Alone today amongst all the “dictatorship, “affront to democracy”, “game playing” blah, blah, blah articles and columns written today on the prorogation of Parliament, I’m thinking John Ivison from The Post comes the closest to nailing the reason. (see column here)
The Liberal Ontario government and Ontario Provincial Police settled out of court with the couple who was suing them over their treatment by the authorities from harassment received from the Six Nations protestors who occupied a development nearby. (see story here)
Now we’ll never have anyone held accountable over this as the settlement comes with a confidentiality agreement. I love how governments are allowed to spend tax payer money to settle lawsuits and no one is allowed to see the terms? Sweet deal for the cops and politicians involved.
Today was the first time I’ve time I read one of the National Post’s newest contributors and I gave my head a sad shake. (see column here)
John Baglow, known as Dr Dawg to the on-line blogger community, is now getting his anti-Harper/Conservative ramblings published in the only decent newspaper in Canada and you have to wonder what editor Kelly McParland is thinking. Is this his way of trying to make the paper diverse? Well, we already have Don Martin for that, so I’m thinking this is just an attempt at trying to inject some controversy and reactions from readers such as me and make Baglow a foil as he attacks Baglow’s article with his own (see here)
If that’s the case, McParland is playing with fire…
The war of words between Ezra Levant and liberal blogger Jason Cherniak just got a whole lot more interesting with Warren Kinsella sticking his nose in it.
Kinsella repeated the phrase “porch monkey” that Cherniak attributed to Levant’s usage of the phrase “porch Jew” in reference to Irwin Cotler (see previous Cotler post here) and wondered aloud if the Conservative Party would now “kick him to the curb” for not only this but “defending neo-Nazis and racists and a regular basis.” (see Kinsella blog post here)
If this isn’t a case of the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is (see Kinsella quote regarding Chinese food here).
Also: see my post to CBC complaining about Kinsella being on their blog roll and his response to me here
Ezra Levant writes on his blog site of a dinner meeting organized by the late media mogul and big wig Liberal Izzy Asper to aid a pro-Israel lobby effort. This story shows Cotler to be self-righteous in his defense of being called out by the Conservatives on his record of not properly supporting Israel. (see Levant blog here)
“This was in the wake of the Durban fiasco that the Liberals had disgracefully attended; the second Intifada was still hot; and Canadian media and politicians were too often siding with terrorists and terrorist states over democratic Israel. The pro-Israel case was losing in the court of public opinion.
Asper called together a small meeting in Toronto — a half dozen people or so — to talk over dinner about what to do. Sen. Grafstein was there; so was Cotler. To my surprise, I was invited too.
I was fascinated by Cotler’s description of how the Liberal government dealt with matters of Israel. Cotler explained that there were indeed Jews in high ranks in the PMO and cabinet, including the deputy prime minister at the time, Herb Gray, and Jean Chretien’s senior advisor, Eddie Goldenberg. But Cotler said that when an issue came up about Israel, and Chretien would take a reading of the room, the Official Jews were silent — so Chretien would naturally assume that they approved of his position, or at least didn’t object enough to speak out.
Cotler’s point was that Chretien was not actively anti-Israel, or at least he didn’t regard himself as that — he certainly wasn’t on some ideological warpath against Israel. He would look at the Jews around the table and, hearing no complaints, would adopt his course of action. So his policies were passively anti-Israel — the passivity being that of his court Jews.
Asper called these Jews “the Jews of silence”. Sort of like Uncle Tom, really — they liked being porch slaves a lot better than being field slaves, so why cause a fuss?”
