It was something like -20 today with the wind chill here in New York.  This pic is near the skating rink at Bryant Park.  I registered my new domain name today, and have started work on the forms for business registration.  After about a year of back and forth, I finally decided on New York for the expansion office.

The idea is to have two strong regional centres from which to run the company and expand further.  Vancouver will be at one end of the continent and New York will be on the other. My Vancouver office is a couple months away from being able to operate without me, which will leave me free to get creative and start building.

Seeing as our head office is in Canada, I’d naturally been thinking about expanding to Toronto for a while – but no.  We in Canada can all pretend that ‘T-nought‘ is the centre of the universe, but at the end of the day it is what it is – a big fish in a small pond, and in spite of its pretentions, it’s second rate (at best). I only have so many years to live, and I’m not going to waste any of my time with the second rate, and neither are my customers.  So it’s New York City.

I get my Green Card on January 5th and I’m set.  The preliminaries are all done, and this time next year, I hope to have boots on the ground in this city.

I’m in New York visiting Cathy’s family for the holidays, Merry X-mas by the way. Today when I was doing last minute shopping I went to hit the ATM for more cash and discovered that my card was dead. I tried logging into my online account with my iPhone but it kept giving me an error message. So I called the bank and they told me that my card had been ‘compromised’ – i.e. the pin number had been skimmed from some fake machine back in Vancouver.  When I was able to check the balance again, I saw that my account had been nearly emptied.

Being in New York and right before the holidays, there’s literally nothing I can do about this. I can’t get my money back, not for a while anyway (there’s some form I’ve got to fill out) – and although I’ve got a bunch in my PayPal account, I can’t transfer it over quickly enough for it to be useful.  Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to access it because my bank card has been cancelled and I can’t get a replacement here.

So tomorrow’s Christmas eve, our big dinner, and to all appearances I’m going to be as peaceful and cheery as one of the Whos from ‘the Grinch who stole Christmas’. You know how after the Grinch stole all their Christmas presents and roast beast, they still went out to the square to hold hands and sing Christmas carols? Like that.

But come on, we’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars right before Christmas – I’m pissed. I can’t sleep I’m so angry.

So while I paste some sh*t-eating grin on my face, and do some ‘aw shucks’/'don’t cry over spilled milk’ routine for Cathy’s family – here’s what I’m really going to be thinking about:

The top ten things I would do to that asshole who stole all my money:

10. We’re not supposed to have a Christmas tree in our apartment – but we did anyway. At the end of Christmas we had to sneak the tree out, so I took some bolt cutters and snipped it into tiny pieces and fit the whole thing into a single garbage bag.  That was our Christmas miracle for 2007.  I bet I could do the feat again, this time using nothing but a criminal, a shoebox, and toe nail clippers.

9. Deep fry his extremities and make the world’s first ever ’screaming tempura’.

8. I’d scrape sand paper over his entire body, smear him in sh*t and let his whole body become a giant, throbbing, puss-filled infection.

7. I’d peel him.

6. The trusty ‘putter to the spine’.

5. I’d invent ‘diahrea boarding’. It’s like water boarding but with a twist.

4. I bet you can kill someone with humidity. Like if you sealed a room off and left a really big pot of water in it to boil dry. I bet you could put so much moisture in the air the person would drown. Not quickly mind you, but you could probably kill them.

3. Fire.

2. Cut off his balls and then stretch his emptied nutsack over his face and suffocate him with it.

1.

If I ever find that person, I don’t know which of those things I’d do – but I suspect that the freakier it is, the more likely I am to get off with an insanity plea.  And worst case scenario, I do get sent up for suffocating some guy with his own scrotum – at least everyone in prison will think I’m a total psycho and leave me alone.

1. The worldwide Atheist bus ads.

Richard Dawkins with an 'atheist bus' in London

Across the globe, local atheist groups slapped ads up on the sides of buses to get their message across.  Here in Vancouver, in what is maybe the most atheistic city on the continent, the ads weren’t allowed.  In fact in dozens of cities around the world the ads weren’t posted – in many cases because of reactions from the “faithful”:

Recently a Christian bus driver from Southampton refused to drive a bus that displayed the ad, saying he was shocked and horrified when he saw the slogan, and walked out of his shift in protest.

“I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face, my first reaction was shock, horror,” driver Ron Heather told BBC radio.  “I felt that I could not drive that bus. I think it was the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God. I told my managers and they said they haven’t got another one and I thought I better go home, so I did,” he said.

An AFP report said that following the appearance of the ads on 800 buses across Britain and in London’s subway system, “angry Christians have protested to Britain’s advertising watchdog – the Advertising Standards Agency – asking for proof that the slogans are telling the truth.”  A Daily Telegraph report said that the Advertising Standards Agency is considering whether to investigate the campaign on the grounds that it is offensive or that its central claim about God’s existence cannot be substantiated.

In northern Italy, a more blatantly antagonistic slogan – “The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that we do not need him.” – has been rejected by a billboard agency, the IGP Decaux advertising group. The ad campaign was condemned by the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Genoa, whose Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco is president of the Italian Bishops Conference.

2. Obama’s ’shout out’ to atheists in the Inaugural.

From the NYTimes:

Most startling, in his inaugural address he described America as “a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.” That’s the first time I can recall an American president ever saying anything inclusive about atheists (who constitute about 8 percent of Americans, are fast-growing and much reviled; Americans say in polls that they are willing to elect almost anyone president but an atheist).

I think the most startling thing was that he was able to include atheists into the mix without anyone really caring.  Outside of 30 seconds on Fox News and a few dozen bitchy comments in the blogosphere, he was able to do this with virtually no criticism.

3. The March 29th vote in the French colony of Mayotte to become France’s 101st Department.

Why is it significant?  From leMonde:

La départementalisation de l’île devrait également entraîner des modifications culturelles importantes pour les 186 000 Mahorais – musulmans à plus de 95% – comme la suppression définitive de la polygamie, l’élévation de l’âge légal pour le mariage de 15 à 18 ans ou la diminution des attributions des juges musulmans.

By joining France, they automatically become a full member of the European Union – possibly the first Muslim majority territory to do so and what’s more they become subject to French secular law.  Until now the islands have had an informal Sharia law, and Muslim Imams had wide sway over legal affairs  Thanks to the vote, those things are gone.  The people of Mayotte knew that going into the vote – there was significant opposition from Imams, but still – they voted 95.22% in favour.  While this isn’t specifically an atheist triumph, it is a secular one – it’s the rollback of religious law in a far-away corner of Africa.

4. Darwin Day.

Darwin Day – the 200th anniversary of his birth – became a rallying point for atheists this year.  Atheists were able to meet at any one of 800 celebrations in 46 countries.  The people behind the festivities are the who’s who of the Atheist high clergy (the Centre for Inquiry, American Humanists et al*).  Here the Freedom From Religion Foundation (another of the organizers) explains why they believed that Darwin Day was important:

… “2009 from beginning to end [is] truly the Year of Darwin,” says Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor.

“And,” adds Foundation co-president Dan Barker, “the anniversaries make 2009 a blockbuster year for promoting science.” Barker left his fundamentalist ministry more than 20 year ago and is author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists.

“It’s an intellectual blot on our country that more than 50% of Americans reject evolution,” said Gaylor. “The Darwin bicentennial is a chance to celebrate reality, to move our nation forward, to ‘evolve beyond belief’ and return to the Enlightenment.”

5. The Irish Blasphemy law

You can’t win everything.  Atheism did pretty well around the world this year, but there were some set backs.

The Irish government plans to bring into force a new law in October that critics say is a return to medieval justice.

The legislation, aimed at providing judges with clear direction on the 1937 Constitution’s blasphemy prohibition, imposes a fine of up to $25,000 — about $39,000 — for anyone who “publishes or utters matter that is (intentionally meant to be) grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.”

Police with a search warrant will be able to enter private premises and use “reasonable force” to obtain incriminating evidence.

Atheists are naturally challenging this law, and hopefully next year this can be moved over to the ‘win’ column.

6. Berlin’s religious education referendum fails.

A 'no' poster for the Berlin ethics course referendum.

Berlin is called – I don’t know by whom – “the capital of atheism”.  So it was a shock a few years ago when the city had its first Muslim honour killing.  Part of the reaction to that was to introduce mandatory ethics classes to teach all children about what is expected of them by society.  Because these classes were mandatory and covered many of the same topics as the elective religion classes, enrollment in what the Germans call ‘Reli’ classes plummeted.

Naturally Christians couldn’t have that, so they pushed through a referendum which, if passed, would have made students choose between a mandatory ethics class or a mandatory religion class.  Those religion classes would be divided by faith, with Muslims, Catholics and Protestants each attending separate classes.

“What’s so awful about an ethics lesson in which everyone takes part?” asked Michael Müller, regional head of the Social Democrats. “Isn’t it a good thing that I learn something about my neighbour’s religion, his family and cultural background?”

It was close, but thanks to apathy, the vote lost on two counts: first, they lost in total numbers, and second they didn’t get a sufficient turnout to make the referendum binding.

7. Renewed popularity of Ayn Rand.

Her book sales are sky-rocketing, her name is on everyone’s lips - but what people never seem to remember about Ayn Rand is her relentless and militant atheism.  It’s her best feature.  Here she is discussing it with Playboy:

Playboy:

Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?

Rand:

Qua religion, no—in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy.

This year more than a million copies of her atheistic books made it into the hands of Americans.  Hopefully countering the false perception that atheism is only for left-wingers.

8. An atheistic civil society

Here we’re talking about Dawkins’ atheist summer camps, about the boom in atheist student groups on campuses, about the great attendance at Darwin Day, even about the Out Campaign – what’s happening is that the world is seeing the birth of an atheistic civil society.  It’s obviously a long way from being able to offer the sense of community that people find in the churches, but it’s a necessary step forward.

9. Science shows religion to be hard-wired.

This year treated us to a spate of articles about how humans evolved to believe in God, or how there could even be a God gene:

… research is pointing to a new perspective on religion, one that seeks to explain why religious behavior has occurred in societies at every stage of development and in every region of the world. Religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning that it exists because it was favored by natural selection. It is universal because it was wired into our neural circuitry before the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland.  For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

This is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand it makes it sound like religion will be harder to eradicate – on the other hand, does this mean we atheists are more evolved?  Or on a weirder and more menacing note, does this mean that – as one newspaper reported – “science is just one gene away from defeating religion“?

10. The rise of debaptisms.

It’s silly.  But it’s a real thing, a coming out for many people who were forced into the church at a young age.  At the time the above report was done, 60,000 people had downloaded debaptism certificates.  As the year wore on, de-baptisms spread.  When they reached the USA, they even became more elaborate:

In a type of mock ceremony that’s now been performed in at least four states, a robed “priest” used a hairdryer marked “reason” in an apparent bid to blow away the waters of baptism once and for all. Several dozen participants then fed on a “de-sacrament” (crackers with peanut butter) and received certificates assuring they had “freely renounced a previous mistake, and accepted Reason over Superstition.”

For Gray, the lighthearted spirit of last summer’s Atheist Coming Out Party and De-Baptism Bash in suburban Westerville, Ohio, served a higher purpose than merely spoofing a Christian rite.

“It was very therapeutic,” Gray said in an interview. “It was a chance to laugh at the silly things I used to believe as a child. It helped me admit that it was OK to think the way I think and to not have any religious beliefs.”

I like how this is considered to be the ‘mock’ ceremony, while dipping babies in magic water is still robed in mystery and awe.

If you have any atheist stories I missed, please let me know in the comments.

Let me preface this by saying that I can’t find enough information to figure this out.  I don’t know if this event I’m writing about is tied to the Tamil referendum, or if it’s just a big wedding party.  Logic leans toward one conclusion – but I honestly don’t know.  Read on and the above will make sense…

Tamil referendum signs in Ontario.

A minor note on the events calendar for Kitchener-Conestoga’s Conservative MP, Harold Albrecht:

Harold attending Thamil gathering at the Four Points Sheridan Saturday, 19 December 2009

Unlike all of the other events on his calendar, this one didn’t include any information.  Just the badly misspelled title.  So what’s missing?  Well, what’s happening with Canada’s Tamil community on December 19th?

On December 19, thousands of Canadian Tamils will vote in cities across Canada to test the current political validity of the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution, which was declared in 1976 by all Tamils political parties and in the 1977 general election in Sri Lanka. In an e-mail to Digital Journal on Monday, Senthan Nada, a Toronto spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop the War in Sri Lanka, said that the Coalition for Tamil Elections Canada was created to conduct surveys, opinions, referendums and elections among the general Tamil Canadian public. Nada further explained that the elections will take place in major cities across the nation with areas that contain large numbers of Tamils between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. The polling will also be assisted of a “reputable Canadian company.”

or from 680 news in Toronto:

This begs the question: what is the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution?  Here are a few key points from it via the Coalition for Tamil Elections Canada:

This convention resolves that restoration and reconstitution of the Free, Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of TAMIL EELAM, based on the right of self determination inherent to every nation, has become inevitable in order to safeguard the very existence of the Tamil Nation in this Country.

This Convention further declares -

[...] that Tamil Eelam shall be a Socialist State wherein the exploitation of man by man shall be forbidden, the dignity of labor shall be recognized, the means of production and distribution shall be subject to public ownership and control while permitting private enterprise in these branches within limit prescribed by law, economic development shall be on the basis of socialist planning and there shall be a ceiling on the total wealth that any individual of family may acquire.

This Convention directs the Action Committee of the TAMIL UNITED LIBERATION FRONT to formulate a plan of action and launch without undue delay the struggle for winning the sovereignty and freedom of the Tamil Nation;

And this Convention calls upon the Tamil Nation in general and the Tamil youth in particular to come forward to throw themselves fully into the sacred fight for freedom and to flinch not till the goal of a sovereign state of TAMIL EELAM is reached.

The Tamils lost their war.  They didn’t have clean hands, that “struggle” mentioned above included suicide bombing and ethnic cleansing* among many other acts of terror against civilians. Canadian Tamils are going to vote on whether to support further struggle or to accept their defeat.  It’s arguable that to even ask the question could be seen as legitimizing separatism and political violence.

Don’t get me wrong – today 128,000 Tamil civilians reside in concentration camps.  Their homeland is in ruins.  The Sri Lankan state has proven that it does not have their best interests at heart.  They deserve security, and it seems like that means they need a state.  I’m very sympathetic to their cause.  But I’m just some guy – I can sympathize without it meaning anything.  When an MP does it – a government MP no less, it means something else.

I don’t know if his event on December 19th is related in any way to the vote.  Logic says that it is likely.  Tamils will be voting in Kitchener* – and every vote I’ve been to, includes an after party at a hotel or bar to watch and complain about the results.

So if this is what he’s going to – should he?  Should a government MP be attending an event which legitimizes separatism and political violence?

UPDATE: from the Christian Science Monitor:

Tamils of Sri Lankan origin across Canada overwhelmingly voted “yes” [99.82%*] on a referendum held Saturday calling for an independent homeland in the island nation.

It’s the latest in a series of such votes held in Sri Lankan Tamil communities in Europe and North America, and organizers say the purpose is to apply international pressure on Sri Lanka to devolve more autonomy to Tamils.

Political analysts say this goal is unlikely to be achieved anytime soon, but that the votes may help reinvigorate the pro-Tamil Tiger diaspora in the wake of the Tigers’ devastating military defeat this year after decades of fighting.

“The referendum has been organized by groups supportive of the Tamil Tigers,” says Dr. Narenda Subramanian, associate professor of political science at McGill University, who specializes in South Asia. “They’ll use this as a way of revitalizing their pro-Tiger network outside Sri Lanka. They may be laying the foundation for a transnational Eelam government, a legitimate self-governing authority outside Sri Lanka that will one day take over a future Tamil state in Sri Lanka – in the event that ever happens.” [ ... ]

The referenda will have no effect in Sri Lanka, says Madras-based political analyst Ramani Hariharan, a former intelligence officer working on the Sri Lanka dossier for the Indian army.

“The Sri Lankan government won’t comment on this because they don’t want to recognize this as being influential,” says Mr. Hariharan. “It won’t change anything in the country.” He says the Sri Lankan government is using its own strategy to win over conciliatory elements of the Tamil diaspora.

According to Hariharan, the real motive of the referenda may just be to fill the leadership vacuum created by the death of rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and lay claim to the vast financial empire the Tamil Tigers have worldwide. “The Tigers want to create some sort of legitimacy to revive the movement,” he says.

A comment on another post reminded me of an article I read ages ago about one of the cornerstones of the neo-fascist resurgence – gay fascists.  Now before you start thinking I mean something I don’t – I’m not talking about some “gay agenda” you may not like, I’m talking about real foreigner-stomping, cold-blooded, gay fascists:

Scratch the homophobic surface and there’s a spandex swastika underneath … when the British National Party – our own home-grown Holocaust-denying bigots – announced it was fielding an openly gay candidate in the European elections this June, dedicated followers of fascism didn’t blink. The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was – including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay. It’s time to admit something. Fascism isn’t something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is – in part, at least – a gay thing, and it’s time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music.

The late Austrian fascist leader, Jorg Haider

Just look at our own continent over the past decade. Dutch fascist Pim Fortuyn ran on blatantly racist anti-immigrant platform, describing Islam as “a cancer” and “the biggest threat to Western civilisation today.” Yet with two little fluffy dogs and a Mamma complex, he was openly, flamboyantly gay. When accused by a political opponent of hating Arabs, he replied, “How can I hate Arabs? I sucked one off last night.”

Jorg Haider blasted Austria’s cosy post-Nazi politics to rubble in 2000 when his neo-fascist ‘Freedom Party’ won a quarter of the vote and joined the country’s government as a coalition partner. Several facts always cropped up in the international press coverage: his square jaw, his muscled torso, his SS-supporting father, his rabid anti-Semitism, his hatred of immigrants, his description of Auschwitz and Dachau as “punishment centres”. A few newspapers mentioned that he is always surrounded by fit, fanatical young men. A handful went further and pointed out that several of these young men are openly gay. Then one left-wing German paper broke the story everybody else was hinting at. They alleged Haider is gay…

On and on it goes. If you inter-railed across Europe, only stopping with gay fascists, there aren’t many sights you’d miss. France’s leading post-war fascist was Edouard Pfieffer, who was not batting for the straight side. Germany’s leading neo-Nazi all through the eighties was called Michael Kuhnen; he died of AIDS in 1991 a few years after coming out. Martin Lee, author of a study of European fascism, explains, “For Kuhnen, there was something supermacho about being a Nazi, as well as being a homosexual, both of which enforced his sense of living on the edge, of belonging to an elite that was destined to make an impact. He told a West German journalist that homosexuals were ‘especially well-suited for our task, because they do not want ties to wife, children and family.’”

Read the rest

American Greens that is:

In March of this year, [American Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney] attended a conference in London on the Gaza crisis organized by a foundation established by Mahathir Mohamad, who was prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003 and has a long history of anti-Jewish rhetoric. In a 1970 book, Mahathir wrote that “Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry gained them financial control of Europe” and that Jews “are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively.” In a 2003 speech at an international summit of Islamic leaders, he said: “Today, the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy to avoid persecution and gain … control of the most powerful countries.”

McKinney commented about the London conference in two postings on the Green Party’s website in which she praised Mahathir (“one of my heroes”) and also a man named David Pidcock, whom she called “my London friend.” A British-born convert to Islam, Pidcock is the author of an extensive collection of conspiracy-laden anti-Semitic works, including the 1992 work Satanic Voices Ancient & Modern, which blames most of the world’s current and ancient problems on a centuries-old conspiracy whose participants include Freemasons, Illuminati, “Luciferian Zionists,” the Rockefeller family, big oil companies and the Council on Foreign Relations ….

At the conference, McKinney was photographed with Pidcock and Michele Renouf, a former model and socialite who is considered one of Britain’s leading Holocaust-denial activists.

Come on, they’re married, they’ve got a dog, land, brown clothes …  what more do you people want?

From the Globe and Mail:

Comments have been disabled

Editor’s Note: Comments have been closed due to an overwhelming number of hateful and homophobic remarks. We appreciate that readers want to discuss this issue, but we can’t allow our site to become a platform for intolerance.

Our whole strategy for victory in Afghanistan is to wait for a country that we conquered in 3 weeks to be able to defend itself.  For god’s sake, we took that country out with a few hundred special forces troops on horseback.

Just look at them.

We are so going to lose.

This isn’t that topical, it’s more one to save for later.  Say for the next time the CBC publishes one of their semi-regular stories about the government or some company outsourcing to Americans.

Here’s an example of the kind of story I’m talking about – in this piece on Evan Solomon’s Power and Politics, the CBC presenter gives a Tory minister a tough time because the federal government used an American company to build the Canadian Olympic pavilion – fast forward to minute 48.50:

Ok.  Now here’s the funny thing – that podcast you just listened to (naturally) comes direct from the CBC’s web-server.  A web server whose management has been outsourced to an American company.  Take a stroll over to http://geotool.flagfox.net/ and type in www.cbc.ca.  Here’s what you get:

As you can see, the CBC has outsourced to Akamai Technologies of San Diego, USA.

Now fortunately the CBC has been so kind as to provide Akamai with a video testimonial on their services.  They talk briefly about their tech needs and why they chose to use this American firm instead of a Canadian one.  It’s a clear explanation and I hope that the next time the CBC wants to use their American-operated website to make a big stink about someone buying from Americans – maybe a helpful blogger will direct them back to their own thoughts on the matter.  This is the CBC’s Martin Delisle (Director, Production & Operations):

For the record – this blog you are reading right now is hosted in Texas and I totally don’t care.  For the money I’m paying ($0) they could host it Castro’s bathroom.

Between an animated crapping bird and this picture below, I’d give the edge to this pic as being the new low in juvenile partisan stupidity – the PM fisting a cow (NB: read the fine print, he’s not wearing any pants):

Where is it from?  Liberal.ca the official website of Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal Party.  It’s up there as part of a photo contest put on by the Liberals.  The contest is to mock Stephen Harper for his reluctance to go to the Climate Summit in Copenhagen:

Last week Stephen Harper finally agreed to follow world leaders like Barack Obama to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen.

We know that there are many, many places that Harper would rather be than Copenhagen next week—and we want you to use your mad Photoshop skills to illustrate them for us!

Now, this wouldn’t be a challenge without a winner. That’s why we’ve lined up these exciting prizes for the 3 best entries:

One other entry jumps out too – not so much for being juvenile, but for being unbecoming of a major federal party.  In this picture you can see the PM apparently shouting out in pain as he’s being shot.

The Liberals posted these pictures today – December 14th.  Not that there’s a good time to publish things like this, but to do it today, right after that attack on Berlusconi – the one attributed by many (left and right) to an atmosphere of poisoned political discourse – it’s shocking.

What’s more shocking though is that the Liberals and their supporters think it’s ‘ok’ to mock or threaten the Prime Minister like this, just because he’s not up to their standards on the environment file.

Update : Here are a few of the other pictures the Liberals just pulled off their site:

Updater: The Liberals have made an “apology” of sorts:

“We apologize for any offence these images may have caused, and continue to strive to present a progressive and dynamic web experience for our site visitors.”

Kady O’Malley at the CBC notes:

this particular web offence would seem to merit a more direct apology — as in, one directed at the prime minister, personally, from the Liberal leader than an update to the webpage. Also, comparing the kerfuffle to “Attila the Hun complaining about the Romans’ table manners,” as A Senior Liberal Official did this morning, according to the Globe’s Jane Taber? Not really helping sell the sincerity.

Contrary to what some on the blogosphere are saying – let me be clear: Elizabeth May and the Greens don’t hate Israel, hate Jews, and love Hezbollah.

That would involve forming an opinion and taking a moral stand on something other than spotted owls or water use.  To quote the Green candidate from York South-Weston “the Green Party’s international policy is not their strong point”.  Nor is their economic policy, their first nations policy, inter-governmental affairs policy, etc… etc…

The point I was making in the posts in question – was that any politician, hell, any moral person – if they are standing in front of a crowd pock-marked with fascists, should take a few minutes to say a word or two about that.  It’s not enough to condemn terrorist missiles being fired overseas when you’ve got actual walking, chanting, goose-stepping fascists 10 feet from the podium.

The Liberals and Bloq took a lot of grief over the same rallies – from both the Israeli Ambassador and B’Nai Brith.  Why should the Greens be let off the hook?

Now I know some certain unnamed knee-jerk reactionaries might want to look at the pictures on that Elizabeth May post and run with it.  But to say she’s Anti-Israeli, that kind of interpretation is like a millimetre deep.  Politicians from every party have been sandbagged at rallies where pro-terrorist fascists have shown up – what separates serious parties from those in the fringe, is how they react.

This is how the Greens react.

On any issue other than the environment, the Greens can’t be taken seriously – and that’s the main point.

I’ve noticed that people who read my blog tend to be well hung geniuses.  Which comes first: the reading, or the monster dong?

Unrelated