Nov. 19, 2006: 13

CTV News has confirmed an alleged spy arrested in Montreal is Russian. Ottawa is trying to deport the man using a national security certificate.

news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/TopStories
/ContentPosting.aspx?feed
name=CTV-TOPSTORIES_V2&newsitemid=
CTVNews%2f20061116%2fmontreal_arrest_061116&showbyline=True

[....] The man was arrested at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport at about 6 p.m. on Tuesday, according to Melissa Leclerc, a spokesperson for Stockwell Day, Canada's public safety minister.

According to unconfirmed reports, he was about to leave the country when he was nabbed. If true, former CSIS agent Michel Juneau Katsuya said that would be a significant success for Canada's intelligence agency. [....]

Families upset by sentencing in sex assault case, Nov. 14 2006, CTV.ca News Staff

www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061114/
sex_assault_061114/20061114?hub=TopStories

Family members of victims sexually assaulted by a Winnipeg couple cursed and sobbed in court Tuesday, upset at what they felt were lenient penalties handed down to the husband and wife.

The 25-year-old woman was released after Justice Gerald Jewers gave her a sentence equal to the approximately two years she had already spent in pretrial custody. Her 39-year-old common-law husband was given another seven years behind bars. [....]

Crown prosecutor Jill Duncan ....

... the couple is "evil incarnate" for running a house of horrors, in which young girls were lured with promises of free liquor and drugs, and then brutally raped. [....]

Why would she get a lesser sentence than the man involved? Why? Why? Why? What happened to equality? That women are just as capable as men ... Perhaps what has been meant is that they are capable of reaping the rewards ... but not the punishments. Feminism as promoting equality? ... Obviously, feminism is not about equality. I must have been misinformed.




Woman good ... man bad

Currently there are brochures and letters in the post requesting money for shelters, often termed "battered women's shelters".

I just happen to know of a shelter client who provided the usual story; she was a "poor battered woman". In reality, so I understand, she was pursuing her own selfish desires and had found a lover ... an exciting younger man ... the kind who notices a fortyish woman in a bar on a Saturday night with her girlfriend--note, not her husband ... The new boy toy had just come out of prison, himself, in need of a good woman. When the husband learned of the affair, he kicked his spouse out ... still ignorant of the fact that she had been caught, convicted and punished--community service--for theft from one or more of the seniors in whose homes she had worked. The relationship with the lover suffered a failure to thrive ... and so she arrived on the steps of a women's shelter, lies ready tale of woe ready to smoothe her entry ... so I was informed.

This memory leaves me slightly jaundiced about the stories of "poor battered women". After all the years of feminist enlightenment about women's equality, the promotion of women's equality and rights in the education system and the media, why are so many women claiming to be in need of help? Are that many women so battered by men or by having made stupid choices in men? Has the system failed to teach women their value but that they must buttress that with education and the skills that would allow them to walk away from a situation where they are being ill treated? Or is this a feminist and media-created issue?

How many women do you actually know have been or who appear to have been battered? Women do tend to talk about their personal lives and confide in others--at places like the hairdresser's, for the latest; yet, I don't know of another woman who might even be subject to battering. For those who are, is it possible that these women actually had made stupid, unrealistic choices in acting without respect for themselves, then in choosing men likely to reinforce that? I am thinking of some of the language and behaviour I have overheard. The story above was the only one I could think of ... and the need for a shelter was created by her choices. Human nature being what it is, I also wonder whether there is a need for men's shelters. In my admittedly limited experience, women are simply not that weak. I'm guessing that the chickens, particularly the feminist chickens, have come home to roost -- pursuit of one's own desires without consideration of the consequences, without belief in right and wrong within the context of family and community, marriage being an easily dissolved institution of briefer and briefer length, if a more attractive lover comes along.

I am thinking of elderly people, women I have known who, even years after leaving their communities, still had ties to those neighbours, that community, that usually rural or extended-family support system. They gave me, through stories and reminiscences, the idea of interdependent and supportive families and neighbours, of respect for oneself and one's partner based upon the necessary and defined role of each within the household. They had convictions about right and wrong, even repentance and forgiveness, all buttressed by the teachings in houses of worship, along with community sanctions. Now, after years of the evolution in thinking about women's rights and equality, after organized feminism, we have male villains and a need for women's shelters.

What was the impetus for the idea of men as evil, women as good ... but needy? Did it start with acceptance of what past communities shunned and sanctioned in order to maintain the health of the whole? What was the impetus for the demise of the idea of right and wrong, the impetus for pursuit of momentary passion replacing respect for oneself and one's partner, honour, marriage, fidelity ... along with a healthy dose of realism about the results of foolhardy personal choice? Along with the idea of no fault insurance, we have morphed into a society with no fault behaviour. Now, the need is to provide shelter for the inevitable result of ill-considered personal choices, perhaps in not gaining education and work skills, then in not having developed reasons to have self-respect, and finally, in acting without consideration of personal consequences or of consequence to others--even of right and wrong--without reflecting upon how this would affect the extended family, the wider community and society.

With all the opportunities not afforded our female ancestors, opportunities for education and self-actualization, the women I am thinking of knew their importance, their role, and they derived both partner and community respect for being excellent at their work which was, in their era, a job at home within the family. With today's opportunities, why are so many women so downtrodden? Are we focusing upon the result rather than upon why women make the choices they do about their own futures, their education, then about getting involved in relationships with men who, had they been honest with themselves, these women knew would treat them badly ... if that (ill treatment / battering) is the problem. Has feminism helped create a problem which now needs a solution?

I don't think I shall be contributing.

Memory Lane - Gun Registry

How it began: Canada's First Muslim Terrorist, August 17, 2003

newsjunkiecanada.blogspot.com/
2003_08_17_newsjunkiecanada_archive.html

Marc Lepine was born Gamil Gharbi [....]

I believe it suited the purposes of feminists and government that the above facts be hidden.
First, Canadians might have begun questioning Muslim attitudes toward women much earlier and whether these immigrants make good Canadians -- if we do not want women to face such attitudes in Canada. That would not fit well with the government's immigration policies. [....]

Heads must roll over foul-up by Diane Francis, Financial Post, 2002.12.16, reprinted in The Guardian (Charlottetown), A6

The notion of a registry was the policy solution offered in 1994 by [Allan] Rock to stem gun-related crimes following the Montreal massacre of 14 women by the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater who changed his name from Gamil Gharbi to Marc Lepine. [....]

Howard Dean invitation riles Liberals -- U.S. Democrat to deliver key speech -- Some call choice insult to Canada, Les Whittington, Ottawa Bureau / The STar, Nov. 16, 2006. 05:31 AM

www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Content
Server?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=
Article&cid=1163631019257&call_pageid=
968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

OTTAWA—The upcoming Liberal convention appears destined to open on a decidedly discordant note as U.S. political brawler Howard Dean takes the platform for the keynote address.

.... a brilliantly timed coup. .... on-air scream ... [....]

[Some] are not amused that their party, which has often accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of marching in lockstep with the United States, is looking to an American to establish the tone of the national convention in Montreal.

... Ray Heard, a well-known Toronto Liberal. ....

Heard said he resents the fact the party could not find a Canadian of national stature to open the convention, which runs from Nov. 28 to Dec. 3

"Why couldn't a Canadian do it? If Stephen Harper invited an American conservative to open a Conservative convention in Canada, the Liberals would be going crazy with outrage." [....]

US input only counts as negative if it is a Conservative connection. The media will forgive; it's a Liberal convention.




A Witch's Brew: The Gutmann Affair and Middle East Studies, by Winfield Myers, The Washington Examiner, November 16, 2006 -- or here

Winfield Myers is director of Campus Watch.

www.examiner.com/a-401900~Winfield_M
yers__A_witch_s_brew__The_Gutmann_af
fair_and_Middle_East_studies.html

www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2936

On Halloween, when University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann agreed to be photographed at her annual costume party (at which she dressed as Glenda the Good Witch) with a student dressed as a suicide bomber, [....]

Yet one looks in vain for such insights from a professoriate accustomed to reaping the benefits of a stable, affluent America while professing hatred for the virtues, habits and sacrifices necessary for the preservation of liberty. Few scholars of the Middle East bother to investigate thoroughly, much less condemn, radical Islamist terrorism.

A few examples from among many: [....]

Diversions

New Telephone Greeting.

Wouldn't it be pretty doggone wonderful, if this caught on, all over the country...?

"GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA."
"Press "1" if you speak English."
"Press '2' to disconnect until you can"

Would posting that be politically incorrect ... in Canada?


The last 50 years -- send it to those who would appreciate it.

Congratulations
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because...
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem .
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents .
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,

Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
We had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!
PS - The big type is because your eyes are shot at your age.

Isn't that a great last comment? I have to send it to some people I know who have a sense of humour. Thanks to a friend living in the US, one who keeps me supplied with chuckles.