The Year the Media Died

This is long but entertaining.

What is Canada's Idenity

This piece by Andrew COHEN in the Edmonton JOURNAL was passed on to me yesterday, and I couldn't agree more with it's main thesis.

But [must] learn how to leverage ideas and experience, such as our history of liberal internationalism. We can embrace--and sell--an idea of ourselves as the good-governance nation, for example. That would mean, among other roles, keeping the peace, building federalism, writing codes of conduct, monitoring elections and encouraging mediation.

Let's drop the Tim Horton idea.

Lord of the Flies

Last week President OBAMA dispatched some lazy pests hanging around the Whitehouse.

How much rope does Jennifer LYNCH need?

In what I believe is a total "bureaucratic suicide mission", the "Commissar" of the CHRC - Jennifer LYNCH has unleashed a full scale attack on Ezra LEVANT, Mark STEYN and many of its critics in the media over its outrageous justifications and unmitigated arrogance in how they are running the CHRC.

I believe this is unprecedented and is sure to provoke a response by the Federal Government - somehow. Of course they have been castigated before for "furloughing" recalcitrant civil servants but the CHRC is somewhat better insulated from direct intervention. Still, she is being given lost of rope.

Here is Ezra's blog post on her "attack speech" and here is an editorial in the National Post.

Ezra LEVANT has U.S interview with Bernard CHAPIN

Ezra is becoming pretty sharp on his interview techniques. I found this one to be partcularly terse and to-the-point. Here are my [edited] points.

Q1) What exactly is a Canadian human rights commission (HRC)?

A1) HRCs are government agencies. There are fourteen of them in the country — one for every province and territory, and one national HRC. They’re “quasi-judicial tribunals” — that means they’re sort of like courts. They have the power to hold hearings and issue rulings — including fines and other punishments, such as forced apologies. Their rulings are filed at real courts and take on the force of law. To ignore a human rights commission order is to be in contempt of court — for which the punishment can include prison.

However they resemble kangaroo courts as they are generally not staffed by lawyers, do not follow traditional legal protocols (rules of evidence, presumption of innocence) nor due the provide true "due process" (they are investigators, crown prosecutors and judge/jury all rolled into one).

But it’s not just their procedures that are un-Canadian (and un-American). It’s their substance: they prosecute “human rights” cases that aren’t real human rights at all — like the counterfeit “right not to be offended.” I was prosecuted for 900 days under that one.

Q2) Are the HRCs an example of a good idea gone mad?

A2) I think it’s a good idea for us to get along, regardless of race or sex, etc. But most of life’s little grievances and setbacks are too trivial to be arbitrated by the government. We shouldn’t criminalize mere rudeness or offensiveness. And we shouldn’t dress up a political action committee as a neutral arbiter of justice.

Q3) You suggest in your book "Shakedown: How Government is eroding our Democratic Freedoms" that one tactic in fighting back was to "Denormalize the commissions". What do you mean by that?

A3) Most debates [Ed: with the left] are won or lost before they’ve even begun because one side manages to define the terms of the debate and even the vocabulary. It is almost like George Orwell's newspeak in his book "1984" about totalitarianism. Take the very name “human rights commission.” How could you possibly argue against something so saintly? And me? I was accused of “hate speech.” Who could possibly support me?

[So I decided to "rebrand" myself as a] defender of human rights — freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, property rights. The HRCs were violating my rights. [and I wasn’t publishing "hate speech", I was legitimately publishing the news! Both TRUE]

Q4) You labeled the commissions “kangaroo courts” and your enemies tried to have you disbarred for using such an accurate phrase.

A4) For the left - the ends justify the means - and it has been ever so since Communism was founded. [or longer] As I document in my book, the CHRC staff publishes hundreds (perhaps thousands) of bigoted comments about Jews, blacks, gays, etc., all in the name of smoking out the “real” haters. I know that sounds nuts, but they’ve justified their own bizarre, racist behavior as being a necessary evil.

When I refused to go quietly, as most HRC victims do — and when I actually started to win, at least in the court of public opinion — the HRC industry decided to personally destroy me. They piled on with a total of three HRC complaints, four defamation suits, and close to 20 law society complaints. They’re all baseless — I’ve won the first six and should win them all — but the hassle and cost of their nuisance suits are clearly designed to take up my time and money and demoralize me. I have named it "lawfare" or "legal warfare".

Q5) Is there any hope that the government will end this HRC reign of terror and error?

A5) I am very hopeful that there will be reforms. Remember, there are 14 of these HRCs in Canada and any province or territory can make reforms. The Conservative Party of Ontario is having a leadership race right now and the HRC is a central issue in the campaign.

Not only can rats gamble, they're good at it!

University of British Columbia neuroscientist Catherine WINSTANLEY has studies the behaviour of rats to better understand gambling addiction.

"Certainly rats are able to gamble and they're able to gamble well" and she quipped, "we just couldn't get them to hold the cards".

My only concern is that as Alberta has no rat population - why is our percapita gambling higher that average?

CHRC "Commisar" Jennifer LYNCH attempts to subvert CTV interview

Ezra LEVANT is reporting that CTV PowerPlay (a daily Political Affairs show from Ottawa) was bullied by Jennifer LYNCH, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission after she refused to debate an internal report that the CHRC has submitted to Parliament on how to "improve" the protection of Human Rights in Canada. Among his points:

1. This "internal report" was never requested and completely ignores an external "lapdog" review finished in December.
2. The "recommendations" include removing centuries old legal traditions and adopting the much maligned CHRC definitions - thus removing "truth and fair comment" as defenses.
3. Jennifer LYNCH would not agree to even appear on CTV show with Ezra Levant, nor would she allow her top legal representative to debate him. CTV agreed to have them make separate appearances, with Ezra last.
4. The representative would not address anything said by Ezra.

It was a joke.

65th Commemoration of D-Day

June 6 was the 65th commemoration of the D-Day invasion that led to the liberation of France, defeat of Hitler's Third Reich and the threat of the Axis Power's Fascist domination.

Prime Minister HARPER was in France participating in the Juno Beach Commemorative Event and it was reported on by a number of news media.   I watched CTV's coverage and was confused by the reporters claim that 9,000 men were "buried" at Omaha Beach - half that landed" as a remarkably dreadful combat statistic that didn't seem right for some reason.  So I did a bit searching on Wikipedia.

In the Wikipedia entry for "Juno" beach which was jointly assaulted by the Canadians and the Brits (who were in command). The Joint British/Canadians brigades totaled 21,200 soldiers+support. Air & Sea bombardment began in early hours (0430h) of June 6.  The beach assault was launched at 0730h - a bit later than planned due to the poor weather and pitching seas.  There was no reliable tally of casualties directly on the beach, but it was considered well defended against attack - for example the tankwalls were twice the height of Omaha beach (themselves reported to be 4-12ft high) and heavily mined.   By the end of D-Day total casualties were 1,075 men (335 dead,  740 wounded) =5%.

On Omaha Beach the Americans invasion force was larger at 43,250 men, matched to the larger beach (8km wide) and the assault ran into many difficulties from the start as the landing of men and tanks was hindered by poor weather and sea conditions.  Also, Omaha was very well defended - perhaps the best of all.  The various beach assault troops were caught in brutal cross-fire and despite finding exits from the beach, got bunched up so that only two points were strong enough to be secured.  (The recent film "Saving Private Ryan" apparently was a  reasonable representation of what truely happened.)  Total casualties 4,500 =10%  German losses were also significant at 1,200 or 20%.   At one point early in the invasion, American General Bradley was said to have considered abandoning Omaha since his tanks were not getting off the beach.  By the end of the day only 5 of 48 tanks landed were still operational.  But perhaps because of the German confidence in their defenses on Omaha, little else was in place only a kilometer or 2 behind them.  So, once the Americans established a beachhead, they were able to quickly make gains in to the countryside.  Ultimately, this led them to contribute to the Liberation of Paris on August 19, 1944. 

The other invasion beaches Utah (American), Sword and Gold (British) sustained losses but they were much less.   In the case of Utah Beach, there were only 200 casualties out of an invasion forces of 32,000.   At Sword Beach casualties were 630 men from an invasion force of 28,800 - but the British army met serious resistance from General Rommel's  German Panzer divisions and did not manage to secure any strategic advances off the beach for a few weeks.   At Gold Beach, the British successfully landed and swept behind enemy lines with light casualties of only 400 men from an invasion force of 25,000.  They joined up with the Canadians from Juno and successfully drove inland to take Caen within a few days. 

So where that 9,000 men buried on Omaha Beach statistic came from I don't know, but it does not seem to be strictly correct. 

Political Correctness must Die

I ran across this Conservative blog - in part due to his piece on "Deadbroke Dads".   

It is unfortunate that he has swallowed the traditional feminist myth that irresponsible men are 100% to blame for their plight and even claims this unemployed, sexually profligate (black) man seek to avoid any responsibility by choosing "poverty" as a defense.   Still I enjoyed his attempt to broker a solution.   It is similar to Wendy McElroy's article about removing government from the marriage business completely and making it all about private contacts between consenting adults.

Then there was this piece about "Political Correctness", and Canadian Cincinnatus had me.

Enjoy!

20th Anniversary of Tienamen Square Massacre

Google Commemorative logo's you'll never see. [Courtesy: small dead animals blog]

I listened to historical BBC radio audio describing the event the other night, including some interviews with eye-witness survivors.  It was very moving and brought back those memories from 1989.

Then today I read that most major search engines in China were having their Internet searches by - Google, Microsoft MSN and Yahoo, including major news providers like BBC - blocked.

Online Barcode Generator

Ok, this is another one of those unique services that one needs from time-to-time - an online barcode generator - so I thought I'd quickly add it.  It is good for generating a couple of special barcodes for whatever reason you can think of.

PDF software

I subscribe to www.MakeUseOf.com blog because it is a daily chatter-box of interesting software ideas. The topic of PDF is one I always have time for as they are so useful. The regular "free" Adobe PDF Reader which started the whole phenonomena off so long ago has become too bloated for my use, plus there have been a few scares recently about its security.

Here are the PDF readers highlighted in this post:

1) Foxit PDF Reader - ok
2) PDF X-change Viewer - ? (appears to have features that allow annotations)
3) Cool PDF Reader - only 1 mb! - how cool is that?
4) Perfect PDF Reader - ? (not recommended in review)
5) Sumatra PDF Reader - very good!

Another one they have highlighted before (but not for some worrying reason today) is Sumatra PDF Reader. I use it and apart from a few weaknesses, it is quite lightweight and small.

Another aspect is a PDF print driver. These are less important now that OpenOffice and Google Documents print to PDF files directly, except I often find myself printing website material from the browser and it is handy to have a PDF as reference. Here is www.MakeUseof.com recent comments about such desktop options (Windows only).

1) doPDF (I use this now)
2) PDF995 (I used to use it, but it was too persnickity to install, plus even though I bought it, they were constantly requesting upgrade fees for very little additional functionality, so I dropped it.)

I will update with addons as they appear.

crj

Interview with Ezra LEVANT'S on "Shakedown"

Ezra gives some good clip with US Interview about his new book "Shakedown: How Human Rights Commissions are destroying democracy"". It opens with 15 seconds of fame for the AHRC bureaucrat who ends ominously with famous "you're entitled to your opinion" tag line - which Ezra wisely contradicts. That is priceless.

Maps + Data

After the US Election I saw this NY Times interactive map site and thought is was a pretty cool to convey data - but then I lost track of it.

In my recent voyage of discovery into map-mashups I have discovered a few other interesting sites.

1) The first is www.HousingMaps.com

that combine live feed data from CraigsList with Google maps providing a useful site to seek rental accomodation. (except it many cities are missing).

2) The data I want to chart is www.WindAtlas.ca - a special site created by the Canadian Government to provide access to winddata - except it is woefully unacceptable for modern use and begs the question "Why didn't they just use the Google Maps API"?

3) Other useful resources are: www.GeoCoder.ca - which provides portal to cross-reference Canadian Postal Codes with Place/Name Gazetteer and Lat/Long data points.  (U.S data is available at www.GeoCoder.us)  It is used by www.openstreetmap.org to create private use maps.

4) A free mapping mash-up site is www.mapstraction.com

5) another blog about data mapping/charting is www.flowingdata.com

Happy Mothers Day