Dec. 11, 2006: Various #1

Canadian Food Inspection Agency: CFIA issues warning of possible contaminated spinach , Dec. 10, 2006

www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2006
/12/10/spinach-salmonella.html

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is warning the public not to eat an American brand of fresh spinach that may contain salmonella bacteria.

The Queen Victoria brand of fresh spinach was sold in 10 ounce (or 284 gram) packages, bearing UPC 0 33383 65201 6 and the best before date of "DEC 07."
The agency said in a release Sunday that the product was distributed in the Atlantic provinces.

Ottawa announces local phone deregulation , 11/12/2006 4:20:54 PM

news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/TopStories/ContentPosting.aspx?newsitemid=
CTVNews%2f20061211%2fphone_deregulation_061211&feedname=
CTV-TOPSTORIES_V2&showbyline=True

The federal government wants to deregulate local telephone services in areas where there is competition. Critics fear this will mean higher prices in areas of low competition.

Industry Minister Maxime Bernier said Monday that the government intends to overrule a CRTC decision that provides for regulation of local phone services. [....]

Does that mean that where there is only one phone company now, there will not be this freedom? Deregulation may be positive or not, but I'm inclined to prefer freedom to the oppressive regulatory rules and the networks of those who always seem to win ... with a little help from their friends and regulators. I suspect if we could be rid of the regulatory shackles imposed by those who don't ask us but check out what the activists and other groups want, we might begin to enjoy our freedom. Of course, people fear something they have not experienced so the MSM will play on that. Smaller is sometimes better, as long as we have freedom to choose.

I don't want to hear that another do-gooder, activist group has formed, the Friends of the Telcos, or something like that, rather akin to the Friends of the CBC, to agitate, to march, to protest, to be activists in the service of ... whoever pays their way.



Carol Skelton, M.P. - Setting the Record Straight on Status of Women Funding
www.carolskelton.ca/releases2006/20061207-oped.html

It is important to be clear on the recent changes Canada’s New Government has made to Status of Women Canada.

Canada’s New Government was elected because of its promise to deliver value for taxpayer dollars. This promise is being kept. Programs are being reviewed to ensure every taxpayer dollar is spent to achieve results that benefit Canadians. Government waste is being eliminated and reinvested in programs for people.

Lone gunman: The Ecole Polytechnique massacre was a freak tragedy. So why is every man made to feel guilty for it? , Barbara Kay, National Post, December 06, 2006

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=
75e56e58-5238-4d65-82ff-e87f841303e3

[....] a political industry emerged, which produced in the massacre's name: gun control laws, lavish public spending on women's causes, feminist-guided school curricula and a high tolerance for overt misandry. [....]

Publicly endowed grievance rites like the annual Dec. 6 vigils are inappropriate responses to isolated acts of violence. National mourning ceremonies should consecrate events that have shaped our civic character. Honouring the dead should draw people together -- the whole country, not half -- either to heal historic wounds, acknowledge sacrifices made on all our parts and strengthen our sense of national purpose, or to affirm solidarity in the face of calamities inflicted by a real, external enemy.

This is a copy of a letter, not the original article.

Telegraph News UN downgrades man's impact on the climate , Dec. 10, 2006

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=
/news/2006/12/10/nclimate10.xml

Perhaps you should question your MP's.

Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.

[....] Why have we not heard much about this in statements about global warming made by our MPs in the House of Commons?

Surely our MPs owe it to Canadians to give us a balanced and truthful approach to the whole matter of greenhouse gases and global warming.

Could it be that the Prime Minister is on the right track after all to insist Canadians have a "Made in Canada" solution to pollution and greenhouse gases?

Free advice for Stephane Dion, National Post, December 06, 20

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters
/story.html?id=bc997220-20ce-431c-a1bd-09c0468da60b

[....] - We're not suggesting you should sell your dog Kyoto. Yet. But your single-minded obsession with the protocol is already looking a little bit -- what's the polite word? -- idiosyncratic. Even environmentalists are increasingly recognizing that trying to nail carbon emissions to arbitrary national baselines by means of a quota system would have been a dumb idea, whether or not it "worked." Shackling yourself to a specific, failed approach to climate change is unwise.

If you want to build credibility, start saying the things the environmentalists will be saying two years from now, not what they said two years ago. Price signals always work better than quotas. [....]

Bill C-257: A threat to the little guy , Garth Whyte, Ottawa Citizen, December 06, 2006

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/
story.html?id=de7a30b5-6909-4780-9138-57fae62039bf

Garth Whyte is the executive vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

The setting of a minority government is fertile ground for opposition parties to push legislation that under less politically charged circumstances would never see the light of day. Legislation banning replacement workers (C-257) has weaved its way past second reading to committee despite the fact that similar legislation has been rejected by the House of Commons numerous times.

Canada's small businesses fear the passage of this bill will have them blindsided by unions and will hurt Canada's competitiveness overall. [....]

I hate enforced membership in anything, unions included, even though sometimes they do good things for workers. It is the compulsion to join that I hate. Let those who wish to work together in a union join one, the same for marketing boards. Let the rest do what they choose. Is it too much to ask that individuals have freedom from joining unions, and the political causes they support -- and also end the fact that unions be able to bar people from moving from one province to another to work, if not in all, at least in certain fields. Quebec has used this to bar or greatly discourage worker movement into Quebec in some industries ... but Quebeckers seem to move freely into other provinces, at least in the road repair and construction industry.



Future Chelsea Clinton In-Law in Jail -- only a rumour of an engagement -- but it might affect Hillary's ambitions for the White House, if that is her ambition, Friday, Dec. 8, 2006 4:32 p.m. EST

www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006
/12/8/164251.shtml?s=us


The end of history

This man could only be French , Joseph Brean, National Post, December 09, 2006

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.ht
ml?id=32c2f668-86b1-4d74-8d53-778b9ed8f8a4&k=14704

[....] The problem, he said, is the belief that the victories over Stalinism and Nazism were the final victories..... Europeans have been deluded .... we have now come into the eternal moment of peace." [....]

This is the "end of history" thesis, ....

... made popular by Mr. Levy's friend Francis Fukuyama, [....]

And so now, instead of a sense of urgency about impending threats to democracy, Europe has a tendency toward appeasement, and a "flourishing industry of scapegoats," the two most common of which are Israel and America. [....]

Search: Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida , "I would never conclude from my unbeliever status to the condemnation of religion" , If Bernard-Henri Levy

Worth reading.




"Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat." , Kate at SmallDeadAnimals.com, via W, and thanks.

www.smalldeadanimals.com/

Every so often one reads something that contains such obvious truth, that is communicated with such clarity and efficiency, that it comes to serve as an ideological anchoring point. This is one such piece for me, first published in 2001. I've been meaning to share it for some time now.

Multiculturalists insist that we change how we teach our children, in order to reshape how they think. Specifically, they must stop thinking of Western and American civilization as superior to other civilizations. The doctrine underlying this position is cultural relativism -- the denial that any culture can be said to be better or worse than any other. Cultural relativists take the principle of equality, which in the American political tradition is applied to individuals in terms of rights, and apply it instead to cultures in terms of their value.

One approach taken by multiculturalists to extinguish feelings of cultural superiority is to revise reading lists in our schools to minimize the influence of those they deride as "dead white males." [....]

From the speech "Multiculturalism: Fact or Threat?" by Dinesh D'Souza, given on May 22, 2001 in Boise, Idaho. The rest is here. The little periodical it first appeared in, Hillsdale College's Imprimis, is truly unparalleled in the quality of content per square inch of copy. And it's free!

Thanks to W and Kate MacMillan at Small dead Animals. Go to the SDA website for the links in this article: www.smalldeadanimals.com/



Hollinger Inc. Sells Toronto Headquarters , NewsMax.com Wires, Friday, Dec. 8, 2006

www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006
/12/8/144143.shtml?s=mo

TORONTO -- Hollinger Inc., the holding company through which Conrad Black ran his once-mighty media empire, said Friday it is selling its longtime headquarters in downtown Toronto, signaling another step in the former press baron's fall from grace.

Hollinger said it will sell the building, a compact but imposing 1850s neoclassical structure at 10 Toronto Street, to investment manager Morgan Meighen & Associates for C$14 million ($12.2 million). [....]

Trusts decision damage continues -- Was pledge broken to pay for next 1% cut to GST? by Diane Francis, Financial Post, December 07, 2006

www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=
ff035740-01c5-4876-b0fe-257fa72c6a09&k=48442

[....] Here's the question: If income trusts face a four- or even a 10-year demise, will they be able to issue debt and securities to fund acquisitions and payment of distributions?

If rules stipulate income trusts cannot issue debt and equity to fund acquisitions and pay distributions they will collapse further in price. [....]