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Combating Honour Killing

The Shafia case shows Canada needs a better approach to a horiffic problem. The National Post's Barbara Kay tells us more.

 

Charles Adler and Raj Sharma Discuss Honour Killings

 

Greenpeace Goofballs

The Menzoid infiltrated a Greenpeace protest last week, finding some hilarious hypocrisy and inspired ignorance.

 

Classic Diversion: Obama's Robin Hood

By Charles Adler, QMI Agency

Thursday, January 26, 2012

 

Eat the rich. Folks, the Occupy movement has infiltrated the White House.

President Barack Obama wants the rich to pay the government’s tab with the American people. To stop the 1% from choking the life out of the American dream. To help eliminate the deficit and pay down those stimulus debts. To fix all that’s gone wrong with America. To overhaul the tax code by ending Bush-era tax cuts in order to fund entitlement programs like education, medical research and the care of military veterans.

End the tax cuts or end benefits to military veterans. He’s pulling heart strings in this ideological tug of war.

In a grand gesture of political theatre, Obama gave Warren Buffet’s secretary one of the best seats in the house at this state of the union address. You know, Warren Buffet’s poor, oppressed executive assistant who apparently pays a higher tax rate than the oracle of Omaha himself? The very representation of the repression of the average American, turns out his poor secretary makes up to $500,000 per year, according to Forbes. Obama’s tax aspirations, the “Buffett Rule,” would actually make her pay a whole lot more. 

But all this Robin Hood stuff is a classic diversion strategy to deflect the attention of the American people away from Obama’s failures. Twenty-four million Americans are still out of work or underemployed despite out-of-control government stimulus spending that has pushed America’s debt to new highs; debt that’s more like a Greek tragedy than the American Dream. Best to divert negative attention to a new enemy and make the rich wear the goat horns. Capital gains tax is in the crosshairs. A tax deferral tool for wealthy investors, Obama’s been wanting to revamp capital gains tax rules for years. After all, by raising those taxes the government makes a bundle — and the rich won’t miss it. They’re already rolling in dough, right?  

Wrong. Historical data confirms that raising capital gains taxes actually reduces government tax revenue. Why? Because it slaughters investment and economic activity.  His tax initiatives target those super-elite bankers but it’s those Mom and Pop businesses that would suffer. Those small businesses create real jobs that lead to real growth. Not the phoney kind of jobs from an ever-expanding public sector. 

It’s also a double taxation. American corporations already pay a 35% tax rate, one of the highest in the world. Any returns to the investors is already net of tax. Americans pay about 45% in combined taxes on their investment income. But that’s not all. Don’t forget the death tax. When an American investor buys the farm, they get dinged as much as 35% in estate taxes. Tax upon tax upon tax.

Does America still sound like a low-tax jurisdiction to you? Funny how Obama doesn’t mention any of these things in his rhetoric. Obama’s got his socialist blinders on. His personal views on fairness are more important to him than economic common sense. And that kind of thinking is both dangerous and destructive.

Obama talks a good game. He’s a great public speaker, but the last three years have demonstrated that style can only carry the America Dream so far. It’s time for a change. Canada’s future depends on it. And that’s Canadian common sense.

 

NOT-SO-SUPER SUNDAY

By The Menzoid

 

Savvy Canadian shoppers have undoubtedly noticed signage at retail stores that read, “Shoplifting costs us all.”

And it’s true, of course. When retailers experience “shrinkage” – that kinder, gentler word for thievery – it adds to the cost of doing business. The retailer either sucks it up by making less profit or increases the price of the merchandise to make up for lost revenue. That’s Capitalism 101.

But there’s another hidden cost that hurts the bottom lines of retailers... and the culprits here aren’t thieves, but rather, disingenuous cheapskates.

You see, as we head closer to the first Sunday in February – a.k.a., Super Sunday – you can expect the nation’s sporting skinflints to take a stand... and hurt the economy.

In the days leading up to the fifth of February, electronic retailers will typically experience a significant blip in sales of big-screen TVs. After all, nobody is going to invite the guys over and watch the big game if the rec room is festooned with a circa-1979 26-inch Zenith.

No, we’re talking at least a 55- incher if you plan on hosting a Super Bowl party in 2012. And if you can spring for a 70-incher, all the better.

But here’s the rub. Just as electronics stores experience an uptick in sales in the days prior to the Super Bowl, they also experience massive returns post-Super Sunday.

Oh, it’s true. You see, the sporting cheapskate only wants to impress his friends with the latest whiz-bang TV for the game but has no intention of living with the big ticket purchase for the months and years to come. So, within the prescribed 30-day period, those big TVs are returned along with some bogus excuse as to why the high-tech telly isn’t suitable anymore.

Of course, this all adds to the cost of doing business, and that means higher-priced electronic goods for the thousands and thousands of honest Menzoid Maniacs and trustworthy Adler Acolytes who wouldn’t dream of playing such a game.

But this year, The Menzoid decided to take a stand to reverse this odious trend.

Namely, for a few days, he patrolled the entrance ways to various Future Shops and Best Buys in the Rich Man’s Hill area, diligently keeping an eye out for those people who were purchasing large screen TVs in late January.

Clad in a rented naval uniform and wearing a pith helmet (which conveys an aura of authority), The Menzoid approached big-screen TV purchasers and asked them for a few moments of their time. That’s when The Menzoid went into his speech about how returning a TV post-Super Bowl is neither moral nor ethical. Please note, The Menzoid was not being paid by Future Shop or Best Buy. Rather, as previously noted, educating others is what The Menzoid likes to do.

As for the results of the impromptu Q&A: not a single shopper actually admitted to the fact that he or she was planning on returning the merchandise post February Fifth. But The Menzoid could see through their lies. How so? Simple. The Menzoid was also carrying a clipboard with a declaration which stated the following:

“I swear to God that I am not purchasing a television primarily to watch the Super Bowl and plan to return the television after the Super Bowl. I have been informed by The Menzoid that this is an unethical practice, and I hereby swear by all that is holy that I will keep the merchandise I have purchased for its normal lifespan. If I am lying, I hope I go straight to hell.”

The Menzoid then offered up a pen so that the person could sign his or her name in the space below the declaration.

Alas, The Menzoid is profoundly saddened to report that not a single one of the 40-plus customers he interviewed – not one! – agreed to sign his documentation. In fact, when The Menzoid began insisting on a signature as a show of good faith, many individuals became verbally abusive. One even dropped the F-bomb. Please keep in mind The Menzoid was, at all times, wearing a naval uniform and pith helmet.

Needless to say, The Menzoid was left shocked, saddened, and dismayed by the type of customer patronizing big box electronic stores today. The Menzoid is also ashamed by the lack of respect shown to authority figures given that The Menzoid would never dream of speaking with disdain to anyone wearing a pith helmet.

To add insult to injury, not a single employee or manager at any of the stores The Menzoid patrolled even had the common decency to thank him for his tireless service, which was sometimes conducted in sub-zero weather conditions.

Moving ahead, does The Menzoid have a solution to this problem? No. But let The Menzoid’s experience be yet another tell-tale sign indicating the ongoing degradation of the human condition.

Indeed, perhaps if more honest consumers of electronic products chastised those who buy big screen TVs in late January, we might be able to collectively turn the tide of these boorish borrowers. After all, The Menzoid simply cannot do it alone –even when clad in a naval uniform and pith helmet.

You’re welcome.

Adler and Bono discuss picky eaters

With psychologists pushing to have picky eating added to the guide on mental disorders, Mark Bonokoski and Charles Adler break down the lunacy.

Watch HERE

Fukushima's animals abandoned and left to die

By Kyung Lah, CNN

January 26, 2012  

Inside Fukushima Exclusion Zone, Japan (CNN) -- When you stand in the center of Japan's exclusion zone, there is absolute silence. The exclusion zone is the 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, an area of high radiation contamination.

On March 12, the day after the quake and tsunami hit, 78,000 people were evacuated out of this area, believing they would return within a few days. As such, thousands of people left with their dogs tied up in the backyard, cats in their houses and livestock penned in barns.

Nearly a year later, animal carcasses litter the region.

Cows and pigs starved to death, their bones still in pens. Dogs dropped dead with disease. A cat skull sits on a neighborhood road.

This is perhaps an inevitable outcome to a nuclear emergency, but animal rights activists call it an outrage.

"It's shameful," says Yasunori Hoso with United Kennel Club Japan. "We kept asking the government to rescue these animals from the beginning of the disaster. There must have been a way to rescue the people and the animals at the same time following the nuclear disaster at Fukushima."

Japan's environmental agency tells CNN the government's position has been to rescue as many livestock and animals possible. But it points out that because of the risk posed to people entering the contaminated area, the government has chosen to take a prudent attitude toward animal rescue.

Last December, the government allowed animal rights groups like UKC Japan to enter the exclusion zone and rescue any surviving animals. Hoso entered with his members, carrying cages and food.

On one of those days, Hoso's group approached a house. A six-week-old female puppy lay dead in the living room in a pool of blood. It appeared to have died from disease. From the back of the house, the UKC volunteers heard weak barking. The puppy's two brothers were still alive, hiding in another part of the house. They were traumatized and afraid of the rescuers, having never been around people before. The volunteers soon rounded up their mother.

Those dogs now reside at the UKC Japan shelter near Tokyo. 250 dogs and 100 cats, all from the exclusion zone, live in cramped cages at the shelter. UKC Japan, which survives on donations, says it has tracked down 80% of the owners.

But that hasn't meant the animals can reunite with owners. Shelters and temporary apartment housing have not allowed the owners to live with their pets, Hoso said.

Unfortunately, he added, the owners can't live with their animals because they are homeless themselves.

***WARNING: Some of these scenes may be very disturbing for animal lovers***

 

Milroy Montage: Canadians Behaving Badly

Milroy Montage - canadians behaving badly

Obama’s “Cut and Paste” State Of The Union speech

Michael Brendan Dougherty | Jan. 25, 2012, 10:51 AM | BUSINESS INSIDER

This is a pretty effective web-video put out by the Republican party after last night's State of the Union speech. 

On the one hand, Presidents do seem to carry over themes from year to year and election to election. And you could say that the repeated demands are due to an obstructionist Congress. But on the other hand, it's still a striking visual presentation. We know that speechwriters look at past State Of the Union speeches before they draft a new one. But do they really use the cut and paste function? 

 

Margaret Somerville: Focusing on the fetus changes abortion debate

National Post Jan 24, 2012 By Margaret Somerville

Over 100,000 abortions take place each year in Canada, which, uniquely among Western democracies, has no law restricting access to the procedure. It is legal throughout pregnancy, although the vast majority of physicians will not carry it out after viability of the fetus (the time at which the fetus has a chance of living outside the womb, which the Canadian Medical Association sets at 20 weeks gestation), except for serious medical reasons. Other exceptions to the 20 week limit do, however, occur and are probably not uncommon.

All of which means that if a woman wants an abortion, whatever her reason for deciding that, she may have an abortion. And pro-choice advocates argue that that’s how it should be, as women have the right “to absolute reproductive freedom.” That means abortion is a private matter between a woman and her physician, just another medical decision; it’s nobody else’s business and certainly not society’s or the law’s; and the fetus is “just a bunch of cells,” part of the woman’s body not a separate being, a “parasite” she is entitled to get rid of.

Pro-choice advocates used to oppose sex selection abortions, but some have changed their position because they do not want to endorse the legitimacy of any restriction on abortion. The absence of any restrictions not only makes abortion more accessible, it sends a message and establishes a cultural value that having an abortion is “no big deal,” as one woman expressed it, which is consistent with pro-choice ideology.

So why is there this huge fuss about sex selection abortion? If one can have an abortion for any reason or none, why not because a baby of the opposite sex is strongly preferred?

The reason is, as sex selection abortion most clearly demonstrates, that abortion is not just a private matter. The issue involves shared societal values, cultural norms and clashes of cultural values and shows that the cumulative impact of abortion has societal consequences.

Pro-choice advocates have long proposed that whether women can have unfettered access to abortion should be the litmus test of whether a society has respect for women and their rights. They argue this access is required to protect women’s rights to autonomy and self-determination — and to protect their dignity. Ironically, however, sex selection abortion is overwhelmingly the expression of a lack of respect for women in cultures in which sons are highly valued and daughters are massively devalued.

Sex selection abortion also shifts the analytic, ethical and legal spotlight from the pregnant woman (who is the basis of the pro-choice case), to the unwanted fetus (which is normally ignored in the pro-choice analysis). This is because in sex selection, unlike probably most other abortions, the woman wants a baby — just not a girl. As a result of this focus on the fetus, we see abortion in a different ethical and legal light.

As is true in all ethical decision making, our choice of language in relation to abortion is also important, because it can affect our emotional response, which factors into how we see abortion’s ethical acceptability. Sex selection abortions are often referred to as “female feticide” or “gendercide” — both emotionally evocative terms. But all abortions are feticide. Why don’t we refer to them as such?

And, cumulatively, abortion decisions have an impact on society and are not just a private matter. This is most clear in sex selection abortion. It’s estimated that there are at least 100 million missing girls in India and China as a result of sex selection abortion and female infanticide. In one Indian study in which 7,000 consecutive abortions were followed, 6,997 were of female fetuses. In some areas of China it’s reported there are 160 young men for every 100 girls. This is harmful to both sexes: Women are devalued, treated as objects, abused and harmed. And men cannot find wives.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal editorial suggestion that the way to handle sex selection abortion in Canada is to withhold information on the sex of the baby until 30 weeks gestation is neither feasible nor ethical. A baby’s sex can be determined at eight weeks of gestation with a blood sample from the mother and, in general, people have an ethical and legal right to know the information a physician generates about their condition.

Moreover, testing unborn children for sex is the tip of the prenatal testing iceberg. Tests for many other conditions are already available and more are coming fast. The issues are how may these be used and how should they not be used — and what law governing abortion should be put in place to ensure that the Canadian values we want to enshrine regarding these tests are respected? Much as some politicians, including the Prime Minister, protest against doing so, they must start discussing abortion in Parliament. It is an issue that affects some of the most important values on which we base our Canadian society. And it is not going away.

National Post

Margaret Somerville is the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University.