OTTAWA - Conservative Leader Peter MacKay began today to eulogize the attempted partnership with the Canadian Alliance in the surest sign yet that the latest unite-the-right process is all but dead.
MacKay and Alliance Leader Stephen Harper met face-to-face for about two hours late yesterday in Toronto but were unable to break a log-jam over leadership selection that has stalled a team of negotiators for weeks.
"We came to the same impasse," MacKay said today.
He said no further meeting has yet been scheduled with Harper and wasn't sure one would take place.
[. . . .]
Yesterday marked the first tete-a-tete between the leaders following weeks of talks between emissaries that failed to bridge what one negotiator called "philosophical differences."
[. . . .]
But the difference remains over whether to run a new party on the basis of grassroots populism, as favoured by the Alliance, or the brokerage politics of the Tories
[. . . .]
The Alliance is prepared to use a riding system - rather than its current one-member, one-vote - but only if it gives far greater weightto ridings with large party memberships.
Ego! What a shame! I hope Mulroney and Harris can get together with the two of them and convince both Harper and McKay to find a way. NJC
Update from the Canukistanian -- and it is bang on!
I have ONE view on this situation. If "Red Tories" DON'T get the hell out of the way -- I want to stomp them right into the pavement! That may sound extreme but these "yucks" fail to understand that there is a very real war going on. We just buried two of our own yesterday. I am so angry that if I were confronted by MacKay right at this point I'd put his lights out!
"Peter MacKay -- you make a point of noting this. I don't give a damn what your personal politics are. You start to get your shit together and fast. My country means much more to me than a bunch of Red Tories and I would bury you all tomorrow if Canada could get back on track.
You disgust me!"
I feel much better now -- I've ranted a bit -- let off some steam -- and "Peter Pipsqueak" had better NOT come anywhere near me anytime soon.
He's a Joe Clark in sheep's clothing and I despise him because he has put his party before Canada and THAT I cannot abide.
The abuse of women, British tolerance of Muslim culture should not include condoning the savage treatment of young girls, says Theodore Dalrymple, The Spectator
If it is not exactly a truth, it is at least a hope universally acknowledged that all cultures are fundamentally compatible in their values, and that cultural cross-fertilisation necessarily results in a flowering of the arts and sciences. In short, the more cultures, the merrier.
There can be little doubt, of course, that the transformation of Britain into a cosmopolis has improved the quality of its food out of all recognition. Anyone who remembers the dire nature of British cuisine in its virtually unchallenged heyday could not possibly wish to return to the days of culinary innocence. But it required no official policy, bureaucracies or governmental guidance for foreign food to conquer: it did so because it was, almost without exception, better than the native variety.
Multiculturalism, however, is not just a question of eating Mexican on Monday and Thai on Tuesday. It is, among other things, the denial that assimilation into our historical, cultural and political traditions should be the goal of immigrants. It is permission for Albanians and Kurds to take their driving test in Albanian and Kurdish (though perhaps not in all the latter’s several mutually incomprehensible dialects) instead of expecting them to have mastered a certain amount of English before doing so. It is to adopt a cringeing and uncritical attitude to every manifestation of every culture except one’s own. It is to disarm oneself in advance against the argument that an unpleasant practice is part of someone’s culture, and therefore inviolable.
When a Muslim in Birmingham observes that one of the largest mosques in the city is called the President Saddam Hussein mosque, is he more likely to feel gratitude for the tolerance that allows his co-religionists to worship unmolested in such an establishment, or contempt for the spinelessness and decadence of a country whose tolerance can so easily be turned against it, and whose liberties might without difficulty be used to propagate and eventually impose tyranny?
His contempt will not be lessened when he discovers that the society to which he has come does not have the will to impose upon him some of its own laws, notably those with regard to the education of his children. I have heard in my medical practice from innumerable young Muslim women that they were removed from school by their parents at an early age, several years before the law allowed, but I have yet to hear of even a single case in which a school or the school inspectors took effective action to return such a child to the school.
I concede that the white girls who remain in the schools from which the Muslim parents illegally withdraw their daughters learn little after a certain age except how to be a lumpen slut, of the kind with which this country is so exceedingly well endowed: but the law is the law, and the subsequent fate of so many Muslim daughters is far from enviable.
At a certain age — 17, but sometimes younger — they [Muslim girls] are taken on a ‘holiday’ to Pakistan. (Their British passport is confiscated from them at all times by their parents, and they themselves handle it only for the brief moments when they must show it at airports. Virtually no Muslim girl keeps her own passport.) On arrival in their ancestral village, they are told that they are to marry a first cousin, a young man whom they have never seen before and who may well be deeply repugnant to them.
[. . . .]
One might have thought that the girls who have been subjected to this culture that is now so much at variance with our own would have received loud, consistent and vociferous support from feminists. On the contrary, the feminists are the dog that did not bark, because, I think, feminism has appealed to the same kind of mind as multiculturalism has appealed to. And the only way the two isms can be held in the mind simultaneously is to ignore actual real-life evidence of their incompatibility.
It might be objected that, by the very nature of my work, I have contact only with young women whose experiences have been unfavourable; that, in fact, many British Muslim girls find the arrangements I have described perfectly satisfactory. But the number of cases known to me is by no means small, and each of them knows of many others whose cases have been just as bad or worse.
In any event, the fact that no one has consistently raised a voice in defence of these girls has played its part in persuading certain Muslims that they are virtually extra-territorial. They know that when a government such as the present one talks of women’s rights, they — the Muslims — are excluded from its rhetoric, precisely because it would take both real conviction and considerable guts, the very qualities so completely lacking in Anthony Blair, to include them. They draw the natural conclusion that our society is running scared of them and — to change the metaphor slightly — that it is nothing but a rotting fruit waiting to fall from the tree. Loosing off a few missiles at Afghanistan from submarines thousands of miles away will not have changed their impression; rather, it will have confirmed it, and their opinion of the cowardice of the British government.
Every multiculturalist believes — whether he knows it or not — that it is right to force young girls into marriages they don’t want, to deprive them of the schooling and careers that they do want, to regard them as prostitutes if they leave their abusive husbands, and to punish, even to kill, those who cross cultural and religious boundaries. As an Italian commentator once put it, multiculturalism is not couscous; it is the stoning of adulterers.
My Commentary:
You won't read much in the print media like this in Canada; it would probably be called racism -- or hate crime -- but think of what he said and of what you know has been happening in Canada. Remember the case of the parents found not guilty of being responsible for a clitorectomy performed on their daughter -- a daughter who had been sent to visit a grandmother -- if I remember correctly. If they are not responsible, who is? Yet, where were the feminists in the media then? Hear much about it? No, it was virtually hushed up. They wouldn't want to be politically incorrect -- if it required expressing the opinion that it is barbaric for a Canadian female to suffer this fate. NJC
TORONTO - A major Canadian-led study has been stopped early because the drug being tested showed "striking" results in preventing breast cancer survivors from having a recurrence.
In the study, women taking letrozole (also known as femara) had half as many recurrences of cancer as those women on a placebo.
TIME Exclusive: A source inside the compound says that Arafat is believed to be suffering from stomach cancer
Yasser Arafat's gaunt, fragile appearance during last weekend's inauguration of an emergency cabinet for the Palestinian Authority has raised a flurry of speculation over the state of the 74-year-old leader's health. Palestinian officials on Wednesday denied rumors that Arafat had last week suffered a mild heart attack and explained that Arafat has been suffering from a bad case of the flu or an intestinal infection. But according to a source inside the compound, the recent working diagnosis is that Arafat is suffering from stomach cancer. Al-Jazeera TV reported Wednesday that two teams of doctors, one from Jordan and the other from Egypt, arrived in Ramallah Wednesday to treat Arafat. Abu Dhabi TV reported on Thursday that following their examination of the Palestinian leader, the Egyptian doctors "expressed concern" about the state of his health. Neither report specified his condition.
The prognosis for stomach cancer patients depends on the stage at which the cancer is diagnosed and treated, and the size and location of the tumor. Whatever the state of the cancer, however, such a diagnosis poses a major challenge to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which could require some nimble refereeing by the Bush administration.
[. . . .]
If Arafat's condition proves to be terminal, the Palestinians will be forced to answer the long-deferred question of succession, and the running debate in Washington and Jerusalem over the prospects for pursuing a peace agreement without the aging Arafat will have been settled. The question of Arafat's succession is complicated by the fact that his power derives from the three separate offices he holds: Palestinian Authority president, PLO chairman and leader of the Fatah movement. The PA constitution requires that if the president is incapacitated, his post would be temporarily filled by the Speaker of the Palestinian legislature. However, the Speaker's position is currently vacant, following Ahmed Qureia's resignation from it in order to become prime minister. Following Thursday’s meeting of the Palestinian legislature at which Arafat’s appointment of an emergency cabinet was rebuffed, Qureia reportedly signaled Arafat that he no longer wants the position.
Rather than a simple transfer of the mantle of power from one uncontested national leader to another, Arafat's passing would likely open a protracted period of power struggles and realignments in Palestinian politics — and it appears unlikely that all three of his positions would be filled by a single successor. The immediate implications for any peace process will be uncertain, although the Israelis and the Bush administration have long insisted that breaking Arafat's grip on the Palestinian national movement is a prerequisite for progress.
It's astonishing how fast the media will jump on any pretext to stomp on Bush!
October 9, 2003 - JUDAS drove a hard bargain compared to President Bush. At least the great betrayer got 30 pieces of silver. All Bush is going to get for delivering the Kurds unto their enemies will be 10,000 Turkish troops - who will act solely in Ankara's interests, not in the interests of Washington or the people of Iraq.
Bush's desire for Turkish forces is craven. Hoping to reduce U.S. troop commitments as an election looms, he verges on throwing away the practical and moral achievements won with our soldiers' blood.
His actions will backfire at home as surely as they will in Iraq. A Turkish presence will make things worse, not better.
Turkey has one enduring aim: the suppression of Kurdish freedom anywhere in the region. That will be Ankara's immutable goal in Iraq.
How the hell does this nitwit know what Ankara has in mind?
The Canukistanian's explanation for why the Iraqi Kurds do not necessarily have to fear Turks coming to Iraq to work with the US is logical; let's hope the Turks are logical. Check it out.
The National Post, Oct, 8, 2003 A-7, reported that Canada has slipped from seventh most honest and transparent to eleventh position. This was the ranking that Transparency Internation, which tracks global corruption, gave to us. The abrupt drop caused TI to call Canada one of "the noteworthy examples of worsening". We got lumped into this notorious category with Zimbabwe, Belarus, and Israel. Finland was the least corrupt; while Bangladesh was ranked worst. The main reason given by the branch assigned to the Canadian file was government and big business malfeasence. It is good to see the outside world alerted to what we Canadians see daily. If the Liberals continue their corrupt ways, the international business might consider dealing with more ethical, honest governments.
Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbid the signatories to use any form of violence against the young, is being used by the Canadian Foundation for Children. This lobby group took the spanking issue to the Supreme Court. They want a previous judgment that moderate spanking was legal to be annulled. Flogging our kid is not okay; reasonable force is.
It will be interesting to see how far this activist court will go. The decision is expected to come down by the end of the year. If this reasonable form of punishment is forbidden, then we have entered the path to total erosion of the family's rights. The government won't be the nannie state -- but rather, the mother state.
I wonder how many of the General Assembly's less enlightened members will stop massive child abductions, mutilations, rapes and child marriage because of this edict? The Congo is just the latest example of these atrocities committed against children but I don't see any relief from the UN.
There are reports that Arafat may be dead; check out the different ones the Canukistanian has dug out. “Make it look like an accident” may not be necessary, one hopes. (Quote—as I remember it--from Being American in T.O.)
The next two articles concern children--educating them, then disciplining them. I found them to be of interest.
Structure comes first, Anne Marie Owens, National Post, first of a series of articles on the education of the micromanaged child, Oct. 4, 03
There is an excerpt, then links to the other articles in the series. You judge for yourself whether the child ends by being captive to someone else’s “plans” and then has difficulty in adjusting to managing himself/herself as an adult. Is this the perfect education to fit the individual into group structure—and group think? Would you want it? There is no denying the children seem to achieve well academically – but at what cost? Where is the time for the mind to contemplate and judge, to discriminate between and to choose alternatives for oneself – to learn to live as an individual? NJC
The highly scheduled, multi-tasking child is the goal of the many parents who believe that to give their children a head start they need to get them on the fast track early. First in a four-part series.
'We wake up every day at six o'clock in the morning during the week. The two girls, the youngest, they have to practise their chess on the computer with their coach in Ottawa. They spend one hour on the computer -- always in the morning, because the mind is freshest then.
"Then, there's school, and after school, one girl has a private teacher from 3:30 till 5. Then we have ping-pong. The ping-pong teacher comes at 5 for three hours. While one is playing, the others do homework. Every half hour, we change positions."
There follows a description of a highly micromanaged life -- for the whole family.
When I ask whether she ever wearies of the pace, she says matter-of-factly, "I do it because I want to keep them busy."
"When I was young, I had nothing like this," Brunot says. "I was an only child. I wanted to do swimming. I wanted to do gymnastics. My dad, he didn't care about things like this. He just liked to go outside, visit monuments; we would go to the sea."
"I thought, 'When I have my kids, I want them to practise everything.... I want them to do a lot more things, so that when they get older, they can do everything.' "
It is the mantra for those who believe in the necessity of a jam-packed schedule for their children: Keep them busy. Allow them to try everything. Get them on the fast track early.
The micromanaged child has become the poster child for a new generation of achievers. They are signed up in utero for the right daycare; primed for early brain development with a steady roster of Baby Einstein videos and infant playgroups in French immersion; attend tutoring programs even before the age of 3; and bookend their school days with a loaded extracurricular program that takes in everything from basketball to second-language classes, from enrichment sessions to music lessons.
It has been more than two decades since the publication of The Hurried Child, the book that first raised the alarm about a generation of children being hurried around by their parents, and today's children are being directed in their daily lives more than ever before.
It is a movement driven in part by the safety concerns that inspire the demand for supervised activities, in part by the age-old competition to keep up with the Joneses, and in part by high-achieving parents convinced micromanaging is the only way they can ensure their kids will stay out of trouble and score future success. It is a movement that already has incredible momentum and a powerful pull on any parents trying to do what's best for their children. Spend enough time talking to these parents and it is impossible not to feel the pull.
The pace is maintained not only by stay-at-home parents, who might have more time to devote to such frenzied schedules, but also by dual working moms and dads, who stretch their own schedules ever thinner to make sure their children don't miss out on something the neighbourhood consensus deems necessary to child development. Even most nannies nowadays need to be drivers, so they can quickly transport their charges from one activity to another.
[. . . .]
Their mother, regarded with awe by the organizers at the Kumon tutoring centre to which she regularly takes her children for her ability to "run her family like an army," says the payoff makes up for any regrets about lost downtime. The children are all doing well in school and know their routine so well, there are rarely complaints.
"When I try something, it's better that they all begin together, so that when we do activities, all are involved," she says. "It's easier for me if they are doing the same. Otherwise it's not equal. This way, we know this is what we do every day. It is their routine."
William Doherty, a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota and a founding member of an organization called Putting Family First, which is urging a backlash against overscheduled lives, worries that parenting has become a competitive sport, "with the trophies going to the busiest."
"We are raising our children in a culture that defines a good parent as an opportunity provider in a competitive world," he argues in his latest essay, "Time Famine in Families," where he says that insecure parents never really know if they've done enough for their children in this new hyper-charged climate.
"Keeping our children busy at least means they are in the game."
[. . . .]
The other articles in the series are:
Do it for the baby The highly scheduled, multi-tasking child is the goal of the many parents who believe that to give their children a head start they need to get them on the fast track early. This is the second in a four-part series. Last updated: 10/6/2003
'There's not enough homework'
MATH TO THE MAX: Children partake in extra tutoring at The Learning Paradise in Mississauga.Glenn Lowon, National PostThe highly scheduled, multi-tasking child is the goal of the many parents who believe that to give their children a head start they need to get them on the fast track early. This is the third in a four-part series. Last updated: 10/7/2003
Did you study for your exam, dear? The highly scheduled, multi-tasking child is the goal of many parents who believe that to give their children a head start they need to get them on the fast track early. Final instalment in a four-part series. Last updated: 10/8/2003
Additionally, this article is of interest on parenting.
There's no other name for it -- narcissism Sure, it might be tempting to sneer at the news, reported in this paper last week, that North American parents are now naming their children after luxury brands. How tacky, one might tsk-tsk, to name one's child Chanel or Porsche or Chivas; what an indictment of the pervasive grip of consumerism. Last updated: 10/7/2003
The soundest spanking I ever got was in 1977 at 11-years-old, for lying to a neighbour. It wasn't any ordinary lie, either, but a desperate two-hour defence of a doomed position: No, I had not been smoking the pack of cigarettes found in my possession, nor had I stolen them from the house guest who, coincidentally, also smoked Belvedere Lights, and was missing his only pack.
As good as I got whupped, though, I can remember feeling a kind of relief. Relief that I could at last abandon my absurd story line; relief that the inquisition was over, and that I could finally leave the awful Teutonic presence of my neighbour; relief too, I suppose, that the rules on lying were the same in my family as they had been the last time I'd checked.
If I were 11 today, and in a similar bind, I might be able to avoid the sole of my father's dreaded slipper. In between squeals for mercy I might remind him that the UN has recently told Canada to ban corporal punishment for children. So stay, cruel despot, and lemme outta the woodshed.
In hindsight, however, I wouldn't excuse myself that spanking, even though it was my quivering nates that took the blows. I was the type of boy that, as Lewis Carroll wrote, would even sneeze because I knew it teased, and invited rough words and beatings because I needed something to push against in growing up.
[. . . .]
But spankings were also, and continue to be, used by parents who love their kids. As a measure of last resort, they are the ceiling on the hierarchy of punishments, and loom large in the order of the child's world. When administered after a cooling-off period, they help defuse an overwrought situation by triggering a cloudburst of tears, explanations and reconciliation between parent and child. They may not be appropriate for all children, but for boys who were as naughty as I, they were often the only thing holding me back from filching another pack of Belvederes.
Does it matter that the child can tell whether the punishment is delivered by one whom the child knows is a loving parent? The child can tell whether it is an excuse for the parent to vent his/her own personal anger—or demons—onto the child. I hate physical violence used on children, but Nicholson makes a good case for the beating he feels he deserved—and which cleared the air—for him. NJC
Baghdad — A suicide car bomber hit a police station in northeast Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing 10 people including two people in the car, police and the U.S. military said.
Also Thursday morning, an attaché to the Spanish embassy in Baghdad, Jose Antonio Bernal Gomez, was shot dead outside his home in the Iraqi capital, the Spanish Foreign Ministry said.
Capt. Sean Kirley said three policemen and five civilians were killed. Iraqi police Capt. Bassem Sami said two more people died in the car that exploded. He said 28 people were wounded.
Police Maj. Majid Abdel-Hameed said the car was a white Oldsmobile. The driver drove through the police compound gate, was fired at by officers and then detonated the bomb.
Dozens of ambulances raced toward the facility in the Shiite Muslim slum known as Sadr City. The attack happened just as policemen were lining up in the courtyard of the station for the morning role call.
Former Toronto budget chief Tom Jakobek told a senior city official that he should not talk to investigators in the MFP computer-leasing scandal, a public inquiry was told yesterday.
"Mr. Jakobek called me on the afternoon of Oct. 9, (2001), the day before my interview. He told me I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life by going forward to this interview with KPMG," Jim Andrew, former executive director of the city's information technology division, testified.
KPMG was hired by Toronto's auditor, Jeffrey Griffiths, to conduct an investigation into the lease after questions were raised about it during the summer of 2001. KPMG's report was a key document in city council's February, 2002, decision to call the inquiry.
The bombshell testimony from Mr. Andrew could do more harm to Mr. Jakobek's mayoralty campaign, already badly damaged by his earlier admission that he had lied to the media about being on board a flight to a hockey game laid on by Dash Domi, the chief salesman for MFP during the leasing process.
Entrepreneurs looking for financing need to think beyond a bank or credit union. The keyword should be geography. Whether your company is in Cape Breton, or Vic toria, there may be government programs designed to boost the local economy by investing in small and mid-sized companies.
Trout River Industries (www.troutriverindustries.ca) in Coleman, P.E.I., reaped the benefits of looking for startup financing close to home. Founded in 2002, the 11-employee company develops and manufactures conveyor-bottom trailers designed to safely unload asphalt and other earthen products.
"We received a loan of close to $100,000 from West Prince Ventures Ltd., the local Community Business Development Corp. (CBDC)," says Matthew Brown, who launched the company with his neighbour Harvey Stewart.
"We are not replacing existing jobs. We are creating new ones in our area, which has typically suffered from high unemployment. This is an area with an agricultural history and dependence on fishing. Development hasn't tended to come to western P.E.I."
In rural Atlantic Canada, there are 41 CBDCs, sponsored by the federal government. "Local decision-making is the cornerstone of the program," says Basil Ryan, chief operating officer for Atlantic Association of CBDCs. "The impact on the community is a prime consideration, along with basic business planning criteria, in the lending decision."
CBDCs are "patient lenders," often funding companies that may not have equity or security, but whose potential success will have a beneficial effect on their area.
Mr. Brown forecasts Trout River Industries, which sells its units throughout Atlantic Canada and has recently broken into the Ontario market, has the potential to ramp up to 16 or 20 employees in the next two years. "We're not talking big numbers in the short term," he admits, "but in a rural area like ours another handful of jobs means a lot."
[. . . .]
Web sites that offer information in both official languages:
- www.strategis.gc.ca/sources: Billed as the Sources of Financing Web site, it provides a lot of listings and links to organizations that offer financing for startup or expansion funds. Sources range from large-scale investments to micro-financing. It is an easy-to-use site that lets you access many geographically specific sources (federal, provincial and municipal). It also provides links to private and private and public initiatives geared to specific communities.
- www.cbsc.org: At the Canada Business Service Centres site, visitors click on a provincial or territorial flag to visit the Canada Business Service Centre in their area. Then they can do a combined search of federal, provincial and/or territorial information. A Talk to Us Live! feature lets visitors talk with a business information officer by phone as they search the Web together. Vistors can search other communities, or provinces, for financing, too. If entrepreneurs are flexible as to where they locate their company it may be easier to secure financing.
- www.communityfutures.ca: The Web site of the Pan Canadian Community Futures Network is a gateway to nearly 300 Community Economic Development Centres across Canada. The site has links to every province and territory. For example, it links to the Community Business Development Corporations in Atlantic Canada and the Community Futures Development Corporations in Western Canada.
My Commentary:
There is more information at the above link. These may be laudable initiatives -- and some probably have been successful, but, from what I have seen as to which companies get government funding--is that the same as tied to government funding?--and what happens to the companies after the money runs out, it seems to me to be ill-advised for government to be involved in this. I have known of one business that replaced another successful business after receiving government largesse – only to have both fail in the end. Another business received financing -- and never set up shop at all. Another business just happened to have an owner with strong Liberal ties – which brings one to the question of whether politics plays a part in who gets funding. And just how does the government pick the winners from the losers – and why should it? Should it not be left to the market to decide? NJC
