Thursday 30 July 2009

Mohamed ELMASRY advocates terror against Israelis



Mr. Mohamed ELMASRY, Professor of Engineering at University of Waterloo ON launched 3 HRC complaints against Macleans Magazine for the Danish Cartoons.

Is this what we want our HRC to defend? If so let all other groups file suits as well.

Sunday 26 July 2009

Overlooks Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez .... but not this?

This was excellent - Mark STEYN you do us proud.

Some gems:
  • The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power.
  • Gates then told him, "I'll speak with your mama outside." Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show. But among his colleagues were a black officer and a Hispanic officer. Which is an odd kind of posse for what the Rev. Al Sharpton calls, inevitably, "the highest example of racial profiling I have seen."
  • Last year I had a minor interaction with a Vermont state trooper, and, 60 seconds into the conversation, he called me a "liar." I considered my options:
  • Option a): I could get hot under the collar, yell at him, get tasered into submission and possibly shot while "resisting arrest";
  • Option b): I could politely tell the trooper I object to his characterization, and then write a letter to the commander of his barracks the following morning suggesting that such language is not appropriate to routine encounters with members of the public and betrays a profoundly defective understanding of the relationship between law enforcement officials and the citizenry in civilized societies.
  • I chose the latter course.
  • Was the cop right? I dunno. I wasn't there. Neither was the president of the United States, or the governor of Massachusetts or the mayor of Cambridge. All of whom have declared themselves firmly on the side of the Ivy League bigshot. And all of whom, as it happens, are African American. A black president, a black governor and a black mayor all agree with a black Harvard professor that he was racially profiled by a white-Latino-black police team, headed by a cop who teaches courses in how to avoid racial profiling.
  • My advice to professor Gates for future incidents would be to establish his authority early.
  • "Roses are red, Violets are blue, Victims are black, Like 2 Live Crew."

[download archived article]

Saturday 25 July 2009

The Wrestler

I rented the other night and although not as good as Grand Torino - it was ok. But the best part by far was the Bruce SPRINGSTEEN solo:



The Wrestler [LYRICS]
Two, three, four

Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the field so happy and free?
If you've ever seen a one trick pony then you've seen me
Have you ever seen a one-legged dog making his way down the street?
If you've ever seen a one-legged dog then you've seen me

Then you've seen me, I come and stand at every door
Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I had before
Then you've seen me, bet I can make you smile when the blood, it hits the floor
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
Tell me can you ask for anything more?

Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and wheat?
If you've ever seen that scarecrow then you've seen me
Have you ever seen a one-armed man punching at nothing but the breeze?
If you've ever seen a one-armed man then you've seen me

Then you've seen me, I come and stand at every door
Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I had before
Then you've seen me, bet I can make you smile when the blood, it hits the floor
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
Tell me can you ask for anything more?

These things that have comforted me, I drive away
This place that is my home I cannot stay
My only faith's in the broken bones and bruises I display

Have you ever seen a one-legged man trying to dance his way free?
If you've ever seen a one-legged man then you've seen me

Al Jazeera in Canada

At the end of June I read that Al Jazeera English TV Network will be approved by the CRTC fro cable. I am not sure that is a good idea - but certainly as it will be an extra service and cable subscribers will have to pay Rogers to carry the service so there will be a small business advantage.
There is a "I want AJ" website put up to encourage Canadians to lobby the CRTC and provides a number of advantages of the service, code of ethics, journalist profiles etc. That is wher a great number of pixels are spent pumping that former CBC journalists Tony BURHMAM and Avi LEWIS have joined the English service.

Here is the live feed.

and now, a word from our sponsors...

As good a summary as could be had for what happened to cause Ezra LEVANT to write "Shakedown" - a CBC News Broadcast dated Feb 14, 2008 - Syed Soharwardy has dropped his suit, Levant want to file for "abuse of process" lawsuit.



Religious Persecution?

"The only valid censorship of ideas is not to listen - Tommy SMOTHERS"

Having read "Shakedown" by Ezra LEVANT, I was made aware of the legal farce faced by Rev. Stephen BOISSION who was pursued by the AHRC in 2008 with an outrageous ruling - basically a "show trial" worthy of North Korea or Iran. I now have found Rev. BOISSION has his own website and shows he is unrepentant - which I think is a good sign as he hasn't given up - and is planning an appeal to a "real" court. He filed his claim last week (2009JUL15) and it is very interesting reading as it highlights AHRC's abuse of our constitutional rights.

Read it.

Friday 24 July 2009

How many words for snow....

I think it maybe myth that Eskimo's have 20 different words (or ways inn Inuktitut) to describe snow, but I think not. In ant even it was reassuring to read that the Scot's have as many ways to describe "rain" - and here they are:

Twenty Scottish descriptions, and their translations, for rain and the act of raining arranged in order from lightest to most severe:

drowie (misty, drizzling, damp);
haar (a mist from the sea);
dreich (merely overcast to distinctly damp);
oorlich (damp, chilly, bleak) simmer-bob (a period of frequent, slight rain);
smirr (a fine drizzle);
Liddesdale drow (a thick, wetting drizzle);
blaw bye (a passing slower);
growin' shoorie (a welcome shower);
peuch, peuchle (to rain in fits);
plowtery (messy, dirty wet, showery);
sump (a great fall of rain);
scudder (a driving shower of rain);
blashy (rainy, wet, gusty);
plump (a sudden, heavy fall of rain);
pish-oot (a downpour);
feechie (foul, dirty, rainy, puddly);
drouk (to soak);
blatter (violent rain);
black weet (a deluge).

There's a sonnet in there somewhere.

Tuesday 21 July 2009

Confidence & Hubris

I have just read this article by Malcolm GLADWELL, a Canadian and popular author of a number of hit titles recent (Tipping Point, BLINK). This is an interesting profile that explores the psychological profile of Wall Street Investment Bankers and Overconfidence. Here are some prime quotes;
Most people are inclined to use moral terms to describe overconfidence—terms like “arrogance” or “hubris.” But psychologists tend to regard overconfidence as a state as much as a trait.

Winners know how to bluff. And who bluffs the best? The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself to be stronger than he is. According to Wrangham, self-deception reduces the chances of “behavioral leakage”; that is, of “inadvertently revealing the truth through an inappropriate behavior.” This much is in keeping with what some psychologists have been telling us for years—that it can be useful to be especially optimistic about how attractive our spouse is, or how marketable our new idea is. In the words of the social psychologist Roy Baumeister, humans have an “optimal margin of illusion.”

The problem was that when, in early 2008, Cayne and his colleagues stood up and said that Bear was a great place to be, the rest of Wall Street no longer believed them. Clients withdrew their money. As the run on Bear Stearns worsened, J. P. Morgan and the Fed threw the bank a lifeline—a multibillion-dollar line of credit. But confidence matters so much on Wall Street that the lifeline had the opposite of its intended effect. As Bill Bamber, a former Bear senior managing director, writes in “Bear Trap: The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008” writes:

"This line-of-credit, the stop-gap measure that was supposed to solve the problem that hadn’t really existed in the first place had done nothing but worsen it. When we started the week, we had no liquidity issues. But because people had said that we did have problems with our capital, it became true... So when we finally got more capital to replace the capital we’d lost, people took that as a bad sign and pointed to the fact that we’d had no capital and had to get a loan to cover it, even when we did have the capital they said we didn’t have."

“When I left,” Cayne told Cohan, speaking of his final day at Bear Stearns, “I had three different meetings. The first was with the president’s advisory group, which was about eighty people. There wasn’t a dry eye. Standing ovation. I was crying.” Until the very end, he evidently saw the world that he wanted to see. “The second meeting was with the retail sales force on the Web,” he goes on. “Standing ovation. And the third was a partners’ meeting that night for me to tell them that I was stepping down. Standing ovation, of the whole auditorium.”
That pretty much seems to sum them up.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Russian Activist Found Dead

First Anna POLITKOVSKAYA and now another shocking political execution in Russia - Natalya ESTEMIROVA - who was found kidnapped and dead, hours after denouncing Vladimir PUTIN over atrocities in Chechnya.

She had been critical of the Chechan regime and Russia's installed puppet ruler Ramzan KADYROV. Just before her kidnapping and execution, Ms. ESTIMIROVA had called for PUTIN to be prosecuted before an International Criminal Court. ESTEMIROVA was a key author of a report prepared by Russian Human Rights organization, Memorial that accused members of the KADYROV administration of revenge killings.

A few weeks ago I was heartened by news that Russia's Supreme Court had over-turned a "Not-Guilty" verdict of three men accused in Anna POLITKOVSKAYA murder and ordered a new trial, despite not expecting a better result. But this atrocity must be openly condemned by PUTIN as it is his admirers/supporters who openly conduct such murders. For Russia to move closer to anything that resembles a democracy that does not terrorize it's own citizens, it must put these totalitarian methods behind it once and for all.

Our Foreign Affairs Minster and Liberal Leader IGNATIEFF must denounce these outrageous violations of basic democratic freedoms.

Here are some addresses to register disapproval:

Mr. Mamedov Georgiy Enverovich
Ambassador of the Russian Federation in Canada
Russian Embassy
285 Charlotte St
Ottawa ON K1N 8L5
T (613) 235-4341
F (613) 236-6342
E rusemb@rogers.com

Mr.Lawrence CANNON, MP - Minister for External Affairs
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, ON K1A 0G2
T 800-267-8376
F 613-996-9709
E Cannol1@parl.gc.ca

Mr. Michael IGNATIEFF - Official Leader of the Opposition
656 The Queensway
Etobicoke (ON) M8Y 1K7
T (416) 251-5510
F (416) 251-2845
E Ignatieff.M@parl.gc.ca

Mr. Oleg ORLOV - Executive Director, Memorial Russia
M. Karetniy pereulok 12
103051, Moscow, Russia
T 011 (095) 200-6506
F 011 (095) 209-5779
E memhrc@memo.ru

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