Aug. 24, 2006: #1

Retroactivity undecided in Tory plan to get rid of faint-hope clause
www.canada.com/theprovince/story.html?id=
e6419ce-f2ac-44af-8bd1-c364ef9bcb59&k=86886

About 1,700 murderers who are currently serving life sentences may end up being exempt from a Conservative government promise to abolish the faint-hope clause, which gives lifers a chance at early parole.

Canada: Home of the free..., posted by David_Leslie, 8/24/2006 08:22:35

SAULT STE. MARIE -- A teen who terrorized his younger sister and photographed his sexual assaults on her won't do time in a custodial institution.

The boy, now 15, was sentenced Tuesday to six months deferred custody.

The teen pleaded guilty to sexual assault, making child porn, invitation to sexual touching and threatening. He had forced the girl to pose for pornographic pictures, which his mother later found.

[.... Below is a different example.]

"They've let him go," a detective at the door tells Nicolas' mom Elsa Ferraro, 45, last week. "He's home."

Sure enough, there he is, across the street from a kid he knifed nearly to death barely three months before.

A shrink says he's okay so long as he takes his meds for paranoia-schizophrenia.

Last Monday a judge agrees and finds him "not criminally responsible" for the attack. And turns him loose. [....]

There is more. A must read.




Time for SoW to go?

It is Time to Eliminate Status of Women [SoW] , Aug. 22, 06, Big Blue Wave
bluewavecanada.blogspot.com/2006/08
/it-is-time-to-eliminate-status-of.html

Feminists who claim to speak for me irritate me. When they use taxpayer money to do it, it sends me through the roof.

Status of Women is a government agency that does precisely that. The agency's name is somewhat of a misnomer, it should be called the Radical Feminist agency, because that's exactly what it is.

What Status of Women does is fund radical feminist groups and gives out money for radical feminist research. The Agency's budget is about $23 million.

[....] Like typical radical feminists, they have decided that they speak for all women, and they only consult those groups and women that agree with their agenda. So it's a bunch of radical feminist bureaucrats consulting radical feminist to hear what they want to hear to promote more radical feminism on my dime. [....]

Ontario Catholic Teachers Run Far Left Conference Promoting Gay Activism -- More of same that has characterized OECTA ideology for years , By Hilary White

TORONTO, August 22, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The most prominent dissident Catholic academic in the country, former priest Gregory Baum, will be the star attraction at a conference scheduled August 24-26 by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA). The conference features a line-up of speakers and workshops promoting feminism, “eco-theology,” courses in turning students into political agitators and economic ideas from the hard left of the political spectrum.

Although there is in fact a wide range of political opinions among Catholic teachers and the union’s own statement of principles includes promotion of “Catholic values”, the line-up of speakers and workshops emphasizes a notably one-sided socialist, anti-Catholic perspective. That of course alarms parents who realize this agenda is what their children are being indoctrinated in by many teachers in their “Catholic” schools.

Conference workshops and speakers include a full roster of favourite socialist issues from key concepts in the new globalist agenda, to eco-theology. One workshop will give teachers tips on how to inculcate students into activism in the labour movement and for “issues of race, class, gender, ability/disability and sexual orientation.” [....]

No point in playing nice with Hezbollah
www.edmontonsun.com/News/Columnists
/Jacobs_Mindelle/2006/08/22/1768909.html

Neither military strategists nor academics have been able to pinpoint how best to fight terrorist groups who hide amid civilian populations while slaughtering innocents. These two MPs have joined the hordes of well-meaning but naive onlookers around the world who think it's possible to make peace with terrorists.

Terrorism charges -- UK , Metropolitan Police via newsbeat1
cms.met.police.uk/news/
arrests_and_charges/terrorism_charges

[....] What I can give is an indication of the type of evidence that will be presented in support of the prosecution.

"First, there is evidence from surveillance carried out before 10 August. This includes important, indeed, highly significant video and audio recordings.

"I can also tell you that since 10 August we have found bomb making equipment. There are chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, electrical components, documents and other items.

"We have also found a number of video recordings - these are sometimes referred to as martyrdom videos. This has all given us a clearer picture of the alleged plot.

"However, the investigation is far from complete. The scale is immense. Enquiries will span the globe. [....]

Mohammed Elmasry on one of Christie Blatchford's best columns, Aug. 11, 06
www.canadianislamiccongress.com/fb
/friday_bulletin.php?fbdate=2006-08-11#1

[....] Now it is no secret to those who monitor her periodic outbursts that Christie Blatchford has a big problem hiding her hatred for those who are Others, not like Us. She doesn't come right out and say things like; Canada should detain, deport, or otherwise limit its entire Muslim population (or at least all those she most hates), but she comes so close that the intention behind her words is only too clear.

She begins her article on a typically colorful note of ugly cynicism: "I drove back from yesterday's news conference at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto [.... See just below for more.]

Blatch cuts through the usual fog to the heart of the statements emanating from news conferences. I loved her article; naturally, Mohammed Elmasry, the self-appointed head of his own "congress", the CIC, who claims to represent ... whoever ... in the Muslim community, does not like what Christy sees through. When Elmasry is upset, you can bet that she has scored a few points.



Ignoring the biggest elephant in the room , Christy Blatchford, June 5, 2006, Page A1
littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=20911#comments

Christy's article is behind a firewall at the Globe and Mail:
www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v4
/sub/MarketingPage?user_URL=http://www.theglobe
andmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FLAC.20060605.
BLATCH05%2FTPStory%2FTPComment%2F&ord=1156298289427&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true


news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22ignoring+the+
biggest+elephant+in+the+room%22&btnG=Search+News

I drove back from yesterday’s news conference at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto in the northeastern part of the city, but honestly, I could have just as easily floated home in the sea of horse manure emanating from the building.

So frequent were the bald reassurances that faith and religion had nothing — nothing, you understand — to do with the alleged homegrown terrorist plot recently busted open by Canadian police and security forces, that for a few minutes afterward, I wondered if perhaps it was a vile lie of the mainstream press or a fiction of my own demented brain that the 17 accused young men are all, well, Muslims.

But no. I have checked. They are all Muslims.

Barely two days after the nighttime raids that saw 15 of the accused arrested (the remaining two, in Kingston, conveniently were already in the joint on gun charges), the great Canadian self-delusion machine was up and running at full throttle. [....]

Opinion — Terrorists rely on propaganda , Leo Adler, Aug. 23, 06
thesuburban.com/content.jsp?sid=3557621151996
9062071853334401&ctid=1000002&cnid=1008543

The headlines over the past month have been dominated with pictures and words depicting the plight of babies and other children. One does not have to be a public relations guru to know that such photos attract immediate attention and sympathy."Terrorist groups, knowing of the West’s sensitivities towards children, are quick to exploit any tragedies by exhibiting bodies (witness the photo-ops staged by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza of “mass funerals”)." [....]

On the other hand, the recruitment and training of children and the glorification of suicide bombings in schools, mosques and public forums by these and other Islamist terrorist organizations, goes largely unreported or, even worse, ignored by many governments, NGOs, social agencies and others supposedly dedicated to protecting children. [....]

Updates to a post yesterday:

Liberal MP Boris Wrzesnewskyj resigns as foreign affairs over Hezbollah comments, CTV.ca News Staff, posted by eliza99, 8/23/2006 16:35:57
www.canoe.ca/mb2/messages/cnewsf/12058.html

Embattled Liberal MP Boris Wrzesnewskyj has resigned as deputy foreign affairs critic following the uproar over his comments suggesting Canada should negotiate with Hezbollah.

Wrzesnewskyj found himself distanced from his own party when he made the statement during a fact-finding mission to Lebanon last week.

CTV's Graham Richardson told Newsnet that Wrzesnewskyj tendered his resignation on Wednesday and that his resignation was accepted. [more at www.ctv.ca ]

Liberal foreign affairs critic quits -- "after saying Hezbollah should be taken off Canada's list of terrorist organizations" , Joan Bryden, Aug. 23, 06
cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics
/2006/08/23/1771811-cp.html

[.... Boris] Wrzesnewskyj (pronounced Rez-NEV-skee) is not the only Liberal to generate controversy over the Middle East. Former cabinet minister Denis Coderre marched recently in a peace rally in Montreal that included Hezbollah supporters hoisting the organization's flag. [....]

Thomas Hubert, the [Liberal] party's youth leader in British Columbia, recently wrote on an Internet blog that Israel was the "most vile nation in human history," and suggested Hezbollah might be considered freedom fighters.

He now has resigned his post on the youth wing executive. [....]

Corruption of the Media: Part 8 - Discussion and conclusions, August 14, 2006, EU Referendum
eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08
/part-8-discussion-and-conclusions.html

For whole sections of the international media, the "Qana massacre" at Khuraybah was a godsend. It provided tangible support for the narrative they had been running ever since the re-opening of hostilities in Lebanon - and before - that Israel was the pitiless aggressor which would stop at nothing to get its way, including "murdering" innocent women and children.

Thus did newspapers like the British left-wing Independent revel in the pictures produced so obligingly by the agencies and staff photographers, this newspaper devoting its whole front page (left) to "White Tee-shirt's" iconic expression of agony. The only problem for it, and the hundreds if not thousands of newspapers and TV channels that reproduced this and many other images, was that they were fake. Not fake in the sense that they had been doctored - as in the infamous photographs taken by Reuters' Adnan Hajj - but in the very real sense that the scenes has been staged. They were artificial, devised entirely to create shots that the media would lap up - a grisly exercise in propaganda by a terrorist organisation which had its own agenda. And the media lapped it up. [....]

A must read




Written to fail, Fred Kaplan, slate.com, August 23, 2006
www.canada.com/nationalpost/news
/issuesideas/story.html?id=56c43242-
d1a6-4d3d-a4c8-8266ab0ccf45

[....] At his Aug. 14 press conference, President Bush was asked about the distinction. He replied:

"If somebody shoots at an Israeli soldier, tries to kill a soldier from Israel, then Israel has the right to defend herself. She has a right to try to suppress that kind of fire. And that's how I read the resolution."

The Israelis, however, read the resolution differently. In their interpretation, an attack on Hezbollah weapons is, by definition, a defensive operation. Or, even if it's not, Paragraph Eight of the resolution requires "the full disarmament" of Hezbollah and bans the "sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government." As long as Hezbollah and its regional allies continue to violate the resolution, Israeli officials refuse to be bound by its terms unilaterally.

One problem, though, is that the resolution lacks a mechanism --or even clear language -- for enforcing these restrictions. Paragraph one's ambiguous language favours Israel's interest. Several other paragraphs favour Hezbollah's. [....]

Death row bomber plotted new attack on smuggled laptop -- Bali , By Richard Lloyd Parry, Aug.

ONE of the plotters of the deadly Bali bombings in 2002 raised funds for a second attack on the island via an internet connection from his cell on death row, a senior Indonesian policeman admitted yesterday.

Imam Samudra [....]

Last year Mr Setyadi, an information technology lecturer who was conniving with a prison warden, smuggled the computer into the jail in Bali where Samudra was being held after being sentenced to death for the first bomb attacks.

Over the course of several months the two remained in touch until Samudra was moved to a high-security prison an island off Java after the second Bali attack in October last year which killed 23 people.

“Imam Samudra . . . directed the fundraising for the second Bali bombing,” Colonel Golose said in Jakarta yesterday. “The laptop allowed Imam Samudra to chat without restrictions in Ahlussunnah and CafeIslam chat rooms [both internet chat rooms with Islamic themes]. This took place before the second Bali bombing.” [....]

The Many Faces of Belgian Fascism , Aug. 22, 06
www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1270

A quote from Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal, 22 August 2006
There is also the amazing case of journalist Paul Belien, who edits the Brussels Journal, a pro-American, Euroskeptic, anti-Islamist blog. [....]

Two weeks after the article appeared, Mr. Belien received a letter from the Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, a government-mandated body whose mission is to "assist victims of discrimination" and "sensitize the general public on anti-discrimination." [....]

Crying racism and hate crime -- the tools of the Islamo-fascists to close down deserved criticism.



The facts about AIDS , wagccan, 8/22/2006 12:04:34
www.canoe.ca/mb2/messages/cnewsf/12033.html

I watched a documentary about AIDS in Africa. Did you know that the high priestesses in some places say to the people with AIDS that to cure it “you need the blood of a virgin” So what are these intuitive people doing? They rape kids even their own daughters in one case it was a 6 month old baby.

If they want money to go to this cause then they should get rid of the high priestesses or at least educate them so they can stop saying that drivel.

I have read this concerning South Africa elsewhere.



Heroin is never 'safe' , Rachel Marsden, Aug. 24, 06
www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists
/Marsden_Rachel/2006/08/24/1772687.html

[....] The leftists -- including three former Vancouver mayors -- are all out in full force. Some of these people are against junk food in schools, but if little Johnny wants to pump some junk into his arm, they'll gladly use mom and dad's tax money to help him find a vein. I'm starting to think that the only way to get lefties to stop pushing for legalization of hardcore drugs is to get big corporations like Halliburton or Pepsi to start making crack and heroin.

The mayors say that "scientific data" proves the clinic is a success. Of course it does. Aren't the people doing the research the same ones who will be out of work if the clinic shuts down? It's like saying, "a survey of McDonald's employees proves that McDonald's makes the best cheeseburgers in the world."

We keep hearing that the clinic "saves lives." This injection site is so "safe" that hundreds of addicts have overdosed right inside the clinic since it opened in 2003. They then head out into the tourist district to shoot up some more and score drug money. [....]

Saving our sovereignty , Ken Coates and Bill Morrison, National Post, August 23, 2006
www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas
/story.html?id=6179abd0-fe07-4d41-be67-fd92a15a43f7

Ken Coates is Professor of History at the University of Waterloo. Bill Morrison is Professor of History at the University of Northern British Columbia.

In its Monday editorial, "Polar Opposites," the National Post struck an important chord: Canada's neglect of its northern regions has been shameful. In calling for support for scientific research in the territories, the Post made a crucial connection between the country's military obligations in the North and broader issues relating to the development of the region.

Happily, the North appears to have a new champion in Stephen Harper. The Prime Minister has sketched out a high-cost, high-risk plan for bringing the region into the national mainstream. After generations being viewed with the political equivalent of strobe lights -- periods of brilliant, intense concern separated by long stretches of studied neglect -- the North seems poised for a brighter future. [....]

Much more if you check ... worth reading.



Soldier ordered to stop blogging -- not clear why , Melinda Dalton, Aug. 23, 06
www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=
thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=
1156284610693&call_pageid=968332188774
&col=968350116467

KITCHENER, Ont.—A Kitchener soldier who has been blogging in Afghanistan for friends and family back home has been ordered to stop.

The military told Matt Austin, 21, to remove all of the blog's entries, the soldier said in a text message to his mother, Rose Anstett. [....]

Gomery fights release of sponsorship commission e-mails
www.canada.com/theprovince/story.html?id=
ae6419ce-f2ac-44af-8bd1-c364ef9bcb59&k=86886

Justice John Gomery is fighting a recent Federal Court judge's order to turn over all the e-mails he received regarding former prime minister Jean Chretien during his commission's hearings into the sponsorship scandal, as well as any memos in connection with his press secretary and the controversial media interviews the judge gave in 2004.

Three Canadians charged in Tamil arms plan , Beth Gorham, Aug. 21, 06
cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/
2006/08/21/1768655-cp.html

[....] An FBI affidavit says one of the Canadians, Sathajhan Sarachandran, told the agents he was taking direction from Pottu Amman, the man alleged to have masterminded the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, India's former prime minister.

The other two Canadians charged are Sahilal Sabaratnam and Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam.

The three men travelled to Long Island on Aug. 19 to try to buy black market weapons for an estimated $900,000 US, court documents allege.

They were looking for missiles to attack fighter jets and ships, officials say.

One of the men charged told agents that more money for the rebel cause is raised in Canada than the United States.

Academics are warned about burying their heads in the sand, Anna Fazackerley and Jessica Shepherd. Published: 18 August 2006, Chronbicle of Higher Education Supplement, via newsbeat1
www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/
story.aspx?story_id=2031867

[....] Universities have been warned this week that Islamist extremists are likely to target freshers fairs looking for recruits, fuelling accusations that politically correct academics are burying their heads in the sand about terrorism.

Shiraz Maher, who joined the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir while studying at Leeds University but later renounced his membership, told The Times Higher that universities were "bread-and-butter" recruiting grounds for extremist groups.

He said: "If you go to freshers fairs at University College London, the School of Oriental and African Studies and the London School of Economics next month, you will find Hizb ut-Tahrir undercover. [....]

Search: residence early in the morning , Hizb ut-Tahrir, Al-Muhajiroun and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK




What is the solution to homegrown terrorism?
www.ottawasun.com/News/poll_results.html

Stricter immigration policies 80%
More police and enhanced intelligence 12%
Multiculturalism and more dialogue with various cultural communities 9%
Total Votes for this Question: 1646

NDP Beliefs, SeanMcElroy, 8/21/2006 04:56:03
www.canoe.ca/mb2/messages/cnewsf/12018.html

That every government program is essential and under-funded;

That the failure of any government program is proof it needs more funding; [....]

There is much more ... than a grain of truth.



Diversion: Photos: Rio Carnival