Thursday Quick Tour

Liberal Justices? Perish the thought.

Ted Byfield: Liberal interpretation of justice -- Lawyers in red dresses badly need to be taken down a peg Ted Byfield, Feb. 19, 06

Three protections, replied Harper. Most of the Senate, the whole senior bureaucracy, and almost all the judges were Liberal appointees. It was by including the judges that Harper was deemed to have made his grave error. To suggest there could be a political bias in the appointment of Canadian judges is, well, unthinkable.

It's on occasions like this that I'm glad I subscribe to REALity, the bi-monthly publication of REAL Women of Canada.

In its January/February edition, they give a sampling of appointees to the courts. When Irwin Cotler was Liberal minister of justice, the following became judges: [....]

The list makes Harper's point.



Ruling raises doubts on escort law -- Freed Calgary man believed city sanctioned prostitution: verdict Sarah McGinnis, with files from Sarah Chapman, Calgary Herald, February 22, 2006

The owner of a rival city escort service said the judge's decision will allow her to conduct business with more confidence.

"This is fantastic," said Carol, who owns The Sweetest Taboo and refused to give her last name or age. "This is going to allow me to be a little more confident about running my business.

"I feel like we're doing nothing wrong in this industry. There are a lot of lonely, lonely people who need company."

How can anyone choose to make money from prostitution? How can we not do everything to protect our children from this? And they call this needing "company"?



Pentagon papers offer insight into al-Qa'eda's hidden world of terror By Anton La Guardia, (Filed: 22/02/2006) via newsbeat1

It could be any employment contract setting out salary, paid holidays, home leave and grievance procedures - except in this case the employer is al-Qa'eda and the recruit's job is "carrying out jihad".

By signing the contract, the recruit commits himself to al-Qa'eda's objectives: "Support God's religion, establishment of Islamic rule, and restoration of the Islamic Caliphate, God willing."

[. . . . ] The contract is one of thousands of documents captured by US forces, mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past four years of the "global war on terror", and stored on a Pentagon database known as Harmony.

An initial sample of 28 have been declassified and published by the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC), part of the US Military Academy at West Point, with the promise of many more to come. [. . . . ]

Cultivating Criminals Kate

Bang on! Also, the comments lead to relevant articles.

Aboriginal women pushing up birth rates via JM, as is the following.

Hiding the truth about native schooling
February 20, 2006

The road to a better life for Canada's Aboriginal people begins with a good education. But the scant evidence available indicates that they are still failing at school. After decades of wrangling among Aboriginal leaders and federal and provincial governments about what to do, and after so many billions of taxpayer dollars spent, why has there been so little improvement?............

[Hiding the truth about native schooling]

Posted by JM at February 20, 2006 07:16 AM

My Comments:

Actually, in the interest of "achieving success", "student retention" or "keeping students in school" so they graduate, and other phrases that cover a less positive reality, we have been fooling ourselves. Students who barely graduate from highschool at a level 5 (On a scale of 1 to 5 with #1 the top level), for example, are not educated to a high school diploma level, if the diploma is to have any meaning at all.

One reason is that, in the interests of their social development which involves remaining with the same class as their age group, we have allowed students who cannot--or can barely--read, to enter high school where the teenage pressures of physical, social and emotional development are rampant. School runs a poor second to other interests. Having entered high school handicapped, the poor readers remain that way; only it gets worse and more confusing. I do not have an answer, other than that we must ensure all students can read before they graduate. Ability to read is the key to learning--from written materials anyway--so we must demand students have this ability after four or five years of their education, or stop their movement until they can. That goes for native children and all the rest. The problem is not confined to native schools but it may have been better hidden for varying reasons in the reserve schools.

Granted, there are some fine students who will become educated whatever the situation and wherever they live, on reserve or off, but there are too many others, (because adults mean well in being too kind) who are helped along in various ways; yet they leave school under-educated (but socially engineered to "right thought"). It is not a kindness to the children to help them like that. After they leave high school, will it matter in a few years whether they were schooled with their age group or that they have the tools to learn for their lives?

I vote for a little less kindness and a lot more realistic assessment, followed by corrective measures as soon as the problem is discovered. One idea that I have heard of (It worked but there may have been a more homogeneous student population.) had all teachers teach reading at the same time of day and students moved to where they were placed by testing. Those who needed even more help were assigned a special teacher, but that would mean ending (or sharing resources with?) the aides in the situation where classes have six or more special needs students who also need interventionists. Perhaps we expect too much of the system and it is not feasible nor fixable?





White-collar crime on upswing in Canada - experts Paul Marck, Edmonton Journal via newsbeat1

“The eyes of regulators are now focused on corruption in corporate accounting,” Spink said.

[....] Among its findings were that 55 per cent of Canadian companies surveyed reported being victims of economic crime in 2004, a nine-per-cent increase from the year before.

An audience member said that Canadian courts seem to have a “catch and release” policy, giving light sentences to white-collar crooks.

What was that time-limit on prosecution passed by the Liberal government -- something that would prevent those who profited from the sponsorship fund from going to jail? (I forget the details.) How convenient. Protecting the crooks before leaving office.


Open drug use, sales end -- Skeptics say crackdown will simply relocate addicts Matthew Ramsey, The Province, Published: Wednesday, February 22, 20, via Jacksnewswatch.info

[....] The primary objective of the city's Four Pillars program -- to treat addiction as a health, not a criminal, issue -- has had "unanticipated consequences," Rolls said.

"There seems to be an increasing sense of empowerment or entitlement [for users to inject and smoke freely].

"Harm reduction has to be for the whole community. It can't be just for the drug user." [. . . . ]

In Canada? In Combermere? Not far from Ottawa?

Terror Camp in Combermere, Ontario and Other Locations in Canada Canadian Sentinel, Feb. 20, 06 via Defense Watch an article posted on Free Republic -- related: Weekly Standard via Jack's Newswatch

Continuing my investigation, I've come across information on a specific location inside of Canada of a Jamaat ul Fuqra (JuF) "jamaat", a rural community of Islamists appparently training in terrorism. [. . . . ]

The whole "politically incorrect" truth about Islam's violent teachings, bloody history, backward culture, and morally depraved founder



Shotgun: The REAL reason the Emerson appointment was troubling -- with comments and The REAL reason the Emerson appointment was troubling D.J. McGuire, China e-Lobby, Feb. 22, 06

David Emerson was no ordinary Liberal. He was a minister in a Cabinet that repeatedly drove the anti-Communist, pro-China-democracy community to apoplexy. In particular was the concern of the ChiComs worming their way into Canada's bountiful natural resources - including Albertan oil (fourth item, Edmonton Sun) and Saskatchewan's oil and uranium (Globe and Mail) - and Canadian held resources abroad (BBC). Emerson, as Industry Minister, appeared unfazed by this (Wall Street Journal via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

The concern is whether the Harper government will support the pro-democracy community in China.

ET comment on what Harper should do:

1) I think that we, in Canada, have to make it more publicly known how, and why, we lack a Canadian investor class. And - how and why we ought to start, immediately, to develop such a class.

2)The result of such a lack - is our complete dependency on foreign investment. I don't think that it is enough protection for us, to insist that these foreign investors abide by our, or international rules. We must develop our own investor class. [.... there is much more. ]

Book: An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and other Goliaths (ISBN: 1-59555-054-2, $24.99 U.S., Nelson Current) will publish March 7, 2006.
But you can pre-order it now!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?path=ASIN/1595550542&link_code=as2&camp=1789&tag=wwwviolentkicom&creative=9325

via newsbeat1



Pajamas Media in Barcelona February 21, 2006 8:52 AM

Three video interviews from last weekend’s Intelligence Summit are now up at WMD Files: former intelligence agent and Arabic expert Bill Tierney, who translated the Saddam tapes; former CIA director James Woolsey; and Richard Miniter, author of the book Shadow War.

Video Interviews from the Intel Summit PJ Media in Washington DC, February 22, 2006



Memory Lane:

Oil for Food Scandal -- the Canadian Connection old but interesting because of weapons of mass destruction.

Search: Wlyonmackenzie , rbacon , "Why is Harper silent on this. Why is the NDP silent on this." , "If you want an insight into Strong and Martin click on the "Earth Charter's Unholy Ark and think back to ... " , netsurfer , styky , "This could end up in Criminal charges because the Bank controlled 25% or about 20B in funds from Hussien and most of the money went to buy weapons." , Splendor Sine Occasu , Desmarais-Powercorp-Liberal connection , his affialiates did the manufacturing of the Candu's , Pakistan , Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan , "16 cylinders of uranium hexafluoride gas — a critical ingredient for uranium enrichment for weapons — had gone missing from Pakistan's leading nuclear lab, the Khan Research Laboratories"[url]http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145633,00.html[/url]
and it was on Fox Report [then].



'If he hadn't been Jewish, he wouldn't have been murdered' -- in Paris! By Assaf Uni, Haaretz Correspondent, 20/02/2006

PARIS - The mother of Ilan Halimi, the 23-year-old Parisian Jew who was abducted, tortured and murdered by a gang in a suburb of the capital, accuses the police of missteps that led to her son's death.

She revealed to Haaretz Sunday that the police told the family to ignore the gang's attempts to contact them for five critical days, after which Ilan was found near death outside the city. She also accuses the police of ignoring the anti-Semitic motivation in the case in order not to alienate Muslims. [. . . . ]

John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute: The Cartoon Jihad January, 2006

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism.

Table of Contents:

[Introduction] [The Manufactured Crisis] [The Unleashed Campaign] [Contrast: Piss Christ and Rushdie] [Islam's Treatment of Other Religions] [Freedom of speech and Western vitality] [Appendix A--The Cartoons]

Forward

In 15 years with the Mackenzie Institute, there are only two times that I have been genuinely angry. A mail bomb, harassment from supporters of various terrorist groups, and sundry other episodes might have left me peevish and irritable, but real anger has only been experienced twice. The first time was in 1993, when the Ontario Human Rights Commission mused aloud about suspending the principle of the presumption of innocence when accusations of racism had been made. The second concerns the casual attitude so many Westerners have toward freedom of speech with regard to the Cartoon Jihad launched against the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

The very foundations of our liberal-democratic culture, the core values of Western civilization, are too important to treat casually. [....]