This is kind of interesting, given the context of what I’m in the middle of right now. The Freeps has been doing an ongoing series on racism, immigration, multiculturalism, etc for the past few days now and as part of today’s bit, they had two rather interesting pieces, here and here, that asked the question, “is multiculturalism working?” As you can imagine, one is pro and the other con.

What I find interesting isn’t that Augie Fleras, comfortable in the majority, spouts all the usual leftist, feel-good, “inclusiveness” rhetoric that one comes to expect from multicult apologists. The clear indication is that nice people like multiculturalism, with the unasked question being, of course, “if nice folks like it, what must be the kind that don’t?”

No, what I find interesting is that the one to denounce this failed experiment is Mahfooz Kanwar, a Pakistani immigrant and (supposedly, according to multicultists) one of the people having the most to gain from the policy. Yes, he used to support the idea because he “believed it gave us a sense of pluralism, diversity and a variety of cultural and social customs.” But it didn’t take long for this man, from a fractious country himself, to see the flaws in the system. An interesting example of those flaws — and what they lead to — can be found in a June, 2006 column by the Cowtown Sun’s Licia Corbella, written not long after the arrests of the TO17:

Dr. Mahfooz Kanwar recently attended Calgary’s largest mosque for a funeral.

At one point in the proceedings, a man Kanwar has known for more than three decades led the prayers.

“He was saying in Urdu (the official language of Pakistan): ‘Oh, God, protect us from the infidels, who pollute us with their vile ways,'” recalls Kanwar, a professor of sociology at Mount Royal College in Calgary.

“I stood up and grabbed him by the lapels, which was shocking even to me because I have never done anything like that in my life and I said: ‘How dare you attack my country.’ And then I addressed the crowd and said: ‘I have known this man for more than 30 years and he has been on welfare for almost all of those years.’ ”

Kanwar chuckles at the memory.

“Then I said to this semi-literate man, ‘you should thank me and those you call infidels.’

“He asked me why and I said: ‘Because the taxes I pay are putting food on your table as are the taxes of the so-called “infidels.’ ”

Most Canadians and many Muslims would applaud Dr. Kanwar’s righteous outburst. But guess which of the two men is no longer welcome at the Sarcee Tr. S.W. mosque?

Not the intolerant, hate-spewing semi-literate. No, it’s Dr. Kanwar who’s persona non grata.

That, says Kanwar, is just one of numerous instances he has experienced as a result of the culture of ignorance and intolerance that permeates so many mosques in Canada and throughout the world.

I keep asking how many times a man has to see something happen over and over before he’s allowed to say he can see it coming.

Still waiting for an answer…

Because it needs it, that’s why. Yeah, you heard that right. We get told over and over and over again about how Islam is “the religion of peace,” it’s not a threat to us, the majority of muslims just want to live and let live. And if you can’t get that through your head, then you must just not be tolerant enough. You’re just a mean, nasty, Islamophobic bigot who either, at best, is just too ignorant to know any better or, at worst, has some malevolant George-Bushesque hatred rooted deep in your worm-ridden heart.

Bullshit.

In all my years of listening to the acolytes of the multicult dogma who relentlessly bludgeon us with the claim that we can’t judge people by this or that or the other thing, there is one question that I have never, not even once, heard answered:

Just how God damned many times does a man have to see the same thing happen over and over and over and over and over and over again… before he’s allowed to say that he can see it coming?

Any takers? I didn’t think so. Muslims fly planes into buildings, we are told it has nothing to do with Islam. Muslims turn a country into a medieval hellhole, we are told it has nothing to do with Islam. Muslims blow themselves up on busses in London, it has nothing to do with Islam. Muslims (women, too) come out in support of a rape advocate, nothing to do with Islam. Muslims plot to murder Canadians and behead our Prime Minister, no Islam there.

Then why the hell do the perpetrators howl so long and loud that it IS all about Islam, and nothing else?  (Except for those nasty Jews, of course…)

And don’t give me any of that “those are just a few bad apples” bullshit. Spare me the myth of the vast, moderate muslim majority. I’ll stick with the evidence of my own eyes. Where was the “moderate muslim” outpouring of outrage when the TO17 got busted? I didn’t hear a peep. But they sure as hell came out in droves to get their knickers in a twist (and threaten violence in the name of their “peaceful religion”) over a few cartoons, didn’t they?

Britain’s independent Channel 4’s respected Dispatches programme sent a reporter undercover in several major and influential British mosques to see just what was being said behind Jack Q. Briton’s back. Some of what they found will be posted here, in three parts.

Today we start off with:

• Terrorists are innocent, because all kuffaar (that’s you and me) are liars; lying is part of their religion. They are the terrorists, not muslims, and all muslims should hate them.
• Sharia should be obeyed; not the law of the land.
• Muslim terrorists (who are all innocent) are better than non-muslims.
• Muslims should settle for nothing less than a total Islamic state.
• Apostates and homosexuals should be killed outright.
• Free speech is evil unless it incites violence against people muslims don’t like.
• Holy war is coming and you’d better be on the right side.
• Kuffaar schools corrupt your children.
• Women are inferior; beat them if they don’t do as they’re told.
• Pedophilia is fine and dandy.
• Be a bigot, but be two-faced about it so that your ass is covered.

You know, all that good, wholesome religion-of-peace that we have nothing to worry about kind of stuff. Think I’m making this shit up, do you? Well then, smartass, play the vid and see for yourself. And while you’re at it, ask yourself this:

If it can happen in England, just why can’t it happen here?

Part 2 tomorrow…

And now, coming direct from the archives of the Ministry of Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction to your brain: le Union Jacques?

I have gotta check my calendar on this one… Um, nope; not April first. I’m still shaking my melon at this, though. I mean, come on, this has just got to be some kind of scam. It’s a prank, right? Some disgruntled buggers in Britain’s National Archives got tired of some know-it-all supervisor or manager and decided to pull a fast one and show him for the bureaucratic dolt that he is, right? Right…??

The revelation the French government proposed a union of Britain and France in 1956, even offering to accept the sovereignty of the Queen, has left scholars in both nations puzzled.

Newly discovered documents in Britain’s National Archives show former French prime minister Guy Mollet discussed the possibility of a merger between the two countries with then-British prime minister Sir Anthony Eden.

“I completely fell off my seat,” said Richard Vinen, an expert in French history at King’s College in London, England. “It’s such a bizarre thing to propose.”

😯 Well, then; at least I’ve got some company on the floor. Wouldn’t want to be getting lonely down there, you know. My gawd, talk about mixing oil and water –or is that and ? Where do I even begin with this one?? Here’s the Guardian’s take:

If you’re reading this on a packed, stalled train, late for work, eating a stale station bacon roll, imagine what life could have been like. If France and Britain had gone ahead with an audacious plan in the 1950s to merge the two countries, the train might have been on time, and faster, the croissants better, but then again, with Paris’s current unemployment problem, there might not have been a job to go to.

Touché. The Yorkshire Post was even more blunt:

WE might have learned a thing or two about gastronomy and dressing with style, but we’d never have accepted their two-hour lunch breaks. They’d surely have had something derogatory to say about our sheep-like ability to form an orderly queue.

They might have acquired a soupçon of understanding about tolerance, but they’d have blown a gasket at imperial measures and the idea of Sunday trading. And, somehow, I can’t see that the average British child’s lunchbox would ever have been converted to baguette and goat’s cheese.

Culturally we’re poles apart, and might as well be at opposite ends of the continent, even with the latter-day efforts of burger chains, coffee parlours and Marks and Spencer to homogenise us. La Manche could be as wide as the Atlantic, for all we have in common with our French neighbours.

Well, that’s one way of putting it. As for me, I shudder to think of what rough beast, its hour come round, would have slouched towards London and Paris to be born of such an unholy union. Thank God Her Majesty’s Prime Minister of the day (Rt Hon Sir Anthony Eden) shot the idea down.

Seriously now, can you imagine slurping back dead snails over a pint? Or washing down bangers and mash with a bottle of Chateau du Snooté? Thinks those are silly? Try this one: a French Royal Marine.

Talk about dodging a bullet…

Yes, it is; and damned fast, too. As if averaging more than one a month wasn’t bad enough, there has been yet another shooting in downtown London. For those keeping count, that makes four in three months now. That’s not for all of London, either. Nosiree, that’s just for the core area and so doesn’t include the guy that was shot on McNay street a month or so ago.

I’ve heard some people trying to take the easy road, just saying that the problem is pretty much restricted to a “certain kind” of bar or club. Translation: those clubs that play hip-hop and assorted techno crap with the bass turned up to the point where it registers on seismographs for miles around and attract the early-twentysomething crowd. Well, you can put that idea to rest. While I don’t go there myself (I prefer a more blue-collar kind of joint 😉 ), the pub where the latest incident occurred is actually kind of snooty; the sort of place where seldom is heard a “yo, yo, wazzup” and you can find enough neckties on the patrons to make a giraffe a turtleneck.
As you can imagine, the fingers are being pointed in all the usual directions with the predictable suggestions being made:

An early-morning shooting in a posh downtown bar left one man in hospital yesterday and the bar owner calling for a “zero-tolerance” approach to the core’s escalating gunplay.

“London should adopt a zero-tolerance policy for its own survival,” said John Scott-Pearse, owner of Robinson Hall. “That (approach) worked in New York City and it will work here.”

I agree. We do need a zero-tolerence policy when it comes to these assholes that think it’s all jolly to send lead flying around on our streets. Don’t go looking at the cops to fix this, though. No, I’m not blaming them. The cops are already doing their job: respond to calls, follow the leads and nab the bad guys.

The problem crops up when the cops manage to track down and bag one of these creeps, only to have some idiot judge fire him right back out the revolving jailhouse door again. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the case of Ahmed Moalin-Mohamed (who I’ve ranted about plenty), the guy that shot four — count ’em: FOUR — people on Thanksgiving weekend, only to get sprung from the pokey by a jackass Justice of the Peace named Jack Carroll.

And before you go yapping that that’s the exception: don’t bother.  It isn’t the exception, it’s the norm.  From drug dealers to shooters to pedophiles and even child killers, they all puke up their sob stories and stroll away, frequently vanishing, no doubt laughing their arses off at the impotence of the courts.

We don’t need more cops; what we need are new judges.

This doesn’t happen to me much. Usually, my first impression of a thing, whatever it may be, is pretty accurate and changing my mind isn’t something that I find myself having to do very often. Some people (okay, okay; most people…) will call that stubbornness but I prefer to think of it as just paying attention to what the hell’s going on in the first place. It usually works out quite well for me. Not always, mind you; but usually.

Sometimes though, I end up doing an about-face. Like today, when I started reading the Freeps this morning and found this:

Police say kin shares fault

Thu, January 11, 2007
By KELLY PEDRO, FREE PRESS REPORTER

The parents of a woman violently gunned down by her former boyfriend are partly responsible for her death, London police contend.

In just-filed court documents, a lawyer representing the force alleges Tom and Kim Bol didn’t report contact between their daughter Vanessa and her ex-boyfriend, Emerson Dominguez, when the parents knew he was not supposed to contact her.

The “WHAT THE F***?!?!?” that came flying unbidden out of my piehole was probably heard in Lambeth. The first instinct was, as you’ve likely guessed, pretty obvious and something that I think just about any parent in the world will be able to relate to…

What the hell is wrong with the cops? Have they lost their God damned minds? Just who the hell was the shithead that came up with this lamebrained idea in the first place? Even if it’s true and the parents were somewhat at fault, these people lost a daughter, for Christ’s sakes; they’ve suffered enough. LEAVE THEM ALONE!

Pretty standard stuff, right? Yeah, I thought so, too. But then I kept reading and lo and behold, there was a little detail about the whole affair that, with all the time that has passed, I had managed to forget all about: following Vanessa Bol’s tragic death at the hands of Emerson Dominguez in November of 2003, it didn’t take long for the lawyers to start circling the carcass. After all, it isn’t for nothing that so many in this world consider lawyers to be one step down the food chain from plankton. Dominguez is currently serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, with no chance of parole for 20 years (theoretically, at least; with our revolving-door justice system, you can never tell… but that’s another rant). Vanessa died on the third of November and the Bol family decided to sue the London cops a little over six months later:

In July 2004, the Bol family filed a civil suit against London police for nearly $1.4 million, claiming officers failed to protect their 17-year-old daughter.

[…]

The civil suit names London’s police services board, retired chief Brian Collins and two London police officers.

An amended statement of defence says the Bols “did not report Dominguez’s contact with Vanessa Bol to other persons or agencies of authority who might have intervened to protect Vanessa Bol.”

[…]

The statement says the Bols did not report threats or assaults by Dominguez against Bol.

So there you have it. Puts the issue in a slightly different perspective, doesn’t it? No doubt about it, there’s a turd in this punchbowl someplace. The questions is: which side is right and which side are being utter assholes and pulling some pretty lowdown crap?

On the one hand, if the allegations are true, it takes some kind of God damned gall to try to and cash in — to the tune of over a million bucks — on your own misdeeds by pinning the blame on someone else. We rely on police to serve and protect the public from scum like Dominguez but it’s a two way street; cops rely on us to tell them when we know that bad people are doing bad things. These folks ain’t psychics, ya know. If the Bols really did know about Dominguez stalking and even assaulting their daughter and they did nothing at all about it… then I say lower the boom on ’em. Bring the hammer down and make an example out of them for others that would try and grab for such a loathesome Munchausen lottery jackpot. On the other hand, though…

If these allegations are false, this represents stooping about as low as you can get. This would be the ultimate in kicking someone when they’re down, the cheapest of cheap shots, and something that we should damn well expect — indeed, demand — that those who are trusted to hold authority in our society place themselves far above. If this is some bullshit stunt, heads should roll for it.

The problem is that we don’t know which story is the truth and which is bullshit. So there it is, big as life and twice as problematic. And here I am, in territory about as unfamilliar as it gets for me… on the fence.

And I don’t like it.

When I see stuff like this, my nature practically demands that I take one side or the other and be quick about it. But make sure it’s the right side. I wish I knew enough to make that decision but I don’t. So here I sit, in the mushy middle, wanting to speak up for somebody but not sure who, and haunted by the words of Mark Twain:

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Easier said than done.

Why the hell is this even a story to begin with? 🙄 Decima Research has cacked up a little hairball and is now trumpeting that “most Canadians want a Democrat president,” as if it’s any of our God damned business. The pollsters blather on that we Canucks would rather have a jackass than an elephant by a margin of four to one.

Republican preferences were particularly low in Atlantic Canada, among women, retirees and francophones, with support ranging from five to eight per cent.

The Democratic option found favour, relative to Republicans, in every region of the country – including Alberta – and among self-identified Conservative voters.

Albertans in the Decima poll preferred a Democratic president in 2008 by a margin of 43-21. People who voted Conservative in the last election were only slightly less enthusiastic, choosing the Democratic option over a Republican by a 41-24 split.

Well, golly gumbucks, four out of five; ain’t we an opinionated li’l bunch all of a sudden? Try this one on for size:

FIVE out of five Canadians don’t GET to vote in American federal elections, shitforbrains!

And just where the hell do we get off trying to think that we can tell the Yanks how their country should be run? If they tried a stunt like that, we would finally see some true all-party unity in this country: everybody would go apeshit about it.

Ah, but polls and headlines are interesting, spinny, little things, aren’t they? What you won’t hear hooted in the headlines is this: almost half (42%) of everyone that they asked replied that it was none of their damned business who was the next POTUS.

But you won’t find any headlines shouting “42% of Canucks Choose to Mind Their Own Business,” will you? Nope, you won’t. I wonder why that could be, eh? Could it be because the media in this country — more so than even in the US — is rabidly leftist and bent upon overinflating any slight hint of moonbattery that it can find in our collective consciousness in the hopes that, if they tell us often enough how far to the loopy Left we are, we’ll start to believe it? Let’s face it, anybody with two brain cells to rub together knows damn well that the MSM in this country, from the TO (red) Star to the Ministry Of What You Should Think, is saturated with lib-left malcontents with more “hidden agendas” than Harper was ever even accused of having. This is just another example.

Who the hell was is that said that polls are most productively used by dogs? 😕