Monday, August 31, 2009

PRIVATIZE THE DAMNED THING!!!!!!

Or better yet, just fold it up and assign it to the trash bin. Why oh why are we expected to pay for this??!!!!

CBC in hot water over racial comments
"The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said it received hundreds of complaints about a New Year’s Eve show on Radio-Canada featuring numerous jokes about blacks, domestic violence and anglophones.

In one sketch, comedian Jean-Francois Mercier says, “It would be good to have a “negre” in the White House” because the colour contrast would make it “easier to shoot him.”

The CRTC said CBC exercised “insufficient prudence” in allowing the term to be used. The French word “negre” often translates as negro but can mean the n-word.

The show’s portrayal of black people — as thieves and lower class workers, and as the butt of jokes about blacks looking alike and black men having large genitalia — violated television regulations, the watchdog said."
Not only do we have a tax-funded broadcaster making hundreds, perhaps thousands (how many didn't formally complain?) of people angry and offended, but we have to petition another Big Brother agency, the CRTC, in order to do something about it. If it was privatized, its corporate sponsors would have received mountains of angry mail from unhappy viewers, who might otherwise be exposed to their commercials and potentially become customers. Those sponsors would have been stuffing their advertising dollars into bags and taking them somewhere else. In the real world people vote on the appropriateness of a broadcaster's offerings with their money and that's what makes a broadcaster profitable or not.

But not so in Canada. We have big brother taking care of us and an arts community bent on producing all sorts of rubbish that thinks they are entitled to take our money in order to fund it. And at the same time, fewer and fewer of us are tuning in.

Way to Go, Regina!

Crime capital of Canada just got worse. Lots worse.

How to Tell Whether AGW...

...is just another kooky hair-brained cause.

When the the anarcho-warmist protesters show up, at the wrong building. That's how.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Interesting Tidbit on Kennedy

from Barce Pundit.
"Let me see if I get this straight: if it's good to show solidarity with the US "in times like this", why did this only apply to foreigners? Why didn't he start (sic) himself?"
Hypocrisy, Kennedy/Democrat style.

Pipeline Sabatoge and More in Iran

The Death Spiral of the Islamic Republic II

Some of this stuff I already read about a few days ago, but Michael Ledeen does a great job of parsing the meaning of this event and analyzing a whole lot more than most of us may not have even heard about. For example (emphasis mine):
"The explosion, which took place in pipes carrying Liquid Petroleum Gas (which is mostly propane), caused fires throughout the facility. It took at least three hours before the fires were brought under control. At least two persons died (fortunately, at that hour personnel was at a minimum) and at least 30% of the plant was completely destroyed"...."The incident was almost certainly an act of sabotage by the regime’s enemies, and the whole story has been spiked."
---
"Due to the chronic shortage of gasoline, many of the city’s 3500 buses and thousands of taxis had been converted to run on LPG. They were grounded after the attack on Pars, amounting to almost all of the two thousand LPG-run buses and, at a minimum, hundreds of taxis. Some of them are now being switched back to gasoline, but, given the country’s notorious lack of efficiency, it is a slow process. All this not only increases the ongoing distress of Iranian commuters, but heightens the country’s vulnerability to a potential cutoff of foreign gasoline, which has been proposed by bills now on the Congressional agenda.".... "The regime’s internal enemies are getting stronger and more brazen, despite the bloody crackdown of recent months."
But that's not all:
"...the regime...faced with the problem of how to dispose of hundreds of bodies (many of which carried unmistakable marks of torture and sexual abuse), stashed them in meat lockers in and around Tehran. Testimony from cemetery workers tells of receiving frozen bodies in the middle of the night from security forces."
---
"Worse yet, according to Afshin Ellian, the highly reliable law professor at the University of Leiden in Holland, Supreme Leader Khamenei has received secret messages from Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf, Iraq, criticizing the bloodthirsty behavior of Khamenei’s people. Sistani has apparently echoed the statement earlier this week from Grand Ayatollah Montazeri that the regime is neither “Islamic” nor “a Republic,” but a tyranny. Disrespect for the regime was also publicly displayed by the family of the founding father. In a break with protocol, Hassan Khomeini, the Ayatollah’s grandson, ostentatiously did not welcome Ahmadinejad and his administration when they visited the Imam Khomeini Shrine. Nor did he attend the swearing-in ceremony for the new government."
And more:
"Not to put too fine an edge on it, the supreme leader admitted guilt, and opened the door to the prosecution of his entire regime. He proclaimed the innocence of his enemies and called for the prosecution and punishment of his allies. But how can he hope to escape blame himself?"
---
"In all the coverage of the ongoing Iranian crisis, most of the pundits have missed what seems to me the key point."...."Afshin Ellian has reported in the Dutch Press that the opposition leaders confronted Khamenei with the evidence of his own criminal activity. He was then given the choice between admitting guilt, or facing the release of the evidence. His opponents are not salon intellectuals, and they know that they are in a life or death confrontation. Contrary to those who have long said that a revolution in Iran is impossible because there is no effective leader, the events of the past two and a half months have demonstrated that Khamenei is facing very dangerous leaders who threaten the supreme leader both from the outside–with tens of millions of followers whose courage and resolve are growing with the passage of time–and from within, because of their intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Islamic Republic and their ability to convince and coerce key actors to help the Green Wave.

Khamenei knows all this. Pity nobody seems to have told the Western leaders. If Obama and his czars were as smart as they think they are, they’d be talking to the future leaders of Iran right now. If the regime’s enemies can take out the country’s biggest petrochemical plant, and compel the supreme leader to bend to their will, they can–and no doubt will–do more."
As Ledeen himself says, faster, please!!

What Would We Do Without CBC?

Apparently nothing that we aren't already doing. We'd be watching CTV, Global and A Channel. And maybe Fox.

And look at those audience sizes for American networks. Fox News draws more people than all others combined. I wonder how many of those 2,291,00 Fox News viewers on Friday, August 14th were Canadians. And to think that the CRTC tried to prevent Canadians from viewing Fox News. Makes me sick that we still have to pay for a network that nobody bothers to watch, or even more so, for a body that deems itself the arbiter of what we unwashed plebeians should be allowed to see.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Pathetic Old Fools

Terry Glavin has posted a good one about the sorry state of journalism as revealed by the coverage of the mission in Afghanistan. There's a good discussion in the comments thread, too. Glavin has deleted some of the comments. I don't know whose they were by or what they said, but I can surmise they might have been Ti-Guy or Dr. Dawg or some other such washed up old fool. I'm glad to see Glavin doesn't have any qualms about keeping his blog clean of that kind of rot. It's the publisher's prerogative to decide what appears on his blog and since his blog is widely respected, I'm glad he's attending to the business of maintaining acceptable standards. It's too good a blog to see it slip into the cesspool as a result of infestation by lunatic leftists.

In the comments someone brings up a URL to an article by another washed up old fool that I had the displeasure of encountering in my youth in Saskatoon, namely Murray Dobbin. This guy is an unrelenting old Marxist of the hardest variety. Glavin does a stellar take-down of him, too. Most enjoyable read of the morning, so far.

Anyway, check it out.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Curses. Foiled Again!

UAE seized N. Korean arms shipment bound for Iran

If only the North Koreans could beat those weapons into plowshares. Failing that, if only that stuff could get into the hands of the right people in Iran.

My Apologies, But..

UPDATED AND BUMPED: Someone else noticed the same thing I did:
"I always got the sense, though, that he was not connected....I never got the sense that all of the partying and playing around for which he got into trouble was the real person or even that it gave him much pleasure."
---
"It seemed to me as if he were following his brothers' footsteps, doing what was expected of him, and still searching to discover who he really was. After the deaths of his brothers, Teddy had an almost fatalistic quality to his life. When he ran for president in 1980, I never really believed that he wanted to be president. His heart didn't seem to be in it. I felt as though he were running because he thought he should to carry on the family tradition."
------------------------------------------------------------------
...I will shed no tears nor will I temporarily put down my disrespect while paying homage to a man whose political career spanned the full breadth of my adult life.

If I were to write the obituary, the themes "sleazy nephew", "alcoholic wife" and most especially "Mary Jo Kopechne", would be hard to avoid. I'd even recall that period in his life when he seemed frankly uncomfortable, completely unready to assume the role as head of America's natural governing dynasty, its answer to the institution of royalty against which it rebelled two centuries earlier, as if he knew the role was expected of him by the Kennedy clan and was unable to break free of family pressures and be his own man. Maybe he feared he would suffer the same fate as his brothers before him, but in later years, his certainty of the validity of the hereditary privilege possessed by his family found ready expression in his bid to anoint his niece, Caroline Kennedy, a woman with no political credentials other than the family name, as Senator for New York State.

No. I would just say, hallelujah, the litany of worn out Kennedy clan pretension is over.

More of his stellar accomplishments here. (h/t Halls of Acadamia)

The Sandmonkey Returns

After an unusually long silence, the Egyptian Sandmonkey has started blogging again. Big sigh of relief from all his readers, many of whom, like me, were afraid the worst had happened. But he's back with a vengeance. I mean, where else would we learn that there are now AA meetings for social media addicts, or that men are obsolete or when Zombies attack, we will all lose? What would we do without him? Welcome back Sam. Glad you're okay.

Oh, and when you finish dusting, come over to my place. I have a bit of neglected housecleaning...just a bit...really...

Young Murdered Women..

...with black hair.

Of course the Indian Industry is crying foul. One thing we will never hear from said industry is the fact that these two young women were involved in the sex trade and that that line of work is extremely risky on a number of fronts, including increased exposure to murderous thugs involved in turf wars or looser creepy types looking for sex who just happen to know where to find it.

No. This is all the fault of the police, of course. Apparently they are supposed to stand guard over these women 24/7 while they ply their "trade". (What a stupid term to use, btw. Like it's equivalent to welding or carpentry or bricklaying, which are regulated and actually require some formal training and certification.)

Tell you what, Indian Industry. Collectively, you are a powerful lobby group. Why don't you use your influence to make a difference at the front end of this malaise, rather than standing up and wailing and pontificating after some young Aboriginal women have been murdered.

Many, many years ago, when I was about 19 or so and living in Regina, a friend and I once hitched a ride with a complete stranger. I can't remember where we were going, but everything went just fine. The stranger struck up a conversation with us and confessed to being Stephen Truscott's cousin. You old fogies will remember Stephen Truscott. He was convicted of raping and murdering a young girl when he himself was only 14. Many, many years later, he was cleared of the charges, forensic sciences and all that having advanced.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I made the mistake of telling my mother about the ride and what the stranger had said. She freaked, as any good mother would, and sternly warned me never to take a ride with a complete stranger and that, my dear Industry friends, is what's missing in this whole sorry tale. In far too many cases, no one is loudly and publicly telling young Aboriginal girls to be cautious. No one is loudly and publicly warning them about the multitude of risks they may expose themselves to by engaging in the sex trade or dabbling with drugs or being tight with the thugs that are gang members.

Now there's a cause you could take up if you had even a smidgen of real concern, but sorry, there's probably not as much money to be made as there would be in law, or teaching at a university Native Studies Department, or being a civil servant or being a member of a band council. Not as much for the old insatiable ego, either. But, who really cares if yet again more young Aboriginal girls end up dead. To the Industry, their lives aren't worth nearly as much as their deaths.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Media Censorship With a Twist

No. Not really. They've been doing this for some time now, broadcasting only what pleases the left. If I were an American, I'd be writing letters to those network's advertisers informing them of my decision never to purchase their products and services as long as they choose to advertise on those networks.

Wow!!

Let the Doer Bashing Begin

Premier Gary Doer resigns

If it's good enough for Sarah Palin.....

"Mutton Headed Conspiracy Theorist"

Speaking of whacky, three cheers for Terry Glavin for putting Saskatchewan's own Dr. Dawg Mengele in his place. And no, I will not link to mutton head's blog, but you can follow Glavin's link.

Great piece at The Torch, too.

Whacky News Day

Every once in a while Google News dredges up an amusing array of crazy stories. Here are some from this morning:

There's a Spanish village that hosts an annual mushy tomato festival in which folks batter each other with over-ripe tomatoes. Gives a whole new meaning to tomato sauce.
"The origins of the event are unclear although it is thought to have its roots in a food fight between childhood friends in the mid-1940s in the city."
The UN declares Australian Aborigines right to self determination is being denied by a law that prohibits alcohol and porn in their communities.
"It undermines the right of indigenous peoples to control their own destinies, their right to self-determination."
---
"Two years ago troops, medical staff and social workers were deployed in an attempt to combat violence and rampant abuse of children in some aboriginal communities. Racial discrimination laws were suspended to allow the controversial policy to be implemented.

Alcohol and pornography were banned in the communities and indigenous residents were forced to spend a portion of their welfare payments on essentials such as food.

Some activists say the measures violate human rights because they only target Aborigines."
Apparently child abuse is a human right. Just one more reason to dismantle that useless organization.

Police have wild time herding zoo fugitives
"It took 12 officers more than four hours, a roll of yellow police tape and a bag of apples to lure four reluctant llamas, a yak and a wallaby back into their pens yesterday morning after someone broke in and set the animals free."
Keystone robbers fail at bizarre burglary attempt
"For the three would-be robbers it was a very simple plan: Steal a backhoe, drive it to a gas station at nighttime and use the backhoe's shovel to tear open an ABM.

But the plan didn't work - the backhoe's shovel couldn't smash open the ABM casing and the three had to flee in a stolen truck."
And for the really whacky news, am I the only one who has noticed that the MSM is now celebrating every event in which a radical Islamist is captured or killed? Funny how that works. During Dubya's term in office, these folks were heroes just "resisting" American imperialism.

US Missile strikes kill six militants in Pakistan

Afghan Taliban Commander is Captured in Raid

Now, apparently, it's okay to call them "militants" and hiding behind civilians is no longer an acceptable excuse.

And, wonder of all wonders, Iran's head fascist backtracks on the foreign agitators meme and admits that wide spread abuses have been committed by his own goons. The guy is shaking in his boots. Hallelujah!

Canada's History About to be Rewritten

510 year old letter points to Englishman's contact with Canada
"British historians have unearthed a letter written 510 years ago by King Henry VII that sheds startling new light on Canadian history.

The letter reveals a previously unknown English expedition to this country in 1499 and may add the name of William Weston -- an obscure shipping merchant from the west England port of Bristol -- to the pantheon of early New World explorers."
---
"Specifically, the king names Weston's destination as "the new founde land" reached by Cabot in June 1497 -- the first European landfall in North America since the age of the Vikings.

That makes Henry's letter, believed to have been written on March 12, 1499, the earliest known use of the phrase that would eventually be used to designate Canada's easternmost province."
Tres interesting.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

From Mound Builders to Grave Diggers

The Mound Builders

Interesting update on a long gone North American culture, the Mound Builders.

The Sacrifices They Made
"That sacred ground, we now know, was the site of the bloody mass murder of countless young women, bludgeoned or decapitated en masse as they stood on the edge of burial pits, sometimes as many 53 at a time, and not all of them dead when the pits were filled in."
Hmmm. Somewhere in the past 20 or 30 years, American anthropologists and archaeologists must have gotten over their fear of an Indian backlash against everything discovered via their science which doesn't support the Indian Industry orthodoxy. There was a time when any thought of excavating these mounds, and there are untold numbers of them, was tantamount to original sin. The real reason, of course, was that North America's aboriginal population doesn't want any of their own mythological - er - religious beliefs to be challenged or any of the less savory parts of their ancestral heritage to be let out of the bag.

Too bad, so sad.

Some good stuff in the comments, too, except for the usual apologists who feel compelled to come to the defense of political correctness.

And I might as well throw this in for good measure. It's a series on the blood soaked culture of the Aztecs as the Spanish explorer Cortez found them. The Aztecs, and previous meso-American civilizations built mounds, too, but theirs were made of stone and rival the pyramids of Egypt. And their lust for human sacrifice, carving out the hearts of living victims, is legendary. Like all civilizations, their cultural inventions were adopted to some degree or another by others many, many miles away. Hence, it should be no surprise that Mound Builder cultures arose further north, even as far north as what is now Southern Ontario, and that human sacrifice would be part of it.

The Last Aztecs - Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Perfect Score: Political Correctness Exposed

Monday, August 24, 2009

Electoral Reform

...Green version:

Constituencies shall henceforth be known as "bioregions"

Seems a disgruntled Green Party candidate who believes "'Secret decisions were made behind closed doors, in cabinet or at private meetings with corporate CEOs and lobbyists,' that could only be fought by winning the war for public opinion" is pissed off that his own Party would do the same. He's determined to run in the same riding into which Dizzy May was recently jettisoned.

Oh dear. At least the Green Party is proving to be biodegradable. By the time of the next national election, they should be fully decayed and returned to Mother Earth. Think of the lovely daisies that will blossom.

Seriously. What a bunch of lunatic flakes! As Andrew Potter says, their policies are blindsided by their behaviour:
"...an avalanche of goofy tree-huggery and retro-anticapitalism, and much of it (like the pledge to make Canada a nuclear weapons-free zone) reads like a Council of Canadians communiqué from 1986 filtered through stale bongwater."
Pushing up daisies.

Dead Blondes

When a young blond woman is murdered, the normal course of events is for the media to glom onto it with their insatiable fangs and not let go for weeks upon weeks, especially when there are some nice little juicy bits like breast implants or famous celebrities involved. Now that the suspect in the latest "dead blond" feeding frenzy has been found dead by his own hand, will they let the story die? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. I suspect this one hasn't yet met the saturation point and that by a long shot.

And in a town called Hope, of all places. Talk about irony. My sympathies to the citizens of that good town. This is all you need.

Schizoid Something

Don't you just love it?

Tories, Liberals mired in dead heat (Harris-Decima poll conducted August 13th to 23rd.)

Conservatives jump to big lead in poll (Ipsos Reid poll conducted August 18th to 20th)
"and a Nanos survey two weeks ago had the Liberals ahead by 2-1/2 percentage points."
As the inimitable Honourable John G. Diefenbaker once said: "Dogs know best what to do with polls."

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Now Is the Time

UPDATE:

Downing Street says Lockerbie release is too sensitive to comment on

Whiskey boycott urged over Lockerbie bombers release

Well, what, pray tell, did you expect!!!!!????
------------------------------------------------------------------
...for all good British Conservative Party members to turn the heat waaaaay up. Your country has sunk almost as low as it can get. Time to bring it back.

Gotta wonder what sort of sweetheart deal they have going with Gadaffi.

Do You Have a 15 Year Old At Home?

Imagine this happening to him. (From Azarmehr)

Iranian boy who defied Tehran hardliners tells of prison rape ordeal
"The 15-year-old boy sits weeping in a safehouse in central Iran, broken in body and spirit. Reza will not go outside — he is terrified of being left alone. He says he wants to end his life and it is not hard to understand why---"
"A doctor who is treating him, at great risk to herself, confirmed that he is suicidal, and bears the appalling injuries consistent with his story. The family is desperate, and is exploring ways of fleeing Iran."
Read the whole thing, all of it, then go hug your children.

Sounds Like Paradise

From the comments at Skippy Stalin's place:

FLYNAVY said...

Nope, Queen Margarethe et al pays her taxes like the rest of us....& drives a 12 yr old limo & turnes out the lights in the Palace & everyone works that wants to. She bakes her soldiers cookies & the Royals serve in the Home Guard. I usually think about the amount of non-payment of taxes in practical terms of how many bullets or body armour for Canadian soldiers that $600+K would buy. Danmark has again made the top of the list of the happiest country in the world, probably has something to do with taxing our strippers & hookers....& well there's that & there r entire parks where u can smoke weed legally. & wearing burkas is illegal, & making fun of Muhammed is a good thing. God save the Queen.
How 'bout them Danes!! Give 'em Hans Island, I say.

Shame on You, India

And you too, Yale.

Memories of a bitter past ignite book controversy
"The book wrongfully portrays the fateful partition of our nation," the Gujarat state government said in a statement." Such a brainchild has no historic background at all. In the larger interest of society, the state government has decided to impose a ban on the book."
---
"The BJP accused Singh of deviating from the party's "core ideology".

"We always respect freedom of expression but can never compromise our ideology," Sidharth Nath Singh, a party spokesman, told CNN. "You just can't eulogize Jinnah and accuse Sardar Patel instead."

Singh, a widely respected politician known for his moderate views within the ranks of a conservative party, found it appalling that freedom of expression was threatened in the world's largest democracy.

"The day we start banning books, we are banning thinking," Singh told reporters."
Which provides a very nice segway into this frightening peace, caught by Sleepy Old Bear, about the Yale University Press dhimminitude. Even the leftards are noticing and expressing concern.

Friday, August 21, 2009

More On the Global Warming Hoax



h/t Dr. Roy

There's Those Tears Again

Via The Torch



Scenes like this always remind me of my dad and his brother who signed up in Regina in 1939 and were shipped Shilo, just outside of Brandon, Manitoba, for the rest of their training. Dad was 33 years old and his brother was 37. Pretty old to be going off to war, I'd say. As poor bloody foot soldiers, too. They both came back. Thanks be to God, the RCAF (including my uncle on the other side of the family) and the RAF for their most excellent air coverage.

Trouble Brewing ...

Fine Bunch of Bastards

Ahmadinejad announces his cabinet
"Yet as soon as he went on state TV last night, the capital erupted with defiant cries of "Death to the dictator!" and "God is Great!" from rooftops and windows. It was the same defiant chants in other major cities, Isfahan, Shiraz, Ahwaz, Abadan, and Kermanshah."
---
"...one of his appointed advisers, his brother-in-law and chief of staff, Rahim Mashaei, has been convicted on charges of financial impropriety by the Supreme Audit Court and has been suspended from his government post for two months."
---
"Ahmadinejad's proposed defence minister is former Quds Force chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Ahmad Vahidi. He is wanted by the interpol."
And from the comments:
"With the Vahidi appointment, the Argentinian government should have enough shame and self-respect to cut off relations with a regime brazen enough to give its defense portfolio to a man alleged to have massacred hundreds of Argentinian citizens in the worst attack on Jews outside Israel since the Holocaust."
Still wanna talk with them, Obama?

Meanwhile, shades of Saddam Hussein.

Iran lets in UN inspectors ahead of nuclear report

After, of course, there has been plenty of time to hide the evidence.

Coattails to Power

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Iran Update

I Just Can't Get Enough of This

"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!!"

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1776, Richmond, Virginia.

Fast forward 233 years.

"Either Freedom or Death": Crowds of protesters, Tehran, Iran, August 17, 2009.



May they get their freedom.

h/t Azarmehr

Meanwhile, Hamas puts on a brave face.

h/t Winston

Another Egads!!

From earlier this year
"Danita Wahpoosewyan doesn't know how she acquired HIV, but she tested positive three years ago.

"I didn't believe it," Wahpoosewyan recalled of being told she was positive. "I thought I would never, ever get it."

Danita Wahpoosewyan is a Regina community worker living with HIV.Danita Wahpoosewyan is a Regina community worker living with HIV. (CBC)

But Wahpoosewyan was leading a high-risk lifestyle: injecting drugs with shared needles and in a relationship with a man who was HIV positive."
Years ago when I was living in Northern Saskatchewan, the warnings were already being raised that the Aboriginal population would be hit hard. There were several gay men in the town where I worked. All of them knew the risks. They talked about it frequently, but none of them practiced safe sex. I guess the attitude of the woman in the first story prevailed. And right now, on John Gormley, they've mentioned that half a million free injection needles are handed out each year in Prince Albert. WTF!! Are they passing them around to their friends to be used more than once? Half a million needles is bad enough as it is, but it sure doesn't seem to be working, does it.

And now this!! Dire HIV Warning
"Medical officer of health for Prince Albert Parkland Dr. Khami Chokani says between 15 and 30 per cent of the province's First nation population could be killed by the virus if something isn't done.

Considering aboriginals make up about 14 percent of Saskatchewan's population that would be thousands and thousands of HIV related deaths."
Amazing. If health care is a treaty "right", when is it gonna be the time to talk about the "responsibilities" that accompany those rights? There are consequences, folks. And health care is only one area where the ever growing plethora of treaty "rights" never seem to have any responsibilities attached to them.


Egad!!

Update on this.

They've let him go. I can't believe how so many people could just be trampled all over like that. Then there's the British pastor who considers it "our Christian duty to show mercy"!!! Sure, Rev. Give the asshole a free pass. What's 270 dead people and who cares about all their loved ones? The world is upside down.

Monday, August 17, 2009

More Parallels

I've written about Dambisa Moyo before. What she has to say about Africa has parallels with the issues on First Nations in Canada. The interview in the video below hits on a few of the parallels between the two. Perhaps "parallels" is not the most accurate description, though, as there are many things that are different as well, differences that only make the problems more intractable.

Specifically, at the 58 and 6:57 minute marks Moyo talks about the effects of massive amounts of free money transferred from government to government without accountability to the citizen. She also states: "We need to start having the discussion of how Africa is going to wean itself of aid and become an equal partner on the global stage." Indeed we do and we also need to have the same conversation about funding for First Nations in Canada.

During the 1950s and '60s many First Nations people looked longingly at the independence movements that were reshaping Africa and other Third World nations. George Manuel, leader of the National Indian Brotherhood (the precursor of the Assembly of First Nations) even wrote a book about the issue of non-Western peoples surrounded colonizers and controlled by colonizer governments. The Fourth World he called it. Indian people today would do well to look at the results of those Third World independence movements and to study what Moyo has to say.

The barriers in the Fourth World are probably higher and more difficult to overcome, reaching, as they do, directly into our constitution; imbued, as they are, with a revisionist and grossly distorted interpretation of treaties; and hamstrung, as they remain, by outdated and patronizing legislation that should have been scrapped decades ago.

Anyway. Food for thought.


Sunday, August 16, 2009

Genetics, Human History and Human Nature

Somehow all these videos I've been posting are connected. Really. They are. But so far only in my mind, such as it is.

I started several days ago searching for information about the Human Genome Project and I've come across a great many excellent sites with videos that explain a very complex set of scientific principles and discoveries in language that the non geneticist/paleontologist can understand.

The whole search was done with the intent of presenting an argument - with links to reputable sources to back it up - against certain tenets the Indian Industry wants us all to believe and others that the Industry wants to sweep under the rug so we will not question what they have to tell us. The series on the history of India was one result of that search, but, although is is related, it was more of a "stumbled upon" group of videos than one directly related and relevant to the topic of the Indian Industry. Whether I'll ever be able to bring it all together remains to be seen. I'll probably have to write a book instead. In any case, I have a shitload of draft blog entries that may form the basis of a series of arguments that will state my case.

In the meantime, while looking for information about the Human Genome Project, I also stumbled across a series of videos on YouTube featuring Spencer Wells, which ultimately led me to the first video below. And since by then I was nearly as totally "off topic" as one could get, I decided to simply offer up three vids from the TED site. The first is just an interesting talk given by Spencer Wells. The other too are interesting links from the first, which in my fevered mind I would even find useful in my beef with the Indian Industry. But the main reason for my inclusion of the second two is that they are heartwarming, lacrimonious stories, the last one of which actually contains some nuggets about the importance of property rights as a way out of poverty, which certainly applies on Canada's Indian reserves and the Indian Industry's resistance to exploring the benefits of individual property rights on First Nations lands.

Anyway, enjoy.






Saturday, August 15, 2009

A Tribute to India's 62nd Anniversary of Independence Day

A fascinating series in 35 parts.









India 2









India 3









India 4










India 5

">







India 6









India 7















Ode to An Eccentric Old Man Who I Loved So Much

...cause I'm sure he won't get invited to a beer summit at the White House. And he won't be wailing about police profiling of eccentric old men, either.



Oh, how quickly our youth passes.

A New Approach For Canada's First Nations?

Fixing the native economy

Minister of Indian Affairs, Chuck Strahl's new approach:
"He talks of multilateral agreements, private investment, and making Aboriginals full members of the national economy. When a community asks for funding, he says, he wants to hear first about what other partners have agreed to invest—something, he maintains, he demands of any applicant in his B.C. riding of Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon. The Aboriginal population, he says, is eager to be involved, and corporations are equally ready to do business."
---
"Strahl’s optimism was seconded earlier this summer by economists at TD Bank. With lengthy caveats about the challenges faced and the mess of obstacles that must be overcome, economists Derek Burleton and Don Drummond reported that “the winds of change may have started to blow in the right direction.” These winds, they wrote, include Supreme Court decisions demanding Aboriginal input into natural resource development on their land, burgeoning Aboriginal entrepreneurship, recognition within the private sector that the Aboriginal population presents untapped opportunity ahead of a looming labour shortage, and greater government focus on the need to improve education standards."
---
"Strahl may find some agreement with Shawn Atleo, the newly elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, whose campaign platform describes “education, entrepreneurship and work” as “the new whale.” And on general philosophy, at least, there may be some wider agreement, even optimism."
Okay. Sounds good. Not a huge departure from the recent past, but certainly Atleo's position dovetails nicely. Perhaps the stars are lining up and the Age of Aquarius has, in fact, finally dawned.

Now, if I may offer my suggestions, perhaps one of the first things that needs to happen is that someone needs to instill in folks like the ones manning the barricade in northern Manitoba an understanding that the surest way to get a job with Manitoba Hydro, or for that matter, any other big corporation, is to ensure you have a trade or skill set that they actually need and that starts with staying in school long enough to complete your grade 12 and when you're in the process of getting your basic education, perhaps you should actually attend school more than just three days a week, with an extra day off here and there over and above. (And by the way, in Saskatchewan at least, and probably throughout Western Canada, trades people are in serious demand and there just aren't enough of them to fill the positions already in place.)

The second thing I might suggest is to any private sector player that may be interested in partnering with First Nations and Government on this. Perhaps a minimum standard may need to be set with respect to accountability and good governance at the reserve level. If a First Nation from the prairie provinces has refused to participate in The Aboriginal Governance Index survey any notion that they should be viewed as a potential partner should be categorically nixed until they clean up their act. Read pages 13 through 19 to get a taste of what goes on some reserves in this region of the country. As an example, take this passage and mull it around:
"Most reserves, including Saskatchewan First Nations, usually have two or more large families or groups who battle constantly for control of the band offices that carry with them the power to give financial compensation to whomever they set fit. These power struggles become protracted and "dirty"."
Observations like this are hardly new. In fact, similar descriptions of band governments in Manitoba and Alberta are reported in the Aboriginal Governance Index. As long as factionalism, graft and nepotism reign in these communities, I would stay well clear, otherwise the business players become little more than partners in oppression and the denial of basic human rights.

The good news is that The Aboriginal Governance Index also describes many First Nations that have booted out their old, corrupt regimes and put in place progressive and accountable band councils.

All in all, there is something in the air to be hopeful about. We'll see what happens.

Friday, August 14, 2009

No English! No French! No Thanks!

Accused family murderers appear in court
"Lawyers for the family say things are moving slowly, in part because of the language difficulties faced by their clients."
Are we to believe from this that neither the father, the mother or the brother could speak either of Canada's official languages???? Did they even know that what they did was considered first degree murder and that family honour is no excuse? How did this happen? Our immigration system really, really sucks.

How about this:

You don't get in unless you are fully fluent and functional in one of our official languages. Learning English, at least, should be no problem. It is the most commonly spoken language in the world. It is spoken as a second language by more people than any other language. It is being learned as a second language by more people than any other language. It shouldn't be that difficult to pick up the basics.

None of your relatives get in unless they are fluent in one of our official languages. No one who gets in is allowed to stay if they haven't fully integrated within five years, after which, you either become a citizen or head back home. If you come from a country where women's status in general is the pits, sorry. We'll let your women in, but not you, until and unless you can demonstrate your total rejection of such a value system, and then, only with your women's permission.

Period.

Don't ask me how we can administer that, but as far as I'm concerned it's worth considering.

A Novel Approach

...to searching for a job.

Hold the employer hostage and demand to be hired. There were times when I was unemployed. I wish I had thought of that. I chose instead to upgrade my skills to make myself more useful to employers. Silly me.

More here with some spot on comments, one of which wonders why CBC didn't ask more pointed questions. Indeed.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Now Deceased Party

This is delicious.

The Party apparently thinks putting lipstick on the pig will improve their image and their standing. Not only that, but having gambled with a Liberal-Bloc-Dipper coalition and lost, they have now discovered they have no coattails to grasp on this side of the border so they are cosying up to the American Democrats. Birds of a feather, and all that. The American Democrats seem to have ended up on the same spot of the political spectrum anyway. Nothing but crazies left. So the Dip-Shits might as well milk them for whatever they can get.

But, it's not without some cost to The-Lipstick-On-A-Pig-Party with it's same old, same old ideology:
"The invitation has sparked an online debate among members about the appropriateness of having a U.S. Democrat address a party of social democrats. Bloggers are expressing concern that the Democrats are more a party of Wall Street than Main Street, and that Barack Obama is pursuing a largely corporatist, militarist agenda."
Oh the horrors!!

But apparently "(o)thers ... are reminding their fellows that the Obama team knows how to win an election; on that front, the NDP can use a few tips."

ROTFLMAO!!

Tips like ditch your leader and choose someone from a long suffering "visible minority" or "marginalized" group. That's the ticket!! There are so many useful, seriously oppressed minorities in Canada. I wonder if Mohammed Elmasry is interested? How about someone from the GLBTT community? Maybe one of those buff naked guys at Toronto's Gay Pride Parade has a hankering to enter politics.

Really folks. There is no hope for you. You are old, dead and stuck in the past. Changing your name won't help.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Clima-geddon

I like that word.

Good (and short) article about why most people aren't buying the climate catastrophe hype the way the warmist want them too.

Five Reasons to Doubt Clima-geddon

So???!!!!

The man killed 259 people. So the perpetrator of "the worst terrorist atrocity and the biggest mass murder in British legal history" is dying of prostate cancer. So what? That's no excuse to let him out.
"The transfer request was made by Libya to the British government in May, less than a week after a treaty allowing prisoners to be transferred between the two countries was ratified."
It's political.

When's the next election in Britain!!

Dear God!!

Will the Greens ever learn? Can they be any stupider?

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Another One Bites the Dust

UPDATE: And another one.
-------------------------------------------------
Hype on melting Himalayan glaciers
"Contrary to the claims of global warming doomsayers, Ganjoo and Koul found no abnormal melting; neither did they find the melting that was occuring to be attributable to man-made causes. The geologists also dismiss claims by global warming doomsayers that the glacier, in the current Holocene period that followed the last Ice Age, was covered in 600-metre thick ice.

"To our surprise, the Siachen glacier valley does not preserve evidences of glaciation older than mid-Holocene, suggesting that the glacier must have advanced and retreated simultaneously several times in the geological past, resulting in complete obliteration and modification of older evidences," they stated."
---
"Ganjoo added that the east part of the Siachen glacier showed faster withdrawal of the snout that is essentially due to ice-calving, a phenomenon that holds true for almost all major glaciers in the Himalayas and occurs irrespective of global warming."
More dust eaten here.

Of course, no amount of science will convince our friends Balb or Saskboy. Their solution is to attack the messenger or send them to see a shrink.

The Nearly Dead Party

A stinkweed by any other name...

Here's a great article about what the NDP really needs to do to reinvent itself.

But alas, if they were to follow that advice, they'd end up indistinguishable from the Liberal Party. The "crazies", like the "Israeli apartheid crowd" would do very well cosying up to the Green Party.

The Warmists Preparing to Adopt Old Soviet Technique

Anyone as old as I am who has been reasonably informed on global politics throughout the years will recall that in the old days of the Soviet Empire political dissidents were routinely declared mentally unstable and placed in mental hospitals as a way of shutting them up and making others who may have been inclined to dissent think twice. The practice was still in use in China in the early part of the current decade and other communist countries.

Well, it seems the AGW fanatics have begun to use the same strategy or are at least sowing the seeds of it. Saskboy reported it on his blog today, but of course, being the naive little puppy that he is, it doesn't appear to have raised his eyebrows one iota even for a millisecond. These warmist freaks are getting really, really scary.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Unions

Damn them.



How about another beer summit, Obama?

From the Human Genome Project...

...to the evolution versus creationism debate.

Yesterday I was scouring around the internet looking for some specific info about the Human Genome Project. I didn't find it. Not yet, anyway. But I did stumble upon this very good lecture by Ken Miller on the fact of evolution and the growing number of defeats and retreats by the creationism camp. I thought it was interesting that the lecture was introduced with a prayer by a Lutheran pastor and that Ken Miller has no qualms about declaring he is Catholic. Both have found plenty of room within science, and evolutionary theory in particular, for a thing they call God.

Enjoy (kinda long, but well worth it)!

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Pakistani Taliban appears in turmoil after shootout
"Pakistan's Taliban appeared in turmoil Sunday after reports of a deadly shootout between contenders to replace the shadowy movement's leader..."
Don't you love it when they self destruct!

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Further to This

...entry on the Indian Industry, go read the Halls of Macadamia on the recent passing of Donald Marshall. That and the comments kinda puts it all in crystal clear perspective. The Industry sucks up yet another stooge into its fold. This one's name is Rob Budde.

Hey Whiners...

...Don't like this?













Try this...

h/t Winston's place.

Friday, August 07, 2009

I've Lost Count

UPDATE: What'd I tell ya.

Taliban commander denies Meshud dead

Kinda reminds me of back in the old days when Chairman Mao was ailing. There were frequent reports of his death, which, according to the Chinese commies, were greatly exaggerated, until finally they couldn't keep up the pretense any more and had to admit he was, in fact, really dead.

Anyway, all in all, it was a good day for hunting terrorists. They got one in Indonesia.

Wanted terror suspect Top killed


Guess he ain't "Top" any more.
-------------------------------------------------------------
...but I think this is about the third time that Pakistan Taliban leader Baitulla Meshud as been killed. Tough bastards must be like the bugs I step on in my hallway. They go crunch and they look flattened and very dead, but sure enough, they come back to life and crawl away. Remember Abu Musab-Zarqawi in Iraq? Hell. He was alleged to have been captured at least a dozen times before he was really, really captured. Sneaky sons-a-bitches seem to have nine or more lives.

Of course, Meshud will be replaced, if he really is dead. Sooner or later though, this movement is going to dry up and there won't be so many stupid brainwashable martyrs ready to offer themselves up and the quality of their commitment and skill will diminish in stride. Only a matter of time.

Oh. And Snoopy the Goon has the final say.

Reza Pahlavi: Update on Iran

So Many Truths. So Many Parallels.

"The Arabs, by their own testimony, have become spectators to their history. A struggle rages between the Iranian theocracy and the Pax Americana for primacy in the Persian Gulf and the Levant. The Arabs have the demography—360 million people by latest count—and the wealth to balance Iran’s power. But they have taken a pass in the hope that America—or Israel, for that matter—would shatter the Iranian bid for hegemony.

We are now in the midst of one of those periodic autopsies of the Arab condition. The trigger is the publication last month of the Arab Human Development Report 2009, the fifth of a series of reports by the by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on the state of the contemporary Arab world"
---
"(A)ll Arabs combined had a smaller manufacturing capacity than Finland with its five million people, and a vast Arabic-speaking world translated into Arabic a fifth of the foreign books that Greece with its 11 million people translates. With all the oil in the region, tens of millions of Arabs were living below the poverty line."
---
"Wily rulers, the men at the helm may have failed their peoples. They may have denied them decent educational systems. They may not have figured out a way into the modern world economy. But they have mastered the art of political survival....The economic dominance of the rulers, the absence of the countervailing power of property and the private sector, has increased the awesome power of the governments and their security establishments."
---
"According to the UNDP’s report, government revenues as percentage of GDP are 13% in Third World Countries, but they are 25% in the Middle East and North Africa. The oil states are a world apart in that regard: the comparable figures are 68% in Libya, 45% in Saudi Arabia, and 40% in Algeria, Kuwait and Qatar. Oil is no panacea for these lands. The unemployment rates for the Arab world as a whole are the highest in the world, and no prophecy could foresee these societies providing the 51 million jobs the UNDP report says are needed by 2020 to “absorb young entrants to the labor force who would otherwise face an empty future.”
---
"The simple truth is that the Arab world has terrible rulers and worse oppositionists. There are autocrats on one side and theocrats on the other. A timid and fragile middle class is caught in the middle between regimes it abhors and Islamists it fears.

Indeed, the technocrats and intellectuals associated with these development reports are themselves no angels. On the whole, they are unreconstructed Arab nationalists. The patrons of these reports are the likes of the Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi and the Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi, intellectuals and public figures whose stock-in-trade is presumed Western (read American) guilt for the ills that afflict the Arabs. Anti-Americanism suffuses this report, as it did the earlier ones."

---

"One day an Arab chronicle could yet be written, and like all Arab chronicles, it would tell of woes and missed opportunities. It would acknowledge that brief interlude when American power gave Arab autocracies a scare, and when a despotism in Baghdad and a brutal “brotherly” occupation in Beirut were laid to waste. The chroniclers would have to be an honest lot. They would speak the language of daily life, and the truths that Arabs have seen and endured in recent years. On that day, the “human development reports” would be discarded, their writers seen for the purveyors of double-speak and half-truths they were."
Compare now to the third Aboriginal Governance Index published by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg, where even the best First Nations governments are somewhat middling.
""To simply grant powers to any government does not ensure that elections are fairly run, that a government is transparent or that the administration is clean. And those are all critical factors as good governance benefits the entire community.”

More details on the survey:

* For the first time, the Aboriginal Governance Index included both a long and a short survey. The longer survey was used to gather more in-depth information about each First Nation.
* The sample size this year is 5,106, with 1,688 coming from Manitoba, 2,616 from Saskatchewan and 802 from Alberta. Of these, 4,635 are short surveys and 471 were long form.
* Overall, in all three provinces, 45.7 per cent of the respondents were male and 54.3 per cent female.
*Many communities either declined to participate or refused entry to our workers onto their reserve." (Emphasis mine)
Kinda makes you wonder what the bottom half would have been like had those "communities" participated. There's likely a good reason why they refused.

The thing is, the Indian Industry is very fond of quoting all sorts of sorry statistics about crime, poor quality health, school dropout rates, on and on and on ad nauseam when it is called upon to blame the "whiteman" or the Department of Indian Affairs or "internal colonialism", or some such cutesy bogeyman, all the while attempting to extract more money from said bogeyman. But let someone else point to the same sorry statistics and there's hell to pay. Not only that, but out come the denials that things are as bad as they claimed they are while in bogeyman mode.

It's a game that has been played for nearly forty years and which shows very little evidence of being over. As long as there is money to be made, pockets to be lined, cushy contracts or positions to be obtained with government or in guilt-ridden industry-funded enterprises the Industry will live on.

Will the day come that the "purveyors of double-speak and half-truths" in the Indian Industry will be exposed? We can see what happens when alternative views, such as those proposed by Tom Flanagan and Frances Widdowson are aired. The captains of the Industry go positively apoplectic and begin hurling desperately emotional scatter shot in all directions but the correct one.

Yup. Arab Nationalism and the Indian Industry. Always pointing the finger of blame somewhere else so as to protect the status quo and their own hide.

Peas in a pod.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

More Bad News..

...for the AGW gestapo: German scientists reject manmade global warming
"More than 60 prominent German scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made global warming fears in an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The more than 60 signers of the letter include several United Nations IPCC scientists."
---
"...there's a growing body of evidence showing anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role,” the scientists wrote. “Indeed CO2's capability to absorb radiation is almost exhausted by today's atmospheric concentrations. If CO2 did indeed have an effect and all fossil fuels were burned, then additional warming over the long term would in fact remain limited to only a few tenths of a degree,” they added.

“The IPCC had to have been aware of this fact, but completely ignored it during its studies of 160 years of temperature measurements and 150 years of determined CO2 levels. As a result the IPCC has lost its scientific credibility,” the scientists wrote."

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Gypsies and the "R" Word

Remember the kerfuffle about Canada's decision to require visas from visitors from The Czech Republic and how it all boiled down to hundreds of Gypsies, economic migrants, claiming refugee status when they arrived on our shores? It seems Norway has a similar problem. Of course Norwegians for the most part are blond-haired and blue-eyed, so they must be racist, right?