SPLC: Tony Alamo is a hatemonger

Last time we heard from Tony Alamo, he was doing time for tax evasion. Now the Catholic hater, brainwasher and FBI Top Ten Alumnus is back based out of Texarkana (home town of Ross Perot, entirely a coincidence) and still spreading his hate against everything he deems "Unamerican," according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Centre, one of the leading anti-hate organizations in America. The SPLC, co-founded by Morris Dees (a real hero of the civil rights struggle) has now listed Alamo's ministry as a hate group.

Oh yeah -- Alamo loves Hitler and has three "wives."

And Lou Dobbs, like most of the prime-time talk show hosts (a notable exception being Keith Olbermann) HATES the SPLC.

Beginning to see a pattern here? Incidentally, the Arkansas Police refuse to say whether they're even investigating the guy at all. This guy needs to be stopped before he can give the wackos even more ammunition in their battle to make America "the way it used to be."

Um, like the Founding Fathers, most of whom didn't believe in the Resurrection? By the standards of the religious right who strive to uphold the so-called "original intent" of the Constitution, Washington, Madison and the rest should be considered anti-American too.

Sorry, but hate is hate. Period. And if you see a leaflet from this man in your windshield (Alamo's favourite way of proselytizing), I'd do the same thing I do to one from Chick Publications. I put it in my shredder.

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I didn't know Mongolia had a merchant marine!

Yet, it does. Along with a group of other countries like Liberia and the Bahamas, Mongolia is a favoured nation for shipping companies looking for "flags of convenience." And today, the US signed a mutual assistance pact with Ulan Bator. But the issue is serious ... seems North Korea has been using Mongolian flagged ships to smuggle the parts it needs to add to the nuclear weapons it already has; so now the US has permission to board such ships without warning.

Maybe Dubya needs to do something about pirates -- real pirates who are disrupting legitimate trade and exacerbating the illegal immigration problem. Only wish he'd done this before 9/11. It is disturbing it came to this but the US already has such pacts with other convenience countries. Canada should consider it too -- the last thing we want to be is a conduit for WMD.

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See you in court Monaghan, sez fired profs

I've been posting somewhat frequently about the troubles at the so-called "Catholic" Ave Maria University. Now, it looks like all hell has broken loose -- the law school there is being sued.

The heart of the suit, [Deborah] Gordon said, is [Tom] Monaghan’s involvement in multiple organizations including those in which he has a financial stake. That involvement violates the law school board’s independence from Monaghan’s "tentacles.” “We think we can prove the illegal acts by showing the connections between Monaghan, the board and his other organizations,” she said. Gordon said she planned to depose Monaghan, Dobranski and various past and present members of the school’s board, which currently includes high-ranking Catholic Church officials such as, Cardinal Edward Egan, the archbishop of New York and Cardinal Adam Maida, the archbishop of Detroit.

And if that ain't bad enough, the board of Deans reprimanded one of their students at the law school for doing nothing more than ask the simple question, what is happening to a project that started with such great promise but is turning into a disaster?

While I firmly reside in the moderate to liberal wing of the Catholic Church, and while stressing that these remain allegations yet to be proven in court, I too will continue to ask those same questions. This certainly doesn't sound like what a Catholic employer should do, or behave. And let's not forget, these are mostly conservative Catholics disputing each other ... makes you wonder if they're ever going to agree on anything, ever again.

Sidebar: There was a time in Canada when one couldn't be a Catholic and a member of the NDP -- in fact, membership in the party of Woodsworth and Douglas meant instant excommunication. Now, a former Catholic priest is leader of the New Brunswick wing of the socialist bloc. And the NDP is the most strongly pro-choice as well. Yeah, I know that was about a week or so ago, but it makes me wonder how times really have changed.

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Kurdistan: The next Canadian War?

Just mere hours after the 9/11 outrage, NATO had no difficulty invoking Article V of the Atlantic Charter which states an attack on one member state is an attack on the entire Alliance. In so doing they recognized that it's not just states alone who can start a war, pretty much anyone can with a couple of airplanes or a truckload of fertilizer. That's why Canada is in Afghanistan. We didn't start the war, Al Qaeda did.

Yet one has to wonder if there's a double standard insofar as the Kurds are involved. Earlier this week the Turkish Parliament authorized the executive there to conduct raids into northern Iraq to fight against the military wing of the PKK, the Kurdish People's Party. Today, that came home to roost when in an ambush near the Iraq-Turkey border, a dozen Turkish soldiers were killed and some others taken hostage. 32 of the PKK were also killed.

If the PKK made an incursion into Turkey, then of course Turkey has the right to defend itself. And by implication, the PKK has too declared war on NATO. So why aren't we seeing an emergency session of the Atlantic Council? Simply because most NATO members oppose the war in Iraq as it's completely disconnected from the real war against terrorism. Forcing the issue would effectively drag the Alliance into the phony war -- now a civil war -- precisely what Dubya has wanted all along.

Maybe it's a Muslim thing -- Turkey is the only Muslim state in the bloc and most of the other members, all majority Christian (with the exceptions of Estonia and the Czech Republic which have majority agnostic populations), don't want to get entangled in the mess; after all, Muslims in that part of the world still have very long memories dating back to the Crusades. But the other thing is this: Kurds -- at least the majority who want peace -- are entitled to a homeland with real autonomy if not outright independence; no less than say the Basques in Spain and France, or the Scottish and the Welsh in the UK, or for that matter the Palestinians. But the Kurds already had that level of autonomy after the first Gulf War thanks to a UN-enforced no fly zone; and it's now in limbo since the present conflict started four and a half years ago.

There has to be a way to protect NATO without making Iraq even worse than it is. I don't believe in cause and effect, but I get this weird feeling that the PKK could have been kept mostly in check if the status quo prior to March 2003 had been maintained. Now, with the precedent of 9/11, we face the prospect of Canada fighting a war in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli and the areas to the east and south; and if we thought the terrain in Kandahar was tough, it'll be nothing compared to the former stomping grounds of Saladin.

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Crime bill: Back to Square One, needlessly

The whole point behind Parliamentary committees is to scrutinize legislation and see how to make it better. In some cases there are wholesale changes to the proposed bill -- changes which have to be approved by the whole House before the amended bill is voted upon at third reading -- but for the most part they are technical clarifications, and usually a government, especially one in a minority situation, won't be opposed to that.

So what is this compulsion that PMS has over the omnibus crime bill? Under normal procedures, after prorogation and a new session commencing, any unpassed bills are simply renumbered and reintroduced at the point they left off. And much of the legislation was already in the Senate, either having been reviewed by the Red Chamber's Justice Committee and awaiting final passage or in the last stages of being scrutinized.

As the Liberals have a solid majority in the Senate, it's one of the few places Harper can be held to account, as the private MSM media who are the official organs of the Con party refuse to do so; and the allegedly publicly owned CBC is wont to ask the tough questions for fear of losing its appropriation from Parliament.

Instead, Harper decided to start all over again and present it as an all or nothing deal; adding that any attempts to amend the legislation would be seen as a vote of non-confidence.

Exsqueeze me? Sphinctersezwhat?

I'm not opposed to raising the age of consent for statutory rape charges -- matter of fact, I think 16 is too low if the victim is non-consenting, it should be eighteen. (Consenting teenagers, heterosexual or homosexual, should of course not be prosecuted.) I support tougher sentences for gun crimes -- and the five year minimum is a good start, although it's actually a 25% increase from the current minimum of four passed during the Chrétien Administration. The drug strategy is troubling, but repeat offenders shouldn't keep using treatment as a fallback -- that's for the health care system anyway, not the criminal law systen. And yes, I support three strikes and you're out for those who commit violent felonies.

The sticking point is the reverse onus for dangerous offenders. If the Supreme Court of Canada ruled it unconstitutional for refusing to give a breath sample for the Breathalyzer test, certainly it would be for the worst of the worst. There are ways to make it pass constitutional muster -- after all, we don't ever want to see Paul Bernardo on the streets again. But in theory, the law as is could see that possibility; and since time in custody counts as double, the Sicko from Scarborough actually qualified for early parole this year, not 2010 as many people may believe. Does Harper really want to be known as the guy who created a revolving door rather than trying to remove it?

For Harper to attempt to corner the Liberals as weak on crime on these issues is not just disingenuous, it's deceitful. The bills would have passed anyway and could have been even proclaimed by Governor General Michaëlle Jean by now. Instead we're back to square one and to give it reasonable scrutiny at this point would take well into Spring Break. It's amazing that to stop the Clean Air Act as amended by the opposition from becoming law, he'd kill the Criminal Code amendments too.

Besides, what I'd like to see in addition to tougher sentences is a "broken windows" approach. Deal with minor crimes -- such as vandalism -- at the source, before the problem escalates and whole neighbourhoods and even cities become safe havens for the mafia, or drug lords, or Al Qaeda. Since these are usually the kinds of crimes that net sentences of up to two years less one day, they are punished by the provincial and territorial prisons; and there's no funding for that. You can't fight crime without giving the Premiers mo' money.

So, if the Liberals want to sit and wait on this, I say go for it. After all, that would be giving the Cons a taste of their own medicine.

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No peep shows in our downtowns

An open letter to Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

Dear Mr. Premier and Honourable Members:

Congratulations on your recent election to the provincial legislature. You have been given a major responsibility and like my fellow Ontarians I pray that Divine Providence will guide your deliberations.

I write this letter to all 107 of you to address an issue that is of concern to many people in this great province of ours. This issue is the presence of adult entertainment theatres in our downtowns. I do not support their elimination all together. That of course would violate freedom of speech; except of course those films which clearly are exploitative or depict criminal acts (as per the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Butler). However, the issue here is that many cities who are trying to clean up their downtowns would like to move such facilities to areas like industrial parks, so as to make our central business districts safe for families; but are unable to do so because the Ontario Film Classification Act overrides all municipal by-laws.

Municipalities should not have the power to say no, absolutely not, to so called "peep shows;" but they should be able to exercise discretion as to where they may be located. After all, they having zoning powers when it comes to the size of department stores or the types of industries they want to locate in town and where. That this is the one business where cities are completely powerless is outrageous.

Most, if not all of you, are family people. It's time to put families first. This is one way to do so. Give the power back to the cities where it belongs.

Yours Truly,

Robert Pavlacic
Hamilton, Ontario.

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Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum ...

Stratfordis non habemus Walmart!

This is a day or two late, but huge kudos to the city council in Stratford, Ontario for deciding to say no to a rezoning that would have allowed Walmart to come to the tourist and auto parts manufacturing centre, in the east side of the city -- right smack dab in the Festival district. As one resident put it, first the downtown stores catering to the locals would have gone; then the shops catering to tourists -- and then the Stratford Festival itself.

This doesn't mean the end -- there's still a proposal to put the store in the west end, well away from where most of the tourist traffic comes from; but score one for common sense.

Yes, I do shop at Walmart. And I'm not against anyone doing business so long as it is legal. But like those shops that sell and show sexually explicit films there are places to put them and not to put them.

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Nothing new pussycat

Another irresponsible GST cut, rather than real tax relief for real families. No sharing of revenues with cities. Nothing about ending systemic poverty in Canada. And as for all that hooplah about no new federal spending in shared cost programs -- well, that's just the status quo. And now, Harper wants to extend the Afghanistan mission -- to 2011.

I'm not impressed by the Throne Speech at all.

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Hareu, hareu, le feu, le feu!

Blogging will be light the next few days due to some fire damage at Casa Blast Furnace. Dad and I are OK. If it's a big enough story, you'll hear from me, though!

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Why aren't more black people speaking out ...

... like Bill Cosby?

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Seeding faith, reaping scandal

I have refrained from talking about the latest series of scandals at Oral Roberts University this past week -- since my colleague at Bene Diction has most of the bases covered -- but I do have some thoughts, though. It starts with Oral himself.

Mr. Roberts has based his entire ministry on a claim that he had a "healing" -- spontaneous remission might be a better description -- of the tuberculosis that had him bedridden, back in 1935. I don't doubt he was sick or that he suddenly got better. But it does raise a question. TB was a huge scourge back during the Great Depression, and when one went to a sanatorium, it was to die. If Roberts had been healed, why didn't he present himself to the medical authorities and offer to be a guinea pig to develop a vaccine? Or at least an antibiotic? It could have closed the sanatoriums decades before they finally were.

No ... that would have been too clever. He must have figured that the real money was in persuading people, wrongly, that God can be bought off. And in so doing, he became not only a wealthy preacher but a very lucrative real estate developer as well. Interesting, he's managed to stay in remission from TB for 72 years, although he has had other medical issues. And it's interesting to note the writings of E.W. Kenyon which are widely seen as the launch of the Word-Faith movement, were published just around that time.

That leads to the present allegations against Richard and Lindsay. Renovating the President's house 11 times in 14 years? Text message sex -- and with minors? Using the corporate jet for personal purposes (just like Ken Copeland who was once a pilot for Oral?) Firing professors for whistle blowing? Encouraging students to go campaigning for a local GOP candidate in clear violation of federal laws (as well as, presumably, accreditation rules for universities)? And let's not forget Lindsay's extensive selection of wardrobes which makes Imelda Marcos' 3000 pairs of shoes look pauperish by comparison?

Yes, they are only allegations. But one has to wonder about this whole thing about "seeding faith" -- meaning money to enrich others. Whatever happened to what Jesus said:

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21, NIV).

Give the university to the poor, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, and expect your hundredfold blessing. You won't do it, 'cause it won't happen. Interesting too that 20 years ago you two were screaming to high heaven over the notion that the accreditation might be cancelled because Oral said gimme eight mil or I meet my Father. Maybe it's time they actually revisited that.

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One reason work's no fun anymore, anywhere

It used to be said that 50% of those who met their better half did so at school and work. I'm not so sure it's even half of that anymore, maybe even less. And perhaps the reason for that is that times and things are so different.

I'm not saying we go back to the way things used to be. For the most part, I think feminism is a good thing. But in the fight to stamp out sexual harassment in the workplace -- which we must of course do -- we've also put a crimp in the kinds of relationships we have at work. Many companies in the States forbid co-workers from dating each other. I have it on fairly good authority such a clause would be completely unenforceable in Canada both at common law as well as the civil law in Québec. But the line between fraternization and discrimination is getting all the more blurry.

In the process, there's a chill in the world of work. It's gotten to the point where asking for a date -- even among co-workers at the same level of authority -- could possibly lead to accusations one actually has an ulterior motive and a sinister one at that.

I don't think there's a lot of clarity on the issue ... and I wish someone would say in no uncertain terms what those rules are. I have no issue with reporting a conflict of interest to the HR department if, for example, an underling were to date someone in management whether or not one directly reports to the other. But there seem to be none in situations where it's colleagues at the same level do.

It's patently stupid to suggest one is not allowed to seek out Mr. or Ms Right among one's friends -- when one knows for sure he or she is there -- because someone else says the former can't.

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2007 Nobel Peace Prize: Al Gore and the IPCC

The Norweigian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to former US Vice-President Al Gore, Jr., and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This no doubt will make conservatives flip. I can't imagine how. Because conservative and conservation come from the same root. And it's the lack of the latter that, as the Committee points out, that's one of the biggest threats to global security that we face. The citation read in part this year's winners have been named so "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

The link between environment and peace has been true throughout history ... the winds of change in the air often precipitated political change whether in the short or long term. A slight change in air temperatures in one year, for instance, started the Irish Potato Famine -- which led to massive outmigration to Canada and the United States, and many of the political consequences can still be felt today here in North America as well as in the UK and the Irish Republic. More recently, the vast stripping of land resources in northeastern Africa has contributed in large measure to the drought there -- and is cited as one of the causes of the genocide in Darfur.

Here in Canada we've literally "paved paradise to put up a parking lot," as Joni Mitchell bluntly said. Only now the new parking lot is the land resources that feed us and give us energy. Forests are being stripped to access the tar sands -- and those trees which could have acted as sinks for carbon are now gone making the pollution from processing bitumen that much worse.
And certainly, the diamond industry is finally giving the Far North the shot in the arm it so desperately needs and will sustain growth in Northern Ontario in the next few years.

But what price progress? Is it worth stripping land like quarries just to get dust which in time will be -- well, even more dust?

Al Gore had it right all along. The key to stopping terrorism isn't to secure access to oil abroad, as Dubya was so keen to do. It's to stop buying that oil all together and state that America will harness what God has given us -- wind, air, earth and fire (the Sun); and manage the resources in a sustainable manner. All countries in fact, including Canada, have to do the same. This is a moral issue.

And while many conservatives also understand the link, those who are in power do not. So, a huge congrats, Al. But please don't quit your present day job -- you have more power outside the White House than you and Bill Clinton did in it.

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Election 2007 post-mortem

[Some comments on Kathy Shaidle below.]

Dalton McGuinty has more than held his own, he practically glided to victory. A month ago, I had predicted McGuinty would win 55 seats, Tory 38, and Hampton 14. This morning, the unofficial totals show Liberals 71, Progressive Conservatives 26, NDP 10.

Decisive to be sure. But McGuinty lost six percent of the popular vote and the campaign was focused way too much on education and not on the other priorities that matter to Ontarians. As we almost certainly slip into a slowdown if not a recession, we're going to need a steady hand and while McGuinty has had a steady hand steering the ship he's going to need nerves of steel in the four years ahead.

Another thing: This is the first back to back Lib win since Mitchell Hepburn did it during the Great Depression. And oddly enough, he won his first election on a promise to extend funding to Catholic high schools -- which he was forced to withdraw when his mostly W.A.S.P. caucus threatened a vote of non-confidence.

Which leads to John Tory. This is the second election he's botched -- the first was Kim Campbell's. And as Campbell lost her own seat, he also managed to lose in the district he was running in against the Education Minister of all people -- rather than run for re-election in his very safe rural seat. And what did him in? Education. Back in the 30's, it was true that most Protestants genuinely hated Catholics. Today, we Catholics are full members of society and most of us get along just fine with our Protestant and Eastern Orthodox siblings -- as well as people of every other religion and no religion at all. The Constitution may be quirky but it is the Constitution and the only realistic way for Tory to have pulled off what he wanted to do was through a Constitutional amendment which no one wants.

There is a way to ensure equality for those who don't want to be in the public or Catholic school systems, but Tory sure chose the wrong way to do it. And overall, people want integration -- and my recollections from high school were that there were quite a few Protestants in my high school and they had no trouble blending in with the rest of us; and we were also a fully multi-ethnic school, including South Asians, Arabs and blacks. We clearly got it. I can't believe Tory didn't.

As for hapless Howard Hampton, his fate is destined to be the same as Edward Broadbent federally. Right leader, wrong party.

On the MMP vote -- it was defeated, and we of course have to respect that. But the education campaign run by Elections Ontario was very disappointing, and people latched on to the totally incorrect idea candidates would have been appointed. The fight may be over for now, but it's not totally done with. Democracy will win out eventually as it has in most of the EU (including the national assemblies of Scotland and Wales), New Zealand and Japan.

And finally ... one last word, or a few.

Some of my fellow ProgBlogs, who I will decline to name for now, have every right to criticize Kathy Shaidle. I know I have on this board a few times. But there's a difference between taking on the talking point, and taking on Kathy personally. I disagree with her on just about everything political. But I consider her a friend, and our exchanges have been nothing but civil. I don't have to defend her, she can take care of herself quite well. The true test of a democracy is the extent to which we allow free expression and thought. It's rather high strung of us to plead free speech when we challenge those in power; then turn around and claim we have higher moral ground just because "we know better."

When I dispute something Kathy says -- really dispute it -- I keep it civil, or at least try to. I hope my colleagues would do the same, as with any other blogger we may disagree with left or right.

Is it a Catholic thing, you may ask? You're damn right it is, but it's only partly that. And for what it's worth, if I could find a woman -- a progressive of course -- who's as feisty as Kathy is, I'd be a really lucky guy.

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McGuinty wins

Global News is already projecting a Liberal majority.

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