In yet another nod to the protection of fledgling self-esteem, an Ottawa children’s soccer league has introduced a rule that says any team that wins a game by more than five points will lose by default.

Kevin Cappon said he first heard about the rule on May 20 — right after he had scored his team’s last allowable goal. His team then tossed the ball around for fear of losing the game.

He said if anything, the league’s new rule will coddle sore losers.

And once these gentle snowflakes reach adulthood maybe we should also guarantee everyone lives in the same size house, and drives the same model car, and earns the same income.

Ottawa, soccer, Kevin Cappon

Spread The Word:

Thick mucus production results in frequent lung infections. Diminished secretion of pancreatic enzymes is the main cause of poor growth, greasy stools, and deficiency in fat-soluble vitamins.

There is no cure for CF, and most individuals with cystic fibrosis die young: many in their 20s and 30s from lung failure. Cystic fibrosis is one of the most common life-shortening, childhood-onset inherited diseases. In most cases, CF causes an early death.

So it comes as a surprise that cystic fibrosis was considered “too white” for a Carleton University fundraiser:

The Carleton University Students’ Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not “inclusive” enough.

Cystic fibrosis “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men” said the motion read Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it. The decision caused heated reaction and left at least one member of council calling for a new vote.

But the rationale for dropping cystic fibrosis as the beneficiary is not correct, Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation chief executive Cathleen Morrison said. CF is diagnosed just as often among girls as boys, although the health of girls deteriorates more rapidly, she said. It is commonly considered an illness that affects Caucasians, but that includes people from the Middle East, South America, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent. ” ‘Caucasian’ as we understand it isn’t just white people,” said Morrison. “It includes people with a whole rainbow of skins.”

Just damn. Good thing someone didn’t mention ovarian cancer research, though, because that’s a disease that really discriminates and is completely non-inclusive. Ditto for breast cancer research and all those terribly non-inclusive pink ribbons. And who really cares if a bunch of little kiddies die of juvenile diabetes?

Left wing Bigotry is still Bigotry.

Cystic fibrosis, Carleton University, Shinearama, Cathleen Morrison

Spread The Word:

If the federal government’s numbers are right, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are Canada’s most heavily armed citizens, but also its least trigger-happy.

According to the most recent numbers from the Canada Firearms Centre, the province has 70,977 registered firearms. Statistics Canada’s latest numbers estimate the province’s population at 508,270. That’s one gun for every 7.2 people, the highest ratio of guns to people of any province in the country.

Statistics Canada’s most recent numbers on gun crime also reveal the province has the lowest annual rate of victims of firearm-related crime in the country, with just 11.4 victims for every 100,000 people.

Gun owners and hunters in the province believe the numbers reflect the province’s close ties to the environment and citizens’ respect for the responsibilities of owning a firearm.

Much of the same pattern can be seen here in the US if one bothers to look at the data. Guns are not the problem – criminals are.

Spread The Word:

That’s the headline from the Toronto Star which is reporting that Marnina Norys, a 39-year-old Ph.D. student in Canada, was stopped by security and prohibited from wearing her necklace into the terminal.

Last week, security officials at Kelowna International Airport in British Columbia forced Norys to remove a silver necklace with a pendant in the shape of a Colt .45 pistol.

The 2-inch pendant apparently was deemed a security risk.

“When the woman pointed at the pendant I had no idea what she was talking about,” Norys told the Star. “They made me feel ashamed, as if I should have known that it was wrong to wear this type of jewelry.”

An airport security official told Norys was told that replica firearms are banned from planes and that she’d have to check her jewelry.

According to the Star, Dave Smith, director of screening operations with the Canadian Air Transport Authority (CATSA), issued a written apology to Norys and wrote that the screening officer “made a judgment call, rather than refer to CATSA’s standard operating procedures. In retrospect, your revolver-shaped pendant is not a threat and should have been allowed on board the aircraft.”

Huh?

The pendant was only 2″ wide but since it was in the shape of a gun the professional security screener deemed it a threat to air safety. No bullets or moving parts, just a replica.

The Canadian Air Transport Authority said that the screening officer made a judgment call? Exactly what level of judgment did the idiot screener use?

I need a drink.

Marnina Norys, Canada, Kelowna International Airport, pistol, firearm, revolver

Spread The Word:

So I present you this from the Toronto Sun:

Mark Degasperis was furious his mother spent five days on a stretcher at Toronto Western Hospital waiting for a room with 25 patients ahead of her — until the Toronto Sun made a call and she was suddenly moved to a room yesterday.

“They were giving us the same old song and dance why she was in the emergency department with only a sheet draped around her. I couldn’t even call her because she didn’t have a phone,” Degasperis of Georgetown said.

Heather Degasperis, 60, has a dangerous bacterial condition and was sent by her doctor to Toronto Western because it has the experts for her condition.

“She is not well and wasn’t able to sleep and she wasn’t getting any better. She needed peace and quiet to sleep.

“This is a terrible environment. I suggested taking her to another hospital, but we were told there are long waits across the region and the doctors we need are here. So there was nothing we could do,” Degasperis said yesterday.

“I’m angry we pay such high taxes and the more money we throw at the health care system the worse it gets. People shouldn’t be lined up on stretchers in the emergency department. If you are sick you should get a room.”

Because of patient confidentiality laws, the hospital isn’t able to comment on patients, so it is unclear if Degasperis’s mother jumped the line because the Sun made a call.

Dr. Bob Bell, president and CEO of the University Health Network, which includes Toronto Western, said the problem of overcrowding has nothing to do with the emergency department.

“The problem is the flow of patients in the hospital. What we need is an alternative level of care for folks who are not ready to go home but don’t need acute care,” Bell said.

“We are trying desperately to improve the experience folks have, but we need more capacity in the community.”

healthcare, Degasperis

Spread The Word:

Sometimes I wonder whether Toronto Mayor David Miller actually listens to himself talk.

Probably not.

Nothing original ever issues forth from the man’s mouth. Instead, he seems only to function as a funnel for every fashionable theory about “root causes” and social engineering advanced in the past quarter century.

Consider the drivel His Worship has produced since the murder last Wednesday of 15-year-old Jordan Manners at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute, a high school situated in a violence-plagued north Toronto neighbourhood.

Mayor Miller blamed Ottawa for letting law-abiding citizen’s own handguns.

Apparently, the problem couldn’t be the prevalence of father-absent upbringings in the Jane-Finch area of Toronto, or the glorification of gangsta, drug and gun culture that liberals and social democrats such as Mr. Miller have been loathe to denounce out of a politically correct fear of being called racists.

Nor could it be the every-boy-a-good-boy approach to juvenile crime, also favoured by the Millers of the world, that has eliminated nearly all punishment for young offenders in favour of touchy-feely counselling that hardened young criminals — such as those who would shoot down a student in the hallway of a high school–just scoff at.

It couldn’t be the way courts have hamstrung police investigations or lefty city councils have pared back police budgets and reassigned beat patrol officers to traffic safety campaigns and police-minority relations teams.

Nope. If we follow Mayor Miller’s logic, the only reason Jordan Manners is dead is the federal Conservatives’ unwillingness to ban handguns.

Well, while, we’re at it, why don’t we get those nasty Tories to ban drugs, bank robberies and car thefts, too. And murder. Let’s get them to ban murder, because murder is bad. And if all it takes to prevent bad things from happening are federal bans on them, well let’s just ban lots of stuff–because then all sorts of crime and personal pain will just magically go away.

Oh, right: Ottawa has already banned drugs, murder and robbery. And despite those prohibitions, bad things continue to happen. In spite of laws making it a crime to murder, deal drugs and hold up credit unions, criminals still do it.

It should be obvious to a six-year-old, then, that a handgun ban would never eliminate or even reduce handgun crime in Canada. Handgun murderers in this country typically use illegal weapons, anyway — so banning the weapons outright would essentially be redundant. Despite this, self-important liberal- left windbags such as David Miller never fail to call for such bans every time a horrific crime presents them with an opportunity to do so.

Their constituencies — academic theorists, special interest and right organizations, feminists, guilty white liberals and multiculturalists — disdain guns and lawful gun owners (not our kind, dear). So guns make an easy — and convenient — target. If they can turn the blame on guns and lawful gun owners, then they do not have to admit their own social and criminal justice experiments have been a bust.

A 2004 metanalysis by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (hardly a gun-owners’ lobby) evaluated more than 250 articles from academic journals, nearly 100 books on gun control and more than 40 government studies from around the world; and found no evidence that gun control or gun bans had reduced gun crime, gun murders or suicides with guns.

A new study by American criminologist Don Kates and Canadian criminologist Gary Mauser (both, admittedly, pro-gun ownership), published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, shows no correlation between civil gun ownership and murder or suicide.

For instance, Kates and Mauser found that Russia, with a relatively low incidence of legal gun ownership (4,000 per 100,000 population) has a murder rate nearly 30 times that of Norway, even though Norwegian civilians own nine times as many guns as Russian civilians.

Since Britain implemented a near-complete ban on civilian handgun ownership a decade ago, handgun possession among criminals has soared by an estimated one million to three million guns, and handgun crime has almost tripled.

The cause of gun crimes such as the Manners murder and Britain’s recent rash of similar shootings is a changing culture. And that’s the one “root cause” David Miller and his ilk refuse even to talk about.

- Lorne Gunter

Wow.

Ain’t nothing else I can add.

Toronto, David Miller, social engineering, handgun

Spread The Word:

You’ve heard of green cars, green tourism and green weddings. Now Canadians should ready themselves for green sex.

For those who like to make love to the soundtrack of the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Greenpeace has released a list of strategies for “getting it on for the good of the planet,” suggesting “you can be a bomb in bed without nuking the planet.” TreeHugger, an online magazine edited by Ontario’s Michael Graham Richard, has just published a guide on “how to green your sex life.” The famed adult store Good Vibrations announced last week they would no longer sell sex toys containing phthalates, controversial chemical plasticizers believed by some to be hazardous to humans and the environment alike.

And throughout Canada and the U.S., people who want to pleasure the planet can now buy everything from bamboo bed sheets to organic lubricant and “eco-undies.”

Other ways of “greenwashing” the bedroom, as outlined by TreeHugger and Greenpeace, include turning out the lights, not buying PVC or vinyl accoutrements, ensuring S&M paddles are made from sustainably harvested timber, using organic massage oils, showering together, using bamboo bed sheets (they come from a rapidly renewable resource and are said to be “super sexy”), and wearing lingerie made with renewable fibres such as hemp (Enamore), bamboo (Butta) and other organic goodness (GreenKnickers, Buenostyle, Peau Ethique).

Do you have a mental image of Al Gore using S&M paddles that are made from sustainably harvested timber?

Michael Graham Richard

Spread The Word:

From Yahoo, and NO I’m not making this up:

A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said Wednesday.

“I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation … that could be a way to save our planet,” Paul Hellyer, 83, told the Ottawa Citizen.

Alien spacecrafts would have traveled vast distances to reach Earth, and so must be equipped with advanced propulsion systems or used exceptional fuels, he told the newspaper.

See, we don’t even need the High Holy Goracle to solve the planet’s dire future of turning into a rock of charcoal due to man-made global warning. All we need to do is use the alien propulsion technology from all those crashed spaceships that the world’s governments are hiding in their secret laboratories. But using warp drive on the nation’s highways is sure to cause added congestion during rush hour.

UFO, Paul Hellyer, Alien, global warning

Spread The Word:

Different phrases, all with the same meaning. Something the Left has been threatening to unleash on the US for decades, and a very real possibility if the Democrats continue to hold Congress – and a bet-your-paycheck surety if Comrade Hillary takes the White House.

One example the Left consistently points to is the wonderful, “almost-perfect” Canadian health care system. If only the US were to adopt a health care system akin to Canada our lives would be so much better they say. “Think of the children” they say.

Europeans are now learning some hard facts of life about socialized medicine: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The question is whether Congress, and the US voter, will learn from Europe’s mistakes. The Europeans have run into a very simple economic rule. If something is perceived as free, people will consume more of it than they would if they had to pay for it. Think of it this way: if food were free, would you eat hamburger or steak? At the same time, health care is a finite good. There are only so many doctors, so many hospital beds and so much technology. If people overconsume those resources, it drives up the cost of health care.

In 1965 the government passed Medicare legislation, providing basic medical services to the nation’s retirees. Physicians and hospital administrators were delighted. They built new hospitals and enlarged old ones. They began providing the medical equivalent of the best Parisian hats to all comers. Why not? The government encouraged physicians by asking them simply to send the bill to the American taxpayer. Patients, as well as physicians, no longer had to consider costs. Everyone demanded “the best” – price no object. Medical expenditures in the United States were 4.3% of GNP in 1952; by 1982 they exceeded 10%, and were still rising. In the same period the government’s share of these expenses nearly doubled, from 22% to over 40%. Here is Lesson One in action: with the government footing the bill for a substantial number of those receiving medical care, there was suddenly an enormous demand for medical services.

At the same time, prices for medical care soared. The legislation deliberately removed any incentive to keep prices low: in fact, removing concern about costs was the point of the program. Many of us can remember that prior to 1965 a few days in the hospital did not threaten to bankrupt the average middle class family, who could afford the state of the art in medical care as in everything else. Today, many find the cost of a hospital stay prohibitive, because the rise in medical costs has far outpaced the general inflation rate. Why? Because of Lesson Two. Prices skyrocketed precisely because the government was providing unlimited funds for medical care. Consumers demanded the most expensive treatment, and medical facilities did not have to keep prices low in order to maintain a competitive edge.

By 1983, Medicare threatened to bankrupt the entire Social Security system. It was clear that something drastic had to be done to control runaway costs. Taxes were raised, of course, but this was not enough. Like the manufacturers in the hat illustration, health-care professionals were (and continue to be) denounced as the greedy culprits who had to be controlled; price controls were slapped on hospitals and doctors. Under this system, called Diagnosis Related Groups, all hospital admissions of Medicare patients are classed in one of 486 categories, and the hospital receives a set fee for the patient, regardless of his length of stay or the amount of care provided. When it was pointed out that this might lead to inadequate treatment and early discharges (“quicker and sicker” releases), the government responded by imposing further complicated regulations.

The federal government has also set a limit on what doctors can charge patients over the age of 65, and some states now refuse to license doctors who do not accept the Medicare fee as full payment. Just to receive the government-approved payment, doctors must comply with a bewildering, and sometimes contradictory, array of regulations from several different agencies. The process a doctor is required to go through to obtain payment from Medicare makes filing your tax return look like simple arithmetic, and your doctor does it many times per day, not once a year. Also, a simple error in filing that would result in no monetary gain for him, such as using an incorrect code for a diagnosis, can mean no payment at all on the claim, plus a fine of thousands of dollars. Not surprisingly, doctors are leaving the profession and the number and quality of medical school applicants are falling. In 1974 there were nearly three applicants for every opening in medical school; by 1986 there were fewer than two. What bright young college graduate would want to get involved with such a mess? Lesson Three comes into play: you can’t get top-notch, dedicated individuals to enter and remain in the medical profession while controlling their activities and their earnings, and calling them greedy exploiters to boot.

And guess what? Costs are still rising uncontrollably, despite stringent controls on medical expenditures. Given the fact that it was government funding that made prices skyrocket, and that the government is still funding medical care, the continually rising prices should come as no surprise. The government is now considering more drastic measures, such as rationing and “universal insurance.” Massachusetts has already adopted such a plan, which led to the exodus of doctors from that state and contributed to its recent financial collapse and tax increase. Here is Lesson Four: what the government pays for, the government must control. In the very near future, if a physician tells you that your life could be improved with bypass surgery or a hip replacement, you will have to petition the government and take a number. Perhaps your petition will be approved, once all the appropriate government bureaucrats have debated its merits; perhaps it won’t. Likewise, every aspect of a physician’s practice will have to be dictated and controlled: most of them are already. He’ll be told whom he can treat, and how, and what payment he’ll receive. His livelihood and his freedom will be in the hands of the same bureaucrats who hold your life and health.

Government control of medicine means, in short, that the bureaucrats will be telling you what services you are allowed to have, and when. If what you want is the best care for the most people, any government-funded medical program is impractical as well as immoral. At every step the government has become more involved in private health care the worse the situation has become. And yet we’ve got dozens of politicians, and millions of “intelligent” voters, screaming for more and more government intrusion into private health care. For years we’ve been told to look to Europe and Canada for lessons about health care. Maybe we should. So let’s take a look at some facts and figures from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Universal Health Care, Socialized Medicine, Democrat, Congress

Spread The Word:

From 3 Ex-terrorists:

Zachariah Anani was a teenage militia fighter. Born into a family of Muslim clergy in Beirut, Lebanon, he began Islamic school at age three. His grandfather and great grandfather had been imams, and his family expected him to follow in their footsteps.

At 13, he joined one of the many military groups that existed in the early ’70s. “All the religious fragments had their own secret militia,” Anani says. “I was trained to fight and kill Jews, and to hate Christians and Americans.”

Soon after enlisting, he made his first “kill.” By the time he turned 16, “life meant nothing,” Anani says. “Every time I killed someone and two or three fighters witnessed it, they would give me a point on my chart. I carried 223 points.”

Anani met a Christian missionary, embarked on a spiritual journey and converted to Christainity which became a turning point in his life.

Anani initially tried to keep his new faith secret. Apart from one professor, no one at his university suspected he was a Christian. But in the Muslim neighborhood where he grew up, everyone knew it and he was harassed and persecuted. He moved to the city’s Christian sector, but the persecution continued. Even his father hired assassins to kill him.

Finally church leaders convinced him to leave Lebanon because his presence endangered others. In 1996 Anani entered Canada as a refugee. It took another three difficult years before his wife and three children could join him. After Anani debated with a Muslim scholar in the United States, his family was attacked in Lebanon. Two of his children required surgery.

Zak has been attacked numerous times for his faith as a Christian, even in Canada.

When in Lebanon, he was nearly beheaded and was only saved when an army patrol came by and the Islamist gang dispersed leaving Zak with a huge wound on his neck. Zak nearly bled to death and was actually technically dead for 7 minutes, before being revived.

In Canada, where he now lives, his house and car have been burnt, his family attacked physically and Zak himself has been attacked.

An absolutely amazing story of a man trained from youth to fight and kill Jews and to hate Christians and Americans. Yet due to a single Christian missionary he has turned his entire life around – and done so at a terrible cost.

He was almost beheaded. His children have required surgery because wounds form attackers. His property has been destroyed – and done so not in Lebanon but in Canada. And now he wants to tell his story to the public, a story how both the Quran and Islam seem to condone violence. But not everyone wants Anani to tell his story.

From The Windsor Star (Canada):

A member of the Windsor Police Services Board says the anti-Islamic lecture held at a Baptist church Thursday night was a hate crime, and he’s leading the charge to have the speaker arrested.

Wally Chafchak, also a member of the Windsor Islamic Association, said he and other Muslims and Christians have approached police about the lecture by Zachariah Anani.

“In my opinion, this went far beyond religious discussion and debate,” said Chafchak. “In the Criminal Code there is a section that deals with spreading hatred in the community, and I think that’s what this is. This instance should fall under those laws. Justice can only be served if this person is charged. He’s talking about hate, this person. We will pursue it further until we feel we have our share of justice.”

Now a Christian convert, Anani said Islamic doctrine teaches the “ambushing, seizing and slaying” of non-believers, especially Jews and Christians. He said Islam is a religion that worships a god “who strikes with terror.”

Anani said he isn’t worried about being charged, because he only drew on facts from the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book.

“What I said was fact,” he said Friday. “I wasn’t talking about my own interpretation. I picked facts derived from statements of the book.”

It has to be noted that converting from Islam to any other faith, according to the Quran, is punishable by death. Islam is the only known faith to have such a restriction.

More from The Windsor Star (Canada):

Anani angered local Muslims when he used passages from the Qur’an during his first lecture Jan. 11 to support his view that Islam preaches violence.

“There will be an examination of whether he became a Canadian citizen with the full truest extent. His citizenship is going to be questioned at that time,” [Windsor West MP] Masse said.

As well, members of the Windsor Islamic Association have filed a formal complaint with the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

CAIR has sent letters to Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant asking for a prompt investigation into Anani’s lectures under Canada’s hate crime legislation.

“His citizenship is going to be questioned…” Just imagine what will happen to Anani if his citizenship is revoked and he is returned by force to Lebanon. It appears that CAIR is not going to use its power to protect Anani but rather have him either convicted of hate crimes or deported.

Here I’ll repeat an earlier statement: Converting from Islam to any other faith, according to the Quran, is punishable by death. Islam is the only known faith to have such a restriction.

From PRNewswire via Yahoo:

There is a growing and forceful campaign by CAIR and other Islamist organizations in Canada to silence the free speech of Zachariah Anani and undermine his legitimacy as a Canadian citizen, by calling for his arrest and deportation.

CAIR, an organization which claims to be the voice of moderation, should be embracing Anani’s message against violence and the dangers of extremism instead of mounting a witch hunt against him.

It is no wonder that CAIR is attacking Anani, as it has been documented that many of the leaders of CAIR have openly supported the positions of Hamas, Hizballah and al-Queda — all recognized terrorist organizations.

[former terrorist from the West Bank] Walid Shoebat believes that CAIR and other Islamist organizations should join Anani in encouraging Muslims to speak out against terrorism and the killing, raping, forced conversion, mutilation and other acts of violence perpetrated by Jihadist groups worldwide against non-Muslims.

Why is it that CAIR absolutely refuses to acknowledge that killing, raping, forced conversion, mutilation, and other acts of violence are being perpetuated in the name of Allah? Do they not read the newspapers? Do they not watch TV? You would think CAIR would use their influence to effect positive change in the Muslim community, not punish those that would shine a light on those that use Islam for death and destruction.

Despite being founded by two self-identified supporters of Islamist terrorism and continually refusing to condemn Islamist terrorism, CAIR has not only survived, but thrived. In the five years since September 11, CAIR has grown exponentially in both resources and influence, becoming the de facto voice of American Muslims in the mainstream media.

CAIR claims to condemn “all forms of terrorism,” yet it almost exclusively focuses on Israel’s actions.

The CAIR board chairman is Omar Ahmad. In 1998 a California newspaper quoted Ahmad as declaring that the Quran should be America’s highest authority. That would put the Constitution where?

Addressing a youth session at a 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine convention in Chicago, CAIR’s other cofounder, Omar Ahmad, praised suicide bombers who “kill themselves for Islam”: “Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam.”

Ibrahim Hooper is the chief mouthpiece for CAIR. You’ll see him on television from time to time. In 1993 the Minneapolis Star Tribune interviewed Hooper. During that interview Hooper is quoted as saying that he wants to see America become a Muslim country.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, on the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, said “there is ample evidence indicating that both the Mossad and the Egyptian Intelligence played a role in the explosion.”

CAIR has never condemned any of Hamas’ many terrorist attacks. During the month-long war last summer, CAIR issued at least eight condemnations of Israel and America – but not one of Hezbollah. CAIR has, in fact, never condemned Hamas or Hezbollah. Given repeated opportunities to do so by outlets such as The Washington Post and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, CAIR has flatly refused to denounce either. Asked point-blank by Newsweek just last month to condemn Hamas, CAIR Executive Director and cofounder Nihad Awad demurred, dismissing the question as “the game of the pro-Israel lobby.”

And now they want Anani convicted of hate speech and deported to Lebanon … where his previous attempted beheading can be completed.

Anani, Muslim, Lebanon, Islam, Quran, CAIR

Spread The Word: