How to avoid jury duty in Ontario

Criticize the police.

I take it I shall be spared sequestration for now.

[H/t Morton's Musings]

Monsters from the Id

Every time I am in the process of being wooed away from binary thinking, "us" vs. "them," and the profound sense that conservatism isn't a politics so much as a character issue, I am brought back to reality with a thump.

Obviously the outing of Canadian Cynic has, for many, induced a quite understandable Schadenfreude. He has the knack--I'd say the gift--of getting well under the skin of the smug, the stupid and (I apologize for the tautology) the right-wing. He tweaks the unkempt bristles of yahoos, scourges grunting knuckle-draggers, mocks unibrows and is merciless with gun-totin', whittlin', racist rednecks who hang out in the fetid swamps of Small Dead Animals and other even danker and oozier places, where pedophile-enablers and stalkers dwell.

I don't blame some, then, for feeling what I felt when Arnie Lemaire ("Blazing Cat Fur") was outed. It wasn't right, but it felt so good. (I never knew who Warren Kinsella's other outee, "skippy stalin," was until I read all about it at his place. It appears that "stalin" was going real-world and trying to hurt WK's business. Mess. Bull. Horn.)

But.

The Right is never content merely to attack. Some of them literally shoot to kill. I have posted before about the eliminationist bent of American conservatism, and sourced my quotes. Our side can be unkind, but we don't shoot up churches, murder doctors, launch a full-gun attack inside museums, etc., etc.

And we don't go after people's families. Or threaten physical violence. Or try to destroy their livelihoods.

"Christians" like SUZANNE, misogynistic stalking creeps like Richard Evans, and their allies, on the other hand, have posted CC's photograph, personal information about his place of residence, and have threatened his livelihood.

The following quotes--and I have screenshots--are all too typical of this element of the Right. The seething, maggoty inner lives of these people is bursting forth. Judge for yourselves.

If he loses his job, and his family suffers, he's got nobody to blame but himself.

I think Bobby's life is about to get real interesting, as all the people he's shit on horribly over the years get the opportunity to meet him in person. Some of them are much bigger in person than they are on the interweb.

and you've gotta wonder how cesspool's employers are gonna be with his, ah... innovative theories... about the prime minister of canada being bought off by that evil, all controlling z.o.g.

Heck, I'm very tempted to cull together all of his positively egregious statements, comments, and postings send it to his workplaces.

I’ve stated this before: “There are numerous internet organizations that track males who use the net to abuse women and children” and you merit a spot on their list you filthy pig.

I also think women should be issued a .38 and extensive self defense training at 16, so they don’t have to worry about perverts like Robbie bothering them.

What a classy bunch. And artful, too: transmuting their assorted mental and moral deformities into a recognizable and surprisingly coherent politics. Meet the conservative base, folks--and I do mean base.

UPDATE: Aw, PZ Myers says it so much better.

[H/t CC, and again]

The Braidwood Chronicles: Epic Fail!

A BC Supreme Court judge lopped yet another limb off the squirming, multi-legged monster that the Four Horsemen's defence has become.

From improper delving into their victim's early life in Poland, to attempting to smear his reputation, to stupidly making up the same lies ("he came at us brandishing a stapler and screaming") in spite of a video that must by now be one of the most-circulated pieces of evidence in history, the killers of Robert Dziekanski have dug themselves into an ever-deeper and smellier pit.

They were ultimately reduced to putting up an "expert" whose pixillated "analysis" of the video appeared to cause even the usually taciturn Justice Braidwood considerable irritation. And then, the writing on the wall flashing in gigantic neon letters, they tried an end-run--appealing to the BC Supreme Court to enjoin Braidwood from finding any misconduct on their part.

Even the RCMP itself, which has by now apologized to Dziekanski's mother and pretty well admitted that all was not right in the Vancouver airport, officially refused to back that desperate move.

The last-ditch manoeuvre, in any case, was hammered down today:

Justice Arnie Silverman ruled Monday morning in Vancouver that the inquiry properly warned the officers that it might accuse them of using the Taser on Dziekanski when it was "not justified," of giving "misleading" testimony and of misrepresenting the facts.

The judge said the inquiry's commissioner, retired judge Thomas Braidwood, is entitled to make such findings in his final report into the October 2007 death and is not prevented by any lack of jurisdiction.

Closing submissions on Friday--if the charmers don't head off to the Supreme Court of Canada. But once again, with this lot nothing would surprise me.

UPDATE: Tawdry. Yes, that just about covers it.

FURTHER UPDATE: QOTW goes to Chris Selley: "[J]ust about everyone else in Canada has found misconduct; why shouldn’t Justice Braidwood?"

Annals of free speech

And now for some light comic relief.

For two or three days, I discovered that I couldn't post over at Jay Currie's place. Comments of mine have occasionally gone astray there, not even appearing as "awaiting moderation," but those were sporadic glitches that seem to be characteristic of WordPress. Jay has always been agreeable to posting them manually when this happens, and has done the same for John Cross, an erudite commenter on the subject of global warming.

This time, though, it was different. My attempted posts, including one that had actually landed in the "awaiting moderation" bin, just--vanished. This all began shortly after I delivered a slap to Kathy Shaidle on a thread about pin-ups, of all things, when she decided to go the personal route with me.

Well, well. It seems that Jay had been busy during the period in question, and he'd handed over the keys of his abode to none other than Arnie Lemaire, better known (we're speaking relatively here) as "Blazing Cat Fur"--and Shaidle's spouse.

Jay asks me to accept that Arnie, new to Wordpress, "accidentally" directed my comments to the spam lock-up. If he really believes that, I have a bridge and some prime cottage land to sell him. A comment from another progressive gadfly over there, "truewest," somehow met the same fate.*

To his considerable credit, Jay bravely dug my comments out of the dumpster, clawing his way through the various ads for enlargers, reducers, enhancers and real fake watches, but has not yet been able to locate "truewest"'s contribution.

In other news, Teh Burning Kitteh is busy defending free speech against the "cowardly" CHRC chief commissioner Jennifer Lynch. Oh, well, a foolish consistency, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, is the hobgoblin of little minds.

______________
*And, we learn, two from Balbulican as well.

Mobbing Lynch

The swarming of Commissioner Jennifer Lynch continues, with the Usual Suspects™ playing fast and loose with the truth--as usual. A typical example:

Canadian Human Rights Commission chief Jennifer Lynch was invited to appear on national TV to talk about their dubious activities, but when she found out she'd be appearing with Ezra Levant, she backed out.

Then she sent an underling, who appeared only upon the condition that EZRA LEVANT NOT BE ALLOWED TO SPEAK. [shrieky emphasis in original]

Not so, of course. A flat-out lie. But inconvenient facts have never stopped Levant or his panting acolytes before. There was no call to ban Ezra or to muzzle him. As I noted in a previous post, it was simply a matter of not engaging him--an exercise, in my view, of sound professional judgement. (Here's the video.)

An analogy: suppose you run a large widget factory. There have been some production problems recently, but you have responded to complaints by announcing measures to fix the difficulties. You are invited on national television to discuss your announcement.

But you have been told that a local crank will be facing you in conversation. The crank hates anything to do with widgets. He has publicly proclaimed that they are made of green cheese and sold to terrorists, and that you, the widget-maker, engage regularly in satanic orgies involving pythons, whipped cream and the blood of ferrets. In other words, he just makes stuff up.

Now, wrestling in the mud is great fun after a few pints, or if you're running a blog where anything goes. Not so much, though, if you're a factory-owner asked to talk about serious issues before a national audience. Setting up a debate with a fool might make for good television, but an invitation on those terms is an affront to your work and your reputation, and so, not being a fool yourself, you wisely decline.

Bravo, Jennifer. Stay strong, cool and professional as always. Good report, by the way.

Oh goody

Let's put lots more people in jail. On-side, Iggy?

Fascism

The word has a perfectly good, if broad, classical meaning. It was overused by the Left in the 'sixties. Now it is the Right who bend it to their purposes--partly as a deflection. "Liberal fascism," forsooth, as the far Right captures seats in the European Parliament, fascism is once again on the rise in Austria and Italy, fascist assassins are prowling the US, and the Right makes new alliances with an old and evil force.

Turning things on their head is a fine old tactic, which the Right has mastered to a fare-thee-well. One of its lasting achievements was to capture and re-deploy the phrase "politically correct." Once used by Communist Party dogmatists to measure adherence to the General Line, it was used ironically in the 'sixties by the Left to mock the orthodoxy of some comrades and tendencies. Then Dinesh D'Souza and the Dartmouth Review got hold of it in 1986, and the rest is history. (More on the reprehensible D'Souza here.)

"Fascism" is now, as noted, undergoing its own transformation, to the degree that the correct usage of it is met with incomprehension. (If you can't call a neo-Nazi a "fascist," then the term has become merely a floating signifier.) Currently, it is deployed by the Right in scattershot fashion merely to attack the people and ideas with which it disagrees. A couple of examples should suffice:

• Nick Packwood (Ghost of a Flea) has indicated what appears to me to be a fascistic taste for physical violence, but he objects to the label. He'd rather apply it to--of all people--Abousfian Abdelrazik. Not only does he seem to relish the idea of kicking a victim when he's down, but, such is his evident dislike for brown Muslims, he is willing to override the findings of CSIS and the RCMP to brand Abdelrazik as guilty--of something. Must be, or he wouldn't be on that no-fly list.
  
  I don't know what Packwood's politics are in pectore, but it's worth pointing out that this unquestioning assumption of the guilt of the Other was one of the historical drivers of fascism.
  
  
• Well, let's stay with the Flea for awhile. In a post just this morning, he refers to Human Rights Commissions as fascist. That's already a worn-out meme, but in this case it was applied after CHRC head Jennifer Lynch declined to appear on a CTV program with the mendacious Ezra Levant. She sent a minion instead, and only on condition that the latter didn't have to speak with Levant. Over to Packwood: "We will watch this sickening spectacle - a commissar sneering at an uppity Jew who has thus far escaped the government's net - and recognize it for what it is: Canada's soft fascism at work." [his emphasis]
  

I guess that makes me a "fascist" too. In a previous life I was a trade union leader, and I had not a few public appearances, some in the form of panel discussions, even one with a soft-spoken representative of the Fraser Institute. I think I would have demurred, though, at invitations to sit with someone who had previously made wide and spectacularly false anti-union claims in the purest of bad faith, blatantly lied about me and my work, and shown himself, frankly, not to be a foeman worthy of my steel.

Lest anyone think I am being too hard on my friend Ezra, check out his claims about BC human rights tribunal members here, and be sure to read the actual decisions. And have a look at the decision in the "hand-washing case" that he and his followers have insisted on misconstruing. From deliberate and self-serving misreading of human rights cases to bizarre attacks that had even the quiet academic Richard Moon gasping for air, this is not someone with whom one holds a serious public conversation.

Lynch was right on the money not to set herself up for more frothing attacks and egregious misrepresentations. Meanwhile, the recent outbreak of murderous fascist violence in the US has been embarrassing for the Right--so much so that conservatives are inventing almost hallucinogenic fantasies as they try to wriggle their way clear.

"The bitch is in heat again," so the prescient Bertold Brecht put it. Don't look for it in progressive ranks, though. You'll find that particular rabid dog, as always, in a conservative kennel near you.

We have nothing to lose but our chains

As Canada's most vicious Marxist™, I commend to your attention Ian Brown's column today in the Globe and Mail.

Ignore its completely misleading title (go and read the original for yourselves). Brown's on to something. History repeats itself, appearing the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce, says Karl Marx. Third time lucky?

Editorial: white fright

Now that a vicious white killer has had her appeal rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada, it's time for a little soul-searching, is it not?

Recall that recently four other white teens were found guilty of microwaving a cat, and two more, of torturing a dog. And still two more whites have recently been accused of horrific crimes--kidnapping, rape and murder--against a little girl. The list goes on and on, almost without end.

We need to realize that some cultures are just--better than others. You don't see this sort of thing happening in Japan or China. It's unknown in Pelau or Tonga or Vanuatu. It's unheard of in Mauritius, Samoa and Nauru.

Only when we start educating our children to be responsible, sober members of the wider society will we put an end to this epidemic of white crime. Sequestered as we are in our large ghettoes, we are failing, dismally, to live up to the standards and values of the country that we dare to call home.

I call upon the leaders of the white community to do something, without delay, about this fast-spreading epidemic of violence and cruelty in our midst. Their inaction, up to now, is our shame.

We have to face the matter squarely, stop making excuses and take responsibility. It's not affirmative action that's causing this. It's not Human Rights Commissions. It's not the Liberals and their multiculturalism, although that certainly helped to build walls around us.

No, if there's finger-pointing to be done, we should be pointing at ourselves. Only we can solve the problems in our own house. And we'd best act quickly before yet more innocents are harmed.

The fairies and goblins file: Abousfian Abdelrazik

One cannot prove that fairies and goblins do not exist any more than Mr. Abdelrazik or any other person can prove that they are not an Al-Qaida associate. --Justice Russel Zinn

A hat-tip to Alison for suggesting this series.

Let's start it off with Abousfian Abdelrazik himself, the subject of Justice Zinn's comment above.

Today Abdelrazik, with a new plane ticket in hand, was again unable to begin his journey home, as the Harper government continues its vicious little game of cat and mouse:

A spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the government is still reviewing the decision and would not divulge whether it planned to file an appeal.

"We will not comment further until we have reviewed the decision," press secretary Natalie Sarafian wrote in an email.

As noted in an earlier post, exiling brown Canadians is just something the Harper regime likes to do. It could at least spare us the noisy lip-smacking, though.

[H/t POGGE]

Word of the day: "duumvirate"

"Ignatieff keeps 'em guessing?" Not me.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and predict that, once again, the Liberals will be Conservative backbenchers, and Michael Ignatieff the de facto Deputy Prime Minister.

Think I'm wrong?

Support our troops

It's that time of the week, isn't it?

After all, Stephen Harper's government is setting such a good example.

[H/t M@]

A timely reminder...

...about another brown citizen marooned by the Canadian government. No crime, no accusations, no charges...you know the drill.

It's getting to be a habit, eh?

Municipal voting--citizens only?

An interesting controversy is brewing in Toronto at the moment. Actually it's been simmering away for more than three years: Mayor David Miller pledged during his campaign that he would seek the local franchise for an estimated more than a quarter-million permanent residents (formerly known as landed immigrants) living in the city. They should, he said, have the right to take part in city council and school board elections. He reiterated his pledge this past Wednesday.

Quite an impressive campaign in favour has arisen. My instincts are to support it, especially after reading this snide editorial comment by--predictably--the National Post. Some pros and cons may be found here. I think the "no taxation without representation" argument trumps a lot of others. But there are more.

What does it mean to be a citizen? Is it a mere formality, a certificate issued to people who have met the minimum residency requirement--and then beetle off to live in another country? (An estimated 2.7 million Canadians live abroad at the moment, a truly astounding figure.) Or does it mean participation--in our neighbourhoods, our communities, and our country?

What does such participation entail, though? The apathy of the Canadian electorate is notorious. And immigrant voting patterns are a complex matter; for example, foreign-born members of visible minorities participate to a greater degree than Canadian-born members. What does that tell us about the real, as opposed to the formal, matter of citizenship?

To me, being able to vote for those who run your city and those who oversee your child's education makes perfect sense. In fact the original meaning of the word "citizen" was simply "an inhabitant of a city." The objections to extending the vote strike me as facile and dogmatic. Citizenship is a form of recognition that one is a fully-fledged member of the community. What better way to become so than getting civically involved?

Think of this as an apprenticeship, a kind of citizenship training. Won't it help to make better citizens in the long run? I can see no harm whatever in the proposal, and the possibility, at least, of much good. Comments, as always, are welcome.

Outing, revisited

My last post on this subject was mainly concerned with the outing of American blogger "publius" by National Review's Ed Whelan. But I asked readers to comment on the ethics of outing. I noted that, were I to get into this practice, it would be with those who believe they have outed me. Motive is important. It's a moral thing.

So it happened that I came across a fascinating thread over at Small Dead Ideas today. Warren Kinsella quoted me yesterday anent the pseudonymous "Raphael Alexander," and so the two of us had the privilege of being nibbled by the angry mice over there.

Among the rodents is an ex-professor from Bishop's University, one Edwina Taborsky, who blogs under the entirely suitable initials "ET." She thought she'd have a go at outing me.*

Now, turnabout, you might think, is fair play.

Not so, it seems. When a couple of rascals immediately did to her what she had just done to me, she filled cyberspace with a shrill, outraged whine. Unethical!*

As long as someone is posting on a blog, and using a pseudonym on that blog - and we know that some people use different pseudonyms on different blogs - then, ethics requires that you, on that blog, acknowledge only the pseudonym.

When someone is not posting on a blog, whether by their own choice or by the blog owner's choice, then, I have no problem with 'outing' the name, if it is relevant to the issue.

Your retaliatory reaction to my 'outing' you, as Fishy/If/Dawg/Baglow was unethical. And, furthermore, you do NOT post phone numbers, addresses and emails - ever - in any situation. Never. Got that?

She's right, of course, on the last bit, even if the coordinates are by now well out of date. Motive, as I said, does count. But the rest of this is, not to put too fine a point upon it, a hoot. It has to be some of the most sinuous reasoning I've ever encountered. Bishop's was lucky to have her, if only for comic relief.

I do feel the need to clear up some factual errors, though, squinting as I am through my tears of laughter. Earlier in the thread, she said that I came from the US. Really impressive research, there, Prof. And I have posted nothing on the thread at all, although she appears to believe that I am, well, "Fishy" and "If" and, for all I know, the Walrus and one of the Eggmen.

Guestblogger "lance" likely knows this very well, but he's letting it ride. That's cool. He's probably getting as much of a kick out of this as I am.

In the meantime: ET, call home. And if you forget your number--call me. :)

UPDATE: It gets better.* The terminally outraged Taborsky bleats to one of her tormentors:

[Y]ou don't understand blogging ethics. First, I have never used my name in blogging. Not here or at the Shotgun. Always my initials. You have no right to use my personal name in this blog, or inform people of it.

And then this simply scrumptious morsel of prose; I 'm thinking of having it engraved upon the head of a pin:

Don't insult people. And don't abuse blogging ethics. Again, I have no problem with telling someone who a blogger really is - on another blog. After all, we can certainly reveal who Lewis Carroll was and discuss his work, but, if we were interacting with him as such, we wouldn't violate that trust.

For the second time in 24 hours--I got nothing.

*wipes eyes*

____________________________
*since excised, after this comment by Marky Mark.

Try not to leave a tear on your keyboard

Kathy Shaidle is upset with me--again.

Interesting question, though, and I don't mean the pin-up genre: can we be friends with people with whom we disagree politically? I would have thought the answer was obvious--yes, of course: politics is barely more than skin-deep--but the malignant half-pint disagrees.

Comments? Personal accounts are particularly welcome.

UPDATE: The ultimate accolade.

UPPERDATE: (June 12) "Kathy Shaidle, a Canadian wingnut of imperfect renown who attempts an expert dismount from the high horse and ends up flailing limb over limb into a folding refreshments table covered with Dixie cups of Haterade." I wish I'd said that. [H/t reader "Navvy"]

Annals of anti-Semitism

I got nothing.

UPDATE: (June 11) And in case you thought the above reference was an exaggeration, here's the liberal Ha'aretz:

A photo released by the White House, which shows Obama talking on the phone with Netanyahu on Monday, speaks volumes: The president is seen with his legs up on the table, his face stern and his fist clenched, as though he were dictating to Netanyahu: "Listen up and write 'Palestinian state' a hundred times. That's right, Palestine, with a P." As an enthusiast of Muslim culture, Obama surely knows there is no greater insult in the Middle East than pointing the soles of one's shoes at another person. Indeed, photos of other presidential phone calls depict Obama leaning on his desk, with his feet on the floor. [Emphases added]

On the last point, Obama (like countless others, myself included) enjoys the foot-on-the-desk informality--as did his predecessor. Showing shoe-soles is an Arab insult, not an American one or an Israeli one. So what is being broadly hinted at here? Ah, its the "enthusiast of Muslim culture" aka the "closet Muslim" meme, redivivus.

Fist clenched? With his thumb and forefinger forming a circle? Face stern, rather than merely serious? One picture might be worth a thousand words, but Ha'aretz's words have no relation to this picture at all. That such "analysis" would appear in a liberal Israeli newspaper shows just how far things have deteriorated. Maybe the following is more typical of current thinking in Israel than I had, up to now, been prepared to believe:

Death of James von Brunn 88

"88" is the gematria of the neo-Nazi two-digit IQ set, standing for HH--Heil Hitler. Von Brunn signed off that way.

It was also the disgusting creature's age when he got himself killed shot. No doubt he was bucking for Randy Weaver-like immortality.

And he's already got it--sort of.

BACKDATE: Reader Bob LeDrew points out that von Brunn is not dead, merely in critical condition. The guard he shot at the Holocaust Museum was not so lucky. I must have been a victim of unconscious wishful thinking. Mea maxima culpa.

Out of the mouths...

...of stepsons.

"Why does bottled water have an expiry date?"

February 20, 2011. There it was.

Google was not my friend. Suggested reasons:

• Chemicals from the bottle leach into the water
• It's planned obsolescence, to increase the water company's profits
  
• The law says that every consumable product must show an expiry date, so the companies just pick one at random
  
• The water changes taste over time
• The water companies slip fluoride into the water, which eventually expires

And my personal fave:

• "Water which is not flowing can go stagnant. Bacteria and even small worms can appear."

Plausible answers are welcome. I must admit that the leaching explanation sounded convincing.

In the meantime, here's The Economist, if you can believe it:

The success of bottled water is in many ways one of capitalism’s greatest mysteries. Studies show consistently that tap water is purer than many bottled waters—not including those that contain only tap water, which by some estimates is 40% of the total by volume.

OK, then. All of the above.

[H/t Danny MacKinnon].

Sado-politics: my temptation

Stories like this bring out the worst in me:

Prosecutor John Watson said Buffy, the nickname of a girl who was 16 at the time of the killing, should be sentenced as an adult for her role in the violent rape and murder of 13-year-old Nina.
--
Defence lawyer Peter Royal said the teen should be sentenced as a youth because she did not directly contribute to Nina's death or coerce her from West Edmonton Mall to the golf course.

The one stab wound Buffy did inflict was deep, but not life-threatening, Royal said. [Emphasis added]

UPDATE: (June 17) Buffy gets a break.