learned: Insulting other people’s stupidity is important! And be prepared to put this into action, preventing the damned from conquering the earth. Next time you hear that the relationships between married heterosexual couples are equivalent to whatever two male lovers have going on, or that either of those are equivalent to whatever two female lovers have going on, please, call it what it is, the stupidest thing you’ve heard that day. Or next time you hear that somehow Stephen Harper’s cowboy fashion at the Calgary Stampede or his “cold demeanour” makes him unfit to be PM, while the alternative, Paul Martin, is up to his elbows in Liberal Party corruption in Quebec and has demonstrated no regard for the constitutional conventions of responsible government, please, call it what it is, the stupidest comparison you’ve heard made that day. If anything, this will keep things spirited! At most, it will keep common sense in politics because the Deepak Chopra’s of the world, and those who listen to them, might notice that, truly, all the “intolerant” and “judgemental” people of the world are getting scrappy!

Even the Hillbillies hate us

You know that relations between east and West are getting strained when even the Ontario hillbillies are denying Albertans’ right to chart our own future:

If you Alien Alberts wanna quit Canadee, get busy buildin’ up yer stoopid-ass Alberta Separatist Party an’ try holdin’ a dumbass referendum an’ see how far you get. Not far, I betcha.

Liberals pander to Quebec, punish the West

Remember when there was speculation that an Albertan would be the next Governor General? Silly goose. You underestimated the Liberal Party’s commitment to Eastern Canada and its vindictiveness toward Alberta. We now know that,

Clarkson’s successor likely to be Quebec woman

Suprise suprise.

Ontario Establishment Still Promoting Bob Rae

According to Adam Daifallah, the Ontario establishment continues to promote Bob Rae (see here for previous post on this silly topic). It seems Michael Valpy once again has his nose rammed up Rae’s you-know-what, as are several “Liberal insiders” (according to the Ottawa Citizen).

According to my friend in Ottawa who remembers living under the Bob Rae NDP government, he’d like to do something impolite to him using a gun.

Which has more common sense?

I just hope the Liberals believe the establishment and that there are lots of people in Ontario like my friend who remember the bad old Rae days.

Crossposted to Civitatensis.

Jihadists Want Global Caliphate

Via Mickey Craig at the always excellent No Left Turns, Daniel Pipes documents how the jihadists like bin Laden seek a worldwide global caliphate. The “war on terror,” or whatever one calls it, is not about Afghanistan, Iraq, or even reclaiming Andalusia:

In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and Islamic law, the Shari’a. Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their “real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide ‘caliphate’ founded on Shari’a law.”

Terrorists openly declare this goal. The Islamists who assassinated Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 decorated their holding cages with banners proclaiming the “caliphate or death.” A biography of one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of recent times and an influence on Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam declares that his life “revolved around a single goal, namely the establishment of Allah’s Rule on earth” and restoring the caliphate.

Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that “the pious caliphate will start from Afghanistan.” His chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also dreamed of re-establishing the caliphate, for then, he wrote, “history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world’s Jewish government.” Another Al-Qaeda leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, publishes a magazine that has declared “Due to the blessings of jihad, America’s countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon,” to be followed by the creation of a caliphate.

Or, as Mohammed Bouyeri wrote in the note he attached to the corpse of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker he had just assassinated, “Islam will be victorious through the blood of martyrs who spread its light in every dark corner of this earth.”

Interestingly, van Gogh’s murderer was frustrated by the mistaken motives attributed to him, insisting at his trial: “I did what I did purely out of my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted.”

Although terrorists state their jihadi motives loudly and clearly, Westerners and Muslims alike too often fail to hear them. Islamic organizations, Canadian author Irshad Manji observes, pretend that “Islam is an innocent bystander in today’s terrorism.”

Note bin Laden states that the caliphate begins in Afghanistan. The ecumenic ambition of the jihadists fits with Olivier Roy’s findings that they do not regard themselves as citizens of Iraq or Morrocco, but as citizens of a global umma.

Note too van Gogh’s murderer who expressed frustration that the Dutch liberals just didn’t understand, or refused to understand, his motives. The Western lack of understanding reminds me of Hannah Arendt’s examination of the ways that Westerners failed to understand, or were unable to understand, the diabolical nature of Hitler’s and Stalin’s totalitarianism. Their deeds and goals simply defied common sense. After all, it was Hitler who told his general staff that military defeat in the USSR didn’t matter because such things would be judged in terms of millennia, not in weeks and months. Such is the totalitarian mindset.

Cross posted to Civitatensis.

Alberta’s SSM Legislation

CBC reports that the Klein government has legislation in the works to protect marriage commissioners from human rights complaints if they choose not to perform them. It will also protect churches from them. Here’s the government’s brief news release and here’s the CBC’s previous story on the Klein government’s waffling stance on this issue.

The same CBC story quotes Justice Minister Ron Stevens who says that Alberta would be prepared to use sec. 33 to override the federal law. Naturally, the story lacks context and it’s unclear which part of the law Stevens has in mind. Or is he simply waving the s.33 card to shore up conservative support in this effort, which may or may not make any difference? It would be so unlike the Klein government to do that!

Cross-posted to Civitatensis.

Bloggers swimming against the tide

Unfortunately, no one in the MSM felt it necessary to correct this nonsensical assertion from Carolyn Parrish on Canada’s military tradition:

“We are also not a country that is going to easily throw away 100 years of peacekeeping reputation and noble reputation in the world by a testosterone-filled general, and I think somebody should put a clamp on his mouth.”

Luckily, conservative bloggers are on the case. Many of them are quite articulate in this regard. A summary:

Angry in the Great White North: “It’s hard to imagine anyone in Canadian politics more ignorant and offensive than Carolyn Parrish…except Carolyn Parrish.”

All Things Canadian: “Parrish’s warped thinking is far too common. It’s not hard to imagine that she would push for our soldiers to be given whistles instead of guns – it’s much more in line with our peacekeeping tradition.”

Monte Solberg: “Gee Carolyn did you mean those Canadian peacekeepers at Vimy who peacefully shot, shelled and bayoneted thousands of the enemy in the most important battle in our history.”

Let It Bleed: “Does Canada’s “100 years of peacekeeping reputation” include our participation in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, Gulf War I and the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan?”

The Phanton Observer: “Somehow the idea of the garish Ms. Parrish as a “force” to be reckoned with seems somewhat oxymoronic — with the emphasis on “moron” — but perhaps we should give her the benefit of the doubt.”

Aaargggh: “I predicted the Usual Suspects in Canada would get annoyed with General Hillier for suggesting that the purpose of an Army was, in the final analysis, to fight and kill.”

Ravishing Light: “I realize that for some Liberals, Canada sprang fully formed from Trudeau’s godlike brow, but Jeebus.”

The sad part is that Parrish is probably more representative of mainstream opinion in Canada then are General Hillier and these admirable bloggers. What other aspects of their heritage are Canadians willing to merrily throw into the ditch in order to conform to the Liberal view of what Canada should be?

An Albertan Governor General? Yeah right

Two names being touted to replace Adrienne Clarkson as Governor General were Preston Manning and Joe Clark. Both twits to be sure, but also Albertans. And wouldn’t it be a novelty to have an Albertan in the office of the Governor General?

Today the National Post revealed that such thoughts truly were fantasy. You didn’t really think that a Liberal government which exists solely at the pleasure of Ontario would appoint an Albertan to this position, did you?

Canada’s time running out

We’ve got polls! The current standings are:

• Lib 39%
• Con 24%
• NDP 19%

Some ND thinks its good news for the NDP (not entirely sure why); Bob Tarantino appears disgusted.

My view? Very, very impressive. A fifteen-point lead. Paul Martin deserves congratulations. Well no, he doesn’t, because he hasn’t done dick all to raise his party’s polling numbers. Stephen Harper, on the other hand, has done much to help the Liberals. Like wearing a cowboy hat at the Calgary Stampede. It’s this sort of thing that decides matters for the brilliant and worldly people of Ontario; a month ago, the corrupt-to-the-core Liberals stood sixteen points ahead of the Conservatives in Ontario.

The big news is that the Liberals on the rise in Quebec. Which is essential to the Liberals’ securing a majority in the coming election.

Will it be a minority or a majority? It doesn’t matter. As Ontarians line up once again to bend over for the corrupt Liberals, Albertans stand bemused by your willingness to see Canada transformed into Argentina, Northern Branch. Bemused, that is, and increasing unwilling to accept the stupid institutional and federal arrangements that have blocked Alberta from halting this country’s long march to fourth-rate status.

Tick tock…

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