High Park, Toronto

Toronto's huge, protected tract of parkland called High Park is well worth the respect it is due. It has a long and storied history. And as a parkland within the greater confines of a large and growing metropolis, it represents a natural escape existing within a concrete jungle.

As a natural resource located close to the waterfront of Lake Ontario, extending upward from there, and readily accessible by anyone who lives in the city who might wish to touch with nature from time to time it is an invaluable treasure.

So, that a group of Mohawk Warriors have set up a protest camp in a section of High Park is explicable only because they oppose the ravaging after-effects of off-road cyclists using the natural resource of a huge inner-city park as a social gathering point for avid outdoor enthusiasts. Enthusiasts who do not really respect nature for what it has to offer. Theirs is not a vision of nature to be admired and to serve as inspiration.

Rather the young people who use the park as a venue for riding their machines on inclines and jumps to contest their agility and abilities as stunt riders disparages nature. For in the end the use to which they put the park is one that destroys the natural lay of the land, and it despoils the beauty to be seen there.

The BMX tracks that have been built in the park as a venue for bored inner-city youth looking for thrills corrupts the original purpose of a natural parkland.

This is not, of course, the reason that the Mohawk Warriors have set up a protest within the park. Their outrage is manifested by what they claim to be an insult to a cemetery. To the memory of ancient aboriginals who once roamed the terrain and whose bones may have been laid to rest within the park confines.

For them it is a matter of respecting an ancient burial site. That may have resonance with certain sensibilities, but it should not necessarily be the entire reason for protesting the misuse of High Park's auspices.

The trails within the park should be left for the recreational use of walkers, runners, those who enjoy the opportunity to be within a natural forested setting. To witness the beauty of nature. To take advantage of the opportunities given them to see mature trees and forest plants in various seasons.

It could be used perhaps for casual bicycling as well. But certainly not for the destructive use of altering the terrain for the purpose of giving adventurous thrills to those who have no appreciation whatever of nature's heritage to the people who live within the city.

Solutions? Here We Are!

The long-awaited speech by the President of the United States of America on the cusp of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been received with truly mixed feelings. Mostly the feelings are mixed between incredulous and disbelieving.

Mind, the president relieved himself of his impressions and feelings about the eventuality of a Palestinian state alongside that of the State of Israel, in the context of a longer, large speech of the general conditions currently prevailing in the Middle East and North Africa. Where support of long-time allies were disposed of, and a selective attack mounted on another.

It isn't entirely clear why a speech focusing primarily on the "Arab Spring" also mentioned Israel and President Barack Obama's view of how Israel should comport itself officially in the prosecution of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority, for the 'political awakening', confrontations and state brutality taking place really have nothing to do with Israel.

Other than the occasional reported outburst from protesters in Libya, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt about the Israeli aggressors. And the equally pointed expressions of exasperation by the ruling elite masquerading as benevolent dictators that the protests have been fomented by the Israeli Mossad.

But it is President Obama's considered opinion, one to which he has given great weight, that Israel must seriously consider and follow through with a series of concessions to the demands of the Palestinians to create an environment where the Palestinians might consider sitting down at the negotiating table for serious talks about peace with the Israelis.

No one seems to expect any manner of concessions to be available from the Palestinians.

The 'right of return' remains sacrosanct; the PA's Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's admission of his belief that returning Palestinians should be absorbed within the new Palestinian State is not favoured by the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas, and Mr. Fayyad is definitely out of favour.

The borders issue has received an unequivocal - almost - endorsement by President Obama; back to 1948, and bargain if you can for 'mutually agreed swaps'.

With a Palestinian Authority that has visions of sugar plums in the shape, colour and fragrance of swapping promises for accessing the entirety of the region, usurping the very ground that the State of Israel sits upon. The mourning of the Nakba will be concluded in the triumph of accession, righting a wrong that the United Nations imposed upon the poor Palestinians.

And the accursed, usurping Jews can just go back from where they came from - anywhere but the Middle East. And that nicely settles the issue of an undivided Jerusalem.

Too Cynical for Comfort

The general election of 2011 for Canada's 41st Parliament is over and done with. Whew! And we've attained a majority government. Whew again!

Four years at the least where the government may govern for the good of the country without the constant threat of the opposition parties forming a common front to remove the minority from power. Installing themselves in the process. And infuriating the voting public because what they insist is perfectly legal is still insulting to the democratic process.

After all, if the opposition parties appealed to the electorate as potential governors of the country they would have been voted into that position. People like to think that their effort in attending the polls and voting as they see fit counts for something. It enrages them to think that their vote can be treated so cavalierly.

And in all likelihood the constant threat of the opposition ousting the minority government and installing a coalition helped to elect the current Conservative majority government.

There were some shocks, to be sure. This was an unusual election. With an increased voter turnout. And the truly puzzling lemmings-over-the-cliff phenomena in Quebec, where the horribly irritating and nationally useless Bloc was thrown out on its collective ear, and the NDP which positioned itself as a powerful ally to Quebec's dream of nationality, was given a thorough sweep.

So now there is a 19-year-old Member of Parliament sitting for Quebec, and a woman who couldn't be bothered to campaign and spent her time outside the country instead; only two of many college students and other casual picks who were astounded to find themselves handily elected on May 2nd. The event seemed feckless and foolish, but the voters have spoken.

And that seems to be why most people are inordinately affronted; that should be amended to clarify that the media are offended, the NDP is offended, and several provincial premiers are offended, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he of the majority parliament who may now rule as he will, has done just that.

It is no compliment to the voters who rejected three Conservative candidates, only to see them appointed (and, as the case may be, re-appointed) to the Senate. What could Mr. Harper be thinking? Well, for starters, stacking the deck.

Too cynical for comfort.

Officially Sanctioned Extortion

Canadians feel complacent that our security is assured, that illicit attempts to force any of us to part with our hard-earned cash will bring the law to our side, protectively. We live in a free and fair society, one where each of us is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees us equal treatment under the law. Providing us the choice of religion, ideology, gender orientation.

Our right to free speech and free association is guaranteed under the Charter. To a certain point.

Unless any of us utter hurtful slander geared to cause pain and suffering and danger to others. And then the law steps in, for there are anti-hate laws that protect society. Of course if someone is not being utterly hateful and dangerous to your well-being, but being provocative and causes you distress you can get your own back by claiming hurt feelings. Take those hurt feelings to a human rights tribunal and you're away to the races.

If there is a criticism that impacts on you personally, if someone who offers specialized services to the public, but declines to provide those services to you, become affronted; it is your due. For the human rights tribunals are there to look to your peace of mind. You can trample on someone else's peace and security and values by imposing your own on them, and that's a lesson learned, isn't it?

And psst! it won't cost you a red dime. Designed and paid for on taxpayer funding. And through the process of impressing on the tribunal just how hurt your feelings are and how unfair it is that a religious group refuses to honour your orientation because it offends their value system, take the opportunity to give them a come-uppance, courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer.

In the process you can bleed them of their assets as compensation for hurt feelings.

Cry racism, or homophobia or any other manner of phobia to impress the human rights tribunals and presto! Your case is made for you. Because that's what their raison d'etre is, after all; to defend those who are bleating and to offend those who claim innocence. There is no neutrality, no balancing of opposite and apposite standards and opinions, there is your tragic story that must be pursued to your satisfaction.

Make your story compelling enough, describe your grief over the insult, the assault on your human dignity and watch the tribunal excoriate the offender, and see them empty their pockets to satisfy the fine that will go directly into yours. These are shakedown tribunals under a human rights guise. The complaint whatever the issue is the issue.

The outcome is a settlement agreed upon by a harassed and discombobulated individual or group who never in their wildest nightmares imagined themselves as human rights defilers.

Choices and Consequences

It's tragic that young people feel themselves invulnerable to harm, and entitled to exercise less caution than they should in the exuberance and celebration of their youth. Young men in particular - but not exclusively, between the ages of 16 and 24 appear to be particularly susceptible to the delusion that nothing will occur of an untoward nature as a result of any reckless behaviour they engage in. Life is an ongoing adventure, after all.

But not for everyone. Some people die in the pursuit of that adventure. And that's what happened to a privileged son of a former Canadian premier; he became the instrument of death for a close friend. This was an accident, there was nothing intentional about it, other than the intent to have fun. Having fun for so many is synonymous with alcohol consumption; it loosens up the social inhibitions and makes decision-making just so much easier.

Jack Tobin, son of Brian Tobin, really has no excuse for his behaviour that took the life of Alex Zolpis. They were having a Christmas Eve blast at Byward Market, isn't that what young guys do? Engage in exhibitionism, frighten the life out of more sober people around them, challenge others to join them in having fun.

Jack Tobin's act was a commission of stupidity; his attitude prevailed even before alcohol was consumed. If he believed while sober, before the night on the town with his buddies, that drinking and driving was a bad combination he would not have done just that while intoxicated. His privileged background and his obvious sense of intelligence and honesty, if anything, should have imposed an obligation of caution upon him.

He cannot be excused for the inexcusable. The tragedy that his stupid behaviour caused, with two friends caught under the vehicle he was wheeling about on the roof of a parking garage caused a death. One man dead, another man's life impaired. There is no doubt he has suffered the agony of self-blame. But he will also doubtless suffer the shame and blame that an act of free will however intellectually impaired causing death, deserves.

There was another trial that took place recently of a woman, Dominika Duris, found guilty of driving while impaired by alcohol, in the death of her 20-year-old friend who was a passenger in her vehicle. She had been acquitted in an earlier trial, and second time around she was found guilty and sentenced to a two-year conditional sentence, including house arrest.

Both she and Jack Tobin are guilty of vehicular homicide. They both chose to drive while under the influence of alcohol and both caused the death of friends. Conditional sentences, house arrest, speaking to school groups as part of their punishment, week-end jail terms are all alternate sentencing potentials for young people.

There is no punishment quite as sobering as, at the very least, a minimum incarceration as society attempts to teach shallow young minds that their choices have consequences.

Arctic Resource Ownership

Map of the polar region, showing Peary's 1909 route to the North Pole. (Corbis) Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/05/19/is-the-rush-for-the-arctic-back-on/#ixzz1MtMBs1kc

Canada has had a long-standing territorial dispute with Denmark in the Arctic over Hans Island. The Arctic territorial nations all lay claim to ownership of 'their portion' of the Arctic area, but the territories are not clearly defined and there is much overlap in claims. Particularly with the discovery of great natural resources to be mined and claimed to enrich those nations with sovereignty of the areas in dispute.

Russia, the United States, Canada and Norway, along with Denmark, all claim ownership of various areas of the Arctic. Russia famously made headlines when it planted a three-foot titanium flag using a submersible, to hammer home the point that it plans to claim its territory and with it the riches ensconced there in natural resources.

As the environment changes and passage through the area becomes feasible year round eventually, shipping challenges Canada's claim to the North West Passage. Those who plan to increasingly use it as an efficient transitway claim it is international waters and is not in the possession of Canada.

Early explorers from Norway, Russia and the United States all gave those countries an investment in the future.

Now Denmark has unveiled a plan for its Arctic territories to lay claim to the North Pole sea bed. "We expect that Denmark will be able to document claims to an area that among other things includes the sea bed at the North Pole" referring to a ten-year strategy. This initiative will lead to a confrontation for ownership with Russia, the U.S., Canada and Norway.

Thanks to new undersea mining technologies - it lies within the capacity of those nations that can document and prove to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea their claims to ownership - they will be able to harvest 30% of the world's undiscovered gas resources and the 90 billion barrels of oil to be derived from those undersea areas.

All of the nations claim their ownership of the Arctic area in a 200-mile radius from their shorelines. Russia is invested in proving that the gas, oil and diamonds that exist on its claimed territory - the Lomonosov Ridge - is theirs alone. But experts also say that the Ridge does not represent part of the continental shelf, but the point where two ocean floor plates spread.

Since the Ridge extends from Russia to Canada, claims by Canada should have at least as much merit as Russia's. From time to time all the countries involve say they are invested in working amicably together. Then greed gets in the way of good intentions and each embarks on its individual plans to prove ownership, disputed by the others.

The geographic and geopolitical assertions on all fronts with a view to ownership of seabed resources will remain a contentious issue for some time to come until full clarification can be achieved through proper mapping and documentation and geological identification. Meanwhile the issues involved see all those nations jostling for primacy and injuring diplomatic relations.

Practising To Deceive

What is it that motivates high-powered alpha males who consider themselves to be so entitled that they cannot maintain their most intimate personal relationships intact? They claim and possibly believe that their love for their mates are absolute, yet they are unable to forego the piquancy of the pursuit. Sexual conquest and gratification seems to overcome all other needs, urging to be fulfilled.

It is a human enough trait to succumb to inner urges, but the adult in us also cautions against excess and the destruction of vital relationships.

There is a choice; to maintain what is of emotional stability and deep value, or to knowingly, through the compulsion of emotional adventure and satisfactions derived from the thrill of achieving illicit relationships, to charge their atmosphere with the potential of destruction of a marriage. The urge seems irresistible to men who consider themselves to be elevated above the concerns that instruct most men although it is certainly not commonly unknown among the general population.

And, of course, women are as susceptible as are their male counterparts to forging relationships outside the confines of their marriages that will, in the end, destroy their marriages. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes because of a course of events that can no longer be restrained. The scenarios and the events themselves are as varied in circumstance and reason as the reflection of human dynamism and individual emotions and needs fulfillment.

Men and women search for intimate companionship, love and sexual gratification in monogamous relationships, then tire of the monotony and predictability and look elsewhere for additional uplifts. It seems to be men, largely, whose predator's instincts draw them toward destroying their intimate partnerships and with them, often enough, their public careers. Since it is high-profile public figures that draw the attention of the curious.

From politicians to socialites, sport figures to entertainment celebrities, aristocrats to the fellow living around the block, peoples' fallibility in maintaining constancy and the obligations of protecting and valuing special relationships seem to fall casually by the wayside of impetuous desires fulfilled. Women can find it in them to overlook casual errors in judgement, often enough.

But when it is revealed that their trust has been betrayed over a prolonged period of time, the sting of betrayal, that what they represent in the deepest possible emotional terms has not been sufficient to satisfy the cravings and the satisfaction of their partner represents a rejection of their value as partners. To discover that one's husband has maintained a long-standing affair under the radar of discovery represents a monumental blow to elemental self-esteem.

It represents a hard blow to the belief that a deep love and trust and understanding has been equally shared. It is destructive of not only the relationship but the psychical sense of self-worth. What woman would view with equanimity the revelation that her husband of a quarter-century fathered a child with another woman at the very same time that he impregnated her with their youngest child?

It is an unforgivable affront to the dignity of the relationship, a betrayal at the deepest level of the trust and love inherent in such a relationship. The deep and lasting harm that people do to one another through these secret alliances cannot be ameliorated by any kind of remorse after the fact. The deed is done and the pain is lasting.

"Another guy gov admits 2 cheating on his wife. Maybe we need more women governors. Guys: Keep ur pants zipped, for Pete's sake." Jennifer Granholm.

It is only the public figures, the politicians and the socialites,the entertainers and the high-paid sport figures that cause a scandal when salacious reports of details are revealed through the media. But these scenarios with various squalid and disappointing details occur all too often within the lives of the general public, disrupting family life and leaving children to cope with deleterious emotional upheavals.

"This is a painful and heart-breaking time. As a mother, my concern is for the children. I ask for compassion, respect and privacy as my children and I try to rebuild our lives and heal." Maria Shriver

It is not possible to confine the damage to one's inner sphere. Gossip on a grand scale, as in regularly updated media reports as details emerge occurs and the public is agog with disbelief at the status of those involved in the fall from public grace - revealing as in the case of those like John Kennedy, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger that the emperor lost his dignity in a series of tawdry affairs.

"After leaving the governor's office, I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago. I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family. there are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologize to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry." Arnold Schwarzenegger

And on the micro-level, young children are bewildered as their parents no longer resemble the adults they know and have depended upon for emotional security and stability. They see their modest homes with for-sale signs and strangers trampling through for inspection, as the neighbours talk quietly among themselves expressing society's collective sadness at yet another human failure.

Mired In The Middle Ages

Ancient Persia has a magnificent and an ancient heritage. Modern Persia not so much.

With the Islamic Revolution the country under its new ruling Ayatollahs seemed to regress rather than progress socially. Iran's parochial concerns with its Shia traditions and its animosity toward the larger Sunni populations outside its borders, allied with its xenophobic attitude toward the outside world and its close embrace of Islamism earns it the reputation of a closed society.

Any country ruled by elite religious figures who consider themselves the supreme authority on politics, technology, social conditions and external relations and who bind themselves to the rigid traditions of religious fascism represents of its very nature, a totalitarian one that rejects human rights for its population.

Under the authority of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as religious head and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as political head, there is the spectacle of the hornet and the scorpion. There is a struggle for power and authority between the two figures, even while the Supreme Leader remains the titular head of state and the religious authority.

Iran's president, who exemplifies the country's rigid authoritarian stance and fervent religious devotion, while aspiring to acquire the annihilating properties of nuclear fission, believes himself to be the superior authority figure. While each supported the other's ambitions they were able to function as heads of government.

Now, it seems that the aspirations of each outdistances their usefulness to one another. It is hard to imagine which of the two is more fundamentally deluded. Both are intensely invested in fundamentalist Islam. The president is meant to take his orders from the Ayatollah, but it is clear that the President feels he should be junior to no one.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad feels his experience on the world stage and his ranking in the country gives him the authority to make decisions unauthorized by the Supreme Leader. Causing offence to those who support the Ayatollah, let alone Ali Khamenei himself. Each sponsors a different replacement as president for upcoming 'elections'.

This is a country that believes in the resurrection of a Hidden Imam, who will bring with him Armageddon; the ascension of the righteous to heaven and the destruction of the unworthy to dwell forever in the netherworld. Only those whom Shia Islam of the Iranian variety blesses will be saved; the lives of all others are forfeit for they are clearly undeserving.

This is a country where the political elite employ exorcists. Where Ahmadinejad's former spiritual mentor feels his pupil has been placed under an evil spell. "I am almost certain he has been bewitched", the ayatollah explained. Indubitably.

With Dignity and Regret

Neighbours, so near yet so far. Great Britain, historically dominating its neighbours, just as it dominated, through its imperialist colonial past, less advanced countries of the world to ransack them of their natural resources and to impose the British system of governance upon them, as chattel dependents.

Ireland, seen as backward as Africa, suffered the same indignity as India. With British landlords, and endemic poverty and neglect and violation of its peoples' needs. Above all, the need to be a free people. The resentment of the British occupation of its neighbours resulted in fear, anger and violence.

What is now left internationally of the British imperial past among the Commonwealth nations is largely a tradition of sound governance, a fair and just system of justice, and a second language of international communication. And, without doubt, residual resentment at the heritage of the dominated by the dominant.

The 'troubles' of a troubled land that suffered great privation because of its poverty and the struggles of its people to survive against brutal odds that included a disease blight that struck its major food crop were exacerbated by the disinterest of Britain to help provide Ireland's people with food to keep them from starving.

Neighbours who take unfair advantage of their less advantaged neighbours and then make no effort to assist them when they fall into dire existential straits are hardly neighbours; they are social predators. That was then, this is now. Now Britain is immensely sensitive to the past. And political correctness is the order of the day.

Now, Queen Elizabeth has undertaken a historic century-visit to Ireland in a long-awaited overture of caring friendship. She spoke of "forbearance and conciliation", of the need "to bow to the past, but not be bound by it". Ireland extended its warm hospitality to the monarch, that very institution that once violated its human rights.

Although there are and will always remain many Irish who will continue to resent Great Britain for its malfeasance toward its neighbour, who express through violent means the violence of their emotions against Britain, times have changed. The mutual brutality and expressions of anguished intolerance have been muted by time.

"It is a sad and regrettable reality that through history our islands have experienced more than their fair share of heartache, turbulence and loss. These events have touched us all, many of us personally, and are a painful legacy. We can never forget those who have died or been injured, and their families."

Conciliatory, heartfelt sentiments from a head of state whose obligation to the future has been made abundantly clear.

A State By Any Other Name

As Israel finishes celebrating the anniversary of its creation the Palestinian Authority with help from Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon and Gaza converge at border points to express their peaceful protest against the existence of the State of Israel. Molotov cocktails and rocks aside, the issue was that people have a right to protest that which grieves them. And the existence of a State within the Middle East, comprised of Jews is horribly aggravating.

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images Two Palestinian men with rocks during clashes with the Israeli police on Sunday near Ramallah.

As the Middle East and the Arab States within it are gripped with the drama of people agitating for their rights and the obligations of those who govern them to recognize their human rights, the core issues slip by as protesters are urged to vent their frustration not at those who govern them but at the existence of a Jewish State. Positioned where it is for the express purpose of irritating the Arab population to infuriated distraction.

The United Nation's plan for Partition was unacceptable to Arab Palestinians, and no less so to to the Arab States surrounding Israel. One attempt after another with combined Arab armies was launched to dislodge the new country from existence in a rage of exclusion and hatred. The original 1948 borders were increased to reflect the last of those attacks, enabling Israel to better defend itself.

And now that the Palestinians are united politically as well as in their incessant and indomitable need to express their outrage at the existence of Israel and to continue mounting their 'resistance' against the 'occupier', there is no longer any need at the pretense of searching for a peace agreement. United, Fatah and Hamas see themselves as conquerors.

But for international consumption the fable of the search for peace continues, and the Palestinian Authority has laid out its preconditions. These preconditions have a limited shelf life, for when, once again, elections take place at a time when Fatah can no longer stave them off, it may very well be Hamas that constructs the preconditions, and Hamas's precondition for peace is war.

Meanwhile the PLO's call for the right of "return" of the Palestinian people to land upon which Israel now sits is considered an 'inalienable right' under international law. A newly-constructed international law that has been practised nowhere else in the world. The popular' struggle' against the West Bank settlements must be re-commenced.

The infamous "refugee camps" for which the international community has footed the bill for over 60 years must remain as a living blight. Until such time - and it cannot be too soon - as the State of Israel is but a dim and bad memory. When such profound errors of judgement from within the international community take place, they must be reversed. There is a first time for everything.

The United Nations must recognize the racist character of the State of Israel which designates itself a Jewish State. That characterization of a Jewish state is clearly apartheid in nature, placing the status of Arabs in question for what kind of Arab would agree to live in a Jewish state? The fact that the Jewish state still honours equitable justice and citizenship for all is insultingly irrelevant.

With the dissolution of the Jewish state and the eventual absence of the State of Israel, there will be but one state, that of the Palestinians. It will be named the State of Palestine. And it will be recognized as an Islamic state.

Once Upon A Time

There was a time when Canada's immigrant population was far more homogeneous than it is now. Many of its immigrants came from English-speaking countries; Britain, Scotland, Ireland; the mother country. Many more came from Europe, they were Caucasian. Those who were brought into the country to labour mightily where no one else would, were often orientals and they faced great discrimination.

Canada was not kind to its visible minorities. Although black Americans, escaping slavery, made their way into parts of Ontario and Nova Scotia, they lived as free men and women, but still faced grave discrimination. Canada's native populations, the First Nations people, always faced bigoted discrimination. And Jews faced the legends "no Jews or dogs" for entry to private clubs and universities.

That was once upon a time. Now Canada celebrates itself as a tolerant, multicultural country whose pluralist society represents ethnic groups, cultures, and religions from across the world. Once upon a time there were no special social programs through government agencies that existed to assist immigrants to adjust to their new, adopted country. No language study groups, no social service agencies to provide introductions to society and social assistance.

Immigrants adapted, they learned the language, they worked at menial, subsistence jobs, they raised their children who attended schools and adopted Canadian customs with the language, and they melded into society. If they had assistance it was far more likely to come from those of similar backgrounds who saw it as a duty to help others. There was practical assimilation.

It is now far more costly for Canada itself to embrace, encourage and absorb immigrants. There is a recognized humanitarian aspect to immigration that did not exist in much earlier days, once upon a time. Family reunification, for example; before, family sponsored family by paying for every aspect of their emigration and taking responsibility for adjustment and investment in the future.

Once upon a time there was no universal health care, nor the broad social services seen today. Earlier immigrants had a difficult, often miserable time adjusting on their own, and they lived in helpful communities that offered support. New immigrants also live in communities that offer support, but support is there in many other ways, government-sponsored at every level.

And it is immensely costly. The cost underwritten by the taxpayer. A new study by the Fraser Institute points out that for every immigrant coming to the country it costs an average of $6,000 over what government spends for all Canadians in terms of social supports. Since 2004, it has been estimated the total cost of integrating immigrants reached $25-billion.

Family unification, bringing over parents and grandparents to join their adult children with young families is a costly affair because the parents and grandparents have nothing to offer to Canadian society. No language capability, nor working skills, and because of their advanced age, a need for health care and other services, and eventually old-age supplements.

Immigrants do not, even after their first decade of employment in the country, earn salaries commensurate with the average population, and therefore pay less taxes. They consume the same amount of social programs as other Canadians while adding less than the majority of the population to the tax base.

A longer-range thought process might come to the conclusion that eventually, with the second and the third generation, all those 'differences' will have been expunged; the children of immigrants, adapted into Canadian society and the workforce will earn what other Canadians do, and pay for their own social services.

And they all live happily ever after.

Each The Other

The man has defied medical opinion and has vastly outlived the diagnosis of an early expiration to become one of the world's most respected authorities as a theoretical astrophysicist. His very name evokes respect for his mind, encased as it is in a frail shell of a body that has succumbed to the dire effects of a degenerative motor neuron disease - utterly brilliant in his ability to conceive theories.

He is of the ilk of Leonardo da Vinci, albeit far less a master of so many disparate qualities and enterprises in the understanding of science, engineering, human physiology and the plastic arts. Perhaps Albert Einstein's brilliant theoretical mind more reflects the kind of inheritance that Stephen Hawking's represents. In any event, he is capable of conceiving scientific, natural notions beyond the capacity of most professionals in his field.

He is a theoretical genius.

One supposes that he has something in common with another theoretical genius. Moses, for example, who 'understood' that there is but one God, not a panoply of gods to represent all that nature presents to awe humankind. Stephen Hawking may implicitly and with confidence understand time and space and the natural elements that inhabit the heavens.

But this genius who was Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, a position held long before him by another genius, Sir Isaac Newton, also knows of a certainty that it is Nature alone that is responsible for the existence of all that is known and everything unknown. There is no God, he tells those who have no wish to hear his pronouncement.

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. there is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

"We should seek the greatest value of our action." Raising the affronted ire of the faithful who bridle at his arrogance at speaking of what he knows not. If it takes a great leap of faith to believe in what we cannot see in nature, but which is theorized to exist and which propels existence, why not that faith that exalts in the belief of the Almighty?

Ah, because science and theology are not twinned, though others declare that they are but a reflection of each the other.

Till Irritation Do Us Part

Cool, polished, civil and civilized. To agree between a married couple that although they still like one another and perhaps even respect one another, it is time to part. For the elemental reason that their interests do not converge, perhaps never did. They are too unlike in their values and priorities to continue living together in harmony. And if the investment has been only three years, why then, parting is not all that difficult.

Couples make that kind of decision all the time. To part, that is. But rarely is the parting agreeable in nature. More often each blames the other for not living up to a psychological agreement that each would make an effort to respect one another's differences and appreciate what they have in common. The effort sometimes becomes too onerous and either one or both decide the experiment was a failure.

Sometimes it's an inattentive partner, or a philandering one that causes the anger to mount. Sometimes it's an attitude of incurable arrogance that causes one to feel he/she is superior to the other, and the alpha runs the show. Then there's the possibility that the physical attraction has evaporated. Or one of the tandem isn't wholly invested in matching the bacon the other brings home.

Whatever the reasons, what usually results is rancour and vituperation. One of the brace may be thunderstruck by the announcement of the other that it's time to call an end to the duo. One may still love the one who now denies there ever was love to begin with. The longer the irritation of living together continues before the final break, the more urgent the passion of disharmony becomes.

Unlike the oyster, irritated by the tiny grain of sand that he keeps oozing nacre over to eventually produce a pearl, the couple headed toward divorce seldom produce a pearl of acceptable behaviour toward one another. Separation and divorce are heralded by angry and ugly denunciations.

That's how most marriages end, in blame and anger, whatever the cause. But then, if someone has limitless wealth and a more blase attitude toward life, augmented by a balanced personality and a large social following, things can be done differently. A three-year marriage between a young, attractive woman and an older, moneyed man can result in invitations to celebrate a divorce.

As has been done by Charles and Bonnie Bronfman, who have invited their circle of friends to a night of cocktails and party chatter in New York City. Their invitation signs off with "fondly, Bonnie and Charles"; with the explanation that they look forward "to continuing these relationships with everyone."

Just not quite so intimately with one another.

Upholding Law and Order

The troubling, if not utterly pathetic story of the Mountie who couldn't distinguish right from wrong. How then, is he able to administer the notion of law and order, let alone justice? Amazing how aptly named he is, as well: Constable Wright, confused about right and wrong.

Are we expecting just too much from law enforcement officers? Are we being unreasonable, anticipating that they are imbued with a righteous sense of what is socially permissible and to avoid the illicit in their personal lives? Is their training apt? Are we prepared to accept that an officer of the law will hold us responsible for our anti-social and criminal acts, while blithely pursuing those acts themselves?

Constable Matt Wright was definitely not in his right mind - or perhaps he was - when he decided not to document taking possession of drugs and cash after a drug bust. It wasn't that he had no previous experience as a law enforcement officer, why the man had also served in the military prior to taking up his profession with the RCMP. He then must have known what he was about, and it would appear that he approved of what he was planning.

Leaving no logistical trace of the drugs and cash he had earlier seized he took the opportunity some months later to depart the Chilliwack detachment with files, his notebooks, RCMP I.D. card along with the cash and drugs he had taken possession of, but never documented. This was the result of a street arrest, after all, and no one would be any the wiser. Was the miscreant about to begin an investigation into the cash and drugs that he had been relieved of, at his arrest?

Off he set with the undocumented goods. And then he reported that those items which he had left in his vehicle had been taken by some no-good who had broken into his car. It was only a "thin wad" of cash, he explained, containing a $20 bill as a wrapper, and perhaps 50 blue pills. No great loss. But he was brought before an internal disciplinary hearing where he made an admission guilt of the allegations brought against him.

And for his misdemeanor was docked two days' pay representing due punishment for neglect of duty. "The lapse of judgement in the proper care, control and storage of an exhibit may be out of character; however, members must be vigilant in properly processing exhibits. The public and the courts expect nothing less than perfection", huffed the disciplinary board.

Months later it was revealed, Constable Wright's supervisor discovered that he had purchased a rifle a few years earlier from a retired member of the RCMP. He never got around to acquiring a firearms certificate, nor was the rifle registered to him. The superior officer took possession of the firearm, and Constable Wright was charged under the RCMP Act with disgraceful conduct.

And docked (gasp!) another three days' pay for having an unlicensed firearm. The disciplinary board stated: "We commit to uphold the law and by acquiring a firearm without the proper licensing, Constable Wright is breaking the very law he swore to enforce." This severe chastisement caused Constable Wright to apologize.

He has demonstrated contrition, and expresses deep regret for having embarrassed the national police force. The RCMP has experienced a great many occasions of late for being deeply embarrassed by the unprofessional and occasionally not very exemplary behaviour of its members in pursuing their duties. Constable Wright feels very badly about that, too.

He has assured his seniors that he is now scrupulous about processing all crime exhibits "meticulously". Good thing that is, too; restoring our confidence in the honesty and integrity of those whose duty it is to serve the public interest in upholding law and order.

Self Restraint?

Is that all it is, an inability to reign in one's inner beast? As though it is of no great moment. The occasional lapse in judgement. The surrender to one's instantaneous, baser instincts. A moment of madness. Lust that must be appeased. Sexual gratification at all costs. It has been said that powerful men who reach the heights of public acclaim for their prowess in many areas of accomplishment have a greater sexual appetite than other, more modestly endowed men.

Call it arrogance, a sense of entitlement that society owes them the kind of gratitude that will excuse moral lapses because of their reputations as great thinkers, military men, writers, poets, politicians, philanthropists - and economists. There is that about males who hail from countries where the Romance languages are common; they think of themselves as great lovers. They consider women as blatant objects of desire.

And they practise a societally-approved pursuit of women and girls. They are not considered lechers or predators, but rather celebrated as successful at seducing women. Frenchwomen have always been seen by other women elsewhere in the world as worldly, sophisticated, in control, mistresses of their own culture, inclusive of the boudoir. And the aristocratic, polished Frenchmen the very vision of courtesy.

These cosmopolitan, smoothly distinguished individuals, from the highest echelon of public affairs to the social elite are frank and free about sex. Unlike the prudish North Americans, for example. And what IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was able to get away with in France he could not do in the United States. Both countries are egalitarian in nature presumably, but where sexual violence is accepted in one, it is not in the other.

Position, fame and celebrity equal respect. And this Mr. Strauss-Kahn had in abundance. His prowess with women was well known and celebrated as well. Women who had been abused of their innocence in his presence did not pursue their grievance but were encouraged to put their experience with his passion-entitlements in the past and give him wide berth in the future. In France the man was able to behave as disgracefully as he wished; all was forgiven.

In North America violent sexual assault is not so readily overlooked. No one is entitled, irrespective of his other admirable qualities, to abuse and violate women at will because he will make no effort to discipline himself as a civil human being.

Like Oil and Water

How many countries of the world are there who while celebrating their creation, must contemplate that their neighbours view that event as a black day of mourning? Pakistan came into being at roughly the same time, Bangladesh some years later; who contests their creation? British colonial rule left arbitrary borders around geographic areas that later became 'nations', countries whose tribal adversities have never resulted in peace; who suggests their destruction?

Palestinians continue to claim that Israel exists on land that is rightfully that of the Palestinians. Yet the Palestinians who remained within Israel at its declaration remain there yet, with full civil rights equally administered under the law. It is claimed that 700,000 Palestinians fled out of fear and at the urging of surrounding Arab governments that they could return once the new state was demolished by a combined Arab military assault.

That original 700,000 now numbers roughly six million who live in neighbouring Arab state as refugees for their neighbours, other Arabs, always refused them citizenship and equality, with the exception of Jordan. The world, through the United Nations which established a special refugee agency just for the Palestinians, have paid ever since for their welfare.

It is estimated that some 800,000 Jews were expelled at the same time from the Arab countries they had lived in for millennia. Their worldly goods were confiscated, there was never any compensation, nor was any offered since 1948. Their long history in Arab lands was simply an inconvenience; the affront of the creation of Israel resulted in their expulsion.

No international outcry was heard at that event, nor did the world offer assistance to the refugee Jews. But the endless plight of refugee Arabs whom other states refused to absorb, while Israel absorbed the refugee Jews remains highly visible and an ongoing incendiary issue. The Palestinians urge a return to Israel, but it would not be Israel, it would be Palestine; a Jewish state no longer.

Because of a heritage tradition within Islam of land consecrated to Islam never permitted to be absorbed into another religion or heritage, just as within Islam secession from Islam is considered a capital offence, it is not the 1948 or 1969 borders that are contested for a new Palestinian State; it is the entirety of the geography dedicated to the State of Israel that is to be re-claimed; in Arabic, not English.

While Middle East countries are grappling with inner unrest fomented by civil protests against authoritarian governments, Israel waited warily for the inevitable. And Syria's administration has sought a diversion from its brutal crackdown on regime protests by urging Palestinians to cross their border into Israel. Another FaceBook revolution taking place, ushering in the Third Intifada with young Palestinians planning a concerted mass entry into Israel.

From Lebanon, from Jordan and from Syria and Gaza, they came, declaring their intention to return to the land their grandparents occupied. A clear diversion for the heads of government, and an obvious disavowal of recognition of a Jewish State in the midst of Arab Muslim states.

All Bets Off!

There continue to be reverberations of blame-and-shame directed toward the United States, its executive and the orders given to the Navy SEALs to conduct an operation with the distinct purpose of eliminating the world's foremost terrorist. ...This is not the manner in which a civilized country prosecutes its agenda of forestalling terrorism. There are laws to be observed, international standards of niceties to be acknowledged.

And what the United States ordered be done was to conduct an official assassination. Yes, they did. They did what the Israeli Mossad has long considered to be effective and needfully useful.

Onlookers and bystanders are offended. Of course those who considered Osama bin Laden to be an honoured mujahedeen, a man of principle, a pious man of God, actually following orders from on high to defend Islam from the infidels and Crusaders are beside themselves with rage. Citing their determination to carry on without him, that his precious blood would not be spilled for no cause; he will be avenged.

Even his estranged sons whose own sensibilities were offended by their father's insistence on slaughtering innocent civilians; those of the West and Muslims as well, were dreadfully upset that their father was not politely arrested and placed on trial. Exception is also taken to the fact that his body was buried at sea; had film been taken of a Muslim scholar offering last rites in a land burial many claim they would have found that acceptable.

The burning question is why does it matter what his end was like considering the violence he espoused and demanded in the mass slaughter of innocent people? He was guilty of mass murder, and he continued to agitate for further slaughter in the name of Islam. He posed as a dire threat to the well-being of a good portion of the Globe, given the off-shoots of al-Qaeda posed and determined to terrorize their targets.

The niceties of the law become forfeit when facing up to a resourceful, indomitable, resistant-to-reason adversary who will grasp at any measures, however vile and destructive to wound an enemy mortally. Osama bin Laden was simply treated to his own brand of action in an act of official retribution for the thousands of lives he was responsible for terminating.

The United States is again being treated in some quarters - say for example, Britain, where the infiltration into society at many levels, including politics and academia of tolerance for Islamist rhetoric and claims for justice have been astoundingly successful, as an intolerant brute of a nation. An undercurrent of sympathy for bin Laden and recrimination toward the U.S. for killing the al-Qaeda leader runs through that society.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, had a sympathetic take on the situation: "I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn't look as if justice is seen to be done." Justice? Why justice was indeed done, and seen to be done. It is the interpretation of justice that is at question here. Kill unmercifully and be yourself treated to no mercy.

Osama bin Laden whose sole raison d'etre is the destruction of Western society and the elevation of Islamism had no compassion whatever for those whom he delivered to death. He felt that anyone associated with the West was tainted and had no right to live. He engineered death traps, inspired followers to think of more inventive and useful ways to slaughter people.

Was he really owed the dignity of being handled with respect? His life was to be given the respect and the dignity and the honour that was denied by him to countless others? He used every and any means at his disposal to destroy life, why was his life worthy of special consideration? Those who express reservations about the manner in which his life was taken are clearly confused.

It's the same old story about reservations taken by those who are uninvolved; those who are not threatened, demanding of those who must defend themselves that they do so fully observing the fine points of the law. When you're dead because of a lack of attention to the big picture and too much attention to the fine details, the finality of it all cannot be reversed.

When faced with a deadly venom-spewing architect of death it is best removed expeditiously. Those who speak derisively of the U.S. action in removing any further options from bin Laden, whose voices caress the words "moral obligations", are sadly delusional.

Inside Job Trailer 2010 HD

We viewed the film on Friday sponsored by the Progressive Alliance and DSA.  It is a great video.

Many viewers were frustrated.  They asked- well what can we do?

I made a list of possible responses.  I encourage additional ideas.

10 Things you and I can do to turn this state around.

1.     Vote against the Republicans.

2.     Search for progressive Democrats.

3.     Talk to your neighbors about the issues.

4.     Shut off Fox News.

5.     Move your money to a credit union.

6.     Join a union.  Or, a union support group. www.aflcio.org, http://www.workingamerica.org/join/

7.     Sit quietly for 10 minutes per day. Shut off all radio, TV, telephone.Think about additional ways to promote economic democracy.

8.     Copy this list.  Give it to friends, neighbors, colleagues. ( do not send via e mail. Personally give it to them).

9.     Post suggestions of Facebook, twitter, etc.

10. Go see Inside Job. – then take action.

11. Join an organization working for economic and social justice. ( Like DSA).

12. Think of 2 additional ways to promote economic justice. Post them on your list.

Captivity and Forgiveness

When the news media were full of the kidnapping details in 2005 in Iraq of four men representing a Christian peace group, it seemed a lunatic enterprise on the part of those held hostage to enter the country for the purpose of attempting to turn Iraqis toward peace and away from violence. The Iraqis themselves were fully invested in their tribal and sectarian hatred toward one another. Their focus was on the capture, torture and murder of Shia or Sunni by Sunni or Shia.

But the Christian Peacemaker Team sent a delegation of four committed members to preach sweetness and light, courtesy fundamentalist Christians who believe in forgiveness and redemption to fundamentalist Muslims who practise violent jihad and martyrdom. One of the abductees who had been held for 118 days as hostages before a joint commando raid freed them, has written a memoir of the experience.

Long before James Loney wrote his memoir he had issued a public expression of forgiveness toward his captors. Recalling his statements at that time he seemed like a delusional and fearfully stupid man, determined to support his faith by declarations of unflagging hope in the decency and goodness of humankind. Failing to make a distinction between social environments and hereditary antipathies.

"I know I'm speaking out of school here, but I'm going to say it anyway. You have no idea how many people were involved, how many people risked their lives to get you out. I want you to tell your people that. Just tell them to think about that before they decide to send someone else here. I'm not saying anything else. Just tell them. Tell them to think about all the people that risked their lives to get you out."

This was spoken to James Loney in an icily chiding lecture by one of the soldiers who had been tasked to rescue him and the three other abductees. It was a joint British-U.S. task force, whose formation had the purpose of hunting for al-Qaeda operatives and rescuing foreign hostages. Everything comes at a price. The men who rescued Loney and the two others risked their lives.

The fourth man was beyond rescue. An American, Tom Fox, had earlier been removed from the squalid site where he had been kept along with James Loney, Norman Kember and Harmeet Singh. He was murdered, his body found on a street in Baghdad. And the following is what illuminates the peculiar mind-set of a man like James Loney.

Determined to forgive, he will not permit himself to feel any kind of rancour or blame against his abductors. He lived for all the time he was in captivity in the fear of their discovering that he is gay knowing that they would make an attempt to cure his homosexuality; the cure for which in many Muslim societies is death.

Like the jihadis that captured him and his three colleagues determined to turn the face of peace toward their captors, he believes in self-discipline and self-sacrifice; where they believe in the sacrifice of martyrdom with its great reward of attentive virgins in Paradise, he believes in the martyrdom of self to a greater ideal of Godly virtue.

Neither he nor the two others who were rescued from their miserable captivity and possible even future torture and death, would agree to testify against their captors in the prosecution of the death of the American Tom Fox, by trial in Iraq by its Central Criminal Court. "They took Tom away from us, but they did not take away our ability to forgive.

"We did not lose ourselves. We were not infected with the poison of hate. They may have changed our lives, but they did not change us." This is how James Loney celebrates his victory over the events that occurred to him as a tormented prisoner of the Swords of Righteousness Brigade who held them for ransom.

In pledging forgiveness and refusing to testify against their captors they effectively denied justice to the man whom their captors murdered. This kind of moralistic hubris does not reflect a humble mind but a sadly delusional one. Obtusely, deliberately delusional.

Flood Watch

Trying to conceive of the concern and misery of people desperately attempting to fend off the ravages of floodwaters ruining their fields, their homes, vast acreages of farmland, threatening the safe security of farm animals, is not quite possible. We tend to divorce ourselves from the reality of the details, the anguish being suffered by people who see their homes and their dreams being destroyed by a force of nature that human ingenuity cannot possibly control.

Of course it is well known that it is a risky concern, building on a flood plain. Municipalities are logically supposed to deny permits to those seeking to build on flood plains for the very good reason that there is always a danger of flooding; this is why those low-lying areas in river basins are called flood plains. But there is something inordinately attractive to people about living in close proximity to running water; to lakes and rivers.

The view is irresistible, the recreational opportunities magnificently compelling. And people habitually think of the positive, the pleasures involved in building where it seems attractive to do so, rather than lingering on thoughts of the negative and potentials for dismal disaster. Nature may never, we reason, threaten the land we will build upon, and if it does, it will be manageable. Human ingenuity will provide.

But then the catastrophic occurs, and no amount of human ingenuity quite manages to challenge nature's indomitable will to do as she will with the climate, with the environment, with the puny lives and plans of mere humankind. Having said which, the richest soil is often alluvial, and planting agricultural crops on that rich soil, and having a close source of water for irrigation makes good, practical sense.

With farmland comes farmhouses, and if the farms are established there, then why not small towns as well, where the watershed can also provide potable water for the use of the nearby residents? Let's face it; human beings have always chosen to build their settlements along the banks of lakes and rivers; it made for easy availability of a water source, and for transportation.

It is a tragedy that once in a while, flooding occurs that transcends what people normally anticipate year-over-year in a tradition of manageable, nuisance flooding. When minimal risk becomes maximum liability and everyone rushes to try to manage as best they can, hoping that somehow, a miracle will occur, and the worst possible scenario will not, after all, result.

The agonizing suspense of watching and waiting and hoping and praying is a dreadful way for people to have to live.

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  Members of 2nd battalion Princess Patricia's Light Infantry help load sandbags onto helicopter slings to be transported to weak sections of the dike running along the Assiniboine River some 25km from Portage La Prairie, Man. Thursday, May 12, 2011.(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward)

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  Brandon Sun Civic employees wait to deliver sandbags on a dike set up on John Avenue, Thursday afternoon. May 12, 2011(Colin Corneau/Brandon Sun)

Proportional Representation?

Some years back during a federal election Canadian voters took part in a referendum. To signify how they felt about a new potential reform for the Canadian electoral system. It wasn't quite proportional representation, but a modified version of it. And voters turned it down. That hasn't stopped the proponents of proportional representation, however. And isn't it an odd thing that those who urge that such a change occur mostly represent political parties that have never been voted into power by Canada's first-past-the-post system.

Now those who protest our original and only electoral system insist that the majority the Conservative government under Stephen Harper were finally granted by the electorate represents a "false majority". On the basis that under 40% of the electorate voted for the Conservatives - that percentage rises to 48% if we exclude Quebec, and Quebec deliberately excluded itself as it is wont to do when its nose is out of joint; which is a perpetual state.

The protesting groups representing the NDP and the Green parties received far less of the popular vote, needless to say. But the principle that they espouse, that proportional representation would be a fairer recognition of how Canadians tend to vote is one that will not be laid to rest.

It does result, in countries which use that electoral system, in fractionalized governments which, to maintain their integrity must shuffle for support and alliances resulting in a process approximating co-operation, but not always to the best advantage of the country necessarily. The Green party's leader, Elizabeth May, portrays herself and her party as seeking PR from principle.

She won her party's first Parliamentary seat giving her party and herself cause for great celebration. But the Green party, despite fielding 300 candidates won just one seat, after three elections in which they won none. Because the party garnered 7% of the popular vote, a million dollars was doled out in vote subsidies to enable the party to operate and run an election campaign.

That campaign focused on one single seat, chosen because in all of Canada it seemed the most likely to submit to the blandishments of a party focused on the environment. Elizabeth May's previous riding election attempts failed; her reputation and her hubris simply weren't enough to sway voters there to her vision of a new Canada.

How much of a success was her single Parliamentarian win, when the other 299 candidates all failed?

And when, this time around, the Green party garnered a mere 4% of the popular vote? "My concern is less about the number of seats the Greens would have in Parliament, but that the first-past-the-post system has allowed this false Conservative majority when only 39.6% of voters voted for them." There's a vast difference between 4% and 39.6% is there not? Yet she professes unconcern about the lack of seats achieved by the Greens.

The spearhead group, Fair Vote Canada, is now focusing on moving the dispirited, failed Liberals around to their way of thinking, "...because under a proportional system they would have twice the number of seats they have now." Which still would not have given them the lead they anticipated, raising them toward governing status.

Elizabeth May's bravado and sense of entitlement is somewhat galling and insulting to the great numbers of Canadians who voted during this election and feel satisfied that their vote counted as intended. Her contention, "I realize that the term false majority isn't familiar to most Canadians, but the reality is, we will be governed under one for the next four years", makes one groan at the thought this poseur will now sit in Parliament.

The 41st Parliament under Prime Minister Stephen Harper cannot rescind the tax-paid vote subsidy fast enough for many of us. It falsely and insultingly enabled the Bloc Quebecois and the Green parties to assume an importance neither logically and practically were entitled to.

The Dignity of Moral Indignation

Pakistan is well and truly fed up. Their faultless assistance to the West in the interests of halting international jihad has been questioned once too often. Pakistan has made many sacrifices, all of them for naught, since the innuendos and accusations continue to mount. While Pakistan must continue to protect itself from the slurs and the slanders it has undergone in the process a humiliating and undeserved blow from its erstwhile partner in the war on terror.

Pakistan's parliamentarians will no longer facilitate American-led operations in their country. For their sovereignty has been breached once too often, and they have no intention of absorbing any further, future insults on this magnitude of order and insult. The adventure that blind-sided Pakistan's military and its secret service must never be permitted to repeat itself; the U.S. raid that culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden was intolerable.

What self-respecting country could, after all, abide the insult to its lawful autonomy suffered by Pakistan as a result of the "situation arising for unilateral U.S. action in Abbottabad". No consultation, no assistance requested, no permission to invade sovereign territory - unsupportable, insufferable, hubristic scorn of a trusted friend and staunch ally.

As for the drone strikes which Pakistan has made known at the very highest levels of American authority that it will no longer tolerate: "Such drone attacks must be stopped forthwith, failing which the government will be constrained to consider taking necessary steps including withdrawal of (the) transit facility allowed to NATO".

Now that's hitting them where it counts. It's been done before, on a strictly petulantly temporary basis, but this time it will be a permanent withdrawal of agreement - should NATO and specifically the United States not deign to apologize and to withhold from future such strikes. The NATO troop supplies transiting across the northwestern border crossings already under militant attacks may be withdrawn.

What then, NATO? Complete withdrawal of NATO troops, a suitable conclusion for all concerned. And then, of course, Afghanistan will be at the complete mercy of the Afghan Taliban, trained, protected, armed and given haven by official Pakistan which never dreamed that their own Pakistani Taliban would arise to offer them untold grief.

Still, with the Afghan Taliban back in place, Pakistan would be assured that its plans to possess its neighbour's 'trust', turning off any potential inroads by its political nemesis India, might very well eventuate. And then, emboldened by success, Pakistan could then return its attention to booting India out of Kashmir. And from there forward - who knows?

Perhaps it would be a matter of effectively striking India with nuclear weaponry before that country had the opportunity to respond with alacrity; that the damage done India would suffice to lend Pakistan the ultimate advantage....

Devious to the end ... and the end is deadly.

UWO Academic Funding

"[We want] to express our alarm over the disclosure that two Islamist organizations - the Muslim Association of Canada and the [Virginia-based] International Institute of Islamic thought - will provide most of the $2-million in funding for a new Chair in Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Theology at Huron University College. While we commend the College for undertaking to 'make a substantive contribution to understanding of Islamic thought and Muslim identity in pluralistic societies' through the establishment of this Chair, we think it is extremely ill-advised of the College to accept funding from any organization implicated in violent jihad.

"We think that it is reckless for Huron University College to accept up to $1-million in funding from a tainted organization like the IIIT. Would the College have accepted funding from the IRA for a chair in Irish studies? We think not." Letter sent by 26 faculty alumni and friends of the University of Western Ontario to Trish Fulton, interim principal at Huron University College, affiliate of University of Western Ontario.

With good reason. There are precedents, of course. Saudi Arabia used a good whack of its oil revenues to establish Wahhabist madrassas in countries around the world, from Afghanistan to Canada and points in between. In those madrassas, mullahs taught their students the fundamentals of Islam, encouraging the obligation of jihad and martyrdom for the cause. It was institutions like those that inspired today's terror groups, including al-Qaeda.

The Muslim Brotherhood has its tentacles all around the world, including cells in Canada. It portrays itself as a respectable, law-abiding group whose only purpose and function is furthering the honourable cause of restoring Islam to its former glory. Its Egyptian founder, Hassan al-Banna, wanted to promote Islamic piety; he rejected the influence of the secular West in the Middle East, advocating a return to Islam.

That was in 1928. His ideas motivated many devoted Islamists to broaden his vision, and pick up on his urging of Muslims to undertake holy war as a defensive strategy to an offensive one. The Brotherhood excelled at assassinations of political figures. It had a huge influence on Yasser Arafat, spawned Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and had great influence with al-Qaeda leaders.

The Muslim Association of Canada links itself to the Muslim Brotherhood. On its website: "MAC adopts and strives to implement Islam ... as understood in its contemporary context by the late Imam, Hassan Albanna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood." The Brotherhood, which aims to restore Islamic laws and values in the face of growing Western influence.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood has influenced a generation of violent, radical groups, MAC spokesman Yaser Haddara told the news conference (on instituting Sharia law in Ontario) without blinking an eye, that the group's core values are consistent with Canadian values. MAC states on its website that "We do have a firm belief that our philosophy and vision are superior to others and we strive to ensure that they are actualized." How MAC will "actualize" the Muslim Brotherhood "philosophy" in Canada is not elaborated." Tarek Fatah - Chasing a Mirage; the Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State

The answer to that question posed by Tarek Fatah seems to be held within this initiative to fund a Chair in Islamic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario.

Hassan Al-Banna envisioned Middle East Muslim states re-affirming their Islamist fundamentals. Eschewing the growing trend toward Westernizing their outlooks and priorities, abandoning their Islamic bona fides. His current-day followers advocate for a slow and steady infiltration into Western society with a view to substituting Western values and thought with those of Islam.

A 1991 memorandum by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood Shura Council proposed that Muslim settlement in Canada and the United States be considered a "Civilization-Jihadist Process". "The MB must understand that their work in America is kind of a grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house."

We are sleep-walking helpfully to the fulfillment of the Muslim Brotherhood agenda.

Jack Be Nimble

Jack is feeling his oats. Things have turned out really swell for the leader of the New Democratic Party. His breezy self-confidence was infectious, really impressed people. Particularly the voters in Quebec who liked his smile a whole lot, his spunk and his cane as a prop to remind everyone what a courageous fellow he is.

Why he could have stood a cardboard cut-out resembling a human being out as a candidate in most of the Quebec ridings and still seen a sweep. In fact, that’s just what he did, in effect, given that some of those warm bodies couldn’t be bothered to campaign, to make themselves available for all-candidates’ meetings for public edification, and many didn’t even live in the ridings, much less bother to pop around.

A few absented themselves from the country during the campaign. Nothing seemed to matter; Quebecers, so prone to insult and offence, found nothing untoward in any of this. Out they came in their droves, and drove back the Bloc Quebecois, dropping them from owning 43 seats to a meagre four. In the process astonishing both Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton.

As far as Jack Layton is concerned, he and his party won the election. As far as Gilles Duceppe is concerned, the fact that he was not re-elected in his own riding is a nightmare he has yet to awaken from. The misery of forlorn failure etched deeply in the frowning downturned mouth that presented as a model caricature of abject dejection.

The election, according to Jack, effectively launched a “new chapter in Canadian politics”. For the NDP had been gifted with a “clear mandate” from voters across this great country to represent “hard-working families”. No other political party in Canada has any concern whatever for the hard-working families of the country.

Certainly not the Conservatives who had lowered taxes, given parents additional breaks, and allowed seniors to combine incomes at tax time. The relief that the NDP, given the chance, would offer to hard-working families in Canada would come with higher taxation and greater support for union entitlements.

Jack is celebrating the “clear mandate” given to the NDP, though. “It’s a mandate that Stephen Harper is best to not ignore”, Jack crowed. For as the leader of the official Opposition, someone who is now entitled to move into Stornoway as an extension of living off the taxpayer which Jack and Olivia have had great run experimenting with in Toronto’s assisted housing, he and the NDP are on a roll.

Of course, being so completely focused on the startling success of the NDP in capturing 103 Seats in Parliament, with 58 rookie Members of Parliament from Quebec alone, mentored by the single experienced Quebec MP, the fact that Canada now has four years of a majority Conservative government appears to have escaped his notice.

For a majority government has carte blanch to comport itself in a manner commensurate with a confident minority government, without the acidic suspense of the opposition parties continually threatening to shut down the government and take it over themselves.

But there’s Jack, expressing his joy and jubilation and warning Stephen Harper that he will personally hold him “accountable”. The NDP alone represents a party that protects Canada’s health care system, cares about improving senior pensions, doing right by the environment and stopping corporate interests in their tracks.

“Together, we’re going to hold Stephen Harper’s government to account. Together, we’ll continue to grow our movement, reaching out to more Canadians and more communities”.

Go to it, Jack. And while you’re at it, just remember all those things you promised Quebec to persuade voters there that there was no need to maintain the Bloc in Parliament, for the NDP stands prepared to badger Canadians and threaten the country to respect the collective will of French Canadians as uniquely deserving of very special attention in recognition of their extravagant claims and superior entitlements.

Harvard's Pain

Harvard is disgruntled. And rather disbelieving. What absolute hayseeds Canadians are. How could they do this to an alumni of Harvard University where the intellectual crème de la crème of academics hang their capes and make their mark on the international community in the halls of academia.

Michael Ignatieff, after all, is one of their own. Oh yes, a Canadian, certainly so, but American in spirit and orientation; why else might they care? His speciality honed in their great halls of learning, and the beneficence of his considered wit and advice dispensed for the edification of adoring students.

He was, during his tenure, and more specifically because of his tenure at Harvard as the reigning human rights impressario with tons of right-there experience, anointed with the elixir of greatness.

How could those dull-minded clods passing for intelligent voters pass him by? What’s worse, ignominiously refusing to renew his seat, still warm from the 40th Parliament, so recently vacated. That Canadians stubbornly could not recognize the greatness with which he was imbued, thanks in good part to his sojourn in Boston, bespeaks unspeakable narrow-minded stupidity.

And what does it all reveal? Obviously, a lack of respect for the halls of higher learning, but more, far more, misplaced, ignorant resentment of America. But that’s Canada for you; a mewling, confused and uncertain nation of complainers and temporizers. Canada, as anyone can tell you, has always felt self-conscious as a neighbour of the United States. Their brash and confident neighbour to the south, imbued with a sense of itself, no stranger to recognition of merit and accomplishment.

Whereas Canada and Canadians are meek, cautious, moody and complacent. They are, above all, definitely not Americans. Describe them in any kind of pejorative terms, and that’s fine, but do not under any circumstances consider them to be too much alike Americans. They simply won’t have it. It is the most profound insult of all.

Canadians are different from Americans. They are unequivocally … Canadian.

Mr. Ignatieff’s former colleagues and fast friends cannot conceive of a collective temperament that had the opportunity to elect a Harvard man of great repute as their prime minister, and chose not to. What might they have been thinking? And those Conservative attack ads … atrocious. How could they portray the Liberal leader in such a demeaning, insulting light? Just visiting. Elitist. Ivy League academic. Not one of ‘us’.

Why Michael had a marvellous reputation at Harvard, he could pack those classrooms like no one else could, the consummate professorial communicator, enlivening the atmosphere, impressing students, a credit to the profession and his chosen field. Charismatic. Didn’t Canadian voters recognize his charisma? His character? His experience? His wisdom? The grace of his locution and verbal expression? His stature as a expert at one of the most prestigious universities in the world?

Critics in Boston and at Harvard appear to have overlooked the success in the U.S. of the election ads, where the genre originated, that they so decried being used in Canada. And while they may believe that being taken for an American in outlook and orientation reflects a high order of compliment, it is not quite taken as such by Canadians who believe their national leader should reflect a Canadian orientation, experience and outlook.

And, in the final analysis, this is what a significant proportion of the electorate chose. And the patrician intellectual will now have the opportunity of dispensing the wisdom of his experience and expertise in his chosen field at University of Toronto. Another institute of higher learning that is respected - in Canada

CTA members arrested in California Capitol- State of Emergency

A Highway Patrol officer prepares to take into custody the first 14 Capitol Insiders who refused to leave the building when so directed slightly after 6PM on Thursday evening. These 14 placed themselves outside the offices of Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway, saying they would stay there until she provided a budget proposal that would protect schools.

Among those the Highway Patrol began arresting for trespassing are (from l.) Barbara Franklin, Miriam Aguilar Escobar, and CTA Board Member Theresa Montano.

Meanwhile, at Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton’s office, CTA President David A. Sanchez and other Capitol Insiders were reportedly also being taken into custody by law enforcement officers for refusing to leave until the Senator presented an acceptable budget that included an extension of the state’s temporary taxes.

The arrests came on the day that the Assembly Republicans released a budget proposal that would slash nearly $500 million more from public education.

“Basta, basta (enough, enough),” said CTA Member Aguilar Escobar to Spanish language media prior to her arrest.
Join the teachers in a support rally.  Friday. 4 - 6 PM. Sacramento State Capitol.