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This is a great victory…for Hezbollah.

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“BAD” news from Israel. At least, I think so.

 Samir Kuntar

Beirut/Tel Aviv - United Nations hostage negotiator Gerhard Konrad has handed over a message to Israel from Hezbollah indicating that missing Israel Air Force navigator Ron Arad is dead, a Lebanese security source said Monday. (…)

For their part, Israel will give Hezbollah a report on the fate of four Iranian diplomats kidnapped and killed during the Lebanon war in the 1980s.

Israel has previously said it does not know what happened to the diplomats, who were arrested at a Christian Phalange party roadblock in north Lebanon in 1982 and are believed to have been subsequently been executed. (…)

As part of the controversial deal, Israel is to release Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar, thus far considered the main bargaining chip for information on Arad. (…)

In return, Hezbollah is to free Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, two Israeli reserve soldiers whose capture by Hezbollah in a July 12, 2006, cross-border raid sparked the 33-day war.

Olmert told his cabinet Monday that the two soldiers were dead.

Seeing this as a possibility doesn’t make it any better.

I offer my sympathies to the families of all those concerned.

I’d like to point out that the Cruisading Zionazi Occupiers have the hability to keep people in jail for 28 years. Isn’t that something? Keeping people ALIVE for twenty eight years?

Here’s a comment from TZOMET which seems to reflect my thoughts exactly…

Take a look at this article today in Jpost. It’s starting already. In addtion, all these LIVE prisoners Hezbollah gets in return will be paraded around Beirut and ‘victory’ will be declared and this WILL be believed by everyone watching. Israel caved in to all of Hezbollah’s demands. No winners? My ass, Lapid.

Quote from that JPOST article…

Gaza strongman Mahmoud Zahar, speaking to the independent Al-Quds radio station, said Hamas would take advantage of this decision “to release people Israel accused of having blood on their hands like Samir Kuntar. We have to take advantage of this to release our prisoners.”

Incredible. A monster goes home to make more monsters…

This is one of those times where Meir Kahane comes to mind. I miss him.

^{Link to Wikipedia page on Samir Kuntar.} 

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The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a Muslim group’s complaint against Maclean’s magazine.

The Canadian Islamic Congress had argued the magazine published an article in October 2006 that would likely expose Muslims to hatred and contempt.

(…) 

While commentators have said Steyn’s demographic claims are way off-base (wtf?!), the CHRC concluded the views in the article, “when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court.”

^{source:  CTV news} 

Emphasis added by me, if you hadn’t noticed.  Hehehehehe.  That’s the work of CTV’s news staff.  I guess you could call that “balanced reporting”.  Or something…

As Maclean’s declared on Friday: “No human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation’s media.”

^{source:  National Post commentary}

Exactly.  Let’s leave it at that.

This was the Canadian HRC, there’s still the BC HRC to…do whatever it is they do.

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On Thursday, the Supreme Court held down an important ruling confirming that the Second Amendment means what it seems to mean: There exists an individual right to own guns. It can be limited in reasonable ways, just as the First Amendment to free speech can be limited. But it cannot be annihilated
altogether.

(…) 

Gun control had always been based on a theory about how best to fight crime — and now that that theory has been exposed as false, and a new and more accurate theory has been put in its place.
Improving public safety made this new gain for civil liberty possible. Unfortunately, this new liberty is also shaping up to be a clear gain for Democrats: Barack Obama cannot now take away your guns even if he wanted to. On this once so divisive issue, the Supreme Court has helped to make Obama’s Democrats … bulletproof.

Nah-ah.  He’s still a victim of white oppression.  Poor fellah.

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…kind of… The Human Rights Commission has stopped the prosecution.

Ezra Levant mentions this on his blog…

So they blinked. Against everything in their DNA, they let Maclean’s go. That’s the first smart thing they’ve done; because the sooner they can get the public scrutiny to go away, the sooner they can go about prosecuting their less well-heeled targets, people who can’t afford Canada’s best lawyers and command the attention and affection of the country’s literati.

Maclean’s response spells out everyone’s concerns about free speech in Canada:

TORONTO, June 26 /CNW/ - Maclean’s magazine is pleased that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint brought against it by the Canadian Islamic Congress. The decision is in keeping with our long-standing position that the article in question, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s best-selling book America Alone, was a worthy piece of commentary on important geopolitical issues, entirely within the bounds of normal journalistic practice. 

Though gratified by the decision, Maclean’s continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation’s media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience. We enthusiastically support those parliamentarians who are calling for legislative review of the commissions with regard to speech issues.

Well said.  Freedom of speech isn’t free.  Just ask Ezra Levant how much money he’s spent for his own defense.

And don’t forget that the Canadian Islamic Congress HAS NOTHING TO PAY HERE.  They bring up their complaint and we (the tax payers) pay the expenses of this circus.

^{Found this on LGF which keeps me updated on this issue.  Big thank you to Charles Johnson, I’m in Canada and this isn’t mentioned on Google News or on my local news outlets.} 

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A 27-year-old man originally charged with obstructing justice in the murder of his teenaged sister, has now been charged with first degree murder.

Peel Regional Police said Friday that Waqas Parvez is to appear before the Ontario Court of Justice today to face the new charges

The murder of Aqsa Parvez, 16, gained international attention after high school classmates claimed that the girl had clashed with her devout Muslim family about her refusal to wear traditional clothes. The strained relations drove Aqsa out of her home and to another Muslim family, who described her as a “typical” teenager who yearned for acceptance while straddling the Muslim and Western cultures. They disputed the claim that the friction was over a hijab, and said the girl was repairing her relationship with her family in the days leading up to her death.

On the morning of Dec. 10, 2007, her brother picked her up at a bus stop and took her home, where police say she was strangled to death before 8 a.m. Police say a man called 911 and said he had killed his daughter.

Muhammad Parvez, 57, was arrested that day and later charged with second-degree murder. The charge was later upgraded to first degree, which suggests premeditation and planning.

How does honor fit into all this? I doesn’t.

And if I can speculate for a moment: Aqsa’s friends all know with way the wind blows now. They don’t need anyone to tell them is this was hijab related or not. They know.

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The country’s top court has absolved former Vancouver radio personality Rafe Mair of defamation for a commentary in which he made reference to the Ku Klux Klan and Adolf Hitler.The Supreme Court of Canada decision in the defamation suit also broadened a key defence often used by journalists to ward off libel actions. In a 9-0 judgment Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Mair was engaging in fair comment in the 1999 radio editorial that was critical of Kari Simpson, a high-profile player in a campaign opposing the use of teaching materials about gay lifestyles in local schools.(…)

“We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones.”

A key component of the fair comment defence has long been that the person making the comment must sincerely believe in it. In the course of the ruling, however, the high court modified that test.

Commentary must still have a factual basis, be made without malice and be in the public interest, said Binnie.

But the test of honest belief is not whether the specific person holding the opinion believed it. The yardstick is whether any person might honestly hold the view based on the facts at issue.

Binnie acknowledged that is “not a high threshold” for any defendant to met. But neither is it appropriate to rule out “a piece of devil’s advocacy” in any debate on a matter of public importance.

1999. It took 9 years to be absolved. Wow.

Will this have any bearing on Mark Steyn’s case before the HRC? Yeah, ten years from now, maybe…

Start filling in the paperwork, boy!

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These three lesbians walk into a bar, which sounds like the start of a joke, except the punch-line will ultimately be delivered by a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
In yet another example of our burgeoning culture of complaint, three admitted sisters of Sappho took umbrage with a Toronto comedian who answered their incessant heckling of his act in a Vancouver nightclub by tastelessly riffing on their sexual orientation. According to the complaint, the three were subjected to a “tirade of homophobic and sexist comments.” In his defence, Guy Earle says he regrets the unsavoury exchange, but insists the tribunal hearing is taking him out of context.
If, by context, he means the setting of a comedy club, he’s spot on. What part of this unbridled art form don’t these three understand? When did bad taste or a perceived slight in any idiom become enough to invoke the full weight of the state’s bureaucratic complaints department? Going into a comedy club with delicate sensibilities is like heading into the deep end with water wings. Enter at your own risk, and if you’re in over your head, just leave the pool. Don’t drag the rest of us down with your petulant assault on one of our last cherished forms of free expression.

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It’s funny to do some research over a long period of time. You assimilate information, then when you revisit a source, you pick up details that evaded you before.

And then sometimes you just notice details on who is writing what in contrast with other sources.

For example:

Wikipedia has a page for “trebuchet” in french. There’s another independant page on Wikipedia in english.

I was certain that the war machine had been renamed this way by the French when it first appeared in France. From what I’m reading, this is a probably a fact. BUT it was not named after the verb “trébucher” (to lose balance, to trip) as I expected.

Trebuchet comes from the occitan (europeen latin) word “trebuca” or “trebucca”, which means “trouble ahead”, or “that which brings trouble”.

This isn’t too far from the British trebuchet which was named “Bad Neighbor”. And indeed they were. Read the rest of this entry »

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I was on Google, doing a search for marigold, the word. It was mentioned in this book I own, Dave Letterman’s Top Ten lists. This is a bit random but it goes to show how being hooked up to the internet sometimes leads you to interesting things. Having a computer without an internet connection is like an electric razor…when the power is out.

Ok, so the list was Top Ten bioengineering projects in devellopment. #3 is: Angry, Read the rest of this entry »

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