The Philadelphia Experiment

Sometimes, I guess... you just do what you can...

The plan to put 10,000 men on the streets for an initial period of 90 days starting late this year is the latest effort by Philadelphia’s black community to curb violence that drove homicides to a nine-year high of 406 in 2006.

This is a brave, if somewhat naive initiative... I wonder what happens when the first volunteer is gunned down. I know I wouldn't be out there without Kevlar and a K-frame.

Groups of volunteers will be stationed on drug corners and other trouble spots in a bid to stop the shootings and other crimes that have given Philadelphia the highest homicide rate among the nation’s 10 largest cities.

They will not be armed, will not have powers of arrest, and will be identified only by armbands or hats during their three-hour shifts.

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RELATED: Something has to give

America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners.

A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.

The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts.

Somebody better tell Hamid Karzai...

If he wants to negotiate with the Taliban... he'd better bring his kneepads...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's offer of peace talks has been rejected by a Taliban spokesman, who on Sunday repeated a position he anounced earlier this month, saying there would be no negotiations until foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

Good timing on holding out that olive branch, Hamid... straight from the school of "please don't hurt me anymore" diplomacy.

There will, no doubt, be a job waiting for Mr. Karzai at the United Nations, when he loses the rest of his nerve.

Karzai's offer came shortly after a suicide bomber disguised as an Afghan soldier killed 30 people in Kabul. The victims included 28 soldiers who were on a bus taking them to work. Two civilians near the bus explosion were also killed.

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RELATED: An incentive to negotiate

Mr. Karzai's tenuous hold on his government has been badly shaken by a widespread perception that many of his ministers and other senior officials are corrupt and by the Keystone Kops performance of his police, who are far better known for taking bribes than for maintaining order.

The Taliban has been reeling from huge losses since serious fighting between its forces and mostly U.S., British and Canadian troops started in the spring of 2006. Every time it has tried to achieve any strategic militarily gain, it has been seriously whacked.

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UPDATE: You don't need a weatherman...

Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters from an undisclosed location that talks with Kabul were out of the question.

"Karzai government is a dummy government. It has no authority so why should we waste our time and effort," Yousuf said.

"On the one hand, America has put our leader's name on a wanted persons list and is calling us terrorists; and on the other hand, Karzai is talking about peace talks."

"It's a joke," Yousuf said.

**********

LAST WORD: Negotiating with the Religion of Peace

How's that working out for ya?

-- DURAIJ, Sudan -- A large force of rebels stormed an African Union peacekeeping base in Darfur, killing at least a dozen soldiers and wounding several others in the biggest attack on the mission so far, the AU said Sunday.

More than 50 AU peacekeepers and support personnel are missing in action since the attack on the base in northern Darfur just after sunset on Saturday. It was the worst attack on AU troops since they were deployed in Sudan's violent west in 2004.

International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died in Darfur with 2.5 million driven from their homes. Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of neglect.

Washington calls the conflict genocide, a term Khartoum rejects and European governments are reluctant to use.

Technorati Tags: Hamid Karzai, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, peace talks

In other Non-CBC news...

Two dozen terrorist sons of bitches get to meet their maker.

-- BAGHDAD -- U.S. aircraft killed more than 20 al-Qaida fighters who opened fire on an American air patrol northwest of Baghdad, the military reported on Sunday.

"The aircraft observed about 25 al-Qaida personnel carrying AK-47 assault rifles, with one of the men brandishing an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade), and walking through an area of local shops and into a palm grove.

Four vehicles were destroyed and no Iraqi civilians or U.S. soldiers were killed or wounded, the military said.

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RELATED: Caught with their pants down

Today the site near Dayr az-Zawr lies in ruins after it was pounded by Israeli F15Is on September 6. Before the Israelis issued the order to strike, the commandos had secretly seized samples of nuclear material and taken them back into Israel for examination by scientists, the sources say.

A laboratory confirmed that the unspecified material was North Korean in origin.

America approved an attack.

Technorati Tags: al-Qaida, Dayr az-Zawr, Sayeret Matkal

UPDATE: Hunting Humans

There's a wolf pack on the loose... in Brampton.

-- BRAMPTON -- Honours student Akila Badhanage was knifed to death during a random swarming by "cowardly" young men, leaving even seasoned homicide detectives seething at the senseless violence.

Akila Badhanage, a Grade 12 student with an average mark of 90, aimed to be an engineer.

Police in Peel Region are calling the murder a "random act of violence." Badhanage was swarmed by a group of men around Lord Simcoe Drive while on his way to work late Friday afternoon.

Police are on the lookout for four or five black men seen running from the scene.

You can work hard, you can do everything right... and in the blink of an eye, a pack of animals can tear your throat out.

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SIDENOTE: Brampton... the new Toronto?

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RELATED: Predatory Toronto pack continues to grow

Toronto police dog Rambo is being credited with arresting two of four teens who threatened to kill an undercover officer in a sting operation.

Two of the suspects were described by police as being members of the Five Point Generals, the same gang whose members are allegedly involved in the separate slayings of Ephraim Brown, 11, at a July 22 birthday party, and the 2005 Boxing Day shootout that claimed the life of 15-year-old Jane Creba.

One suspect spoke with the undercover officer and then turned to his cronies and told them to "shoot him," Adamson said.

The officer was vulnerable, without body armour or his service revolver, and police watching the undercover sting moved in quickly with Rambo leading the charge.

Four teens, two aged 14 and two aged 15, are charged with robbery, threatening death and resisting arrest.

Of course, under the Liberals "catch and release" programme, they'll be back on the street tomorrow.

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LAST WORD: Obviously not enough midnight basketball

Police have released the name of a young man shot and killed in the city’s north end late last week.

Richard Gyamfi, 19, was shot in the head while sitting in a car in a parking lot on Jane St. just south of Finch Ave. W. on Friday around 8 p.m.

Thank you Premier McGuinty.

Technorati Tags: Akila Badhanage, Five Point Generals, murder

And Charles Manson...

Had a thing about over-population...

"We talked about how some people have different ideas about animals," teacher Lori Peters said. "Some people don’t think they should be in cages."

A better lesson for those kids... "some people are thieves."

Denis Khadr...

Wants to visit Afghanistan... I say let the troopers give him the deluxe tour...

Mr. Coderre shrugged off any suggestion that he's about to embark on an intercontinental political stunt.

“It's not a stunt. I'm doing my job,” he said.

Many of you will remember Denis from such patriotic job-related pronouncements as, "To ask us to make a choice between the Taliban detainees and our troops I think it's infamous."

Yeah Denis... that's a hard one.

After all the support Denis and his boss have been giving our soldiers... I'm certain they'll take special care of him.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"As far as I'm conerned, the whole Liberal Party of Canada can go to Afghanistan. If Dion talked to the Taliban long enough, they wouldn't know who's fighting who after awhile."

"Who'd miss them?"

Technorati Tags: Denis Coderre, Afghanistan, Fiberal smoke and mirrors

Sing a song of hatred

"Battyman fi dead!/Please mark we word/Gimme tha tech-nine/Shoot dem like bird".

Kool Haus has pulled the plug last minute on the concerts of two controversial reggae and dancehall artists.

Entertainers Elephant Man and Sizzla were scheduled to perform Sept. 28 and Oct. 5 respectively, but both men have been under fire from human rights organizations who say their lyrics are homophobic.

“There are artists who are profiteering the songs about death and violence against gays and lesbians,” says Larcher. “It isn’t a black and white issue."

"It’s a human rights issue.”

Judging from his picture... I'd say the E-Man, at minimum, looks to be a little conflicted.

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RELATED: Why is it ok to "smack the ho's"?

Fact is, there's more than just the gay bashing aspect of this culture we should be looking at. Why has it taken a gay advocacy group to speak up about it.

Technorati Tags: Elephant Man, Sizzla, advocating murder

A publicly funded Mennonite school...

In Ontario...

A public school in St. Catharines that for two decades has offered chapel services and Bible classes for its Mennonite students proves Dalton McGuinty's arguments against funding religious schools are "nonsense," according to the Progressive Conservatives.

Eden High joined the public system in 1988 during the Liberal government of premier David Peterson.

So what does that have to do with the "funding proposal" on the table today?

Mr. Van Soelen noted five current Cabinet ministers -- including Greg Sorbara, the Finance Minister and Liberal campaign chairman -- were members of Mr. Peterson's caucus.

"They would have been at the Cabinet table. They must have believed in it at the time," Mr. Van Soelen said.

Apparently the Liberals had their fingers crossed when they put this one through.

Kathleen Wynne, the Liberal Education Minister, yesterday described Eden High as "an anomaly" and said its existence does not justify the fundamental changes that Mr. Tory is proposing.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

We have a new Native spiritual school in Toronto with full funding, busing and snacks.

Also, five Ukrainian Eastern Rite schools with full funding under 3 Catholic school boards; extra 30 min of instuction per day in Ukrainian language and heritage and prayers in an old Slavic language paid for by government heritage grants and or church/parents.

Technorati Tags: Eden High, Greg Sorbara, Fiberal smoke and mirrors

If you can't trust the Syrians...

Who can you trust?

-- DAMASCUS, Sept 29 (Reuters) -- Syria accused Israel on Saturday of making excuses for war by spreading what it described as false reports that an Israeli air raid targeted a site linked to weapons of mass destruction.

Damascus says Israel launched the air raid on Sept. 6, bombing an empty area after air defence systems confronted the aircraft.

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, what does the Israeli Airforce know about making war anyway? They're all just a bunch of poseurs who couldn't hit the broad side of a nuclear reactor.

Syrian Deputy President Farouq al-Shara said the raid also was aimed at boosting the morale of the Israeli military, which failed to crush the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, an ally of Syria, in last year's war.

You tell 'em, Farouq.

Now get back into the bunker. Just in case.

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RELATED: Back in the real world

Notice how far away Dayr az-Zawr is from Israel. An F15/16 attack there is not a tiptoe across the border, but a deep, deep penetration of Syrian airspace.

And guess what happened with the Russian super hyper sophisticated cutting edge antiaircraft missile batteries when that penetration took place on September 6th.

Nothing.

(via the last amazon)

Technorati Tags: happy horseshit, Farouq al-Shara, Osirak

Getting your moneys worth

We sometimes forget how long nuclear power generation has been around.

-- LONDON -- Explosive charges leveled four giant cooling towers at the world's first commercial nuclear power station Saturday, as engineers began the planned decommissioning of Calder Hall, a 62-building site on Britain's west coast.

Although smaller research reactors had been used previously to generate energy, Calder Hall was the first plant to generate commercial quantities of electricity.

The Shippingport Atomic Power Station, in Pennsylvania, was the first such facility built in the United States. It went into operation in 1957.

Technorati Tags: Calder Hall, Shippingport Atomic Power Station, nuclear power

Larger than life...

Larger than death...

"The American people must know we too lost a close friend and brother this day," said Iraqi Army Col. Ali Jafar, Commanding Officer of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Iraqi Brigade, who previously spoke at Manion's memorial service.

"May his family know we too lost family, and we share their loss, our loss."

(via SDA)

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RELATED: A proud Canadian tradition

At RMC they're kicking ass and taking names

These 265 first-year cadets have spent September generally being miserable, when not stealing each others squadron colours or decorating Brucie, the parade square statue.

They have marched nonstop, worked out thrice daily, been wakened by loudspeakers before dawn. They've had to holler Billy Joel's Goodnight Saigon before bed.

It's called FYOP, first year orientation program.

Technorati Tags: Travis Manion, Military Transition Team, Royal Military College

The Sport of Kings

Straight from the mean streets of Toronto... another episode of "Hunting Humans."

-- TORONTO -- Two people are dead and three more are wounded after a spate of violence across the Toronto area.

Police found three men in their 20s with stab wounds when they arrived at an east-end house party around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

The three men are suffering from non-life-threatening injuries, and police say they are not co-operating with the investigation.

You can also chalk up another body for the wily denizens of Jane and Finch.

Across the city Friday, a man was shot and killed around 8 p.m. in Toronto Police say they received a call from a phone booth not far from where the man was found in a car. There's no word yet on a motive or suspect.

A dead 16 year-old in Brampton rounds out the Friday night tally.

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UPDATE: Saturday night body count

Another shooting has rocked Toronto this weekend - this time an 18-year-old male on Saturday night in the city’s west end.

It occurred around 7 p.m., near East Mall and Robinglade Dr., and the teenager was hit in the lower back during a drive-by shooting, police said.

Technorati Tags: shooting, stabbing, David Miller's Toronto

Why Email is like a Gun

All guns are always loaded... never let the muzzle cover anything you're not willing to destroy...

Some CTV employees got an accidental -- and personal -- edition of eTalk Thursday night.

Employees at Canada's largest private broadcaster's building in Agincourt were sent an e-mail by Dawn Fell, CTVglobemedia's vice-president of human resources, that revealed some news about upcoming changes in the executive suite.

You've just gotta love the bloodless, "whistle while you work", Dilbert-esque human resources dynamic that's in play here.

"There are other departures in addition to (David) Kirkwood -- Ellen Baine, Paul Gratton, Peter Palframan," Fell wrote.

"Do we want to work all these in or leave out anyone who is not part of the long-term future? Neither is a great option. Your thoughts?"

The e-mail was received at 9:38 p.m. and recalled 12 minutes later -- likely in time to yank it out of the inboxes of most workers -- but not those with BlackBerrys.

It's spooky, it's like...

He's got a special gift...

Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Blogging Tories not conservative enough

This is worth noting. One of the top Tory bloggers, Bound By Gravity, has chosen to leave the Blogging Tories because they are not real conservatives.

How long will it be before conservatives start leaving the actual Conservative Party again?

Flash forward to September 2007...

The internal bickering comes following the Liberal defeat in three Quebec byelections.

The party also lost two high-profile candidates in Quebec — Paul Leduc, the former mayor of a Montreal suburb and former astronaut Marc Garneau.

That's not possible... I mean, Steffi is "the man."

Garneau announced he won't run in the next election because he wanted to get on with his life in the private sector. It's said he got tired of waiting for the party organization to choose a riding where he would run.

Jason, maybe it's time for a new crystal ball.

Technorati Tags: Paul Leduc, Marc Garneau, Jason Cherniak

Reach out and touch someone

Narrowly focused strikes continue to reap big rewards.

-- WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S.-led forces have killed one of the most important leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq, a Tunisian believed connected to the kidnapping and killings last summer of American soldiers, a top commander said Friday.

Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson said the death of the suspected terrorist in a U.S. airstrike Tuesday south of Baghdad, and recent similar operations against al-Qaida, have left the organization in Iraq fractured.

"Abu Osama al-Tunisi was one of the most senior leaders ... the emir of foreign terrorists in Iraq and part of the inner leadership circle," Anderson said.

The U.S. Central Command said American aircraft dropped two 500-pound bombs on a terrorist safehouse, killing al-Tunisi and two others suspected terrorists who were meeting there.

Ouch... that's gonna leave a mark.

Technorati Tags: Abu Osama al-Tunisi, al-Qaida, payback is a bitch

All veneer... no hardwood

It isn't only Omar Khadr who gets to be forever young -- Note: on the left, from Michael Ignatieff's website banner.

On the right... the actual corpus.

The Liberal Party of Canada... because style is what really matters.

It's not the size...

Of the dog in the fight... it's the size of the fight in the dog that matters.

-- TAIPEI -- Faced with a threatening military buildup by China, an increasingly outgunned Taiwan is quietly pushing ahead with plans to develop missiles that could strike the mainland, defense and security experts say.

The Taiwanese are very aware that a war with mainland China could turn them all into "crispy critters"... but they're not goin' down without a fight.

Taiwan has in recent months tested a land attack cruise missile with a range of 1,000 kilometers, or 621 miles, that could carry a 400-kilogram warhead to targets as distant as Shanghai, according to military analysts.

BREAKING NEWS:

PMO Insider...Reveals... in excruciating detail... exactly how Stephen Harper views combined Dion/Layton threat.

Dalton ducks another one

Slippery, evasive and not too bright...

Play this game with a friend. Name Canadian prime ministers in reverse chronological order, starting with Stephen Harper. How far back did you get?

John Tory: Meighen (ed.'s note - Arthur Meighen was the 9th prime minister).

Dalton McGuinty: Sorry. I'm so busy on the campaign trail, I could only play this game with Terri, and if she won, I might never hear the end of it. So I'll try to play the game the next time I meet with a Grade 6 class. Still, if I were you, I'd bet on the sixth graders.

Howard Hampton: John A. Macdonald (the first prime minister)

Technorati Tags: John Tory, Dalton McGuinty, Howard Hampton

C'mon... it works for Dalton McGuinty

A little baksheesh for all the screaming protesters... and then you ran away and hide again.

-- KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Canadian officials have moved quickly to assure Afghan officials that their troops played no part in this week's shooting deaths of a local religious leader and his brother.

But military officers say they won't rush to use development projects to appease simmering public anger over the deaths, which prompted some 500 Afghans to block a highway west of here Wednesday.

It seems those darned fascists in the military have a different idea... they're gonna operate on principle.

"We don't want to be in a situation where we're seen as just bribing people who have a grudge against us," said Lieut. Derrick Farnham, a Canadian who works with the civil-military team on reconstruction.

"That's something that's been done in the past and it's been termed the great game in Afghanistan where locals play one side off the other in terms of getting treats and gifts. That's something we want to avoid," he said.

Shawn Brant's 'other' trial

Let's face it... in Shawn Brant's world, you're only as credible as your last "death threat."

Stringent security measures were in place as the trial of three men accused of confronting Canadian military personnel during a native protest last year began Thursday.

Shawn Michael Brant and Jerome J. Barnhart are facing several charges of uttering death threats stemming from the Nov. 15 incident east of Deseronto, in which a convoy of military students on a training mission happened upon a group of native protesters blocking Highway 2.

Technorati Tags: Shawn Brant, death threat, Deseronto

Let's be magnanimous...

And call it a draw...

As early preparations for the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 get underway in Canada and the United States, organizers in Canada have run into an unexpected hitch.

Their American counterparts seem to think they won.

Somebody had better stop...

Those eco-warriors... before they kill us all.

-- BEIJING, Sept 27 (Reuters) -- Most crops grown in the United States and Europe to make "green" transport fuels actually speed up global warming because of industrial farming methods, says a report by Nobel prize winning chemist Paul J. Crutzen.

The findings could spell particular concern for alternative fuels derived from rapeseed, used in Europe, which the study concluded could produce up to 70 percent more planet-warming greenhouse gases than conventional diesel.

This is a prime example of "The Law of Unintended Consequences."

There was a wonderful example of this type of thing in the book "Freakononics" where a daycare decided to institute a late fee for the few parents who were consistently late picking up their children at the end of the day.

The intent of the charge was to decrease the instance of people who were tardy... but what resulted instead, was a significant increase... now that parents felt they were justified in coming late, as long as they paid the "fine."

The obvious lesson here is... listen to the science... not Al Gore.

Technorati Tags: alternative fuels, Freakononics, Law of Unintended Consequences

Who cares about the National Debt?

Not Taliban Jack and the loony left.

-- OTTAWA -- Pumping almost all of the $14-billion surplus into debt-reduction rather than investing in Canadians is the kind of rigid conservatism that makes it likely the NDP will vote to topple the government next month, Jack Layton said Thursday.

It's true, this kind of windfall could put safe-injection sites in every city in Canada.

It could set up government inspected brothels for every sex-trade worker in East Van.

We could send every violent convict in maximum security to a fresh round of anger-management classes.

We could double up the cash-for-life to all those welfare moms who clog up the airwaves every time some kid gets smoked at an after hours club.

Is that what the majority of Canadians want?

I think not.

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RELATED: Steffi, meanwhile decides to fall back...

On the tired old "Boogie Man" defense.

When Paul Martin realized he wasn’t going to be able to waltz to a majority government in the spring of 2004, he turned to one of the Liberals’ most reliable and effective weapons: a smear campaign accusing Stephen Harper of harbouring a “secret agenda.”

It might not be surprising, then, that Stéphane Dion reached for the same weapon this week as he sought a lifeline to drag himself out of the swamp he’s stumbled into.

“This hidden agenda will be stopped,” he vowed, fresh from three disastrous byelections in his home province.

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UPDATE: Liberal largesse bled us dry

"Even Jean Chretien himself famously admitted, and I quote, 'We left the cupboard bare,'" said Mulroney, who pointed out that Chretien served as a finance minister under Trudeau and knew of what he spoke.

"That was his only understatement," added Mulroney, to much laughter.

"The day I was sworn in as Prime Minister the government was spending $1.23 on programs for every dollar it took in in taxes," he told the attentive crowd. Under Trudeau, the debt grew by 1,100% and interest rates peaked at 22.75%.

By the time Mulroney left office, program spending was reduced to 97 cents for every dollar of revenues.

In other words, the only reason there was a large deficit, was because of the huge interest payments (33 cents on every tax dollar) Canada had to pay to service the enormous debt Trudeau built up.

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LAST WORD: Speaking of bad budget skills

An urgent plea from the political party that used to accept brown envelopes stuffed with cash: "The Liberal Party's Quebec wing has warned Leader Stéphane Dion that it needs a quarter million dollar cash injection by Friday or it will have to close its Montreal office and lay off staff."

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POSTSCRIPT: Welcome readers of Canadian Cynic

CC has once again directed you here... after calling me a silly name. I will return the favour by urging you to peruse some of CC's "collected wisdom".

Technorati Tags: Taliban Jack, Stephane Dion, smoke and mirrors

Just to change things up a little

Wanna hear about a kid... who isn't ever gonna end up in the middle of a knife fight?

-- THE LAST AMAZON -- Just before I left work for the day, Montana called me to add a little more pressure to my decision.

Montana’s friend Peter would not be allowed to go to the game store unless Montana was with him. In fact, Peter would not even be allowed to leave the house unless Montana picked him up at the door.

Apparently, I now held the fate of two boys in my hands.

Technorati Tags: THE LAST AMAZON, a boy no more, life, its ownself

Balancing the equation

See... where I come from... 'gun control' is being able to hit your target.
This really is a no-brainer... you're breaking into my house at four in the morning and approaching me and mine with speed and purpose... you need to know just one thing... me and my friend "Buck" are gonna change your freakin' horoscope...

There is to be an urgent review of the law protecting those who intervene in criminal situations in England and Wales, the government has said.

Mr Straw wants to reassure victims or witnesses that they can use reasonable force to stop and detain offenders.

"The justice system must not only work on the side of people who do the right thing as good citizens but also be seen to work on their side."

Technorati Tags: self-defense, gun control, remington 870

Sharia Law?

Sorry folks, it's already here...

Upon arriving at the cemetery in September of last year Zakaria was shocked to see that his mother’s tombstone had been removed. As had the flowers. He found a part of it discarded in a corner of the cemetery.

Death and well, you know...

You had to know this was only a matter of time...

The Canada Revenue Agency has won a Federal Court order requiring eBay Canada Ltd. to turn over the names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all high-volume sellers on the popular website.

The CRA wants to find out whether those individuals or companies are reporting the income they made from online sales in 2004 and 2005.

A verb and a noun...

You never wanna see in the same sentence... amputate + woodchipper.

-- MONTREAL — A firefighter was forced to saw off the arm of a Quebec man caught in an industrial wood chipper.

The French-language television network TQS says the 23-year-old victim was working at a factory south of Montreal when his left arm became trapped in the machine.

Firefighters and ambulance technicians were the first to respond to the accident in late August, and quickly judged the man's arm had to be amputated.

The network reported that local police even went to see about renting a saw at a nearby hardware store, though firefighters eventually used one of their own.

Hey Dalton... no biggie

He probably wasn't voting Fiberal anyway.

-- OTTAWA -- On a day when the Liberals wanted to tout their plans to hire more nurses and reduce surgical wait times, Dalton McGuinty got a pointed rebuff today from a terminally ill cancer patient who upbraided the premier for refusing to fund certain new cancer drugs.

During a Liberal campaign visit to an Ottawa hospital, patient Mike Brady refused to shake McGuinty's outstretched hand, telling him he has cancer and "you're not helping any."

"That's not true," McGuinty replied, without inquiring further, before continuing his tour.

The least McGuinty could have done here was hear this guy out... but he chose to turn and run away.

"Thank you very much... oh wise and compassionate Premier."

**********

UPDATE: Exchange was caught on tape

The hospital encounter was one of McGuinty's few dealings this week with ordinary citizens and prompted reporters to ask why he doesn't meet the public more often.

McGuinty has attended stage-managed events, interviews and press conferences for most of the week.

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LAST WORD: Stunts R'Us

Dalton McGuinty went to great lengths yesterday to make a point.

His campaign crew flew to London, staying overnight for an early morning news conference at which he re-announced plans to hire 9,000 more nurses if re-elected.

Kudos for creativity, but the trip didn't do much for the environment. And he didn't speak to a single Londoner, other than local candidates.

Technorati Tags: Mike Brady, terminally ill, rattus liberalis

Allah not so Akbar

Where is your God now?

-- KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- U.S.-led forces used artillery and airstrikes to kill more than 165 insurgents and repel massed assaults on coalition troops in two strongholds of Taliban militants and Afghanistan's rampant drug trade, officials said Wednesday.

Better stick to booby traps and suicide bombers.

You aren't shit when it comes to the real thing.

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RELATED: Canadians deploy Huskies

No, not those huskies.

-- KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Canadian troops in Afghanistan have a new weapon against deadly roadside bombs. Military officials unveiled the first of their new RSD Husky armoured vehicles Wednesday.

"A lot of the (soldiers who were killed by IEDs)could have been saved if we had had these earlier,'' Holsworth told reporters at Kandahar Airfield. "It's extremely important."

Technorati Tags: war on terror, artillery and airstrikes, RSD Husky

A poor little lamb...

Who has lost his mind...

Stephen Harper's Conservatives must make major changes to the upcoming throne speech or the opposition Liberals will vote against it, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion warned Wednesday.

"This hidden agenda will be stopped," Dion said after a meeting with Quebec caucus members in Montreal.

Stopped??? You mean like Steffi's political career?

A CROP poll commissioned by La Presse indicated the Liberals only earned 19 per cent of Quebec voters' intentions — the lowest percentage since Dion became leader. The poll surveyed 1,001 Quebecers between Sept. 13 and 23 and has a three per cent margin of error.

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RELATED: Somebody should tell Craig Oliver...

CTV isn't really a wing of the Liberal Party... just yet.

"We just heard the Liberal leader throwing it back at the prime minister. And it seems to me, if the Prime Minister doesn't want an election he has sent him a message that will allow Harper not to have one."

"In other words those were not intolerable conditions laid out by Mr. Dion," Oliver told CTV Newsnet.

Gee Craig... you really think so?

You really think Stephen Harper is looking to a ratty old pinko mouthpiece for help here? Maybe you could just stick to "reporting" the news.

Oh wait... it's CTV.

Technorati Tags: Stéphane Dion, election fever, dazed and confused

Francisco Chimoio might wanna...

Check this one out with head office...

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".

"They want to finish with the African people. This is the programme. They want to colonise until up to now. If we are not careful we will finish in one century's time."

Technorati Tags: Francisco Chimoio, Mozambique, conspiracy theory

Growing support for NDP position...

As... coincidentally... Afghani tribesman seem to be getting their information from the same unimpeachable source as Taliban Jack.

-- KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of protesters blocked the main highway west of Kandahar city today, claiming that foreign soldiers killed two local clerics in an overnight raid.

The Canadian military says it wasn't involved in the operation last night in Senjaray, a sprawling suburb where military convoys have often faced ambushes.

Yeah, yeah... but I'm sure somebody's brother's, uncle's, first cousin... saw something or other.

But that really doesn't matter does it? It's death to everybody, right? Wind 'em up and watch 'em go.

However, witnesses' vague descriptions of the troops who broke through doors in the middle of the night have led many residents to blame the Canadians.

“Death to Canada, death to foreigners, death to Karzai,” a protester yelled.

That's some "Religion of Peace" ya got there.

Technorati Tags: religion of peace, KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Taliban Jack

While David Miller raises taxes...

And cuts services to the citizens of Toronto... will he still be shelling out for a city subsidised nightclub?

-- TORONTO -- The City of Toronto is reviewing the leasing terms of a building it rents to a community group for 7¢ a year following a complaint from Councillor Rob Ford that the facility is not being used for its intended purpose.

Mr. Ford said the Marcus Garvey Community Centre for Leadership and Enterprise, located in the Weston Road and Sheppard Avenue area, is apparently not being used as a skills training centre, and has been sub-leased on select weekends to promoters who are using the centre as a nightclub.

Maybe this is a tempest in a teapot... I'm sure the majority of Torontonians aren't gonna mind that their property taxes are being used to promote rap music and hip-hop sensibility.

The building encompasses 22,000-square-feet and is located at 160 Rivalda Rd. Mr. Ford-- who said he was tipped off by a Rivalda Road businessman who has personally witnessed parties at the centre -- said the Marcus Garvey Centre pays no property taxes or water bills and that the city provides landscaping services.

According to the terms of the lease obtained by Mr. Ford, the city gave the Marcus Garvey Centre a 15-year lease for $1 beginning in 2002.

**********

UPDATE: Miller has to eat this one

Looks like threats and blackmail aren't gonna work after all.

Mayor David Miller, who presented the motion to reopen the centres, came under fire for agreeing to close the centres down in the first place. His peers grilled him on why he allowed that to happen without council's approval.

Miller said he's agreeing to reverse the decision because of the impact it has had on the public but warned that cuts would come and that they would probably hurt.

Hey Mr. Mayor, you need revenue... I know a lease you could renegotiate.

Technorati Tags: Mayor David Miller, Marcus Garvey Community Centre, Comrade Miller

Does the Mohawk model...

Come with steel toes?

-- BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Nike on Tuesday unveiled what it said is the first shoe designed specifically for American Indians, an effort aiming at promoting physical fitness in a population with high obesity rates.

Nike said it is the first time it has designed a shoe for a specific race or ethnicity. It said all profits from the sale of the shoe will be reinvested in health programs for tribal lands, where problems with obesity, diabetes and related conditions are near epidemic levels in some tribes.

Surprisingly, Nike has decided to swim against the politically correct current that usually insists that human beings, regardless of race, age or gender are identical to each other.

Nike designers and researchers looked at the feet of more than 200 people from more than 70 tribes nationwide and found that in general, American Indians have a much wider and taller foot than the average shoe accommodates.

And where would we be without a little cultural pandering?

The design features several “heritage call outs” as one product manager described it, including sunrise to sunset to sunrise patterns on the tongue and heel of the shoe. Feather designs adorn the inside and stars are on the sole to represent the night sky.

Technorati Tags: Nike, American Indians, cultural pandering

I'm betting Ahmadinejad wishes...

He'd stuck to his original itinerary...

Noon: To protest barbaric U.S. exploitation of women, dine at Hooters, accompanied by writer Noam Chomsky.

1 p.m.: Tour Midwestern town of Smallville. Visit meteor site where alien boy is said to possess superpowers.

2 p.m.: Meet with political prisoner O.J. Simpson. Exchange autographed sabers.

Why we're over there

Though it's relatively easy to argue that it's best for us to leave Afghanistan, it's difficult, if not impossible, to argue that our doing so would leave Afghans better off.

"Afghanistan will fall back into anarchy," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a group of Canadian journalists recently.

"Leaving Afghanistan alone now will bring back all the evils that were here under the Taliban."

Liar, liar

While Premier Dalton McGuinty shook hands and thanked supporters during a brief stop in Belleville, there was one small boy who waited anxiously to see Ontario's leader but failed to get his attention.

Coppers wrangle Rapper Ripper

And surprise, surprise... he's another graduate of Dalton McGuinty's politically correct "catch and release" programme...

Cleavon Joseph, 31, was arrested yesterday in Mississauga.

He's charged with first-degree murder in the death of Jermaine Alexander Malcolm, 24, a rapper and self-proclaimed member of the Meadowvale Bloods gang.

Barely three months before Malcolm was found dying from stab wounds outside a townhouse on Meadowvale Town Centre Saturday morning, London cops were charging Joseph with aggravated assault.

They alleged he stabbed a man in the back three times.

**********

RELATED: Who was Jermaine Alexander Malcolm?

Technorati Tags: Cleavon Joseph, Jermaine Alexander Malcolm, No Gun, No Funeral

Another Toronto school stabbing

Eventually the code talkers just have to spit it up.

A fight between rival groups of students yesterday in a north-east neighbourhood sent three teens to hospital, one with stab wounds.

Toronto Catholic District School Board Chair Oliver Carroll said violence hasn't been a problem at Mother Teresa, but most high schools deal with some fighting.

"In any high school these days, you're going to have gangs, groups, whatever," Carroll said.

"It's a very diverse school."

**********

UPDATE: Second stabbing at same school

Police said the student at Mother Teresa Catholic School was stabbed twice in the chest area at about 4 p.m. and is in good condition at Sunnybrook hospital, where he was being interviewed by detectives.

The youth is the second student of the school to be stabbed in two days.

Residents said tensions have been escalating between Tamil and black youths. They claimed the knife attack came in retaliation for the stabbing of another teen at the school on Monday.

And surprise... it's race-related.

**********

RELATED: Wait a minute...

Didn't they just bury a 16 year-old Scarborough high school student a couple of weeks ago?

Yup.

Technorati Tags: no gun, no funeral, Michael Bryant, suckass political correctness

The Price of Freedom

A Canadian soldier has been killed and four wounded as Canada's battle group pushed into a zone of Taliban control and tried to establish a police checkpoint on Monday.

Corporal Nathan Hornburg, 24, a reservist who worked as a mechanic for the King's Own Calgary Regiment, was trying to repair a broken tread on a Leopard tank about 4:30 p.m. local time Monday when he was struck by the blast from a mortar shell, military officials say.

He will be remembered.

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RELATED: Doing the right thing

-- YANGON -- Chanting "democracy, democracy," 10,000 monks marched through the heart of Myanmar's main city on Tuesday in defiance of a threat by the ruling generals to send in troops to end the biggest anti-junta protests in 20 years.

That area was the scene of the worst bloodshed during a crackdown on nationwide pro-democracy protests in 1988 in which up to 3,000 people are thought to have been killed.

Technorati Tags: Corporal Nathan Hornburn, King's Own Calgary Regiment, democracy

Harm reduction my ass

In the wake of the "let's give junkies a safe, clean place to inject poison into their veins" controversy... I've been trying to imagine the next silly-ass wave of nanny-state, government sanctioned assininity...

Ms. Davis said the co-operative brothel would keep sex workers safe and give the workers access to drug treatment and other support. She said if it opens, the cooperative brothel would likely be situated in the industrial area of the Downtown Eastside.

Of course... whorehouses.

What parent wouldn't be pleased to have their child performing serial sex acts on a daily dozen misfit strangers, so they can earn money to feed their ravening heroin addiction?

It's hard to imagine what the loony left could possibly have planned for an encore to that.

How about a subsidised shooting-range for gangbangers, to reduce the number of people injured or killed by stray bullets? Or maybe we could send teenage racers to skid-school to minimise the number of idiots who kill themselves while running away from the police?

Is there an end to this insanity?

Technorati Tags: co-operative brothel, nanny-state, loony left

Welcome Back Khadr

Chalk up one for the good guys... Omar Khadr is gonna get his day in court.

-- WASHINGTON -- A military appeals court sided with the Pentagon today, overruling a judge who threw out terrorism charges against a Canadian Guantanamo Bay detainee.

The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review ruled that a military court set up by the Bush administration was the proper venue for deciding whether Omar Khadr is an "unlawful enemy combatant" and trying him on terrorism charges.

That sound you just heard is the sighing and weeping of a million deluded leftbots.

The ruling reverses a military judge's June 4 ruling that the tribunal system created by Congress did not have authority to try detainees unless they were first determined to be unlawful enemy combatants.

**********

UPDATE: In other Canuck terrorist related news

In a move that stunned defence lawyers for 14 men alleged to have participated in terrorist-related activities, the federal Crown announced this morning that it will file direct indictments against the accused.

All parties were in the midst of a preliminary hearing that was expected to last until the spring. A direct indictment would mean an end to the preliminary hearing and a stay of all the charges. The men would be re-charged and after bail hearings, they would proceed to a criminal trial.

Technorati Tags: Omar Khadr, Court of Military Commission Review, Guantanamo Bay

Bollinger 1... Ahmadinejad 0

Well, well, well... looks like Madman Ahmadinejad isn't gonna get a free ride after all.

-- New York -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the stage at Columbia University to a blistering welcome from the president of the school, who said the hard-line leader behaved like “a petty and cruel dictator.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad smiled as Columbia President Lee Bollinger took him to task over Iran's human-rights record and foreign policy, and Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel.

“You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,” Bollinger said in reference to Ahmadinejad’s views on the Holocaust. “Will you cease this outrage?”

Ahmadinejad sputtered out a retort, but I guess none of his conversations with the "Hidden Imam" had really prepared him for this very public beatdown.

“People in Iran are very joyous, happy people,” he said when questioned about the arrests of students, journalists and women. “They're very free in expressing what they think.”

He said women in Iran were "the freest women in the world... They're active in every level of society."

The Iranian leader has previously called the Holocaust “a myth” and called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

You've gotta love the sheer impenetrability and arrogance of this guy... he just doesn't know when to get off the bus.

Asked about executions of homosexuals in Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad replied: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."

Reacting to laughter and jeers from the audience he added: "In Iran we don't have this phenomenon, I don't know who you told this."

Sounds like someone's being awfully defensive, Mahmoud...

C'mon sweetie... you got anything else you'd like to share?

Technorati Tags: Lee Bollinger, Columbia University, Islamo-closet

Pinko Howie...

Been smokin' Maui Wowie.

-- WATERLOO, WALKERTON and OAKVILLE, Ont. -- The New Democrats will insist the ruling party take on its six key election pledges if the Liberals or the Conservatives want the party's help to form a minority government in Ontario.

NDP Leader Howard Hampton said Monday that the party's platform would need to be completely implemented in return for his support after the Oct. 10 vote.

Uh, Howie... I know you like to shoot from the hip, but apart from the Prime Minister, I honestly can't think of anyone less likely to surrender to political blackmail than John Tory.

Are you really saying your master plan is that he'll kiss your ass and turn the Conservative Party into a wing of the NDP?

You might just wanna dust off "Plan B".

Technorati Tags: Howard Hampton, John Tory, pipe dreams

It's gotta be all or nothing

Maybe a Catholic Premier, whose kids go to Catholic schools and whose wife is a teacher in the Catholic system... shouldn't be the final arbiter of this controversial matter.

The Ontario government should stop funding Catholic schools, according to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Ontario is the only province where taxpayers pay 100 per cent of the costs for students who attend Catholic schools and none of the costs for students attending Islamic, Jewish or other faith-based schools.

Other provincial governments either partly fund all faith-based schools that meet their guidelines, or fund none of them.

It only makes sense.

Technorati Tags: Liberal Party Hypocrisy, conflict of interest, liar, liar

Lead, follow...

Or get out of the freakin' way...

Tensions are increasing near Hollow Water First Nation after a local man used a logging machine to circumvent a roadblock, damaging the barrier in the process.

“I wanted to go for a nice quiet beer at the bar,” said Ivon Saber, who broke through the barricade Friday night with his skidder, a vehicle used to haul logs out of the bush.

You've gotta love this guy's style.

Of course, now he'll have to sleep with his skidder to stop the aboriginal thugs from setting it on fire.

The actual road was blocked by logs, a front-end loader, some vehicles and all-terrain vehicles, he said. I supposed if I was crazy I could have run over their cars and quads,” he said, declining to say how he later returned home.

If only the police had as much backbone.

**********

RELATED: It's like a homegrown Hezbollah

Tensions and hostilities are rising in the area, says Ivon Saber, owner and resident of the Ayers Cove development, also inside the blockaded area.

"They let some people out last night, but they would only allow you to get out for 15 minutes every two hours," he said.

"As far as I'm concerned, that's being held hostage. The main road to Manigotagan is blocked, and they're not allowing anybody out that way."

One small note here...

The subdivisions are part of the province's cottage lot draw and are on Crown land.

Technorati Tags: Ivon Saber, Hollow Water First Nation, homegrown terrorism

Now lemme see, what Federal party...

Is actually pushing a tough on crime agenda right now?

-- MONTREAL -- A Quebec victims' rights group is calling on federal politicians to serve tougher justice in Canada, demanding an end to concurrent sentences for offenders who commit multiple violent crimes.

Victims' rights advocate Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu says Canada should force violent criminals to serve sentences consecutively to ensure each victim gets equal justice.

Federal law now allows criminals to serve several sentences at the same time.

And what Federal party is opposing that legislation in the Senate?

No more Fiberal hug-a-thug

Technorati Tags: Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, concurrent sentences, victims' rights

Allah denied

Seriously wounded still beats having your head sawed off.

Crazy talkin' fundamentalist freak...

Has brief moment of lucidity.

-- NEW YORK, Sept 23 (Reuters) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a U.S. television interview on Sunday that Iran did not need nuclear weapons and his country was not heading for war with the United States.

Ahmadinejad also took issue with U.S. charges that Iran supports militants in Iraq, providing weapons and training, saying: "We don't need to do that."

Of course, like most people walking that fine line between quasi-twilight sanity and schizophrenia... the Madman is a really shitty liar.

Asked whether he was denying that Iran supplied weapons to militants in Iraq, he avoided a clear answer. "It's very clear the situation. The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests," he said.

Not half as detrimental as the gps-guided cruise missile that's gonna come flyin' in your bedroom window one night, ya freakin' squirrel.

Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, was denied a request to visit the World Trade Center site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Iranian people had better think seriously about dumping ol' Mahmoud before they get too much further down the plutonium highway.

Even if Bush's exit strategy for Iraq doesn't include the USMC leaving via Tehran... there are other parties here who will burn Persia to the ground and piss on the ashes... before they let them acquire a nuclear capability.

**********

RELATED: Equal time for the courageous left

The Columbia Coalition Against the War acknowledges that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holds some "inexcusable" views.

That doesn't mean they will, you know, confront him about it...

Technorati Tags: Iran, flat, black, glows in the dark

Not to rush things here...

But... when exactly Mr. Layton... will you be heading over to Afghanistan... to fire up your, uh... "peace negotiations"?

-- KABUL, Afghanistan -- Italy's defence ministry said on Sunday it believed two Italian soldiers missing in Afghanistan had been kidnapped.

The soldiers went missing while on patrol in western Afghanistan, Italian authorities said earlier on Sunday. Police in the country's west said they were searching for the pair.

It's probably not a good idea to travel alone... perhaps you could bring Sergeant Steffi along to spread some of that egghead goodwill we've been hearing about.

I'm sure these guys are willing to listen to reason.

In southern Zabul province, meanwhile, the Taliban kidnapped three Afghan men accused of spying for the U.S. and executed them, said Shamulzayi district chief Wazir Khan.

Police recovered the bodies Saturday evening. One of the victims was beheaded, and the other two were shot dead.

Uh, Jack... Jack... are you there?

Yeah... that's what I thought.

Technorati Tags: Taliban Jack, religion of peace, suckass political correctness

The reality of a Liberal Ontario

That was the day Mr. Brown, watching from his house, realized that he and his family were on their own...

“When the sun goes down behind my home, I don't live in Canada, I live in Beirut.”

**********

UPDATE: John Tory steps up

If elected Oct. 10, Tory says he would change provincial laws to broaden the definition of trespassing and double existing fines for those who defy the order.

Individuals would face a maximum fine of $2,000 for each day they occupy land illegally and organizations would face a maximum daily fine of $25,000.

(also via "joanne")

Hang on a minute... I'm confused

Everything I've seen or heard about Iran in the last couple of years... had led me to believe that surly, hormone soaked teenage boys were already "calling the shots."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his government is planning to reduce the minimum voting age in the country to 15 years.

“When the voting age was 15, we saw how our young people acted with fervor and helped choose the right way for the independence and greatness of Iran," he said, addressing youths on the first day of the school year.

What a stroke of genius.

No wonder he's coming to the United Nations.

This time... I'm not lying

Dalton McGuinty makes another promise.

Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty, whose 2003 campaign promise not to raise taxes dogs his Oct. 10 re-election bid, said Ontarians should read his lips.

"We will not have to raise taxes, because we're in charge. We know exactly where we are," he said yesterday on Global's Focus Ontario.

So Dalton, what you're saying is, after all the lies you've peddled to us over the last four years... you've decided to turn over a new leaf?

Until yesterday, McGuinty has tried to avoid saying "we will not have to raise taxes," instead answering reporters' questions with simple "yes" or "no" responses less likely to be used on television.

That's because he and his handlers worry it would spur TV newscasts to air the clip then re-broadcast the infamous 2003 campaign commercial, where he promised: "I won't raise your taxes and I won't cut them either."

Fool me twice... shame on me.

Technorati Tags: Dalton McGuinty, Fiberal Party, Liar, liar

No Rap... No Funeral

Anybody out there have Attorney General Michael Bryant's cellphone number?

-- MISSISSAUGA -- A young rapper who called himself Tactix and who rhymed about violence on the streets was killed in an apparent stabbing early yesterday at a townhouse.

The 24 year old man, whose non-street name was Jermaine Alexander Malcolm, poetically listed his hometown as SCARTOWN on his MySpace page... street slang for Scarborough.

"He was a good guy," a friend of Malcolm said near the crime scene yesterday. "He was one of my best friends, yo."

"He was a young guy, yo, he didn't deserve this shit."

Perhaps it would be more fitting to remember to remember the multi-talented Tactix in his own words...

Im here to be herd and it will be DONE!!!

IM A TORONTO/ SAUGA /SCARTOWN/UPTOWN/DOWNTOWN GRITTY CITY RIDA G.T.A. CANADA WIDE REPPEN U.S TO DA THE WORLD IN FULL EFFECT TACTIX BANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DATS ENUFF FOR NOW PEACE YO FAM LETS GET DIS OH SEV MONEY ON LOCK N BANG THEM IN DA FACE 1 DAT ITS YA BOI T .O. LIVE WIRE AKA TACTIX AKA CLAPP DODGE IT AKA 45 AKA MISCHIEF AKA LIL THUG AKA LIGHT TOKA/ L.T. AKA CASH AKA TAX AKA STATIC FEINS CALL ME BILL/BOSSMAN N THE LADYS CALL ME BEEF HEAD ASK ABOUT ME BANG

How could anybody argue with that?

**********

UPDATE: Surprise!!! There's a pharmaceutical angle

It may have been a stab wound to the chest that killed wannabe rapper Jermaine Malcolm but it’s drugs that are behind the death, Peel police said Sunday.

“There is a drug angle to this,” Const. J.P. Valade said, adding Malcolm, who used the stage name Tactix, was “very well-known” to cops in the region.

Valade would not comment on whether Malcolm had any gang ties but his MySpace website makes several references to the Meadowvale Bloods and MDV (Money, Drugs and Violence).

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Congratulations to Jermaine for living the dream."

Technorati Tags: Tactix, Jermaine Alexander Malcolm, No Gun, No Funeral

Taliban Jack...

Had better get a move on, if he wants to negotiate with these guys...

A British-led multi-national force in southern Afghanistan says it has found a network of well-established bunkers at a former Taleban stronghold.

Most of the Taleban seem to have left the area but the bunkers indicate they were experienced fighters.

The positions, which also suggest the Taleban thought they were in the district to stay, are being documented and then destroyed.

**********

RELATED: In an eerie sort of reciprocity...

A British company welcomes its future overlords.

**********

LAST WORD: Forget reality tv... choose reality

Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem.

The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say.

Technorati Tags: leftwing media bias, religion of peace, suckass political correctness

Bested Bloc-heads beget bad bluff

Maybe Gille's lookin' at his numbers and just figures things can't get any worse.

-- OTTAWA -- Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe set off a game of parliamentary chicken on Saturday, laying down five "non-negotiable" conditions for supporting the minority Conservative government's throne speech next month.

Unless one of the parties blinks, Mr. Duceppe's ploy increases the chances that the country will be plunged into a fall election.

What makes Duceppe think, even in his wildest, most optimistic dreams, that the Prime Minister will bow to this sort of public blackmail?

During a campaign-like speech in Rimouski, Que., on Saturday, Mr. Duceppe listed five "non-negotiable" conditions the Conservative government must meet to earn his party's support.

"If it means an election, it means an election," he told reporters following his speech.

Hey... it has to happen sooner or later.

I say, bring it on.

I'm sure Taliban Jack would agree...

Who wants to live in an absolute shithole like Canada... when they could live and prosper in the people's paradise of Iran?

-- UNITED NATIONS -- Iran is distributing a booklet on Canadian human rights "violations" in a bid to discredit Canada on the eve of the annual United Nations summit where its own rights record will be the subject of intense scrutiny.

The 70-page document being handed out to diplomats at the United Nations comes with an inscription that says it is written "In the Name of God" as it rails against the Canadian government.

Cowardly, backstabbing...

Religion of Peace surfaces briefly... then crawls back into its rat-hole.

-- KANDAHAR -- Four Canadian soldiers and their Afghan interpreter have been injured after their vehicle struck a roadside bomb.

The blast, early yesterday morning, hit a resupply convoy on its way to the Canadian forward operating base at Ma'sum Ghar, west of Kandahar.

Two soldiers injured and the interpreter were medevaced back to the hospital the international base at the Kandahar air base. Their injuries are not considered life-threatening, said Capt. Josée Bilodeau. Two other soldiers were treated in Ma'sum Ghar.

You'd think if these guys actually believed that Allah had blessed their "holy war", they'd just throw themselves into the fray.

Of course, every time they do that... they get beaten like a much-reviled third wife.

Sometimes it's hard to ignore reality.

Technorati Tags: Ma'sum Ghar, Canadian casualties, religion of peace

Music to my ears

It's an interesting contrast... while Dalton McGuinty concentrates on measures like vaccinating pre-adolescent girls against sexually transmitted diseases... John Tory says he wants to go after actual criminals...

Tory said yesterday that he would go province-wide with an idea proposed by Kingston Police Chief W.J. Closs to have the Ontario government offer $50,000 in cash for information leading to the arrest of murderers and other dangerous criminals.

Unlike Crime Stoppers, this program would require that tipsters give their names and testify in court if necessary.

Crime Stoppers programs typically offer rewards in the range of $50 to $2,000, but the information can be provided anonymously.

Just as importantly, Tory proposes stripping away the layer of suckass political correctness that conceals the actual state of affairs of the prosecution of justice in Ontario.

The Conservatives would, if elected to govern, introduce a Truth and Transparency in the Justice System Act, to require the justice system to release statistics on plea bargains, crimes by suspects on bail and court wait times.

Tory said too many murders have been committed by people who were out on bail for serious charges at the time, and any government run by him would demand that Crowns fight bail for all gun crimes.

"This is catch and release justice; catch and release works when you're fishing," he said. "It doesn't work when you're dealing with violent offenders."

I think this one is a winner.

Technorati Tags: John Tory, catch and release, freedom of information

It's not a huge leap...

From hearing voices... to hearing footsteps...

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has issued a tough warning to any country considering an attack on Iran.

He said Iran's forces were just for defence, but that anybody who attacked would experience nothing but regret. On display at the parade was Iran's latest military hardware, including new long-range missiles and Saegheh fighter jets.

According to the Associated Press news agency some of the lorries carrying Iranian missiles bore anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans.

It's starting to sound as though ol' Mahmoud has an invisible friend.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says Mr Ahmadinejad believes he is winning the battle for world opinion - a fight he is now taking to the UN General Assembly in New York.

Technorati Tags: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, UN General Assembly, flat, back, glows in the dark

Aboriginals 'amp up' threats

The only question is... who's gonna end up in hospital this time?

-- HALDIMAND -- Six Nations elected Chief Dave General stands behind a toughly-worded letter warning that more native protests would occur, unless all development is stopped along the Grand River.

Haldimand Mayor Marie Trainer called it a thinly veiled threat.

“It’s so strongly worded. It’s more or less saying we’re shutting Haldimand down,” Trainer said.

Technorati Tags: Chief Dave General, Mayor Marie Trainer, homegrown terror

Bin Laden plays his big hand here...

But by taking away Musharraf's remaining wiggle room, he has just created, where none existed before, an implacable and extremely motivated enemy.

-- ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan's military vowed Thursday to eliminate terrorism, undeterred by a call from al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden for a rebellion against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

In a new audiotape released Thursday, bin Laden said the Pakistan army's bloody siege of militants holed up in Islamabad's Red Mosque made Musharraf an infidel.

To date, Musharraf has been walking a knife edge trying to accommodate both the West and the hardline religious parties.

This video was obviously meant to cut Musharraf's feet out from under him domestically, but by declaring him an infidel... Bin Laden has left the President only one option here... and that is eliminating Osama.

Unless there is a coup, or a popular uprising in the next little while, which is always a possibility... this threat will have been for naught. It will, in fact, have been extremely counter-productive.

Musharraf, at this point in time, now has absolutely no reason not to greenlight the massive "special forces" operation that the Americans have been advocating for the last six years.

The longer Bin Laden remains in circulation, the more he can agitate for an Islamic coup directed at Musharraf... and let's remember, an extremely motivated George Bush would like nothing better than Osama's head on a pike as an end-of-term party favour.

Cooler heads within the fundamentalist movement already realise that this was a tactical error and are frantically backpedaling away from the video threat.

But a prominent lawmaker from a hard-line Islamic coalition strongly opposed to Musharraf's alliance with Washington said he thought the video was fake. He offered no evidence to back up his assertion.

"This is an attempt to turn people's sympathies in favor of Gen. Pervez Musharraf but such tactics are not going to work," said Liaquat Baluch, from the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal.

"I am sure that the video is a fake and made in America," he said.

Osama, you fucked up here... and I think it's gonna cost you bigtime.

**********

RELATED: Getting his ducks in a row

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has made a series of top-level changes in the military high command ahead of next month's presidential elections.

Most important, the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate has been changed and a new commander of the Rawalpindi corps appointed on Friday.

Technorati Tags: Pervez Musharraf, Red Mosque, Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal

Photographic evidence

It's true... everybody in North Vancouver is a stoner.

Screw education, fuel and food...

How the loony left deals with a humanitarian crisis.

-- ABU DIS, West Bank -- Fahed Abu Haj, curator of the Abu Jihad Palestinian Political Prisoners Museum, greets visitors with a meant-to-shock claim: "The first Palestinian prisoner was Jesus," he says.

Apparently, that "three square meals a day thing" is totally over-rated. The really important thing is to build monuments to spread your propaganda.

With that salvo, Abu Haj introduces a place that is part symbol and part propaganda. The museum reflects a shared experience that Palestinians consider central to building their national identity: Israeli jail.

The museum opened in April and cost $750,000 to construct. A Kuwaiti charity provided the funds.

Hmmmm... there's something that feels a little off here.

One notable omission from the museum is any mention of prisoners from Hamas, the movement that defeated Fatah in legislative elections last year.

Oh yeah... that.

Technorati Tags: Fahed Abu Haj, bread, not circuses, Abu Jihad Palestinian Political Prisoners Museum

No more bacon for convicts

I agree with Duane David, let's get rid of bacon in Canadian prisons...

A Muslim inmate has won $2,000 and a partial human rights victory over a Correctional Service of Canada policy not to replace bacon with a halal diet for Islam-worshipping cons.

Duane David, who is serving time in Kingston's Joyceville Institution for an unknown crime, had complained to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that his rights were being violated as the prison failed to offer a halal replacement for bacon served to inmates with breakfast every Wednesday.

I'm sure all his health-conscious buddies out at the weight-pile will be anxious to support Duane in his crusade... ah... campaign here.

And bacon's just a start... let's ban televisions and computers in prison as well.

We just want these poor boys to be comfortable.

Technorati Tags: Duane David, Joyceville Institution, Canadian Human Rights Commission

Straight from the 'grassy knoll'

Is there any crazy shit from decades past that can't be woven into a conspiracy theory and laid at the feet of evil, racist anglo society?

'An Inuit "truth commission" is investigating long-standing accusations that Mounties slaughtered sled dogs in the 1950s and 1960s to force their owners to give up their traditional lifestyle, officials said yesterday.'

Let's make sure we get PETA involved here too.

**********

LAST WORD: Back in the real world

During this election, I thought that the Conservatives would be able to nail Caledonia right into McGuinty’s forehead. However, John Tory is not hammering on this issue for fear of hitting himself on the Ipperwash thumb.

Without John Tory forcing this issue, the media is not forced to cover it, and in fact, is content not to.

It's the "crazy" wheel that gets the grease.

Technorati Tags: truth commission, conspiracy theory, suckass political correctness

Spare us the crocodile tears

If the spokes-natives for the aboriginal community... who last week offered up public apologies for the assault on a Caledonia contractor were really being sincere... they should have no trouble ponying up the three suspects in the case.

-- CALEDONIA, ON, Sept. 20 /CNW/ -- The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) has issued warrants for the arrest of three suspects in relation to the Stirling Woods Subdivision assault.

The suspects are: Richard SMOKE, age 18 years, being sought for aggravated assault and break and enter; Byron POWLESS, age 18 years, wanted on charges of assault and break and enter; and a 15-year-old male youth also wanted for assault, uttering threats and break and enter.

But that ain't gonna happen, is it?

**********

UPDATE: Naming the No-brainer Nine

Nine aboriginal protesters at the site were arrested Wednesday and appeared in court Thursday, but not in relation to the attack on Gualtieri.

The nine include both men and women and range in age from 17 to 47, and all are charged with mischief. One man also faces a weapons charge, and a woman is also charged with assaulting police.

Charged are Ronald Cook, 31, of Akwesasne, N.Y.; Greg Powless, 18, of Ohsweken, Ont.; Stephen Powless, 42, of Ohsweken; Francine Doxdator, 47, of no fixed address; Teresa Jamieson, 41, of Ohsweken; Sheranne McNaughton, 26, of Hagersville, Ont.; Skyler Williams, 24, of no fixed address; June Jamieson-Maracle, 40, of Ohsweken; and a 17-year-old female from Ohsweken.

Technorati Tags: Richard SMOKE, Byron POWLESS, Sam Gualtieri

Leadership Snooze-o-rama

Good grief... now we're on to energy.

All I know is that listening to all this argle-bargle... is sucking the life out of me... I'll let somebody else try to make sense of this.

7:38 — Three and half minutes of debate.

Tory to McGuinty: "We've got to get it done or we'll run out of energy."

McGuinty responds to Tory: "You're making this stuff up."

If I don't get away from this storm of polished fluff right now, I'm gonna zzzzzz...

**********

LAST WORD: The only worthwhile moment

A flurry of accusations and recriminations was prompted when a woman from Burlington asked if the party leaders would support a law allowing voters to recall politicians who break their word.

In the end, all three said they would oppose such a law.

Technorati Tags: Dalton McGuinty, John Tory, naptime

There's a nouveau Sheriff in town

And he's got his own thoughts about keepin' the peace...

The French National Assembly has passed a controversial bill tightening entry conditions for the relatives of immigrants living in France.

Under the legislation, the relatives will have to prove they are solvent financially and can speak French.

It also includes plans for DNA testing of foreigners seeking to join family members living in France.

I can't wait to see what happens come Car-B-Q season.

**********

RELATED: DNA testing is a double-edged sword

The United States already uses DNA to verify familial relationships for immigration purposes. Sometimes though, you don't get the results you're looking for.

-- When the DNA results landed on Isaac Owusu’s dinner table here last year, they showed that only one of the four boys — the oldest — was his biological child.

Technorati Tags: immigration, DNA testing, France moves right

Dumbing down with Dalton

Another case of the Fiberals promising voters the sun, the moon and the stars...

Fewer than two-thirds of Ontario's 145,000 Grade 6 students have met provincial standards on the latest province-wide tests – well short of the Liberals' promise in the last election to have 75 per cent of Grade 6 students clear the bar.

Maybe Dalton should be spending a little more time "celebrating intelligence and achievement" instead of simply ensuring public school libraries have multiple copies of "My Two Dads."

However, only 64 per cent achieved at least a B – the provincial standard – in Grade 6 reading in the latest scores released yesterday and 61 per cent got a B or better in writing – results unchanged from the year before. In math, 59 per cent got at least a B, down 2 points from the previous year.

Our children deserve better than this.

**********

RELATED: Natives ask... where's McGuinty now?

Three programs at First Nations Technical Institute (FNTI) have been postponed because of what the school calls a dire ongoing funding shortage.

Officials with FNTI met with Chris Bentley, Ontario Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, following at Intelligencer article in July. They got a listening ear but no real solutions, Thompson said.

The province, which funds Ontario's other post-secondary schools, says aboriginal affairs are a federal matter.

Yeah Dalton, it's always somebody else's fault, isn't it?

Technorati Tags: provincial standards, Grade 6 testing, Liberal lies

On the bright side...

Nobody's talking about killing the guy who made them...

Four statues of Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu deity revered as the remover of obstacles, are to be removed in the next few days from outside Edmonton's Shaw Conference Centre after adamant objections from Alberta Hindus.

Ryan McCourt's sculptures, which have been on display for 10 months, were placed at the centre under Edmonton's Art and Design in Public Places Program, a corporate-municipal non-profit partnership seeking to show large-scale sculptures produced by many artists in the region.

**********

UPDATE: Ryan McCourt replies to critics...

"There's lots of art that I don't like," he wrote. "I don't go around gathering signatures of people who agree with me, and try to force the art to come down."

"That would be truly offensive, especially in a democracy like Canada."

Technorati Tags: Ryan McCourt, Ganesha, censorship

Smack-talkin' Persians...

Are cruisin' for a bruisin'.

-- TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran has drawn up plans to bomb Israel if the Jewish state should attack, the deputy air force commander said, adding to tensions already heated up by an Israeli airstrike on Syria and Western calls for more U.N. sanctions against Tehran.

The RAND Corporation thinktank was quick to put the Iranian rhetoric into perspective...

"If Israelis attacked Iran it would be with high precision weapons that could destroy military targets," he said. "They could destroy Iran's nuclear reactor and do damage to the enrichment."

"The Iranian response would be quite different," Ochmanek said. "It would be small numbers of highly inaccurate missiles and the intention would be to do this for psychological purposes rather than to destroy discrete targets."

"It's an asymmetrical relationship."

In brains apparently, as well as brawn.

Technorati Tags: Iran, enriched uranium, flat, black, glows in the dark

"Dances with Peyote"

Just like the famous, totally fabricated "Tawana Brawley" incident in the United States... it now appears that the RCMP did not scoop up these brave aboriginal warriors and spirit them off to a mythical secret police gulag after all.

The claim that Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested a group of Navajo American Indians this week appears to be bogus.

Both levels of police have categorically denied taking a group of Navajo American Indians into custody this week.

While reports from the group itself said they had been taken in by RCMP for questioning and released, the OPP and RCMP said they "did not stop, detain nor arrest anyone in the area."

Both agencies have investigated the allegations and determined the incident did not occur, the OPP said in a joint statement Tuesday.

So what's up with the kook who made the false allegations?

Spata Desareau, a member of the tribe that is an offshoot of the Navajo, had told the Intelligencer the 28-person group was taken into custody Sunday en route to the aboriginal protest at a quarry near Deseronto.

Ah... he's one of Shawn Brant's merry men.

That explains everything.

**********

BREAKING: Believe it or not... ARRESTS IN CALEDONIA

It appears the OPP may have finally taken some action against native protestors in Caledonia.

Reports from the scene of a long standoff at a housing subdivision indicate cops moved into the disputed land on Wednesday afternoon and took 18 people into custody. All those arrested are said to be natives.

This latest incident follows a violent confrontation that took place last week between a home builder and those on the land. Fifty-two-year-old Sam Gualtieri was discovered unconscious and bloody after he went to check out a home under construction.

You've gotta love the timing here.

Did Julian Fantino tell Dalton, "No more kid gloves?"

Technorati Tags: RCMP, Spata Desareau, Caledonia

Another Dion brainwave...

I can't wait to see the t-shirt... "My Canada includes every fanatical, murderous fundamentalist sonuvabitch..."

-- TORONTO -- Federal Liberal Leader Stephane Dion is repeating his call for a Canadian man being held in a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay to be tried, if not in a U.S. court then in a Canadian one.

I imagine our soldiers is Afghanistan must be similarly excited about the actions of a man who also apparently aspires to be their next Commander-in-Chief.

Mr. Dion met Wednesday with U.S. military lawyers representing Omar Khadr, 21, and later spoke at a hotel in downtown Toronto.

Mr. Khadr is accused of murdering a U.S. officer in Afghanistan in a 2002 firefight at an alleged al Qaeda compound when he was 15.

Sorry Steffi... my Canada does not include terrorists.

Technorati Tags: Omar Khadr, Stephane Dion, al Qaeda

Show me the honour

And a little outrage from the East Asian "community" involved, wouldn't be amiss either.

-- LONDON -- A judge sentenced a 70-year-old widow to life in prison Wednesday for arranging the murder of her daugher-in-law after discovering she was having an affair.

Bachan Athwal was convicted in July of killing Surjit Athwal, 27, almost a decade ago. Judge Giles Forrester said she must serve at least 20 years before being considered for parole.

The victim's husband, Sukhdave Athwal, also was convicted of murder at the same trial. The judge said he must serve at least 27 years.

"The pair of you decided that the so-called honor of your family members was worth more than the life of this young woman," the judge said.

Register culture, not guns.

**********

RELATED: Do we call it "growing pains"?

A chief constable has said her force needs more staff and resources to cope with the pressures caused by a sudden influx of migrant workers.

Julie Spence of Cambridgeshire Police says a dramatic change in the make-up of the population in the county had meant new challenges for her officers.

For example, in the space of one year, drink-drive figures showed a 17-fold rise in arrests of foreigners.

Since 2004, 83,000 East Europeans have registered to work in Eastern England.

This is an inevitable consequence of tossing standards and regulations out the window. If your goal is simply to acquire a "cheap labour pool" you will end up paying the piper.

Police officers were now dealing with close to 100 languages without having the right skills - a situation which had landed the force with a translation bill of at least £800,000.

The force had also seen rises in some crimes which could be directly associated with migration.

These included drink-driving involving foreign nationals and the emergence of an "international dimension" to crimes including cannabis production, human trafficking and credit card skimming.

Mrs Spence said knife crime was another problem area. She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme a lot of people who carried knives for protection in their home country believe they can do the same in the UK.

She added that ongoing feuds can also be brought into the country.

Anybody remember back when "discriminating" wasn't a bad word?

Technorati Tags: Bachan Athwal, honour killing, Chief Constable Julie Spence

Answering that age old question...

What happens when Islam runs into... "Plan 9 from Outer Space"?

"The hunt for the Islamic dollar at the retail end of the value chain is now starting to heat up. But it has a very long way to go until it is anywhere close to being fully realized," says Abdalhamid Evans.

He wasn't, he didn't...

And look where it got him...

"Shilton was a good kid, he knew what he was doing," Henderson said. "Going to school, trying to get everything he wanted out of life."

Despite the warm, fuzzy-bunny sentiment... the only upside here, is that the driver young Shilton smashed into... well, he's gonna be okay.

**********

UPDATE: He really wasn't... said the judge

A police source told the Sun that Shilton was recently before the courts for twice breaching his recognizance on previous charges. His release from custody stipulated he wasn't allowed to be in the front seat of a vehicle and had to be with his stepmother at all times.

**********

RELATED: The Toronto "Truthing" Star

Here's a breathless headline from a separate incident that night...

2 injured after police chase

The province’s Special Investigations Unit has been called in after two men were injured following a police pursuit early Wednesday morning.

Oh yeah... the reason these two poor innocents were being chased by the fascist police officers... it's in there somewhere.

The shooting victim was shot in the chest on the corner of Sumach and Winchester Sts. around 1:30 a.m. and remains in serious condition in hospital.

Reporter Rachel De Lazzer strikes another blow for the proletariat.

Technorati Tags: Shilton Lutchman, Special Investigations Unit, suckass political correctness

You know you're worth it...

More here.

Stephen Harper's personal mantra

"Do the right thing."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to raise the ire of Chinese officials next month when he meets with the Dalai Lama.

The Harper government has had a tense relationship with China during its tenure primarily due to the Conservative government's concerns about that country's human rights record.

Funny... this doesn't sound like a scary, hidden agenda.

Leaders of Tibet's independence movement in Canada say they hope that the expected meeting between Harper and the Dalai Lama will address the need for serious negotiations about Tibet's relationship with China.

That's my Prime Minister.

**********

RELATED: Other Canadians agree...

(Montreal, Friday, 14 September 2007) – Over two thirds of Canadians believe that the federal government should raise the issue of Tibetan human rights and freedoms with the Chinese government, regardless of its potential impact on trade with China, according to a SES Research poll conducted for the Canada Tibet Committee (CTC) from July 28th to August 4th.

Technorati Tags: Tibet, Dalai Lama, human rights

I think I already saw this one...

And as I recall, the book was way better than the movie.

-- LIMA -- Dozens of people living in a Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca reported vomiting and headaches after they went to look at a crater apparently left by a meteorite that crashed down over the weekend, health officials said on Tuesday.

After hearing a loud noise, people went to see what had happened and found a crater 20 metres wide and 7 metres deep on an uninhabited plateau near Carancas in the Puno region.

I think this is where the alien microbes infect all the dummies who come up and sniff the crater... and then we have to wait for some unlikely Hollywood anti-hero to save our fragile, not-too-bright asses.

Experts from Peru's Geophysical Institute are on their way to the area 1,300 km south of Lima to verify whether it was a meteorite.

"We've examined about 100 people who got near to the meteorite crater who have vomiting and headaches because of gasses coming out of there," Jorge Lopez, health director in Puno, said.

Technorati Tags: meteorite, Lake Titicaca, Lima, Peru

Treehugger community in disarray...

After failing to find a way to blame this latest eco-disaster on Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

-- VICTORIA -- The mountain pine beetle is projected to kill more than three-quarters of B.C.'s marketable pine forests within the next eight years, a report released Monday by the province's Ministry of Forests says.

The report says if the pine beetle kill continues at its current rate, it will kill the equivalent of almost 25 per cent of the province's entire volume of market timber.

Donna Barnett, the chairwoman of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition, said the report will help guide discussions and decisions on the environmental, social and economic issues surrounding the pine beetle.

**********

RELATED: Screw the whole bugs and trees thing

Just gimme my PETA Porn.

-- HOUSTON -- An animal rights group says Alicia Silverstone appears naked in a television ad promoting vegetarianism that was to debut Wednesday in Houston.

Silverstone is shown emerging from a swimming pool and talking about the benefits of being a vegetarian.

"I wasn't always a vegetarian, but I've always loved animals," the 30-year-old actress said in a statement.

"Physically, the effect has been amazing."

C'mon, you little eco-tramp... less yip, more backflip.

**********

LAST WORD: Leftbot politician proclaims...

"It's actually a good thing."

Responding to a new report this week that shows the tiny pine beetle has wiped out 40 per cent of B.C.'s current stock of pine trees – a total of 12 per cent of all of B.C.'s saleable timber – B.C.'s Forest Minister said Tuesday that the devastation does have a silver lining:

"There's more water for surviving trees to grow quickly."

Technorati Tags: mountain pine beetle, pine forest, Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition

Tony Soprano would be proud

This guy says he's gonna "lend his expertise on development issues"... anybody else smelling quid pro quo here?

-- Caledonia, ON -- A developer in Caledonia, Ont., says he hopes to resume home construction this week with no protesters and no violence.

John Kragten also said he hopes a deal he has struck with a new development agency created by the Six Nations Confederacy will pave the way for future agreements for other builders.

Kragten wouldn't give any details of the deal but insisted no money changed hands. He said he has agreed to help build bridges between natives and other developers and to lend his expertise on development issues.

However, natives shouldn't break out the celebratory firewater just yet... not everybody is willing to roll over and play dead here.

Other developers, including Mike Quattrociocchi of Brantford, have been asked to pay fees to the new development agency but have declined.

"I have bills to pay. I have four young kids I'm responsible for. Come hell or high water, this project's gonna get done," he said.

Quattrociocchi plans to resume construction, without Six Nations permission, on Tuesday morning.

**********

UPDATE: Dopey white man suckered again

-- Caledonia -- A small group of aboriginal protesters is holding up a return to work at a disputed Caledonia subdivision, even though native leaders have reached an agreement that would let building resume, says John Kragten, one of the builders.

Such kidders... ya just gotta love these guys.

**********

LAST WORD: Sorbara tells Hamilton Spectator...

Liberals have officially bailed on citizens of Caledonia.

The Ontario Liberals say only Ottawa can resolve the Caledonia crisis and there's nothing more the Dalton McGuinty government can do.

"We will not be dragged into a dispute between residents."

A dispute, Mr. Sorbara? Try telling that to Sam Gualtieri... that is, when he gets out of hospital.

Confirmation of the provincial government's complete and abject surrender also came from the Mininstry of Aboriginal Affairs.

-- TORONTO -- A violent confrontation last week in Caledonia, Ont., has prompted the Ontario government to pull out of this week's scheduled negotiations with Six Nations and the federal government.

“Ontario considers last week's confrontation unacceptable,” Lars Eedy, spokesman for the provincial aboriginal affairs ministry, said Tuesday in a news release. “Violence is never a solution to any dispute.”

Another broken trust from Milquetoast McGuinty.

Technorati Tags: John Kragten, Mike Quattrociocchi, homegrown terror

I'm actually pretty surprised...

The Saudis didn't snap it up.

-- BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Hidden among the porcelain fox hounds and Burberry tablecloths on sale at eBay.be this week was an unusual item: "For Sale: Belgium, a Kingdom in three parts ... free premium: the king and his court (costs not included)."

"I wanted to attract attention," said Gerrit Six, the teacher and former journalist who posted the ad. "You almost have to throw a rock through a window to get attention for Belgium."

Unfortunately for bidders... ya snooze, ya lose.

"It was a really fun listing made by a Belgian," Peter Burin, PR manager of eBay Belgium. "This person, in a very funny way, reminded the Belgians what a great country Belgium actually is and it would be a shame to sell it."

However, the company decided to pull the ad Tuesday after receiving a bid of €10 million (US$14 million)

"We decided to take it down, just to avoid confusion," he told APTN.

Selling the country? It's an interesting idea.

I mean... it sure beats just giving it away.

Technorati Tags: Gerrit Six, eBay Belgium, Brussels, Belgium

Alien abduction in Eastern Ontario?

Well, if it's not the RCMP... or the OPP... what could have happened to these brave Navajo warriors?

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials are scratching their heads over media calls that 28 Navajo people were detained en route to the aboriginal protest at a quarry near Deseronto.

Cpl. Nancy Mason of the Kingston detachment said she has seen no evidence that the people were brought in for investigation.

"I'm not aware of any incident at all," she said. "We've gone right to our headquarters to see if it was officers from another area. We're not aware of anything taking place."

The OPP also have no knowledge of the incident.

If we rule out the racist police state and kidnapping by that evil Stephen Harper... I think we've gotta start looking at extra-terrestrial suspects.

Apparently their spokes-native has other ideas.

Spata Desareau, a member of the tribe that is an offshoot of the Navajo, maintains the group was taken into custody Sunday. The women and children were released immediately and the men kept under investigation until about 11 p.m.

The group has no hard feelings toward the police and wants to downplay the incident and the attention it's gotten, he said.

Yeah... I'll bet he does.

**********

RELATED: Peyote and hypocrisy... no surprise here

"Although we do not believe this matter should be settled in the courts, we have to use every avenue open to us," said Doreen Davis, Chief of the Shabot Obaadjiwan.

Yeah, Doreen... we noticed.

The Shabot Obaadjiwan were actually forced to respond to a suit by Frontenac Ventures, the mining company that is suing the natives for $77-million... this after police refused to enforce an existing injunction.

Officers from the Ontario Provincial Police, who have the power to arrest the protesters but have not done so, were being subpoenaed for the motion, Smitheman added. They will be ordered to identify protesters and name other people who have been at the site to support the protesters.

This is gonna be interesting.

Technorati Tags: RCMP, Spata Desareau, alien abduction

More "Applesauce for Allah"

I'm guessin' we're talkin' closed casket here.

-- KABUL -- U.S. air strikes targeting a meeting of Taliban leaders killed a high-ranking commander involved in the kidnappings of 23 South Koreans two months ago, Afghan officials said Tuesday.

Perhaps the "in your face" horror of war is beginning to have an effect on the "command and control" level of the insurgent forces.

You wouldn't know it, from coverage by CTV or the CBC, but these very specifically targeted strikes have been knocking people down as fast as the Taliban can set them up.

Mr. Jan was the fifth Taliban commander allegedly involved in the abductions who has been reported killed in recent days, and believed to be the highest-ranking one eliminated so far.

He's makin' a list... checkin' it twice... gonna find out...

Maybe Mao had something...

Perhaps a “journey of a thousand miles begins with"... a single step on the accelerator.

A group of women in Saudi Arabia is for the first time to lobby the kingdom's government for the right to drive cars.

Members of the Committee of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars plan to deliver a petition to King Abdullah by Sunday, Saudi Arabia's National Day.

It could get a little sticky though... next thing you know, these chicks'll be zoomin' around AND givin' you their own opinions.

Correspondents say the demand is likely to be rejected, as conservatives argue if women are allowed to drive, they will be able to mix freely with men.

Where will it end?

Blood, teeth and hair...

All over the place...

The phone at Jason's keeps ringing. Could someone please blackberry him for me and check that he's ok?

**********

UPDATE: It's okay, everybody can relax...

Jason is back on his feet and spinning furiously like the Tasmanian Devil...

"No honest Liberal is happy with tonight's results."

"At the same time, no journalist who claims that this is a "blow to Dion's leadership" knows what he or she is talking about."

Okay, you get the lithium... I'll go fill the bathtub with icecubes.

**********

MINUTIAE:

Outremont has fallen out of Liberal hands only once previously since 1935.

The Liberals' current seat-count in Quebec - 12 - is the lowest since Confederation.

**********

LAST WORD: Steffi agrees with Jason Cherniak

Outremont was a huge defeat... for Stephen Harper.

-- CROSBY, Ont. -- Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion says his party lost the by-election in Outremont to the New Democrats on Monday because voters were sending a message to the Conservative government to pull out of Afghanistan.

Hey buddy... whatever gets you through the night.

Technorati Tags: Outremont, Jason Cherniak, fever dreams

A load of crap indeed

Everybody brace yourself... here comes a Jurassic fart.

-- DUVANNY YAR, Russia -- Sergei Zimov bends down, picks up a handful of syrup-like mud and holds it to his nose. It smells like a cow pat, but he knows better.

"It smells like mammoth dung," he said.

This is more than just another symptom of global warming.

Yeah, you go ahead and focus on the dino shit... I'm a glass half full kinda guy myself.

A sea level rise of just 50 feet would give us a Conservative majority up here, and put the Republicans back in charge of Congress down there, while guaranteeing that neither Hillary nor Chelsea Clinton ever becomes President.

Technorati Tags: mammoth dung, Sergei Zimov, global warming

Survivor: Gaza Strip

Here's just one reason why "reality tv" would be so freakin' redundant in the Middle East.

-- GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Long before the sun comes up, Gaza's musaharatis, or public wakers, are hard at work — banging on drums to get people out of bed for pre-dawn prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.

The job has never been fun, but a year of bloody infighting in Gaza has forced the wakers to be politically aware, too. Before, they could chant the praises of a political or religious figure while waking the people.

Now they have to take care that they're not praising a Fatah leader in a Hamas stronghold — or the other way around.

It's a killer.

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RELATED: Who's Smarter than a 5th Grader?

Well... apparently not Human Rights Watch.

-- (New York, September 18, 2007) -- The Egyptian government's decree dissolving one of the country's leading human rights organizations is an affront to freedom of association, Human Rights Watch said today.

The government move to shut down AHRLA follows its closure of the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services (CTUWS), which offers legal aid to Egyptian factory workers and reports on labor-rights issues in the country.

Yup... who could have seen that coming?

Technorati Tags: AHRLA, Human Rights Watch, fuzzy-bunny naivety

Aboriginals allege RCMP conspiracy

Be that as it may, can anybody tell me where these guys get the money to haul 10 horses all the way up to British Columbia and then across Canada to Ontario... I mean... are these millionaire protesters or what?

A group of nomadic Navajo Indians en route to support the aboriginal quarry protest near Deseronto have been arrested, says a member currently at the quarry.

Twenty-eight members of the tribe, an offshoot of the Navajo, were on their way to Deseronto in nine vehicles with 10 horses in tow to show support and respect for a group of Tyendinaga Mohawks, said Spata Desareau, 64, a member of the tribe.

Somebody here has to know... what's the cost per klick, to push a one-ton and a half decent size horse trailer? I know my SUV can eat 60 bucks of dino-juice on a Toronto turnaround... and that's just haulin' my 200 pound butt.

Maybe it's like the way Shawn Brant and his buddies can apparently mount a 24 hour a day, six month love-in at the gravel pit in Tyendinaga... without any visible means of support.

I'm smelling a taxpayer-supported rat here.

Technorati Tags: Deseronto, Tyendinaga Mohawks, nomadic Navajo

The lunatic left has this theory...

It involves digging a big hole... placing your cranium inside it... and pulling the dirt back in, over top... fortunately France, of late anyway, has decided to walk another road.

A warning by France's foreign minister that the world should prepare for war over Iran's nuclear programme has drawn an angry response from Iran.

Iran's foreign ministry said the remark had damaged the credibility of France, while the official Iranian news agency accused Paris of aping Washington.

On Sunday France's Bernard Kouchner said: "We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war."

Meanwhile, back in the land of the "Hidden Imam"... Iran continues, as Clint Eastwood would say, to "feel lucky."

Iranian official media responded with contempt.

The accepted wisdom in Iran is that the US is too wrapped up in Iraq and Afghanistan to launch another war in the region, says the BBC's Jon Leyne in the capital, Tehran.

Yeah Mahmoud... you keep telling youself that. Even if the Americans choose to step back from this imminent geopolitical crisis, my guess is Israel has a bright, shiny... one might say glowing... "Plan B."

You might just wanna stop the crazy train... while you still can.

**********

UPDATE: If we just let Iran off the hook...

They're willing to go out and find the "real killer."

“While the issue of Iran's nuclear case is close to being resolved, thanks to the measures taken by Iran and the IAEA, the extremism of the French leaders is creating an obstacle in this path,” the editorial said.

Technorati Tags: Bernard Kouchner, Hidden Imam, flat, black, glows in the dark

Sun's up, you roll out of bed

There's nothing like that first cup of Kathy...

Astronomers don't check their horoscopes every morning to "get another point of view."

Shssssh, it's a secret

Don't tell Jean Charest, but there's this statistically significant pool of under-employed and chronically unemployed (many of them francophone) Canadians, who could probably be taught to swing a hammer.... right here in Canada... it's called the Maritimes.

-- MONTREAL -- Quebec Premier Jean Charest is optimistic he can sign an unprecedented labour mobility deal with France as part of an economic strategy that he hopes will revitalize his leadership and revive his party's sagging fortunes.

"Our objective is that a French doctor, plumber, nurse or carpenter can work in Quebec and vice versa," Mr. Charest said in his closing remarks to a party meeting yesterday.

The trouble is, like his fellow liberal, Sargeant Steffi, Charest is ready to try just about any crazy old trick to boost his polling numbers.

The Liberal Leader, who has been labelled the most disliked politician in Quebec in a recent public opinion poll, said he understands the difficult task the lies ahead in trying to win back the confidence of voters.

"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."

**********

RELATED: More fiberal magic spells

You know what I love about Ontario's Public Schools? They're public. And expensive. Very, very expensive. Whatever the race or creed of our kids, they attend the same schools.

Unless they're Catholic, in which case they don't.

Be very afraid

You don't need to cruise the scary streets of Toronto's Jane-Finch ghetto, to know that we're on a slippery slope...

"What the 2006 census showed was not that the family was changing: It showed that the family was dying.

It showed a society in deep dysfunction. It delineated, statistically, a very real danger to the future of the nation-state itself."

Nobody had weapons when I was a kid. And whether or not you got along with your father... on some level you knew, at the end of the day... you were accountable to "the man." And there was none of this "time out" nonsense... there was instead, if you screwed up badly enough... "knocked out" and from what I remember it was pretty damned effective.

Apparently though... fathers aren't necessary anymore.

You need additional confirmation that Canadian society is hip deep in societal quicksand, never mind listening to the media. The next time you see one... ask a cop.

It ain't a pretty picture.

**********

RELATED: A special welcome to Canadian Cynic readers

I hope all you "progressives" appreciated CC's use of the phrase, "booga, booga." It's a little weak, but even CC has to be careful about the "N" word.

Of course, he's a little less scrupulous about how he refers to women.

Keep em comin' CC... I appreciate the traffic.

Iraq isn't a country

It's a gang-war with borders.

-- BAGHDAD -- Iraq is currently occupied by Iran and the United States but the Persian state is the more dangerous, the spokesman of a leading insurgent group said in remarks aired Sunday.

Ibrahim al-Shammari of the Islamic Army in Iraq told Al-Jazeera television that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government claims to be close to the Americans when in fact "the full loyalty is to Iran."

"Iraqi is subjected to two occupations but the more dangerous is the Iranian occupation. If the Americans withdraw from Iraq and the Iranians stay, we will fight them," al-Shammari said.

Technorati Tags: Ibrahim al-Shammari, Nouri al-Maliki, religion of peace

SHOW ME THE GUANO!!!

Steffi rallies the troops.

ALLAH-SNACK-BAR!!!

Hey... you can't tell me these filthy infidels didn't have it coming... "twinkie this... you unbelieving sons of pigs and apes!"

-- BAGHDAD -- A booby-trapped bicycle exploded near a cafe serving tea and food during Ramadan fasting hours Sunday, killing at least five people in a religiously mixed area in northern Iraq, police said.

And there's plenty more where that came from...

The violence came a day after al-Qaida in Iraq announced a new offensive in Ramadan, the Islamic holy month that began last week. In all, at least 39 people were killed or found dead nationwide.

The bullet-riddled bodies of a traffic police chief and his 11-year-old son also were found after they were kidnapped during the fighting, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Yessirree Bob, er... Faisal... God is surely great.

Technorati Tags: religion of peace, holy month of Ramadan, kill 'em all... let allah sort 'em out

Where is your God now?

I imagine ol' Fallah is having some second thoughts right now about jihad... now that he could be handed over to the Iraqi security apparatus...

US forces in Iraq say they have seized a suspected al-Qaeda militant believed to have been behind the killing last week of a Sunni tribal leader.

A US military statement named the captured suspect as Fallah Khalifa Hiyas Fayyas al-Jumayli. The statement said that he had been captured near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad, on Saturday.

"Intelligence reports indicate Jumayli is involved in a plot to kill key leaders in the Anbar Awakening," the statement said.

He'd better pray he stays in the Great Satan's custody for a very long time, because his Anbar cousins are a little pissed off right at the moment.

Two words... blowtorch... genitals.

And that's precisely why they so desperately need democracy in the Middle-East.

**********

RELATED: The Islamic killing machine...

Ramps up the slaughter during the "holy season."

At least 22 people have been killed in a series of bombings and shootings in Iraq, security officials say.

Fourteen people were killed in Diyala province, north of the capital Baghdad, when militants attacked two villages.

At least six people were killed by a bomb near the northern city of Kirkuk and two people were killed by a car bomb in Baghdad.

Because it's who they are.

Technorati Tags: al-Jumayli, Anbar Awakening, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha

It's time to find out...

If Julian Fantino is still a cop... or just a politician with a pretty uniform.

The Caledonia home builder beaten unconscious during a confrontation at a Stirling South subdivision told family today that he recognized his attacker.

“I know who he is,” Sam Gualtieri told his brother Joe from his hospital bed today.

Apparently Gualtieri has lived in the area for decades and worked extensively on the native reserve... so this development should make this a pretty straightforward operation for the local gendarmes.

Strangely, that's not the way the OPP sees things.

OPP Sergeant Dave Rektor said no arrests had yet been made in the assault but that investigators were working "diligently".

"Several native protesters remained at the subdivision and were demonstrating peacefully", he added.

Apparently there were police officers on site when the assault took place... but again, for some unexplained reason... they were unable to arrest the natives who beat Gualtieri senseless.

Let's see what happens next.

**********

RELATED: Napanee OPP cover themselves in glory

Maybe officers were just too busy answering the "feuhn", or looking for that darn "minkee."

**********

LAST WORD: OPP stops, drops and rolls

"We were looking the other way", say cops.

OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino's office was contacted by The Spectator to speak to the events.

A spokesperson said Fantino is on vacation outside the country and is unavailable for comment.

Technorati Tags: Stirling Woods, Douglas Creek Estates, Sam Gualtieri

Is that a fatwa in your pocket...

Or are you just glad to see me?

DUBAI — The head of an al Qaeda-led group in Iraq has offered a $100,000 reward for the killing of a Swedish cartoonist for his drawing of Islam's Prophet Mohammad and threatened to attack major Swedish companies.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, also offered $50,000 in an audiotape posted on an Islamist Web site on Saturday to anyone who killed the editor of the newspaper that published the drawing by Lars Vilks.

You'd think some of these self-described devout Muslims would have something else to do with their bags of cash, like say... helping Iraqi or Aghani refugees... but apparently they simply have murder on their minds.

And no room for anything else.

Technorati Tags: Lars Vilks, Swedish cartoonist, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi

France.... sucking or blowing?

I don't get France... they're either running for their lives, or re-enacting, usually really ineptly... the Charge of the Light Brigade...

A Sikh school is opening its doors in a Paris suburb for the first time on Saturday in the wake of tougher French laws on religious dress.

The special school in Bobigny was set up after secularisation laws in 2004 prevented Sikh boys from wearing their traditional turbans in class.

The French laws ban the wearing of prominent religious symbols such as Muslim headscarves or Sikh turbans in public places like offices or schools.

How can you take a draconian stand on something like turbans... while simultaneously ceding large urban areas of the country to the Car-B-Q crowd?

Do they vote... do they hold a seance?

I'm thinkin', maybe they flip a coin.

Technorati Tags: secularisation law, Bobigny, tempest in a turban

Comrade Miller gets an earful...

Some days you eat the bear... some days, the bear eats you...

A website set up by Mayor David Miller to garner support for his proposed tax increases has instead become a lightning rod for Torontonians wishing to voice their outrage and disgust.

Miller unveiled fairtaxes.ca on Thursday and urged the public to visit the site and to leave a comment encouraging their city representative to approve new land transfer and vehicle registration levies, a proposal councillors put on the backburner in July.

But the site has instead been flooded by citizens expressing their opposition to the mayor's plan, a plan he figures will take care of a good chunk of the $575-million budget shortfall the city is predicting for next year.

Who could have seen that coming, huh?

Apparently not Commie Dave.

**********

UPDATE: Will of the people, my ass

The Mayor and his allies on council have been working overtime for the past two days, lobbying a restive council to gather enough votes to reopen debate on the tax measures, which council voted earlier this summer to defer until October.

But despite a barrage of phone calls, arm-twisting and even personal visits from Mr. Miller, so far the Mayor does not appear to have enough votes to bring the issue back to the council chamber.

Mr. Miller needs the support of two-thirds of councillors -- 30 of the 45 members -- to reopen the vote on a land-transfer tax and vehicle registration fee, which were deferred in July by a one-vote margin.

Just keep diggin' Dave, I'm sure there's a pony in there somewhere.

Technorati Tags: Mayor David Miller, land-transfer tax, vehicle registration fee

The Blacksmith Institute names...

The world's top ten ecological shiteholes...

A list of the world's most polluted places has been published by a US-based independent environmental group.

The annual review, which debuted in 2006, is listed alphabetically, and the sites are unranked "given the wide range of location sizes, populations and pollution dynamics".

And the winners are...

Sumgayit, Azerbaijan; Potentially 275,000 affected
Linfen, China; Potentially 3m affected
Tianying, China; Potentially 140,000 affected
Sukinda, India; Potentially 2.6m affected
Vapi, India; Potentially 71,000 affected
La Oroya, Peru; Potentially 35,000 affected
Dzerzhinsk, Russia; Potentially 300,000 affected
Norilsk, Russia; Potentially 134,000 affected
Chernobyl, Ukraine; Potentially 5.5m affected
Kabwe, Zambia; Potentially 255,000 affected

Funny... Canada's suddenly looking a little less affected than the lunatic left would have you believe.

The sky may not be falling just yet, after all.

Technorati Tags: Blacksmith Institute, environment, scare tactics

That's good enough for me...

It's about time a politician from Ontario said, "This far... and no further."

John Tory says a Conservative government would launch its own civil suits or fund court actions by the public against organizers of protests like Caledonia.

"I believe in the importance of respect for the law ... and in one law for everybody," Tory told The Spectator.

Get the word out.

A Conservative government would use the courts to try to recover money from First Nations, environmentalists, union members or others who engage in illegal blockades or occupations.

Technorati Tags: John Tory, Caledonia, homegrown terrorists

Hey... it's just like in Caledonia

These leftards are acting in self-defense too.

-- MEXICO CITY, Sept 14 (Reuters) -- Leftist rebels behind this week's crippling bomb attacks on Mexican gas and oil pipelines said they are acting in self-defense against government aggression.

The Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, blew up key pipelines on Monday in its biggest attack on economic targets since emerging in mountain villages of southern Mexico in the mid-1990s to kill dozens of police and soldiers.

**********

RELATED: First, you knock the guy unconscious...

"The Indian was striking him on the head with a two-by-four while he was unconscious."

Then you proceed to defend yourself.

Technorati Tags: lunatic left, Stirling Woods, Sam Gualtieri

If, as Dalton McGuinty is boasting...

The Liberals have been improving the Ontario Health Care system over the last four years... why would Belinda Stronach go all the way to California for cancer surgery?

"As we said back in June when we confirmed the surgery, this is a personal and private matter between Belinda, her family and her physicians. I think you'll understand that because of respect for Belinda's privacy, we refrained from offering specific details around her medical treatment," said MacEachern.

While it is rare for MPs to seek treatment outside Canada, MacEachern said Stronach was not lacking confidence in the system.

Sure... maybe this was a regularly scheduled Rodeo Drive shopping trip with a visit to the doctor just thrown in, huh?

Like heading down to the Big Apple to gas up the Benz.

Puh-leese.

Technorati Tags: Belinda Stronach, Dalton McGuinty, more Liberal lies

Tips for ardent politicians...

Watch out for that bad juju... it'll get you every time.

-- KINGSTON, Jamaica -- A community of descendents of freed slaves is blaming the recent defeat of Jamaica's long-ruling People's National Party on the prime minister's improper use of a sacred horn.

The Accompong Maroons are the descendants of slaves freed by the Spanish in the 17th century to repel invading British forces.

The community has lived semiautonomously in Jamaica since 1739, when they signed a peace treaty with the British after resisting them for decades.

Has Dalton done his "sweetgrass ceremony" with his aboriginal pals this year?

He'd better not screw that up.

Technorati Tags: Dalton McGuinty, bad juju, Accompong Maroons

A briefing note...

For Taliban Jack and Sergeant Steffi... if you're really interested in saving some Canadian lives... lay off Afghanistan for a minute and take a look over here...

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in Canadian men. In 2007, an estimated 22,300 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 4,300 will die of the disease, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Yeah... that's what I thought.

Technorati Tags: Taliban Jack, prostate cancer, Canadian Cancer Society

Weird science

I knew a guy in high school, who used to stick his sister's pet budgie in a paper lunch sack and then blow the smoke from his doob into it...

Yeah, ok... I know...but however you might feel about it... it sounds eerily like this little scientific romp...

“One soldier attempts to feed the birds by climbing a tree..."

and

"The efficiency of the rocket launcher team was also very impaired.”

Hot damn, it's just like they used to tell us in the seventies... "Better living through chemistry."

The Americanization of Toronto

Meanwhile, American mayors are taking action to ensure their downtown precincts do not become "Vancouver Eastsidized."

Aboriginal terrorists...

Beat Caledonia housing developer so severely... he ends up in hospital in serious condition...

Up to 20 native protestors are occupying a hill near a contested development site in Caledonia tonight.

The occupation follows an altercation earlier in the day that sent a Caledonia man, 52, to hospital. Now, up to 50 area residents have gathered by the Stirling Woods subdivision. OPP, provincial officials and area councillors are also at the site.

At about 4 p.m., a sub-developer got into a confrontation with a group of occupiers and was injured. He was taken from the site by ambulance in serious condition.

The people of Caledonia have been living in fear for 19 months now.

Hey Dalton... how far will you let this thuggery go?

**********

RELATED: Not always so timid

As he has before, Mr. Hampton slammed Mr. McGuinty for giving MPPs a raise just four days before last Christmas that hiked the Premier's pay by an “extravagant” amount.

The $22,000 increase in base pay raised the minimum salary for all members to $110,000 a year. Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty received a $39,000 raise to boost his premiers' annual salary to $198,620.

The NDP Leader said Mr. McGuinty's raise alone was higher than what the average Ontario worker makes in total each year.

See... Dalton can actually lead the charge when it's "something important."

**********

UPDATE: Does somebody have to die...

Before Dalton Do-Little actually stands up for the rule of law in Ontario?

Sam Gualtieri, 52, of Caledonia, was found unconscious on the floor inside the home with at least four young men, his brother Joe, told The Globe and Mail. His brother was trying to chase them out of the house when they punched him, his nephews later told him.

"The Indian was striking him on the head with a two-by-four while he was unconscious."

Know what Sam Gualtieri was doing there? He was checking on a home he was building for his daughter and her fiancé.

Savages.

**********

LATEST UPDATE: Not backing up an inch

Aboriginals said they occupied the site because developers had not followed up on a promise to learn more about their new development protocols.

Yeah, I recognise that one... the old Jimmy Hoffa "two by four" protocol.

Hey Dalton, can we call in the cops now?

Technorati Tags: Stirling Woods, Douglas Creek Estates, Sam Gualtieri

"They're encouraging vigilantism"

This is no longer just a question of leadership... the Premier of Ontario is actually running away and hiding from the issue of aboriginal anarchy...

A Brantford developer's frustration over native land claims came to a boil during a confrontation Wednesday with Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Mike Quattrociocchi, owner of Mayberry Homes, intercepted the premier as he left a campaign stop at a Hamilton banquet hall, where McGuinty had just delivered a speech to Liberal supporters.

"What are you going to do about the natives on my site?" Quattrociocchi shouted while standing in front of the premier.

"As much as I can," McGuinty said, before his answer was drowned out by Liberal supporters cheering: "Dalton, Dalton, Dalton."

So it seems as though this businessman just gets hung out to dry by the Fiberal government. I guess Dalton figures his rope-a-dope of the last year and a half... on Caledonia, Deseronto and now Brantford is the best way to handle the situation.

Quattrociocchi said he went to Hamilton on Wednesday looking for answers from the premier. During a scrum with about a dozen members of the media, the builder said McGuinty didn't provide any.

"The premier told me it was a federal issue and got on (his campaign) bus," Quattrociocchi said. "That is not leadership.

In an interview, Quattrociocchi said the province is provoking confrontation between natives and non-natives by taking a hands-off approach to disputes between developers and Six Nations.

"It's almost as if the province is encouraging a fight," Quattrociocchi said. "They're encouraging vigilantism."

We don't deserve another four years of that.

**********

RELATED: "Not our problem," says government ministry

Ministry spokesman Lars Eddy told a Hamilton Spectator reporter on Tuesday that developers facing heat from natives for building on disputed land "should proceed" with their projects.

When asked what happens in the event of a confrontation with Six Nations residents, Eddy was quoted as saying: "That's between the developers, it's their property ... and the Six Nations."

Mayor Mike Hancock said Quattrociocchi's anger and frustration are deserved.

"For the government to tell developers they're on their own is frankly shameful," he said. "To get solutions we have to be in this together - the province, the feds, Six Nations and developers. To tell one group 'Sorry guys, we can't help you on this" is disgraceful."

Apparently the Premier of Ontario agrees.

(h/t reader "fernando")

**********

LAST WORD: It's like a "Mafia shakedown"

Haldimand Mayor Marie Trainer says it would be "outrageous" to allow the Six Nations Confederacy to collect fees for development projects along the disputed Grand River tract.

She has joined a group of mayors trying to block the move, which a Brantford area builder has compared to a "Mafia" shakedown.

Traditional chiefs at Six Nations are saying anyone planning to build in the Grand River watershed now needs their approval. Developers in the area have been told they must secure a permit, issued for a fee by a new planning department established under aboriginal law.

Brantford developer Mike Quattrociocchi of Mayberry Homes said the Six Nations Confederacy asked him to pay a 4 per cent or $48,000 fee for his $1.2 million building project on Grand Avenue in Brantford.

He has refused to pay and compares the demand to a Mafia "extortion."

It's not clear how Six Nations intends to enforce development permits not required by Ontario law.

(via "joanne's journey")

Technorati Tags: Mayberry Homes, Mike Quattrociocchi, homegrown terror

Go BIG... or go home

Far be it from me to advocate taking your own life as any sort of a solution to MOST of life's little obstacles... but given that proviso, it, for sure, isn't something you wanna mess up either.

-- AMERICAN FORK, Utah -- A 42-year-old paraglider fatally shot himself in midflight after a domestic dispute, authorities said Thursday.

Witnesses reported that a "loud pop" was heard shortly before the motorized glider crashed, the Utah County Sheriff's Office said on its Web site.

While the death appeared to be a suicide, that determination must be made by the medical examiner, said sheriff's Lt. Dennis Harris.

A cautionary tale that comes to mind, is the teenager who blew off his jaw and half his face with a Winchester pumpgun. Yeah... he thought he had problems before he almost killed himself.

The teen survived the horrible mutilation, long enough anyway, to try bringing suit against the heavy metal band he claims was responsible for influencing his actions.

Now, I'm sure all the leftbots are grumbling about those horrible, evil guns... but up at the gun club, we called stuff like this, "the jerk on the trigger."

I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

**********

UPDATE: You thoughtless, unimaginative bastard

I'm getting a sense of why this guy decided to trip the light fantastic.

A passenger in an SUV is in serious condition in hospital after a man jumped onto highway traffic from a Mississauga overpass during rush hour yesterday and landed on the vehicle.

Sgt. Cam Woolley said the man landed on the hood of the vehicle and then smashed into the windshield, severely injuring the passenger.

Geek break... or maybe just...

A particularly piquant Trivial Pursuit moment.

-- PARIS -- A kilogram just isn't what it used to be.

The 118-year-old cylinder that is the international prototype for the metric mass, kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing weight – if ever so slightly.

No need to panic, nerdy guys in white coats are on it.

Many measurements have undergone makeovers over the years. The meter was once defined as roughly the distance between scratches on a bar, a far cry from today's high-tech standard involving the distance that light travels in a vacuum.

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RELATED: The truth is, I'm jealous

I wish I'd been more of a geekazoid... so I could work on cool stuff that actually adds something to the sum of human knowledge.

The hidden content in ancient works could be illuminated by a light source 10 billion times brighter than the Sun.

The technique employs Britain's new facility, the Diamond synchrotron, and could be used on works such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or musical scores by Bach.

Intense light beams will enable scientists to uncover the text in scrolls and books without having to open, and potentially damage them.

**********

NOTE: Blogging will be light today.

Have to travel to the Devil's Armpit (Toronto) to run a few errands.

Pray for me.

**********

Sounds like we'd better go with...

The "dumber than a bag of hammers" defense...

An immigrant recruited by a stranger in Toronto's Chinatown to work at a Manitoba farm testified Tuesday he thought he was harvesting Chinese medicinal herbs and had no idea it was marijuana.

Defence lawyer Mike Cook said his clients have learned a hard lesson. The mastermind behind the grow operation has fled the country, Cook said.

Yeah... that one always works.

(via "justfrank")

Technorati Tags: medicinal herbs, Chinatown, hang all the lawyers

Dalton does dirty

And from the sounds of it, dirty works...

While the Liberals are playing hard ball, posting largely negative ads about Conservative Leader John Tory under a variety of aliases, Mr. Elmer said the Conservatives have taken an uncharacteristically playful approach — slamming the Liberals in a YouTube parody of the animated Simpsons show, for example.

“The Liberals are consistently uploading negative videos, particularly on Tory, that are getting the highest number of views compared to the other two parties,” Mr. Elmer said.

Of course, we'll have to see how vacuous condescension figures into the equation.

There are also differences in the way the parties are approaching the official websites of the leaders, he said.

Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty's home page offers little in the way of interactivity or real discussion of political issues, while the Tory campaign posts links, images and speeches on Mr. Tory's website and regularly updates his Facebook status, Mr. Elmer said.

Technorati Tags: Dalton McGuinty, John Tory, mudslinging

More Politicians

Yup... I was just thinking you can never have too many of those guys on the payroll...

Now a primer on MMP, as proposed by the 104-member committee appointed by the McGuinty government:

Instead of electing MPPs in 107 ridings as we do now, we will elect MPPs in just 90.

(Good. We'll save money. Fewer ridings. Fewer MPPs at the trough.)

In a pig's eye. Queen's Park will actually balloon to 129 MPPs.

(Howzat?)

Well, another 39 MPs will be appointed.

(Holy cow! Without us voting for them?)

Amazing, eh?

See, in addition to picking our local fave, we will vote separately for a party.

The pool of 39 MPs will be divvied up among the parties according to the percentage of those votes.

It's like the bonus spin on The Price Is Right.

Technorati Tags: MMP, Queen's Park, same old, same old

Windtalkers

Apparently the Mohawk News Network is putting out their articles using some sort of code...

"In other words, they appear to have adopted the customs of the dominant states which want to prevent investigative journalism and for the media to publish only the stories by their “imbedded”(sic) reporters."

Anybody out there speak gibberish?

**********

RELATED: A little background on the illegal occupation

(h/t "rideau reflections")

Technorati Tags: Mohawk News Network, Frontenac Ventures, Ardoch and Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nations

Racist Coast Guard interferes with...

Traditional machine-gunning of the whales...

A whale has died after being harpooned and shot with a machine-gun by aboriginal hunters near Vancouver Island, a U.S. Coast Guard official said Sunday.

Petty Officer Kelly Parker said five people, believed to be members of the Makah band based in Neah Bay in Washington State, killed the California grey whale on Saturday.

Parker said the hunt took place in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, near Washington's western tip.

Hey, there's nothing here a little sweetgrass won't fix, right?

"The five individuals involved were picked up by police but no charges have been laid," said Parker.

The Makah band has treaty rights to kill whales for traditional, sustenance purposes.

However, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) said the use of a machine-gun may not qualify.

Say, that machine gun... that just happened to be sitting around in a dusty ol' corner of somebody's sweat lodge?

And hey, whatever happened to fishing with dynamite? There's the real "Sport of Kings."

You guys got any more surprises for us?

(h/t reader "justfrank")

Technorati Tags: Makah, Coast Guard, suckass political correctness

Music to my ears

In a stunning blow in the battle to eradicate the pervasive, deleterious, long-term effects of the Liberal Party's "catch and release" judicial system, the Ontario Court of Appeal yesterday slammed on the brakes and turned the Big Pink bus around...

Judges cannot undercut mandatory minimum sentences by showing leniency to accused people who lived under virtual house arrest awaiting their trials, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled 3-2 yesterday.

In an important test case presided over by a special five-judge panel, the majority said that reducing sentences by taking bail conditions into account would flout the will of Parliament.

It's way past time to stop the "revolving door" system of justice that releases predators back into the community before the victims have a chance to catch their breath. Court of Appeal... I salute you.

"Put bluntly, bail is not jail," Mr. Justice James MacPherson wrote on behalf of Madam Justice Eleanore Cronk and Madam Justice Eileen Gillese.

"Parliament has the clear jurisdiction to establish minimum sentences," the majority agreed. "Judges may not like such sentences because they are perceived as harsh or because they reduce judicial discretion in the sentencing process. However, that is the effect of mandatory minimum sentences which, by definition, remove much of the discretion that sentencing judges otherwise possess."

Onwards and upwards, my friends.

Technorati Tags: bail is not jail, Ontario Court of Appeal, suckass political correctness

A question for Taliban Jack

How do you suppose Olivia would feel about living under an "Islamic democracy"?

"The government hasn't made any serious attempt to talk with us," Mr. Ahmadi said. "If they want to talk, we have two demands: All foreign troops must leave, and we must have an Islamic democracy in Afghanistan."

"The United States brought democracy to Afghanistan, but it was un-Islamic," Mr. Ahmadi said. "We need democracy, but under the laws of Islam."

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say Olivia Chow would not be amenable to living under Sharia Law.

Now... if it's not good enough for your wife... er, sorry, life partner... why is it good enough for all those other women over there?

To be honest Jackie, I'm thinkin' you might just have a few problems yourself.

Jack, Jack... you still there?

Technorati Tags: Taliban Jack Layton, Olivia Chow, sharia law

Fool me once, shame on you...

Fool me twice... SHAME ON ME.

-- OTTAWA (CP) -- Premier Dalton McGuinty is once again telling Ontario voters he won't raise taxes - on the fourth anniversary of his broken 2003 tax promise.

After visiting students at an Ottawa elementary school, McGuinty said he would not repeat his high-profile event from the last campaign when he put in writing his vow not to raise taxes.

**********

RELATED: And in this corner...

-- OAKVILLE -- Progressive Conservative leader John Tory continued to assail Premier Dalton McGuinty’s credibility during a lunchtime speech for business audience.

Mr. Tory began his day at joint press conference with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation commemorating the fourth anniversary of Mr. McGuinty’s promise not to raise taxes.

The Conservative leader accused Mr. McGuinty of breaking his commitment by introducing the Ontario health premium, which costs residents as much as $900 per year.

Mr. Tory continued his line-of-attack over lunch, telling a crowd at surburban motel Mr. McGuinty "did more than break a promise."

"He broke faith with the people of Ontario."

**********

LAST WORD: C'mon, at least it's not a lie...

This time he's simply evading the question.

"If you, your children, and your own wife have benefited from funding of your faith based Catholic school, why should that right be denied to parents and children of faith-based schools?"

Right, Dalton?

Two choices here, babycakes... fund one public system... or fund every system period.

Technorati Tags: Dalton McGuinty, John Tory, Election 2007

No Gun, No Difference

Maybe someone should tell Michael Bryant that Afghanistan isn't the only "war zone" Canadians should be concerned about.

A 16-year-old student has died after being stabbed on a walkway near his high school in Toronto's east end.

Police have confirmed the boy was a student at Winston Churchill Collegiate, which is located close to where the incident occurred. The school is located in the Lawrence Avenue and Kennedy Road area and was not locked down.

This looks to be another spectacular failure in the Toronto District School Board's policy of shuffling the deck whenever they need to deal with what they euphemistically call "problem students."

Coun. Michael Thompson (Scarborough Centre) told CTV News the victim was recently transferred from Marc Garneau Collegiate, located on Overlea Boulevard, because of disciplinary problems.

In late August, a report by the School Safety Community Advisory Panel found that one of the key issues at another high school -- Toronto's troubled C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute -- was that students were being transferred to other schools without proper counselling after being expelled.

Got a child enrolled in a Toronto High School?

Be very afraid.

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UPDATE: Murdered teenager is identified

Denesh Murugiah, 16, was stabbed once in a walkway behind Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute around noon Monday and later died in hospital.

Det.-Sgt. Gary Grinton brushed aside suggestions the student had been in trouble before, saying he was doing nothing wrong when he was killed.

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RELATED: We pay dearly for all those Liberal lies

And not just financially either...

“In 2003, Dalton McGuinty promised to build safe communities,” one of the advertisements states. “But last year in Toronto, seven out of ten people charged with murder were out on bail or probation when those murders were committed.”

I'm guessing the other three... were high school students.

Technorati Tags: no gun, no funeral, Michael Bryant, suckass political correctness

Something...

That really needed to be said...

"The great lesson of September 11 was not that the jihadists ever believed that they could kill us all.

Rather, they trusted that enough of the West and indeed enough of us here in America, might at the end of the day, declare that we had it coming."

"In this long war, that belief was — and is — far deadlier even than an unhinged murderer at the controls of an airliner."

Victor Davis Hanson: Lessons in War.

Reflections on 9/11, six years later

The only thing missing...

Is the black helicopters...

“Every time I’ve done any stories it goes online and all these conspiracy theorists start up and they call me and harass me,” said Mrs. McClatchey, 51, who runs her own real estate company.

In online postings, critics have ripped apart every element of the photo and Mrs. McClatchey’s life. They accuse her of faking the photo, of profiteering from it and of being part of a conspiracy to cover up that the government shot down Flight 93.

They claim the mushroom cloud is from an ordnance blast, not a jet crashing; the cloud is the wrong color for burning jet fuel; the cloud is too small and in the wrong position.

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RELATED: I'll bet you didn't realise...

That Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has extended it's oily tentacles all the way into Ontario...

I'm writing this in confidence so I hope you will keep it on the DL.

I'm sure you're already aware of the attempts, but I thought you should know a bunch of folks have contacted me trying to develop some united effort to expose your identity.

I am not warning you of this because I like you. I'm doing it because you have a right to remain anonymous, even if I personally happen to think you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Anyways, tread carefully. And rest assured I'm not assisting these people.

The best part of this... has to be the way all the "little winged monkeys" are so eager to climb on board the "Crazy Train."

"Roger that, Darth Stephen... I'll meet you at the grassy knoll."

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UPDATE: Yes, Virginia... there is a DEEP TORY

Yeah, this little post? The anonymous email that some people think is imaginary?

I sent that email.

I dislike the views of "Canadian Cynic" as much as the next Tory.

But I certain am not going to be party to any attempts to blow the cover off his anonymity - even if I think is cowardly. My fellow BTers can crucify me if they want, I don't care - right is right.

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Aaron... my first reaction here is curiosity rather than crucifiction.

I've just gotta ask, what sort of "united effort" was involved here?

Were people throwing in for a "private dick", blanketing Guelph to Waterloo with surveillance... or maybe contacting a psychic?

And secondly... why wasn't I invited?

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Once again, the Cynic has linked back to me and again I welcome all his readers...

"I just this second noticed what sort of sleazy douchebag our infantile stalker Neo is."

What CC is referring to is the hyperlink I inserted in the paragraph above, specifically, the part that reads... the views of "Canadian Cynic".

Make sure you click on that link... and read those posts, by your favourite "Canadian Cynic"... and then decide who is actually, to once again quote CC... "a sleazy douchebag".

Just like his hero, Steffi... CC keeps squawking, "That is not fair." That's funny, I bet Wanda Watkins felt the same way.

Oh, you sad little man... you write it, you wear it.

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LAST WORD: Hey Cynic... scream louder

Because there's no such thing as attracting "too much attention."

Technorati Tags: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Crazy Train, tin foil hat

Say Dalton, here's a idea...

Get Attorney General Michael Bryant to start working on... "No Parole. No Funeral".

The guy charged with his murder, Andrew Dexter Bourne, is back on the front page again. The last time was Feb. 12, 2004 under the headline "Sun photog nabs gun suspect."

That photog is gutsy Dave Thomas, who took the great picture first and tackled the suspect second. He did his job as a journalist and as a citizen.

When the dust settled, Bourne, a cousin of recently slain teen Jordan Manners, was sentenced to 27 months in prison.

Maybe someone can explain to me, how taking gopher rifles off of farmers was gonna stop this animal from killing someone?

Because it didn't.

Anybody?

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RELATED: More Liberal letdown...

"Those dreams of seeing Tie Domi cry at Rideau Hall as Don Cherry is installed as Governor General will just have to wait for the Fates to correct this tragic turn of events."

Technorati Tags: Ronell Williams, Andrew Dexter Bourne, Jordan Manners

Dear Mr Dion...

Sorry to hear about your testicular condition...

"Having a great time. RPGs hit the camp occasionally. Lot more than when I was here before. Minor damage so far, no lives have been lost, and they missed Timmy's."

Grow a pair, would'ja?

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RELATED: Similarly covering himself in glory...

Sheikh Dalton bin McGuinty stands up for "some" women's rights.

Muslim women shouldn't be forced to remove their veils to vote in Ontario's election, Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday.

"I think they have to produce alternative forms of identification that are acceptable to Elections Ontario," McGuinty said.

You think?

Isn't that something you should know?

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LAST WORD: Goes to Osama bin Laden...

On the sixth anniversary of 9/11...

“It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan [of martyrs] until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues,” he said.

Technorati Tags: courage, veiled threat, Dalton McGuinty

Important archeological find in UK

This sounds like an invaluable, incredibly important discovery for Britain's historical community...

A 1,000-year-old Viking longship is thought to have been discovered under a pub car park on Merseyside.

The vessel is believed to lie beneath 6ft to 10ft (2m to 3m) of clay by the Railway Inn in Meols, Wirral, where Vikings are known to have settled.

Well, perhaps "rediscovery" is a more precise term.

The ship was first uncovered in 1938 when the Railway Inn was being knocked down and rebuilt further from the road, the site of the old pub being made into a car park.

Workers were advised by the foreman to cover the ship over again so as not to delay construction.

Well, you don't want anything to mess with your local pub.

Technorati Tags: Viking longship, Meols, Wirral, Merseyside

If you can sell Al Gore as an ecologist...

Then turning Gadhafi's former terrorist spawning ground into an environmental tourist paradise... should be a piece of cake.

CYRENE, Libya: The son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi unveiled an ambitious plan on Monday to protect ancient Greek ruins, conserve the country's pristine Mediterranean coastline and draw eco-tourists to this former pariah state.

Much like the Goracle... the Libyans are long on palaver and a little short on substance.

Details about the Green Mountain project and how its vision would be implemented were vague.

No one could provide the amount of money that would be needed and had already been pledged by the government. Estimates ranged from US$2 billion to US$5 billion, but no one would provide a precise figure.

Maybe they can go chasing after some of those Wall St. venture capital bucks, huh?

Hang on... damn that worldwide Zionist conspiracy.

Technorati Tags: eco-tourism, Moammar Gadhafi, unintentional irony

Alrighty, gotta head into town...

And pick up that latex Ronald Reagan mask...

Elections Canada says the parliamentary legislation governing how people can cast a vote does not require people to show their faces.

Chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand said Monday that the law does allow for veiled voters to decide whether or not to reveal their face.

Mrs Neo is gonna want a piece of this... I sure hope they haven't run out of Maggie Thatcher.

Make sure you read all the comments for this particular G&M article. The lunatic left is citing this pronouncement by Marc Mayrand, as proof that the Prime Minister is incompetent and should be removed from office.

You can hear the politically correct howls from miles outside the Toronto city limits.

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WELCOME, YET AGAIN, READERS OF CANADIAN CYNIC

If I ever have any doubts about which side of an issue I should fall on, I can look to the Cynic... and go 180 degrees the other way.

To absolutely no one's surprise, our "progressive pal" has decided to throw his head back and side with the howling 4 percent.

You don't need a weatherman, to know which way CC's blowin'.

Make sure to scroll down to * PATHETIC POSTSCRIPT REDUX * for CC's latest "Fantastic Voyage."

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SIDENOTE: In other Reagan-related news...

-- LOS ANGELES -- Jane Wyman, an Academy Award winner and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's first wife who was known internationally for her role in television's long-running "Falcon Crest" series, has died at her desert home.

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UPDATE: Action on Veiled Voting by Friday

Canada's chief electoral officer will be asked to reverse his decision to allow veiled people to vote, or explain himself to a parliamentary committee.

If Elections Canada's chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand does not backtrack, the Commons Committee on Procedure and House Affairs unanimously voted to conduct a study into the decision to allow veiled individuals to vote, to be completed by this Friday, Sept. 14.

Technorati Tags: Elections Canada, Marc Mayrand, suckass political correctness

If Ron Kessler is worried...

Maybe you should be too...

"It would be the real thing," he says, "a nuclear device brought into the country in a small package. It may not be a dirty bomb, but a real device that could kill hundreds of thousands of people."

A Family Affair

The family of shooting victim Jordan Manners is once again in the news.

-- BRAMPTON -- A parolee released in June and described by police sources as a cousin of shooting victim Jordan Manners was yesterday charged in the gun murder of an East York man as a birthday party ended.

He was released in June on parole from a federal institution after being sentenced to 27 months for firearm and other offences over a road rage incident in 2005. He was also banned from possessing a firearm for 10 years.

This killing sounds like a particularly brutal event.

During the dispute, a firearm was pulled and the victim, who was not known to police, was shot repeatedly in the head and upper body.

There was also a similar sort of connection in the recent tragic shooting death of Ephraim Brown. Ephraim's uncle, Matthew Osbourne was shot to death four years ago in Scarborough.

But let's not let any of that get in the way of blaming an inanimate object for Toronto's rising homicide rate... instead of a bankrupt culture that breeds violence and misery.

I just don't get it.

Technorati Tags: Andre Dexter Bourne, Jordan Manners, Matthew Osbourne

Do you think Mark Steyn...

Is working on the sequel to America Alone?

-- BERLIN -- Sixty years after World War II, Russians are dying younger in peacetime than their grandparents did under Stalin. They are having fewer children, and many are falling mortally ill from alcohol-related diseases.

This is an incredibly significant change, demographically and geopolitically. It forever alters the balance of power in the world and it will occur during our lifetime.

"A terrible demographic crisis is taking place," said Nikolay Petrov, a specialist on Russian society at the Carnegie Center in Moscow. "Over the next 20 years, Russia will need 20 million immigrants to compensate for the labor shortage.

This is the first time in which the population and labor force are declining together. It will have an enormous impact on Russia's economic and strategic ambitions."

Who's that sitting right next door to the Russians?

This could get interesting.

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World shaking, international demographic implications be damned... trust mischevious, elfin Darcey to find the sexual subtext.

Technorati Tags: Russia, balance of power, Carnegie Center