I’m glad to see the Liberals are going to the fringes again with their plans (Ontario Health Minister and notoriously dogmatic homosexual activist George Smitherman bragged about how this would only affect about a dozen people per year) since it will allow us Conservatives the opportunity to point out the folly to a health care system which on paper is completely financed by the government but in reality is only as good as the government decides to make it. On the provincial level, it would be hard for Dalton McGuinty to justify how he can allow thousands in the province to go through life with debilitating back pains or limited eye sight but hey, at least Fred is happy with that new figure we bought him when we dressed him up and called him Sally! Well, at least it would be if there was actually an opponent out there who wasn’t a complete pushover or leading a party with even less hope of winning the top prize than the Leafs.

All of which makes one happy to see our national government contains MPs who are willing to go to bat for us average Ontarians whose self-esteem issues are generally limited to the names our parents gave us and foregoing extremely expensive cosmetic surgeries for a shopping trip on the weekend. It’s nice to know that somebody out there still get the notion that “public” health care is supposed to cover more than one out of every one million people in this province!

As a Christian, I won’t ever own the game and highly doubt whether I’ll ever play a friend’s copy, although GTA IV did strike up some curiosity last week when speaking to one of my gaming friends who holds no allegiances to God but is pretty observant. He mentioned that the game, with fancy next-gen graphics and a deeper, longer story was different than its predecessors since, in this new, more detailed version, the wounds you inflicted were actually graphic and not fuzzy, pixilated renditions; the game code was more realistic so that people didn’t just keel over and die but actually begged for their lives, cried out in agony and added a sense of victimhood that never existed before; and the game was more open-box (a challenge given the freedom this game gave you before) where as the anti-hero, you are now charged with making moral decisions as you go about your life of crime and immorality.

Yesterday, while visiting another friend, I got a chance to see the game in action by watching a mission through which the hero, Neco, was sent to kill the biker-boyfriend of the mob boss’s daughter. The mob boss, my other friend observed while we were chatting, was messed up — there was a strong correlation between his drug habits and the deteriorating relationships he had with friends, family and *business colleagues*. Later on, during online mode, the game spit out “player 1 2nd amendmented player 2″ after the former shot and killed the latter in an airport. It seemed to me like the rumours of hidden messages in this game were true, even to the point where I now wouldn’t be surprised if I was told that Nico could get STDs from some of his dating activities that take place in the game (and which caused the infamous “Hot Coffee” affair in the last GTA game). Could it be that publisher Rockstar games is actually trying to explain to young and impressionable gamers that bad choices in life have consequences?

While it’s still a little premature to say, it might also be suggested that just by striving to give gamers that more realistic experience — right down to going to a bar to play pool — Rockstar is inadvertently making its games so life-like that the ugly side of crime, promiscuity and general ungodliness are all seeping out of the woodwork. If it is this intense, the publisher of GTA IV might have also found a way to reach out to a demographic law enforcement, governments and churches have struggled decades to make contact with. Ironically, Rockstar’s realism might just have the unintended consequences of making the acronym GTA a cultural fossil, given enough upgrades to gaming hardware.

Rae was angered by the generalization for which he says he sees no basis in fact.

-Toronto Star, Saturday May 10, 2008

That quote, and that link, refer to a story by Toronto Star reporter Tonda MacCharles today that suggests that Prime Minister Harper is wrongfully smearing the opposition with an anti-semitic brush. Rae’s charge is quite simply not true, which isn’t shocking to Ontarians who remember his expert opinions on the affairs of government nearly 20 years ago. However, Tonda MacCharles, a journalist, is not presenting a full picture of the situation in her write up and all it takes is a quick Google search to prove it. That’s right! Three MPs, including Bloc MP Giles Duceppe and Montreal Liberal Dennis Coderre marched alongside Hezbollah flags in downtown Montreal back in the summer of 2006 when the Israeli-Lebanon strike was going on those two years ago. The three MPs never publicly denounced their actions and as public representatives, ignored the due diligence that they are expected to practice as such office holders.

That is because Hezbollah is a radical and dangerous group that wants nothing more than they physical obliteration of Israel and all Jews in the world. That’s the sort of allies that the three MPs above-mentioned had on that summer day two years ago and that is why the Prime Minister is accurate in asserting

Canada, under this government, is never going to cater to that kind of opinion. You know, I am disturbed that there are some elements in our political system; there are even some members of Parliament – we saw during a confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah a couple of years back – some that were willing to cater to that kind of opinion.*

So in other words, the Montreal rally was exactly what the Prime Minister was referring to, lest the opposition now suggest that his “blanket statement” could imply other anti-semitic occasions that opposition members indulged in (a Freudian slip, if it comes?). It will come too though as the Montreal event was pretty cut and dry, something that even the most hardened partisan should see if they simply put the shoe on the other foot and tried to imagine Conservatives marching alongside someone holding a “God hates fags” sign…hey, even having an MP holding hands with somebody down the street would even be fair game I guess!

So are the Liberal and Bloc caucuses full of raving “drive ‘em into the sea” anti-semites? Hardly. Are their numbers, however, including those who give legitimacy to an organization that deserves to be destroyed and at the same time associating themselves with a toxic philosophy that the civilized world should not entertain? Absolutely!

*-emphasis added

Keeping track of all the National Post entries, I have to admit that all the big ones were covered: The Charter, multiculturalism, abortion, The Tragically Hip (actually, that last one didn’t appear, but it should’ve!). The topics covered by Post columnists had the common theme of being either the cumulation of, or source of the social ills we experience today. As I got thinking about this, I quickly came to think of our “biggest mistake” as being something which is a cause, not an effect and furthermore, our biggest mistake should’ve been the biggest cause of things that has hurt us as a nation since.

Once I got into this frame of mind, the riddle became simple: government education! You have to go back a’ways to find a time before we had such a system, but as Ontario’s last election showed, we’re still paying the price for it today. If you take any other problem that we’ve had in the last 100 years since the advent of “public” education, you’ll find that an argument can be made that the government’s meddling in our childrens’ upbringing caused it: Poor performance in the world? Government education. A narcissistic and euthanasia-bent society? Government education. The crumbling of our ability to govern ourselves? Government education. You get the point I’m sure. There’s also the more minor results (relatively speaking) like the over-bearing and scofflaw unions that now indoctrinate our children year after year, or the massive debts that our provincial governments have accumulated because they got tangled in the teaching domain in the first place.

The one thing that makes this mistake unique from the others explored though is that it isn’t unique to Canada. The United States, western Europe, and Australia have all been duped by the allure of having big government pay for every little boy and girl’s enlightenment. If it weren’t for the sparsely populated elitist, religious and cultural private schools consistently out-performing the government systems in the western world, we wouldn’t even have a way of knowing just how much we’re failing our kids. It does present an opportunity for Canada as well though. If we were to take a leadership role in the 21st century by revitalizing and reinvigorating our school systems, doing away with political controls and the presumption that parents aren’t the best decision makers for their children, it would take practically no effort for us to excel to the head of the pack and become the best-educated most potential-blessed nation on the Earth. We’d become the new Japanese, as it were. It’s all something to think about, both from a contemporary and from a visionary point of view. Who knows, our kids might even learn how to properly do their taxes in a couple of generations!

With that said though, I think that the Harper government, keen to keep itself from acting too rational on matters dealing with our southern neighbours, lest our nation’s favourite case of racism bloom along with the other spring offerings, might have come to the right conclusion on this one, even if they still don’t have a good reason for why they did it in the first place. Consider, if you will, the wider context of this sale. Yes this was a sale between two willing organizations that was perfectly legal within the context of business and contract law and in appearances it appeared very free-trade and amicable for all parties. However, the aerospace industry and its derivatives, including satellites, is notoriously regulated the western governments involved. For MDA, this means that it cannot compete for U.S. business because U.S. law requires that contracts are rewarded exclusively to U.S. firms. In fact, if you look at why MDA wanted this deal so badly, it’s precisely because of this law — it would’ve allowed the company to compete in the massively larger, and far more lucrative U.S. ocean instead of being concealed within its present Canadian fishbowl. Not that we’re much better, screaming how any foreign interaction would be an immediate compromise to our sovereignty and national security.

At the end of the day though, if we’re going to play nice and laissez-faire, the least we owe to ourselves is to expect the same attitudes in return. NAFTA would’ve never worked for Canada if it was all give and no take. It’s also why North America’s flirtation with China is ultimately doomed in the long run as well. As soon as they actually get an economy over there, do you think the Chinese government’ll actually welcome the free flow of wealth out of its country, given the way it handles every other non-expedient situation it encounters right now? This sort of vigilance might have also given our local auto industries a fighting chance, if the union python wasn’t helping Japanese protectionism to choke it to death!

So in retrospect, I think that even conservatives will look back on the Prentice decision as one that was beneficial for a Canadian firm. Not that the man actually deserves any credit, given his willingness to invent guilt-by-association taxes to appease record labels and other blunders that indicate that Jim Prentice clearly doesn’t *get* how economies work! Of course, lost in the translation during this whole situation was the question of how MDA got into its mess in the first place; if Prentice were wise, he’d be spending the upcoming weeks with his American counterpart on that one…

I’ve noticed that a lot of youths are jaded and cynical, their hellishly asinine cosmion of meaning offering little by way of hope. It seems to me that a lot of urban youth are lacking the interest, the opportunity, to take on some kind of character forming responsibility or challenge; dismissed by too many adults as just stupid kids.

People tend to blame disinterested, or deranged, parents or even lax young offender laws for vicious youth. And while I suppose they are to blame in part, there’s only so much self-pitying contempt to go around before teenagers accrue the pathologies of perpetual victims.

When you consider the rate of obesity among youth today, the constant “noise” of the angry music iPod, video gaming, cell phoning, and celebrity following tv generation, the teenage years appear to be a bitter dawn of nihilism.

More police, aggressively empowered, and more silly welfare schemes for single parents are not necessarily the answer. Initiatives like Big Brothers Big Sisters and The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award seem like a good antidote to me, providing a path toward adulthood, toward some measure confident self-reliance that isn’t feeling sorry for oneself, then terrorizing others.

Schools should promote these initiatives with more enthusiasm, a respite from their constant barrage of tolerance and sensitivity training.

UPDATE: “Does affirmative action hurt kids?”

“How, then, can he say that Canada will intervene with Saudi Arabia to spare the life of Mr. Kohail? How is it also possible for Canada to have legal assistance treaties with other countries — including Mexico?” Dion said.

The first problem that I have (and I would hope this should be obvious) is that the government can not rescue every single Canadian throughout the whole wide world who may be suffering obvious injustice. It is just impossible. Therefore, it seems unfair for the government to play favorites. [The irony is that governments always play favorites. Every time a government acts, it plays favorites. I wonder if the Liberals understand that.] Although, I am sure Dion only meant to ask a rhetorical question to highlight a double standard in state intervention but if that is the only way we can get intelligent commentary from the leader of the federal Liberals, so be it. On second thought, it would not surprise me if Dion’s political strategy involves the advocacy of saving every single Canadian throughout the whole wide world — I have yet to hear anything more mature come from his mouth in either official language.

[In other news, an RCMP search-and-rescue team take a few Griffon helicopters out to save a British adventurer trapped in her vain solo ski trek to the North Pole. Who pays that bill?]

Secondly, I am not too certain I want the Canadian government to have legal assistance treaties with other countries. The cynic in me fears that it is just a front for giving nation states political bargaining power for issues that have nothing to do with justice. Marc Emery is facing extradition to the U.S. for a non-crime in Canada.

I see no reason to trust a state that imprisons foreigners when they have the option of deporting and banishing them from their country. Incarceration is generally a bizarre state construct and this fact becomes more evident when we examine such inter-state or cross-jurisdictional cases. Brenda Martin said something very powerful, in my opinion:

“Right now there is so much negative publicity for Mexico, and for what? For a 51-year-old woman who allegedly received $26,000 illegally? [Someone] has to put this in perspective and simply let me go.”

She is right — unless they want something from her.

Maybe they think she can provide information to lead to further arrests. I do not know. Maybe the Mexican prosecutors just want to look tough to local Mexicans. Prosecutors love looking tough — it helps further their political careers. Maybe, like most bureaucrats, the more work they create for themselves, the more they get paid! Whatever the reason, the Mexicans can simply deport Brenda Martin to Canada and bar her from ever entering Mexico again.

Why would the Mexican authorities waste their time, effort and money on Brenda Martin? The actual fraudster, Alyn Waage, is already convicted and serving time. He insists that Brenda Martin is innocent and that they are holding her as collateral for a $500,000 bribe he was supposed to pay in exchange for his release. Sadly, that sort of corruption does not surprise me and it makes the most sense.

I have a lot of sympathy for Brenda Martin and her plight. However, I have no proof of what Brenda Martin was doing in Mexico. I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she is an innocent woman. A friend of mine, spent a few years in North African and Spanish jails after being set up on trumped up smuggling charges. Generally, I distrust most legal systems and my distrust is greater for foreign ones.

—-

Canadians travel to Mexico all of the time. Some get scape-goated for crimes but most have a peaceful vacation or business trip. One thing I do know for certain is that I have never been to Mexico and I can not afford to go there. Maybe one day, I will.

Why should my taxes go to pay for one person’s legal debacle in a country I can not afford to visit???? That certainly does not seem fair. Even if it is fair, it certainly is no way to run a country without going bankrupt.

Beijing, China was regarded as the one to beat though as many of the delegates in the IOC thought that bringing the Olympics, with all its capitalist dollars and scrutiny, would be a vehicle to enhance the progress that China was making at that time to become a freer society. There was a columnist that wrote at the time that China’s then-leadership was probably going to be replaced by the time that the games came to the Chinese capital and that somehow a sporting event was going to usher in a push to hold free elections in the billion-strong nation. How wrong they all were.

Fast-forward seven years and aside from the blessing of the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 games — an endeavor that will at least save Ontario taxpayers a few ‘G’s for the next two decades — there isn’t much to report on in way of good news. Today it is being reported that France may boycott the games now (for once I support their auto-trigger response to surrender), and the undertones are indicating that other western nations might join in. Since Athens was the last city to host a summer games, it might be asked in the event of a large enough boycott to re-host the games although they would almost certainly be delayed at this stage until later this year or even 2009. The fact remains though that China the reality isn’t settling very nicely with the real world and it is only the IOC pie-in-the-sky types that we have to blame for what might not be a crisis, but certainly might be a disappointing disaster for the hundreds of young athletes who sacrifice almost all of their young lives to make it to the five-ring competition.

While I’m reluctant to say that the world owes anything to these talented young people, certainly the officials in the IOC do, and they’re about to let them down quite unpleasantly. The fact that boycotts are already being suggested is no surprise; if we were honest with ourselves we’d know that China has an atrocious human liberties record and is using its human capital clout to bully the world into maintaining the status quo. This might work when we are talking in terms of economics (we’ve already seen China politely threaten Stephen Harper’s government if Canada takes a hard line with it, risking the valuable trade we have with the nation), but the Olympics are at the end of the day a highly symbolic situation, wherein the only losses will be suffered by the athletes, their coaches, families and friends. Sponsors will find other events to bankroll, people will find other shows to watch, and the economy will remain virtually unaffected, aside from the Olympic emblem hat here or the torch keychain there.

Of course, China, in continuing its violence in Tibet is only hurting itself at this point. Even the Soviets back in their day knew how to look pretty when they had to , and cover up the fact that they weren’t playing nice behind the scenes. In other words, China might have finally pushed around its weight a little too much and crossed the previously-mythical line that the West had drawn in the sand. China will be set back if they have the games disrupted by this folly, both economically in the short-term and politically down the road. Who knows, maybe this’ll even start to make us here in the West serious about our feelings that Tibet should be given independence; a blessing in disguise that will bring about tremendous good in the years to come. All we can know for sure right now though is that China had put on a pretty good show in the next few weeks if it wants to keep the Beijing games intact. A word of warning to the Asian country though — watch out for the French judge, as he’s looking pretty grumpy right now!

“We are both federal states and when you live in glasshouse you don’t throw stones.“

Yes, Mr. Ambassador, but Canadians do not torch embassies nor do they poison their political opponents. Canada is a “federation” but Canadians are different from Russians and Serbs. [I wonder if the Russian ambassador considers a bayonnet and a butter knife as being the same too, hmm???]

If Canadians want to maintain any semblance of being part of a civilized nation, they will distance themselves from the bullying arrogant rhetoric of Russian statesmen.  Canadians will align themselves with other civilized people who did not hesitate to recognize the obvious: Kosovo independence.

President Bush has had a difficult time lately in Iraq. He lost the mid-term elections, fired his defence secretary, and is about to launch his presidency’s last stand — a “surge” of thousands of fresh troops in one more desperate attempt to take and hold Baghdad.

Norman Podhoretz speaks Jan 16, 2008 :

It took Lincoln three years to find Sherman and Grant. It took George Bush three years to find Petraeus.

Basically, Shane is right that this is the beginning of something. We have crossed the line of officially recognizing the isolationist mentality that we have been acting upon for the past 40 years. Let’s not kid ourselves though, this school, John Tory’s ill-fated campaign promise, and everything that is yet to come should’ve been seen coming from a mile away. In fact, most of us still smugly endorse the culture that is allowing this transformation to take place. You see, unlike the Americans who now have 230 years of generally open immigration experience (and whose one exception happens to be the black slave case), Canada’s current model has only been going for a few decades and it is something that most Canadians like to think makes us superior to our souther neighbours.

Instead of a melting pot, we like to think our society is multicultural, where you can bring not only the food, dress, music, and language from back home but also the racism, ills, cultural norms and other attributes that most of us would personally find undesirable. When a family from the Middle East punishes their daughter harshly for not wearing a hijab, as a Mississauga father did in killing his daughter over the issue, we always see the culprits at the CBC, Libblogs and the general bleeding hearts quickly run in to caution us that it is we, the ones who have been assimilated into what used to be Canadian culture, who need to adopt sensitivity, not the individual(s) who came here to seek the better life/wealth that our culture had a large part in creating! By letting different ethnic groups go about their business, just not around my family though if you please, these newcomers who include many individuals who want to escape the ills they left behind and become truly Canadian, are marginalized. Unlike the Americans or Japanese (to name a couple), we don’t create a systematic incentive so strong that one cannot help but learn passable English within a year of landing here (I should know; my neighbours two doors down don’t speak enough English to understand me saying “hello”, but live off of the welfare program all day in their new dwelling). Nor do we create any other incentive that will make people stop saying that they’re Indian, African or Dutch, but rather that they’re just Canadian!

I know some of the people who are up in arms over this post already wouldn’t like me quoting from our Lord, but He had some pretty wise things to say that apply to all of society, not just Christians. The one that comes to mind is that “a house divided will surly fall.” As North York becomes the newest member state of the African Union, and Islam prepares to move Mississauga into a vassel dar al-Islam, we might want to step back for a moment and consider that for a bit, and maybe explore whether we’re paying a higher price to get sushi at the mall than we have to…or than we can afford!

The topic of the interview will be general military affairs and issues relating to Canada’s role as a peace-keeper. If you’re interested in submitting a question, read more at the Maple Leaf Web weblog.

Among the more reasonable explanations that I’ve been offered are that if the roles were reversed, the U.S. would be laughing right through the primaries at the thought of turning one of its citizens over to a foreign nation to face a criminal charge that it is not willing to make itself, and that Emery is just being used as an example; there are many B.C.-based websites that offer the same service that Emery has, but the U.S. law enforcement agencies aren’t even recognizing their existence.

There are problems though, even with these justifications. First, while it’s true that the U.S. would be more keen on keeping its own safe, I seem to recall many examples wherein the country is willing to extradite American citizens to Europe, or Canada to face charges such as fraud, murder or theft; if I’m not mistaken, many of the recent business scandals that have been recently rocking the U.S. financial world involve execs in just this situation. Irregardless, two wrongs wouldn’t make a right; everyone, including Emery, agrees that he willingly provoked the States and is now facing the consequences. Canadian law is quite reasonable in this case, giving discretion to the Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, who has the ability to veto a citizen’s transfer to a foreign country to face charges if he feels that there is the potential that that individual’s basic rights (to a fair trial, to life…) would be violated or that the crime stated is unreasonable (eg. if you are a woman charged with walking down the street sans a male escort). This allows our nation’s officials to get a glance at the situation and make a judgment call. As for why Emery is being singled out, I understand that he’s particularly provocative and even if he isn’t the biggest or more dangerous seed seller out there, it’s the U.S. government’s freedom to decide who and who they will not contact Canada about wishing to prosecute.

Marc Emery will certainly face a steep sentence if he is convicted in the States, make no doubt about it. However, he knew the risks going into the situation and figuratively thumbed his nose at America’s right to authority as he did so. To cry foul now that the tables are turned is to completely disregard every step he’s taken up until now!

The RCMP: Instilling virtue in a mass of unworthy humanity somewhere near you.

PS: Remember the public service announcements that came at the end of G.I. Joe and Inspector Gadget cartoons? Well, they worked precisely because the Joes and Inspector Gadget didn’t electrocute senior citizens ’cause they don’t pay their parking tickets. That was more of a Cobra or Dr. Claw kind of thing.

And just in case you have a generally non-compliant dog:

“Why in God’s name should a copper get hurt just to avoid tasering or OCing a subject that it violent and out of control?”

“Today we have use of force tools that allow us to effect our purpose without getting a “bloody nose”. Getting hurt isn’t part of my job.”

“I don’t go to work to become a punching bag, and weapons and tools are available to me so I go home. These guys are cops who are no different. At the end of the day it’s ME who goes home, if some jerk-off who tried hurting me gets hurt or killed in the process, that’s just too damn bad.”

These sorts of statements make it difficult indeed to believe the police line that tasers save lives by giving cops the option of not using their guns. So too do stories that describe how RCMP officers shot a handcuffed woman twice with a taser in order to convince her to move into a cell; how a lawyer was shoved to the ground and shot with a taser because he wouldn’t hand over his camera; and how a seventeen-year-old was tased up to thirteen times because he wouldn’t (couldn’t?) roll over onto his back. Some of the recent commenters at this site might be a-ok with the idea that Canadian police officers are using potentially lethal weapons as a method of pain compliance. That’s fine, but be sure to keep your eyebrows un-arched next time you’re getting a speeding ticket.

Presumably, cops didn’t use their guns as a method of compliance prior to the advent of the taser. Presumably, those four cops would not in the absence of their tasers have shot Robert Dziekanski. Yet Dziekanski is dead. All the more reason to ban the vile things.

The RCMP, an international embarrassment.

A Polish immigrant tasered to death by Canadian police appears to have been asking for their help in a non-violent fashion, when he was tasered.

h/t 

Would it have been so hard for the RCMP to do something similar?

Read the whole thing.

One wonders if tasers are growing in popularity because they level the playing field between officers of different physical capabilities, important in a world of affirmative action.

B.C. police use of Tasers up 57% in past two years

[Edited because I didn’t really like it] 

Now to wait and see what the review consists of, and how sharp are its teeth. And how many representatives from police unions and the shadowy American taser corporations are invited to give “input” (Hey, maybe we can hear from more industry-sponsored experts on how tasers are “completely harmless”!).

Meanwhile, Stephane Dion lends his weighty intellect to the cause:

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said he hadn’t seen the video, but [nevertheless] wants the Mounties to review their use of the weapon…

Mr. Dion asked other Liberals at a news conference if they’d seen the video.

“I didn’t. Did you see it, Keith?” said Mr. Dion, turning to Victoria-area MP Keith Martin.

“No,” Martin replied.

Less than ten seconds after walking up to the man, he was tased. The lesson is therefore that four RCMP officers considered themselves unable to subdue a single man without resorting to tasing him. One can be heard saying, “Got your taser ready?” as they walked into the room, before even seeing the man or assessing the situation. If you can think of a shorter way to write an abdication of an RCMP officer’s duty, I’d like to see it.

The situation is sickening. Dziekanski didn’t speak English. He’d been held as a prisoner for ten hours. The ridiculous security guards repeated, “He only speaks Russian,” constantly. In fact, a woman had asked Dziekanski if he spoke Russian and he shook his head “no.” Perhaps security guards at Vancouver International Airport should be given training on what shaking one’s head in a horizontal direction generally indicates.

Enough. Canada does not and has never needed these vile instruments, whatever excuses Canada’s assorted police unions are currently patronizing us with. It’s within the authority of the federal government to ban their use. Let Stockwell Day watch this video, hold his lunch down, and then do so.

AND: Considering that Canadian police have murdered a Polish citizen, why is the government of Poland not now raising hell?

AND: Robert Dziekanski, meet Ian Bush.

AND:

Look at it this way: if the same cops had approached the guy and immediately started kicking the shit out of him, 3 on 1, it would be considered unacceptably savage. A taser can (obviously) be more deadly than a shitkicking, but because it’s small and quick, somehow it gets lost that this is exactly what they’re doing when they employ that kind of force.

AND the worst of all:

The video is hard to watch. It has four brawny men going up to a clearly petrified man who’s suffering an anxiety attack. He even seems to welcome them by saying Polizei, Polizei - perhaps mistakenly believing that they are coming to his help. They zap him twice and sit on his neck.

In 1999, Australians voted “no” in a referendum for a republic system for their country.

“We’ve got a very stable system of government. There has been no coup or civil war, in part because of the constitutional linkage between the Crown, the Governor-General and the Government of the day.

“This has given Australia great stability,” he concludes.

The West should be very wary of trading with China to the extent that it presently is, be it a tyrannical and morally bankrupt regime, although some significant trade is necessary to leverage our moral authority and hope to influence them in the long term. As a point of national interest, India is a much more logical strategic ally than China, although China has certainly helped reigned in the North Koreans.

In the mean time, those Liberal trade missions to China should not have been in vain. It’s nice to see Harper, rather than more trade missions, cashing in on Canada’s moral leverage to prod Chinese leaders along.

Now, if only he can say something about Darfur and China’s less than agreeable complicity. See here as well.

Harris, a self-described “gay man” who dedicates his recent book to his “partner of twenty years,” tells how the orgins of Islam, be it the origins of an inner-worldly political community, were and are, out of necessity, violent. He argues that the very generosity of liberal values, when confronted by those who do not share such values, works to undermine the very security of Western liberal society.

Near the end of the interview, Harris shares why he is an opponent of same-sex marriage. He makes a point that I have argued here many times: traditional marriage is the very definition of marriage. Any partnership between two-persons of the same-sex is not, by definition, marriage; there’s no substantive equivalency.

In agreement with anyone of a conservative temperament, Harris argues that intellectuals should be highly wary of tinkering with basic traditional conventions, conventions that give Western society a basic ordering structure, from whence reason emerges.

This is an excellent point!

Once you start ignoring basic common sense differences between men and women, and basic differences between heterosexual and homosexual human relationships, you are no longer as in touch with the ordering structure of reality as you once were. And when common sense reason starts to flag in one area, such unreason is demonstratably contagious and liable to spread. Case in point: once “sexual orientation” was read into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and accepted as standard lingo in speaking of ALL persons, juridically and very narrowly, same-sex marriage became a more amenable, seemingly logical, permutation of Canadian jurisprudence.

Harris tells how he grew up a Southern Baptist and has a great deal of respect for many of “those people.” He says the very fact that he is tolerated as a gay man and allowed to live freely is a great accomplishment of civilization, especially when radical Islam would have him killed in the worst possible way. One can’t expect perfection from Western civilization, but rather be aware of how much better it is than the alternatives and WHY it is ABLE to be better than the alternatives.

Definitely an interview worth checking out!

* Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that three of their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.

This next bit is not credible, however:

However, the police force denied allegations its undercover officers were there on Monday to provoke the crowd and instigate violence.

Right. Because nothing says “just keeping the peace” like wielding a rock.

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There’s no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like “boat people,” “re-education camps,” and “killing fields.”

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today’s struggle — those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that “the American people had risen against their government’s war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today.”

His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to “the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents.”

Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans “know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet.” Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility — but the terrorists see it differently.

We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say. Bin Laden has declared that “the war [in Iraq] is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever.” Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror — but it’s the central front — it’s the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it’s the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating. (Applause.)

If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America. (Applause.)

Recently, two men who were on the opposite sides of the debate over the Vietnam War came together to write an article. One was a member of President Nixon’s foreign policy team, and the other was a fierce critic of the Nixon administration’s policies. Together they wrote that the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be disastrous.

Here’s what they said: “Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences.” I believe these men are right.

In Iraq, our moral obligations and our strategic interests are one. So we pursue the extremists wherever we find them and we stand with the Iraqis at this difficult hour — because the shadow of terror will never be lifted from our world and the American people will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our Creator meant for all. (Applause.)

I recognize that history cannot predict the future with absolute certainty. I understand that. But history does remind us that there are lessons applicable to our time. And we can learn something from history. In Asia, we saw freedom triumph over violent ideologies after the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives — and that freedom has yielded peace for generations.

Peter Rodman explains why Bush’s history lesson correctly Assesses the consequences of defeat in Iraq for American global posturing.

So the president has his history right. The outcome in Indochina was not foreordained. Congress had the last word, however, between 1973 and 1975.

The strategic consequences of defeat in Indochina were also serious. Leonid Brezhnev crowed that the global “correlation of forces” had shifted in favor of “socialism,” and the Soviets went on a geopolitical offensive in the third world for a decade. Demoralized allied leaders in Europe as well as Asia feared the new Soviet aggressiveness and lamented the paralysis of American will. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, he and his colleagues invoked Vietnam as evidence that U.S. warnings did not need to be taken seriously. That’s what it means to lose credibility. Once lost, it has to be re-earned the hard way.

No analogies are ever complete, but — given our global leadership and the number of allies and friends that rely on us for their security — the consequences of an American defeat can be counted on to be terrible. How can anyone seriously think otherwise?

See for yourself.

The Montebello summit in Quebec, where, among other matters, Artic sovereignty is to be discussed, demonstrates to Canadians the Harper difference in foreign affairs: the world takes us seriously again!

The Financial Times has a good piece on Harper’s last eighteen months in office, “Canada’s conservative man of action.”

Comedian Robin Williams once described Canada as being “like a loft apartment over a really great party” but it’s doubtful Mr Harper was laughing. Much of his time as prime minister has been spent trying to build Canada-US relations and making sure his country is taken seriously the world over.

During a speech in October, Mr Harper made clear he does not want Canada to sit back and watch the rest of the world act and react, saying the “objective is to make Canada a leader on the international stage…If there is any one thing that has struck me for the short time I have been in this job, it is how critically important foreign affairs has become in everything that we do”.

Thank God we have a leader who finally understands that keeping the Liberal Party in power—or any party—is not the sole reason we have general elections in Canada. Harper’s term in office, being a Canadian leader the world takes seriously because he takes the world seriously, will go down as a great restorative force for Canadian sovereignty, on the heels of Liberal frittering away of our national inheritance.

If Paul Cellucci’s recent comments are any indication, the Americans pay attention to Canada when Canada takes responsibility for it’s own sovereignty and security; they like a Canada that actually acts like the friend it always claims to be.

And in another good turn, in contrast to the constant buttering up of the Liberals to Red China, Harper has never wavered from criticizing China’s human rights record, compensating any trade defecit by looking within the Anglosphere to India:

Harper in his statement to congratulate India on the 60 aniversary of its Independence said, “India’s independence in 1947 has been an inspiration to the world. Using its great diversity to its own advantage, India has evolved into a vibrant democracy.”

“India is rising to global prominence and Canada stands ready to deepen our partnership with India to advance our common interests and to promote new opportunities for economic development and international trade for the benefit of both our peoples,” he said.

UPDATE:  Ten years ago, when asked about the protesters outside the APEC summit in Vancouver, Jean Chretien deflected commenting on their very presence, and the harsh police response to them, by saying he put pepper on his plate.  In contrast, Harper is too sincere to reflect such poor leadership, not feigning to ignore the protesters and their insincere antics.  As far as Harper is concerned, the protesters at Montebello are a sad spectacle. :-)

So who did Dion chose? A woman who would help Dion meet his much-talked about but little praised quota for the number of female Liberal candidates he wants to run in the next election? How about someone who would actually be able to appeal to the ethnic minorities in the riding, given that the NDP is making a power play for the seat with a popular former Quebec Liberal minister? No, he chose one of his own: a university accademic from Montreal named Jocelyn Coulon.

Coulon isn’t shy about his expectations either, reportedly saying that Dion is seeking his expertise on foreign affairs, defence issues, and Africa, which makes Dion’s current caucus specialists in these areas what? Chopped liver? Considering that Dion already has people like Michael Ignatieff, himself an academic expert on foreign affairs, and current critics in these areas like Ujjal Dosanjh and Denis Coderre already handling these areas, what does this say about Dion’s trust in his own caucus or the Liberal leader’s evaluation of that talented “dream team” the Liberals keep on bringing up when referring to their high-ranking members. Still yet, why doesn’t Dion let Justin Trudeau run in the riding that the young Trudeau currently resides in? These are all very good questions for Canadians and particularly Quebecois to consider as this by-election begins to come into the spotlight. The answers point to a leader so insecure with his own ability and with the more capable rivals around him that he feels compelled to use extreme powers to appoint a bunch of loyal yes-men (and note:not yes-women!) so as to reinforce his position as leader. Not much of a management style, now is it?

We’re there for the women and children everyone!

So lets face it, Harper should be talking as much as he can about the good Canadian soldiers are doing in Afghanistan; not only providing law and order, but bolstering aid and development. However, he should not, for one minute, play to the traditional pat-ourselves-on-the-back Canadian national pathology toward peace keeping. It’s in our national interest for that self-congratulatory and desultory nonsense to die! Even peace keeping missions need to serve our national interest; Canadians told this straight up.

When it comes to Afghanistan, Canadians need to be told what’s in it for us, how it serves our national interest to be in Afghanistan, and how the soldiers serving in Afghanistan know this full well. Those boys—and a few girls—are fighting and dying for Canada, not some hell-bent over-eager idealism!

The idea that Canadians are just do-good internationalists keeping the peace between warring parties—out of our own benevolence, with little expectation of casualties—is not only vain, it’s a well-worn foreign policy hat that Canadians should never wear again. It not only blinds Canadians to the very real threats, and root causes of those threats, to our national security and sovereignty, it reinforces a moralizing self-righteousness that far too readily excuses bad governance at home.

Thankfully, Canada’s new Conservative government has done an admirable job of ushering this country back into the real world, a world where national sovereignty and punching above one’s weight comes at a real cost, one that requires serious strategic thinking.

1.) Political progress itself will not reduce the violence, especially when Iraqi government is too little established to provide stability. Coalition forces, and lots of them, are needed to provide the basis for political stability.

2.) Higher ratios of troops to civilians does provide easier won success in bringing stability, though it is not determinative, considering preparedness and troop reliability. More coalition soldiers, along with more well-trained and reliable Iraqi forces, the total of which is now 350,000 in Iraq, have improved troop/civilian ratios significantly.

3.) After an area has been cleared of insurgents, rapid reduction of coalition forces while turning control over to Iraqi forces should not occur prematurely. All previous operations were hindered because Iraqi forces were not sufficiently capable of maintain security. Coalition forces need to hold their positions and help keep the peace.

4.) Advance forces, moving ahead of major operations, need to be used to establish bases and establish contact with local civilians. Not only does this assist with better tactical planning of the numbers need to clear an area, it is a way of reaching out to local leaders who are potential allies.

5.) Casualities are always highest at the start of clearing operations, despite better troop/civilian ratios and solid preparation. These casualities need to be expected! This spike in casualties is the short term cost of flushing insurgents from their defensive positions, and this spike NEEDS to be explained so that the political will for operations is maintained.

As Kagan and Kagan sum up:

… there is every reason to believe at this stage that the current operation and its likely successor will dramatically reduce the level of violence in Baghdad, and do so in a way that will prove sustainable. That accomplishment in itself will be a major contribution to American security, in that it will entail a major defeat for al Qaeda and its allies, now surging in response to our stepped-up operations. And it will create an unprecedented situation in postwar Iraq: one in which Iraq’s elected government can meet and discuss policies in relative security in a capital returning to normal; in which Sunni and Shia can afford to compromise without fear of an imminent sectarian explosion; and in which Iraqi forces can become increasingly responsible for maintaining the security that they have helped to establish. The current strategy is on track to produce that outcome–which is why it deserves to be given every chance to succeed.

Abu Saif spoke with disdain of Blair’s appointment as a special envoy to the Middle East, issuing an apparent threat.

“Inshallah,” meaning “Allah willing,” he told the crowd, Blair will “go to the Middle East as an envoy, and he’ll come back in a box. Inshallah. What box that is, we leave that up to you.”

Humphries estimated nearly 3,000 Muslims were gathered in front of the mosque in north London June 22, after Friday prayers, to protest Queen Elizabeth’s knighting of Indian author Salman Rushdie, the target of a death-sentence fatwa for “insulting” Islam’s prophet Muhammad in his 1988 book “The Satanic Verses.”

For Humphries, the response of the Muslims at Islam’s largest house of worship in the UK was telling.

“Not one said, ‘You’re not speaking for me’ or ‘Not in my name.’ They stood there and watched and applauded,” he told WND.

Like the UK, Humphries said, the U.S. has three major vulnerabilities to patient, fundamentalist Muslims who believe their purpose for living in the West is to help fulfill Islamic prophecies: The loss of border control, the inability to say no and lack of assimilation.

Be sure to listen to all of the audio feeds, particularly the interview with Abu Saif. It’s truly fascinating stuff, especially with his home-grown British accent, inciting revolution and the destruction of Israel.

Appears to be a solid appointment:

Elliott was viewed by many as a skilled manager in the public safety department as well as in the Coast Guard, where Elliott served as deputy commissioner.

“Apparently people say he did a very good job when he was running the Coast Guard and he ended up having a lot of respect with the rank and file.”

In 1989, Elliott worked as an executive assistant to the office of the deputy prime minister. One year later, he became chief of staff in the same office.

Elliott also served as national security advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper from April 2005 until last spring.

Day also reminded reporters on Friday that Brown was also appointed by a previous Liberal government as national security adviser to former prime minister Paul Martin.

Canada’s homicide rate and number of gang-related murders has increased since the federal government’s firearms registry and licensing program was implemented, an indication that the program has failed to improve public safety

Mauser, the report author, found

overall criminal violence and suicide rates have continued their long-term decline with the violent crime rate falling by about four per cent. Yet the homicide rate has actually increased by nine per cent since the registry was implemented. No persuasive link could be found between the firearm registry and these changes.

You can find the report at the Fraser Institute’s website.

First, remember that it was the Democrats who pushed this case to begin with. If they are going to lodge a political protest after years of referring to Mr. Libby as guilty, they are no better than President Bush if he only did his forgiving move today for political reasons.

More importantly though, I draw attention to this man, who at the end of his presidency in January, 2000 spent his last day in office freeing a bunch of people including his own relative. In fairness, Bush doesn’t have to face the people on any level again, but he will have to defend his move in the media as this week goes on; Clinton just snuck in his move as he was passing Bush on the way out the door. It was a blatantly corrupt move and even Clinton knew it; but he will never face any true scrutiny over it. More relevant to today’s move though, I have yet to hear a Democrat condemn the 42nd President of the United States for using his legal power in such an immoral way…until then, they better not say