My New Home

With the two idiots we have running for President, Forvik sounds kind of nice.

Obama Finds Jesus, Says He's Great

Obama is not who he is presenting himself as. I know all politicians move toward the center after the primaries, but Obama's newfound respect for the Christian faith is ridiculous given his previous statements of contempt for people of faith. Obama is a TEXTBOOK liberal straight out of the 1930s. He's a socialist, he's a statist, and he has a marxist view of religion. Fine, great, if that works for you, go for it. What downright offends me is when he's disingenuous and represents himself as someone he's not. If you think people "cling" to religion out of prejudice, or irrationality, or fear of brown people and change, fine, we can debate that, but don't insult my intelligence by trying to cozy up to James Dobson. Kudos to you Mr. Dobson for calling him out and pointing out his bastardization of the scripture. Leftists using scripture to justify their convictions bothers me to no end because the real secular leftists have no convictions about scripture. They see the Bible as just an old collection of myths, just an "opiate of the masses". Obama's contention that the Sermon on the Mount condemns the Defense Department is ludicrous. If Obama had learned anything in church besides "Whitey = Satan" maybe he'd understand that the Sermon on the Mount condemns the entire world as sinful because none of us can live up to its ideals. Thank God the Defense Department understands that the world isn't filled with nations concerned with blessing the meek or peacemaking. Its filled with Kim Jong Ils and Mahmoud Ahmadinejads. The Bible says there can't be a Heaven on Earth until Christ's return, so stop using it to justify your attempts at a leftist utopia. Don't sit there and pretend to have common cause with evangelicals when we know full damn well what the "liberation theology" taught at Trinity United is all about. I'm going to go more in depth on this as the campaign continues.

Does Yelling "Heil Hansen" Produce Too Much Carbon?

Anyone who doesn't believe that the environmental movement has become a haven for anti-capitalist types like Communists and Fascists needs to take a good look at NASA scientist James Hansen's testimony today before Congress. According to The Guardian he plans to call:

"for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer."

Regardless of your opinion on climate change, this is Stalinist. Outlawing your opponent's opinion and making free speech a high crime "against humanity and nature" is a bald faced tyranny that I'd hoped would stay relegated to Canada. Oil companies doing too well refuting your points? Just make fossil fuel apology illegal. Much easier to make your case when you make your opponents out to be the moral equivalent of the Nazis. Stalin first found this handy when he branded Trotsky and any other Communist he found inconvenient a "fascist". Now those found inconvenient are branded "deniers" which implies a moral equivalence that I hope outrages anyone who had a family member killed in a Nazi death camp.

There is a deeper point here however, and one that must be understood in order to see where this is leading. Like many global warmists, Hanson is screaming that "radical steps need to be taken immediately if the 'perfect storm' of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable." This is a favorite global warmist tactic. There is no debate to be had, the crisis is now. "Deniers" are merely filibustering and wasting what little time we have left. Society must unite under the government for a superhuman effort. Hansen says "the new US president would have to take the initiative analogous to Kennedy's decision to go to the moon." Global warmists didn't invent this tactic, its been in use since the days of Woodrow Wilson. Use a crisis -- real or imagined-- and exploit it to expand the powers of government and unify the State into one combined will. Wilson did it during World War One, FDR during the Great Depression and World War Two, Kennedy with Space Program, LBJ with the "War on Poverty". What Americans need to be perfectly clear on is what ideology underpins this line of thought. Manufacturing a crisis in order to unify the collective will behind the leadership of the State is a Fascist method of governing. I cannot emphasize this enough. Anytime a crisis is given the moral equivalence of war (as the global warmists have given the fight against "climate change") and there is a call to abandon selfish interests (your SUVs) and unite in common cause with the State, it is fascism. From Wilson's "War Socialism" to LBJ's "Great Society", national calls to action have been right out of the fascist play book. Even the "War on Drugs" is at its heart fascistic.

While Ike may have seen the costs of putting a man on the moon as a boondoggle, this green effort has more ominous consequences than 25 billion dollars to stick it to the Soviets. This crisis is created by the celebrated "American way of life". Its our cars, our food, the temperature of our homes, even the light bulbs we use. This call for Americans to work together on a new "Manhattan Project" or "Apollo Mission" to combat "climate change" is a permission slip for the government into the life of the private citizen that would make Hitler drool. This is a back door attack on capitalism and must be recognized as such. Capitalism itself isn't directly questioned, just its results: unfettered access to fossil fuels, oil company profits, bigger cars, private jets, unlimited travel, larger homes, cheap light bulbs, cheap anything really. Instead of our affluence coming at the expense of the "proletariat", it now comes at the expense of "Mother Earth". For a self described middle-of-the-road conservative, James Hansen has certainly let himself become the pawn of big government socialists.

Whining to the Nanny State

The West seems to be tripping all over itself in an effort to surrender to whomever we can find. Its an odd civilizational suicide that may be unprecedented in human history. Islam is ascendant, let's just concede now and hope for favorable terms. Thus we come to a story in today's Globe and Mail about Britain's effort to be first among slaves. Sarah Desrosiers, a seemingly progressive owner of an "alternative" hair salon in London has been ordered to pay an aggrieved muslim "£4,000 compensation by way of 'injury to feelings'." How did she injure this poor woman's feelings? She didn't hire her because she said she wouldn't remove her hair covering during work.

"Sarah felt that a job requirement of any hairdresser was that the stylist's hair would provide clients with a showcase of different looks. Especially one working in a salon such as hers, which specialises in alternative cuts and colours."

Sarah has made the mistake of believing that the purpose of a business is to provide a product or service in return for compensation. This is no longer necessarily true in a socialistic welfare state. The purpose of a business is now more properly seen as providing employment. While we have rightly lamented the traditional rights being discarded in Canada right now, we all too often fail to see to potential tyranny in new rights being invented by progressives. The "right to work" has been a mantra of progressives, socialists, and communists alike, and is gaining more and more acceptance in the west. People have a right to employment and a "living wage". The case of Sarah's salon is the natural progression of this invented "right". British, Canadian, and even American muslims are twisting this well meaning concept to force western societies to bend to their demands, and the western judiciaries seem only too eager to acquiesce.

And really, can you blame mulsims for exploiting the system as every other supposedly aggrieved minority group has? If it was ok for Jews, homosexuals, blacks, or spanish speaking immigrants to cry foul when they came up against societal norms, customs, traditions or prejudices, why is it wrong for muslims? Progressives didn't see (and still don't) how these laws against discrimination and protecting "feelings" could be used against the welfare state and liberal democracy in general. Banning blacks from a shop is wrong but outlawing it strips a business owner of sovereignty over his business and sets the stage for future tyrannies. Hanging a swastika in your doorway or denying the Holocaust is repulsive, but banning them is merely the first step in complete government regulation of speech.

Western society needs to come back to its senses and reembrace the principles that made it free and prosperous. Just look at a statement by Bushra Noah, the recipient of the £4,000 payout:

"I felt so down and got so depressed. I thought: 'If I am not going to defend myself, who is?' Hairdressing has been what I've wanted to do ever since I was at high school. This has ruined my ambitions. Wearing a headscarf is essential to my beliefs."

Tough cookies lady! Do you know what the relationship between employer and employee actually is? You give the employer something of value with your services in return for agreed upon compensation. If the employer believes someone else's services are of greater value, they are (supposedly) free to hire them, regardless of your "feelings". Maybe if you stopped whining long enough you could realize that you are free to start your own salon and do whatever you want with it. It seems that there is an opportunity in this neighborhood to open a salon that caters to muslim women who would be more comfortable with a hairdresser in a hair covering or burka. There were obviously none for you to apply to. This is what successful people in the west do, they create their own opportunities instead of bitching about what's been denied them.

Will the Real John McCain Please Stand Up?

Barack Obama is certainly a presidential candidate in the mold of Jimmy Carter, and its nice to see McCain pointing that out. Speaking in Houston yesterday, McCain said this:

"He supports new taxes on oil producers. He wants a windfall-profits tax on oil, to go along with the new taxes he also plans for coal and natural gas. If the plan sounds familiar, it's because that was President Jimmy Carter's big-idea tool - and a lot of good it did us. I'm all for recycling - but it's better applied to paper and plastic than to the failed policies of the 1970s."

This is a topic that Republicans need to hammer Obama on. His energy policy is insane. He resembles Carter on issues from energy to national defense. However, McCain seems to think we're too stupid to remember what he said last week:

"The point is, oil companies have got to be more participatory in alternate energy, in sharing their profits in a variety of ways, and there is very strong and justifiable emotion about their profits"

In the same interview he said that oil companies should "absolutely" return some of their profits. Is this not a call for a "windfall profits tax"? McCain's position on oil profits sounds a lot like Obama's to me. Which McCain is the real McCain? The one bashing Obama's Carteresque energy policy in Houston or the one espousing the same policies in an NBC interview? Why did we nominate this guy again?

McCain Briefly Pretends to Understand Economics

Finally John McCain has said something I can support. It is definitely time to begin drilling for oil off the coasts. If China and Cuba can do it, I don't see why we can't. Senator McCain plans to say this in a speech today:

"we have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. . . . It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions."

Great to hear him seemingly support market driven solutions to this problem, but sadly, it couldn't last. Lest conservatives actually begin to believe he had a sane grasp on the concepts of economics and the workings of the market, he also plans to say this about oil speculation:

"Investigation is underway to root out this kind of reckless wagering, unrelated to any kind of productive commerce, because it can distort the market, drive prices beyond rational limits, and put the investments and pensions of millions of Americans at risk,"

Every time I try to grab his olive branch, he hits me in the face with the tree. Let's take a look and the Senator's complete ineptitude when it comes to the principles of a free(ish) market. This "reckless wagering" is actually a risk taken by speculators on the future price of oil. Not only is this done perfectly legally with all sorts of other commodities, it helps protect supply. Why do prices go up? High demand or low supply, in this situation a combination of both. When someone speculates on a barrel of oil, they are betting that the price will be higher in the future. They are betting that demand will be higher and/or the supply will be lower. At a future time, they plan on introducing the oil they have purchased back into the market when prices are higher. While this may drive up price now, it drives down price later. Contrary to the Senator's statements, this is absolutely "productive commerce". It doesn't "distort the market", it protects supply by holding reserves until they are most needed. There are no "rational limits" in a free market, there are the laws of supply and demand. They may be harsh, but they work for a reason, and when the government tries to control them, the problem is exacerbated. The good Senator is right to advocate increasing the supply, (as soon as the government even announces that restrictions on drilling will be lifted speculators will begin hedging their bets and selling, thus increasing supply and driving down cost) but punishing speculators will only hurt America in the long run.

The Nanny State End Game

The New York Times has an interesting piece today on the circus in British Columbia last week and how unique the United States' protection of speech is in the western world. This got me thinking about how we got where we are today, with freedom of speech considered an "American concept" and many in America asking whether or not we are too free. This whole controversy cannot be completely understood if we only look at it from the perspective of speech. Speech itself must be understood as but one of a group of what Enlightenment thinkers liked to call Natural Rights. I believe that history is beginning to bear out that these rights cannot exist independently of one another. It is all or nothing.

I don't walk around wearing swastikas or denying the Holocaust, and I openly discriminate against those that do. They are not allowed in my house or place of business. Discrimination is not a bad thing, unless it is done by the government. Citizens in a free society should be allowed to reach conclusions on their own and let these conclusions guide their actions as long as they cause no one else direct harm. This is how we treat adults. Your words and actions are judged by other adults and they draw their own conclusions about you. However, many western democracies no longer see their citizens as adults. They cannot provide their own Health Care, the government must do it. They can't plan for their own retirement, the government must do it. They can't afford to provide themselves with the basic needs of life, the government must do it. They cannot be trusted to say what they wish in public, the government must regulate it. This is the natural conclusion of the Nanny State. It has taken some time, but it is finally apparent that totalitarianism isn't the exception in a Nanny or Welfare State, it is the rule. You are not an adult, you are a child. The State is your legal guardian. It will be gentle when it can, stern when it must. You are not to hurt the other children's feelings.

This is the way its playing out in much of the western world. I don't think we should be surprised. When you make the State your parent, don't be shocked when it treats you as a child. America hasn't totally descended into the loving embrace of the State yet. The First Amendment has been settled as an ironclad protection of all but the most directly threatening speech since after the Second World War, but I cannot emphasize enough that it has not always been this way. Americans must be ever vigilant or thus we fall into the Statist temptation. It must be clearly understood that the natural rights of man are not to be individually analyzed as neccessary or not. They must exist as a package, a whole. When just one is disregarded, the rest are on borrowed time. Economic freedom is eternally linked to all other freedoms, and is most always the first to go. Once you are dependent on the State to "make a living", the State will eventually control how you live. America must learn from Europe and Canadians must pray its not too late.

Everything Is Worth What John McCain Says It Is

"The point is, oil companies have got to be more participatory in alternate energy, in sharing their profits in a variety of ways, and there is very strong and justifiable emotion about their profits."

Thus said John McCain this morning on the "Today Show". That sound you hear is the last of his conservative supporters cringing. Why, pray tell, Senator, do oil companies have to be more "participatory in alternate energy"? Shouldn't oil companies be concerned with oil? Shouldn't their business be finding, pumping, refining, and selling more oil? What gives you the right to tell any privately owned company what they "have got to be" doing? The government is going to force the oil companies to develop the technology that will put them out of business? Has the Republican party descended back into the days of Teddy Roosevelt? Are we going to go Trust busting? Aren't you the supposed conservative candidate from the supposed conservative party? Now we advocate "sharing profits"? Sounds an awful lot like socialism. There's more:

Although the GOP presidential candidate didn't address the question of raising taxes on oil companies, he said the companies "absolutely" should return some profits to consumers. "And they should be embarking on research and development that will pay off in reducing our dependence on foreign oil," he said.

He's basically advocating price fixing without actually fixing the price. Oil companies can charge whatever they want to, but then they've got to return excess profits to consumers. Who decides what amount of profit is too much? In the past the market has dictated this. A business charges whatever it can up to a point where demand starts falling. This is why apartment complexes strive for 5% vacancy instead of 0%. They want to balance on the line between maximum profit and pricing themselves out of the market. This is not only good business, it protects supply. Artificially lowering prices leads to shortages. Just look at the results of rent control in major cities.

Why should oil companies worry about reducing our dependence on foreign oil? This isn't their job. Their job is get the stuff out of the ground and to the consumer. If we would let them do what they're best at - exploiting oil fields - they would reduce our supply on foreign oil. Unfortunately they are unable to do so because our government stands in the way. If he truly cared about reducing our dependence on foreign oil, the good Senator would be addressing this instead of telling the media exactly what they want to hear.

A part of me wants the oil companies to call Washington's bluff. "Screw you! You say we're evil, money grubbing, unpatriotic, fine. We're shutting down American operations and moving Corporate HQ to the Bahamas. Good luck." I wonder if that is what it would take for America to see the wisdom of Publilius Syrus: "Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it"

Someday, We Won't Be Judged By the Color of Our Lungs

For all the nonsense being thrown around about how tough it is to be "black in America", Senator Barack Obama is actually a member of an oppressed minority: American smokers.

If I Vote For Him, It Will Kill A Part of Me

Leave it to the Republican party to give us a candidate like John McCain at this pivotal point in the history of our country. The Democrats are running LBJ without the commitment to national security and conservatives have been saddled with a candidate who abhors both conservatism and conservatives. He's Nixon without the paranoia at a time when our side needs to be pretty damn paranoid.

The only person who could ever convince me to vote for John McCain is Barack Obama, and every time I think he's done it, McCain has to open his mouth and remind me why, on principle, I can't vote for him. Take his attack on big business yesterday. There is really nothing wrong with shareholders approving CEO pay and severance packages, but I'd like to remind Mr. McCain that its NONE OF HIS DAMN BUSINESS HOW MUCH CORPORATIONS CHOOSE TO REWARD THEIR CEOS. Corporations, like individuals, should be allowed to sink or swim on their own. If they want to pay 40 million to a guy who's run the company into the ground, its their problem. This is public information, and the public can dump their stock in inept company A and buy stock in well run company B. That's how the free market works Senator. Reagan conservative, my ass. Further more, if say, Exxon Mobile wants to send off a CEO with a golden parachute, who is John McCain to say it isn't right? Can he run a multi billion dollar oil company? Does he know what it entails and how someone who can do it should be compensated? If McCain is elected, why don't we just follow the lead of Maxine Waters and nationalize the oil companies. Then we'll see how well McCain and the economic dunces in Washington can supply a commodity that is vital to American prosperity. I'm curious to see who they'll blame when prices skyrocket.

You're losing me Senator, and its not just Eric and his little blog you're losing. There are millions like me who aren't going to vote for this progressive B.S., no matter how you label yourself.

Give it the Ol' Prussian Try

NBC's Brian Williams to graduates in Columbus Ohio:

"...I come here today with a request for the Class of '08: We need you to fix the country -- and I'm sorry to ask this of you. And I'm deadly serious and we really do. I am 49 and on behalf of my generation, I'm so sorry, the Internet is so cool we got sidetracked. I can burn an hour on Perez Hilton like that. And I know I speak for a lot of you: WebMD, very cool, except anything I've ever punched in comes back “thyroid cancer."

This on its own is fine, well, not fine, but no more than typical liberal drivel about fixing the country that conservatives have supposedly run into the ground. However, when you combine it with what he says later, something emerges:

"Dial in and pay attention, and I say that as part of a group we all have to start thinking and acting as one. There are, as of this week, 117 million blogs in the United States. One more time: 117 million blogs. And I stand here today as one of them. And what do most of us bloggers talk about? Us. And the problem is we need to start talking about us, all of us. We need to start thinking of us as the collective, the United States that we used to know. It's going to require a lot of work."

This is fascist. I'm not calling Brian Williams a racist or an anti-Semite. Most people don't realize that fascism doesn't require racism. I don't think Brian Williams is evil, I don't even think he knows he's extolling fascism, but the fascist undertones are clear. When Williams asks us all to start thinking and acting as one, he's unwittingly using a fascist talking point. Subvert the individual, emphasize the collective will. Don't worry about yourself, worry about the Nation. Combine this with what he said earlier about fixing the country, and you have an appeal to fascism. Rejecting partisanship in order to come together as one body politic, one nation, to correct whatever "wrong turn" society has made with one collective will is a call to action right out of a Mussolini speech.

People don't realize how much political discourse in this country and around the world is rooted in a fascist line of thought. I'm sure Mr. Williams was just trying to give an inspiring speech and as far as I know he's a decent human being, but I think its important to point out the totalitarian instincts that lurk below the surface in our supposedly free, liberal, western society.

The Irony Is Lost On Him

McCain is absolutely right to point out that Barack Obama will be Jimmy Carter's second term. Its too bad that John McCain is running for Gerald Ford's second term.

I Wonder Why They Need Those?

A National Fingerprint Registry has been thrown into a housing bill.

Do American's care that the State is slowly tightening its grip on us? Do we even notice? One day we'll all just wake up in a Huxley novel and think "Huh, I wonder when that happened."

Tell Us What You Really Think

Khurrum Awan can't seem to figure out that he lives in Canada, not Zimbabwe. At a forum on free speech and the curtailment thereof at the Canadian Arab conference he called on Canadian muslims to demand a right to participate in the media. The problem is that Mr. Awan lives in a liberal western democracy. You don't just get to demand things, especially not of private companies or individuals. I guess Mr. Awan "demanded" a sick day when they taught that at law school. But it gets better, or rather, worse:

"And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars," (Awan) said.

Does Richard Warman know this kid is cutting into his racket? For a supposed lawyer, Awan is being pretty candid about shopping around for an activist judge. Then again, Awan doesn't strike me as worried about that whole "gross miscarriage of justice" thing western legal systems have been trying to avoid since the Magna Carta. I hope wider Canada is fully awake to this now. I hope America too is paying attention to recent happenings in the Great White North (oops, did I just commit a hate crime?). Our courts have a troubling habit of citing foreign cases as precedent. Thank goodness our tort system isn't prone to giving out obscene judgments on ridiculous decisions. I'm sure John Edwards wouldn't jump at the chance to represent a minority group in a class action against the rest of society for not liking them.

Thankfully - for me at least - this nonsense is still confined to the Canadian half of North America. However, if Mr. Awan and his islamist ally Mr. Elmasry succeed in revising the list of Canadian rights then Canada will have proven itself to have a European style spine and the list of potential American allies in a fight gets that much smaller. The friendly, easygoing neighbor we've taken for granted is starting to fade away. In the updated version of "Canadian Bacon" Dan Akroyd doesn't make you write all the obscenities on your truck in French, he hauls you off to Barbara Hall for summary judgment.

I make light of this and have a chuckle where one is due, but some of what Mr. Awan says is truly terrifying.

He said that the argument for limitless free speech "is really a far-right Republican argument that is being imported into this country."

So freedom of speech is just a scheme cooked up by the evil Republicans and George Bush over in the States? For what end? Just to defame muslims? I guess we'll just disregard the last thousand years or so of western history. Its unimportant that the ideals like freedom of speech that America was founded on weren't conceived on our continent. The American "experiment" was the best opportunity yet to put into action ideas that Europe had been mulling over for a few centuries. Mr. Awan doesn't seem to understand that America is a product of the enlightenment, as is the rest of the west, Canada included. He doesn't understand that the concepts of liberal democracy and freedom of speech were developed at the same moment in history, that they go hand in hand and cannot exist separately. Worse though, Mr. Awan doesn't see the need to understand this. As far as he's concerned it never happened. Its all a recent, really "far-right Republican argument". I pray that I don't live to see the day that freedom of speech is only advocated on the extreme right wing.

Its cliche to call this Orwellian, but its a perfect example. Mr. Awan is just making up the past as he goes to fit the situation. Soon Common Law will be a recent GOP invention. The whole HRC process is already an affront to western legal tradition. "Of course we can have a separate sharia law for the Umma, one law for everyone is an intolerant American notion". What will be next? Freedom of Assembly? Representative Democracy itself? I may be spouting extreme worst case scenarios, but once you throw out one supposedly universal human right, aren't the others up for debate?

What Mr. Awan truly needs to understand is why we fear him and his ilk. Its not his religion that gives me pause, its his secular views on the role and power of the State in society. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism, regardless of who you pray to. What he's really doing is hiding behind Islam and his minority status so he can claim any vitriol directed toward him is actually directed at his religion. I don't believe Mr. Awan is an islamist, terror supporter, or an anti Semite like his pal Elmasry, but I do believe he's a Statist, and to me that's just as damning.

Pay No Attention to that Trial Behind the Curtain

A particularly sinister quality of the Steynian inquisition in British Columbia this week has been the Tribunal's seeming desire not to record the proceedings for posterity. As Deborah Gyapong points out, the Maclean's defense team is having trouble getting access to recordings of testimony because of "equipment difficulty". If the defense team has trouble accessing court proceedings, how difficult will it be for the public? Most of Steyn's supporters (myself included) have been referring to this sham as a show trial, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that these Human Rights Tribunals don't want to be showy at all. They shrink from the light of day. As crass and totalitarian as a show trial is, a secret trial is far worse. Granted, the press and public have been granted access, but it seems to me that the BCHRT wishes they weren't. I think they can't wait for this to be over and forgotten in the minds of the public and press so they can go back to railroading citizens without the fame or fortune of Steyn and Maclean's. Make no mistake, they would love to rule in Elmasry's favor and firmly establish their right to regulate speech and the press, but I think I tend to agree with Blazingcatfur's assessment that self preservation will lead the BCHRT to find in Maclean's favor. The Human Rights Commissions aren't quite ready for prime time. Maybe after another 30 years of tinkering and public apathy, but not now. Quite frankly, this is terrible for Canadian free speech. Both Steyn and Maclean's know that what's at stake here goes far beyond a columnist and a news magazine. They wanted to lose. They wanted to appeal up the line to the Supreme Court. They wanted to overturn Taylor. They wanted to end this fascist institution before it does another 30 years of quiet damage. Winning this battle may cause the public at large to lose sight of the war.

In British Columbia, This is a Crime

I hope he's not fired for this.

Dear Moslem Association,

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey ), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests. If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave.

I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option.

Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,

I. S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Idiots Guide to what the Idiots are Doing

Here's a great summary of the entire Human Rights debacle in Canada.

Springtime for Elmasry

Day Three of the BCHRT vs. Maclean's, Mark Steyn, and the internet in general has passed and Andrey Vyshinsky, er, I mean Faisal Joseph has yet to call an actual aggrieved muslim from British Columbia, which supposedly is what this is all about. The plaintiffs' case hasn't even begun to be proven, in fact, I'm not even sure if Faisal Joseph knows what he's trying to prove. Yesterday he called an expert on Bollywood who has written articles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Queen Latifa. Now unless the legions of vampires Buffy kills are metaphors for muslims and Maclean's created her, I have little understanding of what she could possibly bring to the proceedings, but of course she was allowed to testify after the Grand Inquisitors retired to chambers in order to consult season 5 of Law and Order for the proper course of action. Predictably she saw abundant stereotypes throughout the Steyn article, and of course the cover, which is a picture of actual muslims, stereotypes them. Now everyone who reads her testimony and looks at her credentials can see she'd see a stereotype in a Bin Laden tape, but there's a larger point here. Are all books - or articles even - going to be dissected by a Tribunal if a "minority" deems them offensive? Is the government going to vet everything published in Canada? What is the standard used to decide what is publishable going to be? The testimony of an expert on Bollywood? This is comically fascistic, but fascistic all the same. Its as if Canadians have become trapped in "Springtime for Hitler". Funny sure, but would you want to live there? I'm sure most Canadians don't.

BCHRT vs. Everyone

Apparently I wasn't too far off when I imagined the BCHRT might go after dead British General Sir Edmund Allenby considering they're now going after American Catholics posting on an American Catholic blog. Why don't they just get it over with and declare themselves international and make the move to the Hague? I'm sure they're just chomping at the bit for a shot at Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and possibly posthumus indictments of Ronald Reagan and St. Peter. For that matter how about Charles Martel? The Battle of Tours has certainly belittled muslims over the years. I certainly hope Canadians start paying attention considering this post is only slightly more ridiculous than the actual actions of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

And Wild Turkey Makes You Invulnerable

Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan

I'm still waiting for a study on the health benefits of Busch and Natural Light.

The Bitch Won't Die

(Obama) tried to call her twice following the speech - but got her voicemail. She finally returned the call as his plane was about to fly out of St. Paul to Washington.

I still despise Hillary, probably more than Obama considering the decade of the 90s when Hilldog was decrying "Right Wing Conspiracies" and attempting to introduce Marxism into the health care industry while Obama was only screwing over people in the State of Illinois. However, right now, I have to say God bless the bitch that she is.

About.........Damn............Time

Bortscheller, president of the Elk Point City Council, had invited about 250 supporters to an outdoor barbecue Tuesday to await the returns for arguably the most important election in Union County's history. The big crowd didn't leave disappointed.

As midnight approached, they popped the champagne corks, celebrating a hard-fought victory that keeps alive the county's chances of landing the nation's first all-new oil refinery in 32 years.

A "Bizarre and Frightening Spectacle"

Ezara Levant has a very informative piece on who is sitting in judgment over Macleans at Mark Steyn's show trial. I didn't see Vasiliy Ulrikh listed, but it was only day one. The National Post has a pretty good summation of this "bizarre and frightening spectacle". It points out a fact that I at least was unaware of:

"None of the main players starring in this quasi-judicial drama actually live or work in B. C. Not Mr. Steyn, not the editors responsible for Maclean's, and not Mohamed Elmasry, a Muslim who launched a complaint to the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal on behalf of all Muslims in this province."

Apparently the British Columbian Human Rights Tribunal doesn't deal with petty technicalities like jurisdiction. I'm sure its only a matter of time before some imaginative muslim files a complaint in B.C. against Sir Edmund Allenby for the horrible insensitivity he showed when he proclaimed “today the wars of the Crusades are completed,” after drubbing the Turks (A minority in the Ottoman Empire) in 1917.

For now though the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will have to make do with the crimes of Maclean's, and they are legion. Lawyer Faisal Joseph, representing the complainant, describes them in detail:

"The Steyn excerpt that Maclean's published in October, 2006, presented Muslims as 'a violent people' who hold traditional Canadian values 'in contempt,' he alleged. Their religion was portrayed as 'inhuman" and 'violent.'"

Not only that, but also:

"'20 other articles' that ran in Maclean's, beginning in January, 2005; these were also unkind to Muslims. . . Mr. Joseph even slammed Maclean's for publishing letters from readers praising the magazine and Mr. Steyn."

If these blatant examples of Freedom of the Press weren't enough to damn Maclean's, even

"the cover image that Maclean's chose to run with the Steyn excerpt was hauled before the inquiry. The image of two Muslim women, along with the magazine's cover line, 'could have been the picture of a horror cult movie,' declared Mr. Joseph."

Ignoring the hate crime Mr. Joseph committed by implying that a photo of two actual muslim women looks like a "horror cult movie", let's examine this new standard for the publication of photos. If publishing photos of minorities that resemble scenes from horror movies is prohibited, doesn't that rule out Holocaust photos? I can't think of anything more "horrific" than the piles of emaciated bodies awaiting incineration or mass burial. Will the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal actually put Canadians in the situation where both Holocaust denial and Holocaust proof are considered hate crimes?