Please note that there are several groups of posts today, with a few articles in each.
List of Groups of Posts for Today:
* Bud Talkinghorn: War on Terror, True Speak, Islam, No Blood for Chocolate
* Cesspool on the Hudson -- UN: 150 Sex Abuse Charges in Congo Peacekeeping
* IRFAN-Hamas Front in Canada, Language Czar , Richard, Guite, Mafia in Canada, Canada Haven for Crooks & Terrorists
* Militant Islam: Holland, Saudi Prince Abdullah, Van Gogh, Pim Fortuyn, Education by Murder
* RCMP Widows, Maltese Cross, Ivory Coast-France, Education-Inclusion, Immigrants-Softer Rules, Kinsella Mystery
Bud Talkinghorn: War on Terror, True Speak, Islam, No Blood for Chocolate
List of Articles
* Rethinking America's War on Terror
* Be prepared to wash out your mouth if you don't emit TRUE SPEAK
* The major problem with Islam
* No blood for chocolate
Rethinking America's War on Terror
I would be the last one to condemn American's valiant efforts to stem Islamic terrorism. God, knows we are sadly lacking in such diligence in Canada. Nevertheless, U.S.zeal can get out of hand. The Intelligence bill that didn't get passed in Congress today, had a slippery little rider, that suggested Congress should be allowed to review any citizens' income tax return. No reason would have to be given for asking for them. There is also talk about demanding visas from all Canadian visitors. Let us hope that cooler heads will steer a moderate path. A KGB state isn't much better than a Taliban one.
While on the topic of security, it is instructive to examine Minister Judy Sgro's actions. A deportee, wanted on a Canada-wise warrant, shows up to work for this Immigration Minister's election campaign. Besides that poor Romanian stripper, there now appears to be another man, Song Dai Ri, a North Korea defector, who was also stuffing campaign envelopes for her. He is awaiting judgement on his application for permanent residency.
Of the three cases, the East Indian deportee is the most serious. The deportee was seen talking with a senior Sgro staffer. Why he wasn't reported to the police, when they found out who he was, is highly suspicious. The stripper's damage to Canada falls into the morals area, while the North Korean probably does need protection from his former hellish country. However, the deportee was a fugitive from justice and possibly had criminal or terrorist connections. He is a perfect example of how we have lost the battle to secure our borders. He is part of the army of 36,000 other people--or more--who just never turned up on their deportment date. For his brazeness, he should be made general of that army.
That the Minister, who is supposed to be our most powerful gatekeeper, would allow these three people to work for her is indefensible.
It is obvious from Martin's reaction to these allegations, that he simply considers it normal business. If Martin is draining the swamp of corruption in the Liberal Party, he is doing it one teaspoon at a time. Sgro has to go. I should mention that Sgro also used her ministerial staff for campaign work. This is strictly forbidden. The staffers presented a bill for $11,000 for their work. That contravenes the election spending law, as well as being against federal rules. It will be interesting to see the conclusions that Bernard Shapiro, the Ethics Commissioner, comes to when he looks into the allegations that dog Sgro. If it turns out to be a whitewash report--long-drawn out, as well--then he will be just another Chretien-styled lapdog. That image is not going to help Martin win another election. Big Pauly has big problems.
Be prepared to wash out your mouth if you don't emit TRUE SPEAK
There is a case before the BC Human Rights Commission that claims righteous wrath against a few anti-gay-curriculum people at a school board meeting. The pro-gay lobby does not like, and increasingly tries to stifle, any opposition to the gay agenda. In fact, any opposition voices are considered "hate speech". If the suit is a success then individuals will start to passively accept whatever political correctness that the minority wants to impose on Canadians. While I am not cognizant of who the BC Human Rights leader today, not too long ago it was an Ontario Chinese-Canadian lesbian. You can just imagine the thrill that that gave the BC white male population. The dystopia that George Orwell predicted is not so far fetched 20 years after 1984. There is a broad front attacking any digression from the humbug that flows out of the loony left's diseased minds. We have watched the Charter of Rights and Freedoms become perverted. The courts and Rights lobby have hijacked free speech. "True speak" is no longer in the realm of fiction. If Orwell were alive today, he would spot this erosion of liberty for what it is, a dictatorship in the making. Remember that some of these "human rights" people still revere the memory of Lenin and Stalin. Now there are a couple who knew how to deal with dissident language. This is yet another front that democracy-loving citizens must fight tooth and nail.
Bud Talkinghorn P.S. And in case you think stuffing your mouth to help you stifle your incorrect thoughts will help, then you haven't heard how successful Jack Layton's no trans fats initiative has been in Parliament. Forget about that Hardee's monster burger. Mean lean cuisine is coming your way -- by government decree.
What the West has to understand is that most Muslims don't really believe in a secular society. Yes, their desire for a theocracy is thwarted by their dictatorships, but these are increasingly seen as failed governments. Hafez Assad had to crush them ruthlessly in Ham'a. On the theocratic front, the Islamic government was equally ruthless in stamping out any Islamic sect but Shiism. The Bahais were eliiminated. Their temples were bulldozed and their leaders were jailed or killed. The bombing of Shi'ite mosques in Iraq and Pakistan were simply part of the on-going conflict between the sects. It is the Ulster / IRA feud writ large. I cannot see a reconciliation between these solitudes.
We must not retreat from our attitude towards women and their freedom, or our separation of religion and state. An old acquaintance from Bangladesh once told me that he respeated the Sikhs because they fought for their rights in Canada. His son, the brightest kid I ever encountered, was thinking of becoming an immigration lawyer. What a horrifying thought. Our already hugely expensive refugee / immigration expense will be clogged with endless litigation cases thanks to him and people like him. And that boy will win them. Definitely a case of unexpected consequences.
Lorne Gunter in The National Post (Nov.22-A-12) compares the world's attitude towards the intervention of the French into the Ivory Coast to the conflict with the Americans in Iraq. He points out the hypocrisy that allows the French to unilaterally intercede without any form of censure. It is necessary here to mention that The Ivory Coast produces about 45% of the world's cocoa. Don't expect any Michael Moore film showing the killing of Ivorian protesters or the blowing up of the nation's tiny airforce. Where are the university students parading through the streets with their banners proclaiming: "No blood for chocolate!"? Where is the condemnation by Kofi Annan of this "illegal" French action? If the Americans had done what the French have done, and are still doing, the reaction would have been immediate from the aforementioned. It's too bad, as the protesters could do wonderful things with chocolate, such as creating a huge effigy of Chirac made out of melted down Easter Bunnies. And when they got too hoarse to shout "Hands off my Mars bars"anymore, they could eat it.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations (news - web sites ) is investigating about 150 allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. civilian staff and soldiers in the Congo, some of them recorded on videotape, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.
The accusations include pedophilia, rape and prostitution, said Jane Holl Lute, an assistant secretary-general in the peacekeeping department.
Lute, an American, said there was photographic and video evidence for some of the allegations and most of the charges came to light since the spring.
[. . . . ] In May the United Nations reported some 30 cases of abuse among peacekeepers in the northeastern town of Bunia, where half of the more than 10,000 soldiers are stationed.
Last month, one French soldier and two Tunisian soldiers were sent home, U.N. officials said. Three U.N. civilian staff were suspended.
The United Nations has jurisdiction over its civilian staff but troops are contributed by individual nations. Consequently, the world body has only the power to demand a specific country repatriate an accused soldier and punish him or her at home.
[. . . . ] Annan said the allegations concerned a small number of U.N. personnel and promised to hold those involved accountable.
"I have long made it clear that my attitude to sexual exploitation and abuse is one of zero tolerance, without exception, and I am determined to implement this policy in the most transparent manner," Annan said. [. . . . ]
While he is at it, perhaps Kofi Annan would show a little zero tolerance for all attempts to withhold whatever documents are necessary to get to the bottom of the UNSCAM--oil-for-food scandal? Or would that just be too much? Is it possible that there a more personal reason?
IRFAN-Hamas Front in Canada, Language Czar , Richard, Guite, Mafia in Canada, Canada Haven for Crooks & Terrorists
List of Articles:
* IRFAN: A Hamas front organization operating in Canada
* Customs: Get us backup
* French farce abroad -- Canada's official languages commissioner has gone overseas
* Bail granted to ad exec -- Allegedly broke bail conditions -- Sponsorship Scandal
* Guite won't face questions about evidence -- "Guite to avoid some questioning"
* Canada's a safe haven for crooks and terrorists -- "Le Mafie", about the Mafia in Canada
* Canada: A haven for Mafiosi of every sort -- Part 1 - In the first of a 22-part series -- how slack laws benefit organized crime from around the globe
IRFAN: A Hamas front organization operating in Canada
There is also an article in today's National Post on this. The following was sent to me but the links are here:
22 November 2004, Ottawa, ON - Today, the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD), Stockwell Day (Official Opposition Critic, Foreign Affairs), and David Bedein (Bureau Chief for the Israel Resource News Agency) released a report connecting the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN Canada), a federally incorporated charitable organization (Charity Registration Number 885408849RR0001) to Hamas, a group that has been designated an illegal terrorist organization by the Canadian government.
In May 2000, a confidential memo from the Privy Council identified several Canadian charities acting as terrorist fronts. The memo stated: "Front groups operating in Canada include the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services (Hamas Front)".
"We have a situation in Canada where the Jerusalem Fund was identified by the government as a Hamas front. Then a new entity, IRFAN Canada, is granted legitimacy and tax-deductibility as a registered charity by the government, despite having the same address, same fax number, and same senior official, Mr. Rasem Abdel-Majid, as the Jerusalem Fund," said Alastair Gordon, Director of Communications for CCD. "A 30-minute Google search turned up all these facts."
"Our government claims to be cracking down on charities that fund terrorism," added Gordon, "yet even the most basic research of the government's own tax records would have called IRFAN into question."
CCD is calling on the government to begin an immediate investigation of IRFAN Canada to determine if (1) it has breached its obligations as a registered charity, and (2) if charges should be laid under Canada's anti-terrorism laws.
"Directly or indirectly funding Hamas is a criminal offense in Canada," said Naresh Raghubeer, executive director of CCD. "Yet it appears that our foreign aid and charitable tax dollars are being used for just such a purpose, all with the blessing or indifference of Paul Martin's government."
CANADA CUSTOMS officers want backup from armed cops at some of the country's busier airports and border crossings. "Our officers encounter all sorts of people every day," said John King, labour co-chair of the Customs Excise Union. "They face all sorts of danger on a daily basis." [. . . . ]
French farce abroad -- Canada's official languages commissioner has gone overseas
In today's episode of "Canada: Nuts 'R' Us," we find the federal bureau of official language loonies travelling the world at taxpayers' expense.
The office of Canada's official languages commissioner recently concluded a global investigation into the use of French at Canadian embassies -- even in countries that wouldn't know bonjour from bad hair.
Apparently not content with the fortune wasted on bilingualism boondoggles in this country every year, Official Languages Commissioner Dyane Adam recently turned her sights abroad. [. . . . ]
Similarly, the language czar reports an international crisis in Washington where our embassy website includes English-only text of some speeches to American audiences. Say it ain't so. [. . . . ]
This is one of those must read articles. Read about the state of bilingualism in our embassies abroad--and Ms. Adam and her team have been able to travel--to inspect--on the Canadian taxpayers' dollars to some great destinations like "Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Washington, Mexico City, Santiago, Washington, Chicago and New York" -- places maybe you would like to go if you didn't have to pay so many tax dollars so Liberal ministers such as Ms. Adam and team could travel the world--and create more need for French.
Diane Adam is underemployed and you're going to pay! The details would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect the vast majority of Canadians who are not French speakers -- be it affected in the pocketbook, through more government "initiatives", a larger department for Ms. Adam's pressing concerns, more control for a government already out of control -- or whatever.
Bail granted to ad exec -- Allegedly broke bail conditions -- Alain Richard, Quebec ad agency, sponsorship scandal
MONTREAL (CP) - Alain Richard, a former vice-president of a controversial Quebec ad agency implicated in the federal sponsorship scandal, was released on bail Monday after being arrested last week.
Richard was originally charged in September with two counts of uttering threats and three counts of criminal harassment.
Police arrested Richard on Friday and allege he contacted the victims and witnesses in the criminal harassment case. [. . . . ]
Guite won't face questions about evidence -- "Guite to avoid some questioning"
OTTAWA (CP) - A key witness at the federal sponsorship inquiry won't have to face questions about apparently contradictory stories he's told in the past.
Former bureaucrat Chuck Guite told a parliamentary committee last spring there was no political interference in the program. He's now telling a public inquiry that senior politicians and their aides called all the important shots.
Lawyers at the inquiry wanted to cross-examine him on the inconsistencies.
But Justice John Gomery ruled Monday they can't do so, because Guite's previous statements are protected by parliamentary privilege. [. . . . ]
Canada's a safe haven for crooks and terrorists -- "Le Mafie " -- Canada: A haven for Mafiosi of every sort -- an excerpt from Part 1: "how slack laws benefit organized crime from around the globe"
Le Mafie Nov. 21-28, 04, Antonio Nicaso, author of "Bloodlines: the rise and fall of the Mafia’s Royal Family" (Harper Collins) and nine other books on organized crime.
You may read Part 1 online; an excerpt is below this list of topics
Part 1 - In the first of a 22-part series we investigate how slack laws benefit organized crime from around the globe
Extortion and racketeering
Part 2 - The rise of organized crime in Canada and the hold of Mano Nera
La Cosa Nostra makes its way north
Part 3 - Drug trafficking and prostitution prosper in Montreal
The twisted code of silence
Part 4 - Murder, extortion and drug dealing exemplified organized crime in Toronto
The violent Paolo Violi connection
Part 5 - How a boy from Sinopoli in Reggio Calabria became the most feared man in Montreal
Canada’s Al Capone
Part 6 - Rocco Perri rose in Hamilton as the boss of all bosses
For the love of Bessie
Part 7 - The end of Rocco Perri’s reign as boss of Hamilton
The Drug Connection
Part 8 - How mobsters are poisoning the Canadian economy
The rise of the White Collar Mobster
Part 9 - Canada now a haven for money-laundering activities
[Parts 10-13 on the Russian mob]
Flirting with Power
Part 14 - The Russian mob is spreading its wings in Canada and the U.S. [. . . ]
The tattooed men
Part 17 - The startling power of Japan’s criminal underworld
The Dragon’s fire
Part 18 - The Chinese Triads are digging their claws into Canadian businesses [. . . ]
Understanding the Mafia
Part 20 - A recent survey exposes Canadians’ knowledge of organized crime
Sins of procrastination
Part 21 - Canada continues to drag its feet in the fight against Organized Crime
Canada’s sad truth
Part 22 - The Global Mafia finds comfort in country’s lack of anti-organized crime laws
Canada: A haven for Mafiosi of every sort -- Part 1 - In the first of a 22-part series -- how slack laws benefit organized crime from around the globe
"The Mafia is strong and well-rooted in Canada. But other criminal groups are operating with an organizational capacity and a turnover no lower than those of the Mafia."
Ben Soave is one of the point men at the RCMP. He’s been leading the special Organized Crime Task Force in the Greater Toronto Area, and he and his men are credited, among other things, with the capture of Alfonso Caruana, who is alleged to be one of the most powerful bosses of international drug trafficking.
[. . . . ] In 1990, the government was forced to review legislation on this subject, after two U.S. Grand Juries investigated certain transactions involving two branch offices, one of the Bank of Nova Scotia and the other of the Royal Bank of Canada, operating in the Caribbean.
"There were suspicions that the money deposited was the fruit of drug dealing," confirms the former vice Director of the FBI, Oliver "Buch" Revell.
"Today, in the case of suspicious transactions, bank officials may inform the police, but the law does not compel them to do so," explains Soave. "If a boss enters Canada with a suitcase full of cash, based on the laws currently in force we can do little if anything at all," he admits.
[. . . . ] Canada seems to be a country suitable for Mafia investments. The stock market in Vancouver is seemingly very receptive and investments by the Triads could be the order of the day. "Better than Vancouver, we should call it Van-Kong," suggests half-jokingly a British Columbia RCMP sergeant who prefers to remain anonymous. The largest part of heroin destined to Canada and the U.S. enters through British Columbia. Montreal, which has become the marshalling yard for cocaine arriving from Bolivia and Europe, is no less important.
[. . . . ] According to Fantino, in dealing with criminals the police should avail itself of the same tools used by Revenue Canada. "That’s the only way to stop them".
Militant Islam: Holland, Saudi Prince Abdullah, Van Gogh, Pim Fortuyn, Education by Murder
List of Articles:
* Militant Islam rising -- Threat to liberty rears head in Holland
* Hugh Fitzgerald on Saudi Prince Abdullah
* Netherlands: Van Gogh's murder
* Further Developments Concerning Theo van Gogh and Holland's "Education by Murder"
* Theo van Gogh's book "Allah Knows Best" - Murders of Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn perpetrated by and for Muslims
Militant Islam rising -- Threat to liberty rears head in Holland
[. . . . ] Nature and politics abhors a vacuum. For a generation, Europe -- and Canada -- has been told that nothing is right or wrong, there ought not to be Judeo-Christian morality in public life, and that the philosophical compatibility and integration of immigrants is not important. That may have worked before; but it does not work in the era of Osama bin Laden and al Jazeera. These are not people coming to join things.
They are coming to change things.
Moderate Muslims are too few or too terrified to speak up. True liberals like Fortuyn or van Gogh are assassinated when they do. The secular media that swears by separation of church and state has not yet figured out the threat to liberty comes not from suburban Christian conservatives, but immigrant Wahhabi jihadists. [. . . . ]
Here is Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald's take on Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's complaint that terrorists are tarnishing the image of Islam:
It's too late for the likes of Abdullah to any longer prettify Islam. Too many people can now read the Qur'an and hadith, for they are on-line. Too many people, finally fed up with the likes of Esposito and Armstrong or the endless propagandists, [. . . . ] those who want us to keep focusing on the putative sins of Israel and the “centrality” of that matter when a glance around the from Beslan to Amsterdam to Madrid to Kashmir to southern Sudan to northern Nigeria to the Balkans to New York, to Washington, to southern Thailand causes us to release that the war against Israel is only a local expression of a world-wide totalitarian belief-system whose adherents firmly believe in the right, as Muhammad says, of “Islam to dominate and not to be dominated.” Naturally the Arabs would prefer that Infidels learn nothing about the tenets of Islam, still less about the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, over 1350 years, and from Spain to Indonesia, and to keep the high-beams on that little affair of little Israel.
But Infidels are not having it any longer.
[. . . . ] And it is too late, for the Abdullahs of this world, to suppress the accumulated scholarsihp of the past, scholarship of French, English, American, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Greek, Serbia, Spanish, Indian students of aspects of Islamic conquest, or of the Muslim belief-system, or of the remarkably similar treatment, over 1350 years of conquest and subjugation, of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.
[. . . . ] Islam is a totalitarian belief-system. It emphasizes the collective; it refuses the autonomy of individual conscience. Believers cannnot ever leave the Army of Islam -- they must stay as Muslims or face severe punishment, even death. It is a belief-system based on dominance -- of men over women, but even more, of Believers over Unbelievers or Infidels. [. . . . ]
The more we learn of Wahabbi Islam, the more we realize that it does not fit into democratic societies -- unless it changes, modernizes, becomes tolerant -- and I see no evidence of that. When many of Canada's Muslims live peacefully yet have so little use for us--particularly our women--I wonder what will happen when they become a larger segment of our society. How many Muslim men have you read of travelling to a Muslim country for a wife; they are disgusted by Western women's freedom -- by us. Admittedly, that is only one aspect of this, but it is telling.
The site has a raft of resource materials listed -- well worth checking. Also, there are comments.
There is a lesson for other western countries, like Canada, to be found in the Netherlands. When you welcome individuals who do not share basic values such as freedom of speech and tolerance, there is a price to pay down the road.
The answer is to be careful with immigration, and stop the direct government funding of multiculturalism that promotes separateness, instead of commonality and equality. [. . . . ]
Further Developments Concerning Theo van Gogh and Holland's "Education by Murder"
[. . . . ] (2) A few readers worry that I am giving advice to the enemy in my penultimate paragraph:
Islamist terrorism in the West is counterproductive because it awakens the sleeping masses; in brief, jihad provokes crusade. A more cunning Islamist enemy would advance its totalitarian agenda through Mafia-like intimidation, not brazen murders.
I worried too about this, especially as I know that the Islamists read my articles. But I went ahead with the paragraph (and might write in more depth on the same topic) because I believe the most valuable service I can render in this war is to make anti-Islamists aware of the problem they face.
MIM: The editor of MIM hopes to translate Theo van Gogh's last book "Allah Weet Het Beter"- "Allah Knows Best" into english [sic] to give readers can an idea of what Theo was like as a person and read his views on militant Islam, political correctness, and multiculturalism which he warned against as a prelude to the Islamisation of Holland
At the time of his death Theo van Gogh was working on a film about the murder of Pim Fortuyn who was the first politician to be assassinated in Holland in 400 years. At the trial Fortuyn's killer said he did it "to save Muslims". The Fortuyn murder by a so called "animal rights" and "environmental activist" highlights the connection between the radical left and Militant Islam in what David Horowitz terms, in his new book an " Unholy Alliance". Horowitz's depiction of the parallels between Radical Islam and the American Left provides valuable insights into this phenomenon. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15316 [. . . . ]
One of the parallels that I see is that the left brooks no other view than their own; the left is extremely intolerant of others' points of view on just about everything -- like extremist Islam. Think about how many subjects are considered not politically correct to discuss in leftist Canada. . . . . .
* Can't help widows, McLellan says -- RCMP
* Forces acting in bad faith -- Throwing out cross as military symbol betrays the soldiers buried under them -- Licia Corbella
* Canadian Department of Defence to scrap use of Maltese Cross -- Judi McLeod
* Ivory Coast: French double standards
* Education: Inclusion -- "One rogue pupil held up my class for a year " -- "Mr Clarke needs to let teachers in mainstream schools teach their subjects and deliver the curriculum. His Government also needs to fund properly a decent system of "special schools" that caters for pupils who cannot cope."
* Settlement of lawsuit applies old, softer rules to would-be immigrants
* Want to help solve a mystery? -- Warren Kinsella
EDMONTON -- Anne McLellan expressed sympathy Saturday to the wives of three RCMP officers killed on duty who want the federal Treasury Board to change an outdated policy which saddled them with large funeral expenses after burying their husbands.
But the deputy prime minister said it is not an issue the government of Canada involves itself in.
[. . . . ] Sherwood Park Conservative MP Ken Epp, who raised the issue in the House of Commons, called the Treasury Board policy regarding RCMP funeral expenses "outrageous."
"It should be an automatic given that when a police officer dies with their boots on they should have their funeral expenses covered in full," Epp said Friday.
In the interim, the RCMP should immediately reimburse any widow of an officer killed on duty who had to pay funeral expenses, he said. [. . . . ]
Forces acting in bad faith -- Throwing out cross as military symbol betrays the soldiers buried under them -- Licia Corbella
It's a good thing that most of Canada's war dead are buried in foreign lands.
If they weren't, my guess is those cemeteries would have been plowed under by now by our gutless leaders for fear that the sight of all of those crosses -- more than 160,000 of them -- might offend someone.
I keep wondering too when the famous war poem -- In Flanders Fields will be banned from ever being uttered in Canada at Remembrance Day services by virtue of the fact that it mentions the word cross, and that might cause offence to those easily offended souls out there so eager to accept our freedom, prosperity, generosity and tolerance but not the ethic, sacrifice and traditions that created all of that in the first place. [. . . . ]
Canadian Department of Defence to scrap use of Maltese Cross -- Judi McLeod
Add to the Land of the Maple Leaf’s mounting politically correct garbage heap, the Maltese Cross badge on the caps of Department of Defence chaplains.
It didn’t take them long, the Canadian Department of Defence, which only a year ago hired its first Muslim chaplain, is stripping the Maltese Cross from the caps of its chaplains.
Already tossed on the politically correct garbage heap, the practice of giving Gideon Bibles to new Canadians at government swearing in ceremonies, as announced by Canadian Immigration officials a few months ago; any reference to the Christian God at anniversary ceremonies for September 11, as proclaimed by Prime Minister Paul Martin and his predecessor Jean Chretien.
The Canadian government is hell-bent for leather on high road toward a multi-cultural, multi-faith society.
The Maltese Cross, a Christian symbol dating all the back to the Crusades, is being retired in the name of Canada’s fast-growing multi-faith society.
[. . . . ] The debate on removing the Maltese Cross will be up for discussion by a Commons committee before a final decision is rendered by the military. [. . . . ]
It was supposed to be an attempt to enforce international law against a dangerous aggressor, but we sophisticates knew better all along.
The French moved into the little but chocolate-rich African nation of Ivory Coast ostensibly to enforce a cease-fire between warring parties. But then they unleashed a shock-and-awe campaign against that country on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Just because the Ivorians broke a cease-fire and attacked French troops, killing nine of them plus the required American aid worker, France has been using, in Kofi Annan's phrase, disproportionate force in response to terror.
Let it be noted that France undertook this high-handed, preemptive policy without any authorization beforehand from the U.N. Security Council or even its own parliament, though it sought international support after the fact. [. . . . ]
This is the work of a small circle of ever-scheming neoconservatives around President Chirac who have plotted to seize the Ivory Coast's cocoa fields for years. And yet the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has not used his veto to stop the Security Council from approving the French action. Where is the world's conscience?
Just wait until Michael Moore exposes this whole rotten plot in his next blockbuster documentary, which will show a host of suspicious ties between France's ruling clique and Ivorian cocoa sheikhs. The rest of Hollywood will surely weigh in at any moment, led by Whoopi Goldberg and her minions. [. . . . ]
Check the Canadian Free Press website often -- very good.
Education: Inclusion -- "One rogue pupil held up my class for a year " -- "Mr Clarke needs to let teachers in mainstream schools teach their subjects and deliver the curriculum. His Government also needs to fund properly a decent system of "special schools" that caters for pupils who cannot cope."
This article is from the UK but it is equally applicable in Canada. It is a lengthy article worth reading.
[. . . . ] Clarke's ratty impatience with the outspoken Charles perfectly illustrates what is wrong with the Education Secretary's latest policy initiative, which has been forgotten in the furore.
This policy, which will now force all schools to take their quota of pupils who have been expelled for bad behaviour, is terribly wrong [. . . . ]
I couldn't slap [Lancel Hendricks] down in public, I couldn't tell him to "think more carefully" about his language, I couldn't even insist that he left my classroom.
Let me explain. For a few months I had been teaching a Year 9 English class with reasonable success in an average London comprehensive - not dissimilar to thousands of schools throughout the country in terms of intake and results - when Lancel arrived.
Lancel had been permanently excluded from his previous school for pulling a knife on another pupil and systematic bad behaviour.
The school I was teaching in was obliged to take him because the local education authority had a policy of "inclusion": that is, it didn't have any "special schools" where it could send emotionally and psychologically damaged children. [. . . . ]
Settlement of lawsuit applies old, softer rules to would-be immigrants
Ottawa has settled the country's first immigration class-action lawsuit, and will pay $2.9-million in legal fees to more than 260,000 prospective immigrants and process their applications under older, more lenient selection criteria.
The settlement averts a costly trial, and gives renewed hope to doctors in Iran, teachers in South Africa and information-technology engineers in China who have been waiting as long as five years to find out whether they qualify to immigrate to Canada under the point system.
[. . . .] But a parliamentary committee found the department grossly underestimated the numbers in the backlog, which totalled 120,000 people, and the time it would take to process their applications. [. . . . ]
Patrick McClarty is a Canadian blogger who has recently been receiving threatening email messages from someone claiming to be me. The person in question is using a Hotmail account under the name warren_kinsella@hotmail.com. . . .
[. . . . ] This kind of crap is contrary to the Criminal Code.
[. . . . ] Calling all cyber-sleuths: contact me at warren@warrenkinsella.com, and I will flip you the threatening emails Patrick received. First guy or gal to crack the case gets autographed copies of a couple of my books (you pick), and the gratitude of Patrick and I.
