Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Niqab wearing poison dart spitters

I'd hate to be a minority in Quebec, with all the fuss they are making about the twenty women in the province who wear the niqab. On second thought I probably would be a minority in Quebec.

Anyway, the RCMP in Quebec and the Montreal police force, as well as other forces across Canada. have now vowed that the niqab will be removed before taking any any mug shots.

Well thank god for that and I mean Jesus' dad here.


Hey you never know, they could have poison darts in their mouthes and then quickly lift that veil and spit them out at you, right into your eyes. You'd never know what hit you.

This is my third post about niqab wearing women in a month. I think I am getting infatuated.



As reported by Canadian Press via CNEWS

You cant tell a book by its cover




A Niqab wearing housewife is poised to win the Dubai version of American Idol. The Million's Poet is an Arabic reality TV show that is a competition for the most talented poet in Arabic prose with a cash prize of over a million dollars.

Hissa Hilal, the outspoken Saudi housewife, pictured above has become a heroine for women's rights speaking out in her poetry against fundamentalism, censorship of the press and even the validity the clerical fatwas and decrees.


Or on suicide bombers,


The former journalist and poetry editor who is now considered to the front runner in the contest, has received death threats, but claims that she is not afraid. She defends wearing the Niqab.


And then goes on to blame the radical fundamentalists


This Youtube link from CBS (they won't let you imbed) explains the popularity and positive influence this intelligent and brave woman is having. 

She makes me feel somewhat pedestrian today sitting my Mississauga kitchen after watching American Idol last night.



Reference: The Telegraph here and another post from the Examiner here.













Saturday, March 27, 2010

Politicians, Abortion and Religion

When the three liberals voted against the LPC motion last week I decided to send a couple of them an email. Although their reasons seemed obvious at the time based on what I have read about the gentlemen here or elsewhere, I thought I should at least ask the simple question. Their responses appeared to be personally crafted and I guess not surprisingly contained very similar language and justification. I will not post their emails but I would like to share my responses to those emails or at least a compilation of my replies.

Dear Member,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question.

Unfortunately I've always had a difficult time seeing things in black and white and although I somewhat envy your resolve and self confidence in describing yourself as Pro-Life, I personally refuse to label myself Pro anything in this debate. 

It may be my naivety, but the pro-life label, simply and somewhat maliciously infers that those who disagree are pro-death which is logically and obviously not the case. No one is rooting for abortions here. Alternatively the pro-choice label infers that the other side is offering no other choices except the completion of a pregnancy regardless of the cause of that pregnancy or the risks to the woman's health or life and the ongoing care of her existing children, which I can not believe that any sane Canadian would support. I guess that might make me a Pro Choicer in your books.

My personal experience with abortion is thankfully limited. I have only known two women who have had an abortion. The most recent was married, in her forties and the decision to have an abortion although not made lightly was more for economic reasons than possible health affects. She is a christian, believes in a god and continues living her life with her husband and children.

The other was a talented and young, eighteen year old girl that I went to school with, too many years ago. After getting pregnant for the second time she wanted to have an abortion. Her first pregnancy at 16 resulted in a child that was put up for adoption. She was never told if it was a boy or girl, as her parents thought it would be easier for her to forget the whole incident and move on with her life. Although she may have been considered somewhat frivolous with her favors even for the sixties, she could not and would not go through that again. Something her devout family and not so devout boyfriend would accept, as they refused to help her. We combined our cash and paid for her abortion. She too was a christian and went on to have a successful career, got married, raised a family and according to my last communication with her is now a doting grandmother,

My point is that both women were fortunate to live in Canada and even as far back as over forty years ago were able to choose to end an unwanted pregnancy. They had a choice. It wasn't like that for my mother's generation. Only the rich could afford abortions, with the majority of women being forced to leave town for a year or move into to an unplanned, unprepared for and all too often an unhappy marriage. The majority of women had less choices to have successful and personally satisfying lives. 

There is a reason that so many of us in our sixties have or had so many uncles and aunts and it wasn't as I was told as a child because they were needed to work on the farm. Our grandmothers became pregnant every year, with the gaps in my uncle's ages being miscarriages or still born deaths. Without the contraceptive methods and the rights that married and single Canadian women have today, our grandmothers were treated like breeding stock. Married young and bred early was unfortunately the fate for a majority of Canadian women as recently as eighty years ago.

And that is what is still happening today in many under developed countries and in an environment that is much harsher than those faced by my grandparents generation here in Canada. My understanding of the motion put forth (and I could be wrong as I often am) was to reinstate what was removed by the Harper conservatives. The amendments included the funding of contraceptive technologies, family planning education and abortion services. The same funding we provided for in the past and the same services that are being provided to Canadians.

In your response, which I again thank you for, you state that you agreed with supporting and the funding of contraceptive methodologies and family planning services but when the debate in parliament became focussed on the funding of abortion services, you could no longer support the motion based on your personal beliefs and voted against it. You then claim and somewhat arrogantly I might add, that 50% of Canadians would agree with you if it was put to a vote and then infer that since 70% of the developed countries in the world are either christian or muslim or have laws against abortion, your personal beliefs are in the vast majority.

Unfortunately I would character those assumptions as blind faith on your part. The fact that an individual considers themselves a christian or muslim or a country is deemed to be one faith or another does not mean that the individual or the citizenry of that country would not have or would prevent others from having an abortion. It is an absurd argument. 

As for your statement that 50% of Canadians would agree with your third world abortion funding argument, unfortunately 50% of Canadians would refuse to fund any third world services if they were given the opportunity. However such a vote would immediately evolve into the rights of Canadian women to avail themselves of such services and though you may consider yourself in a majority position, it is a vote your side would not win, Your personal beliefs which you claim your constituents are well aware of and accept as they have reelected you many times would eventually end your political career, if such a vote occurred. 

Your opinions on abortion are not posted your web site or included in your mailings as is your right in Canada, but yet they were the overriding factor that caused you to ignore the much needed contraceptive services, that you supposedly agreed with. Again as you state the vote was not binding on the conservative government, however if it had been, your vote would have increased the number of deaths and increased the hardship of women and their surviving children in these undeveloped countries,

I guess my objection to your actions on this matter is that you failed to put aside what I would consider as a very narrow, personal and I'll mention the word, even though you won't, religious, belief, when voting on potentially life and death issues for women living precarious lives. I am not a christian, nor believe in any god, but I fully support your right to have such beliefs. However I do not support your right to impose them on others, especially when you take on the responsibility to represent the majority of voters within your riding.

Although you obviously believe that you have that right, you should at least be honest with your constituents and make them fully aware of the extent of your personal religious ideologies when it comes to refusing to support existing Canadian values.

Best Regards.


Willy


Please note: The references to statements made above can not fairly be assigned to any of the members that I communicated with and does not imply that any one member made those statements. This response was a compilation of emails that were sent and received as private communication.



Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Apparently there is an obnoxious media whore in town

Treat it like a floating fart. You can light matches, fill the air with air spray and just create more attention to the rancid odor or you can just ignore it and it will quickly and quietly dissipate.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Go Play Tarnation


New browser game from Insidious Designs here where you can splat oil on Harper and Ignatieff. Even works on Safari. I hit Harper 20 times in row and I feel a lot better for it. Hit Ignatieff only 10.

Article about their message and why you are splatting Harper here.

As if we needed one.


Sunday, March 21, 2010

A week of weak apologies

The pope apologized to the Irish people this week for hiding four decades of sexual abuse inflicted by the Irish clergy upon thousands of Irish children. Reportedly not all the clergy, just some of them. Coming three days after St. Patty's day, many of the victims are still angry and believe that the church had intentionally failed to remove the snakes from within their own midst this time around.

A Wal-Mart store manager apologized to black people this week, over the store's PA system. Reportedly not all black people, but just the one's that had previously been told to leave the store by a 16 year old who had also used the PA system. Many of the black people were still upset, after being told they did not have to leave the store and the 16 year old boy was arrested.

Another member of Harper's cabinet apologized to Canadians this week for being an asshole at an airport security gate, but that seems to happen every month. Apparently Harper is going to issue an edict reminding his ministers that they are not above the law. Similar I guess to what the opposition reminded him in Parliament this week.

Lastly I would like to apologize to my one follower. I didn't know I had a follower until recently nor how I got one or whom that follower is, but I would like to apologize to that person for the quality of the posts this week.

They weren't that well written, the topics were, well, kinda simple and there was at least one typo in each post. Plus ffib jumped in for two posts which typically screws me up for a couple days. Hopefully I'm just rusty. It's more difficult getting back to this blogging thing, than I thought it would be. Next week might be better.

I need to wrap this up, as it is starting to sound like a Catholic confessional and I wasn't even baptized. Something I am not sorry about.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Sad Saturday Songs

The saddest song ever written....



And the saddest performance ever televised.



At least in my humble opinion.

A pot smoking law abiding gun registrant

I couldn't be more at odds with the Harper government, even if I purposely set out to do so.

Harper's Safety Minister (another oxymoronic title) Toews, following in the boot steps of his predecessor Stockwell Day, has extended the grace period for registering our rifles for another year. 


Of course the facts as reported last night on the CTV National prove the Minister either does not know what he is talking about or is purposely lying to Canadians.
  • From CTV and the Auditor General's report the long gun registry only costs $3 million a year to run.
  • Law enforcement officers query the gun registry 10,000 times a day
  • In 2008, 50% of gun related crimes in rural areas were committed with rifles and shotguns
  • 18,000 of the 23,000 guns seized in Canada were rifles.
  • 14 of 16 murders of law enforcement officers serving rural Canada were perpetrated with rifles and shotguns
  • 74% of police officers state that the registry in beneficial during major operations

Although Fantino the current OPP commissioner infamously came out against the gun registry at it's inception, he might want to reconsider it's enforcement with the recent and tragic death an OPP officer last week.

The long gun registry is a rural versus city issue and it isn't just the Harper reformatories who have voted in favor of the private members bill, to end the long gun registry. Rural MPs from all parties have voted in favor of ending the requirement to register your rifle. 

I live in the GTA, the so called center of the universe, according to the cowboy hat crowd, who generally accuse us of being arrogant and self righteous. However when it comes the long gun registry it is rural Canadians that are displaying arrogance and a dangerous self righteousness. 

It was a distraught, former small town mayor who killed a law enforcement office with a rifle, during a shoot out across a rural highway, last week. 

If the long gun registry had been backed and enforced by our government over the last three years instead of pandering to a self righteous group of wannabe cowboys, the officer would have been better aware that this distraught individual owned a long gun and possibly both men might still be alive.

The continuing extensions for registration, besides flaunting the law of the land, is making the long gun registry less effective and is causing lives. The MPs who are voting in favor of this private members bill should be ashamed. As should be the so called law abiding rural long gun owners who haven't registered yet.


On the pot smoking part, I am in the majority according to the latest poll.


Friday, March 19, 2010

Helena to Gate Six, Helena to Gate Six

You know you are in trouble when your government, your colleagues and in this case your employer start using your first name as a noun to describe bad behavior when boarding an airplane.

When describing the latest airport tantrum by a Harper minister, Jean-Pierre Blackburn, a senior government official said, on condition of anonymity. "He remained polite. He didn't pull a Helena apparently."

Being an asshole, throwing a tantrum and demanding special treatment when boarding a plane is now called a Helena, by the conservatives.

Helena noun:
i: a person who throws a fit when their title does not garner them special treatment: you're a regular Helena
ii. a temper tantrum: he started to do a Helena just before the security guards arrived

I can see this spreading through the whole airline industry, a code word used to send security guards rushing to a gate or ticket counter to handle pompous irate air travelers, who refuse to believe that rules also apply to them. "Helena to gate six, Helena to Gate six" :D


Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Ideology over fact, ideology over logic, ideology over good governance

Having parliament is session and reading the daily onslaught of proposed changes that the Reformatories want to introduce is more frustrating that having them all prorogued and we do not even have the Olympics to watch.

The Minister of Justice is proposing changes to the Youth Offenders rules, adding the ability to publish the names of minors convicted of crimes, the admittance of evidence from previous encounters with the law, not convictions, previous encounters, and prosecutors will now have to justify why they are not trying a 14 year old as an adult in a serious offense, not the other way around. The proposals are being wrapped in the oxymoronic message that they are putting the public first, focussing on confinement rather than rehabilitation.

The facts according to experts who actually concern themselves with such things as facts, are that youth crime has continued to decline each year, including the current year, for both serious and non serious crimes and that the Supreme Court has already ruled that children must be treated differently that adults when assessing and assigning punishment for crimes. But those are just the facts.

Other legal experts believe the rehashed proposals are nothing more than political gamesmanship to a narrow political base and similar to the tactics used by Bush with his No Child Left Behind bullshit, this new reformatory proposal will achieve the opposite of it's lofty packaging.

Logically locking up our youngest offenders instead of focussing on their rehabilitation, while there is still time and better chance for rehabilitation will more likely produce hardened young adults who will have better chance of becoming professional criminals as soon as they are back on the streets, than productive members of society. But that is just too logical.

Unfortunately facts and logic do not exist for the Harper reformatories or if realized, they are just ignored. The main purpose of these draconian changes to our societal laws is to satisfy a rabid narrow base of bible bangers, living in privileged, sheltered rural based cities, who annually wear a cowboy hat, satisfied. Therefore allowing the Harpercons to focus their neocon endeavor of supporting the oil industry.

Nothing really new here. Same as it always was. It is just frustrating because they are back at so called work.




Linked to Globe article

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Why does every announcement come with a billboard





Yesterday's announcement from Towes, the I have a plan, Safety Minister featured the old Vic with a aqua blue banner professing to protect us.






Today's announcement from Nicolson, the I am ignoring the fact that youth crime is declining, Justice Minister comes with a similar billboard and similar oxymoronic messaging.






Well if it's good enough for these ideologues, it's good enough for me.




Monday, March 15, 2010

Toews finally releases the Tory Emergency Response Plan



Shorter...


A plan is a plan. What kind of a plan? It's a plan. A plan is a plan. And when you have a good plan, it's because it's planned.










from: the CNews, Gobe & Mail, CBC, Canwest, Macleans and Public Safety Canada







Why do Albertans always want to leave us in the dark


Continuing their assault on the climate our Alberta based federal government has again refused to provide funding for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences in their latest budget.
The CFCAS is one of leading research foundations on climate change, financing research on everything from melting glaciers to drought on the Prairies to the thawing permafrost.
Since its creation in 2000, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences has been a major source of financing and co-ordination for projects that gather and crunch data.
The foundation has bankrolled $110 million of research, but hasn't received any new funding since the Conservative government was elected in 2006.
Last winter, it made a formal request for $25 million annually over 10 years.
Its existing mandate runs until March 2012, but without a fresh cash injection the 12 research networks currently under its umbrella will be shuttered by the end of 2010.
Certainly a unique way to end the so called climate debate, just refuse to fund the scientists who study it.

Good thing Baird is busy upgrading hockey rinks across Canada.

Fifty years from now, the only snow that my great, great grandkids will see, is the ice scrapings left by zambonis, while their parents, changing them back into their protective heat repellant suits, curse their ancestors for electing this Harper government.


from the Canadian Press via Macleans.ca




Sunday, March 14, 2010

Sexy mysterious looking women



I always found the veiled look to be somewhat sexy or at least I did when I still had enough testosterone left in my body to find such things sexy. It is most likely a lingering memory of watching Rita Hayworth movies with my father.

I doubt if increased sexual arousal in aging old men is the intended purpose of the niquib, although it probably was the intended purpose in this old Sweet Marie chocolate bar ad.




In a world where we are inundated with more and more semi clothed models and styles of clothing that hide nothing of the human figure and in fact act as nothing more than a colored skin covering, I find the scarfed, veiled and multi-layered look much more appealing, more mysterious and in fact sexier, whether it be the niqab, veil or the hijab, scarves worn by some muslim and orthodox jewish women.

Of course I also liked the strippers who came out dressed as secretaries when I used to take my US clients to the Landing Strip.

I really don't give a shit what the religious meaning or intent of the niqab is, nor why Catholics ate fish on Friday, but in no way should the wearing of a veil, scarf or halloween mask prevent you from learning French and the Quebec government is wrong in this case.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Sadly the reason to register long guns

OPP Constable Vu Pham was fatally shot on Monday by an apparently distraught seventy year old armed with a rifle. Although all the details have not been released it is assumed that the seventy year old's vehicle was spotted and approached by Constable Pham.

If the rifle had been registered Constable Pham might have been forewarned that the seventy year was not only distraught but also possibly armed and dangerous and both men might still be alive.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Robin Trower, Bridge of Sighs






Mistakenly I thought that that I had discovered a new loud, fantastic blues guitarist when I downloaded Robin Trower from limewire six years ago (supposedly Trower got 35 cents for the download). 

But as is typically is the case I was wrong because Robin Trower has been around for years. He was the original lead guitar in 1967 version of Procol Harum. 

Although never reaching the same pinacle of fame, Trower was and is considered an equal with the other British guitar icons, Clapton, Page, Beck.. 

This is Trower at age 60, on his 2005 European tour with Davey Pattison on vocals (an aging Sottish tenor), Dave Bronze on bass (who has backed up Clapton and others) and Pete Thompson on Drums.

When viewing the Trower you tubes and there are lot of them, you realize he has gotten better with age. They said of his early days that he could make his guitar sing, now he can make it cry.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Jason they could be Japanese Jews in jeopardy

Our Immigration Minister Jason Kenny is apparently not on the top of his game this week. He has not only just wiped our queer folks from the foreign, face of our country, but he also is making snap decisions on the validity of refugee claimants based on, I would assume, his own personal opinion.

Seven foreigners who were in Vancouver for the games have claimed refugee status and although this happens at every Olympics and we have a Department of Immigration to handle such claims, Jason thinks this is, well ridiculous...
Look, to get two claims from Japan? This is ridiculous. Japan is a liberal democratic country with full human rights protections," he said. "You have to wonder what kind of a system we have that encourages people from a democracy like that to be saying that they're victims of persecution and coming to Canada.
Well firstly, Jason we just spent seventeen days telling and selling the world how wonderful we are, maybe they think Vancouver is like that every week or maybe, just maybe, they are Japanese speed skaters, and we could use them to break the hold that Quebec has on the long skates. I don't know, shouldn't we ask.
Secondly and more importantly, Jason why are you still wondering what kind of system we have, you should know, you are the fucking minister in charge.
Jason Kenny, our Minister of Immigration who apparently is still wondering what kind of immigration system we have.

Of course it appears that Jason has a plethora of personal proclamations about whom we should or should not allow into Canada. Thank goodness these radical, right wing, faith based extremists will soon be out of power.






H/T As reported by CTV.ca and Canadian Press

I am now a country music fan


I know it's not Friday night, the designated night for music around these, here parts, but this is one of the funniest things I have seen in weeks and since we all have nothing to look forward to for next while except more reformatory bullshit, it is with pleasure that I present Rodney Carrington's live performance of Show Them to Me.


Monday, March 1, 2010

Breaking CTVs bubble

As Canadians were glued to their TV sets last night to watch the Gold medal final, our other hockey team lost to New Zealand 3 to 2, in a hard fought battle at the Hockey World Cup being held in India. A point my friends in New Zealand, rubbed in my face this afternoon.

Similar to all kiwi sports teams, their national field hockey team, the Black Sticks has the word black in their name. Seriously all teams in New Zealand have black in their name. The famous All Blacks rugby team, the Black Sticks Field Hockey team, and believe it or not the Tall Blacks, basketball team. Talk about words having a different connotation in different parts of the world, you could not get away with calling your basketball team the Tall Blacks in North America, even if if they were all black and obviously tall.

To some extent and leading to the point of this post, it sort of explains the bubble we all live in. Especially the 1,600 or so CTV employees that were in Vancouver and Whistler. I realize that seeing crowds of Canadians with painted faces, waving flags and screaming their heads off is not something you see everyday in Vancouver, but it is the just Olympics folks, not a rebirth of national pride.

There were lots of heart breaking stories about the sacrifices the athletes and their families made and many brought a tear to my aged and cynical eyes, but it is like that at every Olympics, even when we didn't win the gold and listen to our song being played a record breaking 14 times. 

Canadians, or at least the ones I have met have always been proud of our national sports teams, well maybe with the exception of our current field hockey team. The constant bullshit from the CTV broadcasters about how they have never seen this before, how this is uniting our country and the constant playing of that fucking I Believe song drove me crazy through the whole Olympics, 

The Winter Olympics is about athletes that ski, snowboard, slide, skate and more importantly to all of us play hockey, on ice and whether you agree with the funding of these athletes or not, it is great to see them try to excel at their chosen sport.

That's it. that all.

The Olympics is not, was not and will never be the greatest display of Canadian unity since the second world war, as so described by Beverly Thompson of CTV yesterday morning, because if that was true we would be a pathetic nation.

Sorry Beverly, like my friends in New Zealand sometimes do, you were just living in a bubble, the Vancouver bubble. Canada already was a proud nation and about as unified as we are going to get. 

We just tend to get more so when there is a big hockey game on. Unfortunately for the team in India though, only if the game is played on ice.