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SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 2013

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
January 26, 2013 •Leave a Comment
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As I fight to stay awake not-eagerly awaiting the results of the Ontario Liberal Party leadership race, which I don’t really care that much about, and which I’m only really watching because I’m waiting for Jo-Anne to come back from walking our dog Sammy, I’ve come across some of the usual things that bug me. Here’s some:

• Many Ontarians say “aboat” instead of “about.” They speak of a “hoase” instead of a “house.” I do not know what is the matter with these people. They really should learn how to speak.

 

• I read another one of those articles in the paper this morning in which they pass off a state-owned, state-run government operation as a private corporation, thus continuing their long tradition of blindly, blithely blurring the lines between actual private enterprise, and big, politically progressive government mendaciously posing as private corporations, meddling in private enterprise, wrecking it and capitalism, as they have been doing for decades.

And this all reminds me to re-read Jonah Goldberg’s fabulous book “Liberal Fascism.” But anyway…

Today’s news article didn’t quite rise to the level of the egregious, oft-referred-to-by-me 2008 example from the Vancouver Sun about an aggrieved guy suing what he apparently forget or didn’t know was the fully state-owned, state-run BC Lottery Corporation, for ripping him off, and was quoted in the paper as saying “It’s about keeping corporations honest, that’s really what it’s about.”  It’s hard to top that powerful an example of the success with which the liberal news media and, more generally, the progressives, have succeeded, over decades of teaching people, to fail to understand what’s really going on around them, which is progressivism or Fabian Socialism.

Today’s article in the Sun Van_Sun_Jan_26_13_post_office-250pxis about a rather simple real estate and property development transaction. Canada Post, the state-owned, state-run government “corporation,” which is well-known to be a government operation, just sold its mammoth downtown Vancouver mail sorting plant. That’s fantastic. I always hated that the government owned that fabulous piece of what could otherwise be valuable commercial office space, useful to normal free-enterprising citizens to conduct business.  The problem is (a) that they sold it to yet another state-owned, state-run operation; and (b) the newspaper (again the Vancouver Sun), once again failed to be transparent about the true nature of the “corporation” involved. To wit:

VANCOUVER — The downtown branch of the Vancouver post office has been sold to the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (bcIMC), one of Canada’s largest institutional investment managers.

[...]

BCIMC isn’t a household name, but it quietly invests “more than $95 billion of managed gross assets,” including B.C.’s public-sector pensions.

“Our clients include public-sector pension plans, public trusts and insurance funds,” said Chittenden.

It owns several buildings in Metro Vancouver, including downtown landmarks like Park Place and the Evergreen Building, Willowbrook Shopping Centre in Langley and Broadway Tech, a 1.1-million sq. ft. campus at Broadway and Renfrew. It is currently building 745 Thurlow, a 23-storey office tower on the old Keg site at Thurlow and Alberni.

Nowhere is it explained that the “corporation” buying the property is actually another state-owned, state-run government investment trustee, this one being provincial instead of federal. They do go so far as to describe it a little, starting with “one of Canada’s largest institutional investment managers.” But that’s it. That’s all that matters to them? I don’t really think so, but that’s all they’re telling us.

Is it not important to anyone but me that it’s not really a private corporation, despite their making it sound as though it is?

For their own part the “clients” that BCIMC lists are all government, even though they don’t actually come out and say that.  The “insurance funds” they refer to include, as best I can tell, nothing more than yet another big government operation called “Worksafe BC”  –  which is the more politically-correct name slapped on to what is really the BC Government’s Workmen’s Compensation Board of B.C. (renamed to Workers Compensation Board of BC to appease feminists).

Like at all government operations posing as corporations, nearly half of the board of directors are appointed by the government. The BC Minister of Finance appoints three directors out of seven.

Trust me on this: henceforth, when there are complaints about the design, the style, substance, the quality, or rent increases as time goes on, within the development, they will lay blame at the feet of “the developer” or “the corporation,” and not refer once to the BC government, thus further advancing the negative narrative against actual corporations  –  instead of at big, huge progressive government.

So that bugs me.

 

• On a totally different topic, a good read today by the Globe & Mail’s Margaret Wendt about Obama’s latest rather brainless feel-good, appease-the-base move to allow military women to fight on the battle fields on the front line.

Women in combat: Let’s get real

…But please, people. Let’s get real. Women cannot equal men in ground combat, the kind of dirty, brutal stuff that (fortunately) makes up a very minor part of modern military life, especially post-Afghanistan. It’s not that they can’t be trained to kill – they can. The issue is that the physical differences between men and women are very large, and on the battlefield, they really matter, and can’t be wished away. Men are better fighters because they are bigger and stronger and can endure far more physical punishment before they break down.

The average female soldier is “about five inches shorter than the male soldier, has half the upper body strength, lower aerobic capacity and 37 per cent less muscle mass,” Stephanie Gutmann, author of The Kinder, Gentler Military, wrote in the New Republic. “She cannot pee standing up … She tends, particularly if she is under the age of 30 (as are 60 per cent of military personnel) to get pregnant.”

 

• And my wife (a woman) is back now, so mercifully, I can stop watching the Liberal Party leadership race. As I type, it appears to be aboat over, with an openly gay woman named Kathleen Wynne, who is married to another woman, set to become Ontario’s new premier and leader. I bet the media will make it ab-so-lute-ly clear that Kathleen Wynne is a lesbian.

UPDATE: see?Nat_Po_Wynne_win_Jan_27_2013-500px



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
January 26, 2013 •Leave a Comment
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Filed Under: America, Canada, Ontario
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Police politicization: Law breakers ignored while law-abiding protesters treated like criminals

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
January 13, 2013 •Leave a Comment
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Within the propaganda and tawdry political theatre that is the Idle No More movement and the Chief Spence diet program, something rather magnificent occurred last week. A Canadian judge had the courage and consistency to question the police, and perhaps make himself politically unpopular with the liberal bloc that is the senior Canadian judiciary.

Superior Court Judge David Brown, a man of singular wisdom and integrity, was chosen to hear an injunction request by CN Rail to stop the Native blockade of a railway line in Sarnia. Their action was dangerous, irresponsible and — most pertinent of all — plainly illegal. Brown granted the injunction.

But, as we’re so often told in seemingly interminable episodes of Law and Order on television, there are several branches to the law. Now came the turn of the police to implement the law without fear or prejudice.

Problem is, the Sarnia cops demonstrated both in enormous lumps.

Not only did they refuse to comply with the injunction, they refused to even try to do so, and there is evidence that one officer, a staff-sergeant, actually joined the protesters. Orders from the most senior kind instructed officers not to intervene, and at every level of the Sarnia police word had gone out to in effect ignore the law.

In the end, this small protest was ended quite easily when the hands of the police were forced, and with no violence or even particular problems. But it took far too long. The disregard, even contempt, evinced for the law from high-ranking police officers and police lawyers is staggering, and reminiscent of some foreign state we would previously have mocked.

Thank goodness for Judge Brown, but those of us who have covered demonstrations and reported on the police in Canada have seen this politicization for some time now.

In the past year alone, for example, I have seen the police intimidate and harass, even physically remove and threaten to arrest, pro-Israel demonstrators, yet ignore their anti-Zionist counterparts across the street.

I have seen peaceful Christians physically attacked at a gay pride parade and cops ignore their attackers and instead caution the victims and promise to arrest them if they did not leave the scene.

I have seen teenage pro-lifers handcuffed and arrested, merely for holding signs, and an opponent of abortion have his camera confiscated, the photos inside destroyed. He was then told the destruction was accidental — the photos proved police brutality — and it took three separate actions to “accidentally” erase them.

Right to protest

In all of these cases, it should be not the beliefs of the protesters, but the right to peacefully protest that shapes the police response. Yet Natives breaking the law are ignored or encouraged, while law-abiding supporters of Israel, the family or the unborn are treated like criminals.

They are far from isolated cases.

Any private conversation with rank-and-file cops will reveal how depressed they are about the situation, but a new generation of recruits, drowned in politically correct training classes, has often lost sight of what policing is.

When an enormously respected judge tells the police they are not doing the job, surely even Canadians have to demand action.

Let’s see, let’s just see.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
January 13, 2013 •Leave a Comment
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Filed Under: Canada, Columnists, Michael Coren, Ontario
• Also follow Joel Johannesen on Twitter -- @JoelJohannesen

Ontario Liberal premier quits amid contempt charge(s), doubling of debt, failure to lead

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
October 16, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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The super-liberal Canadian mainstream media is twisting like fat-free, no-trans-fats pretzels today (in deference to McGuinty’s daddy-state Ontario food consumption laws and regulations), trying to whitewash failed Ontario Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty’s resignation as (for example) merely a “personal” decision. This is exactly as he risibly claimed yesterday. After all, the excuse has been poll-tested by the wind-powered Liberal machine, and by gum, these are winning words! Trust them! They’re the (liberal) gov’ment!

This is as per the liberal media guidebook, in which they are instructed to simply regurgitate exactly what any liberal politician commands them to say. Had it been a conservative premier quitting at a time of abject failure amidst charges of corruption and debt-doubling (or for purely altruistic reasons), trust me, they’d be pulling their full Sarah Palin. That’s when they suddenly become ever so earnest news hounds, digging and finding “journalistic” reasons to question everything, and somehow then finding supposed nation-saving, truth-based reasons to assassinate the personal (and family!) character of a politician, and engage in the conservative-career-bashing techniques taught to them at the state universities and colleges under the rubric of “investigative journalism.”

The even more smarmy among the mainstream media are wagging their fingers at us conservatives, admonishing us that today is not the day to be all negative and political (read truthful), but rather it is a day to openly embrace his daddyship’s super-duper career. Laud his supposed benevolence and longtime “public service” and his supposed personal sacrifice. Some Liberal Dalton McGuintyare even attempting to advance McGuinty’s political career today, by seriously suggesting that after failing Ontario, he might possibly be a good contender for an even bigger train wreck  –  that of Liberal Party Of Canada leader. And do even more damage ( — my words, like I had to tell you!).

It’s hideous. And it doesn’t speak well for Canadians that so many apparently continue to buy into the narrative being spewed by nearly all of the liberal news media.

Luckily, I don’t like pretzels and don’t consume them. I mean unless they’re fried in bacon fat and covered in milk chocolate. So I have little more than another disdainful head-shake about McGuinty’s latest news.

In a nutshell, by which I mean McGuinty’s party and his premiership was a nutshell within which he was the nut-in-chief, it’s good news for Ontario. Maybe now Ontarians will take a breath and take another look at the huge mistake they made in the last election, which you’ll remember was only a year ago. And take another look at their media and how they advocate for liberals and liberalism, rather than for the right politicians. Not that I’m holding my breath.

Start by asking why he even ran in the last election since incredibly, only a year after the last election, he said yesterday that by golly, one of the reasons he’s quitting  is because now “it’s time for renewal, it’s time for the next Liberal premier”. Maybe my brain cells are all clogged from all the trans fats, but it seems to me it’s pretty obvious that last year was the “time for renewal.”

As it is, they’re still going to be stuck with a Liberal Party government at least until the next election, which, due to “time for renewal,” might be a few weeks from when the next Liberal Party leader is chosen.

Paper shredders aren’t subsidized by government “investment” wizard Barack Obama or Dalton McGuinty or any other progressive governments, yet, are they? As long as they’re “investing” for purely political or left-wing ideological reasons, and then (allegedly or otherwise) covering-up when they prove to be abject failures or saturated in crony capitalism or politics, that “investment” would have at least paid-off far better for liberals and the citizens, whose money they’re “investing.” Alas they mostly pick losers.

So today, for my part, and as long as they’re not government subsidized, I’m looking at investing in the companies that make paper shredders. Between Obama’s Benghazi-gate and that associated ongoing media-aided cover-up, the Liberal Party of Canada’s sponsorship-gate (which is still paying dividends), the recent Quebec Liberal government’s alleged corruption, and now Ontario’s Liberal mess, and that of other liberal administrations across North America and Europe, I think that’s a winner for the rest of us.

 

 



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
October 16, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Bullies or victims? Fairness and proportionality strike out in sport and sexuality

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
September 23, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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So, a guy who plays pro sport is an idiot. Good Lord, I can’t believe it! I mean, who knew?

Yes, Yunel Escobar was dumb enough to write on his face in Spanish something akin to “You are a faggot,” thus enabling every hypocrite and self-indulgent victim fetishist to moan about the horrors of homophobia.

Big money and big entertainment will do pretty much anything to not offend the gay community these days, and in this case their acts of ostensible contrition were positively nauseating.

Frankly, I don’t think Escobar intended a slur on homosexuals, and was probably not even thinking of homosexuality when for some perverse reason he wrote these nasty words beneath his eyes. It was probably some silly, jock, inside joke.

When it’s used by teenage boys, the word faggot generally means idiot or loser. I’ve heard kids who are trendily pro-gay and pro-same-sex marriage use the term “fag” with no apparent understanding that there is a connection. I’ve also heard gay people use it about other gays. The word will disappear naturally, as is right.

It should never have been written, and no professional sports team should allow an employee to write anything, even innocuous, on his face.

But the story ends there really.

Rogers, the owners of the Toronto Blue Jays, fined the guy $90,000 and suspended him for three games, which is fair enough.

Unlike in 2011 when television sports anchor Damian Goddard was fired from Sportsnet, also owned by Rogers, just hours after he tweeted his support for “the traditional and true meaning of marriage.” He had been defending a hockey player’s agent who was receiving death threats and abuse for refusing to support a pro-gay-marriage campaign.

It could have been a coincidence of course, but we’ll leave that to the human-rights commission where it is being considered. Goddard never used an offensive word, and merely expressed his opinion of marriage. Perhaps he should have written it on his face — he may well still be employed!

As for Escobar — bad word, move on. Stop the grovelling, stop the nonsense, get it in proportion. After all, it’s nothing like what happened to Peter Vidmar. You didn’t know? OK, let me explain. Vidmar is one of the most successful athletes in U.S. history. He was chosen to be the chef de mission of the U.S. Olympic team in the last Olympics, as was gay activist Mark Tewksbury for Team Canada. But Vidmar is a Mormon, and it was discovered that he had made a small donation to the Proposition 8 campaign, enshrining marriage as the union of a man and woman. He has never called anyone a nasty name, never treated gay people badly, is an example of a gentleman in sport. But he opposed gay marriage, and after relentless pressure he was forced to resign.

So who are the bullies, who are the victims, in sport and sexuality? Nobody should face or feel discrimination in professional sport, but can we please stop magnifying a dumb gesture into an act of sociological and moral barbarism?

Oh, and as for compulsory sensitivity training, the Jays are in far greater need of baseball training. The genuine victims are the fans.

 



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
September 23, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Sympathy well runs dry

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
September 2, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Ontario teachers are giving us an education in groundless bellyaching

 So there he was, the leader of one of Ontario’s largest high school teachers’ unions. He sat on national television and explained there was going to be a day of action, and his members would, in his words, “take time off from their volunteering at school to prepare lessons and show the government that they are angry” and don’t want a pay freeze.

I’m sorry! Time off volunteering at school? First, that’s nonsense and you know it.

Most teachers wouldn’t attend a day of action during their vacation because they’re still at the cottage, because teachers have the entire summer off and are paid handsomely with our tax dollars through July and August. Also because, quite frankly, most of them are not particularly political in the first place.

How about the idea that they don’t want their wages frozen? In Ontario, and the situation is not radically different in the rest of Canada, teachers have been given increases almost unheard of elsewhere, which is almost unprecedented in a groaning economy and certainly enormously generous. That’s happened because the Liberal government in Ontario bribed teachers to be nice, purchased union passivity, gave our money to teachers to prevent those same teachers from going on strike and thus giving grief and hardship to the very people — parents — who pay their wages in the first place.

Teaching isn’t easy, but nor is it so terribly hard. Very few Canadians would refuse to exchange their jobs for an indoor life with three months paid vacation, $75,000 a year or more, and retirement in their early 50s with around $60,000 a year for the rest of their lives. I don’t begrudge you, but please stop moaning on that you’re more giving than Mother Teresa and more exploited than some poor bugger enslaved on a 19th-century Mississippi plantation!

I’m tired of hearing about burn out, tired of hearing mythology about getting to school at 7 a.m. and not leaving until 6 p.m., tired of sick days, tired of showing videos when you should be teaching, tired of your activists and leaders with their leftism and social engineering, tired of pretending that public education works so well when, in fact, it is highly questionable.

Teachers in this country have frequently put all of their resources into defeating provincial governments and federal politicians of whom they disapprove.

They have campaigned tirelessly for parties they knew would give them almost anything they wanted. It’s not so easy now, because the money is running out, and even the leftist parties can’t help you much anymore.

The problem you really face is the deposit of sympathy in the bank of the body politic has been run dry. People care, but not that much — they’re more concerned, and understandably so, with their own jobs and futures.

We like you, we respect you, we wish you well, but we also wish you’d teach, give up politics and show a bit of gratitude for the way you’re treated, compensated and cuddled by the rest of society. Hey teacher, leave our cash alone!

Now I’m off to double detention, because I’ve been a very naughty boy indeed.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
September 2, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Pampered prince

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
August 27, 2012 •2 Comments

Michael Bryant has a new book out. Yes, the former attorney general of Ontario, a man tipped to be the eventual leader of the Liberal party and even perhaps prime minster of Canada, has just given us 28 Seconds: A True Story of Addiction, Tragedy and Hope.

Appallingly pretentious and lazy title aside, the main point is that this pampered prince of the liberal establishment was an alcoholic and he is angry that the police treated him harshly and even charged him back in 2009, when Darcy Allan Sheppard leapt onto his car and the young bicycle courier was killed.

Look, when Bryant panicked and when Sheppard died, most of us surely thought it was something, while tragic, that could have happened to anybody.

Bryant did not appear to have acted unusually or unnaturally, though there were some worrying questions to be asked.

He was charged, and then after an investigation told that he was free to go. That is how the system works in a civilized nation and as a former attorney general, Bryant really should know this.

That the police initially charged Bryant with dangerous driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death is also part of that same civilized equation.

It’s the law, and it must apply equally to all — from wealthy lawyers with powerful friends to troubled and broken young men who ride bicycles.

Bryant writes, “It is not unusual for Toronto Police Services to wait weeks (or even months) before deciding how they will proceed with such charges. In my case, the police couldn’t wait a news cycle. I got the opposite of special treatment.”

No you didn’t.

If anything you were treated kindly, and I’d bet the house on the fact that someone like Darcy Allen Sheppard wouldn’t have had the same treatment.

Nor would he have been able to afford the toughest lawyer in town or hire a leading PR company to represent him. You could and did both, Michael.

He also claims the police didn’t interview witnesses properly, yet the police have revealed they have never received a complaint from Bryant or his lawyers about this, and they went to the trouble of bringing in a special prosecutor from outside of the province to guarantee local bias would not influence matters.

Bryant also sounds more than a little smug and artificial when he says he hopes the book brings comfort to others who have struggled, when there’s very little indication of contrition or sorrow on offer — a point emphasized by Sheppard’s adoptive father since the book’s publication.

The fact is, Bryant was a major player in a Liberal party machine that enjoys massive influence within the law, business and media in Canada, and particularly in Ontario.

Some of its senior members have a sense of entitlement that is hideous, and assume they are more significant and important than the rest of us.

Frankly, I may well not have liked Darcy Allan Sheppard very much, but the fact is he is the one who died in all this and the one whose family grieve.

I’m sorry Mr. Bryant, it’s simply not all about you.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
August 27, 2012 •2 Comments

Filed Under: Canada, Columnists, Michael Coren, Ontario
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It’s about power: Al-Quds Day a celebration of hatred and terrorism

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
August 20, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Beyond the hatred, the racism and the anger, there’s a certain irony surrounding Al-Quds Day, commemorated this weekend internationally and to its shame — in Toronto.

The event was founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and is an overwhelmingly Shiite Islam event. Anybody who knows Islam will understand that the Shiites are despised in most of the majority Sunni world. They were treated as second-class citizens in Lebanon, they are murdered in Pakistan, they are thought as being, golly, even worse than the Jews in Syria, and there aren’t any in Egypt because Saladin killed them all.

So spare me the lies and propaganda about Islamic brotherhood and the fraternity of Muslim believers. You have not seen genuine hatred if you haven’t seen how Muslim sect treats Muslim sect. And you’ll see a lot more of it when President Assad falls, and his fellow Alawites, a version of Shiite Islam, are likely slaughtered like cattle.

While this sordid event can take place in Canada, it would likely be banned or violently suppressed in most Muslim countries. Believe me, it’s not about Jews; it’s about power, and the psychotic inability of international Muslim leadership to tolerate anybody who does not agree with the established position.

The epicentre of Al-Quds Day is Iran, where homosexuals are publicly executed, women stoned to death, dissidents gang-raped and then murdered, the Holocaust denied, and international terrorism planned and financed. Tehran is the model that many of the people at the centre of this protest admire and would like to see replicated everywhere. They couldn’t give a damn about the Palestinians, and see their plight as another way to extend their own ideology. Good Lord, some of them even pretend to be Iranian when they’re not. I interviewed one of the Al-Quds Day organizers some years ago, and knew him to be Pakistani. He lied to my face, because being Iranian is apparently way sexier in the Islamic fanatic community.

So this is not about free speech at all. Freedom is sacred, but it is not the same as license. All civilized people condemn public pleas for violence and genocide, which is what will be heard at the demonstration if they are in any way similar to past gatherings, and judging by activists’ e-mails that have already been circulated.

There may well also be Hezbollah flags flown. This internationally recognized terrorist group is illegal in Canada and is also playing a central role in the Syrian massacres that we read about every day.

Imagine, for example, a large group of people waving Paul Bernardo flags, or Nazi banners.

A lot of mainstream Arabs and supporters of Palestine are uncomfortable with this gruesome display, but too many politicians, especially Liberal ones, seem to measure morality by votes. It’s not whether something is wrong or not, but how many people might support the party if a stand is taken.

That’s horrible. In some ways even more horrible than the day itself.

As you read [Friday, August 17, 2012 08:00 PM, EDT] this I’ll be speaking to 800 Catholics in Winnipeg. No terror, no hatred, no screaming for blood.

Religions aren’t all the same.

Really, really not the same.

 



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
August 20, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Racism nightmare

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
July 23, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Political correctness holding us back from facing gangster problem

 

There was a BMW SUV parked outside the house, the earnest reporter told us on the radio earlier this week, following the shooting of more than 20 people, and the killing of two at a Toronto party.

But surely the reasons for urban shootings are poverty, lack of air-conditioning, too few basketball courts, racism and a history of oppression.

Whoops, scrap the last reference, because if we mention race, the people out there to whom we lie on a constant basis will realize that gun crime is often the result of black gangsters fighting over drug turf, respect, or simply because they’ve nothing better to do.

Not that we’re always even told the ethnicity of the criminals, sometimes resulting in the ludicrous, Kafkaesque scenario where the police give out descriptions of dangerous people they want to arrest, but are often too politically intimidated to be specific about their colour.

It’s the racism of lowered expectations, in that white people know who the gangsters are because they’re not fools, and black people know because they are so often the direct victims of these sociopathic cretins.

It’s a scene replicated internationally, and even if we ignore the American example ­— where there genuinely is a history of discrimination and the phenomenon of a multi-generational underclass — the problem is entirely obvious. In Britain, for example, there are specific black crime units in every major city. Not, presumably, because everybody is obsessed with catching Conrad Black.

Many of the officers in these outfits are black, and they might just know a little more about who the killers are than white politicians terrified of speaking truth to liberal power, more than Sally Social Worker with her degree in gender studies, or Bobby Bolshevik, who blames everything on anything other than the real causes.

It’s partly about self-regard. Too many teenage girls in the black community have so little of it that they are obsessed with becoming “baby mamas.” What’s love got to do with it? Sod all! Forget love, it’s hardly even about sex. It’s plastic self-esteem through pseudo-parenting, while the man’s self-esteem is defined by the very opposite. He is hardly on the scene at all, and she likes is that way. Of course some of these girls grow to be mature and responsible mothers, but far from all.

If you have several children by various fathers, and if those children are never given any sense of boundary or limitation, if the ostensible mothers party rather than work, and then if they’re told by suburban whites that they’re victims rather than perpetrators, it’s no wonder we have what we do.

Combine this with an attitude that despises authority, a police force led by people seemingly more concerned with appearances than arrests, the pop culture glorification of a rancid sub-culture, and politicians who know even less than they care, and we have disaster.

There has always been ethnic crime, but “civilians” were not targeted, and fleshy profit triumphed over moral and personal anarchy. I’m so damned tired of kids dying while adults are lying.

A great man had a dream, but many who have followed him have made the world a nightmare.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
July 23, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Filed Under: Canada, Columnists, Michael Coren, Ontario
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A hateful paradox: Queers Against Israeli Apartheid oppose what is really the bitter truth.

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
June 24, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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A homophobe writes, so to speak.

Actually I don’t hate anyone, and I’ve not been frightened of, or intimidated by, much since working in Belfast and the West Bank. But because I oppose same-sex marriage and some of the more aggressive aspirations of the gay community, I’m called all sorts of things.

It doesn’t matter. What does matter is some 6,000 gay men have been murdered in Iran and thousands more beaten, tortured and slaughtered in Egypt, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Jordan and pretty much everywhere else in the Arab and Islamic world.

I mention this because once again Queers Against Israeli Apartheid are about to march in the Pride parade in Toronto. The term is a gruesome misnomer, a macabre political irony, a hateful paradox.

And it’s time for someone who is not regarded as a friend of the gay community, and who would never attend the parade, to make it abundantly clear that only a moral criminal would ignore the plight of gay people inside Israel’s neighbours, and pretend that Israel treated homosexuals with anything other than total equality.

Let me be clear. I do not approve of the Pride parade, and find the hedonistic displays, cross-dressing, nudity and self-obsession highly objectionable. I also know that the claims of more than a million attendees are a joke.

It is my right to disapprove, as it is the right of gay people to be treated with respect and to have the same freedoms and protection under law as anybody else. Discrimination in employment, housing or inheritance is wrong. End of story.

One of the reasons I so admire the Jewish state is that whatever its challenges — and few nations face more — it labours to guarantee these fundamental principles and laws. There are many Muslims, Christians and Jews in Israel who would prefer there were no Pride parades in Tel Aviv, Haifa and now even Jerusalem. But there are. There are some who detest the thriving gay scene in Tel Aviv, the welcoming of gay tourists, the presence of openly gay army officers, some of whom have won medals for the highest gallantry.

This disagreement is part of the democratic process. It does not, however, exist in any Arab country. Even relatively moderate Jordan or Lebanon have no protection for homosexuals. The first gay conference in the entire Arab world, held in Beirut a few years ago, had more police guards than participants. Gay Palestinians flee their homes for the freedom of Israel, gay Egyptians plead to enter Israel for a life of dignity.

Don’t believe this homophobe, go and visit.

So how dare they, how the hell dare they, try to exploit the parade in Toronto to spread their venom and their racist propaganda! They’re not queers against Israeli apartheid, but neurotics and extremists screaming at mommy and daddy, and using people’s ignorance or indifference to create an untruth. If you tell a lie often enough, said the fascists, people believe it. How right they were.

Remember one thing. The parade, and even the anti-Zionist fanatics in the parade, would be allowed and protected in only one place in the entire Middle East. Yes, Israel. L’chaim.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
June 24, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Filed Under: Canada, Ontario
• Also follow Joel Johannesen on Twitter -- @JoelJohannesen

Not sorry enough: Cops’ apology to humiliated dad falls short

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
June 10, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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The name Jesse Sansone may not register with most readers, but how about the Crayon Dad?

This was the 26-year-old man who earlier this year in Kitchener, Ontario, was handcuffed, arrested, and strip-searched by the police, and whose three children were removed by Family and Children’s Services, all because his four-year-old daughter had drawn a picture at school that a teacher considered worrying.

“I didn’t even know why I was being arrested for a long time,” this disarmingly gentle, rather innocent man explains. “I went to pick up my daughter from school, and the police were waiting for me. I was handcuffed, put in the back of the cruiser, with children from my daughter’s school looking in. When I asked the police why they were doing this, they advised me not to say anything.”

The charge was, it turned out, possession of a firearm.

Earlier this week, the police issued a rather perfunctory apology, not for arresting and humiliating him, but for the strip search.

“It doesn’t seem enough,” Sansone says. “I believe I deserve something more. Nobody has ever seen the picture, as it was rubbed off the board. They say it was of me shooting monsters. But so what?”

The teacher who made the complaint apparently thought the alleged picture drawn by a four-year-old of daddy fighting monsters merited calling Family and Children’s Services, who decided to involve police, and Jesse and his wife’s horror began. They have been sweethearts since they were teenagers, they are happily married, religious and law-abiding people. Good folks.

“At no time did anybody actually call me, and ask me anything,” he says, a little nervous and clearly still stunned by the whole thing.

“I mean, the school had offered me a job not long before, and the principal knew me. He later called to apologize, said he knew nothing about it, which I find difficult to believe.”

His children have had to move to another school of course, after the ritual humiliation and traumatization. Pathetically, his daughter thought she had hurt daddy. And his reputation was hardly improved by the number of cops and social workers getting involved. Yet at no time was there any evidence of any wrongdoing or any gun.

When the school authorities were asked about the appalling case, a pompous twit at the board explained that they “co-parent” with parents. The audacity and arrogance is breathtaking!

Those who work at the school itself have said very little, and the panicked teacher has not shown any contrition or, as far as we know, been penalized or suspended. The police, who according to Sansone misled him and gave him no chance to explain, built a blue wall around those officers and their superiors who thought this civilized behaviour in a free society.

As for the social workers, they of course have escaped consequences because social workers almost always do.

Jesse would like a genuine apology, and while he is not asking for it, surely deserves compensation.

If he was an Islamic terrorist, there would be lawyers all over him. Alas, he’s a simple, working-class guy living an ordinary life, and those people apparently don’t matter very much in modern Canada.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
June 10, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Filed Under: Canada, Michael Coren, Ontario
• Also follow Joel Johannesen on Twitter -- @JoelJohannesen

Church can’t be bullied into accepting homosexuality

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
June 4, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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So it’s happened.

In a sordid attempt to deflect from scandals and mismanagement, the Liberal government of Ontario has told the Catholic school system it has to do what it’s told, not be Catholic and embrace the lie that gay kids are perennial victims of bullying.

Be warned in the rest of Canada, this will likely happen to you as well.

First, the dishonesty of the premise that gay children are bullied. Some are, of course, but there is no objective study concluding gays are targeted.

Body image is the major reason for bullying and figures that indicate otherwise tend to come from gay organizations.

As for bullying itself, teachers have been trying to stop bullying since teaching, and bullying, began. Far too much time has been devoted to the bullying of gay kids, largely because the gay community seems to have an emotional hold over our culture and politicians right now.

There is no doubt gay people have often been bullied in the past, and — this is important — no child, no person, should be made to feel dirty or unloved merely because of their sexuality.

But let’s be serious here. Urban North America has become extremely gay-friendly in recent years, to the point where in some schools it is even a fashion statement to come out, and silly girls regard having a gay friend as the ultimate fashion accessory.

Teachers rush to the defence, even the affirmation, of gay kids and homosexuality, gay teachers often push an agenda, and students who from a Christian or Muslim perspective have any sort of objections to the homosexual lifestyle are made to feel eccentric, if not evil.

Back to this specific case. In Ontario, people are losing their jobs and people are dying on hospital waiting lists, and yet the government obsesses about an issue that even many in the gay community are not concerned about.

The minister leading the charge is Laurel Broten, who back in 2007, and much to the chagrin of neighbours, became slightly famous when she and hubby applied for a permit to build a large, two-storey garage monstrosity behind their home for their four — yes four! — cars. She was environment minister at the time! Now she’s at education, and appears similarly consistent.

It’s actually quite simple. Catholic schools are Catholic. Not very these days, with the influence of an often anti-Catholic teachers’ union and the majority of teachers being Catholic only in name.

But the schools themselves are still supposed to be committed to Church teaching: Jesus is saviour, Virgin Mary, Papal authority, turning the other cheek, marriage between man and woman, and all that stuff. If you object, fine. Go to a public school.

What the schools are being told now is not to stop bullying (they already do) but to affirm homosexuality (which they can’t).

The alternative to a gay kid being bullied is not a gay-straight alliance but an end to bullying.

But then this isn’t about children being bullied and hasn’t been from the beginning.

It’s about government and activists bullying others into acceptance of homosexuality.

Whatever happened to genuine tolerance?



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Michael Coren
June 4, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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Filed Under: Canada, Michael Coren, Ontario
• Also follow Joel Johannesen on Twitter -- @JoelJohannesen

Ontario bloggers needed

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
March 13, 2012 •Leave a Comment

Want to write in the Ontario blog section of ProudToBeCanadian on a regular basis? Let us know.

Contact us.

Here are some notes about that:

  • Payment commensurate with that of ants. Not even welfare ants. Just plain, unpaid ants.
  • Must be a good blogger/writer (good content, spelling, grammar, etc.; good at self-editing for legality issues like libel, copyright, etc). We don’t write in smartphone text-talk. Instead we write in actual, whole words. And we use capital letters ‘n stuff. And we don’t put apostrophes before every s as if to warn readers of an impending s; nor even use an apostrophe in “its” unless we’re contracting “it is.”
  • Must adhere to solid conservative political values. Which doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to party. Partying, especially tea party-type activities, is strongly encouraged. Also parties with booze.
  • Cross-posting to other blogs or newspapers is OK, as long as there are no copyright issues with others. Cross-dressing is not encouraged.
  • It would be helpful if you’re not a Luddite. Knowing the basic technical parameters of blog posting would be good. Like you should know how to attach a picture to an email. Hi-tech stuff like that.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
March 13, 2012 •Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Ontario
• Also follow Joel Johannesen on Twitter -- @JoelJohannesen