Whose We?

The screaming mimi of the right whing in Canada; Michael Coren writes in his Sun column this weekend; We should nuke Iran

Whose we? We, as in Canada, do not have nuclear weapons. Of course Mikey means the US. He seems to confuse which side of the border he is living on. What a nutbar. But it just goes to show if you are a right wing columnist in the right wing media that dominates this country, you can say anything.

He stoops to the lowest levels when he uses the appeasement arguement, trying to be a mini Rumsfeld I guess..... The usual suspects will complain. The post-Christian churches, the Marxists, the fellow travelers and fifth columnists. But then, the same sort of people moaned and condemned in 1938. They were clearly wrong then. They would be just as wrong now.

What the heck is post-Christian churches. Huh? All churches are post-christ. And in fact are not Christ based but Pauline.

As for 1938 I am glad he brought that up. For the very allies who could have halted Fascism did not. Not by appeasement but by their blockading aid to the people of Spain during the Spainish Civil War 1936-1939. Which this year is the seventieth anniversary of.

Of course that was because Republican Spain was made up of the masses who were communists, anarchists and socialists. Mikey's pals were of course on the other side they were the Catholic Church and the Fascists.

Germany and Italy had no problem avoiding the allies blockade, and Germany developed the tactics of airwar and Blitzkrieg in Spain, later to be used on the rest of Europe. The blockade was set up not against Germany and Italy but against Canadian and other International voluteers who went to fight in Spain with the International Brigades. It was there to stop guns and material getting to Republican Spain. That was real appeasement in action.

Of course Mickey won't agree. Cause like Jason Kenney he would prefer fascism to communism.




A tip o' the blog to buckdog for this




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Your Sunday Bible Reading

It's Sunday and fellow blogger Ianism provides us with this pithy bible quote from the Old Testament, on the importance of Ishmael the son of Abraham and the current Arab Israel conflict over nationhood. Not a biblical quote you will read in a Michael Coren column.

The muslims view themselves as followers of the book, the Old Testament, thus they and the Jews are descendants of Abraham.

Call Me Ishmael.

Is the opening line of the Great American classic novel; Moby Dick. Showing that in the 19th Century Orientalism, was present in American literature.

The Great White Whale is of course a metaphor, one that could be applied to the current situation of the US in Iraq.

apocalyptic components of Melville's novel to the foreground. A novel that uses the Pequod as a microcosm of American diversity-in terms of class and race-ends with the destruction of that symbol. Furthermore, as Lakshmi Mani proposes in The Apocalyptic Vision in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Melville's apocalyptic ending relies on the vast ocean as the site of imperialist conquest and its failure, The Cold War's "undigested apple-dumpling": Imaging Moby-Dick in 1956 and 2001,


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Conservatives Bash Canada

By and large Canada Day was slagged from the Right in a demagogic hatred not seen since the debates during the Viet Nam war in the American press. And at that time the Right in the U.S. responded with the simplistic 'Love It or Leave It'.

It seems approriate then to adopt this slogan and apply it to the current crop of virulent Canada bashing right wingers in Canada; those who are columnists in the mainstream, read right-wing, press especially the Sun newpapers and the National Post. The irony is that they get paid for their calumny. America is soooo much better than Canada, but their paycheques are made in Canada, and their health care and social benefits they despise are still delivered to them regardless of their opinions.

Canada basher Ezra Levant's Calgary Sun column; Canada Day looked like a Liberal campaign ad made his comment appropriately on July 4th, not July 1st. Showing his Canadaphobia is merely good old Americaphilia it comes down to the simplistic arguement that goes Canada=The Liberal Party.

Levant whose an out and out Republican like his other Calgary pals Anders and Kenney, wants not only deep intergration with the United States but would like to be American. He even goes so far in his All Things American are good by calling his national publication the Western Standard after the American Conservative magazine the Weekly Standard.

Typical of the right wing in Canada who once upon a time opposed the Liberals under Trudeau they embraced being Anglophiles, all that was British was good.
Levant hearkens back to this time honoured tradition of being an apologist for the good old days of British colonialism (the specious arguement being that
Canada would not be a country if the Brits had not defeated the French and that they 'allowed' us independence under the Act of Westminister) .

In his column he says: "Once upon a time, Canada Day -- when it was called Dominion Day, when we had our old flag, not Lester Pearson's new flag, in Liberal colours -- celebrated what really did make our country great".

It's not just the old union jack or the red ensign that Levant embraces but that other fine Anglo American tradtion; child labour, that so offended Charles Dickens.Decisions on young workers and sour gas deserve cheers

Like the vast majority of Alberta right wingers, Ezra is an Anglo-American apologist by ideology (he was an intern at the Fraser Insitute the voice of the neo-conservative agenda in Canada) while being a Canadian by the accident of birth. He and his ilk's final solution, to what he sees as a degenerate left wing Canada, is to call for Alberta to Seperate from the rest of Canada. Forgetting of course that this American identity is strictly a Calgary phenomena, being the largest American city north of the 49th parallel. Those of us in Redmonton would then demand the right to Seperate from a Seperate Alberta, which true to form would continue on its right wing path of being a one party state in the tradition of Mussolini and Stalin.

Meanwhile not to be outdone, in the city of Toronto another Sun columnist Michael Coren, a born again papist, Anglophile and proud homophobe, denounces Canada in his column: Canada Day? Bah, Humbug!
where he says: "The notion that this is the greatest country on Earth and that our cities are "world class" is, frankly, quite ludicrous. We have little history, few passable museums, mediocre galleries and minimal national pride".

Well there's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, hard to have national pride when those in your nation, the so called patriots continue to bash it in favour of the good old days of British Colonialism or by embracing modern era American Imperialism. Our neo-cons ideology is a mix of bad old Socreds and sad sack Republicans.

And like Levant that is what Coren says; Brits and Americans good Canadians bad: "That's not difficult, of course. We make dreadful television and movies, whether they are funny or not. There are diluted versions of American and British programs and politically tendentious films that are instantly identifiable. They're characterized by bad acting and unfailingly lugubrious plots that often include a hackneyed and out-of-context gay relationship.".

The fact that we make very good TV and have long supplied the humourless Americans with their funniest comedians, since the early days of Hollywood to Saturday Night Live, seems lost on Coren. And with his predicatable homophobia, he dismisses Kids in the Hall was a funny series in both Canada and the United States. But hey why worry about facts when you are bashing Canada and gays in one breathe.

The columnists are not alone in their hatred of Canada, as I pointed out in a recent blog comment on Medicine Hat MP Monte Solberg who expressed much the same senitiments after the same sex bill passed.

Jim Elves at Blogs Canada exposes the rants of the right wing Canada Bashers in blog space with his blog article Calling on the Right to Quash Canada-haters .

Like their paid brethern in Canada's right wing press these supporters of all things Conservative, once again come up with the solution to their woes is to take Alberta out of Canada. They love the one party state in Alberta but hate the one party State in Ottawa, which is actually now a minority government something Albertans have never tried.

What they hate is not a country, not a government in Ottawa, hell when Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives were in power they hated them as well.
Nope they hate Canadians, they want to be Americans.

We Canadians are basically a peoples who embrace a social democratic ethic, that we support individual rights when they are not only good for the individual but for the good of the community as well. The right wing is opposed to all that makes us Canadian.

Thus they oppose gun control in principle, despite the fact that the majority of Canadians approve of gun control and despite the fact it works according to Stats Canada; Gun deaths down in Canada.

And they fail to see that the Federal government billion dollar boondoogle over the gun registry is because it embraced the neo-conservative ideology of privatization and private public partnerships, and because they did not expect the provinces like Alberta, not to buy in (ok that was stupid, but the point is that cost all of us part of the billion).

These yahoos on the right in Alberta have a history that is ridden with anti-french, anti-semitic, anti-native, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-union traditions. A right wing based in the old Social Credit party and the KKK in Alberta.

Federally they became Preston Mannings Reform Party/Alliance/Conservative Party, they are Albertans first, Canadians second. Which much to their own chagrin puts them in the same camp as the Quebecois, whom they bash out of jealousy for their asymetrical autonomy.

This then is the politics of the right in Canada as embraced by the Levants and Corens, and by the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party of Harper. Simply put they are not just pro-American, but virulently anti-Canadian and anti- Quebec because we are both Social Democratic countries.

As long as the majority of Canadians and Quebecois embrace the politics of the left by voting for the NDP, Liberals and BQ, the Conservatives will remain a regional party of Alberta. Ralphs party on the federal stage. A party that wanted to create a firewall around Calgary but disguised their aristotilian city state aspirations for an American outpost in the heartland of Canada's energy market by calling for annexation of the entire province.

Albertan's who are conservative never think of themselves as Canadians, to do so would mean we would have to share our wealth with the rest of the country, rather than horde it in a mean spirited way. The Alberta Government and its Federal arm; the Conservative pary, want deep integration with the United States, hence their support for the right wing rump that calls for seperation.

Since the right wing is so concerned with democracy and applauded the American invasion of Iraq to bring down a dictatorship and give the people a democracy perhaps they will applaud if the Federal government did the same thing in Alberta to secure the oil reserves for all Canadians, and to bring democracy to the oppressed and exploited peoples of Alberta. But somehow I don't think so.

Once upon a time the conspiratorial right wing published a manifesto of the new right in America it was entitled "None Dare Call It Treason". The new right in Alberta has supped deeply at the cup of this kind of politics and encourage if not call for Alberta seperation outright. But I dare to call it what it is; Sedition and treason agianst all that is Canadian, and the rantings of Levant, Coren, Solberg and the bloggers continues to prove this time after time.

Nikki Haley's 'Groveling' Claim About Donald Trump Leaves People Bewildered 

The former U.N. ambassador's spin on Trump's decision to cancel part of the RNC because of the coronavirus raised more than a few eyebrows.
By Lee Moran, HuffPost US

Nikki Haley attempted to rewrite the narrative on President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel the Jacksonville, Florida, element of the Republican National Convention in August over fears about the coronavirus.

And Twitter users weren’t buying it, accusing the former U.N. ambassador of “groveling” to the president.

Haley, also the former GOP governor of South Carolina who has been rumored as a potential replacement for Vice President Mike Pence on Trump’s 2020 ticket, tweeted Friday she was “proud of the selfless leadership” the president had shown in nixing the large-scale event that had been expected to attract tens of thousands of visitors.

Trump “has a great story to tell on how he turned out economy & foreign policy around,” Haley continued. “We look forward to sharing it in the next 100 days!”

We know how much @realDonaldTrump wanted to have a blowout convention.Proud of the selfless leadership he has shown in cancelling the convention. He has a great story to tell on how he turned our economy & foreign policy around. We look forward to sharing it in the next 100 days!— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 24, 2020

Some critics questioned Haley’s use of the word “selfless” to describe the president.
“You misspelled ‘selfish,’” quipped “Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill.

Many highlighted the Trump administration’s catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the president’s decision to press ahead with a rally in Oklahoma last month that public health officials now believe significantly spread COVID-19 across the state.

Others noted how the economy has cratered amid the pandemic ― and that travelers from the United States are currently banned from entering certain countries because of the devastating surge in new daily cases of the virus nationwide.

You misspelled "selfish." https://t.co/YgdUpXhL8J— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) July 24, 2020

He turned our economy and foreign policy around in that everyone lost their jobs and then the world said Americans aren't allowed. https://t.co/qYI70FnVZX— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) July 25, 2020

Now this - THIS IS COMEDY!!! @NikkiHaley you've jumped the shart. Not a typo. https://t.co/bJOnjjNxEG— Erin Davis (@erindavis) July 24, 2020

This lady is the Ted Cruz of Lindsey Grahams. Phony. Awful. https://t.co/lLjJOi7wEZ— Villi (@villi) July 24, 2020

Selfless @NikkiHaley !? You can't be serious. Was it selfless not to wear a mask or encourage Americans to until last week? Was it selfless to hold a rally in Tulsa? Was it selfless to say #Covid_19 would just disappear? You're both smarter and
“We know how much Donald wanted to poop in his diaper. Proud of him for making boom boom in the big boy potty" https://t.co/zZd7nbODjD— Jason O. Gilbert (@gilbertj                                                                                                               


      The depths of degradation to which power-hungry, racist Republicans are willing to sink for this ludicrous fraction of a human being never ceases to appall me. #votetheGOPintoextinction#NikkiHaleyhttps://t.co/iu8Q58CURl— Dennis Perkins (@DennisPerkins5) July 24, 2020



"Turned our economy around" in two charts. pic.twitter.com/AU0wKu16Sw— David Rothschild (@DavMicRot) July 24, 2020



If you mean he has no self, then I agree: there is certainly a grotesque vacuity about him. But if you mean he lacks selfishness, I'm speechless! #Nikki#DonaldTrumphttps://t.co/mHcCq2GtUi— Rev. Michael Coren (@michaelcoren) July 24, 2020



Are you kidding. The word selfless can never be used in the same sentence with trump. He cancelled because he knew no one would show up. And you are ruining your chances to be elected by aligning yourself with this draft dodging coward. He’s finished.— American Veteran (@amvetsupport) July 24, 2020



We know how badly trump hated to cancel, but no one was going to show up because they didn’t want to get CV-19. You’ve become quite the embarrassment.— Regina Marston for CA 42 in 2022 (@Marston4ca42) July 24, 2020



Trump has literally never done anything selfless. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever.— JRehling (@JRehling) July 24, 2020



Imagine the blowout inauguration in a few months... https://t.co/fVje8xa6xA— Jim Swift (@JimSwiftDC) July 24, 2020



Blink twice and we’ll rescue you.— Black Lives Matter Jennifer Mendelsohn (@CleverTitleTK) July 25, 2020



According to Trump It's NOT safe enough for Trump and the GOP to hold its convention for 4 days in Jacksonville but it is SAFE enough for our children and teachers to be crowded into classrooms five days a week for 6 hours a day. #Selfless#NikkiHaleyhttps://t.co/dGOtAgc6pc— (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) July 24, 2020



She is certainly right about one thing. Trump inherited a prosperous economy and turned it around. https://t.co/jCaRz59Ngj— Max Steele (@maxasteele) July 24, 2020



Pres. Trump pressured North Carolina for weeks to hold a "full scale" convention amid rising number of cases in the state. https://t.co/rSsI3RuyOy— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) July 24, 2020



She *really* wants Pence's job. https://t.co/pEJhh8M2M2— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) July 24, 2020



This kind of groveling might even be too embarrassing for @scottwalker.

Just kidding. https://t.co/4qDN2mUBya— Scot Ross (@rossacrosswi) July 24, 2020



Someone tell nikki the engine rooms r flooded, the captain radioed the crew n lifeboats being deployed. Do not be a member of the band...#nikkihaley#COVID19#BunkerBoyTrumphttps://t.co/1obakFSlnS— Kathleen Madigan (@kathleenmadigan) July 24, 2020



.@NikkiHaley

Set aside politics for a minute and your worship of Donald Trump.

Sending kids back to school and putting them all together in a classroom will result in kids dying all over the country.

You can't be pro-life and advocate kids going back to school in a pandemic https://t.co/zx8AYIj2AT— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) July 24, 2020



She was who we thought she was. This is your "moderate Republican," America. Just like the rest. https://t.co/te2vjjL44Y— Wajahat "Wears a Mask Because of a Pandemic" Ali (@WajahatAli) July 24, 2020



"But Tom, why would you argue for the complete destruction of the GOP? There are plenty of good Republicans who, behind the scenes, didn't like what Trump did, and they deserve support after Trump is gone."

Me: https://t.co/WJYTtr1pvP— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 24, 2020



Spoken like someone who's counting on a special political announcement at a cynically timed moment. https://t.co/OZIg3X9e40— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) July 24, 20

Shark Bait

More stupid human speciesism.

Since all sharks look the same.

Lucky for the shark there was a 'Life' guard at the beach to save his life.

These are Michael Coren's kind of folks, beating up on a poor shark.

When a Coney Island lifeguard spied a shark near an upset group of swimmers, he did what he thought was right: He rescued the fish

Marisu Mironescu, 39, said he was prompted to action Monday after seeing about 75 to 100 people circling the 60-centimetre sand shark off the beach and "bugging out."

"They were holding onto it and some people were actually hitting him, smacking his face," said Mironescu. "Well, I wasn't going to let them hurt the poor thing."

He grabbed the largely harmless shark in his arms and carried it, backstroking out to sea, where he let it go. "He was making believe like he's dead, then he wriggled his whole body and tried to bite me," Mironescu said.

The rescue ended a holiday weekend that began with another city shark scare Saturday, when a 1.5-metre thresher shark washed up on Rockaway Beach, sending hundreds of swimmers out of the water.

And size does matter. Five feet is a lot bigger than 3.5 feet.

At least these New Yorkers did do the 'right thing'. Since sharks are an endangered species thanks to stupid humans.

A five-foot-long thresher shark that washed up on a crowded city beach this weekend — and was pushed back into the sea by beachgoers — is dead.

Rockaway Beach was back open Sunday, a day after a shark sighting shut it down.

Park officials say a shark washed up on the shore Saturday near Beach 109th Street. Some New Yorkers approached the creature and pushed it back into the water.

The Parks Department ordered swimmers back on the shore and closed the beach and surrounding bay for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning, a dead thresher shark, five feet in length, washed up on the shore at Beach 113th Street. Parks officials say they believe it was the same shark as Saturday.

An expert from the New York Aquarium told the New York Post that thresher sharks don't attack nearly as often as the famous Great White, although swimmers have been injured by their tails.

Thresher Shark

The genus and family name derive from the Greek word alopex, meaning fox. Indeed the long-tailed thresher shark, Alopias vulpinus, is named the fox shark by some authorities.

All three thresher shark species have been recently listed as vulnerable to extinction by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Sand Shark

The sand tiger (Carcharias taurus) is a coastal shark often encountered by shore fishermen while fishing for striped bass and bluefish. Please note that this species is protected by both State and Federal laws .

Sand tigers have two dorsal fins of equal size and are grayish brown in appearance, often with dusky spots on their sides and tail. They are most often confused with smooth dogfish (Mustelus canis), but sand tigers have very noticeable long thin teeth while smooth dogfish do not. The spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) is another small coastal shark, but can easily be distinguished from a sand tiger by its two dorsal fin spines and the lack of anal fin. If you accidentally catch a sand tiger,you should take care to return it to the water unharmed.

SEE:

Prison Zoo Complex

They Walk Among Us

Nessies Relative

Nessie?

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Islamicists and Evangelical Christians

They share common right wing social conservative values; like a belief in creationism. Shhh don't tell them. They may get together and then all hell will break loose.

Turkey's election

Jul 19th 2007 | ANKARA, DIYARBAKIR AND ISTANBUL
From The Economist print edition

Secular suspicions of the AK government had already been fanned, not least by the controversial education minister, Huseyin Celik. Mr Celik, who is said to have close links to the powerful Islamic Nur fraternity, has been accused of injecting Islam by stealth. He has overseen a revision of textbooks to promote creationism and the recruitment, as teachers, of hundreds of graduates of imam hatip, Islamic clerical-training schools. There has also been “an explosion in enrolment at Koran lessons, especially among girls,” says Alattin Dincer, president of Turkey's largest teachers' union. No wonder Mr Celik had to explain himself in a meeting with the chief of the general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, shortly after the army's e-coup.

Attempts by a few AK mayors to create booze-free zones, as well as Mr Erdogan's own failed effort in 2005 to outlaw adultery, have not helped the party's image with secularists.

SEE:

Secularism Vs. Fundamentalism

Michael Coren's Fatwa

Procreation To Save The White Race

Strange Bedfellows

American Polytheism

Marxism and Religion

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Eyeless In Gaza

The outrage against the illegal Israeli invasion of Gaza and its armed assault on the Palestinian Authority and its terror attacks on the Palestinian population is growing. Albeit amongst the leftwing blogs.

My Blahg On Gaza

It's Time to End the "Last Taboo" and Hold Israel Accountable for Its Actions - by Stephen Lendman



The left folks.

Not liberals like Mindelle Jacobs of the Sun who on the issue of Israel and Gaza sounds more like that other bitch queen at the the Sun; Michael Coren.
And like the proverbial Israeli Apologist and Suck Up Warren Kinsella liberals in Canada defend the aparthied state. In fact that is how they define themselves as liberals. For liberals Israel is the very model of a modern major democratic state.

For the Left the State of Israel is Imperialist and an occupying power, that is barely legitimate, the liberals paen that Israel is somehow democratic forgets the disenfranchised Arab population.

"The extermination of the Native Americans can be admitted, the morality of Hiroshima attacked, the national flag (of the US) publicly committed to flames. But the systematic continuity of Israel's 52-year oppression and maltreatment of the Palestinians is virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has no permission to appear."

--Edward Said, Palestinian writer, scholar and activist

And then as I googled Eyeless in Gaza, which is a novel by Aldous Huxely ( and an avante garde band) , I found these complimentary articles;

A critique of the media coverage from Australia Eyeless in Gaza

And from the US Arms and influence: Eyeless in Gaza

And in an article from last year after the Israeli withdrawl from Gaza we are reminded of the economic differences between the Palestinians and the Israelis. An economic relationship of indentured servitude by one group to the other.

According to the Palestinian Economic Council for Reconstruction and Development (PECDAR), annual per capita income in Gaza continues to average roughly $700, compared to the $16,000 per capita income enjoyed by Israelis. In the absence of relatively well-paying jobs, what will happen to the lines of unemployed Gazans? The potential flight of employment seekers -- a formidable phenomenon worldwide -- is only one problem. More immediately, if Gazans cannot feed their families, the recurrence of cross-border violence, if not a third intifada, will only be a matter of time. Eyeless in Gaza - Salon

Also See:

Gaza

Israel

Zionism/Anti-Zionism


Israel, deaths, Gaza, children, artillery, Paestine, Palestinians, US, slaughter, missles, Zionist, Zionism,
Hamas, Fateh, IDF, Abbas, Palestinian-Authority,hostage, Hamas, war, Gaza, invasion,

Pro-Life Pro-Death

Thought I would add a few of my posts to the Canadian Blog Exchange topic Pro Life since Syncategorematic noted this posting space has become a spam spot for one view and one blog.

So riddle me this what is both pro-life and pro-death?

Why the average Christian right winger. Who, if they are American or wannabe Americans (like Michael Coren), hate Canada for our libertarian position defending a womans right to choose.

Libertarian, something that many Blogging Tories and Conservatives claim to be but aren't. Cause they are inconsistant. Libertarianism is an outgrowth of classical liberalism, which is the very political ideology the right wing hates.

For consistency on the right see Anti-War.com



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Elsie Wayne Challenges Harper

Toronto Tory commented 'grow up' on my recent post; Conservatives Hidden Agenda Exposed.

Well a couple of days later and a millimetere taller here is what the MSM is reporting.

Tory firebrand Elsie Wayne back on national stage to fight same-sex marriage

Wayne says she is convinced a national referendum on the marriage question would produce overwhelming support for the traditional definition.

"We have a lot of people in this country who are for marriage being between a man and woman and nothing else," she says.

"The fact of the matter is that Paul Martin just listened to a few loudmouths on this issue. He hasn't listened to Canadians."

Wayne's controversial views on homosexuality often landed her in hot water when she was an MP and deputy leader of the Conservative Party.

She says Canadian society is founded on Christian values and there is no place in that value system for people who have made what she considers a lifestyle choice to live as gays and lesbians.

"If you want to live that lifestyle, go live it. But don't ask us to change marriage. Just shut up about it," she says, repeating comments she once made in the House of Commons.

And not to be left out Michael Coren the scion of the Catholic Right sez Stand up for family values, Mr. Harper


And I said that the Conservatives are wide open to using the Free Vote and thus the Not Withstanding clause on a variety of issues of importance to their right wing base, including (despite thier convention resolution) abortion, the death penalty and Same Sex Marriage.

An article in the Toronto Star confirms that my scepticism of Harpers promise that 'he' won't use the Not Withstanding Clause, is hollow since he does not speak for the backbenchers that will bring forward private members bills on these issues.

Will Harper override the Charter?

Survey shows Conservative MPs will exert strong pressure on leader to change definition of same-sex marriage if they take power, say Jerome Black and Bruce Hicks

During the two leaders' debates, the issue of revisiting same-sex marriage was raised and Harper repeated his commitment to hold a free vote. He went on to say that he would not use the "notwithstanding clause" — the clause that allows Parliament to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — during the vote on "that issue."The implication is clear. Harper's promise to not use the notwithstanding clause is temporary. He will specifically not use it in the free vote to repeal same-sex marriage that will take place immediately following the election.How will MPs vote? When will Harper use the notwithstanding clause? An overwhelming number of Conservative candidates — 86 per cent — responded that Parliament should be able to override the courts. In fact, more Conservatives would support Parliament in overriding a court decision on the Charter than would vote for the repeal of same-sex marriage.
So what is likely to happen on same-sex marriage under a Conservative government?Based on the views of candidates, it seems likely that the Commons would repeal same-sex marriage.

Now who needs to grow up Mr. TO Tory?


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Conservative Conundrum

A less than impassioned criticism by the 'Prime Minister' of Ezra Le Rant and his Western Standard and the Jewish Free Press both of Harpers home town; Calgary.In fact it isn't a criticism at all it's a defense of Le Rant. Harper regrets publication of controversial Muhammad cartoons

"Free speech is a right that all Canadians enjoy; Canadians also have the right to voice their opinion on the free speech of others," Stephen Harper said in a written statement, his first comments on the incendiary cartoons since the furor erupted.

Well what did you expect, Le Rant is one of the young Turks who surround Harper, like Jason Kenney, Rob Anders, etc. all members of the Republican wing of the Conservative party.

Harper is in a conundrum, as is his Conservative party, as are Blogging Tories because Le Rant may have put Canadian troops in harms way with his publishing the cartoons. The rioting over the cartoons has seen assualts on NATO troops in Afghanistan. And his publishing the cartoons has made it into the world wide Muslim press.

Legal redress sought over cartoons Aljazeera.Net
Canadian PM laments publication of Prophet caricatures Malayala Manorama

Ezra Levant is an Idiot.

On Tuesday, Lt.-Col. Tom Doucette told CTV News that the decision of Western Standard, a Calgary-based magazine, to reprint the cartoons could endanger Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan. "What it might do is slow things down, i.e., in concentrated centres," Doucette told CTV. "If we get crowds gathering, then we will try to avoid that." His comments bolstered a similar warning from Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor. "It doesn't help. Radicals in Syria and Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, they get people roused up because their religion's being offended," O'Connor said, the Ottawa Citizen reported Tuesday. "We don't need any more risk in the area than we have."PM 'regrets' publication of Muhammad cartoons

Uh oh now all those Blogging Tories that support our troops in Afghanistan will have to make a choice defend an idiotic provocatation that was unneccary and that will lead to endagering our troops, or denounce Le Rant for his deliberate and calculated attempt to increase his magazines circulation and his own profile. The later being more the case than a case for Free Speech.

Ezra Levant, publisher of the Western Standard, told CBC television the magazine decided to publish the cartoons because it considered them newsworthy. "We're not publishing them for their editorial merits," he said."They're boring cartoons. They're bland. They're not interesting. We're not running them because we share their views. We're running them because they're the central fact that caused Muslim radicals around the world to riot."

Ezra is all about Ezra being the news. The Western Standard has no more real circulation than Alberta Report before it. So this is all about Ezra in the news. Always has been. And Ezra ain't news.

And his publishing the cartoons is sheer opportunism not a question of fighting censorship. The Canadian media didn't censor the cartoons they just didn't run them because of good sense and good taste. Something that is lacking at the Western Standard.

But again as I said it's not about the cartoons or freedom of the press or freedom of speech its about Ezra. He thinks now that the Conservatives are in power he and his right wing pals should get more press and be referred to like his counterparts in the U.S. are.

It's a tempest in a tea pot feuled by faux right wing outrage.

And unlike Voltaire I cannot support Ezra's right to so called Free Speech.

As a right winger he has now shown himself as a fascist who would deliberately publish material he knows will provoke a negative reaction in order to prove his point that his self appointed enemies, Canadian Muslims, are terrorists and reactionaries. To Ezra and his Conservative pals all Muslims are radicals. He is practicing the Goebbels school of propaganda not Free Speech.

Levant, who is Jewish, had some harsh words for Elmasry. He described him as an "idiot" several times, and said he has no moral high ground to lecture him on journalistic integrity.
Levant pointed to controversial comments Elmasry made in October, 2004, when he said all Jews over the age of 18 are fair targets for suicide bombers. Elmasry made the comments on The Michael Coren Show, an Ontario program that runs on Burlington's Crossroads Television System.Elmasry later repeated the comments in a Globe and Mail interview, but eventually claimed he was expressing a widely-held Palestinian view, not his own personal belief."PM 'regrets' publication of Muhammad cartoons

Yeah Ezra is Jewish, so what. He is a perfect example of what he calls the self-hating Jew, he is Jewish when it is conveniant to be Jewish. Like now. Most of the other times he is just a regular WASP Right Winger like his other pals in the Calgary Conservative circle.

And yeah he uses a mistatement by his opponents to belittle them, like he has never done that and had to apologize. These are the debating tactics of a fascist. Never apologise never surrender. Ah, Dr. Gobbels would have been proud.

And Canadians deserved more outrage out of our PM rather than his weak tea 'regret'. Yeah we all regret your pal's in Calgary are idiots, but your job is not to defend them but to speak for Canadians whom they have insulted and outraged.





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Trump’s promise to put coal miners back to work was a failure

REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS

Former US president Donald Trump at a Charleston, West Virginia rally in 2018.

• 

By Michael J. Coren

Climate reporter

3 hours ago

In 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a promise to coal miners at a rally in West Virginia. “For those miners, get ready because you’re going to be working your asses off,” he told them, wearing a white hard hat. “We’ll be winning, winning, winning.”

After four years of the Trump administration, coal has been losing, losing, losing. Not that Trump can take the blame (or the credit). Dismal economics have been inexorably displacing coal as the fuel of choice in the US and around the world. Trump made some attempts to stop the bleeding—easing air pollution laws and propping up ailing plants—and in 2017, falsely claimed those efforts were working. “We are putting the coal miners back to work, just as I promised,” he said.

But, the data tell a different story. The number of people employed by the coal mining industry has fallen 15% since Trump took office in January 2017. Despite job losses that temporarily stabilized during his years in office, according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics Data, the trend is continuing. Jobs did not increase, unhelped by Trump’s trade wars and unsuccessful efforts to use the Defense Production Act to prop up coal plants, before the pandemic curtailed coal demand and employment.

Production has followed suit. Despite coal prices remaining stable around $35 per ton over the last decade, production fell during Trump’s years in office to just 706 million short tons, the lowest amount since 1978, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Coal still generates 38% of global electricity, the largest share of any fuel. But that is falling in many countries as the price of solar, wind, and natural gas dips below coal, cutting into the industry’s profits. During the first half of 2020, global coal capacity fell for the first time since at least the 1950s, reports the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor.

In the US, many coal boilers are now simply too expensive to run. In the last five years, utilities have shut down more than 48 gigawatts of coal-fired generation capacity. The pandemic accelerated that trend: As energy demand dipped, the most expensive sources were taken offline first. In 2021, another 2.7 GW, or 1% of the US coal fleet, is scheduled to be retired. Soon, it will be cheaper to build new solar or wind farms than continue operating old coal plants, accelerating retirements further.

But there remains one bright spot for US coal producers: exports. The rest of the world still has a huge (and in some cases growing) coal fleet. China and India support the industry through heavy state subsidies, and China doubled the pace of new coal permitting last year with least 250 GW of new coal power capacity planned. For now, American coal mines’ only new business is likely to come from overseas.

QZ

Climate models predicted heatwaves like America’s record-breaking weekend


Michael J. Coren
Sun, June 20, 2021

QUARTZ


The US hasn’t seen anything quite like this. Over the weekend, temperatures soared to new triple-digit heights across the American West. The immediate cause was a “heat dome,” a mass of high-pressure air trapping heat beneath it, one far stronger and larger than normal.

But what we saw this weekend is what climate scientists have been predicting for decades. And it’s a taste of what’s to come. “It’s surreal to see your models become real life,” Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, says in the Guardian.

Records fell across the region. On June 17, California’s capital of Sacramento hit 110°F (43°C), smashing the last record of 102°F set in 1976. Similar all-time highs fell in Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, and other cities thousands of miles apart. In Death Valley National Park, where temperatures soared to 128°F, just one degree off the record, nighttime temperatures stayed above 111°F (44°C) well past midnight, among the hottest nights ever recorded in North America.

It’s hard to argue with climate models

What climate models predicted is coming true. Scientists forecast global warming would fuel higher temperatures, falling humidity, dwindling snowpack, and intensifying drought. So far, this is coming to pass, despite some uncertainty about how this will play out in the coming century.

Extreme heatwaves are now an estimated 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer across the US, estimates Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the West, the hottest days have gotten about 33% drier in Nevada and California over the last 40 years, according to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) climate scientist Karen McKinnon. A “megadrought” now engulfing the region is eclipsing any period for the last 1,200 years.

Little of this is surprising for scientists who run supercomputers modeling the planet’s atmosphere. In 2019, climate scientist Zeke Hausfather analyzed 17 climate models run between 1970 and 2007 and found more than half predicted outcomes “indistinguishable from what actually occurred.” More than 80% correctly analyzed how the atmosphere would respond to rising greenhouse gases level after controlling for models that overestimated humans’ GHG emissions.
When will the heatwave be over?

The West’s drought appears to be without precedent in recorded history. From Oregon to the Mexican border, drought intensity has reached “exceptional” levels. Decades of low rainfall, and two especially dry years, have turned the region into a tinderbox with 100 million dead trees in California alone, and millions more ready to burn. With the hottest, and driest, period of the year still ahead, conditions are “as bad as they can be,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.


Last year, similar (but not as dry) conditions led to an apocalyptic fire season that killed 33, burned 4% of the state (4.4 million acres), and left the entire coast languishing under blood-red skies. Fires are breaking out again in California more than a month early, with forests primed to go up in flames. Ranchers and farmers are starting to talk about shrinking their herds, or ending their livelihoods, as the wells dry up: 20% of California’s prime farmland in the San Joaquin Valley has been fallowed.

On the surface, water is vanishing as well. For the first time, the massive reservoir behind the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, registered just 37% full. That’s threatening power and water supplies for seven states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) in the Colorado River basin (the dam’s generation is already down 25%). In California, the loss of snowpack means that power generation is forecast to drop 70% below the 10-year average, while some power-producing dams, such as the one on Lake Oroville, could stop generating power for the first time since they were built more than 50 years ago.

This week’s misery won’t go on forever, and some relief is in sight for the West this week. Temperatures will ease as the heat dome begins to dissipate over the Southwest. But a new heatwave is already gaining steam, this time in northern California and up along the Pacific coast. More misery is in store. “Additional records may be set, once again,” writes Swain.