Sundown

Ian Davey is taking it right and left for his terse remarks about the Sun chain, those folks coming soon to a TV near you:

I’ll just say that it was once said about the Toronto Sun that it’s a newspaper for people who can’t read, so I think that probably applies to the whole chain.

Obviously that one provided an opening the size of a barn door for the barbarians to come thundering through, with the "lock and load" folks, of course, leading the charge. But they also faltered:

This smug little Toronto elitist just called you an illiterate — you, and the 20% of the Canadian public, hundreds of thousands of you, who are loyal readers of Sun Media’s chain of newspapers.

We can fault Davey for being marvellously impolitic, of course, as well as inaccurate--obviously Sun readers can read. Accuracy, however, has never been the Sun's strong suit either, as a quick check on the numbers just quoted serves to illustrate.

But the other, more serious, slip on the Sun's part was to quantify those who are aligned with the "shoot the Tamils" crowd. 20% of the population? That sounds about right.

Davey's remark reminded me of one attributed to the American free speech crusader Zachariah Chafee: "I note that I have been attended by the Luce publications. You know the ones I mean; the one for those who cannot read and the other for those who cannot think." He was referring, of course, to Life and Time, respectively. If Davey had said that the Sun is "a newspaper for people who can’t think," he'd have been telling nothing but the sober truth.

The Sun specializes in vulgar, uninformed comment intended to inflame prejudice and damp down reflection. And there's a constituency for that. Davey didn't express himself well, but that's precisely what he was getting at, and--let me go out on a limb here--it's what a lot of us believe, even if we sometimes forbear to say it out loud.

Being peaceable Canadians, we don't want the Viking war party to notice us over here in the corner. But as we watch them eagerly rip and tear, we have a right to our own thoughts. We, the other 80% of the country, aren't "elitists." We're just people, with varying political philosophies and levels of education, who don't feel like joining the mental equivalent of a baying lynch mob, egged on by "just plain folks"--like Pierre Karl Péladeau. We know elitism when we see it.

Back to that mob, which Davey, in damage-control mode, says he didn't mean. 20% may be a bit of an underestimate, but there are people who don't like thinking too hard, who prefer visceral reactions instead, who choose to see the world through a fog of right-wing clichés, and who just happen to form Stephen Harper's red-meat base. The latter knows what he's doing when he makes "Harvard-educated" an epithet, when he subjects knowledge to crude ideological filtration, when he makes prisons and warplanes a priority instead of education, health, science and the arts.

The most enthusiastic anti-elitists, in fact, are cultured millionaires with enormous reserves of cultural, political and material capital. They can make good money off their gullible, less-fortunate followers, conditioned to shuffle like zombies wherever they are led. Hence the Sun chain, breaking everything down into easily-digestible nuggets of fear and intolerance--filling, as the old solecism goes, a much-needed gap.

Spare Davey a tear. He said, if clumsily, what a hell of a lot of us know to be perfectly true.

Stephen Harper's war on knowledge (2)

From the long census questionnaire to the on-going muzzling of scientists whose work is financed by our taxes: narrow dogma reigns supreme in a country that has never stood for it.

Galileo must be spinning in his grave. Certainly the hands of the clock are whizzing backwards with unprecedented speed.

At this point, postmodernist as I am, I'll settle for the Enlightenment. Back to the future we go.

Genocidal act averted?

As of this writing, we have no news on whether Terry Jones, the Potty Pastor of Gainesville, is carrying through on a new, murderous threat:

In a day of confusing claims and counter-claims, Jones Thursday said he was dropping the plans by his Dove World Outreach Center to burn some 200 Koreans after Muslim leaders agreed to move the planned New York mosque.

North Korean President Kim Jong-Il, currently testing karaoke facilities in Pyongyang, has not yet reacted publicly to the Florida cleric's immolatory promise. But the flames of hatred continue to hiss and spark. A commentator in the New Yorker, for example, referring to that self-same building project, writes:

I’m pleased to note that the imam is again calling the project Cordoba House—a much better name than Park51, which sounds like a Korean teenager’s internet handle.

The cause of this current wave of anti-Korean feeling in the US is difficult to ascertain, but may have its roots in the continuing decline of the American auto manufacturing sector.

UPDATE: Breaking...A previously scheduled burning of some holy book or other has been called off. "We feel that God is telling us to stop," says the abashed minister. "We didn't mean nothing by it. Hell, we burn crosses down here all the time."

[H/t Stephen Taylor]

International Spurn A Moran Day

And not just this sadsack reverend of a moran - all of them, media included.
If a moran burns a Quran in the forest and no one is around to plug and play it ...

Mike Thomas at the Orlando Sentinel (h/t Dammit Janet) :

What if media had ignored Terry Jones? :

We created the Rev. Terry Jones from dust. And in two weeks, to dust he shall return. Then we'll move on to the guys who plan to run over the Quran at their monster-truck pull. Whatever it takes to keep your attention.

Also : Greenwald and Mr. Fish

Fire vs. stone [updated]

No one in their right mind could defend a deliberate, unprovoked insult intended solely to wound people's feelings. How brave and righteous the ragged little band of headcases from Gainesville must feel as they prepare to burn the Qur'an--like the Phelpsbrood picketing the funerals of American soldiers.

I can appreciate that millions of Muslims worldwide will take grave offence to this gratuitous display of bigotry. No doubt a good many of them will fill the streets of their countries, protesting this stupid slur against the Recitation.

I just find myself wishing that they would display equal fervour when unspeakable atrocities are committed in their name.

In Iran, a country combining 21st-century technology with a 10th-century leadership, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani has already been lashed ninety-nine times because a newspaper printed a picture of someone who looked like her, without a headscarf.

That's just for starters. This woman will shortly be stoned to death, not by a mindless lynch mob, but by judicial order. Her "trial," for adultery, was carried out in a language she doesn't even understand, with no interpretation.

And the stones may not be too big--because she might die too quickly.

Why will this not arouse the passion of those crowds who rally to the defence of the Qur'an? Why are they not furious that such obscenities are to be carried out in the name of the very Book that they hold dear, the Messenger who transcribed it, and the God--Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful-- who transmitted his holy words through the angel Gabriel?

No Christian or Jew can defend the burning in Gainesville, and many are already speaking out.

No Muslim should countenance the stoning in Tabriz.

And as a secularist, I can't help but observe: the flames will devour a book with no nerves and no blood. But the stones will strike and slowly bruise the life out of a screaming Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. In 2010, before the eyes of the world.

UPDATE: (September 8) Stoning "on hold." Iran: "not a human rights matter."

UPPERDATE: (September 9) Burning cancelled. Right-wing bloggers devastated.

UPPESTDATE: (September 10) Oh, make up your mind, you infernal boob. Seems like a moronic tag-team is now in play.

Incidentally I agree with this. We are not dealing merely with the antics of a rightfully little-known Xian sect, but with a much larger phenomenon, including media hypermagnification. And it is, of course, that phenomenon as a whole--the entire hideous assemblage of actors, media, public figures and innumerable second-order commenters--to which Muslims around the world are already reacting, and of which they are, in fact, a part.

For those who think the (on-again, off-again) cancellation of the bonfire is a Bad Thing because it's somehow knuckling under to something, take note: many of us civilized folk are more concerned by the gratuitous nature of the act itself, and its publicists (in whose number we must paradoxically include ourselves) than by the threat of retaliation.

There should be no acts of retaliation, of course, although there almost certainly will be if the burning proceeds. But that probability doesn't figure very largely in the progressive calculus when we assess the original provocative act, its cranked-up amplification, and its benighted defenders.

These People Are Evil, Psychotic Pigs.

And each of those words is carefully considered.

They are evil. They are mourning because an act of deliberate and considered hatred, intended to enrage and inflame and described as such by its source, has been aborted in the face of shocked horror by decent people of every political stripe and religion. They're disappointed.

Shame on you all who are opposing and criticising the burning of korans by the Florida pastor. Am I the only person who is rooting for this mad hatter of a pastor in Florida to continue with his good work? I don't care if he is off his rocker and as hateful as the islamists.... I just want him to do it. Go for it Pastor Jones. Hip Hip Hoorah !!!!!!!!!!!

They're psychotic. Read this quote and tell me this is not a sociopath speaking.

The Florida pastor - whose name I cannot be bothered to remember, but his church is called Dove World - could have come out and said “Let’s burn Muslims on 9/11!” And while I would have been 100% behind him on that, the constitution doesn’t allow for it. Pity.

And they are pigs - something less than human in their contempt for reason, truth, or the so-called Christian virtues they claim to espouse.

Yawn....They've Been Burning Korans On YouTube For Years Now.
This is news only to our media & politicians. Enough already with the surrender monkeys who have made a mountain out of a pile mohammed's burnt musings. The selective outrage & self righteous preening is a bit much to take.

There. I've got it out of my system. Thanks.

The chronicles of Fox News North

Heather Mallick, in her new incarnation at the Toronto Star, has hit her stride.

Afghanistan: winning hearts, minds

--and fingers.

[H/t Sudbury Against War and Occupation]

How the organized Right fights

A case study:

A petition opposes special treatment for a far-right TV network in Canada. What to do, what to do?

1) Dismiss the petition because it originates in the US. In fact, score a twofer: refer to the sponsoring organization as "an American special interest group."

2) Sabotage it with false signatures, all from one IP address. Then give those signatures suspiciously quick national publicity. (More to come on that, I suspect.)

3) Call the owner/funder of the petition site a Nazi. Add other character assassinations.

4) If all else fails, launch a SLAPP* to shut the petition down.

And then, by all means, go back to defending free speech against teh evul Human Rights Commissions.

__________
*Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, a well-known corporate tactic to silence opposition.

Ezra Levant's fictioneering

Or, in a shorter word, lies. Hold your nose and read Levant's scrofulous column here, in a "newspaper" that recently called for the mass murder of Tamil refugees. Now read this good and proper debunking.

As the article's hed says, "a prelude to Fox News North." Should cable companies be forced to carry this kind of thing?

UPDATE: Ezra threatens his debunker, calls her an anti-Semite.

Monday metaconspiracy

"Conspiracy theories make the world seem a lot more rational." --Robert Robins

Conspiracy theories, we are told, should be dismissed out of hand. They're closed delusional systems, so runs the conventional wisdom: self-proving and self-sustaining. Too many people are involved in the supposed conspiracies for them to be credible. Loose lips would have sunk those boatloads of conspirators long before their nefarious plans were ever consummated.

From among the ranks of the literally thousands of people involved actively or passively in the alleged 9/11 fraud, the Great Obama Birth Certificate cover-up, or Zio-lizard enslavement plans, surely someone would have blown the gaff, given the game away, published a book and become very rich, etc.

Agreed. But why has no one ever suspected, let alone realized, that there is a real conspiracy going on, right under our very noses--or, more accurately, a metaconspiracy?

DawgNews has learned, after months of frisky and painstaking research, that a loose global network of conspiracy theorists themselves are engaged in a plot whose purpose is not yet entirely clear. We can determine their links, if not as yet their aims. But that alone should make us very, very afraid.

US President Barack Hussein Obama is the current decoy of the metaconspiracy. Wayne Madsen, meet Nick Packwood. Nick, meet Henry Makow, a man so intrepid that even David Ickes, no slouch in the conspiracy game, has written: "Henry Makow ventures where most fear to go!"

But of course they've already met.

We might handily dismiss the cockeyed notion that gay, Kenyan-born Obama, who had three fathers (all of them Muslim), the Antichrist himself, was propelled into office by wealthy conspirators as a Manchurian candidate. But that's missing the whole point.

The metaconspirators are in fact deliberately filling our heads with easily debunkable "conspiracies." Don't be put off by their apparent differences, either. Was Bush gay too (not that there's anything wrong with that)? Is the Pope a Catholic? None of this matters--all that talespinning is just to throw us off the scent. While we're chasing after the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion, the metaconspirators, having sown those false trails with sufficient breadcrumbs to lure the gullible, are free to pursue their own dark ends unmolested and undetected.

Until now.

Readers, DawgNews will not give up, will not be intimidated, will not falter, until the truth is laid bare. To the question, What is their plan?, we shall provide the answers in due course. Be patient. And to the Enemy: you can discredit me, you can threaten me, you can ruin me, you can even try to kill me. But the truth is out there. And soon it will make us free.

Out Of The Blue

At some point, we all have to Face the Music.

LONDON (Reuters) – A giant bale of hay has killed a founding member of the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) band after it tumbled down a hill and crashed into his van.

Cellist Mike Edwards, 62, died after the 600 kg (1,323 lb) bale rolled down a steep field in Devon, southern England, smashed through a hedge and careered on to the road.

Wonder what they'll be asking him to sing around the great camp Fire On High - betcha it won't be "I'm Alive".

Judge in the dock

I admit that I have been almost instinctively with the side defending Manitoba Associate Chief Justice Lori Douglas. There seemed to be a snap reaction in several quarters that could easily be distilled down to: "Not very ladylike." The woman's reputation has been drowning, in fact, in a steaming media-created mixture of prurience, prudishness and sexism.

But Alice Woolley makes an interesting point in Thursday's National Post. There is a racial angle to this matter, she argues, that should not be ignored. In her words:

[T]his is not about Douglas. It is not even about whether she would be a good judge. It is about whether people appearing before her could feel confident that their cases were being heard fairly and dispassionately. If those people included a black man, or a white woman divorcing a black man, or a Mexican family dealing with a child apprehension case, those people could reasonably wonder whether the racial stereotyping that the website reflects is one that Douglas shares, and that will impact her judgment.

Interracial sex presented as a transgressive turn-on is, of course, hardly unknown in the pornoverse. And integral to that is the lurid racist imaginary that once got a lot of people lynched--the Black male as id-creature, an untamed sexual animal lusting after white women. Indeed one might wonder about a judge's state of mind if she were party to such notions and were passing judgement where "race"was at issue.

Pretty convincing. But in conversation, my co-blogger Marie-Ève raised an equally salient point. Should the judicial advisory committee generating recommendations for new appointments to the bench perhaps proceed a little further in their investigations? Should a proposed judge who has been active in the Catholic Church be rejected because he could not be neutral in the case of a gay defendant, or one in which abortion was a factor? Should a Jewish candidate be turned down because of an apprehension of bias if an accused Muslim terrorist were in her courtroom?

Judges are human beings, no more neutral in life than anyone else. In fact I'd be hard-put to define what "neutral" actually means, since one person's "neutral" is always another person's parti pris. What we do expect is that, in their role on the bench, judges will recognize their own prejudices and preconceptions and consciously put them aside, considering only the evidence.

That takes an iron discipline that not everyone possesses: the selection process is intended to determine what candidates have that particular strength, essential to carrying out their duties. We have no reason to question Madame Justice Douglas' qualifications in that respect.

Part of the discipline is knowing when to step aside--if there is an actual or perceived conflict of interest or an apprehension of bias. But would we not be offended if defence lawyers routinely requested Catholic or Jewish lawyers to recuse themselves in the circumstances noted above?

At some point, of course, recusal might be called for--a judge's previous activity in a militantly pro-life lobby group, for example, or membership in the Jewish Defence League, could be sufficient to create a genuine concern in the case of some defendants. But Madame Justice Douglas' private sexual interests, which we should not conflate with her husband's, incidentally, don't come anywhere near this bar. And in any case, the question of recusal depends upon each case; apprehended bias in a specific instance is not the same thing as a general disqualification.

So we return, as it were, to the case at hand. And I would suggest that, having wrung every ounce of sensationalism out of this affair, the media and the chatterati should at this point do the decent thing--back off and let Justice Douglas get back to her judging. Ditto the Canadian Judicial Council, who, in effect, will have to choose between Victorian priggishness and good sense. Move along, in other words. Because there really isn't anything to see here: not even the photos.

UPDATE: Damian Penny reminds us that Canadian judges do not use gavels. Take the illustration. therefore, as figurative.

Wanna Hate? It Helps To Be Ignorant.

By way of BCF, I came across the results of this NYT survey on reactions to the Not-A-Mosque at Not Ground Zero.

The Haters are trumpeting the first response as confirmation that New Yorkers oppose the not-mosque. In fact, the survey confirms that a large majority agree that Americans (who happen to be Muslim) have a perfect right to build at not-ground zero.

More interesting for me, however, is the analysis of responses lower on the page. It confirms some interesting correlations.

- The less educated you are, the more likely you are to oppose the Not-A-Mosque.
- The farther you live from ground zero, the more likely you are to oppose the Not-A-Mosque.
- The less actual acquaintance you have with Muslims, the more likely you are to oppose the Not-A-Mosque.

Anybody surprised at the power of ignorance?

The unvarnished bigotry of the Right

Check out the hed for this post by Half-Pint of Bitter. A summer camp was vandalized, which, unfortunately, is not particularly unusual. Vandalism is something that kids do, and, on occasion, a few politically ergotized adults. But, see, there was something special about this act: the miscreant kids, ages eight to ten, were Indians.

"Your tax dollars at play," is the unaccountably vague first sentence. (What on earth does this mean? Suggestions welcome.) And then, garishly highlighted: the children are from the neighbouring Wahpeton Dakota First Nation.

The link is to a very short story in the National Post. Here's a longer account. What we learn is that the children and their parents promptly accepted responsibility for the damage; and a group of members of the Wahpeton Dakota First Nation came over to apologize and help clean up the mess.

"How Canadian," was my first thought.

"Savages," says Kathy Shaidle.

CBC And Its Appalling Speciesism

Once again our so-called "national broadcaster" confirms the rank bias that has brought it into such disrepute.

The Hilarious Canadian Tea Party

The notion of a Canadian Tea Party has always struck me as faintly ludicrous. It reminds me of my callow youth when we larval progressives cast envious eyes southward at the political and cultural upheavals our young American friends were having such fun with. They had Abby Hoffman, Woodstock and Vietnam; we had Tommy Douglas, Mariposa and the FLQ. We wanted so badly to share the Righteous Rage of Turbulent American Youth, but it seemed at the time that we just didn't have all that much to get angry about. So we borrowed their causes and their rhetoric, did our best to work ourselves into a lather, and had a grand old time.

Seven-year-old is latest "terror suspect"

"What have I done? Why only me?" a bewildered child asks his father, Izzeldin Abuelaish.

Dr. Abuelaish, a true man of peace who has never swerved from that goal even after three of his daughters were shelled to death by the IDF during Operation Cast Lead, is presently on a tour promoting his book, I Shall Not Hate. The tour was to include the US, and after completing a mountain of paperwork, he received visas for himself and his family. Except for seven-year old Abdullah. That request is "under review," without explanation.

Abuelaish wonders about the effect of this exclusion on his kid's thinking.

Rick Salutin, who brings the matter to our attention, will no doubt get into a heap of trouble for this comment:

I thought of this during the recent "homegrown terrorism" news, which involved a Muslim Canadian who plays ball hockey and auditioned for Canadian Idol. A terror expert said it's scary, "they" could be anywhere, even beside you at a rink. Does this mean Nazem Kadri, a top Leafs draft pick, should issue a disclaimer? I think such matters are less opaque and are rooted in phenomena like Abdullah's visa, the U.S. mosque furor or attacks on Muslim countries. As for the "lure of jihad" to the young and privileged – I think it has less to do with religion than with the nature of youth, which leans to absolutes, and privilege, which senses injustice precisely due to its status. The strain can also be acute among Muslim parents who assure their kids about justice in a society like ours, then feel they’ve let them down...."We are pushing them to think of something bad," his dad says. "This child when he's grown up will remember: 'I was suspended.'"

You can just hear the sneers from the pitchfork-and-torches crowd. "Yeah, there they go again, terrorism is all our fault."

Dan Gardner, in an excellent piece in today's Ottawa Citizen, lays bare the shallowness and hypocrisy of such non-thinking. Looking for causes of anger and violence is all very well when the topic is, say, the Russian's flattening of Chechnya, which spawned hyper-violent Islamist movements. But to suggest that the Taliban's alleged targeting of our nation's capital might have something to do with our presence in Afghanistan, as the Toronto Star's columnist Haroon Siddiqui has learned, is tantamount in the vulgar mind to apologizing for militant Islamism. Two weights, two measures.

To know all, pace Madame de Staël, is not to forgive all. But knowing as much as we can is crucial to understanding what at first blush appears to be incomprehensibly inhuman behaviour. Making it comprehensible doesn't render terrorist acts less appalling, but it might supply the necessary understanding to prevent them in the future. Whether it's foreign wars or petty humiliations at home, the seeds of anger are planted, and in some they grow into grotesque and malignant shapes. That lesson seems singularly difficult to teach, however, as well as to learn.

Back Door

No reason. Just felt nostalgic.

Local fascism [updated]

The good burghers of Clarington continue their assault on the Jaworski family, complete with a bullying by-law thug. Talk about a shakedown. Read it and weep.

[H/t. She spells "Jaworski" wrong.]

UPDATE: Some folks missed my reference earlier:

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism." Ann Coulter, MSNBC; February 8, 1997.

So far, local fascism isn't working out so well for the Jaworskis. The Gauleiter mayor of Clarington is now suggesting that the Jaworskis "beg for forgiveness" from the by-law thug mentioned above. Here we have it: the yokel version of Darkness at Noon.