Hussein Hamdani does Charlie Hebdo

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Jan 15

Since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, my hometown newspaper has been running articles intended to soothe western hostility to Islam and reassure its western readership about the peaceful intentions of the Muslims in their midst.  In the Hamilton area, the Muslim population is less than 5 % of the total, and may therefore be regarded as weak in numbers.

The latest in the campaign to assuage fear of Islam and of the Muslims in our midst was an interview with Hussein Hamdani.  According to the reports, Mr. Hamdani, as a young boy, was one of the “Asians” expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in the mid-1970s.  He grew up in Hamilton.  He was a student at McMaster University and was treasurer of the McMaster Muslim Students Association, at which job he reported anti-Muslim graffiti on the walls in a campus washroom.  Presently, he is a partner in a local law firm, is the vice-chair of the North American Spiritual Revival, and a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Greater Hamilton.  Not only was he interviewed by the newspaper, he also appeared as a guest on a local radio station.  At one time he was a regular guest columnist for the Hamilton Spectator, and was on the Board of Directors of a local immigrant settlement center when that enterprise collapsed in fraud charges.  It would be fair to say that Mr. Hamdani has been on the front lines of defense and support of Muslims for quite some time.

In the radio interview, as reported by the show`s host Scott Thompson, Mr. Hamdani said “I`m sick and tired of people hijacking my religion for their own personal vendettas.”

The newspaper interview was more extensive and some pretty tough questions were asked by the reporter, Jon Wells.  Wells held before Hamdani the fact that a lot of terrorism against the West has been done by Muslims in the name of Islam.  Hamdani did his best to answer while not apologizing for being a devout Muslim.  He certain knew how to answer effectively for a western audience.  Some of the tougher questions Mr. Hamdani seemed to evade answering directly, or answered in a slippery manner.  The published interview gave comfort to westerners who were looking for comfort, but for those who knew what to look for and entirely different feeling emerged.

Due to lack of space and time, reporter Wells was not able to engage in back-and-forth discussion with Mr. Hamdani.  As a result, some questions I would like to have seen put and answered were not asked.  These three came to mind:

1.      Should Canadian law be more or less Sharia compliant?

2.      If the population of Canada were 50 % Muslim, would the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms be made more Sharia compliant?

3.      Since you, Mr. Hamdani, are not an Islamic scholar or an Imam, what weight would other Muslims place on your opinion of what Islam is or says?

The questions concerning Sharia are the real test of Islamic Supremacism.  Those who believe in the imposition of Sharia law are, whether they are violent or not, Islamic Supremacists; and Islamic Supremacism is the actual threat to Western Civilization.  I expect that Mr. Hamdani would evade answering questions 1 and 2.

The correct answer to question 3 is nothing, or next to nothing.  The consequence of that answer is that westerners can take no solace from what Mr. Hamdani says about Islam and the intentions of its adherents.  If other Muslims won`t listen to him, then his opinion is valueless to westerners.  Al Azhar University in Cairo, the Islamic scholars and Imams who advocate jihad are the ones to whom westerners need to pay attention, since those are the institutions and people who say what Islam is and says that inspires ISIS, al Qaeda, and lone-wolf terrorists around the globe.

The problem for Mr. Hamdani is that, as a result of the scholarship of Al Azhar University, there is no principled distinction between a devout Muslim and an Islamic Supremacist.  A measure of one’s devoutness as a Muslim is the degree to which one supports the supremacy of Islam, the enforcement of Sharia law, and the submission of all to Allah.  And Mr. Hamdani is, apparently, a devout Muslim.

Nobody blames the swamp when they are being set upon by mosquitos.  Initially, they blame the mosquitos.  After a while, however, getting rid of biting mosquitos means having to deal with the swamp.  The swamp is the habitat in which those noxious mosquitos breed and grow, and destruction of habitat is the surest way of making a species disappear.

The surest way for Western Civilization to avoid being bitten by mosquitos in future is to drain the swamp in their midst.

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More Pious Dissimulation?

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Jan 15

My hometown newspaper ran a letter to the editor supporting an article written by Dr. Raza Khan, who wrote in defense of Muslims in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  The letter writer was a director of the Muslim Association of Brantford, a town not far from Hamilton.  The review below of the argumentation of the writer was an attempt to expose what I regard as Islamic dissimulation.  Pious dissimulation that advances the cause of Islam is permitted in Islam, and there are four words which name the different kinds of pious dissimulation. 

Saeed Baloch gives little comfort to those who have followed Islamic Supremacist terrorism for a while, and are familiar with the pious dissimulation that is permitted in Islam.

In describing “those masked individuals who killed the journalists in France” as not representing Muslims, he fails to say why they and others like them believe that they are following Islam more closely than fellows like Dr. Raza Khan and Saeed Baloch are.  What exactly does not representing mean?  To say that the killers were not representative of Muslims is clearly false in view of what goes on in ISIS, the Taliban, al Qaeda, etc. since these organizations are filled exclusively with Muslims. These men certainly were representative of a wide segment of Muslim opinion.  Not representing means that no one elected them or appointed them for a particular role, and that much is true, but irrelevant.

In qualifying those masked gunmen as those ‘who killed the journalists’, what about those self-same people who killed three police officers and four Jewish shoppers?  I would say that in killing police officers and shoppers, the gunmen weren't acting in good Islamic faith, but in respect of the journalists, they certainly were (see Hadith Book 38 Verse 4348).  It would be more accurate and complete to describe the killers as unchristian rather than unIslamic.

It means nothing to hear a Muslim say that he is opposed to killing people unjustly, because what constitutes just killing in the eyes of Islam is certainly different from what Westerners conceive.  In view of Hadith Book 38 Verse 4348, the killing of the Charlie Hebdo journalists was justified because they insulted the prophet of Islam.  Bloggers are whipped and imprisoned in Saudi Arabia to this day for that very offense, and Saudi Arabia is certainly Islamic.  Ditto in Pakistan, another Muslim country.  Ditto in The Sudan, another Muslim country.  The penalty for apostasy in these and most other Muslim countries is death.  These countries are also not representing Muslims; but their laws are representative of Muslim beliefs. 

Baloch's call for ‘coming generations to live in peace and harmony’ is chilling in view of the fact that peace and harmony comes about in Muslim eyes by submission to Allah and the acceptance of Sharia law.  The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is western through and through, and not a particle of it would survive under a regime of Sharia law.

Westerners need to be aware of all the mental reservations used by Muslims when they address a western audience.

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The Attention Span of a Retarded Gnat

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Jan 15

My hometown newspaper has recently run editorials in support of the proposed Light Rail Transit project in Hamilton, and simultaneously ran a story calling attention to fear-mongering over a proposed waste reduction project.  The waste reduction project involves using high heat to reduce the volume of municipal waste, but burning is not the mechanism.  The technology was developed in a pilot plant in Britain, and Hamilton would be the "guinea pig" for the first full-scale implementation of this method.  A whole series of forgetting of the justifications that ran earlier is necessary to propose all these contradictory arguments.

Hamilton Spectator sports columnist Bob Hanley wrote an immortal line about heavyweight boxer Leon Spinks.  Hanley said that Spinks had "the attention span of a retarded gnat.”  Something like that attention-deficit disorder seems to afflict city hall and some other prominent Hamilton institutions and personalities these days.

The front page of today’s Spectator carried a story headlined “Is Hamilton a gasification guinea pig?”  The editorial page bore the concern that Hamilton was going to lose out on the LRT if we couldn't so much as keep a bus lane experiment going.  It seems there is a lot of forgetfulness going on in Hamilton these days.

First, the LRT.  Not long ago, infuriating traffic calming measures were introduced on King Street, west of Wellington.  A beautiful arch was placed over the entrance-way to the downtown core.  As a sop to drivers who had used King to reach points west, Cannon Street was made into the express route to points west.  Traffic along King would be slowed so that more shopping might occur along King, since the drivers had lots of time to peer distractedly out their windows at the shops along King as they awaited their turn to inch forward.

Now, two of the four lanes of the express route that was Cannon Street are blocked off, reducing the traffic capacity by half.  One lane was converted to bicycle traffic, and the other to parking.  No study has been produced to show that business along King Street has improved.

If an LRT becomes reality, those traffic calming measures along King Street will have to be ripped out, and so will the arch over King Street at Wellington.  King Street narrows to two lanes at the arch, and at least one of those lanes will have to be used by the LRT.  Since the one remaining lane is not sufficient for automobile traffic to enter the downtown along King, the arch and the other calming measures will have to go, and King Street will have to be re-widened.

Recall that the LRT is being sold - not as a solution of the need to move large numbers of people - but as an economic stimulus that is environmentally friendly.  Business is supposed to pop up along the route like so many weeds, at least according to its supporters.  Given how obviously speculative this theory of stimulus is, one can rightly say that Hamilton is going to be a guinea pig for theory that LRT = business stimulus.

Hamilton’s being a guinea pig is a bad thing is the basis for the concern over the waste gasification proposal.  The usual environmentalist suspects in Hamilton are opposed in their usual way, demanding delays through more studies and creating a stench of worrisome uncertainty.  One would think the prospect of reducing the need for, and extending the life of, municipal dump sites would be a good thing to an environmentalist; but in Hamilton environmentalism = Ludditism.

Jack McDonald once wrote a great column for the Spectator in which he described the best principles of traffic engineering and how they were used to create one-way streets in Hamilton in the 1950s.  All the traffic engineering done in downtown Hamilton, from traffic calming to over-regulation and to reconversion to two-way have run against the principles that Jack McDonald described.  The Red Hill Expressway, conceived in 1963, was completed after a twenty year delay in the teeth of environmentalist opposition.

If important institutions in Hamilton had attention spans longer than that of a retarded gnat we would dump the LRT and opt for a rapid implementation of waste gasification.

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The Cartoons of Mohammed

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Jan 15




These cartoons may be offensive, but give it some thought: since no picture of Mohammed is known to exist (or permitted to exist) how do these people know that it is Mohammed that is actually depicted in these cartoons?

There are plenty of Arabs named Mohammed.  Any one of them could look somewhat like the guy in the cartoons.  (To me, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons somewhat resemble a cross between Yasir Arafat and the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia)  So, how would these Muslims know that is was their prophet being depicted?  How would the cartoonist know?

Apparently, intentions matter more than facts.  If western cartoonists are going to be killed for something, decency requires that they be killed for the right reason.  They should be killed not for depicting Mohammed but for ridiculing him.
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The Muslim Brotherhood lives in Hamilton

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Jan 15

From the Wikipedia entry for the Muslim Brotherhood:

 

The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Arabic: جماعة الإخوان المسلمين‎), shortened to the Muslim Brotherhood (الإخوان المسلمون al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn), is a transnational Islamist organization which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna.^[1][2][3][4] The motto of the Brotherhood was traditionally "Believers are but Brothers". That was expanded into a five-part slogan: "God is our objective; the Qur'an is the Constitution; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of God is our wish."^[5] It began as a Pan-Islamic, religious, and social movement. The Muslim Brotherhood had an estimated two million members by the end of World War II.^[6][7] Evidence of its vast influence was clear, with more than 2,000 branches all over the country and 2,000 societies for charity and social services. It ran health clinics, sports clubs, schools and other educational institutes, mosques and Islamic centres, and had a presence of 10,000 army volunteers in Palestine.^[8] Its ideas had gained supporters throughout the Arab world and influenced other Islamist groups with its "model of political activism combined with Islamic charity work".^[9] In 2012, it became the first democratically elected political party in Egypt, but it is considered a terrorist organization by the governments of Bahrain,^[10][11] Egypt, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.^{[12][13][14][15]} However, the Brotherhood insists it is a peaceful organization, pointing to its democratic elections, and has consistently renounced violence.^[16][17] Its top leader is on record as saying that the group "condemns violence and violent acts".^[18]

The Brotherhood's stated goal is to instill the Qur'an and Sunnah as the "sole reference point for ... ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community ... and state."^[19] The movement officially renounced political violence in 1949, after a period of considerable political tension which ended in the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha by a young veterinary student who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.^[20][21][22]

The Muslim Brotherhood is financed by contributions from its members, who are required to allocate a portion of their income to the movement. Some of these contributions are from members who work in Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries.^[23]

 

 

 

The Muslim Brotherhood lives in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.  It is found in several Muslim associations in Hamilton.  One tell that these organizations are offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood by their rhetoric, and by their characteristics of deception when appealing to western audiences.

 

The dangers that the Muslim Brotherhood presents to western civilization has been reported on by former United States prosecutor and writer Andrew McCarthy.  It was McCarthy who first made me aware of the characteristic style of argument used by Muslim Brotherhood organizations.  McCarthy points out that the final end of the imposition of Sharia law throughout the world is the same for the Muslim Brotherhood as it is for al-Qaeda and ISIS; the differences are merely ones of tactics.

 

According to McCarthy, ISIS is the living, breathing embodiment of Islam, and that condemnations of terrorist acts in the west are “unIslamic” or “do not represent Islam,” are false on their face.  McCarthy is able to quote chapter and verse from the Koran and other Islamic texts that the violence the west deplores is absolutely in the mainstream of Islam.  Since the difference between ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood is not one of aim but of methods, anything published by the Muslim Brotherhood to defend the Muslim community from a backlash in the west will condemn tactics but not aim; and while the acts themselves may be condemned, the Muslim who perpetrated them are not morally condemned as unIslamic, heretics, or the like.

 

In an article that appears in the Hamilton Spectator dated 10 Jan 15, a person who might as well  be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood published an article trying to protect the Muslim community from a backlash from the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  The basic technique used by the author is to appear to separate the Muslim community from the Charlie Hebdo killers, to say that Islam and the Muslim community is not a nest of aggressive murderers, and to call upon the best spirit of toleration in the western community not to visit revenge on Muslims.

 

In detail, the argument runs as follows: after a long passage describing an event in the life of Mohammed, the author draws the conclusion that what the Charlie Hebdo killers did was not what Mohammed would have wanted.  This is a clever deception.  In Hadith Book 38, No. 4348 Mohammed held that there was no punishment for murdering someone who insults him.  Mohammed did not order the killing of the person who insulted him, but neither did he punish those who killed without his prompting.  A fine distinction between what Mohammed would want and what he would punish was drawn by the author that would escape a western audience.

 

The second characteristic point of Muslim Brotherhood argumentation, which follows from the above, is that the act of killing is condemned, but the killers themselves are not, because they killed either to advance the cause of Islam or to revenge their prophet.  "What the three Paris gunmen did to the Charlie Hebdo head editor and cartoonists was, undeniably, wrong.” Nowhere, however, are the three Muslims who killed also two policemen and later a policewoman, themselves written of in a morally condemnatory way.  And that is because of Hadith 38:4348.  The killers are not said to be unIslamic or heretics.

 

Having seemingly condemned the three Muslims killers, the author turns to the wrongful pain inflicted upon Muslims by western media outlets that republished the cartoons which were the proximate cause of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  The author was educated in Canada, and he ought to realize that republishing the insulting cartoons would be the natural reaction of westerners, a characteristic act of defiance on their part.  He ought to be more understanding of it, as something westerners will get over once the emotion is spent.  But he is not understanding.  He criticized those few defiant media outlets who republished the offending cartoons as imposing a collective punishment on the Muslim community for the acts of a few.  This is a characteristic position of the Muslim Brotherhood: to uphold the cause of the violent Muslims while poo-pooing their methods.

 

Next, the author calls upon westerners to act in characteristically western ways: to be bigger than killers.  To uphold the right thing.  To be morally upright in upholding principles of respect for each other’s opinions and beliefs, which are held sacred, regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity, or creed.

 

The principle of respect of others does not apply to Islam.  Under Sharia law, which is what the Muslim Brotherhood believes in, Christians and Jews hold a third class legal status called dhimmitude (Koran 9:29).  Second class legal status applies to Muslim women.  Christians and Jews are allowed to live under Sharia law provided they pay a tax called the jizya.  A Christian or a Jew is tolerated upon the payment of money, not because of any inherent human right.

 

The author then tells this whopper: “Muslims also cherish the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, as universal rights of all mankind.”

 

That this is absolutely false is proven by the fact that in a couple of paragraphs earlier the author condemned the republication of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.  This whole episode began by the publication of cartoons in the Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten in 2006, and the cartoonist and that magazine were the objects of violence by Muslims in Denmark.  Muslims believe in freedom of the press and freedom of expression so long as what the press publishes and the opinions expressed are favorable to Islam.  The world-wide campaign that the Muslim community has waged for blasphemy laws is proof that Islam today is opposed to free speech and freedom of expression, as those concepts are understood in the West.

 

One cannot let go of the utter deception where the author uses the expression "our Jewish brothers."  (Note he could not bring himself to say brother and sisters.)  The Islamic holy book Sahil al-Bukhari Vol 4, Book 56, Verse 791 contains the passage, "Oh Muslim!  There is a Jew behind me; kill him!"  Similar passages appear in Book 52 Verse 176 and 177.  Hamas, the Islamic terrorist organization that runs Gaza, holds these passages are articles of faith in its charter.  References to Jews being apes appear in the Koran.  Thus if the author holds Jews to be his brothers, he is not speaking on behalf of the faith of Muslims, when eariler he held himself to be an expert in Islam.

 

The author finishes his piece by recounting, as a statement of self-pity, all the insults suffered by Muslims in France. (The world is angry at us for 9/11, for Osama bin Laden, for Boko Haram, for ISIS.)  Then concludes with this sinister passage: “Does the further inflaming Muslim sensitivities in the name of our universal freedoms make the situation better or make us a better civilization?”  In short, you westerners can have your freedoms so long as they do not offend us.  Since Muslim civilization is held to be distinctly different from western civilization, the passage about the West being a better civilization is entirely fatuous.

 

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a document founded entirely upon the principles of western civilization.  Not a particle of it would survive under a regime of Sharia law.

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Any Tong to Hammer Harper with

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Nov 14

My hometown newspaper published an editorial on 22 Nov 14 entitled "Our Veterans deserve better"  It was a criticism of the fact that the department of Veterans Affairs returned money to Treasury that had lain unspent since 2006.  The thrust of the editorial was that the government of Stephen Harper was depriving veterans of money they were owed in order to help balance the federal budget.  Editors of newspapers ought to have a passing knowledge of how laws and parliament work in this country, and should assume that readers do also.  The fact that the government and its bureaucrats cannot spend money on deserving causes without the authorization of parliament seems to have escaped the authors of the editorial.  The result was an unbalanced attack on the government of Stephen Harper and on Julian Fantino, the minster of Veterans Affairs.  The episode began Fantino's rapid descent as Minister.  The department's budget and the caution about spending from year to year is readily accessible on the department's website.


The editorial headlined “Our veterans deserve better” ought to be entitled, “Any tong to hammer Harper with.”

Veterans Affairs Canada has had an annual budget of $3.5 Billion since 2011, and this is expected to rise to $3.6 Billion in the fiscal year 2016-17.  In the eight years included in the period 2006 to 2013, the Department was thus allocated over $20 Billion.  Of this, $1.5 Billion, less than ten percent, was returned to the Treasury as unspent funds.

The budget of Veterans Affairs Canada fluctuates each year due to the demand-driven nature of its programs, which are based upon Veteran’s needs and entitlements.  By estimating future expenditures on the high side, any surge in demand for VAC services can be met with the funding allocated by Parliament in that fiscal year.  It is only proper stewardship of the public’s money to return unspent funds to the Treasury, that is funds that could have met a surge in demand that did not in fact materialize.  It is irresponsible and possibly illegal to push money out the door just to expend all the money allocated to a Department by Parliament.  The attitude that all allocated money must be spent is what leads to out-of-control spending and deficits.

The fact that a government department returned unexpended funds to the Treasury is not, by itself, a sign of viciousness by the government.  If Parliament voted the funds, it was because the government said it needed it and expected to spend it.  That some money was returned is better than having to go back to Parliament and ask for more.  That’s called being fiscally responsible.

There are always new and creative ways of spending the public’s money.  The better ones can actually sound plausible and gain sympathy.  But until those new ways of spending money are actually enacted by Parliament, a government Department has no authority and would acting illegally to spend the public’s money on them.

There have been a spate of stories recently about how much money was not spent by a Federal department, and that these facts show a vicious parsimoniousness on the part of the government.  An adult would know that no such conclusion is supportable on the basis of that evidence.  If anything, it is a sign of prudent financial management.

Anyhow, it is better for the Federal budget to be managed by a Scrooge than a Santa Claus.  The Editorial page seems to believe in Santa Claus.
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Political Correctness: The Root Cause of the Michael Brown killing

Vincent J. Curtis

 

4 Dec 14

 

My hometown newspaper served as the audience for some thoughts on the Michael Brown and Eric Garner deaths.  I agree with Mark Steyn that police training is such that the killing of Michael Brown occurs all to often in the United States, but also in Canada.  Such training, I contend, is the logical consequence of forcing smaller and weaker people onto police forces out of political correctness, as indicated below.

 

 

Sirs;

 

The United States is suffering an outbreak of rioting from the deaths of two black men, Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner of New York City.  Both men were killed by police officers in the course of their arrests.

 

The police procedures which led to the killings of these two men are directly traceable to the cause of political correctness which was foisted on police departments decades ago by well-intentioned people.

 

It used to be that police officers were, as a rule, physically large, strong, and intimidating people.  One respected the police officer because of the consequences to you if you gave him guff.  But the regime of political correctness thought it wrong that small, physical weak, and unprepossessing people could not make it onto police forces.  Political pressure changed that.

 

The street did not change, however.  To compensate for the physical weakening of the average police officer, police training had to change.  Weaponry was added, and police were trained to use weaponry of various kinds in automatic response to a failure to comply on the part of a member of the public.  The old-fashioned punch in the mouth was replaced with a Taser, often from multiple officers.  You can’t expect a female police officer to physically overpower a male who is resisting arrest, and so she has to use a weapon to subdue the perp.  Thus the tactics of the weak gradually came to be the standard operating procedures of police forces under the rule of political correctness.

 

Michael Brown was three hundred pounds, and tall.  The police officer who tried to arrest him said he felt like a child next to Michael Brown.  Physically, he proved to be no match for Michael Brown when the latter assaulted him and resisted arrest.  The police officer used a weapon to subdue Brown, just as he had been trained to do.  There is no telling what would have happened if the police officer had been taller and stronger than he was, and had looked upon Brown as an opportunity for practice with a night-stick instead of a Glock.

 

Eric Garner was a street vendor who sold untaxed cigarettes for a living.  He could make a living because New York City taxes cigarettes at over $4.50 per pack.  Garner had over 31 arrests for this non-violent crime.  Like Michael Brown, Eric Garner was physically large and intimidating, and he resisted arrest.  Video of the arrest show Garner being set upon by four or five police officers, one of which had him in a chokehold.  That chokehold, and the pressure of several police officers on top of him caused Eric Garner to suffocate.  The Grand Jury in the Garner case refused to press charges against the police, much to the surprise of outside observers who would normally support the police.  (I put it down to jury nullification, New Yorkers who are familiar with the Eric Garner type and have no use for them.)

 

The police officers who arrested Garner looked tiny in comparison to Garner, who was physically larger than most NFL linemen.  However, two linebacker-sized police officers should have been enough to subdue Garner.  Instead, four defensive-back sized officers set upon him.  Police training, combined with a lack of confidence in their own physical prowess caused these officers to use more physical force than was necessary to secure compliance.

 

Something similar happened in Hamilton recently in the Steve Mesic case.

 

It may have been thought a good thing to have police forces more closely resemble the community they police.  More women, more minorities, and fewer big white guys.  Perhaps that is so.  However, cases in which police kill the perpetrator in the course of arrest point to the advantages of having a police force that more resembles a football team than the cheer-leading squad.

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Wasting Time: a Meeting between Wynne and Harper

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Dec 14

My hometown newspaper jumped on the Liberal bandwagon, again; in this case joining the chorus of voices demanding that Prime Minster Stephen Harper meet with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.  Wynne has been demanding such a meeting for a year.  I suspect the reason she wants one is so that she can be seen publically castigating Mr. Harper for her political gain.  It would therefore be reasonable for Mr. Harper to ignore such a call, since he can't win in such an unpleasant encounter.  The political differences between the two simply can't be bridged, and so there is no real point to a meeting except for political optics.  Below is my comment to the paper about the merits of the content of their editorial.  I did not accuse them of favoring Wynne.

 

 

Sirs;

 

The Spectator Editorial Page seems to believe that talks, in the form of a public forum, between Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be a good thing.

 

Superficially, this may be so; but what, realistically, is to be accomplished by such a forum?  Wynne, fresh from a new electoral mandate, is going to be seen at such a forum hectoring the Prime Minister about something or other.  Equity, fairness, how Ontario is being done in by Harper’s policies, whatever.  As a lefty, Wynn is full in her self-righteousness and inevitably regards the right-wing Harper as evil and fully deserving of such treatment.

 

Harper is going to mumble something about how the Ontario Liberals’ madcap economic, fiscal, and industrial policies are hobbling the Ontario economy.  The failure of the Ontario manufacturing sector to grow well during the Liberal years is what is contributing mightily to the Ontario budget deficit and is not helping the Federal budget picture, either.  The kind of technical thing that, while true, doesn’t garner the headlines like a screaming demand for simple fairness would.  Deceased Finance Minister Jim Flaherty used to lecture Dalton McGuinty regularly about madcap Liberal policies, but they had no effect and gathered no headlines.

 

The Wynne idea for an Ontario Pension Plan is a case in point.  The lefty wants to take money out of the economy so that the Ontario government can borrow it now and later pay it back as a pension supplement to the CPP payment, leaving the fiscal problem of finding the money to pay it to a subsequent government.  The righty wants that money left in the economy so that the GDP will grow now.

 

While there is a publicity upside for Wynne, there is nothing good in it for Harper.  And if Harper does agree to meet Wynne, you have to wonder what bombshell he has planned.

 

Anyhow, since the invention of the telephone and email, there are plenty of opportunities for Lynne and Harper to confer with each other if they wish.  A public forum signifies little more than posturing is in the offing – just the kind of thing that makes for column inches of reporting and commentary.

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Late in December, Harper did meet with Wynne in circumstances which prevented her from organizing a public hazing of Harper.  This meeting was treated as an act of cynicism by the paper, but that is the subject of a future posting.

 

Proof that Human Nature has not changed in 40,000 years.

This news article of 12 Dec 14 reports that artwork from 35,000 years ago depicts a woman with large breasts and vulva.  Men, at least, haven't changed since then.

 

http://www.newser.com/story/199328/archaeologists-surprise-find-ancient-busty-statuette.html

Archaeologists' Surprise Find: Ancient, Busty Statuette

(Newser) – Archaeologists in northern France were digging for "tooled flint or bones," they say, when they came upon something stunning: what ended up being a 23,000-year-old sculpture of a woman. While digging near Amiens over the summer, they noticed some pieces amid the limestone they had found didn't look particularly natural, Phys.org reports. "That same night we carefully pieced together the 20-odd fragments and realized it was a female statuette," says archaeologist Clement Paris of the recently announced find. The team used carbon dating to determine that the object was from the Paleolithic era. Europe and Russia have yielded about 100 similar figures, called Venus figurines; all feature similarly-shaped women, with the oldest being the Venus of Hohle Fels, found in Germany in 2008.

That 35,000-year-old sculpture of a woman with balloon-like breasts and explicit genitalia was miniature, at 2.5 inches tall, the New York Times reported; the new find measures a similarly petite 4.7 inches, and also bears large breasts and buttocks. Smithsonian observed that the Venus of Hohle Fels' head, arms, and legs were poorly defined: As the archaeologist who found it explained, "Head and legs don’t matter. This is about sex, reproduction." So too with the latest discovery. "The intent was to produce a symbolic image of a woman linked to fecundity," says Paris. It's being called the "Venus of Renancourt," a name which refers to the Paleolithic site where it was found. (Archaeologists recently found a truly notable block of stone.)

 

Ontario Overpaying for Electricity

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Dec 14

The Auditor-General of Ontario recently released a report in which she claimed that Ontarians were overpaying for electricity.  She blamed in part the use of so-called smart meters, devices which enable the customer to be billed for electrical use during peak and off-peak hours.  Minister Bob Chiarelli defended the Ontario government, saying the Auditor-General (who once worked for Manitoba Hydro!) did not understand the complexity of Ontario's electrical system - as if he, a complete amateur - did.  Below is my unpublished comment to my hometown newspaper.

Sirs;

Why should anyone be surprised that Ontarians are overpaying for electricity?  The system we have today is largely the product of the madcap electrical policies of Dalton McGuinty, who believed in global warming.  This is the man who also believed that raising taxes would balance the Ontario budget.

One should not be surprised either that Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli would dispute the auditor’s conclusions.  HIs government was the one responsible for the present mess, and this mess was created on a set of beliefs the auditor did not accept and which turned out to be false.

Minister Chiarelli was disingenuous to say that the auditor didn’t understand the ‘complex’ electricity system.  The complexity lies not in the electrical system but in justifying why, as the result of environmental correctness, the emperor is wearing no clothes.
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Misogyny Running Rampant in Canada!

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Jan 2015


My hometown newspaper has been runing columns the last month from its stable of female guest writers.  These fillies have been bemoaning their lot in life and blaming misogyny as the root cause of their problems.  The harping on this theme of self-pity reached a climax in a colum by Latham Hunter (previously reviewed earlier) that was published on Saturday, January 3rd, 2015.  My as-yet unpublished reply is as follows: 

This column by Latham Hunter proves nothing except that if you cherry pick enough data you can seem to prove anything, no matter how pathetic.

Since Hunter’s thesis, that misogyny runs rampant through Canada, seems to defy common sense, let’s put it to a couple of tests.

Last year, as reported in the Spectator, there were a total of seven murders in Hamilton.  Of these, two were of women and five were of men.  Women are statistically under-represented in these figures.  Therefore, misogyny is not prevalent in Hamilton for if it were then women would be statistically over-represented, and they are not.  Latham Hunter should be cheering the men of Hamilton, and she does not.

Now, let’s consider the word ‘misogyny’ itself.  The English language has no name-word for the normal relationship that obtains between men and women.  The word misogyny refers to a feeling or attitude which manifests hatred or dislike of women or girls.  The fact that such a word exists at all is because the outlook or attitude which exhibits misogyny is different from the nameless, normal attitude of men towards women or girls.  Normal people do not notice a taste to water, but add some sugar or salt to the water and you get the taste of sweetness or saltiness, which are perceptible because of their departure from the norm, that of tasteless water.

Recently uncovered artifacts show that mankind has not changed in nature for at least 40,000 years.  What Latham Hunter perceives as misogyny is in fact the human norm of at least 40,000 years standing.  A moment’s reflection on that point will bring one to a couple of conclusions.

The first is that no amount of complaining about the facts of human nature are going to change it.  The second is perhaps it is Latham Hunter’s perception that is off and she is seeing things that aren’t there.  To Latham Hunter, the taste of water is bitter.

If Latham Hunter truly believed that men were as misogynistic as she says they are, she would be keeping her own council.
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