The Roadmap to Peace does not have speed bumps; it has huge gaping craters. The Palestinians have made no attempt to quell the terrorist groups. Rather one suspects the "truce" has been nothing but a resupply time for these groups. How do you form a lasting peace between two groups who refer to each other as "Lower than apes"--Palestinian, and "Lice that should be exterminated"--Israeli?
On top of the various bomber groups, you have a public opinion among average Palestinians that favours the complete ethnic cleansing of all Jews from Israeli. Not neighbours I would relish having. Possibly, the Israelis will have to grant the Palestinians a state. If nothing more, when the suicide bombers come a-calling, Israelis can qualify these actions as all-out war actions from a hostile government. Then they can begin their campaign against "the lice" in earnest.
The National Post (August, 17, 2003) reported that the main Kampala mosque was filled to overflowing with worshippers asking Allah for leniency. It might be a noble gesture, if the recipient for their prayers was someone other than Idi Amin. Here is a man responsible for a quarter million Ugandan deaths. One personally remembered episode was the forcing of couples to make love in front of him; then he had them beaten to death with sledgehammers. The only analogy that comes to mind would be Christian memorial services for Hitler.
Not something that our fearless leader has cottoned onto yet, although we have have a few more months to witness the final freakout moment -- and the collapse of our country's economy will obscure that little episode. Ironically, as I write this, the headphones are bleeding out a Solomon Burke tune called Always Keep a Diamond in your Mind. An all time favourite of Chretien's?
I seem a tad harsh on our P.M.; should I say sorry? As a slew of Liberal backbenchers have openly stated, "He has got to go! His final stroke of judicial activism, which we have been trained to accept, was simply too much. For the first time, Islam, Christianity, and Orthodox Jews stood side by side. The pols went into panic mode. They saw their political hides being laid out to cure. Their loyalty is to themselves. A message that Jean must understand implicitly. Chretien's voyage through retirement will grant him a legacy that he never expected.
Paul Martin said Tuesday while he supports the federal government's proposed legislation on same-sex marriages, he is willing to listen to "other options."
One of those may be dropping the word "marriage" from the proposed legislation and instead refer to "civil unions." Mr. Martin said he was willing to explore that revision if the change means Canadian rights are still protected under the Charter.
"Other options may well be put on the table. I think that those other options will be examined very seriously."
Speaking from a Liberal caucus meeting in North Bay, Ont., the leading candidate for the prime minister's job said he won't ask his backers to automatically support Jean Chrétien's same-sex marriage legislation, saying that MPs have the right to their own opinions.
North Bay, Ont. and Montreal — Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is to make a passionate plea to Liberal MPs and to the country for support of his same-sex marriage bill in a speech before his caucus tonight, Liberal insiders say.
With the heat of opposition riding higher than anticipated, Mr. Chrétien is expected to outline why he has made an about-face since a 1999 vote endorsing the traditional, heterosexual-only definition of marriage, and ask MPs to back the expansion of marriage as a matter of human rights.
"He, like most of us last time, voted for a traditional definition of marriage. He'll explain his reasoning. He's a very passionate political person," said Joe Jordan, an Eastern Ontario MP and former parliamentary secretary to Mr. Chrétien.
One insider said last night that the Prime Minister will allude to the fact that his decision to support same-sex marriages has been difficult, given his Roman Catholic background. [nominal RC?]
The source said Mr. Chrétien will not preach to MPs, stressing that they will have a free vote, but he will underline that the issue is constitutional, not religious in nature.
[. . . .]
Tonight, the Prime Minister will not only attempt to sway his MPs, but will also speak through them to the country in a public speech, insiders said.
[. . . .]
Liberal caucus chair Stan Keyes said many MPs are irked not only by the government's move to legalize gay marriages, but also by the fact that it was launched after MPs broke for summer recess, without consultation with the caucus.
I wouldn't want to be an anti gay marriage Liberal MP who votes against JC. He does not like to be crossed.
An American in TO Debbye has a post on Liberal social engineering and growing intolerance for what they don't like.
Defining Liberty in Canada
It also seems to me that the outrage is, when all the arguments are stripped down, less about gay marriage than about a overly strong, centralized Federal government that leads less and socially engineers more. Had the government actually tackled this question, the courts would not have had to.
[. . . .]
The outrage also about the increased scorn and derision heaped on religious life both here and in the US by those same social engineers who also decry Boy Scouts, cowboys, truly competitive sports, women who chose to stay home to raise their children, visible minorities who vote Canadian Alliance and people who chose home schooling over the mess being run by the Boards of Education.
It's long past time to challenge those Liberals who promote what rational people must recognize as intolerance.
[. . . .]
The battleground for Canadians (and Americans) could better be over the mis-named education system, the worship of diversity so long as it's unchallengeable political bias is liberal, the pseudo-science trumpeted by environmental pressure groups who have done more to restrict our ability to provide the power necessary to fuel our ever-growing cities, the failure in Canada to have a Charter that protects ownership of property, in short, the growing nanny state that seeks to impose equal inferiority on all instead of letting individuals strive for excellence
The most devoted readers of Jeffrey Simpson were delighted that he wrote his Globe and Mail column on Tuesday about Arnold Schwarzenneger's decision to run for governor of California. It was an event that needed to be viewed with alarm and disdain, in the Simpson manner, and he did not disappoint us. He never does. He polished off, in 14 paragraphs, not only Schwarzenegger but also populism, the culture of stardom, and California's "perversion of progressive politics" -- which, as any Simpson reader can tell you, is inferior to the politics of cabal and indifference by which Canada is run.
Simpson's tone reminded us once again of his unique place in the national political culture of Canada. Far more than a mere newspaperman, he has achieved over the years roughly the status of a senior deputy minister. In Ottawa he functions as deputy minister of opinion. He holds no government post, but that's a technicality. Having written his column since 1984, he outranks, on longevity alone, every other deputy in Ottawa. Moreover, he shares their attitude to governments and politicians. He knows even the most powerful politicians are only temporary. They come and they go. He remains.
Like all deputy ministers, he believes above all in what he calls "sound public policy," the phrase he used on Tuesday to describe one of the many qualities he finds lacking in the government of California. And, like all DMs, he automatically views with the greatest suspicion anything to which he is unaccustomed. Schwarzenegger's great crime is his strangeness. He fits no common pattern and might well go in some unexpected direction. He seems decent enough for a movie star, he's done nicely in business, and even if he proved to be an incompetent governor he would at least be an amusing incompetent -- a distinct improvement, I would have thought, on the boring incompetent now holding the job. But Simpson intensely dislikes populism, which means government by people civil servants regard as unsound. (The last populist to be PM of Canada, John Diefenbaker, kept the entire Ottawa public service traumatized for the six years he held office, 1957 to 1963.)
As for California, its greatest perversion is the habit of making laws through plebiscites rather than through legislatures and judges. Deputy ministers live by a truth they learn in their youth, ideally (like Simpson) at Queen's University: It's dangerous for a democracy to put decision-making in the hands of the people.
Fulford is always a good read. Note these two quotations again.
***California's "perversion of progressive politics" -- which, as any Simpson reader can tell you, is inferior to the politics of cabal and indifference by which Canada is run.***
***Simpson intensely dislikes populism, which means government by people civil servants regard as unsound. ***
France's Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has just appointed a committee to draft a law to ban the Islamist hijab (headgear) in state-owned establishments, including schools and hospitals. The decision has drawn fire from the French "church" of Islam, an organization created by Raffarin's government last spring. Germany is facing its own hijab problem, with a number of Islamist organizations suing federal and state authorities for "religious discrimination" because of bans imposed on the controversial headgear. In the United States, several Muslim women are suing airport-security firms for having violated their First Amendment rights by asking them to take off their hijab during routine searches of passengers.
All these and other cases are based on the claim that the controversial headgear is an essential part of the Muslim faith and that attempts at banning it constitute an attack on Islam.
That claim is totally false. The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet.
This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shiite community.
[. . . .]
Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shiite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.
Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.
[. . . .]
Last year, the Islamist regime authorized a number of colleges for girls in Tehran to allow students to discard the hijab while inside school buildings. The experiment was launched after a government study identified the hijab as the cause of "widespread depression and falling academic standards" and even suicide among teenage girls.
The Ministry of Education in Tehran has just announced that the experiment will be extended to other girls schools next month when the new academic year begins. Schools where the hijab was discarded have shown "real improvements" in academic standards reflected in a 30% rise in the number of students obtaining the highest grades.
[. . . .]
The delicious irony of militant Islamists asking "Zionist-Crusader" courts in France, Germany and the United States to decide what is "Islamic" and what is not will not be missed. The judges and the juries who will be asked to decide the cases should know that they are dealing not with Islam, which is a religious faith, but with Islamism, which is a political doctrine.
I have received a couple of items today; this is one of them. The other will be posted later.
The Grapes Of Rant
I am sorry I ever read your blog; now I have to subscribe to The National Post and then check-out Jack's blog daily. You're ruining my day. What is the point of living in laid-back BC if you have to contemplate the sorry mess in Ottawa? J***s, we just got rid of one leftie bozo government and you keep harping about their clone clowns in Ottawa. But I must admit that you guys have ole Bud's blood a-boiling on some topics.
So here goes. Hedy Fry, a true BC flake, is back in the news again. Instead of "The KKK is burning crosses in Prince George, as I speak", she now sees any opposition to "gay marriage" as a streak of homophobia that verges on "segregation". Hedy just can not move on from her KKK obsession.
If the courts can decree social revolution by legalizing homosexual marriage at the stroke of a pen, what can't they do? Has it occurred to those who support this that the majority of judges are White, male, Christian, wealthy, and heterosexual? Do we usually want this section of society ruling over the rest - for that is what the ability to write law means? And please consider the level of arrogance it took to do this...it came down to one man declaring "I RULE! I WRITE THE LAW!" Simply astounding! We haven't permitted one man to do this in Western civilization for centuries. I suggest that all lovers of freedom should stand and be counted against this...or you may be deemed to have accepted whatever comes next...
[. . . .]
I think a lot more is going to come out of this court decision than the Liberals or the courts ever bargained for. Canadians are beginning to wake up and it does not bode well for the people that are running around with big grins on their faces at this time.
One very pompous ass has taken it upon himself to disenfranchise an entire nation using the power granted him by the Charter. This type of thing has happened before but never like this! Canadians have grumbled but "grudgingly accepted" the Courts decisions and moved on.
Not this time because this particular Judge chose to attack one of our most sacred institutions -- marriage.
"Bad move!"
The issue is going to focus public attention on the Charter as never before and when people finally begin to realize what the Liberals have foisted off on this country all hell is going to break loose.
"Mark my word!"
There are a couple of excellent articles on the topic of marriage on this site, one after the other. Check them out.
At last, some good news for Canadians who've grown weary of waiting to see what new trick Prime Minister Jean Chretien will pull out of his hat during his long goodbye.
Yesterday, a spokesman in his office said "the prime minister will plan his transition with his successor in the best interests of the party and the country."
Any reasonable-thinking Canadian would interpret that as meaning Chretien may be ready to do an about face from earlier assurances he will stay on as "Da Boss" until February.
That would be months after PM-in-waiting Paul Martin is elected as Liberal leader in November. It would mean, in essence, that during those months, there would be two people running Canada, one with a mandate from his party, another stubbornly clinging to his title as PM.
Why? Apparently, as with most of Chretien's outrageous manoeuvres lately, because he can.
Now, however, it appears his own Liberal caucus is finally working up enough courage to rain on Chretien's retirement parade.
The federal Liberals meet today in North Bay, Ont. for a caucus retreat, and by all accounts, they are not happy campers. The latest sore point is Chretien's same-sex marriage legislation, which some Liberal MPs complain is an attempt to sabotage the Liberal Party once he's gone.
[. . . .]
It will be good news if Chretien leaves early.
Even better news if his successor moves quickly to reduce the frightening level of unchecked power concentrated in the PMO.
Mull over that last sentence. JC give up power? I'm waiting -- as are most Canadians, I suspect.
Blast rocks U.N. mission in Baghdad
Suicide bomber demolishes corner of complex, at least 10 dead
A powerful bomb sparked an explosion at the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad killing at least 10 people and injuring scores of others, including the top U.N. official in Iraq.
Witnesses said a man driving a cement-mixer truck blasted his way through the walled complex and blew up inside the lobby of the building.
[. . . .
Emergency crews are searching sections of the structure that collapsed to rescue the dozens feared buried under the rubble.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said as many as 300 workers of several nationalities, including Iraqi, could have been inside the building at the time of the explosion. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. special representative to Iraq, was among those evacuated.
"He has been injured, but we're not certain how badly. He appears to be conscious; they are giving him water," Eckhard told CNN.
[. . . .
Today's bombing mirrors that at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad earlier this month which killed 11 people and wounded more than 50 others.
It also comes on the heels of attacks on other "soft targets" not secured by coalition forces, including an oil and a water pipeline.
