Tuesday, May 19, 2015
"It's Really Him!"
That's part of the White House's breathless "tweet" re Obama finally getting his own Twitter account.
Two obvious questions: 1) What took him so long?; and 2) Who gives a crap?
Two obvious questions: 1) What took him so long?; and 2) Who gives a crap?
How To Get Ahead In Life
Do you have a steady hand? Are you adept with a curved scimitar? Well, then, my friend, this may be the job for you:
On Monday, eight new job openings for “religious functionaries” tasked with “carrying out the death sentence according to Islamic Shari’a after it is ordered by a legal ruling” appeared on the website of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Civil Service.
Capital punishment is administered for crimes like murder, rape, adultery, witchcraft and drug offenses in the Islamic kingdom, which is currently witnessing an uptick in beheadings under Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman, the New York Times reports.
In 2015, the pace of executions accelerated to 85 in just a few months — already set to eclipse last year’s total of 88 beheadings. It is not clear why there has been a sharp increase, but new judges have swiftly been plowing through a case backlog, according to Reuters.
The vacancies do not specify educational credentials or required skills, but the executioners are ideally adroit swordsmen, as the most common execution implement is a curved scimitar."Swiftly plowing through a case backlog"--well, that's one way to put it.
Monday, May 18, 2015
While We Were Sleeping Ontario's Liberal Government Invented/Instituted a "Social Justice" Tribunal System
When did this happen? Why haven't I heard about it before? More to the point, with the exception of the "human rights" tribunal, in what way are the rest of the quasi-judicial bodies that have been "clustered" (that's the official way to refer to the ingathering) under the "social justice" rubric have anything to do with "social justice"?
My fear: now that we have this "social justice" apparatus, it will at some point involve itself in trying to effect the kind of "social justice" that involves redistributing wealth for the sake of "fairness" and "equality."
My fear: now that we have this "social justice" apparatus, it will at some point involve itself in trying to effect the kind of "social justice" that involves redistributing wealth for the sake of "fairness" and "equality."
Disgusting: B.C. First Nations Tribe Purveys the Big Lie of Israeli Apartheid--to the Delight of CJPME
The Zion-loathers of CJPME are beside themselves with glee over this "great victory" for "free speech."
Sunday, May 17, 2015
"A Principle That Has Guided" Obama's "Work Throughout the Past Six Years"--"Expanding Opportunity for All"
If that has indeed guided his work for more than half a decade, I have two words for him: epic fail.
Were he being truthful, something that doesn't come naturally to him, Obama would admit that his guiding principle has been a desire to make as many American as possible dependent on government for as long as possible. And I have to say--for him that's been a slam dunk.
Were he being truthful, something that doesn't come naturally to him, Obama would admit that his guiding principle has been a desire to make as many American as possible dependent on government for as long as possible. And I have to say--for him that's been a slam dunk.
CBC Radio Host Michael Enright Leaps to Elizabeth May's Defense
Enright claims May was subjected to a "mugging" following her appearance at a light-hearted, alcohol-fueled media event, and poses the following silly questions:
Why the mountain; why unsympathetic? Maybe because it was a slow news day. Maybe because it isn't every day you hear the leader of a major political party dropping the F-bomb in public. (When Pierre Trudeau did it back in the 1970s it became a news and a pop culture sensation.) Maybe because Ms. May made an awful fool of herself, something that this particular gathering could hardly ignore.
Was it because she was appearing before journalists? Yes/duh (see above). If you're going to make an ass of yourself, it's usually not a good idea to do it in front of people who report and/or comment on stuff for a living.
Would the story have disappeared if she had been speaking to environmentalists? Er, why exactly would she be speaking about Omar Khadr to environmentalists?
Was it because she sometimes seemed holier than thou? No. It was because she wasn't funny.
Was it because she is a woman? No, that had nothing to do with it. But props for making the entire Parliamentary press corps sound like a bunch of knuckle-dragging sexists, Michael!
Update: Also on the Enright show--atheist apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells Michael her formula for "reforming" Islam.
Why the mountain of coverage, nearly all of it unsympathetic? Was it because she was appearing before a roomful of journalists? Would the story have disappeared if she had been speaking to environmentalists? Was it because she sometimes has seemed to be holier than thou? Was it because she is a woman?Let's deal with them one at a time.
Why the mountain; why unsympathetic? Maybe because it was a slow news day. Maybe because it isn't every day you hear the leader of a major political party dropping the F-bomb in public. (When Pierre Trudeau did it back in the 1970s it became a news and a pop culture sensation.) Maybe because Ms. May made an awful fool of herself, something that this particular gathering could hardly ignore.
Was it because she was appearing before journalists? Yes/duh (see above). If you're going to make an ass of yourself, it's usually not a good idea to do it in front of people who report and/or comment on stuff for a living.
Would the story have disappeared if she had been speaking to environmentalists? Er, why exactly would she be speaking about Omar Khadr to environmentalists?
Was it because she sometimes seemed holier than thou? No. It was because she wasn't funny.
Was it because she is a woman? No, that had nothing to do with it. But props for making the entire Parliamentary press corps sound like a bunch of knuckle-dragging sexists, Michael!
Update: Also on the Enright show--atheist apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells Michael her formula for "reforming" Islam.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Free Speech: Ours to Lose
In a Globe & Mail Op-Ed piece about the dearth of free speech in Bangladesh, Omer Aziz makes this depressing observation:
In other words, it you don't make the effort to cherish and protect your free speech, you may as well bid it adieu.
Free speech is something that is taken for granted in the West, so much so that 200 writers could boycott a PEN award for Charlie Hebdo that was given in defence of the very speech that got its editors killed.Taking it for granted is the best way to lose it. Or hasn't Aziz--and, for that matter, the 200 PEN boycotters--ever heard that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"?
In other words, it you don't make the effort to cherish and protect your free speech, you may as well bid it adieu.
Borovoy's Gone But His Frankenstein Monster Lingers On
In the NatPo today, George Jonas pays tribute to his friend Alan Borovoy, who died earlier this week. Jonas reminisces about the debates he and Borovoy used to have back in the days when we were much freer, which is to say, before Borovoy and his leftist pals up cooked up our wacky "human rights" system. Jonas notes that while he, a libertarian who had escaped from the Soviet orbit, warned about potential problems with such "human rights" bodies from the outset, Borovoy and the other leftists poo-poo'd such fears:
It always puzzled me why Alan, a civil libertarian by vocation as well as avocation, would burn the midnight oil to set up laws and institutions designed to reduce the very liberties he was safeguarding and promoting by day. The answer, it seemed, was that he never imagined human rights commissions, a progeny of the progressive left, could be a threat to free expression. In my column a few days ago I wrote: “It never occurred to [Alan] that civil liberties can be threatened from the left.”
Unfettered by the illusions of the left, conservative civil libertarians could see it easily. Deny liberty to conduct; it’ll soon be denied to speech, or vice versa. Freedom is indivisible. Cutting it in half means killing it...Later on, of course, Borovoy came to see that these commissions should not have the power to regulate our speech, and he became a vocal opponent of the state censorship provision written into our "human rights" legislation. Jonas, his old sparring partner, applauds him for this effort--as do I. That said, however, this is the comment I left on the NatPo site:
That Borovoy couldn't foresee where his good intentions could lead--i.e. to "human rights" commissions running roughshod over us--constitutes a failure of imagination on an epic scale. So while, yes, I applaud him for sticking to his guns re free speech, I'm not so thrilled with the nutty apparatus he helped erect, and which he leaves behind as a big part of his legacy.
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