HezboLiberal.com Rises From the Ashes

HezboLiberal.com, a satirical website that was critical of the Liberal Party’s (or a few of its members) position on Hezbollah was yanked down by its owner after the Liberal party threatened legal action.

Warren Kinsella agrees with the legal threat, naturally, many conservative bloggers don’t.

For those of you who haven’t hard a chance to see it, you can check out Google’s cache of it, here. In the spirit of freedom of speech and the unwillingness of Internet to abide by censorship, Kate has pointed out that there is a ZIP file complete with HTML and image files for anyone willing to create a mirror.

Update:The Western Standard is also mirroring the site.

Fox Journalists: Converts and Apostates

I don’t claim to know what the recently-released journalists went through during their captivity by radical Islamists. I am pleased to hear that Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig have been released, though I am concerned by a disturbing but novel element in the story: the hostages were forced to convert to Islam under the threat of death before their release.

“We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint,â€? Mr. Centanni later told Fox. “Don’t get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.â€?

Their conversions have numerous important consequences. It’s a case of “heads, westerners lose; tails, jihadists win.”

While the Western mind would not recognise such conversion under duress, the jihadist does not share the Western legal frame of mind. As soon as the former hostages denounce and renounce their forced conversions, they will become apostates and in so doing they will be signing their own death warrants: death is the penalty for apostasy in Islam. If these journalists fall in the hands of jihadists once more, a certain death will await them under Islamic law.

Their conversions become a propaganda “victory” for the kidnappers in two ways. At the immediate level, they win when they get to brag about converting two western infidels. It helps to fuel the jihadist perception that westerners are weak and empty vessels, reinforcing their notion that westerners either believe in nothing or are not earnestly committed to their own beliefs. In turn, it will encourage more gun-point conversions of kidnapped westerners in the near future.

Long-term, time will expose the other side of the same contempt for westerners: westerners lie and will say anything to advance their unprincipled interests or to save their worthless lives. Killing one or however many of the present or future forced converts who become hypostates will gave the jihadists a second kick at the propaganda can. It will also provide greater justification for jihadists everywhere to come after more westerners and show that that arm of Islamic justice is long.

The jihadists will be renewed in their faith to show the West as they believe (and our culture unfortunately does not): that there are worse things than being dead.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.caÂ?

The Incoherence of SSM Protesters

Alberta Bill 208, a private member’s bill introduced by Ted Morton (MLA Rockyview), may come to the floor of a brief summer sitting in the Alberta Legislature. Though it is unlikely that the opposition parties allow debating it next Monday, the gay lobby took to the streets yesterday to protest in front of the Alberta legislature. But what exactly are they protesting?

Protesters would have us believe that the sky will fall if the bill gets debated, to say nothing of passing it. With more flair for drama than for factual accuracy, the Canadian Press bills the protest as an episode in a “pitched battle,” echoing the overly dramatic exaggerations of protestors. “This bill would make it open season on gay and lesbian Albertans,” activist Julie Lloyd is quoted as saying.

The bill does not repeal same-sex marriage nor does it erase its existence. Frankly, it takes SSM as a fact; a fact that has a potential for abuse, but a fact nonetheless. Rather, the bill seeks to introduce balance by addressing potential abuses against those who object to gay marriage on religious or moral grounds.

The bill [...] would forbid anyone from being punished for refusing to officiate at same-sex weddings or for speaking out or exercising their beliefs against gay marriage. It would also put limits on the discussion of same-sex marriage in schools.

Basic protection of moral and religious conscience and the protection of expression are the marrow of Canadian liberal democratic values. Yet, the SSM lobby is in a self-induced (or effected) panic, and paints a picture of violence and persecution against them when in fact their actions do violence to the rights and individual conscience of others.

In making a case for gay marriage, proponents have argued that the state does not have the right to impose a morality, however majoritary, on its citizens. For all its troubles, this Millian-liberal argument has been widely accepted. But if this is so, should the state impose a morality based on the wishes of a minority? If citizens are protected from losing their jobs for speaking in favour of SSM, for example, should opponents to SSM not be granted an equivalent protection under the law when they exercise their right to voice their own opinions?

The attempt to silence real and potential opponents of SSM, the epithets hurled against them, does underscore nicely the need for legislation such as Bill 208. It shows that the protestors are truly no friends of equality. Further, the protest shows that the advocates of SSM are less interested in respecting fundamental rights than they are in maximising their power to cow opponents.

We need to ask why SSM proponents so harshly object to equality with others? Why do they favour silencing (or firing) their opponents?

The gay lobby have framed the search for their own privilege in the language of rights, but they seem to care little about rights themselves. Rights have apparently nothing to do with their quest. If they were interested in protecting rights equally, they would honestly concede that at present there are opportunities for abuse, and surely would be in favour of balance, in favour of equally protecting the right to voice opinions contrary to theirs.

Their opposition to protection of individual conscience clearly suggests that the protesters are not interested in fairness. They are solely interested in the imposition of their own brand of morality on the rest of the community.

Mill’s libertarianism opposed the imposition of majority views on a minority (mob rule), and by the same logic regarded the imposition of minority opinion on the rest of a community as a tyranny of the minority. To embrace the libertarian logic requires embracing both sides of the equation. One does not coherently stand without the other.

To assert a right for one side while decrying a right for the other exposes a type of hypocrisy. If this hypocrisy were private, it would matter only to those who came into direct contact with it. But insofar as this hypocrisy seeks to establish itself as public policy, its effects widely corrode the public interest. It allows for the creation of privileges because the state only grants expression as a right to one group of interests but not to their lawful counterparts.

It becomes clear that the veil of rights under which this hypocrisy operates is nothing but a strategic instrument to assert, advance and protect the power of a small group over all others in the community.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.caÂ?

Hezbollah Propaganda – They’re not even trying anymore…

Moqavemat.com, an Iran-based website run by the Hezbollah terrorist group, claims they have photos of the Israeli ship they hit with a missile last month. Andrew Bolt, from the Australian Herald Sun, points out that the ship in the photo looks suspiciously like one sunk by the Royal Australian Navy’s off the coast of Western Australia in 1998.

Moqavemat.com has since taken the photo down, but here is a screen capture of the site.

Via scruffydan

Operating in Future Tense

Interim Liberal leader Bill Graham is left with no more than pounding on his chest, playing tough for reporters, to draw attention away from the visible fact that his party is in a bit of disarray at the moment.

Although the headline the Citizen gave to the CP story is in the present tense, Graham is quoted in the future tense: “the party will be ready,” “the Liberals will provide an effective and disciplined Opposition,” “the party will deal with the issues one by one, but will be ready in case of a snap election,” and “the Liberals will pressure the Conservative government.”

The constant use of the future tense in Mr. Graham’s discourse is effectively an admission that his party is in disarray –not doing right now any of the things that he claims his party will do later. He is projecting to the future what an opposition party should be doing presently.

To boot, in other related news, Liberals are admitting to their obesity (in the present tense). Is that what Liberals mean when they say that they’re on the same page as the public?

Crossposted from Civitatensis.caÂ?

Al Gore and the Farce of Global Warming

Mr. Lindzen, a Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, sets the record straight on the farce that is Al Gore’s move, The Inconvenient Truth.

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists–especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a “moral” crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce–if we’re lucky.

Via, Disaffiliates – Think Twice

Farewell to NealeNews – It Has Been a Blast

Neale has decided that his heart is no longer in it and he is going to shut down NealeNews. Which is a huge pitty – it’s the first place I visit when I turn my computer on.

Status of Women – Should Taxpayers Fund Special Interest Groups?

Steve Janke at Angry in the Great White North thinks the Feminist Group, Status of Women should be disbanded. Disbanding may be abit of a stretch – I’d be happy with the removal of all government funding – them them sink or swim. Big Blue Wave has more…

Bumper Cars and World Politics, a Perfect Match…

Peter, over at Rempelia Prime, has an interesting idea:

Nothing brings people of different cultures, ethnicities, ages, religions, and IQs together better than bumper cars. Morons and geniuses alike explode in laughter as they smash into one another, Jews and Arabs replace guns and bombs with a weakly-powered cushioned Dodgems car.

The Castro that Sacha Trudeau Does Not See

For those who celebrate ‘Fidel Castro’s greatness’ and ‘brotherly internationalism,’ no amount of evidence can make them believe that he is anything other than a great hero. The selective intellectual minds in Europe and North America can probably recite examples of Vietnam atrocities, but are blind to Cuba’s exploits in Africa in the nineteen seventies. A letter to the editor (subscribers only) in the National Post today should be kept away from Sacha Trudeau, whose sheltered moral turpitude recently found public display.

As a former United Church of Canada missionary to Angola, I can attest to Cuban atrocities even more horrific than those mentioned by letter-writer Andrew Galloway.

In 1975, the Cuban army arrived in Angola to support the Russian-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). They first went north and turned their guns on Holden Roberto’s National Front for the Liberation of Angola, then wheeled around south to attack Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Eventually, after destroying our central mission station in Dondi, they arrived at the Kavango Leprosarium. After ordering all of the lepers, their families and their helpers into their huts, they set them on fire, burning everyone to death. Any who emerged were machine-gunned. This was attested by one of our pastors, who saw it all from the bush where he was hiding.

Ten years later, I travelled to Jamba, UNITA’s capital in the southeastern part of the country. I was taken to a camp occupied by hundreds of survivors of Cuban poison-gas attacks. Nerve gas, when it does not kill outright, leaves the victims with a mind that has been completely addled and, at times, limbs that no longer function. It was the most horrific sight that I have ever witnessed.

Now that Fidel Castro is reaching the end, it is my fervent wish that he burn in Hell.

–John Hart, Mississauga, Ontario.

The Motorcycle Diaries shows a young Ernesto Guevara developing a love for the poor in a leper colony established by the Catholic Church in the Peruvian Amazon. Much is made out of those scenes in the film. His time in the leper colony is portrayed as transformative. The same Cuban regime that the Argentinian helped to install and soldiers he helped to train later turned against helpless Christian missions, and against crippled African lepers to burn them alive.

But please, nobody tell Sacha Trudeau a word about the reality of Cuban international solidarity.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca

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