This what happens when you stir up the crazies as is being done in New York. The anti mosque contingent led by bat shit crazy blogger Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has done its best to inflame the passions and is largely responsible for the rampant hysteria and islamophobia over the proposed building of a mosque on “hallowed ground.”
Things have reached such a point that I can say without much exaggeration that a “pogrom like” atmosphere is being created.
As the rabble rouser largely responsible for politicizing the issue, Ms Geller bears the responsibility when bad things happen to good people. And with this story, she now has blood on her hands.
A college student who did volunteer work in Afghanistan was charged Wednesday with slashing a Bangladeshi taxi driver’s neck and face after the driver said he’s Muslim.
A criminal complaint alleges Michael Enright uttered an Arabic greeting and told the driver, “Consider this a checkpoint,” before the brutal attack occurred Tuesday night inside the yellow cab on Manhattan’s East Side. Police say Enright was drunk at the time…
Besides a serious neck wound, cabbie Ahmed H. Sharif suffered cuts to his forearms, his face and one hand while trying to fend off Enright, prosecutor James Zeleta said while arguing against bail…
Enright volunteered for Intersections International, a group that promotes interfaith dialogue and has supported plans for an Islamic center and mosque two blocks from ground zero…
Sharif, a 43-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant who’s driven a cab for 15 years, was quoted in a news release from the New York Taxi Workers Alliance as saying the attack left him shaken…
About 6 pm Tuesday, Enright hailed the cab at East 24th Street and Second Avenue, police spokeswoman Deputy Inspector Kim Royster said.
Sharif told authorities that during the trip Enright asked him whether he’s Muslim. When he said yes, Enright pulled out a weapon – believed to be a folding tool with a knife blade called a Leatherman – and attacked him, Royster said.
And all this from a dude who’s supposed to into ‘bridge building.’ Either he didn’t learn his lessons or things are really getting bad on the streets of New York.
Last week I blogged about this story where Rogers was trying to hold a soldier to his contract even though he was being deployed to Afghanistan. Not only that but Rogers staff were particularly unhelpful in response to his queries.
But it took a few days (and helped along with some real bad publicity, I’m sure) but Rogers has finally seen the light and is going to do the right thing.
Rogers announced Friday that it not only will amend the cellphone contract of a soldier in Afghanistan but will also devise a new policy for those serving abroad.
Glenn Fraser is one hot soldier off to Afghanistan
” We have reached out to (Glenn) Fraser so we can address his concerns,” said Odette Coleman, director of communications for Rogers.
” We value our customers and we understand that their life circumstances may change, like Mr. Fraser going to serve our country in Afganistan.”
The decision was made in light of a Sunmedia column highlighting the concerns of Scarborough’s Richard Fraser who was upset his son Glenn, 20, was still forced to pay his monthly cellphone bill despite being deployed in Afghanistan.
“It just doesn’t seem fair,” said Richard, who was hoping the contract could be frozen while his son was abroad and fulfilled once home .
However, Rogers, he said, told him his son must honour his three-year contract.
Now they have had a change of heart.
” As a result we are amending our policy as it relates to customers on active duty,” Coleman said.
Coleman did not give a time frame of the new policy but did say ” the terms of the revised policy for customers in active duty are being defined. “
Knowing Rogers, I’m sure they’ll screw things up somehow, so I’ll be keeping an eye open for further developments.
Parliament is supreme, thank God. More here.
In yesterday’s precedent setting ruling, Speaker Milliken did his job and did it well.
Parliament reigns supreme.
In his ruling the Speaker did three very important things:
1) He upheld and reaffirmed the exclusive right of Parliament to manage its own affairs free from interference from both the Crown and the Courts. If the government had been so stupid as to be thinking of appealing the Speaker’s ruling to the courts, he effectively shut that possibility with prejudice.
2) He upheld and reaffirmed the the supremacy of Parliament over the Crown. Nothing is more important in our system of government than this principle. Blood and treasure have been spent upholding this idea. Good on the speaker for stating the case so clearly.
3) He reaffirmed that in a dispute over rights between Crown and Parliament that the guiding principle over the centuries has been compromise. Each give up something for the betterment of the realm.
It was a pleasure to read his ruling in its entirety. He absolutely eviscerates the government’s position with great panache and a more than a little dry wit.
This ruling should never have had to be made. (It’s nice to right, too!). The opposition was wrong to be attempting to be scoring political points on the issue of privilege and for passing the original resolution. The government was wholly in the wrong for it maximalist interpretation of the Crown’s rights.
Both side should have compromised at the time. The solution is obvious. Appoint an arbitrator(or arbitrators) acceptable to both sides to review the documents and make the decision. Justice Frank Iacobucci would be the ideal choice given that he’s already reviewing the files.
This decision is being hailed among many bloggers as a “win” for the opposition and a “loss” for the government. Given the Tories’ stupidity on this issue, it is hard to argue with that judgment. I would rather, though, that Speaker Milliken’s ruling be viewed for what it is, a reassertion of the Parliament’s prerogatives and rights. With that in mind the only winners are all of us.
There have been ‘rumours’ that the Prime Minister will call an election over this. If that is the case and if the election is fought over the issue of who reigns supreme, Parliament or the Crown, I will have to vote against the Tories. I’ve even emailed my (Tory) MP to that effect.
Despite my best efforts I really and truly do not understand today’s federal Liberal party.
Michael Ignatieff doing his best Liebrano interpretation
Every so often they show signs of life and even look like they’re getting a handle on being an effective opposition party but then they go and blow it.
Lately the party seems adept at consistently being on the wrong side of every issue that’s on the public agenda.
Like last year, Iggy took the summer off and then in the fall went off half cocked intoning that “Mr. Harper, you’re time is up.” (And moths later, not only is Harper still ‘there’ but he looks like he’s going to be ‘there’ for quite a while)
Then there’s the fixation on the Afghan detainees. Were Canadian troops guilty of torture by proxy? You would think that the Liberals, NDP and the CBC would get the message that despite giving this issue front page coverage for months on end that the people DON’T CARE. The electorate is far smarter than the opposition parties give them credit for. They understand that Afghanistan is not a very nice place to be with corruption and mistreatment endemic in the society.
Then there was the party’s national egghead conference. The party endorsed and confirmed its love of big government and higher taxes. ie the party decided to go full steam back to the 1960s.
More recently the party with its decision to whip the MPs and make them vote against abolishing the hated long gun registry, seems to have given up on winning any rural seats. Now there are excellent policy reasons for supporting restrictions on gun ownership and the like but the issue has been so badly handled that the well is poisoned. While it might play well with the party’s dwindling base, defending the registry will not go down well in many areas of the country.
And there is this enormous stupidity of requiring Supreme Court judges to be bilingual. In other words political correctness outweighs getting the best person on the Supreme Court. This measure effectively disenfranchises the vast majority of the country’s lawyers and judges.(certainly just about any lawyer or lower court judge west of the Ontario/Manitoba border). This legislation is not going down well in the West. I can only guess that the Liberal party has readopted the strategy of “Screw the West, we’ll take the rest.”
That strategy worked well for the party prior to to the rise of the Bloc(over 25 years ago now) when the Liberals had a lock on Quebec’s seats. the Liberals don’t seem to realize that it’s 2010 and not 1968.
In other words at each and every opportunity presented to them, the Liberal party shows that it has no clue.
If this keeps up, Stephen Harper truly will become the William Lyon Mackenzie King reincarnated. If that doesn’t send shivers up Liberal spines, it should.
To me it shows that they still don’t get why they were thrown out in the first place.
I see Richard Colvin will be back in the news whining on about the non scandal of Canadian soldiers maybe committing war crimes by proxy when Afghan detainees were transferred to Afghan authorities.
Add to that has been the distinct unpleasant experience of listening to the likes of retired Canadian diplomatic schmucks who think that Canada has no interests in Afghanistan.
Knock, knock. Helllooooo? Anybody home?
Of course Canada has interests in Afghanistan and to name just one: preventing the Taliban from regaining power and providing a base for crazy death obsessed Muslims from planning and launching terror attacks.
That sounds like a good reason to me.
My opinions on Afghanistan have not changed since i wrote about it last.
If you need another reason to be in Afghanistan check out this photo essay. A warning to the squeamish: it’s very graphic.
A sample of the horror:
Finally. Someone has actually done some research and discovered a FACT.
It took freaking long enough.
Since last year Parliament has been threatening to censure Ministers of the Crown for contempt of Parliament by not releasing documents to one of its committees as requested.
Parliament or more specifically, the House of Commons, says it has the right to access any document it wishes to see.
The government, acting as advisers to the Crown, is saying that that right is not absolute and that national security is one reason to withhold access.
Unfortunately, they are both right. What should be happening is that government and Parliament should be figuring out a way to compromise so that both side can save face and claim victory while ensuring sufficient access to the documents requested.
Instead both side have gone to ground and are digging in.
The Canadian MSM has breathlessly been reporting each twist and turn of this story.
But since the beginning what has been lacking is context.
Whenever an issue of privilege arises, it’s time to break out the history books and check for precedents. If there’s not Canadian precedent you look further afield and check how other great parliaments have dealt with the issue.
Surely the mother of parliaments at Westminster has dealt with such a situation. And what of the great daughter parliaments in Canberra and Wellington? How have they handled such a situation?
Here I blame the MSM. Back in the day before reporters became simple regurgitators of spin and press releases, they actually did research.
In this case it would have been a simple matter to make a few phone calls to reporters covering the parliamentary beats in London and Canberra and ask them if something similar has arisen. Failing that they could have made a couple of calls to some constitutional experts in England and ask them for their opinion.
But nooooooo.
It fell to the Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, to report that, gasp,
The Harper government’s point man on the Conservative decision to withhold records on the handling of Afghan detainees says MPs do not have an unlimited right to see state secrets that could compromise national security.
“Our parliamentary privileges are not indefinite and not unlimited,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told the House today. “The exact scope of those privileges have been a matter of debate since Confederation.”
He noted the Australian government routinely refrains from divulging documents to its Parliamentarians on the grounds some information cannot be disclosed.
I think we have an excellent speaker in the person of Peter Milliken. He respects Parliament and its traditions. I expect that he and his staff have been doing exactly the sort of research mentioned above. He will come to a good decision.
What a bunch of miserable lowlife motherfuckers.
What a bunch of morally vacuous eggheads, champagne socialists, maroons, nitwits, fuckwads, numbskulls, pond scum and nimrods.
Talk about being totally divorced from reality.
How to discredit yourself, your university, and professors everywhere.
Just sign a letter criticizing scholarships for children of fallen soldiers as “glorification of Canadian imperialism in Afghanistan.”
Normally, I’m not in favour of the use of human shields but I think the sixteen “people”(to use a term loosely) who put their names to this screed would make perfect candidates.
Ship ‘em out to Afghanistan and have them walk in front of our patrols. That way they could serve their country. I, for one, would not mourn them when they trigger an IED.
Needless to say every other sane person in the country is defending the idea and program.
In the last few months Canadians have two good examples of parliamentary principles in action.
The first was the prorogation foofaraw. Opposition activists bloviated that the Tories were for overthrowing democracy, acting like dictators, and on and on and on. The Opposition leaders blithered on about disrespecting Parliament. Liberal leader Michael “We Americans” Iffnatieff solomnly proclaimed that when he became Prime Minister that he would never abuse his power.
The pundits, bereft of the distraction of Parliament to write about, piled on the wagon. MSM opinion was almost universally negative: “the Prime Minister has too much power!” they cried. All of a sudden a decades old problem that had been obvious to anyone with a half a brain was new again.
As I pointed out at the time, though, that if the Opposition thought that there really was a point of principle involved they could vote non confidence in the government when Parliament resumed.
Of course, when Parliament actually resumed the progrogation protests were yesterday’s news and barely a peep was heard from the Opposition about the matter.
Indeed, Iffnatieff thought Parliament was so important that after only eight sittings, he abandoned the place for a cross country tour.
The headline “Iganatieff prorogues himself’ pretty much writes itself.
I could not believe how stupid he was to take such a trip at such a time. The optics were horrible. If consultations with Canadians were so damned important he had over two full months in which to undertake them. But noooo, he has to wait til Parliament is back in session.
It would seem that the amateur hour known as the Liberal Party of Toronto will still be with us for a while yet.
Then there is the second issue of principle: the right of the House of Commons to hold the government to account.
Now for political junkies this is like crack cocaine. After all what is more important that the rights of Parliament?
Civil wars have been fought over this issue. A King lost his head over this issue.
More on this in Part II
I do love a good take down, especially when I agree with them.
Good ones are a work of art and a pleasure to read – ragardless of whether or not you agree with them.
Like yesterday’s column by Conrad Black in the National Post:
The president has three principal problems. He is well to the left of the public and of what he promised the voters in 2008, and it is an old, passe leftism, that is authoritarian, deviously presented and was discredited in this country decades ago; the sort of nostrums that caused Bill Clinton and others to become ‘New Democrats.’ He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called ‘the gift’ of his own articulation. And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent.
The second of these problems seems to prevent the president from appreciating the last. The only serious domestic initiative to show for the last year is an obscene stimulus bill that has had to be defended by the spurious supposition of ‘jobs saved’ since, contrary to promises, unemployment has risen by over five million after it was enacted. That target could have been attained without squandering 787 billion borrowed dollars…
In foreign policy, engagement with Iran and North Korea, appeasement of Russia, over Georgia and missile defense, attempting to bully Israel and to deny that there was an agreement between the Sharon and Bush (Jr.) regimes over settlements, and siding with Chavez and the Castros in the Honduran crisis against constitutional democracy and America’s legitimate interests, have all failed, practically and morally, at least without knowledge of indiscernible and unlikely, contrary intelligence.
Ooooh look. Mr Colvin responds. Colvin Returns Fire writes Scott’s DiatribeÂ
But the best post, the one that shows that  this issue has jumped the proverbial shark belongs to Dr. Dawg. Entitled Devasting“, John lets it all hang out:
Richard Colvin strikes back. Every lie the government has told has now been refuted in detail.
No wonder the Harper administration is illegally defying Parliament, and shutting down a parliamentary inquiry into the bargain.
Liars, and quite likely war criminals. Most Canadians don’t believe a word they’re saying.
Time for the International Criminal Court to step in, methinks.
Not to blow my own horn 
but as I pointed out here back in November the Left left would have a field day with this issue. The prospect of tarring Tories as war criminals would be too great to pass up.  Any google search will show that “progressive’ bloggers have jumped on the war criminal meme with great abandon.
But trust Dr. Dawg to up the ante. Not only are the Tories liars, not only are they in contempt of Parliament; it likely that they’re war criminals to boot! But even that’s not good enough. The not so sane Dr. Dawg(John Baglow) wants to send his fellow citizens over to that well known totally unbiased institution, that paragon of justice,  the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Good luck with that Dr. Dawg.
There’s a great editorial in this morning’s National Post about not seeng the forest for the trees on the issues surrounding Afghanistan:
It is a peculiar neurosis of the modern left that it seems more concerned with the prospect of censure by international do-gooders than it is with the prospect of a whole nation being dragged into Islamist despotism by a Taliban regime whose “mistreatment” of “detainees” in the pre-9/11 period took the form of hanging them from soccer goals, cutting off their extremities and letting them bleed to death. Perhaps those who posture on the side of angels might want to focus more on ensuring that such spectacles do not repeat themselves — rather than trying to rack up points in Question Period.
Not to blow my own horn  but that’s pretty much what I said here back in November. That was my opinion on this Torturegate stupidity then and it is still my opinion now.
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I like Lawrence Martin’s latest column ( which almost never happens with this dried up old hack)
He pretty much nails the point that Harper is growing into the job of Prime Minister.Â
He(ed:Â Harper)Â is unchallenged. He has complete control over his party and the government. He towers, like Zeus, over the opposition. His attack machine mows down all adversaries.Although not in majority government land, you can sense his grip on the country gradually tightening. Unlike Liberal reigns, there is not one region that spurns him. He has smartly mixed his appeal, tossing meat to the middle with his glut of Keynesian spending and butter to the base with his glorification of the military, his law-and-order leanings, his reluctance to go green.
Regrettably, Mr. Harper’s success is based much more on politics – his brutally partisan wielding of executive power – than on inspired policy. The key is his Vlad the Impaler toughness. He’s got more venom than your average cobra.
Some leaders lose authority as they move along. Others acquire it. This PM’s gravitational pull increases with time, as does his resilience.
I especially like the line “He’s got more venom than your average cobra.”Â
But while i liked the column it was a comment in the feedback by one “Joe Dick” that really caught my eye:
Very sad to see all this support for what evidence suggests is a war criminal.
Canada under Harper is not a country any of us should be proud of.
As hullaballoo over the treatment of Afghan detainees drags on, leftist blogs have themselves all in a tizzy. Already some bloggers acting as judge, jury, and executioner, have already decided that some of our troops are guilty of war crimes. I expect that it’s only a matter of time before variations of “Harper is a war criminal” meme catches on.Â
See here and here for my posts on the topic
