Bloodthirsty Liberal

You know how I often say the UN is incompetent at best, malevolent the rest of the time? Well, anyway, I just did.

Here’s just another reason why:

“There is no food and no clean water, nothing,” Mahmoud, a 12-year-old boy from Homs, Syria, told Reuters Thursday. “There is no shop open and we only have one meal a day. How can we live like that and survive?”

According to the World Food Program, half a million people don’t have enough to eat in Syria. Fears are growing that the regime is using hunger as a weapon.

This is the kind of emergency which should attract the attention of the UN Human Rights Council’s hunger monitor, who has the ability to spotlight situations and place them on the world agenda. Yet Olivier de Schutter of Belgium, the “Special Rapporteur on the right to food,” is not going to Syria.

Instead, the UN’s food monitor is coming to investigate Canada.

That’s right. Despite dire food emergencies around the globe, De Schutter will be devoting the scarce time and resources of the international community on an 11-day tour of Canada—a country that ranks at the bottom of global hunger concerns.

Yes, but there are excellent hookers in Montreal! Or so I am told by the Secret Service.

Anyhow, back to those gaunt Canadians:

I asked De Schutter if his time wouldn’t better be spent on calling attention to countries that actually have starving people.

“Globally, 1.3 billion people are overweight or obese,” he responded via his spokesperson, “and this causes a range of diseases such as certain types of cancers, cardio-vascular diseases or (especially) type-2 diabetes that are a huge burden.”

In other words, the hunger expert is not even that interested in hunger, but the opposite. Sure, we should all eat less fries, but do Canadians need a costly UN inquiry to tell us that?

What’s that, Mr. De Schutter? I can’t understand you with your mouth full of coq au vin and moules marinière.

But you thought I cited this article as an example of UN incompetence, didn’t you? Guess again:

First, consider the origins of the UN’s “right to food” mandate. In voluminous background information provided by De Schutter and his local promoters, there’s no mention that their sponsor was Cuba, a country where some women resort to prostitution for food. De Schutter does not want you to know that Havana’s Communist government created his post, nor that the co-sponsors included China, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe.

These and other repressive regimes are seeking a political weapon to attack the West.

…

De Schutter’s consistent argument is that if there is hunger, Western countries are to blame. His attacks on international trade are so ideologically extreme that even Pascal Lamy, head of the World Trade Organization and a member of the French Socialist party, criticized De Schutter’s approach for threatening to drive food prices higher and “exacerbating the negative impacts on poor consumers.”

Second, even when they visit the right countries, Ziegler and De Schutter reach the wrong conclusions. Ziegler went to Cuba, but it was a staged visit that hailed Castro’s policies as almost divine. De Schutter went to Syria—in 2010, long before the current crisis — and mentioned several problems, but his report took pains to repeatedly praise the Assad regime.

My experience is that when you hear the phrase “Special Rapporteur” you should put one hand over your wallet and the other over your testicles (sorry, ladies) because one’s about to get picked and the other about to get kicked. I’ve come to believe that the UN is so malevolent, it uses incompetence as a mere means to its baleful ends (awesome word from my online thesaurus!).

You start to read this story, and your blood simmers if not outright boils:

An Israeli Muslim lesbian couple who claim they will be killed if deported to Israel due to their sexuality is being given a second chance to remain in Canada.

According to the Toronto Sun newspaper, Iman Musa and Majida Mugrabi who are currently living in Toronto, arrived in Canada from Tel Aviv in 2007 and filed unsuccessful refugee claims that were appealed to the Federal Court of Canada.

There goes Canada again—giving in to the prejudices against the Jewish state (in spite of their awesome Prime Minister, Stephen Harper)! Gays face no discriminated in the only Democratic state in the Middle East; Israeli Arabs are freer than any other Arabs in the region.

Huh? What’s that? Oh… okay. Never mind:

Judge Roger Hughes on March 8 granted the couple another hearing by an Immigration and Refugee Board based on new information that shows one of Mugrabi’s cousins confessed to the “honor killing” of his sister 12-years ago.

The couple in an emotional letter presented to the courts claimed they would be killed if forced to return to Israel for being a same-sex Muslim couple.

“We have a same sex relationship, which is forbidden back home,” the couple wrote. “We have dishonored our families by running away to try and start a life with each other.”

The couple, through their lawyer, Daniel Kingwell, said they were pleased by the court’s decision but still fear for their lives.

“As Muslim women, we don’t have any rights in our families,” the couple wrote. “The fact that we are lesbians does not help.”

The letter claimed Mugrabi’s grandfather is a Muslim sheikh, who “repeatedly threatened to kill her.” Musa’s brother, from Ramleh, has “threatened to kill her if she does not leave her lesbian relationship and marry a male,” the women alleged. “There are several police complaints regarding the threats of her brother.”

“Same sex relationships are not permitted or accepted in all Arabic countries,” they said. “There are many stories about honor killings and we are victims of this.”

There are several police complaints regarding the threats of her brother.”

Kingwell said the women will be killed if deported to Israel.

“The situation is not the greatest for gays or lesbians in some Arab countries,” Kingwell said on Saturday, adding many “honour killings” occur from family members who slay their same-sex or gay relatives.

“This couple face a real threat from Muslims in a Conservative country,” Kingwell said.

…

While Israel is known as a country highly tolerant of its thriving LGBT community, it is a well known fact that the Arab communities in Israel still hold an extremely conservative outlook and condemn the LGBT lifestyle.

Good job, Canada!

He snoozes, we loses:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit China next week to discuss the future of Canada’s oil products.

The visit comes after the US rejected a pipeline route from Alberta to Texas.

Five Cabinet ministers, including the ministers of natural resources, trade and foreign affairs will join Mr Harper on his second official visit to China.

A spokesman for the prime minister told the Associated Press it was “absolutely in Canada’s interests” to build a new pipeline to deliver oil to China.

So, Obama wants to be a “major customer” for Brazilian oil, but won’t bring himself to touch the Canadian stuff. What’s that all about?

Perhaps my understanding of geography is off?

No, that’s what I thought.

And what about Canada to China?

Not so bad: just head to the North Pole, and keep going.

Anyway…

Chinese state-owned companies have invested more than $16bn (£10.1bn) in Canadian energy projects in the last two years.

Sinopec, one of those companies, has a stake in a proposed Pacific pipeline that would be alternative route from Alberta.

I wouldn’t worry. After all, what experience does China have with building long-lasting structures hundreds of miles long?

Thank God for mild winters is all I can say.

A lot has been written recently about how the Obama administration is giving up on white working class voters in favor of a coalition of the elite plus very low income Americans.

Jobs: The president says that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than an oil pipeline from Canada. There are at least 20,000 members of the 99% who would disagree.

You can see why the economy is in trouble. Vice President Joe Biden, the stimulus sheriff, says he turned first to MF Global’s Jon Corzine for economic advice and President Obama thinks 20,000 people getting extended unemployment benefits does more for the economy than 20,000 people getting paychecks to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada.

In the president’s view, extending the payroll tax cuts is more important than adding more people to the payrolls, unless they are making electric cars that catch fire or work for solar-panel makers that go bankrupt.

Any attempt to link the pipeline to a payroll tax cut extension will be vetoed, Obama said Wednesday as he stood next to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

President Obama has dropped any pretense that delaying the pipeline that would bring Canadian tar-sands oil to American refineries is really related to environmental safety concerns.

He knows it would create jobs, at least 20,000 directly and many more indirectly thanks to the multiplier effect he dismisses now but touted when he still believed in “shovel-ready” jobs that needed federal funding.

“However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline,” he said, “they’re going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance.”

He forget the stimulus effect of food stamps, something touted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

When it comes to payroll tax cuts, unemployment benefits and food stamps, Democrats and liberals believe in the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

You get back much more than you spend. In their skewed view, joblessness can create jobs.

While adding $250 billion to the deficit, according to Alex Brill of the American Enterprise Institute, extending the payroll tax holiday would provide up to $1,500 per family.

But, Brill notes, researchers Matt Shapiro and Joel Slemrod found that among recipients of tax rebates in 2001, only 22% spent the rebate, while the rest saved it or used it to pay off debt. A similar study of 2008 tax rebate recipients found only 20% spent it.

Contrast this with the 20,000 paychecks that would be added if the $7 billion Keystone XL project is completed. These workers would pay federal taxes. States along the route are projected to receive an additional $5.2 billion in property tax revenue.

Doesn’t matter. The environmentalists don’t want it and Obama wants their votes. And he has written off the votes of the sorts that would be working those projects.

The really terrifying part of all of this silliness is that people who don’t want to live in a Liberal Fascist State have nowhere to go. Even Canada has more sense than the US under this clown.

- Aggie

Teenagers: can’t live with ‘em; can’t drown them in the back of your Crown Vic:

A Montreal man accused of killing three of his teenage daughters and his first wife believed two of his children had been “cruel” to him by dressing in revealing clothes and consorting secretly with boyfriends, he told jurors at his murder trial Thursday.

“My children did a lot of cruelty toward me,” Mohammad Shafia testified during questioning by his lawyer, Peter Kemp.

Shafia said he was angry when he saw a photo of one of his daughters in a short skirt, hugging a boyfriend she had secretly dated. He saw it after her death, he insisted.

“I was upset, I swore because I didn’t expect this thing from my children,” Shafia testified. “I was not happy about that.”

Shafia said he expected that his children would have “consulted” him before making plans with boyfriends. He said he would have allowed the girls to marry boys of their choosing, even if he didn’t approve of them.

Shafia’s daughters — Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 — along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found dead inside a car that was discovered at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. The victims had drowned.

Those of us with teenagers might think about putting the car in neutral and pushing it into a canal (am I right or am I right?), but we wouldn’t do it. And not for that reason.

Spare the clutch, spoil the child, I always say!

If he’s worried about cruelty, I hope Canada’s prisons aren’t crowded with skinheads and neo-Nazis. We can always send them a few of ours.

I suppose these people are free to try again…

A day after the Navy intercepted two vessels from Canada and Ireland a few dozen kilometers from the Gaza shore, the flotilla organizers vow that more ships will attempt to break the blockade on the Strip.

Derrick O’Keefe, one of the organizers of the Canadian flotilla, told Ynet: “This is undoubtedly only the first wave. Other countries are also organizing groups to sail to Gaza, and in Canada we are planning to send more ships.”

Okay, but… well… Do you think you can actually carry something next time?

On Friday, Navy commandos boarded the vessels in a peaceful takeover. IDF officials remarked that they did not find any weapons or humanitarian aid onboard the ship. No injuries were reported during the operation.

Crikey, even the Fleabitten Flotilla, the Maggot Marmara, had stale saltines and expired medication aboard. What were these people doing?

On Saturday, 21 of the 27 passengers remained in costudy and are slated to board flights back to their home countries over the next few days.

The other six passengers were released, including 2 Greek crew members, an Egyptian citizen that was returned to Egypt and two reporters, American and Spanish, who were released under limiting conditions and commited to leave Israel on Sunday.

That doesn’t sound like a humanitarian mission. It sounds like an all-expenses-paid cruise! Such a jaunt would set me and the missus back a pretty penny, yet these Canuck schmucks seem to have traveled halfway around the world for a little sail, boarded free flights back home to rejoin the Occupy Moose Jaw movements they left behind—and it didn’t cost them a devalued Canadian cent!

Why would they oppose capitalism when they’ve figured out so expertly how to rip it off? A tip of the Che Guevara beret to them!

Just like Molson beer, they should call it freedom of speech-lite:

The right to free speech is one of the most important democratic freedoms. It enables the flow of information and encourages diversity of opinion in the public sphere, as well as criticism of political leadership, all of which are in the public interest. BUT like most freedoms, it is not absolute, nor should it be.

That’s quite a but-monkey, as Laura Ingraham would say. But where would the writer draw the line? Shouting fire in a crowded theater? Incitement to violence?

Mark Steyn (on whose site I found this story)?

European countries without our tradition of upholding anti-hate laws, and without a history of ethnic pluralism, have had a much harder time coping with growing diversity. Only the United States allows almost unmitigated speech, but some legal scholars, such as Jeremy Waldron of New York University, are beginning to believe that America should align itself with the rest of the world’s liberal democracies – countries that, in his words, “take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”

This protection has become urgent in the years since 9/11 with the concomitant increase in verbal attacks on Muslims. In Canada, the most prominent free-speech extremists are Ezra Levant, who provocatively republished the insulting Danish cartoons denigrating the Prophet Mohammed in 2005, and Mark Steyn, who has been generalizing about Muslims for years. Both these authors have tried to shift the Canadian consensus by normalizing previously unacceptable levels of speech.

…

Freedom of speech must be balanced with freedom from the destabilizing effects of public hatred in this, the world’s most heterogeneous society.

How did our forefathers overlook that inalienable right of “freedom from the destabilizing effects of public hatred”? What were they thinking?

And who knew that “generalizing about Muslims” was a high crime? Let me try: Muslim women generally dress modestly. Come and get me, coppers!

I think the insertion of too many modifiers in one sentence is a crime: “the most prominent free-speech extremists are Ezra Levant, who provocatively republished the insulting Danish cartoons denigrating the Prophet Mohammed…”. Even “denigrating” and “extremists” are inflammatory. In my world, with the writer’s rules, she would serve two-to-five for that offense alone. Her insulting and denigrating attempt to silence two prominent conservative thinkers for the crime of thinking conservatively would earn her life without possibility of parole.

Where’s the amnesty in Amnesty International?

Amnesty International called on Canadian authorities Wednesday to arrest and prosecute George W. Bush, saying the former U.S. president authorized “torture” when he directed the U.S.-led war on terror.

Bush is expected to attend an economic summit in Surrey in Canada’s westernmost British Columbia province on October 20.

The London-based group charged that Bush has legal responsibility for a series of human rights violations in a memorandum submitted last month to Canada’s attorney general but only now released to the media.

“Canada is required by its international obligations to arrest and prosecute former president Bush given his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture,” Amnesty’s Susan Lee said in a statement.

“As the U.S. authorities have, so far, failed to bring former president Bush to justice, the international community must step in. A failure by Canada to take action during his visit would violate the UN Convention Against Torture and demonstrate contempt for fundamental human rights,” Lee said.

A spokesman for the Canadian government was not immediately available for comment.

Bush cancelled a visit to Switzerland in February, after facing similar public calls for his arrest.

What’d he do to you, you pansy? Electrodes to your testicles would be the first sensation you had down there in years. Shut up.

God, how sick I am of these so-called human rights organizations. Their primary reason for existence is to damn Israel; on a slow day, they come after Bush.

He’s gone, all right? He saved Western Civilization from the Caliphate, and now he’s gone. So find someone else to harass. I think Israel just parted a Palestinian Arab from his olive grove—go git ‘em!

One of the worst things about our oil-reliant economy is that the top oil-producing countries are so hostile to our way of life: Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Canada.

Canada?

Canada:

When it comes to energy, America is lucky to be next to Canada, whose proven oil reserves are estimated by Oil and Gas Journal at 175 billion barrels. This ranks just behind Saudi Arabia (260 billion) and Venezuela (211 billion) and ahead of Iran (137 billion) and Iraq (115 billion). True, about 97 percent of Canada’s reserves consist of Alberta’s controversial oil sands, but new technologies and high oil prices have made them economically viable. Expanded production can provide the U.S. market with a growing source of secure oil for decades.

We would be crazy to turn our back on this. In a global oil market repeatedly threatened by wars, revolutions, and natural and man-made disasters — and where government-owned oil companies control development of about three-quarters of known reserves — having dependable suppliers is no mean feat. We already import about half our oil, and Canada is our largest supplier with about 25 percent of imports. But its conventional fields are declining. Only oil sands can fill the gap.

Will we encourage this? Do we say “yes” to oil sands? Or do we increase our exposure to unstable world oil markets?

Ooh, don’t tell me, let me guess! Hmm, if Obama is president… umm… no [bleeping] way!

The writer, Robert Samuelson, lists the difficulties in accessing and processing this black-gold mine. But he concludes that we really don’t have a choice:

If Obama rejects the pipeline, he would — perversely — increase greenhouse gas emissions. Canada has made clear that it will proceed with oil sands development regardless of the American decision. If the United States doesn’t want the oil, China and other Asian countries do. Pipelines would be built to the West Coast. Transporting the oil by tanker to Asia would almost certainly create more emissions than moving it by pipeline to closer U.S. markets.

…

By all logic, the administration’s Keystone decision — overseen by the State Department, which issued a final environmental impact statement last week — should be a snap. Obama wants job creation. Well, TransCanada, the pipeline’s sponsor, says the project should result in 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs. Most would be American, because 80 percent of the 1,661-mile pipeline would be in the United States. Continued development of oil sands would also help the U.S. economy; hundreds of American companies sell oil services in Canada. Finally, production technologies are gradually reducing environmental side effects, including greenhouse emissions.

The real benefit would be to strengthen the strategic alliance between Canada and the United States. Canada’s oil exports now go almost exclusively to us. Our interest is for this to continue. From 2010 to 2020, oil sands production is projected to double to 3 million barrels a day; most of that would be available for export. On paper, it might seem that Canada should diversify its oil customers. Not so. Canada’s prospects are so tied to ours that any narrow advantage of having more buyers would vanish if that weakened the U.S. economy.

The United States and Canada are each other’s largest trading partners and closest allies. Oil markets are subtly changing, as more countries — led by China — seek preferential access to scarce global supplies. In the future, security of supply may matter as much as price. The more we can reduce oil demand and increase supply stability, the better off we’ll be. On oil sands, we should just say “yes.”

We could increase our consumption of Canadian oil, lessening our reliance on the Islamo-fascists in Riyadh and the Latino-fascists in Caracas, or we could leave things as they are and let China take Canada’s oil. By all logic… oh, forget logic—this is Obama. See my previous guess: NFW!

Sorry, Aggie, Canada’s out.

I hear the Ozarks are lovely.

The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA) has announced the release of its final Inquiry Panel Report.

“At a time when Canada is witnessing an unprecedented increase in anti-Semitic incidents and hateful discourse,” said Mario Silva, chair of the Inquiry Panel, “the release of the CPCCA report could not be timelier.”

After two years of investigation and hearings, the Inquiry Panel’s conclusion is that the scourge of anti-Semitism is a growing threat in Canada, especially on the campuses of universities.

To be fair to Canada, I can’t think of a single country, except Israel, where the university campuses aren’t antisemitic. And Canada’s government is one of the few to support Israel over the jackals and hyenas in the international community.