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From the pointy end:

Shout out to Glavin.

Written by jay on November 12th, 2008 with no comments.
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Glavin in the ’stan

The orthodox Left don’t much like Terry Glavin. Probably because he has the balls to wander the streets of Kabul talking to actual Afghanis. Difficult to argue the “futility” of the Canadian and NATO mission with someone who has actually been in country on his own dime finding out what is working and what is not.

Go read his short dispatches…

Written by jay on October 28th, 2008 with 3 comments.
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Liberal Troother…What will Jason Do

Lesley Hughes, Liberal Candidate…Troother.

Many official sources are claiming to have warned the American intelligence community, which spends $30 billion a year gathering information, about the attacks on the twin towers on that heartbreaking day.

German Intelligence (BND) claims to have warned the U.S. last June, the Israeli Mossad and Russian Intelligence in August. Israeli businesses, which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it. About 3000 Americans working there were not so lucky. Lesley Hughes - Get the Truth

h/t Dawg/ Black Rod

(I have been trying to reach Ms. Hughes campaign office for confirmation…line’s busy.)

UpDate: Reached the Campaign Office and spoke to the very pleasant campaign manager, Selina Bieber. They are aware of the story…the Globe and Mail had called. they are trying to verify it. I left my number and said I’d be happy to talk to the candidate.)

Update II Smoking Gun! At the lovely “Canada Wants the Truth Blog” from 2007 “Barrie Zwicker and Lesley Hughes to speak Thursday September 6th, Winnipeg MB Canada

Thursday on the 3rd floor of Mondragon (91 Albert street.) for 7:30 PM, featuring Author, Media Critic Barrie Zwicker & Fromer CBC jounalist, Editor of Canadian Dimension (www.canadiandimension.com) Leslie Hughes will be discussing 9/11.”

Hey, isn’t Barry Zwicker Smilin Jack’s Troother pal??

——–

Update III And here is a report of Ms. Hughes as a panelist at a Troother event.

——-

Update IV: Here we go. Thank you Kate, Blazing, Daimnation and Jonathan Kay at the National Post for linking into this story. With Jonathan we now have MSM ignition….The Post breaks stories, let’s see who follows.

On a side note - I wrote Jonathan to ask him to credit Dr. Dawg and The Black Rod from whom I got the details. So far no call back from Ms. Hughes or her campaign office.

Selina Bieber, Ms. Hughes’ campaign manger who I had a nice chat with this afternoon told me she had already heard from the Globe and Mail - question of the day - will the G&M go with the story or will they sit on it? I am not optimistic. And what of poor Jason? Crickets? Or a head explosion of Biblical proportions?

Update V: The Globe and Mail weighs in - by basically burying the story (they hope) blending it with assorted other candidate outrages.

Winnipeg-area Liberal candidate Lesley Hughes was forced to explain an article she had written about conspiracy theories alleging that the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that Israeli businesses had advance warning to vacate the premises. The remarks surfaced a day after she joined Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion in a major public outreach to Canada’s Jewish community.

“I find any interpretation of my journalism as anti-Semitic personally offensive and I heartily apologize for that perception,” she said in a statement released late yesterday. globe and mail

Non-apology, apology not accepted: yes, the underlying narrative of the Troothers is implicitly ante-Semitic; but, more importantly, it is batshit crazy. You cannot apologize for being insane - you just have to live with it. But the Liberals are surely not so desperate that they have to nominate crazy people.

But what were the Liberals thinking having Dion sign her nomination papers? More on that tomorrow.

Written by jay on September 25th, 2008 with 9 comments.
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Not a cloud in the sky

Blue sky here in Victoria. No clouds.

Past the falling bodies, the smoke, the second plane it is the blue sky which stays with me.

We were lucky enough to have a warning as bright as the sun on 9/11. Which, to a degree, we have heeded.

But there will be other blue skies.

Written by jay on September 11th, 2008 with no comments.
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And a Dead Dog

“Relatives of 7/7 London bomber hold party at his grave”

Hang on: he got a grave? The UK actually shipped his body back to Pakistan for a “proper burial” and didn’t wrap it in bacon first? kathy

Garlic for vampires, dogs and pigs for Islamists: works like the wonderfully ancient charm it is. If you are fighting the 7th century you need to use 7th century tactics.

Written by jay on July 8th, 2008 with no comments.
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Hitchens discovers torture

Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens, more or less on a dare from Editor Graydon Carter, agreed to be waterboarded. You can watch the video here and read Hitchens’ account here.

Hitchens’ second go, which is what I think the video is of, lasts, perhaps 15 seconds and half a cup of water. No question, the Hitchens gag reflex and fear of drowning leave him wide open to the fear which waterboarding creates.

And, equally no question, this is a horribly effective means of scaring the living daylights out of someone.

Which is, of course, the point.

Hitchens’ conclusion is that this is torture and that “I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.” And, of course, he’s right. We all wish that waterboarding, leave aside the nastier, leaves marks - visible and invisible - end of of torture, need never be associated with our names. But have we that luxury?

At the moment I think we do which is why Graydon Carter was happy to dare Hitch to go mano mano with a damp towel. It is a luxury hard won by 4000 dead in Iraq, dead Canadians in Afghanistan, a series of successes against a strategically inept al Qaeda, the beclowing of radical Islam and, frankly, a great deal of very good luck.

Will that luck hold; Lord I hope so.

But here, via Andrew Sullivan, is the case for the other side:

But at yesterday’s Aspen panel on nuclear non-proliferation, the general consensus was that there’s a reasonably high likelihood that a nuclear device will be detonated in an American city, New York or Washington most likely, at some point in the next ten years. And the experts on the panel, John Holdren and Joe Cirincione among them, are not exactly attached to the Bush Administration worldview. After such an attack, we’ll look back — those of us still around, obviously — on our efforts to combat al Qaeda and judge them inadequate to the task, just as we look back now on the Clinton Administration’s pre-9/11 preparations (and the Bush Administration’s, as well) as thoroughly inadequate. So I suppose I’m convinced of two things simultaneously: Al Qaeda is fairly weak, and not very popular at all, and that this might not matter as much as people think. jeffrey goldberg, the atlantic

Written by jay on July 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
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Israelis rumoured to be hitting Beirut…Reuters has pix

click to see hyperbaric bomb

Written by jay on May 12th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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Fitna Back Online

The flea posts that LiveLeak has improved its security and now has Fitna back on line.

Dr. Dawg has seen the movie and didn’t like the tie in between the Koran and the ongoing Islamic terrorism which Wilders’ film underscores. Dawg drags out the hoary idea that the Bible has blood curdling passages too, so there. Which explains all the headlines we see about Anglicans beheading the infidels and Biblically inspired Amish hostage takings. I don’t have time for a point refutation of Dawg and I doubt it is necessary - the best example he can come up with is Fred Phelps who, one must admit is pretty horrible and has a following which numbers in the tens none of whom, so far as I am aware, has crashed a jet into a building while singing “Onward Christian Soldiers”.

Written by jay on March 31st, 2008 with 16 comments.
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Threatened LiveLeak pulls Fitna

“Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature…This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net” liveleak

It is much worse than a sad day for free speech on the net - it is proof that militant Islam can overpower our most basic rights. Fitna was political commentary. It had footage which was widely available. What made it unacceptable to the Islamofascists is that it made the direct link between the terror and atrocities committed by radical Islamists and the nature of Islam.

HotAir reassures:

Don’t worry, the film’s still around. Google Video has it for the moment and I hear that it’s up and down on YouTube too. When all else fails, just search for “fitna” and “torrent” and all should be well. They don’t call it “viral video” for nothing: Once it’s released into the population, you can never quite stamp it out. LiveLeak did its job for as long as it needed to. hotair

And HotAir points out that the threats which caused LiveLeak to pull the film has pretty much proven Wilders’ point.

I have downloaded a copy from http://www.sendspace.com/file/bodnck

h/t sda

Written by jay on March 29th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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Geert Wilders’ Film

This is pretty damned powerful.

It takes fifteen minutes to watch.

I suspect by putting a link to it on my blog I might be in violation of s.13 of the Human Rights Act.

Somethings are important enough that you have to take that risk.

Update: LiveLeak demonstrates what real freedom of speech is about:

That being said, our being offended is no reason to deny Mr Wilders the right to have his film seen. Pre-emptive censorship or a discriminatory policy towards freedom of speech are both things we oppose here on LiveLeak.com. A person has a simple, clear choice about whether to view this film. No one is being forced to view it and nor is it being broadcasted on every channel on their television set. If you click on media simply to be annoyed, it is pointless to blame others for your choice. liveleak

1.5 million views in English, 2.5 in Dutch (population of the Netherlands 16.57 million). Isn’t the net grand!

Written by jay on March 28th, 2008 with 6 comments.
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Meanwhile in Gaza

Far from being “collateral damage” — that is, women and children killed by accident in the attempt to kill an armed fighter — women and children within Palestinian society can and will become the targets to be murdered by other members of their society. Recall the three little children — Palestinian children, not those “worthy of death” Jewish children –who were gunned down on their way to school as a message to their father:

Balousheh’s three children — 3-year-old Salam, 6-year-old Ahmed and 9-year-old Osama — were in the family car on their way to school when gunmen opened fire from two vehicles. The three were killed along with their driver. Doctors said one of the boys was hit by 10 bullets to the head. Dr. Yael Kaynan, PJ media

Quite a message. Gaza is tragic; it is also redeemable if its inhabitants are willing to forsake the gunmen.

Written by jay on February 25th, 2008 with no comments.
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Let’s have More Muslims

Publius writes at The Gods of the Copybook Headings:

I have, as far back as I can remember, opposed the ideas of multiculturalism. The notion that all cultures - and therefore all ideas and values - are equal is appalling. It is at best moral equivalence and at worst plain racism under an “enlightened” guise. I also don’t remember inviting any Muslims into Canada, I have invited some Portuguese relatives - any country could always do with more Portuguese people, especially Portugal which seems to have gone all Belgian in the last twenty years.

As for inviting Muslims, I wouldn’t mind doing that at all. In doing so I’d just remind them that they are living in Canada now, and if they’d like to stay they must be loyal to ours laws, our values and our Queen. There are over 200 countries in the world, we are objectively one of the best. If you are honest enough to understand and admit this, act accordingly. Like the old British official who promised to hang widow killers, we should stand ready to do the same. the gods of the copybook headings

When I wrote below of the need for an open, no holds barred, immigration debate in Canada this is exactly the sort of position I was hoping to hear. It is not my position as I am increasingly inclined to believe that sorting Muslims from Islamists is near impossible and that the perversion of Islam preached and practiced by Islamists is entirely incompatible with liberal, secular democracy; but Publius’ suggestion had the merit of presuming nothing.

Now, whether Canadian society can shuck off thirty or forty years of the multicultural delusion is a whole other story. But it is a story which needs to be openly debated.

h/t the flea who has a long and interesting post on one of my all time favorite Frank Herbert novels

Written by jay on February 24th, 2008 with 7 comments.
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Boom

A powerful blast went off in the house of a senior Islamic Jihad activist Friday, killing him, his wife, three sons and three neighbors, medics and an Islamic Jihad spokesman said.
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Islamic Jihad claimed Israeli warplanes struck the home of Ayman Atallah Fayed. Israel denied it had launched any airstrike in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza where Fayed lived. Hamas police said the cause of the blast was not clear.

Witnesses reported seeing fragments of what looked like locally produced rockets at the scene, suggesting the house may have been used to store arms. ap

So you keep your rockets and bombs at home and, well, shit happens. I am, to a degree, sorry that his wife and sons were killed; but better them than innocent Israeli wives and sons.

Written by jay on February 16th, 2008 with no comments.
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Tolerance: Valentine’s Edition

zombietimes via the meatriachy

Written by jay on February 14th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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A Wide Stance

*

Warren Kinsella has taken to snapping pictures of graffiti in washrooms to illustrate the need for s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. I suspect Warren and I might agree the little shit who scrawled this deserves a spanking or, if he is a bit older, a few well aimed punches from his more enlightened team mates not to mention an hour or two scrubbing out every stall in the bathroom to remove every bit of graffiti which is what a coach of mine demanded when I simply drew a mildly naughty picture on a wall.

However, that is not the effect of the Human Rights regime either federally or provincially. Stupid, hateful people “posting” in the anonymity of a bathroom stall are not going to be caught. (Unless Lucy Warman is hanging around enticing them to write nasty things.) Instead, on the logic of the HRC, the arena might well be subject to a complaint for “publishing” this vile little screed. Or, at least, for not getting in there with the SOS pad and eliminating it. (Something Warren could have done himself or asked the janitor to do.)

What the HRC effectively does is give citizens - Warren, myself, you - the easy out when we see or hear offensive expression: we call the government.

Now, when I am riding the bus and some lamer kids are chatting about “how fucking gay” PE is, I am quite willing, and often do, tell them to cut the language out. It’s what adults do. I don’t ask the bus driver to intervene. I don’t demand that the state act on my complaint - I just get the job done.

So when it comes to BS like the pic Warren posted or like the sexist racist diatribe some guy posting as “90’sareover” posts at Stormfront I begin my analysis with - what can I do? And, from there, what can “we” do? In the case of the washroom graffiti, wash it off, in the case of Stormfront, shun the site (not a big loss in my surfing habits).

Will this purely private initiative end offensive speech? Not immediately, nor should it as the idea of “offensive speech” is a shifting target. But ask yourself, how often do you hear the word “nigger” these days? (Outside rap and hip hop culture which is a whole other story.) How often do you hear native Canadians refered to as “jigs” or native Canadian women called “squaws”, and when was the last time you heard a Jew referred to as a “kike” or “heb”? Do you often hear women referred to as a “slit” or a “gash” - broad, chick and gal have made something of a post-feminist come back but as often as not from women themselves. All these words have fallen into disuse not because they are illegal but rather because we allow ourselves to be genuinely offended by them. Our personal intake of breath when someone calls a person of colour a “nigger” is sufficient, in the vast majority of cases, to correct the intolerance that usage implies.

If we outsource our capacity to be offended and to correct to the State we have, in effect, neutered ourselves.

Now, I note that Warren’s picture and my examples are rather simple minded - they obviously do not deal with things like cartoons which may offend or quoting Imams as to the breeding rates of Muslims in Europe. Nor should they. Because here the potentially offending speech is in support of a legitimate objective: debate within a democratic nation. Painting a swastika on a gravestone in a Jewish cemetery or calling someone a “nigger” forwards no debate but is simply an expression of overweaning stupidity. However, these sorts of expressions are so primitive that they cannot be taken as incitement either. One is vandalism and should be treated as such, the other is rude and to be shunned as the rude always should be.

Hanging s. 13 on a bit of nasty graffiti shows just how intellectually bankrupt its defenders are. They want to justify its existence as a prophylactic against the one sort of speech it almost certainly cannot control. To give up free expression to better suppress graffiti is a bargain most of us will not make and we should not make it because, as Mike Brock pointed out, free speech is what gives us real democracy.

*Update: with traffic coming from SDA (thanks Kate) and FFF (thanks Kathy) it was a bit unfair to burn Kinsella’s bandwidth with a hotlink. But I was damned if I was going to post a crappy image twice the size it needed to be. So this image has had automatic colour and contrast adjustment and has been scaled to a 450px width.

If you have a minute find out more about Kinsella here.

Update #2: Jonathan Kay in the National Post:

As well as reproducing the earnest, lachrymose plea for censorship sent by his Jewish friend, Kinsella offers, by way of proof, a photo he took of a tiny piece of childish graffiti that says “White Power” — alongside two crudely drawn swastikas.

Good on Warren for having his cell-phone camera at the ready. But my reaction is: So what? When I was in junior high school, it was a common practice for kids to carve this sort of stuff into their desk (and far worse) because we were desperate for attention, and this was the easiest way to shock people. This is hardly indicative that the “web of hate” is reconstituting itself. (Even a generation ago, in fact, that “web” probably never did amount to much — it turns out that a surprising number of alleged hatemongers were actually police informants.) full comment

Kinsella - to whom I have linked more than enough - put up a preemptive piece but, when it comes down to it, Kay’s point is that we have moved on and Warren hasn’t. I wonder how the oldest living punk band is making out speaking of past it.

Written by jay on February 7th, 2008 with 24 comments.
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Moderate Islam Speaks

Quick call the CHRC, Mark Steyn is quoting Muslims again:

The impeccably moderate mullah was invited to address a British conference sponsored by the police and the Department of Work and Pensions on “Our Children, Our Future.” And, when it comes to the children, Imam Qaradawi certainly has their future all mapped out. “Israelis might have nuclear bombs,” he said, “but we have the children bomb and these human bombs must continue until liberation.” As Maurice Chevalier used to say, thank heaven for little girls, they blow up in the most delightful way. mark steyn, nro (possibly out of jurisdiction but don’t tell Warman that.)

Written by jay on January 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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Paying Attention

Kaambakhsh’s case is at least getting some global attention now that the lower court verdict is in, but it certainly would be nice to hear some Canadian voices, particularly Stephen Harper’s and those of the Opposition leaders, raised in protest. Our soldiers are not dying in that country to safeguard this kind of tyranny. terry glavin via fff

I hope Kaambakhsh’s case gets the attention of the Canadian politicians who seem so intent on debating the terms of our engagement in Afghanistan.

A simple statement of the form, “Kaambakhsh must be released and no further attempts to silence dissent with death sentences are to be permitted or else, in thirty days, every Canadian soldier and aide worker will have left Afghanistan.” with Harper, Dion, Layton and Duceppe signing it would have, I suspect, a significant effect. Right now Canada is punching well above its weight in Afghanistan. If we pulled out there would be a huge hole.

The key point being that we are not in Afghanistan to enable a bunch of fundy clerics to sentence journalists to death. If that is the effect of the mission then the mission should end.

Written by jay on January 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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Palestinians fire rockets, hit power plant

People living in the Gaza Strip held a candlelight march Sunday evening to protest the closure of their main power plant Sunday, due to a fuel shortage….

Defence Minister Ehud Barak halted shipments to Gaza after Hamas renewed rocket attacks against the town of Sderot in southern Israel last week.

About a third of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents were expected to be affected by the shutdown. Hours after the blackout, Hamas said five patients died because of the cutoff of electricity in hospitals but it couldn’t be confirmed independently. cbc

Hamas really are slow learners. The other two thirds of Gazians could be in the dark shortly as their electricity comes directly from Israel.

I can’t imagine that the fuel shutdown comes as any great surprise. It was difficult to imagine how the Palis could be any worse off than they were under the Troll of Ramallah ^TM but there is a positive Palestinian genius for self inflicted suffering.

Here’s a hint, stop firing rockets into Israel and your lives will get a lot better.

Written by jay on January 21st, 2008 with no comments.
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M. Dion grabs half a clue

“We are going to have to discuss that very actively if they (the Pakistanis) are not able to deal with it on their own. We could consider that option with the NATO forces in order to help Pakistan help us pacify Afghanistan,” said Mr. Dion in Quebec City, commenting after his two-day trip to Afghanistan last weekend. “As long as we don’t solve the problem in Pakistan, I don’t see how we can solve it in Afghanistan.” national post

This is obviously true - as I pointed out here - but it is more than a little surprising coming from Dion.

Peter MacKay notes:
Defence Minister Peter MacKay told Canwest News Service Dion’s comments were off base.

“Mr. Dion can’t be serious to suggest NATO “intervene,” in another country while simultaneously saying Canada should abandon its United Nations-mandated NATO mission in Afghanistan,” he said in an e-mail.

“He has to explain to Canadians why he wants an “intervention” but wants to turn his back on Afghanistan, which has asked and continues to ask for Canada’s help. It’s inane.” national post

Getting the question half right is just not good enough for a future wannabe Prime Minister.

Written by jay on January 17th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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No luck Huck

Huckabee is made to order for the Left: his rhetoric embodies their heretofore lunatic indictment that we’re no better that what we’re fighting against. Let’s “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards”? Who needs to spin when the script speaks for itself? Where has Huck been for the last seven years? Does he not get that our enemies — the people who want to end our way of life — believe they are simply imposing God’s standards? andy mccarthy the corner

Amen.

Written by jay on January 16th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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