Anti-Atheist hate: Atheist had it coming

[old story, I know...]

I had thought atheism was the ‘in’ thing with the ‘progressive’ left. Apparently not. Take a look at the linked Varsity editorial. Trottier describes it correctly when he paraphrases them as saying: “so what, that doesn’t qualify as a hate crime, you should get used to getting punched or something”.

As for the human rights people? The banners of books and the harassers of librarians – not as much of a surprise. They’re hypocrites, but they’ve always been hypocrites. If the victim in this case had been Muslim, I have absolutely no doubt that they would have been the first to press for charges. Last time I checked, in Canada at least, being a Muslim is as much a choice as being an atheist.

Justin Trottier, president of the Freethought Association of Canada, was assaulted March 28, at approximately 1am, and is claiming that his assault should be considered a hate crime.

…Approximately 20 minutes later the assailant and his friend came back, said Trottier, and the friend asked, “’What did you say to my friend before?’ and I told him just what I said about recycling the poster and he’s like, ‘I don’t think that’s what you said. I think you said that you can believe what you want and I can believe what I want.’”

“I insisted that’s not what I said and he insisted that was what I said and that went on for about two minutes.”

After calling the appropriate authorities, Trottier said he was asked to apologise to the man within two minutes because they were not going to wait for the authorities to come. “Basically I held my ground and the guy who had originally thrown the poster down comes up…he slaps me a couple of times in the face and says, ‘Watch your smart mouth,’ so I grabbed his hand and told him to stop it and that’s when he did the headbutting with his hat and then he left and that was basically it.”

Regarding his injuries, Trottier said, “It wasn’t too serious, I’ve been recovering pretty well.” The headbutting resulted in a cut on Trottier’s nose.

According to Trottier, the Freethought Association of Canada is treating this as a serious incident that should be regarded as a hate crime, and are disgusted at some of the media attention that his incident has received from other papers.

“They joked about our belief system. They had 20 minutes to premeditate the attack, [but] the police were saying it was just an escalation from a verbal dispute but that wasn’t it at all. There was no verbal dispute. They waited 20 minutes and then they decided that they wanted to come,” he said. “They were very smart about it.”

Regarding the Varsity’s editorial, “Trottier makes a poor martyr”—which disputed Trottier’s claims and suggested that his claims are a result of hurt pride—Trottier said, “I couldn’t even make sense of their editorial.” The feeling he got out of it was that they acknowledged that the incident might have stemmed from him being an atheist “but so what, that doesn’t qualify as a hate crime, you should get used to getting punched or something…that was the feeling I got out of that.”

Harry Abrams of the Canadian Anti-Racism Education and Research Society said that this incident does not qualify as a hate crime.

“A hate crime happens when someone is on the receiving end of abuse for the things about themselves that they cannot change,” he said. “[Trottier] really should expect that some lumps should come his way sooner or later over not just taking this position but for promoting that point of view rightly or wrongly.

“I don’t think [atheism] is caught by the Canadian Constitution in terms of being a protected minority.”

He added that perhaps if Trottier had apologised, the assault could potentially have been avoided. “He possibly had a way out of this thing and chose to be confrontational rather than apologetic or something consolatory.”

Read the rest

Taliban kill school girls

The BBC on why 90%+ of the Afghan people support our pressence there:

A group of girls returning home from school in Afghanistan’s Logar province recently did not for a moment expect what lay ahead.

As they walked down a dirt track, insurgents sprang out of the parched farms and began firing on them.

Some of them fled into the farm, but two girls, one aged 13, the other 10, were killed in the ambush. Three of their friends were wounded.

This kind of attack on schoolchildren, the first incident of its kind in Afghanistan, highlights how the insurgents are trying to disrupt education in the war-ravaged nation.

A surge in violence over the past year threatens to neutralise the gains made by the country in sending its children back to school after the fall of the Taleban.

In the past 13 months, 226 schools, many run from tents, have been burnt down by the insurgents. A total of 110 teachers and students have been killed in incidents of indirect violence and another 52 wounded, officials say.

Officials worry that the Taleban may have begun targeting school children because of the “relative success” of a programme to protect schools.

Read the rest…

Mohammed got served

The Danes have belatedly torched an efigy of Mohammed. I have no doubt the EU will be pressing charges for hate this or that, but to hell with it. For now, as they say: “It’s on”.

This is their manifesto:

Now a new evil has arrived in Europe, an evil that lies and kills in the name of their so-called God. An evil that springs from the so-called Prophet Mohammed. Therefore, in our time, it is he who symbolizes evil and it is not just one harvest that will disappear, but all of Western Europe’s future that will vanish if this evil is not dispatched to Hekkenfeldt [i.e. Hell, literally the Hekla volcano in Iceland — BB].

Therefore will we burn the so-called Prophet Mohammed, on June 23, 2007, in three nameless places.

We burned Mohammed in three different places across the country. We now release the video from the first burning. The next videos will be released on July 23 and August 23.

The video and comment are here.

A correction

A correction to those on the left who talk about how Iran is a democracy.

From the New York Times by way of Michelle Malkin.com

Young men wearing T-shirts deemed too tight or haircuts seen as too Western have been paraded bleeding through Tehran’s streets by uniformed police officers who force them to suck on plastic jerrycans, a toilet item Iranians use to wash their bottoms. In case anyone misses the point, it is the official news agency Fars distributing the pictures of what it calls “riffraff.” Far bloodier photographs are circulating on blogs and on the Internet.

The country’s police chief boasted that 150,000 people — a number far larger than usual — were detained in the annual spring sweep against any clothing considered not Islamic. More than 30 women’s rights advocates were arrested in one day in March, according to Human Rights Watch, five of whom have since been sentenced to prison terms of up to four years. They were charged with endangering national security for organizing an Internet campaign to collect more than a million signatures supporting the removal of all laws that discriminate against women.

More on Michelle Malkin.com

Do you want to fight back? Pressure your government to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq from the list of terrorist organizations. The Mujahedin-e Kahlq is the menace of the Iranian regime. Terrorists with the nerve to kill Iran’s leaders on the steps of their homes.  It’s true that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but slipping him a few bucks to cut the throats of the cops in these pictures? If nothing else it’s cathartic.

More on the Rushdie Knighthood

Nick Cohen is one of those writers whose name I would get in a fist fight to defend. He’s the originator of the Euston Manifesto and a militant for the west and for true progess. He’ll be on Shire Network News’ podcast for the next 2 weeks.

Here he is on the Rushdie Knighthood:

Rushdie’s knighthood was a sign of the changing mood. Labour politicians might have tried to impose a veto a few years ago; instead, they said: ‘Are we going to allow British policy to be decided by dictatorial bigots, who want to inflame religious passion to divert attention from their own corruption?’

There is only one possible answer to that question and it remains astonishing how many people who profess liberal sympathies refuse to grasp it. Watch the discussion about Rushdie on last week’s Question Time on the BBC website. You will see Shirley Williams, the representative of the Lib Dems and member of the great and the good, fail to offer a word of protest against men who would murder authors. All she does is condemn the government for honouring a novelist, until Peter Hitchens, a Mail on Sunday columnist who is usually dismissed as a spittle-flecked loon, reminds her that she needs to clear her throat with a few words of criticism for his would-be assassins, if only for form’s sake.

The rest of the article is here

The video to which he refers is below:

Anti-Rushdie Book-Burner: “The freedom to offend is a necessary freedom”

As you may have notice, parts of the Islamic world have been going mental over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. This isn’t the first time though. Back in 1989, when his book, the Satanic Verses, first came out, there was the same indignation and the same violence and of course the fatwa (religious decree) demanding his death.

Never forget that 1. too many people in the west like John Le Carre, Pope John Paul II and others sided with the book burners ; 2. A fatwa isn’t an idle threat. Yes, Rushdie survived but his Japanese translator did not. That translator’s name was Hitoshi Igarashi. Several other translators and publishers in Europe nearly shared Igarashi’s fate – but fortunately, they survived their attacks.

I found an article in the Guardian by one of the original book-burners from 1989 – British Muslim Inayat Bunglawala:

..when the Iranian Islamic leader, Imam Khomeini delivered his fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death, I was truly elated. It was a very welcome reminder that British Muslims did not have to regard themselves just as a small, vulnerable minority; they were part of a truly global and powerful movement. If we were not treated with respect then we were capable of forcing others to respect us.

If you follow the British press, Bunglawala’s isn’t a novel statement. But this is – he repents:

Looking back now on those events I will readily acknowledge that we were wrong to have called for the book to be banned. Today I can certainly better appreciate the concerns and fear generated by the images of book-burning in Bradford and the calls for the author to be killed. It seems crazy now, but I really did believe that some committee of learned elders should vet all books before they could be sold to the public…The freedom to offend is a necessary freedom.

Read the rest here…

While you’re there, I’d encourage you to scroll down and read the comments, Bunglawala jumps in there and clears up a lot of weak points in the main article.

More than ever

Those people are slaves – part of a group of nearly 500 freed from their masters in China. For as little as $50 you could but one of these men or boys to toil in your factory or to torture and murder at your pleasure:

Zhao Yanbing, a foreman who fled a brickworks where 31 men were rescued a few days ago, described on state television how he had beaten a man in his late fifties for not working hard enough. “His performance was so bad, so I thought that I would frighten him a bit. When I raised the shovel over him I never thought that he would get up and confront me, so I slammed the shovel down on his head.” The man never got up again.

You can read more about this slavery ring here.

Around the world today there are 27 million slaves – that’s more than at any time in human history. Most of the action against slavery is being done by Christian organizations, but there are some non-sectarian groups. In the UK there is Anti-Slavery International. In the US there is Free the Slaves. Here in Canada – the Future Group.

Before you get the wrong idea, we aren’t talking about so-called ‘wage-slaves’ (and what an ignorant expression that is), but real people held as chattel. Some of these people are born into slavery, others are victims of war, and others still are (as is the case with the Chinese slaves) kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder.

This is a problem everywhere – including Canada. While not a major source of slaves, this is a final destination for women and children to be used for sex. It’s surprising but Canada didn’t have a law to specifically target human trafficking until 2005. At the time the bill was passed, there were 12 slave masters on trial in Canada.

Last year the Future Group released a report on the current state of slavery in Canada. The situation is summarized here by LifeSiteNews.com):

The situation in Canada is so bad that individual law enforcement officers are reportedly approaching local hospitals and NGOs to cobble together funding to provide the most basic medical assistance for victims in major cities.

“People have been threatened and told that if they co-operate with law enforcement their families back home will be killed,” said Perrin. “What Canada has typically done is detain these victims without medical care, then deport them. It’s a practice that we’ve seen in some authoritarian and despotic countries and it has no place in a civilized, just society like our own.”

The report criticizes former Liberal cabinet ministers Irwin Cotler, Joe Volpe and Pierre Pettigrew for “passing the buck” on the issue. Conservative Citizenship and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg told Sun Media, “It’s very damning, and if there are obvious legislative or regulatory fixes that need to be done, those have to become priorities, given especially that we’re talking about very vulnerable people.”

That was back in 2006. What’s been done since then? Not enough. Monte Solberg did follow up that report with a stop-gap measure to allow victims of slavery to stay in Canada for 120 days – but they can’t stay permanently and they have almost no access to resources. In December the Commons passed a ‘feel-good’ motion condemning slavery but this isn’t legislation and it has no effect on the well-being of former slaves.

Looking at legislation, there are 2 nearly identical bills before Parliament right now. Bill s-222 in the Senate and Bill c-410 in the house. Both of these bills would allow runaway slaves to stay in Canada. Neither has moved beyond first reading and I doubt either will pass. The Senate is too busy fighting the government and c-410 is a private members’ bill from Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, and so you can imagine the chance that one has.

It’s maddening to realize that even though there are as many as 15,000 slaves in Canada this issue ranks below ATM fees, below payday loans, and below movie pirating.

What needs to be done? Domestically we need safe houses for runaway slaves. They need access to health care and they need to be granted refugee status, or at least temporary resident status for much longer than 120 days. This has been piloted in British Columbia – it needs to be extended across the entire country. Internationally, Canada has to be more aggressive with states that actively support slavery and we have to bring in laws to punish individuals and corporations such as Canada’s Talisman energy that benefit from slavery.

As individuals we have to help those who are on the ground in Africa and Asia risking their lives to free slaves and – just as important – we have to pressure our representatives to bring in legislation to deal with this.

Our ancestors would spin in their graves if they knew that the country that American slaves called the “Promised Land” did nothing while modern slaves toiled, were tortured and died in our own cities.

London Welcomes its Islamic Overlords

They don’t call the religion ’submission’ for nothing:

It’s the capital’s fastest growing religion, based on noble traditions and compassionate principles, yet Islam can still be tainted by mistrust and misunderstanding. Here Time Out argues that an Islamic London would be a better place…we should recognise both what Islam has given this city already, and the advantages it would bring across a wide range of areas in the future.

Although England has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilised accommodation could be made among faith groups in London

Read more

Courtesy of LGF

RELATED

Clarity on Afghanistan

I found this while arguing with someone on-line about Afghanistan.  It’s from the government of Canada:

The Afghanistan deployment is not, nor has it ever been, a traditional peacekeeping mission. There are no cease-fire arrangements to enforce and no negotiated peace settlement to respect. Negotiation is not an option with insurgent groups who are not interested in the kind of peace that the Afghan people seek.

The Great Canadian Wish List

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Hi! to all the CBC employees emailing this link around on their corporate email accounts: https://gwpilot.cbc.ca. Shouldn’t you be working or something? Somewhere in Nunavut there is a guy who isn’t bored.

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I found this on Ali Eteraz’s blog:

Diversity, the idea, is good. Diversity, the social engineering project, in which each colored, each religionist, each sexual preference, is praised for the simple fact that he or she exists, is a load of crap…

Ali Eteraz direct’s readers to a Facebook Group called “I Wish Canada”…

I Wish Canada is run by the CBC and allows people to post wishes and then allows users to add support to the different wishes. One of the wishes is to get rid of official multiculturalism – officially the wish is called “Celebrate what binds us rather than what divides us”. The wish is summarized below:

I wish Canada would do more to celebrate what brings us all together, rather than institutionalise everything that divides us under the cover of multiculturalism. I recognise our diversity, but I am tired of being forced to celebrate a system that forces us to find our own ghettoes and create 21st century tribes.

On its 140th birthday, I wish the use of religion and ethnicity by Canada’s political parties to garner votes would become a source of embarssment rather than pride.

I added my support to that. In fact you can add your support to any of the 474 wishes listed there. Come Canada Day CBC will be presenting all of the wishes on a TV special:

CBC News will be following the discussions on Facebook, looking for patterns and trends that emerge. We’ll also be reporting about the people behind the wishes on CBC TV, CBC Radio, CBC Newsworld and online at cbc.ca/wish. As Canada Day approaches, we’ll summarize the top ideas from Facebook, and come up with “The Great Canadian Wish List” just in time for July 1st.

Take a look through those 474 Wishes. The leftist ones aren’t doing so well. ‘Canada out of Afghanistan’ has only 77 votes while ‘More Liberty in Canada’ has 133 (including mine). The best one – “Privatise the CBC’ has only 55 (including mine again). Their wish is summarized as:

 

“There is no greater waste of our tax dollars than the CBC.”

I would encourage anyone with the time to go through the list, see if there’s one you can support, maybe if enough people go, we could let the CBC know just how out of touch they are.

UPDATE: I was looking through the groups I don’t like and saw one “Let’s Not Support Israel” . I took a look through the wall posts and saw that the top post was by a CBC Employee (someone part of the CBC network at least):

Zionists selfishness has exacerbated a colonial situation that may otherwise have been integrated without too much bloodshed. But no, they just *had* to have their own religious state. And to assuage our guilt over the Holocaust, the West gave them whatever they wanted regardless of who they displaced. Shame on us for wiping our hands of it like that.

I clicked on some of the supporters of that and found another CBC employee, ‘Alec Forbes’. Google his name + CBC and you find the personell coordinator for ‘CBC Unlocked’.

Anyhow, it’s not exactly a surprise, so getting back to business, here are my wishes (click below)

World’s worst person dies

Rachel Carson is dead.  If only there were a hell…

From American Thinker:

This attitude of Carson’s was imported into environmentalism whole, becoming the standard for dealing with environmental matters of all kinds.

DDT became target number one for the new environmental movement (one organization, the World Wildlife Fund, was founded with no other goal than its elimination). It was an uphill battle for several years, since serious scientific analysis of Carson’s claims overthrew virtually all of them. DDT did not cause cancer. It had no health effects whatsoever on humans, mammals, or any other higher animals. The sole deletorious effect involved the eggs of raptors, where ambiguous evidence of shell-thinning was discovered.

The EPA’s head, William D. Ruckelshaus, was a committed environmentalist and a member of several environmental organizations, with widespread connections throughout the movement. On June 14, 1972, Ruckelshaus rescinded the registration for DDT, effectively banning the compound. (Many sources, such as this site, claim that there never was any such ban, a contention easily answered by this EPA release.) Ruckelshaus later worked for the World Wildlife Federation, a fact that may or may not be relevant.

Despite clear evidence as to the effects, international aid groups such as the World Health Organization and USAid ceased supporting DDT operations. By the mid-80s, malaria had reached and surpassed previous levels. Up to 500 million people were suffering attacks each year. Two to three million of them died as a result. Up to nine-tenths of the dead were children under five.

So it continued for a quarter of a century. The tide began to turn when South Africa was persuaded in 1995 to abandon DDT in favor of the more expensive pyrethroid. Within three years, resistant mosquitoes appeared. By 2000, malaria cases had shot up by more than 1200%, to 62,000. The government resumed DDT spraying, and within months the disease rate dropped by four-fifths.

We live in a golden age

5 years ago musicians would be beaten with their own instruments if they played so much as a note.

Today: Radio Kandahar – courtesy of the Canadian Armed Forces: