Free Republic

Not in my backyard, either Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 MONTREAL -If you live in Montreal, and an acquaintance tells you she lives in Outremont, you may ask her with a wink -- the question is not perceived as anti-Semitic--if she lives in Outremont ma chere or Outremont kaschere. In Outremont, Montreal's most beautiful neighbourhood, one enclave, the aforementioned Outremont kaschere, is home to thousands of Hasidic Jews, who live peacefully but separately, very separately, from their neighbours. As in any Hasidic quarter, you can walk about there in assured physical security, although you may...

Canadian creed and culture By Jordan Michael Smith Ottawa Sun, Monday, July 9, 2007 Martin Luther King, Jr. argued in 1962 that "integration is the ultimate goal of our national community." A desegregated society that is not integrated leads to "physical proximity without spiritual affinity," he said. "It gives us a society where men are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together and hearts are apart." These words remain as true as when they were spoken, and perhaps a great deal truer, for the simple reason that we are witnessing the disastrous results of a desegregated society...

Cross-dressing coward David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Sunday, July 08, 2007 Should a man have the right to an opinion about how a woman dresses? We could argue about this all day, but the short answer is, yes. Women may obviously comment on what men wear, and I'm tired of conceding "rights" to people who do not recognize my own. An example is the Pakistani policewoman in Islamabad last week who found Maulana Abdul Aziz wearing a full-length burka. She did not think this was an appropriate way for him to dress, and turned him over to her...

Terrorist TV: The bad, the ugly, the boring and the stupid By RACHEL MARSDEN Toronto Sun, Sunday, July 8, 2007 Iran has just launched Press TV, its 24-hour English language satellite news channel to counter what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls western "propaganda." So I've decided this week to take my own romp through the Islamic world, to counter Press TV propaganda. Infidels like legs: Want to win hearts and minds, Press TV? Lose the hijab. Infidels don't dig it. Neither, apparently, do a lot of Muslim radicals. Ask any counter-terror agent about the disproportionate time spent following suspects...

What the ice tells us, 'experts' don't care to hear David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Saturday, July 07, 2007 Surely summertime is the best time to think about ice caps. And it is certainly summertime again up here in the northern hemisphere. Down there in the southern, I have noticed from passing weather reports, new cold records have been set in sundry locations in Patagonia, South Africa, Australia -- just as the "global warming" scare is peaking. My reader will of course realize it is winter down there, and winter is when cold records tend to be set....

Evil doctors are nothing new By PETER WORTHINGTON Toronto Sun, Saturday, July 7, 2007 There is still horror and disbelief that eight medical people were arrested in connection with the bungled car bomb attempts in London and the Jeep Cherokee attack on Glasgow airport. Although it's well established that the sort of terrorism loose on the world today is not from the downtrodden or oppressed (as mythology contends), but provoked by middle class or elite individuals, it is still shocking to think doctors can kill. We like to think of doctors as people committed to the Hippocratic oath to...

Myth shattered By MICHAEL COREN Toronto Sun, Saturday, July 7, 2007 It has been a week for murderers, hypocrites and heroes. In Britain a group of Muslim doctors and medical students have been arrested in connection with a series of attempts to murder thousands of innocent people waiting to board aircraft or, sin of sins, dancing in a club. Commentators were incredulous that people of science sworn to do none harm should apparently act thus. Fools. The doctors' unions in Egypt and Jordan are dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, a fascist group that preaches jihad. The second in command...

Don't turn Canadian soldiers into victims The press has re-evaluated the mission 66 times - and still asks 'what happened?' By CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD Toronto Globe and Mail Saturday, July 7, 2007 – Page A15 The official news came only this week, and only from one half of the investigative whole, the American one. A report released to the Associated Press formally announced that Private Rob Costall, whose gorgeous face is by now familiar to many Canadians, was killed by friendly fire. It was hardly news to the soldiers, Canadian, American and Afghan, who were on the ground on the...

Aid and comfort to the enemy Calgary Herald: Editorial Published: Friday, July 06, 2007 A peaceful observer might suppose it this country's good fortune to have led such a sheltered national life for 60 years, that the arts of war are so poorly understood by those who seek to lead it. Yet, when impregnable ignorance is broached as a serious contribution to debate on the war in Afghanistan, it is revealed as a national embarrassment. Sadly, both Liberal Leader Stephane Dion and NDP Leader Jack Layton ladled out their share in the wake of news that six Canadian soldiers...

Defeatism leads to defeat David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 One really has to wonder about the efficiency of the British National Health Service after seeing how incompetently a group of Islamist doctors carried off their weekend car-bombing and fire-throwing attacks in London and Glasgow. Not one death; not even a successful suicide. We can thank the indiscretion of the British police for the information that the persons since rounded up were mostly doctors and laboratory technicians working for the NHS. "Of Asian origin." Am I jumping to conclusions by guessing that they were all...

Canada is fighting the right war The Montreal Gazette: Editorial Published: Friday, July 06, 2007 The sudden shocking death of six Canadian soldiers in one roadside explosion in Afghanistan this week has renewed calls, from some quarters, for a quick Canadian pullout from that turbulent country. These appeals are not appropriate, because casualty tolls are not the proper test of the merits of our involvement. Six more families are devastated today because of that one blast, six more circles of friends are mourning, six more hometown neighbourhoods are saddened. Every single death is a genuine disaster. But the number...

Al Gore: my favourite Martian Peter Foster, Financial Post Published: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids In fact it's cold as hell?" --Elton John, Rocket Man Elton John won't be performing at next Saturday's Live Earth series of concerts, reportedly the biggest "charitable" music event ever. However, like his Rocket Man, the concerts' main promoter, Al Gore, has invoked life -- or rather its absence -- on another planet as relevant to our situation on earth. In a piece in last Sunday's New York Times, Mr. Gore suggested that Venus is...

Savvy Yanks head for Canada's outpost to celebrate their day Embassy roof is the place to be for Independence Day events L. Ian MacDonald, The Montreal Gazette Published: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 For years, one of the most prized July 4 invitations in Washington has been to the Canadian ambassador's party on the embassy's sixth-floor terrace, with its unrivalled view of the U.S. Capitol and the spectacular fireworks over the Mall. It isn't so much about the neighbours as the neighbourhood. In other words, location, location, location. And the location of our embassy is second to none, on Pennsylvania...

Ontario to distribute Gore's film to schools AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH Mike De Souza And Melissa Leong, CanWest News Service; National Post Published: Thursday, June 28, 2007 OTTAWA - Ontario will be distributing hundreds of donated copies of Al Gore's controversial documentary on climate change to public schools across the province. But Kathleen Wynne, Ontario's Minister of Education, said the government's actions are not an endorsement of the film, An Inconvenient Truth. "It's just a resource that will be available. The teachers can choose to use it or not," she said of the gift from the Tides Canada Foundation. A...

An unfinished country Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 The silly name for our national holiday, "Canada Day" (imagine "Italy Day" or "U.S.A. Day") always makes me flinch. It has done so since 1982 when Dominion Day, a perfectly appropriate name for a big, beautiful country like ours, was voted into the oubliette of history after five minutes' debate without a parliamentary quorum present. "Dominion" happens not to refer to the British empire, as assumed by the bill's presenting MP, but to the 72nd Psalm: "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea ?" But...

There is no roadmap to Mideast peace David Warren, Ottawa Citizen Special Published: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 No sooner has Tony Blair retired as prime minister of Britain, than the "Quartet of Middle East mediators" -- the U.S., E.U., U.N., and Russia -- are poised to appoint him to the even-less-thankful post of chief draughtsman for the endless revisions of "roadmaps to peace" between Israel and the Arabs. As the Quartet's Middle East envoy, he will also be charged with restoring Palestinian unity -- a task that even the Saudi Arabs seem to have given up in despair and...

Michael Moore gets a taste of his own medicine Bill Brownstein, The Montreal Gazette Published: Friday, June 22, 2007 Toronto documentarians Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine had sought to send a celluloid love letter to their hero, Michael Moore. But the creator of such mega-hit docs as Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 refused to talk to them. He should have talked. Melnyk and Caine ended up making the cinematic equivalent of hate mail, Manufacturing Dissent (opening today at Cinema du Parc). Already committed to making a movie about Moore, Melnyk and Caine resorted to interviewing...

CHINA TOPS U.S. AS NO. 1 POLLUTER Calls for West to assist Beijing to find cleaner ways to deal with economic boom; The Daily Telegraph, with files from news services Richard Spencer, National Post Published: Thursday, June 21, 2007 BEIJING - China and the West are under increased pressure to change economic course after a new study showed Asia's rising power had become the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the key greenhouse gas. Until recently, China was expected to remain behind the United States in the emissions table until 2010, but its booming economy and surging demand for...

Americans in Canada prefer U.S. health care Joanne Laucius, CanWest News Service Published: Thursday, June 21, 2007 OTTAWA -- Americans living in Canada prefer the U.S. health-care system for speed, quality and diagnostic technology, says a new study. But they also applaud the equity and cost-effectiveness of Canada's system. And in the final analysis, 40 per cent prefer the Canadian system. The study, released yesterday in the online medical journal Open Medicine, was based on the responses of 310 Americans living in Canada between two and five years, mostly in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. There have been many studies...

Toronto council votes to retain 'Troops' decals Shannon Kari, National Post Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 Toronto Mayor David Miller reversed his position and led a city council vote to continue to affix "Support our Troops" decals to fire and emergency vehicles in the city. The vote, which was passed unanimously Wednesday afternoon with a few councillors abstaining, also permits the police department to put the decals on its vehicles. "It is important for Canada's largest city to make a statement," said Miller shortly after the vote. "Symbolism matters a lot." The vote by city council reverses a plan...