Balafon

The Winter Olympics start in two weeks, and there is much activity at the Vancouver airport. The sound of high-powered turbine aircraft engines fills the air.

My office is right under the approach path to runway 26L, so I see CF-18 Hornet fighter jets

CF-18

and CH-146 Griffin helicopters

CH-146

flying around several times a day.

Rumor has it that two Halifax-class frigates

HMCS Vancouver

will be anchored offshore to provide extra air defense.

Seems somebody repealed Section 494 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which provides for citizen’s arrests, without telling anybody. A shopkeeper who caught a thief and locked him up until police arrived is now charged with kidnapping, among other things.

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help. Oh, and that little thing called the Law? In yer dreams, pal.

And shame on the Globe and Mail for using the term “vigilante” and omitting any mention of the concept of the citizen’s arrest!

The Averter of Evil, the Mouse-Catcher, the Delphinian, the Radiant God, the Watcher of the Heavens, graciously answered his priestess’s prayer and granted his gift of divine fire today to the nation of Canada.

He had withheld his favour from the past three Winter Olympics, so Canadians should feel especially εὐδαιμονίαι.

The federal Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (the body that decides the cases that the “Human Rights” Commission persues) has declared that Section 13 of the Human Rights code (the “pre-crime” section — it allows extra-legal persecution of speech that is “likely to expose someone to ridicule”) violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This is great news in the fight against the wholly corrupt Canadian “Human Rights” commissions.

Dear Ms. Wong:

I read with more than a little dismay that the federal privacy commissioner has dismissed a complaint that the Canadian Human Rights Commision hijacked a private citizen’s internet connection to post racist material on a white-supremacist website, citing “a lack of evidence”.

The evidence in question was not in doubt. It consists of sworn testimony in a hearing on March 25, 2008, by Alain Monfette of Bell Canada (pp. 5645-5646 of the transcript here).

Why would the privacy commissioner ignore such sworn testimony, and allow a federal agency to invade the privacy of a citizen of Canada, especially for the purpose of posting racist material on the internet?

In addition, the privacy commissioner has the gall to say, “This Office cautions individuals to take appropriate measures to properly secure their Internet connections to avoid any unauthorized uses of their personal information.”

This is like saying “Be careful to build a fence around your yard, lest the police drive across your lawn.”

Will the Conservative Party step up to preserve the rights of Canadians to not only the privacy of their own property, but to the rights of free speech and association that have been repeatedly violated by the federal and provincial “human rights” commissions?

Note that Warren Kinsella of recent infamy has long been a supporter of the “human rights” commissions. Birds of a feather…

As someone who grew up in a third-world dictatorship, it saddens me that those who have a duty to preserve the freedoms that make Canada and Canadian society a beacon for people from around the globe are failing that duty, and ignoring clear violations of the rights of ordinary citizens. I hope that you and the Conservative Party will be working to rectify the situation.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Sincerely,

– Gordon Tisher

It is the published position of the Alberta Human Rights Commission that to call for the murder of a Christian is neither discrimination nor hate speech.

However, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ironically a churchgoing Albertan, recently told the press that “everyone has had some concerns” about the commissions which have been for too long trampling on the Charter rights of Canadians to free speech.

The Canadian “Human Rights” Commission has now, in addition to “tampering with evidence, tampering with court transcripts, lying under oath, hacking into a private citizen’s Internet account and publishing vicious hate messages themselves,” sent a private investigator to harrass Ezra Levant’s elderly parents:

Vigna [an employee of the CHRC who is under investigation by the Law Society of Upper Canada for disrupting a trial by claiming he was not in a serene state of mind] has been sending a private investigator to my parents’ house again and again, demanding to see me. My parents, who are far more polite than I am, keep telling Vigna’s hired tough guy that I don’t live there anymore. I did when I was a teenager. But that was in 1990.

The last time Vigna’s hired muscle came to my parents’ house, he refused to leave. My parents said he had a Bluetooth phone device in his ear, and seemed to be taking instructions from someone — Vigna himself? — who told him not to go until he had found me. In the end, Vigna’s enforcer must have lost his serenity, too, because he threw some papers down at my parents feet, and stormed off.

Classy.

Even journalists who absolutely hate Mark Steyn think the show trial at the BC “human rights” tribunal is a farce.

More from the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen:

It is a show trial, under the arbitrary powers given to Canada’s obscene “human rights” commissions, by Section 13 of our Human Rights Act.

I wrote “obscene” advisedly. A respondent who comes before Canada’s “human rights” tribunals has none of the defences formerly guaranteed in common law. The truth is no defence, reasonable intention is no defence, nor material harmlessness, there are no rules of evidence, no precedents, nor case law of any kind. The commissars running the tribunals need have no legal training, exhibit none, and owe their appointments to networking among leftwing activists.

Macleans magazine and Mark Steyn have been hauled before the “BC Human Rights Tribunal” for publishing an excerpt from Steyn’s book America Alone talking about demographic trends in Europe — the fact that the Muslim immigrant population is growing and the European population is shrinking.

A Muslim activist in Ontario was offended by this article, and filed complaints in the federal, Ontario and BC “Human Rights” tribunals.

The tribunal is run by a panel of bureaucrats, with no legal expertise whatsoever. There are no rules of evidence, or in fact ANY LEGAL REQUIREMENTS at all. The tribunal has sweeping powers to punish defendants without any process whatsoever. Complaintants’ court costs are paid by you, the taxpayer, and defendents must pay their own fees, even if aquitted. The federal tribunal has NEVER AQUITTED ANYONE. As Macleans’ lawyers have been pointing out all day, the law under which these tribunals take place is so utterly vague that it prohibits anything that does OR MIGHT AT SOME FUTURE TIME incite someone to act “hatefully”. And in fact it allows for NO DEFENSE WHATSOEVER. Period. If someone decides to file a complaint against you, and claims that something you did or said was or might some time in the future be considered hateful, you’re toast.

The BC tribunal has awarded thousands of dollars to a McDonald’s employee who was offended at being told to wash her hands. The Alberta tribunal fined a salon thousands because one employee called another a “loser”. The Ontario tribunal Employees of the federal tribunal have posted thousands of hateful messages on web sites in order to incite people into similar remarks, using stolen internet connections.

The intent of the commissions may have been benign when they were established, but they are now clearly a menace to freedom of speech and the rule of law.

Andrew Coyne was blogging throughout.

Read Ezra Levant’s blog for lots of background. Update: the three un-elected and completely unaccountable imbeciles in charge of this kangaroo court.

If someone told you that you live in a country where anyone can denounce you for something you say (calling someone a “loser”, for example) to a government tribunal, where your accuser’s fees are paid by the taxpayer, and you are responsible for yours, where an unelected bureaucrat will sit in judgement on the case without reference to any law whatsoever, and that these government tribunals have a 100% record of conviction, would you believe it? Or would you think they’re talking about some third-world dictatorship?

If you live in Canada, you’re living in it.

Mark Steyn skewers the artistes who’ve been crying “censorship!” over a bill to deny government funding to blatantly offensive movie productions:

But free money is not the same as free speech. Nobody is stopping any of these filmmakers from making their films; they’re simply stopping the cheque. It would not seem unreasonable that any truly “bold” “courageous” “radical” “transgressive” content should have to work a little to find a publisher, producer or distributor.

Putting you in jail for your movie is censorship. Refusing to hand out taxpayers’ money for your masturbatory fantasies is nowhere close.

If your art is so good, then you should be able to find backers.

Caught a bit of CBC news last night, and nearly lost my dinner. People talk about George Bush’s smirk, but the Peter Mansbridge’s snarky self-satisfaction wouldn’t have been out of place in a grade school playground.

First off was a story about a battle in Afghanistan. I’ll paraphrase: “Coalition forces claimed to have destroyed a large group of Taliban crossing the border into Pakistan. However, reports say that the enemy death toll was much lower than claimed, because neanderthal western military types always exaggerate their victories, and the honest, decent, gay and feminist-loving Taliban would never lie to me.”

Next a story about the MP who, after a year of working closely with “Our Prime Minister Stephen” — as Anglicans and United churchies must refer to him weekly in prayer, no doubt with much gnashing of teeth — seems to have decided isn’t a rabid lunatic after all, and crossed the floor to join the evil Amerikkkan-loving Conservative Party. Turns out that he spent several tens of thousands of dollars recently on a 19-day diplomatic mission to the Middle East. “The government refuses to release the details of Mr. Kahn’s expenses.” And I’ve yet to stop beating my wife.

Last I heard, the Middle East is hardly the most popular venue for golfing junkets. Could it possibly be that he took a sizable entourage and perhaps hosted one or two diplomatic parties? I thought that we were supposed to be all about dialogue and friendliness with those strange brown people over there on the other side of the world. I guess it’s all right for a Governess-General to spend a mint bring artists for their play-dates with Nordic types, but sending a diplomat to find out more about a sensitive area of the world is downright irresponsible.

Paul Martin’s communications director dares to say what liberals really think about regular working-class Canadians:

They’re idiots.

As a result, Paul Martin has had to come out in support of Harper’s plan. Schadenfreude much?

Despite Paul Martin’s invocation of the wrath of Santa Claus as a reason not to campaign over Christmas, Parliament was dissolved yesterday, and Canadians finally have a chance to stick it to the arrogant kleptomaniacs who’ve turned the True North into their private banana republic.

Now polls are showing the Liberals’ popularity falling in, of all places, Ontario.

It’s not that Harper is the second incarnation of Christ or anything. But at least he might actually acknowledge the fact that there exists little tiny bits of Canada west of Mississauga.

Damian Penny has some good advice for the Tories:

1. Don’t let the Liberals set the agenda. They have betrayed the public trust, and the onus is on the Martin government to show why it deserves to stay in power – not on Stephen Harper to prove he isn’t “scary”.

2. Don’t be afraid to run as Conservatives, not a “Lite” version of the Liberal Party of Canada. Canadians are much more open to new ideas in areas such as health care and immigration than the CBC or Toronto Star would have you believe.

3. Lock Ralph Klein in the basement until after election day. No, it isn’t fair that Alberta gets all the blame for “destroying” medicare when Quebec is further along in introducing private health care. And it isn’t fair that the Conservatives are dismissed as a “Western” party, when the Liberal caucus is overwhelmingly from Ontario. But that’s the line the Liberals want to push, and many Canadian media outlets (I’m thinking of a newspaper whose name rhymes with “Robe and Bail”) will enthusiastically push it for them. The last thing Harper needs is Ralph Klein to open his mouth about medicare.

4. If the Liberals bring up Iraq, throw Paul Martin’s statements in support of the war back in their faces – and emphasize that Iraqis are lining up for hours to exercise their right to vote, while the Liberals are trying to make you believe it’s somehow too hard for Canadians to exercise that right in the winter.

5. If the Liberals accuse the Tories of plotting to “destroy” medicare, ask Paul Martin where his personal physician works.

6. And most of all: it’s not enough to tell Canadians they shouldn’t vote Liberal. Canadians want an alternative. Let’s give them one.

Andrew Coyne is back, with a razor-sharp denunciation of Adscam, plus a well-deserved smackdown of Warren Kinsella.

Hat tip: Damian Penny.

Colby Cosh links to an article that gleefully pokes fun at those people who campaign so hard for gay marriage but squirm at the thought of legalizing polygamy.

Ever since I moved to Canada permanently, my first response to the question of “How do you like Canada?” has been “I hate it.” This position has been difficult to defend and articulate . . . until now.

I learned something yesterday I didn’t know before: in the latest Western Standard, in an excellent essay about the emasculation of men in today’s “progressive” societies, we read that during the Montreal Massacre of 1989, the gunman entered a classroom containing 10 women and 50 men. He “forced the men to leave at gunpoint” and mowed down the women.

In my humble opinion, any society where among 50 — count ‘em: 50 — men there are none who would risk their lives defending women against a lone assailant is sick, sick, sick.

For some reason this incident has been inducted into the feminist hagiography as exemplifying the problem of violence against women in society. But if those non-patriarchal guys in that classroom had been brought up with a bit more chivalry and a bit less “women’s studies,” they would have stopped the violence against their female classmates right there.

This is the triumph of idealism over realism: violence is an evil, so it is better to pretend that good people must never be violent (and thus have no defense against the lone nutcase) than to realize that A: lone nutcases will always be with us, and B: men are good at and prone to violence. But: normal men have an instinctual drive to protect women and children. Like fire or table knives, male violence is both dangerous and useful, and should be acknowledged and controlled rather than suppressed.

The Western Standard writer makes an interesting observation (not backed up with statistics, but reasonable-seeming to me — always dangerous, I know) that the prevalent zero-tolerance attitude towards male violence in schools tends to increase the severity of violence when it does happen. It used to be that a playground scuffle (between equally-matched opponents; bullying is another matter, but ironically the best response to bullying is physical violence, since bullies are usually insecure and cowards) was no big deal.

Boys were taught to “fight fair” — using the instinctual primate techinques of shoving and punching to the chest and head, which don’t usually result in much damage. Biting, scratching and hitting below the belt were out of line — in fact, these were seen as “girly.” And two guys can turn out to be best friends an hour after a fight. (This is something girls never understand. Female conflict tends to be much more long-lasting and intensely felt than male violence.)

But now we live in the age of the drive-by shooting and playground stabbing. Without the possibility of the middle ground of the playground scuffle, conflicts quickly escalate into deadly violence. I’m reminded of the proverbial story of the Chinese peasants living under an Emperor who only had one penalty: death. When they found themselves starving, they asked themselves: “What is the penalty for stealing rice? Death. And what is the penalty for revolting against the Emperor? Death.” So they had nothing to lose by revolting. So in today’s schools, if one will be expelled for taking a swing at someone, might as well shoot them in the head.

The Canadian MSM (mainstream media) is in a tizzy over President Bush’s visit to Canada, trying desperately to maintain the fiction that Canada is important and America (especially the “Jesusland” Bush-electorate) is idiotic and arrogant, while being sycophantic enough to stay attached to the American teat that lets us sip our tea (or Molson Canadian) in luxury without any sort of principles or comittment to anything at all.

Peaktalk has a roundup on the to-do, and an essay by Aidan Maconachy on that rara avis, the Canadian Bush supporter (check out Diplomadic for more on Canada and another US neighbor, Cuba).

The Iraq attack in particular, in the eyes of many liberals was the act of an idiot. To others, it demonstrated tremendous courage and a willingness to defend the United States at any price. The jury is still out, debating the final verdict. As Jacques Chirac recently remarked …”history will judge”. Of course, its easy to play the proctor when you are comfortably ensconced on the sidelines sipping a pernod.

It continues to boggle me that the received wisdom maintains the “idiot cowboy” meme, when Bush, from my observation and study, is a ferociously intelligent yet down-to-earth and principled guy with a knack for seeing the underlying problem, sweeping decades of failed conventional wisdom aside, and resolute perseverance in implementing his radical and often painful solutions.

It is ironic that those who condemn the US for its past foreign policy (while ignoring the Cold War, which necessitated much of it) now condemn Bush for his, which is a radical change, from expediency and realpolitik to principle and real support for democracy.

Encouragingly, however, Friends of America has a survey that shows a large number of Canadians have positive attitudes towards America.

Update: Came across a characteristically illuminating essay by Victor Davis Hanson wondering why self-proclaimed humanists and liberals don’t support the liberation of Iraq (or Afghanistan, for that matter):

Just as the breakdown of a few Communist Eastern European states led to a general collapse of Marxism in the east, or the military humiliation in colonial Africa and the Falklands led to democratic renaissance in Iberia and Argentina, or American military efforts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama City brought consensual government to Central America, a reformed Afghanistan and Iraq may prompt what decades of billions of dollars in wasted aid to Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians, the 1991 Gulf War, and 60 years of appeasement of Gulf petrol-sheiks could not: the end of the old sick calculus of Middle East tyrannies blackmailing the United States through past intrigue with the Soviet Union, then threats of oil embargos and rigged prices, and, most recently, both overt and stealthy support for fundamentalist killers.

. . .

Oddly, our enemies understand the long-term strategic efforts of the United States far better than do our own dissidents. They know that oil is not under U.S. control but priced at all-time highs, and that America is not propping up despotism anymore, but is now the general foe of both theocracies and dictatorships — and the thorn in the side of “moderate” autocracies. An America that is a force for democratic change is a very dangerous foe indeed. Most despots long for the old days of Jimmy Carter’s pious homilies, appeasement of awful dictatorships gussied up as “concern” for “human rights,” and the lure of a Nobel Prize to ensure nights in the Lincoln bedroom or hours waiting on a dictator’s tarmac.

American sociologist Nora Jacobson gives a revealing glimpse of the small-minded, resentful and envious anti-Americanism of Canadians:

In “officially multicultural Canada,” hostility toward Americans is the last socially acceptable expression of bigotry and xenophobia. It would be impossible to say the things about any other nationality that Canadians routinely say — both publicly and privately — about Americans.

Very true, in my experience.

Hat tip: Colby Cosh.

The recent booting of Carolyn Parrish from the Liberal caucus notwithstanding, the general atmosphere of anti-Americanism in Ottawa doesn’t seem to be changing. Yet the Department of Defense remains the red-headed stepchild the Liberals seem to wish would spontaneously melt away, like the polar icecap just happens to be doing. What happens when the Northwest Passage is chock-full of leaky oil tankers, Spanish fishing fleets and southeast Asian pirates — while human sumgglees decide that all that empty land looks a lot nicer than the interior of a dank shipping container — and the Americans politely decline to continue the defense of the ungrateful no-longer-white North?

Or worse — I can think of half a dozen routes off the top of my head to smuggle a suitcase nuke from the north to the US without a great deal of trouble. So much for the world’s longest undefended border…