Saudi Jacobins, or more multicultural word games?

One of the truisms that is fast becoming a tired cliche in this new century, is my old favorite, "Words mean things": to engage in any kind of meaningful dialog, one must first share the same definition of the words each side is using.
"Democracy", "Liberty", "Peace", are terms that nowadays mean different things to different people, much like a discussion about the weather becomes meaningless if I'm from a hot climate and claim that it's "cold" outside, while chatting with a fellow from a cold climate whose counter-claim is that it's actually "hot".
We can't just throw terms around as catch-all phrases anymore; there must be an accompanying context if there's to be any real understanding, any meaningful discourse.

Case in point is story behind the promising headline, "Exile Sets Up Saudi Opposition Group In France".

PARIS -- The son of the last ruler of part of present-day Saudi Arabia has said he was setting up an opposition party in Paris to seek democratic rule in the oil-rich kingdom.
"We announce the birth of the 'Saudi Democratic Opposition Front' which will struggle by peaceful means for the establishment of democracy in the country," said Prince Talal Mohammed Al Rashid, son of the last ruler of the independent Rashidi emirate which reigned in the northwestern region of Hail from 1835 to 1921.
"The Al Saud [family ruling Saudi Arabia] must either respect liberties and introduce democracy or give up the power they usurped," Prince Talal, who has been living in exile in France since 1980, said Tuesday.
Talal, son of Mohammed II Bin Talal Al Rashid, said his opposition group would launch a satellite television channel within three months which will broadcast from a European country to "call on Saudis to rise up against the tyrants and usurpers plundering public funds."
[Maybe some of those broadcasts should be re-directed back into France..?]
The Rashidi emirs, who were ousted by the Saud family during its struggle to unite Saudi Arabia, are a branch of the Shammar tribal confederation.
Prince Talal, who has retained his title, said that the confederation was backing his new movement. He said his group, with "some 2,000 active members, mostly in Saudi Arabia," would coordinate its activities with other opponents of the Saudi government at home and abroad, chiefly the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) which calls for a regime change in the kingdom....

And here the word games begin. MIRA was an organization fingered by the US Treasury for providing material support to al Qaida.
"Information shows that statements on the MIRA website, including messages from Usama bin Laden and Abu Mus'ab al Zarqawi, are intended to provide ideological and operational support to al Qaida affiliated networks and potential recruits...
..In 2003, MIRA and [Saad al-Faqih, who heads the Movement] received approximately $1 million in funding through Abdulrahman Alamoudi. According to information available to the U.S. Government, the September 2003 arrest of Alamoudi was a severe blow to al Qaida, as Alamoudi had a close relationship with al Qaida and had raised money for al Qaida in the United States. In a 2004 plea agreement, Alamoudi admitted to his role in an assassination plot targeting the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and is currently serving a 23 year sentence. " [source: U.S. Department of the Treasury]

What is a "democratic" movement doing aligning itself with a group holding such close links to al Qaida, of all things? Just what kind of "democratic" messages will the "struggle" of their "active members" consist of? And unless Prince Talal envisions for himself a role comparable to that of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, as a purely symbolic head of state (a goal left unexplained in the press release), what is a prince doing leading a "democratic" movement in the first place? (Could his followers get to vote for who becomes the next prince..?)

Don't expect such judgmental questions from the western media, who evidently are content to parrot noble-sounding press releases and leave things go at that. The exiled Prince announces he is in favor of "democracy", after all, and isn't that a good thing...?

Sadly, as news from Afghanistan ["Abdul Rahman, a Christian for the last 16 years, is charged with rejecting Islam and could be executed under Islamic Sharia law unless he reconverts."March 26 BBC ]
and Iraq ["Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam."August 6 Guardian and Observer]
increasingly reveal to us, we refuse to hold certain people up to the same definition of cultural terms that we insist upon for ourselves.

What does this double-standard suggest lies behind the mask of "multi-culturalism" that is supposed to be such a noble ideal for Canada? What do the lower expectations we hold people of the islamic world to, really say about our respect for these fellow human beings?
Do we do them any favors by giving them their own, private, definitions for western values such as Liberty and Decocracy?

Canada's aims for Afghanistan: build. The Taliban's aims for Afghanistan: destroy.

From the Government of Canada's main website, comes this affirmation of our nation's purpose in having Canadian armed forces waging war in Afghanistan. It provides a rather thorough explanation of...

Why We Are There
defend our national interests
We have a national interest in a secure and self-sufficient democratic state that never again serves as a terrorist haven.
ensure Canadian leadership in world affairs
Nation-building takes time and requires sustained support. Abandoning Afghanistan prematurely would have consequences for Canadian interests, international security and Afghans themselves.
help Afghanistan rebuild
Much progress has been made to date; but the work on the ground must continue. With the full support of the Afghan government, Canada is helping the Afghan people bring stability to their country, strengthen governance and reduce poverty.

The same page also offers some heartening data concerning some of the changes we've been able to accomplish by having our troops fighting in that nation for the last five years:

157,000 individual Afghanis receiving loans as part of Canada's commitment towards microfinance to Afghans.
63,000 former Afghan warriors disbanded as part of the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) program, to which Canada is the second largest contributor. These former guerilla fighters have turned in their weapons in exchange for training in peaceful trades such as farming and teaching. And speaking of teaching...
4.8 million Afghan children are back in school, including over one million girls, who were banned from even attending school while Afghanistan was under the bloody rule of the Taliban.

These stated objectives are entirely in keeping with Canadian principles and ideals: to help people help themselves, to make trading partners out of potential enemies, and to balance self-interest with public service.

In this mission we are opposed by the brutal forces of the Taliban. One thing is clear about the deadly enemies we face in our war in Afghanistan: they are not shy about revealing their blow-by-blow battlefield tactics to us, along with their overall war aims. There’s a fellow named Qari Yousaf Ahmadi who pops up regularly in news reports out of Afghanistan, credited as a “spokesman” for the Taliban. (note that the media make no attempt to label his role for the Taliban with the Politically Correct tag "spokesperson"; even the media understand the unrelentingly misoginist workings of the Taliban).

To understand our enemies war aims, all we have to do is listen to them :

…a Taliban spokesman is vowing to step up attacks against Canadian and other NATO forces in Afghanistan.

"We will increase the attacks against NATO, Canadians and other foreign supporters in the south (of Afghanistan)," Qari Yousaf Ahmadi said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
The threat comes after four Canadians died and 10 were injured in intense fighting on Thursday with Taliban insurgents.

More suicide attackers from across the war-torn country have converged in the south to carry out strikes against non-Muslims, Ahmadi said.
"We have got more suicide attackers, so of course suicide attacks will be increased."….

The Taliban has recently stepped up its resistance to what it terms foreign occupying forces in southern Afghanistan.

Ahmadi said the insurgents would not single out one nation in their promised assaults.

"It is not a war among Afghanistan, America, Canada or the British," he said through an interpreter.
"It is a war between Muslims and non-Muslims. And I am sure that we will defeat them very soon."

The Canadian exit strategy for Afghanistan: enable a sustainable nation, one inhospitable to islamic terrorists.
The Taliban's exit strategy: kill all non-muslims, as well as any muslims who may help them, hoping instead to have Afghanistan reclaim its previous role as a home for islamic terrorists.

Where is the middle ground, between these two objectives? Where is the "peaceful, neutral" position, that critics of Canada's military presence in Afghanistan insist we place ourselves, by removing our troops?
Are we to negotiate a quota of non-muslims, along with a mutually-agreed-upon number of Afghan muslims attempting to rebuild their shattered nation, that the Taliban are to be allowed to massacre?

We must eliminate the Taliban for there to be any chance for peace in that region. We cannot negotiate a middle ground between life and death, growth and decay. Can we?

the NDP dream: peace-keeping without war

There are approximately 2,200 Canadian troops in Afghanistan. There are Canadians who demand we remove these troops from there, and leave the Afghans to their own devices, to fight their own battles, presumably by bundling paper money we send as “development funding” into big bales and using them like a mace on the taliban skulls.
A better use of our money would be to spend it to find, face and kill as many taliban bad guys as we can, so that the taliban stops waging war against the people of Afghanistan, allowing that nation to rebuild itself.

Three dead in grenade attack on Afghan postman
July 24, 2006
KHOST, Afghanistan -- Attackers hurled grenades into the home of a village postman in eastern Afghanistan, killing three of his daughters, officials said on Monday, linking the Taliban to the incident.

The attack in eastern Khost province on Sunday followed threats from the extremist movement that they would target anyone in the area working for the government, the district chief said.

The postman and another of his daughters, a young girl, were wounded in the attack in Yaqubi village, district chief Mirza Jan Nimgari said.
….
"Taliban had sent night-letters [secret leaflets] to Yaqubi district and had warned people to stop working for the government or be prepared to be targeted," Nimgari said.
….
Afghanistan's postal service was destroyed during the country's decades of conflict and is barely used by citizens. It has started to recover since the Taliban was removed from government in late 2001. The insurgency launched by the hardliners after their ouster sees regular attacks on foreign and Afghan troops but also on civilians working with the government, such as teachers and clerics.
…

This mailman received death threats for the crime of being a mailman, and yet continued to do his job, in order to feed his family. His is/was a working family. Is he worthy of Canadian help? Nope, according to champion of working families in Canada, the very very Honorable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP).

These are the words of the very very Honorable Layton, from a speech on Canada’s role in Afghanistan, delivered back in May 2006.

New Democrats stand in opposition to this government’s plans to lock our country into a long-term war-fighting role in Afghanistan, a role that does not properly reflect the principles and ideals of the people of Canada.

[Helping working families stay alive does not properly reflect Canadian principles?]
…
There are those in this house, on both side of the aisle, who will claim that if Canada re-directs its efforts, after four years in Afghanistan, all will be lost. There are those who are prepared to see Canada embroiled in Afghanistan to the end of this decade and beyond – they have claimed that anything less will amount to cutting and running.
…
Afghanistan is now the largest recipient of Canadian overseas development assistance. The NDP unequivocally supports the continuation of this funding. And we fully support an ongoing development and diplomatic role for Canada in Afghanistan, but the government has tied war-making and aid together in this motion and we oppose that.

Yes, we mustn’t become “embroiled” in "war-making", else we end up actually helping the people there by (gasp) killing the taliban. Unfortunately the enemy doesn’t seem to have the same qualms about death and killing as the very very Honorable mr Layton seems to possess:

…a man detonated grenades in a taxi at a police check-post in the province [of Khost], killing himself and another person and wounding three others, provincial police chief Mohammad Ayoob said hours after the attack.
The man exploded the grenades after suspicious police stopped the vehicle, Ayoob said on Monday.

This is a tragedy. Working class citizens being blown to bits by lunatic suicide bombers, determined to kill somebody, anybody they can reach, if it might delay or hinder the chances for societal progress in Afghanistan.

With whom will Canada be left to be diplomatic with, if the butchers of the taliban continue to kill off any Afghani working for a better future? Shouldn’t we, as Canadians second, but as human beings first, shouldn’t we want to see such evil stopped? Or is it part of a new definition of Canadian “ideals” to shrug our collective shoulders at such things as school bombings?

Attacks by insurgents on schools in Afghanistan have increased more than six-fold over last year and have now spread throughout the country, the UN children's agency UNICEF warned Friday.
….
"With all Afghan children have gone through, to expose them to this kind of terrible violence in a place which they consider to be safe is appalling," spokesman Patrick McCormick told reporters.

"UNICEF calls on all parties in Afghanistan to cease targeting children, education workers, and schools," he added, warning that progress in education was in jeopardy.

The education system is still regarded as shaky following years of political turmoil, including the denial of education for girls under Taliban rule and the subsequent conflict.

The onslaught, which has spread from Taliban heartlands in the southeast and south, has included 11 explosions and 50 school burnings this year.

In March 2002, 1.5 million Afghan children returned to the classroom following years of civil war. By December 2005 the number had increased to 5.1 million children, including 1.5 million girls.

However, in four southern provinces where children and teachers are under increasing threat, more than 100,000 children are thought to be shut out by school closures, despite attempts to ensure protection, UNICEF said.
Last month attackers bombed a primary school to rubble in the southeastern province of Paktika.
The US based advocacy group Human Rights Watch has documented 204 attacks on teachers, students, and schools since January 2005, with schools for girls particularly hard hit. ….

Well, things can and will get worse, should the very very Honorable Layton achieve any traction in our national dialog...
…
New Democrats will not write a blank cheque for this government, or any government, to drag Canada further into war, to drag our country further away from our place in the world as a nation of peace and peacekeeping.

[How reasonable is it to dream of keeping peace with people like the taliban, when they are so determined to die for their bloody cause? Afghanistan isn't Cyprus, no matter how badly we wish it could be...]
…
New Democrats will stand against this motion because we believe that the mission defined by this government, is not in line with the values and principles held by Canadians....

Is leaving the Afghan people to the evil of the taliban, somehow, some way in league with anything that might be called "Canadian principles"?

The NDP has been clear and up front about their beliefs: they do not think that helping the people of Afghanistan is worth a Canadian life. I wonder why that is... There are almost 30 million Afghans, not so different in population from Canada itself. Look at your children tonight, look at your wife or husband, the postman who delivers your mail tomorrow, the police officer who shows up to answer your call after a crime, the teachers and students, the men, women and children that you see every day; look at these people and try to imagine what life must be like for their counterparts, in Afghanistan.
What if you were there, sending your child to a school that might be blown to bits that day? What if you were driving a taxi and any one of your fares that day might be planning to blow himself up to allah, with you along in tow?
What if you were risking death by simply showing up for work?
Wouldn't you want some help?

The way to keep peace in Afghanistan is to kill the bad guys of Afghanistan. Only when the taliban is destroyed, can there be freedom for Afghanis.
We value freedom for all: that is a Canadian principle. Isn't it?

Covenant Zone again wishes to express our deep thanks to all our Canadian troops

We sadly hear of the deaths yesterday of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan - Corporal Christopher Jonathan Reid, Seargeant Vaughn Ingram, Corporal Bryce Jeffrey Keller, and Private Kevin Dallaire - and wish to express our condolences to the families of the fallen and recommit ourselves to the fight for freedom, abroad and at home.

The recent opinion polls (focussing on the Israel-Hezbollah war, though no doubt also affected by the Afghanistan conflict) showing that many Canadians have an attachment to the ideas of "neutrality" and "playing the honest broker" susggest that many in this country have sunk into a nihilism where they are unwilling or incapable of choosing sides, or in which they seek some mystical "third way" beyond all conflict, as proof of their righteousness. Many are refusing what should be a rather clear choice between the forces of freedom and totalitarian religious terrorists. So if this is correct, the opinion polls suggest that we have a large task here at home to move public opinion further away from certain assumptions, such as that the west is largely to blame for the pervasive anti-western resentment in this world, the "White Guilt" that leads many Canadians to seek guarantees of their rightness in self-denying commitments to "neutrality" in the current war of Israel and the west more generally against totalitarian Jihadists; some even offer active support for the anti-western forces.

So I find the words of Christie Blatchford in today's Globe and Mail (subscription required) appropriate:

The bleeding was barely stopped when the bleating began.

On the day of Canada's most appalling losses yet in Afghanistan - four soldiers killed in three separate but linked attacks and 10 injured - it took but an hour for the open-line radio talk shows in Toronto to fill up with the cries of those who would pull the plug on the mission there, yank the troops home immediately, have the nation revert to its mythical, if cherished, peacekeeping role and go back to that sterling foreign policy of keeping fingers crossed.

I thought of what Lieutenant-Colonel John Conrad, the boss of the combat logistics arm of the Canadian battle group, said not so long ago in Kandahar.

We were talking about the Canadian mission when Col. Conrad said, "Each man and woman has asked, `Why am I here? Why did I volunteer?'" but most, he guessed, had come to the same conclusion he had. "For all that we're here to help Afghans," he said, "we're also here to protect our country."

It was only later, when I was going through the notes of that conversation, that I realized he was the first person I know to put it so squarely.

If it is a thought that might offer some comfort to the families of the dead - that their sons did not die only in service of a Biblical-era faraway foreign land where violences is as reflexive as breathing, but also in service to our own - it might also stand as a reminder that notwithstanding the absence of a formal declaration, Canada is at war.

After commenting on an array of evidence that there are many people from many lands at work in support of a global Islamic Jihad and hence against the very existence of western civilization, not only in Afganistan but around the world, including in Canada, Christie Blatchford concludes:

The least we can do - and we do, in this country, prefer to do the least - is stiffen our collective resolve, face up to the truth, and recognize that the soldiers' terrible sacrifice is in our name.

Covenant Zone is not satisfied with doing the least. We are resolved to challenge any and every Canadian who would seek proof of western guilt, the virtue of "neutrality", and utopian ideas about "world peace", in the deaths of our soldiers. Neutral and holy Canadian Gnostics: we are going to expose you.

Time to End Boycott of Chapters?

We have previously called for a boycott of Chapters/Indigo over Heather Reisman's banning from her stores a copy of the leftist, anti-American magazine Harper's, out of fear that the discussion of Mohammed cartoons therein might bring crazed Jihadists into the stores and endanger her employees.

So it is good for the heart to read in today's Globe and Mail that Ms. Reisman and her husband, Gerry Schwartz, are stepping away from their long time support of the Liberal Party and backing Prime Minister Harper's resolute stance in defence of Israel:

Liberal power couple Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz have publicly broken with the Liberal Party line on the Middle East crisis and are turning to Prime Minister Stephen Harper because of his support of Israel.

Mr. Schwartz, a confidante of former prime minister Paul Martin and one of Canada's most influential businessmen as the head of Onex Corp., is one of the eight signatories of an advertisement placed in a newspaper in Cornwall, Ont., where the Conservatives are holding caucus meetings.

The ad welcomes the caucus to Cornwall and expresses appreciation to Mr. Harper, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Conservative MPs for "standing by" Israel. It also lauds other G8 leaders and Australian Prime Minister John Howard for their stands on the war.

Mr. Schwartz's wife, Ms. Reisman, says she is leaving the party to support the Conservatives under Stephen Harper.

Mr. Harper has expressed firm support for Israel during the Middle East war. It's not clear whether Mr. Schwartz is also leaving the Liberals for the Conservatives.

In an e-mail to friends, Ms. Reisman applauded film producer Robert Lantos's statement at a weekend rally that he would "hereby take off [his] life-long federal Liberal hat."

"I [am] right there alongside Robert. . . . after a lifetime of being a Liberal, I have made the switch," Ms. Reisman wrote. "Feels strange, but totally and unequivocally right."
[...]
Much of the ire of the prominent Liberals who are lauding Mr. Harper is directed at interim Liberal leader Bill Graham, who criticized Mr. Harper's strong support of Israel, saying it will harm Canada's credibility as an arbitrator in world crises.

In a piece for The Globe and Mail clarifying the party's position this week, Mr. Graham said Mr. Harper's government is risking Canada's ability to act as a peacekeeper and honest broker, and may be jeopardizing domestic harmony.

Several of the Liberal leadership candidates, including front-runner Michael Ignatieff, have also been critical of Mr. Harper's position, and have called for Canada to press efforts for a ceasefire.

Senator Jerry Grafstein said that Mr. Graham's stand has distorted the traditional Liberal position of supporting countries when they are attacked by a "clear-cut aggressor," because, in this instance, Hezbollah is the aggressor whose aims are to extinguish the democratic state of Israel.

This time, Liberals are calling for neutrality even though Hezbollah is the aggressor, he said, and a ceasefire without a robust military peacekeeping force will only allow Hezbollah to rearm in Lebanon.

"I'm confused by that, and a lot of Liberals are confused by that," Mr. Grafstein said.

Two Liberal leadership candidates, Joe Volpe and Scott Brison, have backed Israel, Mr. Grafstein said. "The rest of the candidates are all over the place."
[...]
Organizers for several Liberal leadership candidates have said Canadian Muslims have signed up in relatively large numbers -- and many are dismayed when a candidate takes a strong pro-Israel stand in the current war.

Mr. Volpe's former campaign manager, Scarborough MP Jim Karygiannis, left the campaign over a disagreement with Mr. Volpe's strong pro-Israel stand.

These are not the first indications that liberal Jews and others throughout North America are beginning to question the politically-correct blame game of the anti-Israel, anti-western left in light of recent developments in the Middle East. While this turn of prominent Jews may serve as a boon to Judeophobic conspiracy theories, it is no doubt the right thing to do in focussing rational minds on the real enemy that threatens the very core of western civilization. My hat is off to Heather Reisman. I think I will even have a look to see if she has any books I want to buy.

Covenant Zone: a mother's love

A few days ago I had the pleasure to watch a tired mother with her two young daughters riding on the local city transit. The oldest of the two children was probably 6 or 7, the younger maybe 2 or 3. What a sight; what a mother! Never have I seen children share their mother's love so generously with each other. The older sister helped her young sibling stand to see out the window more clearly, pointing out items that she guessed the younger might find entertaining. "look, a bird! see that bird over there..?" and so on. She went one step further, encouraging the younger sister to improve her english: "can you say pigeon?" The mother sat nearby, frequently offering the hug or kiss requested of the youngest child. The older daughter would eagerly help steady her sister to be better able to be on the receiving end of the mother's love.

And the thought occured to me: how abundant and endless must that mother's love be, for an older sister to be so undemanding of attention, so willing to share that attention with someone else, comforted by the knowledge that no limit existed for that kindness; there was plenty to go around, so why make a fuss and try to grab a "lion's share" for herself. One gesture of love did not come at the expense of another, it came in addition to another.

I couldn't tell whose behavior impressed me most; the oldest sister, generous, protective and encouraging of discovery, the youngest sister, who gratefully repaid each generous act with a cute kiss, hug or smile, who, despite the avalanche of love on display, never took it for granted, always demonstrating her appreciation for all she was being given; or the mother, who by God knows how much effort and patient instruction has emerged with such awesome angels for daughters. I feel I witnessed more kindness in fifteen minutes than I see in most full days, admiring this close, giving family from my bird's eye seat.

I had forgotten the wonderful scene, until, coming home from the meeting, I read this story, of a different kind of motherly love, courtesy of the Middle East Times....

Mother axes daughter to death in Jordan 'honor killing'
July 31, 2006
A Jordanian woman hacked her 26-year-old daughter to death in her sleep with an axe for giving birth out of wedlock, the Jordan Times reported Sunday.

The 69-year-old mother and another daughter turned themselves in to police after Saturday's killing, claiming they had acted to cleanse the "family honor," the paper said, quoting official sources. They were charged with premeditated murder, the sources said.

The victim had been divorced for the past seven years and had given birth to a boy on the day she was murdered. Hours later "her enraged mother decided to kill her to cleanse the family honor," one official told the newspaper.

"The mother and daughter waited until the victim went to sleep, took an axe and hacked her repeatedly until they made sure she was dead," the official said.

What am I to make of this story?
What I am to think of a system that, when dutifully learned and lived, results in this kind of conclusion? A mother kills her daughter on the very day that daughter brings a grandchild into the world. Kills her with an ax, no less. An ax... so that their "honor" can be "cleansed". Like pruning the garden, one supposes: trim the dead branches and twigs, pull out the weeds, so that the front yard may look respectable to the neighbors... how am I doing, readers of the koran, am I "getting it"? Is this what you mean when you say you are "humiliated" by the west? That you need to tidy up the room for when company comes over?

What about all those years together, the gentle hugs, the delicate pats on the head, teaching the daughter the joys of learning itself? Don't those memories add up to anything in islam? Does islam sever our natural connections to each other so successfully that a mother could even imagine taking an ax to her daughter's head, for bringing an additional life into this world? Was there so little of a bond created by the teachings of their religious faith, that it could result in not just this "isolated incident" (the media's ongoing cover story for such common acts of butchery) but a sadly regular supply of these incidents. The weapons and means may change, but not the end: dead women, killed in the name of allah.

I try, I really try, to find kinship with all my fellow human beings, hoping against hope that I may learn good from all. What possible good am I to learn from a family fulfilling the dictates of this culture, if such fulfillment results in this animal savagery? Does there really exist a relativist who can equate the mother and daughters I eavesdropped upon my bus, with the mother and daugters we just read about in Jordan?
Is not one unequivocally better than another?
Is not one form of "love" worth spreading, while another in desperate need to be reduced?
Or would a relativist really feel comfortable seeing both approaches co-exist in equal measure?

We need to read and spread these stories of evil, and compare and contrast them with the stories of good that surround our own lives each and every day. There is a right and wrong, there are better and worse, there exists judgments that can and should be made about How To Live. Not all options are equally valid. Some are horrible. Some teach that there actually exists a limit to a mother's love. And as this story teaches us, some mother's are good students of pure, fundamentalist islam.

We met again tonight, in Vancouver, Canada, surviving the repeated dirty looks and glares, hardly "humiliated" for our minority views, since it's a badge of honor to be hated by those who cannot condemn an ax murderer. We meet every week, to try and find common cause with each other, learn from each other, test each other's ideas, in order to arrive at positive moves in positive directions, for our nation and our civilization. It's good to do so, to witness good being done.

At the pro-Israel rally I attended earlier in the week, I felt a connection so deep to the strangers around me that I still ponder its long-term meaning for my life. I felt at home there, despite being in a room full of total strangers. In ways I don't have the vocabulary yet to define, they were "family". There was a connection.

One value system inspires connections between strangers, another inspires taking an ax to the head of your daughter.

We talked about both.
And we'll do the same next week.

Blue Revolution - Still in the Days of Wine & Roses

I have not done much blogging here this week (so thanks to Charles for taking us over the hump of our 100th post!). One part of the reason is that I spent the time I had laid aside the last couple of days to argue with a young man who doesn't believe in truth (see here and here. This young man apparently believes in a Canada where everything will go alright if only we all believe in peace, sing John Lennon's "Imagine" and just get along by respecting everyone's ideas without ever taking any idea more seriously than another.

It seems to me, this man is the fruit of multiculturalism. But as I say to him, there is such a thing as truth in political life and we need to ask what will happen when we forego belief in it in order to affirm every position as equal. There is truth in political life because we need politics in order to create order and justice; the free market alone is not enough for it does not provide the means for us to represent and defend together, and to defend each other, in our common faith in freedom - to defend our freedom against the resentment it inevitably engenders.

The discovery through political life of new symbols or language, and the institutionalization of this language, are the means to represent our need for order, freedom and justice; and this all requires a faith in our ability to discover, through our political discussion, higher truths than those that once bonded our community. Old truths, while still necessary to the community, are not quite sufficient to meet the changing needs of our times.

But if we give up the quest for the truth that will further define all of us as Canadians - if we start reducing Canada to multicultural and relativist pieties like leading Liberal, Michael Ignatieff in Tuesday's Globe and Mail - then we will discover that people in need of order and justice will increasingly leave those political arenas where truth is not pursued, in order to find it elsewhere, fracturing our nation perhaps beyond repair.

Ignatieff writes:

We are a country of peace-makers, especially because we are also a country of immigrants, many of whom have come to Canada to escape the horrors of conflict. As a nation of immigrants from the zones of war, we have a special vocation for peace, and it is by exercising this vocation that we maintain our unity as a people. We have a voice that other countries listen to. Let us use it.

Well, my forebears fled conflict to come to Canada and while I certainly think that mediating conflict with a minimum of violence is a good thing, I'd never make my bottom line definition of Canada "a nation of immigrants" that thus puts neutrality ahead of the defense of freedom and what is right. Canada has a distinct culture of its own - with its own particular ideas of what is good and true - one for which many have fought and died. We lost four soldiers today in Afghanistan. Peace is no ultimate good if it can only be had by submission to terrorists and their crazy religious or Gnostic ideology. Every free nation today needs to act as a security for the other free nations, including Israel. Otherwise, why should any one nation alone take the risk of engaging strongly in their local battles within the larger worldwide war against a religious terrorism that dreams of converting the world, and against the states, notably Iran, that sponsor terrorists and that threaten us all with a nuclear war (if the apocalyptic Mullahs of Iran get the bomb).

We stand together or we will fall alone in time. But to stand together with nations with whom we don't always agree, we need leaders who are willing to articulate and defend the cause of freedom, even if sometimes that takes us to choose sides in a war. We do not need Ignatieff's wishy-washy relativism and his intentionally ambiguous claim that we find our unity in working for peace. What would he make of the fact that one in ten Canadians put on the uniform in World War II and fought for peace? When is war necessary and isn't stopping the insane Mullahs of Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons worth a lot of war? If so, Israel must be our ally, not another tool in our self-denying construction of a Gnostic identity as "the nation of immigrants, the nation of peace".

Just as many parents today want to withdraw from the public school system, we can imagine a day when Canadians withdraw from their national political life and splinter into competing "tribes" fighting over the remnants of a nation that became an empire that tried to represent everything under the sun and thus lost its own principles of coherence, and then became a bureaucratic beast that was slaughtered when all the cults it housed had no more faith in any unifying truth or authority.

We at Covenant Zone are leading the fight against that day. We realize that we can no longer rely on the old and now decrepit cultural elites (in academe, the media, etc.) to define this country and its politcal life. For many reasons, the nation and its culture has had to decentralize itself, in the name of freedom, and indeed respect for our social diversity. High culture has given way to popular culture. It is left to all ordinary people who are able to take a lead in representing and defending the new centre(s) of Canadian national life to do so.

We wish to renew the Canadian covenant and we want you to join us. We meet every Thursday in Vancouver in the atrium of the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9 pm, to plot what we call the Blue Revolution, after the French patriots who are fighting for their nation (see Charles' latest post here.) in face of a nihilist empire of anti-national multiculturalism that only leads to more and more bureaucracy and conflicts among the cults that bureaucracy and its rules alone cannot control .

We are not in search of a Covenant that excludes any Canadian; rather, we want to include all in a new and shared search for the truth. We seek again the unity that must be primary to any social diversity. I hope to write more about these themes soon. In the meantime, if you are in Vancouver, come join us; if you are elsewhere, write us.

Pro-suffering ghouls pester sister of Canadian carpenter murdered in Afghanistan

Is anyone surprised to learn that the ghoulish anti-freedom and pro-suffering forces across Canada are hounding the sister of the murdered Canadian hero, Mike Frastacky [whom we blogged about here], in order to exploit her brother's recent death to further they immoral aims?

Bad enough that they actively campaign to prolong the suffering of Afghan people, now they shamelessly harangue the relatives of dead Canadians killed for having the heart to help Afghanis try to escape from the shadows of their horrific past.

Sister of B.C. aid worker killed in Afghanistan says no politics in his death

VANCOUVER (CP) - The sister of a Vancouver carpenter who was shot to death in Afghanistan says she's overwhelmed by countless messages of support from people around the world.
But [ she] also said Monday she wishes people would stop using the death of her brother Mike Frastacky for political reasons.

Some are using the death to back up their belief that Canadian troops should withdraw from Afghanistan, where her brother was building a school as an independent aid worker, Frastacky said from Toronto.

"They're e-mailing me saying I should put pressure, or they want to put pressure, on (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper to get our troops out of Afghanistan. If they want to do that it's fine. But don't ask me to do more than I've already done. I've sacrificed a brother."

Frastacky said Mike Frastacky, 56, risked his life when he returned to Afghanistan to finish building the school in Nahrin, in the northeastern province of Baghlan.

He was shot at a home two weeks ago under mysterious circumstances.
...
The family will host a ceremony to celebrate Mike Frastacky's life, followed by a memorial service in Vancouver in September, she said.

Omar Samad, Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada, said from Ottawa that he has spoken to Frastacky to express his sympathy and would like to attend the ceremony in honour of a man who did so much for the Afghan people.
....

How low will the pro-suffering mob sink before their consciences cry "Stop! Afghanis are humans too, they deserve to be raised out of their hellish world and shepherded into the 21st century"..?
How much suffering are they willing to inflict in order to continue clinging to the shroud of despair with which they insist on blanketing our world? Why not send more troops, so brave and generous heroes like this humble carpenter can accomplish even more for the people of Afghanistan?

What upsets the pro-suffering left the most: the Taliban's attempt to expand their islamic misogyny, or that Canadians are attempting to end it?

The sister of a Vancouver man shot to death in Afghanistan believes he was targeted because girls were being educated at the school he funded and built.
Frastacky spent $70,000 of his own money over the last four years to build a school in Nahrin that's attended by about 600 students.
......
Under the Taliban regime girls were banned from school.

At Frastacky's school girls and boys were educated in separate classrooms. He left for his latest trip in late June to check on the school and to build a playground for the girls.

Killed for wanting to build a playground for girls.
Maybe one of the denizens of the "get out of Afghanistan" mob can enlighten me, since I readily admit I do not understand the morality of their position at all: western troops try to protect the Afghan good guys from the depredations of the taliban muslims. We withdraw these troops, leaving the Afghan good guys to the mercy of the taliban muslims. What happens next, the taliban muslims turn into blue-state democrats, in favor of gay marriage, expanded day-care for working mothers, socialized medical care, and a higher minimum wage???

(Here comes the typical response: "do you realize what this war is costing the canadian taxpaper?" I suppose when these pro-suffering types see a city-funded fire engine racing to put out a burgeoning fire somewhere in their neighborhood, they block its passage out of their civic concern over the expensive overtime the firefighters will earn that evening desperately dousing the spreading flames..? "That money doesn't grow on trees, you know! It's cheaper to just let the building burn, than to fight to save it..." Some acts are worth going into debt over, on principle.)

Under the Taliban, girls were banned from attending school, and if we let the anti-freedom, pro-suffering ghouls of the left gain any more traction in our national dialog, who can say what else the Taliban will try should they gain a return to power?
The left is not so much "anti-war" as they are "pro-suffering". From now on I will apply their true label to them whenever I refer to the cause-and-effect world they refuse to acknowledge exists.

Comparing media coverage of the Vancouver pro-Israel rally

Spent some time this evening comparing local press coverage of yesterday’s pro-Israel rally held at the Schara Tzedeck synagogue here in Vancouver. Interesting to see what was covered by the media… and what was not.

First, the Vancouver Sun newspaper, which makes no mention of the presence of Ed Fast, the Conservative Member of Parliamant in attendance [and not the local MP, which I should have specified in my own report last night], and the overwhelming standing ovation caused by the initial mention of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s principled stand with Israel at the start of the event.
Also unmentioned was the stirring report on some recent Ethiopian immigrants to Israel, whose introduction to western civilization was to come under direct attack by hizbollah rockets. (which I myself neglected to refer to in my own personal report, here)
The Sun's report makes sure to dutifully quote from the speeches affirming people’s duty to defend themselves when attacked, I notice, probably because of how aggressive it makes the participants sound.

Vancouver rally shows support for Israel
Organizers, police tighten security after Seattle shootings as rally draws more than 1,600 August 01, 2006
Unfazed by Friday's shooting of six women at a Jewish centre in Seattle, more than 1,600 people turned out at a Vancouver synagogue Monday night in a show of support for Israel's actions in the Middle East.

"Israel has no choice but to defend itself," said Morris Soronow, 61, who attended the Stand with Israel solidarity rally at the Schara Tzedeck Synagogue on Oak Street.

He said the violence in Seattle worried him briefly, but "none of that would ever stop anybody from coming out to support Israel."

And apparently it did not. Many families attended with small children, while both young and old arrived with friends, filling the synagogue's main hall and two overflow rooms in the basement. Inside, those in attendance said prayers for Israel and its army.

Among the speakers who addressed the crowd was Rabbi Philip Bregman, chairman of the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver, who likened Israel's attack on Hezbollah to chemotherapy.

"You cannot stop until the cancer is eliminated," he said.

They also heard from Jason Murray of the Canada-Israel Committee, who asked people to express their support for Israel to the government and media, and from Craig Diamond of Combined Jewish Appeal, who requested donations for emergency relief services and rebuilding in regions of Israel under attack by Hezbollah.
…
Four police officers and private security personnel provided security and the event ended uneventfully, despite earlier concerns that prompted organizers to increase the amount of security after Friday's shootings in Seattle.

[I notice that every piece I read about the event suggested a different number of attendees. An understandable conflict of numbers, I suppose, since the spillover crowd were directed to adjoining halls... the varying totals probably leave out one room or another]

Very interesting to compare to the report offered by the Vancouver Province, the city’s other main newspaper; their headline, Give to Israel, backers say, highlights the appeals made for more than just words in support of Israel’s cause. (The article also makes reference to a muslim rally held downtown, but I’m editing that out for brevity’s sake; the theme of my post is comparing coverage of the pro-Israel rally)

Unlike the Sun's account, the one in the Province draws attention to the warm reception granted to both Prime Minister Harper as well as the attending MP from Abbotsford, BC… an eyebrows-raising incident you wouldn’t know about, if you only read about the rally in the Sun.

Vancouver's Jewish community was asked to donate to Israel last night at a synagogue as Lebanese supporters staged a rally several kilometres away.
"It is an hour of very great need in Israel," said Craig Diamond of the Combined Jewish Appeal. "It will take hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the community."
Diamond said almost $2 million has already been raised. "We are sticking to our $6.8-million goal this year. In addition, we are asking for one-time gifts for emergency relief and reconstruction."

More than 1,200 Jewish supporters gathered at the Schara Tzedeck synagogue on Oak Street under conspicuous protection from Vancouver police and hired security guards. The synagogue is one of the oldest and largest in the Lower Mainland, where the Jewish population is said to number about 25,000.
…..
Jason Murray of the Canada Israel committee said terrorism by Hezbollah in Lebanon -- which has been firing 100 rockets a day into Israel -- is a threat to western democracies such as Canada.

"Terrorists threaten our way of life," he said. The meeting was told that about 1.7 million Israelis and Lebanese have been displaced by the shellfire, bombs and rockets. Prime Minister Stephen Harper received a standing ovation when his name was mentioned for his unreserved support of Israel.

The ovation was repeated when Abbotsford MP Ed Fast -- who addressed the crowd -- called on those attending to "bless Canada."
.....
[Here’s a sneaky way to lessen the impact of Israel’s suffering from the hizbollah beasts: “The meeting was told that about 1.7 million Israelis and Lebanese have been displaced by the shellfire, bombs and rockets....” Sure, we were told that, but in two separate accounts: we were told of the several hundred thousand lebanese displaced, and the more than one million Israeli citizens being displaced. By lumping both figures into one, it minimizes the suffering on the Israeli side.]

And finally, for comedy relief more than anything, one of the free local papers, the Metro, which focuses exclusively on Rabbi Bregman's chemotherapy comment. Personally I thought the main focus of his speech was on the valiant sacrifice and courage under fire of the IDF, and putting a human face on the painful conflict going on over there. I had sincerely forgotten the chemotherapy detail until being reminded of it this morning in the execrable Metro account. It was hardly the main point of the evening’s speeches… unless your agenda is to discredit the righteousness of Israel’s defense of its people.

A further small detail about the Metro's report: the photo on the paper’s front page seems taken before the rally started, while the place was filling up, because it shows many empty seats… by the time the event got underway, the room was filled to capacity, with an overflow crowd kept in adjacent rooms, following the event through a video feed. The photo caption doesn’t specify when it was taken, before, during, or after, the photo was taken. I say: before, when it was still pretty empty. I stress the point because, for myself, the visual of seeing so many, many people, sharing the same concerns and supporting the same cause, was very affecting; this photo does not do the event justice.
Much like the rest of the reporting....

Vancouver Rally for Israel... and for humanity

My friends, what an evening.

Thanks to a divine piece of luck, I glanced at an old article from the saturday paper lying around and discovered that there was to be a pro-Israel rally held tonight in Vancouver, BC. The two-day old article offered no address, time or description of any kind, other than a passing mention of the rally itself (the article's main focus was on the reader of the koran's savagery in Seattle last Friday).

Conducting the world's fastest online search I found the event advertised here, in connection with the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. And with less than an hour left to get there I tore off to participate. (just made it in time) When I arrived I didn't know what I would have in store, whether a parade, a gathering on steps outside a building, or what. Turned out to be an indoor event taking place within a beautiful synagogue.

The whole evening was so emotional; my mind is still awhirl from the display of courage, compassion and out-and-out humanity that filled my world tonight. I've never felt so... alive before.

The evening kicked off with a humble gesture of gratitude to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for standing with Israel on principle.... whereupon there erupted a spontaneous, thunderous, standing ovation, growing and growing in volume, and judging by the hesitation by the speaker at the podium, unanticipated by the organizers of the event. Not unwelcome, I hasten to say: just unexpected. Hundreds of people clapping on and on and on... Thank God for having Harper, a man with moral integrity, be the leader in office at this time of crisis.

A spirited performance of both the Canadian and Israeli national anthems, then a heartening prayer, followed by a rousing speech from Ed Fast, Conservative Member of Parliament for Abbotsford (a riding on the eastern outskirts of the Vancouver area). I really admired his talk, such moral clarity coming from a politician... why is it so rare to hear an elected representative admit, in public, that hizbollah (the party of allah), and its members, are evil??

My heart went up and down all night, from admiration and pride at the brave resolve in the face of the unrelenting evil of our common foe, to horror and anger at the reprehensible double standard that the world shackles the great nation of Israel with. For example, the world is awash in pictures of the one hundred thousand lebanese fleeing north, but mute about the one million Israelis desperately fleeing south or huddling underground. One in seven israelis under attack... and the world sides against Israel, choosing instead to stand with the side of the enemy of humanity: the party of allah, hizbollah.

The one emotion that stayed with me throughout the night, to my shame, was fear; after what happened in Seattle last week, after what happens all around the world, who could say we would not be attacked right here in Vancouver? Every few minutes I would feel the need to silently pray that the evening pass without incident, without attack. The readers of the koran who love death as we love life would not hesitate to kill this lone christian sitting among the many jews inside that inspiring synagogue, they would not sift their victims to spare anyone from their thirst for infecting the world with their despair. The readers of the koran fire their rockets from hospitals, schools, crowded apartment buildings, indifferent to the innocent lives shattered by both their rain of death as well as the return fire; if the readers of the koran don't even care about co-religionists of their own faith, how much less must they care for us?

For one evening, in my hubris, I felt what it might be like to be Israeli... and my admiration for them has grown even more than it was before.

The path to success for the west: Two steps forward, one step back

I trained someone recently for a new job, and I've never seen anyone more paranoid about making a mistake. It made training him such a strain; he would pause and hesitate when he was supposed to act, he would never get to step 2 because he was so consumed with perfecting step 1. Meanwhile, with the clock ticking, over a dozen other steps remained untouched, and unreached, since he lacked the proper long-term thinking for his job.
His struggle did not come from lack of skill, but rather, sadly, from lack of belief. Belief in the truism that Learning must involve correction. You can't expect to always proceed flawlessly from step to step; sometimes the path to success comes from going backwards, temporarily, as new information comes to light, or a greater understanding begins to develop, and we discover a better path through the maze.
Dead ends don't mean death, they mean turning around temporarily to then move forward in an adapted direction. Progress involves correction.

A stray comment from Dag the other day illuminated my experience with the trainee in a whole new light. (I can't remember if Dag's remark was from a blog post or a comment, so in the absence of a link I hope my memory does it justice) Dag made a reference to the greek philosopher Scholasticus, who apparently believed that first you learn to swim, then you go into deep water. This effectively summarized my trainee's situation: he didn't want to be corrected, he wanted to only go forward to step 2 once he had perfected a flawless triumph at step 1... He never let himself get to the deep water. The "education" that Scholasticus describes would involve such a perfect series of step-by-step accomplishments that it hardly takes into account the human experience surrounding this education. Life is just too complicated, too full of unknowns, the human species too imperfect, to proceed in an ongoing march of uninterruped progress.
There has to be opportunity for error, for there to be equal opportunity for progress.

Life isn't about one step forward after another, endlessly advancing in one direction, no matter what is happening around us. (I'd hate to be driving with someone at the wheel who thinks this way..) Learning involves correction. Two steps forward, but then one step back. Correcting one's approach, in light of changing circumstances.

For change is not just part of human life, surely it is the essence that life: Change ennobles human life.

Long-term thinking is probably not natural for human beings, we seem wired to instead live in the moment. Therefore learning to change requires the ability to separate the present from the future, the future from the past, and see them all as links in a long chain, rather than one cement block. That there can even be a difference, between past, present, and future.

One of the ways that we can train ourselves to see these separations, is to label them through milestones: individual milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries, cultural milestones such as New Year's Day and the Work Week. For many, the built-in milestone into each week is the day we attend church. These milestones can teach us the belief of the second chance; that we possess the ability of renewal, of getting up and trying again. Whether it's a new decade, a new year, a new dawn: we possess several chances to find success; one day is not all days.
Failing once does not make us a Failure, as it not fated to be a permanent condition, but a temporary one. These are not destinations, they are stepping stones.

This piece marks the 99th post for Covenant Zone. As a personal habit I tend to value the eve of a milestone day, as a chance to reflect on the accomplishment marked by the milestone itself. New Year's Eve is when I do my thinking about the opportunities of the new year; the night before a birthday is when I reflect on what might lie in store for the year to come; sunday is my day to plan objectives for the work week soon to begin. Reviewing the past, to plan for the future.
On the eve of the humble milestone of our one hundredth post, I thought to reflect on how Canada has taken its two steps forward, and now needs to take a step back, to be able to continue its march towards progress. We've taken a wrong turn, left too much behind, and it has stunted our nation's growth, harming our ability to connect with the emerging world around us. So much so that our nation is awash in cynical, amoral inertia, as our elites, so besotted by their unearned status, stain us all with their personal despair. Time to start reconnecting to the faith in a better future that our nation used to have. Time to start renewing older beliefs.

Belief in the future comes with belief in oneself. Belief in a second chance comes with believing that learning involves correction. Being willing to make a mistake, requires humility, not cynicism. It's the cynic who is locked in his cement block. A belief in self-betterment starts with humility: believing that there's something better to become.

I've always felt that one of the major assists that the judeo-christian faith provides its followers is a God so Perfect that we believers are always to be humbled into accepting that no matter how great we may become, there will always be at least One who will be better than we. There's always something higher to reach. By stretching that horizon off into infinity, it can help us shatter any incentive to think in too limited a world view, that this is all there is. We may never become "good", but we can all, always, become better.

Here's to another 100 posts, reaching for ever higher standards, and a better Covenant for Canada.

Lessons from the meeting

First, the important news: we survived the meeting.
Now, a quick report...

Returning home last night on the bus I was witness to an interesting individual, whose actions offered an ironic summary of the meeting I had just left. This man on the bus was the personification of what we are up against, in Canada.

Juding by the body language of two individuals sitting nearby, it seemed as if a man simply attached himself to a conversational partner to keep himself amused for the ride. Pigeonholing some poor hapless passenger this man gave her, and anyone nearby with ears, his life story. It went from an annoying distraction to a revealing life lesson when he got to the part about his complete lack of curiosity. "I don't watch television", he said. "Don't read newspapers, either; or listen to the radio. [He didn't even mention the internet, and he didn't come across as someone who owned a computer] I am not interested in politics or current events. But I still know what's going on in the world. I know about Israel, for instance."

And off he went about why Israel is such a bad place. Interesting that someone who brags about how clued out he is can take equal pride in the depths of his perception on "the jewish threat". A man willfully disconnecting himself from his world, a man so tuned out to the lives of others that he can harass innocent bystanders with no hesitation, yet from the depths of his insensitive hermitage he still dares pontificate on the supposed perfidy of a nation that by his own admission he chooses to ignore on a daily basis. He just parrots "what everybody knows" is true.
It is the self-centered myopia of individuals such as these that plague Canada at this time, those that are so set in their thoughts, so comfortable with their beliefs, so confident in their purity and their sanctity, that they are determined to not change one iota from who and what they are, and possess the hubris to brag of this status, no matter how little they do to test or measure the ongoing truth of their worldview.

How to get more people to question their beliefs, to interact with others who hold different views, to investigate the other side of the great arguments of our time; this was a major question discussed at our meeting. An anecdotal example: a young idealist at the MAWO desecration the week before came over to Dag all afire with fury at the small group daring to protest his protest; by the time his conversation with Dag had drawn to a close, he was a smiling, becalmed, pleasant fellow, disarmed of his hatred by Dag's reasonableness, revealed through prolongued exposure as hardly the monster described by the young fellow's "friends" back at the rally. Sadly it is likely that the moment the idealist was back among his "friends" his mind would be assaulted anew, to bring him to yet another boiling anger about having been, I don't know, beguiled or seduced by our being happy warriors.

I remember several people from the previous protest at the World Peace Forum, who openly declared they would not read our blog because it would be a different point of view than their own. This is the attitude of a student of history?? This is the attitude of someone wanting to be clued in to current events?? We read what the left writes, we hear what the left says, because we can't escape it, certainly not here in Canada: they dominate the discourse with their amoral funhouse mirror vision of our nation's place in the world.

How to expose the other side to our view, to a window into the arguments of people who are proud of the gifts of western civilization, grateful for the opportunities and freedoms bestowed by that western civilization, and safeguarded by nations like the United States of America and Israel. There once was a time when Canada could be counted as an equal shephard to democratic freedoms, and the spreading of them throughout the world. Will that time ever return? Can we recreate a majority willing to bear such responsibilities again? Not without an argument. Yet the left won't even debate, because they don't want to change their minds. For whatever reason, they fear being wrong more than they fear being dead.
Maybe because, with such a limited view, both mean the same thing.

How to reach people, on an ongoing basis, to a sufficient amount of exposure, to give them time to see that what they thought was a window is actually a mirror, that the evils they see are reflections of what lies within them.

The hermit on my bus who brags about how little he needs the outside world turns out to be so desperate to connect to it that his desperation reduces him to parasitically attaching himself to strangers. The left in Canada who brag of their superior compassion seem to hate everyone. They are so determined to help others that they only help themselves.

What will it take to get them to look inward, so that their outward view may be changed?

What seems to work best, to date, is using their own against them. Their methods, their terms, their allies. When we protest them, it unnerves them mightily. When we appropriate their slogans du jour, it mutes them. When we show them what bedfellows they sleep with ideologically, it reaches them.
Because it cracks their mirror.

Citizens Doing Something

Fireworks, English Bay, Vancouver

Tonight we have the start of the city's annual Fireworks Festival. Tomorrow Night we have the weekly Thursday fireworks of the Covenant Zone/Vancouver Blue Scarf Meeting. Join us in the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9 pm, and discuss how we can create new forms of association to redefine what it means to be a member of the Canadian public, taking a lead in promoting individual freedoms, responsibilities, and decentralized democracy at home, and helping fight for the same abroad. If only a few hundred voices are regularly heard in public, the monopoly of the anti-western and guilt-ridden activists and academics that dominate the Canadian scene can be broken.

See also Charles' superior explanation of what we are about

The UN and its "Human Rights" Council: still home to rapists and murderers, not to mention Kofi Annan

If Kofi Annan's evident pro-terrorist, anti-Israel, bias in the present conflict in Lebanon is not enough to convince you that the UN is an evil joke, most simply because it treats countless anti-democratic states as equal members with the nations of the free world, and that any realistic internationalism must be built on a primary foundation of discriminating respect for democratic nationhood and opposition to leftist-imperialist political globalization, and Umma one worldism, then this story from the National Post (via Atlas via Buddy Larsen) regarding an outrageous UN "Human Rights" Council speaking appearance for an Iranian official, the chief imprisoner of Iranian journalists and the man alleged to be primarily responsible for the brutal rape, torture and murder of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, should cause you night sweats:

The Iranian prosecutor implicated in the death of Montreal photojournalist Zahra Kazemi is part of a delegation at a new UN human rights body that was created to replace a commission widely discredited for allowing human rights abusers too much power.

The attendence of Saeed Mortazavi made a "mockery" of the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, according to critics.

The move also angered human rights activists and defenders of press freedom.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the inaugural council session on Monday, urging the member states to mark a "clean break" from the practices of the now-disbanded Human Rights Commission, which had become infiltrated with human rights abuser states.

Hillel Neuer, a Montrealer and executive director of activist group UN Watch, said he was shocked to see Mr. Mortazavi in the council hall.

"There is nothing more obscene than seeing someone alleged to have been involved in torture and possible murder sitting there as a dignitary," Mr. Neuer said. "Unfortunately, we're reminded that the Human Rights Council is still a case of the foxes guarding the chicken coop. There may be less foxes than there were in the commission, but that should not put anyone at ease."

"His [Mr. Mortazavi's] presence makes a mockery of the Council and is an open expression of defiance by Iran, which is sending a message to the international community that it has nothing to fear from anything the body might say about its human rights record," said Payam Akhavan, international law professor at Montreal's McGill University, and president of a Connecticut-based centre that documents human rights violations in Iran.

While Iran failed to win election to the 47-member Council, all UN member states can attend the body's sessions as observers, and Iran is expected to address the chamber tomorrow.
[...]
Among states with poor human rights records that won Council seats, Cuba said yesterday its election was a "victory" for human rights, while Saudi Arabia spoke in favour of women's rights despite denying Saudi women the right to vote or drive.

Canada won election to the Council, but the United States did not stand, saying it first wanted to see how the body conducted itself.

With Mr. Mortazavi is Iranian Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad, who served as spokesman for the Iranian judiciary following Ms. Kazemi's 2003 arrest.

Ms. Kazemi, 54, was arrested while photographing a demonstration outside Tehran's notorious Evin prison. She fell into a coma after being beaten while in custody. Authorities initially attributed her death to a stroke but later acknowledged the beating.

A report from Iran's Parliament, dominated by reformists at the time, blamed Mr. Mortazavi, Tehran's chief prosecutor, for Ms. Kazemi's illegal detention and the subsequent attempt to cover up the fatal beating. Mr. Mortazavi reportedly took part in her interrogation.
[...]
Reza Moini, a spokesman for Reporters Without Borders in Paris, said the presence of Mr. Mortazavi in Geneva undermines the UN's effort to present the new council as a fresh start.

"It's shameful that the Council of Human Rights accepts that a human-rights violator can participate and talk about human rights in Iran and around the world," Mr. Moini said in an interview. His group's secretary-general, Robert Menard, noted Mortazavi's involvement in Ms. Kazemi's death and called his presence in Geneva "an insult to victims of the Iranian government's repression."

"There is no justice in Iran. If there was, it is Mr. Mortazavi who should be in prison for these crimes," Mr. Moini said.

By Reporters Without Borders' count, the prosecutor is responsible for the jailing of more than 60 journalists and the closing of more than 80 newspapers since 2000. His actions earned him the nickname, "the butcher of the press."

In a 2004 report, "Like the Dead in Their Coffins: Torture, Detention and the Crushing of Dissent in Iran," Human Rights Watch said political prisoners in Tehran were known as "Mortazavi's prisoners" by guards and other prisoners. "Few individuals bear more responsibility for turning the judiciary into a tool of the ongoing political crackdown than Said Mortazavi," the report said, using an alternate spelling of his first name.

The allegations have not hurt Mr. Mortazavi's career, and he is the second highest-ranking member of Iran's delegation to the Geneva meeting, after the Justice Minister.

Iran's official news agency, IRNA, reported on Monday that Mr. Mortazavi wants the UN council to take a hard line on human-rights abuses by the United States and Israel. Among the other causes Mr. Mortazavi will defend are "the right to access high technologies, including nuclear technology for peaceful purposes" and freedom of expression for Holocaust deniers, IRNA reported.

Atlas provides a link to an appropriate petition.

Our Analysis Confirmed by One Net User

Someone from the Vancouver area found our blog today by Googling `mawo cult'. Heh, you can't fool all the people all the time!

Good News for MAWO: another dead Canadian in Afghanistan

Good news for MAWO (Mobilization Against War & Occupation) means bad news for Canada, and especially for Afghanistan.

Canada has lost yet another hero to the savagely unwesternized thugs of Afghanistan. Now the well-fed, well-clothed, university-inhabiting denizens of MAWO have an excuse for another rally, another petition, another chance to make Afghanistan even worse off by demanding, once more, that all Canadians leave that beleaguered war-torn nation, no matter what good they were accomplishing.
Was this brave man killed because Afghan brutes were ticked off at Canada's "criminal occupation" of Afghanistan, MAWO?

Vancouver man killed close to school

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A Vancouver humanitarian was shot to death in northern Afghan-istan on Sunday.

Mike Frastacky, 56, was killed close to a school he had been building each summer for the past four years.

His most recent task was to build a wall around the school compound to protect the children inside.
....
Frastacky, a professional carpenter, was not attached to any non-government organization and funded his own work, building a school in Nahrin, in the dangerous Baghlan province in northeastern Afghanistan.
….
"He loved it there," said [Maureen Mayhew, a close friend of Frastacky], who has also been to Afghanistan, working as a doctor.

"He died doing what he loved and it's got to be commended when somebody has the guts to do something that they love despite the risks."

Mayhew last heard from her friend, via e-mail, on Saturday.

She said he had joked about the grim political situation in Afghanistan and was "relatively happy and satisfied."

"He's done a couple of months' work every year. This was a routine he was doing. Checking up on how the school was functioning. He wanted to build a wall around the school compound to make it safer."

Unlike non-government agency workers, who are protected by NATO guards, Frastacky did not have protection.

Mayhew said Frastacky, who was single, was drawn to Afghanistan by the warmth of the people he worked with.

"The people are very hospitable and he felt like he was really doing some good there. He loved the people and he loved the area," she said.
…

There is such a contrast between the good people of Afghanistan and their bad. Why not work to further help their good? Why abandon them to the whims of the bad? How many schools have MAWO protestors funded for Afghanistan, they who are so concerned for the future safety and prosperity of Afghanis? Their official website seems modestly humble about their charitable deeds.
Never mind, we all know the answer to that, don't we... it isn't about helping other people, it is a group formed to make their misbegotten members feel better about themselves.

Afghanistan’s Little Red School House?

Blood red, that is:
"Our teacher beats me until blood comes out of my nails," says an 11-year old Afghan girl."
"If I don't have a stick with me, I can't teach... " says an Afghan male teacher.

Is there to be no hope for Afghanistan? I read this story and again I ask myself, are we as a nation serious about helping these people or not? Just how low is our standard of measurement, to insist on so few changes before proclaiming that nation as “helped”? The Taliban are gone… big deal, if their madrassas are to be replaced by "secular" schools like these:

Hard lessons in Afghan schools
July 24, 2006
HERAT, Afghanistan -- Nine-year-old Mahbuba has been beaten so many times by her teacher that she is afraid to go back to school.

Showing her bruised hands, she said, "Our teacher is a very bad person. My hands have gone black because of the beatings. I hate my teacher and school."

Mahbuba's father Nurullah, who lives in western Afghan province of Herat, is sympathetic to her plight - and he is furious with the school.

"I send my child to school so that she'll learn something, not for her to be beaten by vicious teachers," he said, adding that he has already had to take Mahbuba to a nearby hospital to have her hands treated.
….
The head of Herat's provincial education department, Mohammaduddin Fahim, said that beating and other forms of ill-treatment were against the country's education law, and any teacher found to be doing so would face legal sanctions.
….
Teachers in the province - where at least half-a-million children, two-fifths of them girls, attend about 600 schools - remain unrepentant about using violence, and openly hostile to instructions telling them to change.

"In my experience, unless pupils are beaten they will not be corrected," said Abdul Karim, a headmaster in the Pashtunzarghun district.” …..
Khowaja Mohammad Nadir Seddiqi, the head of the teachers union in Herat province, argued that since Afghan children had grown up surrounded with violence, they would not study unless they were beaten.

He had a simple message for his colleagues, "Teachers should use canes to beat their pupils, so that they fear them."

Saifuddin Maulawizada, a teacher in the Guzra district, described how he regularly beats his charges by tying up by their feet and beating them on the soles with a stick.

"If I don't have a stick with me, I can't teach because the pupils don't listen to me and they disrupt the lesson," said Maulawizada.
……
"In foreign countries, beating and threatening children is regarded as a crime for which the perpetrator is punished, whereas in our country, children are punished for very minor things," said Abdul Salam Hikmati, a member of the psychologists' association in Heart
……
Rahima Halimi, who heads the children's rights section of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission's Herat branch, said, "Violence against children is widespread both in the home and at school, and has a negative impact on children's minds. We have voiced the problem several times to the officials concerned, but no measures have been taken."

Apart from banning schools from administering physical punishment, [Mohammad Muhsen Ismailzada, who represents the Afghan education ministry in Heart], said that education officials are planning other steps to bring about change.
…..
Until these changes happen, pupils like Masooma, 11, will go to school only as long as their parents make them.

"Our teacher beats me until blood comes out of my nails," she said. "I am not an animal. I go to school to study, not to be beaten.

"I don't want to go to school, but my parents force me to."

I try to be optimistic as I stumble through life, but increasingly I see nothing but misery in store for these people. Sadly, all too many Canadians, young and old, proudly announce themselves lacking the will to be of necessary service to fix this problem. As a former CUPE member put it to my wife earlier this year, “who are we to tell these people how to live?”
What other sentiment could one expect from regular viewers of the CBC, Canada’s weapon of choice for self-flagellants? Why help other people, after all they’re only people themselves, it’s not like we have anything in common with them… or something like that; not being in the habit of watching the CBC, I’m a little vague on their reasoning.

Good Canadians are dying in Afghanistan. I do not want us to leave, but dammit I do want us to fix things, and we cannot fix what we deny is broken; we cannot clean a sewer if we declare ourselves indifferent to sewage . Every MAWO protestor who carries a “get out of Afghanistan” sign around my country makes it all the more likely that the political will to raise Afghanistan out of its moral rubble will suffer just as assuredly as the poor children being beaten black and blue by readers of the koran. Every CBC viewer who supports the NDP's position, as outlined last April,"to ask questions to help Canadians to determine if this is the right mission for Canada to be participating in, beyond our current commitments which end in February, 2007", every such supporter prolongs the misery of the Afghan people, and guarantees that valiant Canadian heroes are dying for nothing.

After reading these appaling stories of little girls being beaten by mysoginist readers of the koran, to the point where these tormented young women seemingly long for illiteracy as the lesser of two evils, what kind of Canadian would insist we abandon Afghanistan? If we leave, will these bloodthirsty schoolteachers, for instance, have more freedom to beat up children, or less?

"Is this the right mission going forward?", asked NDP leader Jack Layton.

What do you really believe, CBC viewers, MAWO dwellers, NDP supporters: dare we really “give peace a chance”?

You are bad, bad, bad.

I make no apologies for demanding of reasonable men that we act as filibusters in a pursuit of universal human rights and morality. I argue often, with predictable commentaries in reaction, for school teachers with gun who will stand in front of their pupils and shoot the parents who would destroy the children we would teach Humanness. Yes, take over other people's countries, shoot the locals and kill them, and then marry the women and raise up the kids to be our own in an America of the mind. I argue that that is what is to be done.

Here is one who disagrees. He's nearly perfect except for a few flaws in his mind and personality and social skill and so on. But other than that he's OK, I think....
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RESPONSE TO LETTERS
Christianity promotes hate, hypocrisy
BY GARY LEE FINKENBINER

I, as a born gay man, have chosen atheism and live happy in my choice. I love my fellow human beings and do not stand in judgment of them. I feel nothing but pity for those of you who feel such hate that you need to write letters proving it. You, my friends, are hypocrites and must live such unhappy lives I only can imagine your hearts barely beating. Hold on tight; your Jesus will surely come in the form of a heart attack caused by the great stress of your hate.

In response to the rash of hate letters, all showing complete disregard for their fellow man and woman, I would like to show what Christianity is doing for the modern world: in the name of God.

We start wars with Muslims over nothing, kill thousands of innocent people, call it democracy, tell them it's all for their good, in the name of God.

We rape, then kill entire families, go home American heroes, [until] someone finds out, then maybe we are prosecuted, but it will be covered up, all in the name of God.

We use a book of fables, lies and tales to brainwash and bully society, then call it a free country, as long as you are a Christian, in the name of God.

We rape innocent children, family members and parishioners then pay them off because we all know that money and religion are one and the same, cover it up like it never happened, forget the people and monsters we created and hide them, in the name of God.

We stand in judgment over anyone we choose because our book of fables tells us we can grow hate and bigotry, because we are empowered by this same book of hate and call it love, all in the name of God.

We lie, cheat, steal, abuse, kill, judge, hate and do everything that our so-called good book says not to do because it also says since we are Christians, we will be forgiven for doing it, but only us and no one else since we are so special, in the name of God.

Throughout history we have been the cause of many wars, mass deaths and unneeded human suffering and never have we admitted to anything because as Christians we are the ultimate in human beings and no one else deserves to live on this earth but us, in the name of God.

We are waiting for the day when we will be taken from this earth aboard a big space ship with Jesus and rescued from the mess we created, leaving behind everyone who ever disagreed with us, hoping of course that the world will explode as we leave because no one else deserves to live on but us, we are so special, you know, and so filled with hate for anyone else but us, in the name of God.

We go to nude stripper bars [and] triple-X bookstores during the week then church on Sunday and pretend we are better than everyone else, [with] no concern for the women we are exploiting, but complain relentlessly about a silent community that merely wants to have the same and equal rights as every human in this country, in the name of God.

We mourn the passing of a local hero who made his money from exploiting innocent women, but we seem to think nothing of it since he made himself out to be a good Christian who loves his mom, we love him and his money too, in the name of God.

The one fact that remains here is that religion is always a matter of choice. You choose to be brainwashed and force-fed the lies and fears of religion and live the false life of Christianity. You have a choice to join in the hate and bigotry or to distance yourself and realize that there is a world without religion called reality.

The writer lives in Conway.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/news/opinion/15108631.htm
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I guess he showed you. Thank God I'm an atheist. Otherwise I'd stumble upon him someday and punch his lights out, cause I'm all the bad things he thinks others are. Oh well, he's not too bright. But it ain't his fault, man, he's a victim. I forgot about that part. Uh-oh, I'm forgetting it again....

Yeah, I'm thinking about the kids in Afganhistan and the rest of the world. I remember.