My google alert has been going off non-stop. I’m now thinking it was a mistake to create a google alert for the word masculinity. Google alerts can be created for a word or phrase and whenever it is published on the internet through news, blogs or websites, google will send you an email with a link to the source. The emails related to masculinity are constant. Apparently, the word masculinity gets published on the internet non-stop because I get over 50 emails a day, each with numerous links, related to the word masculinity.

The reason I am telling you about this is that my experience with google alert this morning was especially frustrating. For some reason, this morning’s alerts pointed me to sources that were misogynistic, hateful, incorrect, frustrating, ridiculous and the list goes on and on.

One of the frustrating, but tame compared to the crap posted on the blogs this morning, was an article in the National Post, a Canadian newspaper. It was an opinion piece entitled The end of the gender wars. by Barbara Kay. I saw the title of the link and wondered What gender war? and Who won?

The opening line of the article gave me a taste of what was to follow. The notion that female victimhood is more tragic than male victimhood has long been widely accepted. But those days are over. As a man involved in anti-violence work, I’m insulted. Apparently, women, because they all agree and think alike, and the entire feminist movement did not deem me important enough to include me in the memo about the vast conspiracy to downplay or ignore male victims of violence.

Barbara’s article goes on to knock the White Ribbon campaign, Women’s Studies, sociology, the current state of families, the feminist movement, victims of abuse, domestic violence shelters, and she even suggests that we stop viewing the Montreal Massacre as a gendered issue and focus on more relevant ways of addressing violence. The Montreal Massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique Institute in 1989 wasn’t a gendered issue???? Mark Lepine walked into the institute and systematically targeted women. He lined them up against the wall and shot them after letting all of the men in the rooms leave. When he ran out of bullets, he killed them with a hunting knife. He killed 14 women. He also left a hateful message about how much he hated women and feminists and how they had ruined his life. He had created a list of other women throughout Canada he would have killed if he had the time.

I don’t have the time or energy to address all of the points in the article or the blogs that I read this morning. Time to put away those feelings and focus on doing actual work that makes a difference in our community instead of making incendiary and incorrect statements about things that I know little, if anything, about. If you want to make a difference, you don’t have to attack the attackers. Offer up an alternative view. If their voices are the only ones that are doing the talking, everyone will assume that they speak for all of us.

John Greenwood wrote about us on the front page of the Financial Post (National Post) today.

John Greenwood wrote about CommunityLend on the front page of the Financial Post (National Post) today.

Winston Churchill famously said that “if you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” With that bit of wisdom in mind it’s reasonable to regard young conservatives and old liberals alike with a healthy degree of suspicion, and few people deserve that treatment more than Adam Daifallah.

Daifallah, who was active in Conservative student politics in Ontario and co-wrote a couple of right wing pamphlets with fellow ideologues Tasha Kheiriddin and Peter White, traded his career in journalism for the safety of the legal profession a few years back after it became clear that his attempt to become Canada’s answer to Tucker Carlson wasn’t going to be a success. But he still writes occasionally for the National Post, and his November 19, 2009 contribution to its pages, “A record of conservative achievement,” shows why his decision to switch careers was probably a wise one.

The trouble begins, appropriately enough, with Daifallah’s first sentence. “When the first history books are written about Stephen Harper’s time in power,” he writes, “they will likely focus on the reunification of the Canadian right, the ending of Liberal hegemony in Ottawa, and his stewardship of the economy following the 2008 financial meltdown.” Daifallah ignores the fact that Paul Wells and Chantal Hebert, two of Canada’s most talented journalists, to say nothing of Harper’s former mentor Tom Flanagan, have already written those first books.

But technical quibbles like this are inconsequential compared to the problem represented by the ideas in Daifallah’s piece. Daifallah dismisses concerns that Harper’s fiscal management has been less than conservative, noting that opposition pressure and the realities of a minority parliament have forced him to pour more stimulus money into the economy than he or Jim Flaherty would have liked. “It appears that on issues on which Harper had a true choice,” Daifallah writes, “he acted conservatively. For instance: tax cuts, an end to the Court Challenges Program, a rejection of economically punitive climate change deals that exempt developing economies, a refusal to heed calls to repatriate Omar Khadr, support for Israel, and the recent vote to end the long-gun registry.”

These, apparently, are all good things in Daifallah’s view. That Harper’s position on climate change has made Canada an international pariah and set it hopelessly behind in the race to capture any meaningful market-share in the emerging multi-billion dollar green economy is, for him, a good thing. That the demise of the Court Challenges Program has eliminated an important voice for those in society who lack access to expensive lawyers, advocacy groups, or, as it happens, the comment page of right wing newspapers, is, evidently, a feather in Harper’s conservative cap. That his government has stubbornly – stupidly, even – ignored the word of the highest court in the country in the Khadr case, to say nothing of the pleas for fair treatment for Khadr from advocacy groups and international rights watchdogs around the world, is, rather remarkably, something in which Harper can apparently take pride.

This isn’t journalism, and it scarcely qualifies as opinion writing, given that the only opinion contained within it is that of the Conservative Party of Canada. Instead, it’s cheerleading, political hackery, and mindless propaganda, all rolled up into one execrable partisan package, the kind of “thinking” one can find on Fox News at just about any time of the day. That it ran in one of Canada’s national newspapers doesn’t say as much about the state of Canadian journalism as one might think, given that it ran in the National Post, an entity that is little more than a useful corpse these days.

Instead, Daifallah’s impotent sloganeering, and the fact that he hasn’t been able to find any meaningful success in the Canadian media landscape pushing it, speaks to the fact that Stephen Harper hasn’t been nearly as successful in influencing Canada’s political culture as Daifallah might like to think. In the United States, Daifallah, an educated, well spoken, not unattractive mouthpiece capable of hitting all the appropriate talking points, would be a star, a darling of the political right. In Canada, he’s a lawyer, and that says more about the orientation of Canada’s political culture than anything in his piece.

The Goracle speaks on Climategate
Peter Foster, Financial Post

True believers in catastrophic man-made climate change have been waiting for Al Gore to lead them through the Valley of Climategate. This week, The Goracle spoke. Appearing on CNN, he claimed that the emails to and from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia were more than 10 years old and amounted to a mere discussion of “arcane points.” What this was really about, he said, was an example of “people who don’t want to do anything about the climate crisis taking things out of context and misrepresenting them.” But then what would you expect Mr. Gore to say about his corecipients of the Nobel Peace Prize? If they go down, he goes down.

The emails, (which in fact date up to late this year), far from being meaningless or out of context, show alteration of scientific data and flagrant attempts to rig the peer review process, which the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has always claimed was the bedrock of its scientific objectivity.

During his CNN interview, Mr. Gore went through his usual parade of extreme weather factoids, technological wonkery and green stimulus fantasies, while spouting blatant untruths. Asked about the relative contribution of humans to atmospheric CO2 emissions, he claimed that they put up “the majority” (in fact, they are estimated to contribute about one-twentieth). Interestingly, though, Mr. Gore didn’t use one of the staples of his climate vaudeville act: that “deniers” are like those who believe that the moon landing was faked. Perhaps even he lacked the gall to bring up conspiracy theories when the evidence of a genuine conspiracy is so obvious.

Continue Reading…….

Technorati Tags: Al Gore speaks on Climategate, global warming, climate change

by Nick Filmore

Canwest president Leonard Asper says the media overlooks the fact that the company’s businesses are highly profitable. (Ken Gigliotti/Canadian Press/Winnipeg Free Press)

The long-anticipated collapse of the Asper family’s Canwest Global media empire — which included 11 daily newspapers, the Global TV network of 11 stations, 13 specialty TV channels and more than 80 websites — in October 2009 was the latest development in the shameful history of corporate-owned media in Canada.

Canwest and other media corporations claim to care about quality journalism, but they’ve deceived Canadians for decades — censoring news to protect their profits, pandering to the interests of the corporate world, and neglecting to invest adequately in their news operations.

The Aspers have been the worst of a bad lot. In a bid to create one of the world’s largest media companies, Leonard Asper unwisely used every penny of credit he could get his hands on to buy other media companies, including some in Australia and Turkey. But then millions of dollars in advertising left the Canwest TV network and newspapers for the Internet and, at the same time, businesses began to reduce their newspaper ads. So, revenue problems, added to the company’s debt difficulties, created a financial crisis for Canwest. In response, Leonard, in a desperate effort to save the family’s empire, knocked the stuffing out of what already had been largely mediocre news operations across the country, rendering the papers and the TV network bone-bare and demoralizing hundreds of employees.

The Canwest cuts are the largest ever carried out by a corporate media company in Canada. While many people lost their jobs or had their pensions reduced, about 20 top executives received bonuses of about $490,000 on average in addition to their already substantial salaries. The Aspers’ debts include $50-million owed to us — the Canadian taxpayers — as well as payments due to the Canada Media Fund, which was established by the federal government as way to help small, money-losing TV stations.

Poor quality papers and low salaries

Over the years, other “bad boys” have exploited their Canadian media properties instead of investing adequately in their news operations. I know this personally, having spent the first four years of my career writing for three of the worst newspaper companies in the country: the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the Thomson-owned Charlottetown Guardian, and K.C. Irving’s Telegraph-Journal in Saint John, N.B

I recall the Telegraph-Journal as being a dreadful place to work in the late 1960s. Despite the fact that K.C. was a billionaire and that the company made millions from its near-media monopoly in the province, everyone in the Saint John newsroom was poorly paid. I suspected one editor didn’t make enough to look after his family of five. Most journalists lived in fear of the newspaper’s publisher, Ralph Costello. Every evening, when Costello trudged his way through the newsroom, making his ritual stop to have a sip at the water cooler, the place went totally silent. The paper, void of personality, was often used to either promote or protect the Irving Empire. One night as we were getting ready to publish a photo of a police checkpoint at the New Brunswick-Quebec border, we had to blackout the image of an Irving Oil sign that happened to appear in an upper corner of the photo.

For decades powerful media corporations like the Irvings have decided what news Canadians should read, hear, and see. By reading just about any Canadian daily newspaper it’s not hard to see how the values of corporate-owned media are quite different from the values and interests of the majority of Canadians. Corporate media tend to favor right-wing political ideas, pay a lot of attention to the views of the powerful and rich, but not make a priority of dealing with issues such as income inequality among Canadians or poverty reduction. (How corporate-owned media filters the news to suit their own interests will be dealt with in Part 2 of this series of articles.)

An example of corporate-media priorities: During November, a number of newspapers gave page after page over to business experts chattering about the various burps of the financial markets, while a landmark report that one in 10 Canadian children live in poverty was covered in one story in most papers, with no follow up. When media gives little attention to an issue such as child poverty, they’re abandoning one of their vital roles — helping protect the rights of those in society who are powerless to protect themselves.

Corporate-owned media losing its hold on the public

But times in the media world are changing, and the stranglehold corporate media has had on the news is changing too! Corporate-owned media, particularly the newspaper sector, is struggling financially and is losing readers. At the same time, the Internet is becoming the preferred source of news for a growing number of people. Traditional media — and by this I mean corporate-owned newspapers, TV and radio — are losing millions of dollars in advertising because Internet sites such as craigslist provide free classifieds. And when a newspaper sets up its own website, an ad that sold for $1,000 in its paper brings in only about $100 on the Internet. Then there are the millions of dollars traditional media has lost because of the poor economy.

So far the country has had only one daily newspaper close, the Halifax Daily News, because of economic problems. On the TV side, CTVglobemedia closed its station in Brandon, and Canwest Global closed down operations in Red Deer.

One way that Canwest and Torstar, the corporate owner of The Toronto Star, are going to save money is a little unsavory: They’re firing highly skilled production workers and editors and contracting out their jobs to companies that will pay other workers much lower wages. Almost certainly other papers will do the same thing.

The entire television sector is in flux with the television companies and cable firms fighting over whether cable should pay to carry television signals, and the CRTC seemingly afraid to make a decision for fear it will be overruled by the government. With more specialty channels coming into the mix all the time, and the prospect of a lot more people watching programming directly via the Internet, the three main networks that the public relies on for most of its TV news — CTV, Global and the CBC — are likely to lose viewers, have financial difficulties, and face the prospect of further cuts to their news budgets.

Budget cuts result in poorer quality of news

Because of severe budget cutbacks, most newsrooms across the country are operating with far fewer resources than in the past, and its showing.

A scan of several daily papers reveals a serious shortage of in-dept, thoughtful articles dealing with important issues. There’s weak reporting by inexperienced journalists, gaps in coverage, and a failure to follow up on big stories. At the same time, considerable space is given over to dubious material: page after page is devoted to crime of all sorts, entertainment, fawning profiles of prominent people, U.S. stories written as though we were Americans, and too many “man bites dog” stories. Many weekly newspapers — once a source of interesting, colorful local information — have been snapped up by media corporations, and their unique character has been destroyed.

The quality of much of the country’s TV and radio news reporting has also fallen off. In particular, both CTV and Global national and local TV news programs are loaded with stories picked up from the U.S. networks that are basically “filler” and of little interest to most Canadians. Serious journalism is ignored in favor of “infotainment.” At the CBC, corporation executives turned Newsworld into a hyped, superficial, all-news channel, despite the fact that Canadians already have access to four similar channels. Graham Spry, the father of the CBC, has probably rolled over in his grave more than once because of the deterioration of the once-proud news service.

Will new owners invest adequately in Canwest papers?

Meanwhile, the fate of 10 former Canwest daily papers — which could be considered the backbone of daily journalism across much of the country — is in the hands of creditors who are looking for buyers. Historically, the papers have been vital to the development and well-being of their communities. Included are the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, the Montreal Gazette, The Ottawa Citizen, the Regina Leader-Post, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, the Vancouver Province, The Vancouver Sun, the Victoria Times Colonist and The Windsor Star.

The Globe and Mail reported in October that National Post president Paul Godfrey, formerly head of the Sun chain of papers, had secured the support of enough investors to make a bid for several or all of the 10 papers. Torstar, publisher of The Toronto Star, may bid for some of the Ontario papers, so there could be some rival bidding. No matter who acquires the papers, the most important question is whether the diminished economic realities will allow the new owners to restore the papers’ editorial departments to their previous levels of operation.

Circulation drops over the decades

Of all our traditional media, we should be most concerned about the future of daily newspapers because they’re the source of most of our news, even the news that’s available from dozens of Internet sites. Unfortunately, the decline of daily newspapers in Canada is mirrored in their declining circulation. This falling off of sales didn’t coincide with the growth of Internet use — as a matter of fact, it began almost 60 years ago. Research carried out by Kenneth Goldstein of Communications Management Inc. of Winnipeg shows that during the 1950s the number of newspaper subscriptions exceeded the number of Canadian households. Last year, the equivalent of only 35 per cent of households had paid subscriptions.

Roger Parkinson, a former publisher of The Globe and Mail, said in an e-mail exchange that daily papers are in financial trouble because the traditional for-profit media model is broken. He said the costs of newsprint, printing and paper distribution are too expensive in light of the reduced revenue expectations. The papers with the best chance of surviving, Parkinson said, are “very high quality national papers with a thin, high demographic, highly educated audience who want and need specialized, high quality news and analysis, like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail.”

• Author’s Note: This is the first of a five-part series that will address the need to develop independent media — print, broadcast and Internet-based — in Canada. This first article explores the reasons why traditional media or corporate media — that is, corporate-owned newspapers, TV, and radio — no longer provide reliable news and information to the Canadian public. The next article, to be circulated the week of December 14, will look at how for-profit corporate media have filtered and censored the news for decades. The series will continue in January with articles on why Canada needs news organizations that are independent of the influences of advertising and corporate values, and how independent projects can be started and funded.
• Is your community poorly served by the traditional media? Would you like to become involved in a group to see if an independent media project could be launched? It is hoped that this series of articles will encourage public-minded groups to set up new media projects in their city, town, or region. Interested groups and individuals are invited to send us their comments on the series along with any ideas on how to establish independent media projects. Send your comments to fillmore0274@rogers.com

internet site reference:  LINK

Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers

Published July 2009 by McSweeneys

ISBN: 978-1934781630

The Recommend:

The many tragedies and injustices springing from Hurricane Katrina are well-known, but that doesn’t take anything away from Dave Eggers’ heartbreaking story of a man destroyed by natural disaster and his government’s inhumanity.

*

—-

*

The Lost City of Z, by David Grann

Published February 2009 by Doubleday

ISBN: 978-0385513531

Indiana Jones has nothing on real-life British explorer Percy Fawcett.

Filled with great anecdotes of bushwacking through the sweltering, bug-filled Amazon, the Lost City of Z is escapist non-fiction at its absolute best.

*

About Ron Nurwisah

*

Ron Nurwisah is a co-editor of the Afterword, the National Post’s books blog.

He also blogs at www.boyreporter.ca

A very interesting article in today’s National Post on music and the connection with memory.  Enjoy!

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2372046.

History of climate gets ‘erased’ online

History of climate gets ‘erased’ online
More than 5,000 entries tailored to hype global-warming agenda
Posted: December 21, 2009
8:32 pm Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

“Solomon revealed that Connolley, one man in the nine-member team who is a U.K. scientist, a software engineer and Green Party activist, took control of Wikipedia’s entries to see that any trace of the true climate history would be erased.”

A new report reveals a British scientist and Wikipedia administrator rewrote climate history, editing more than 5,000 unique articles in the online encyclopedia to cover traces of a medieval warming period – something Climategate scientists saw as a major roadblock in the effort to spread the global warming message.

Recently hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit expose a plot to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period, a 400-year era that began around A.D. 1000, the Financial Post’s Lawrence Solomon reports.

The warming period is said to have improved agriculture and increased life spans, but scientists at the center of the Climategate e-mail scandal believed the era undermined their goal of spreading concern about global warming as it pertains to today’s climate.

Solomon noted the warming period presented a dilemma long before the Climategate e-mail scandal.

A 1995 e-mail predating the recent Climate Research Unit scandal was sent to geophysicist David Deming. A major climate-change researcher told Deming, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”

Some scientists later expressed concern about erasing the period.

Get “Global Warming or Global Governance? What the media refuse to tell you about so-called climate change” at the WND Superstore.

One chief practitioner identified as Keith Briffa, said in a Sept. 22, 1999, e-mail, “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. … I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.”

Briffa and other scientists, with the help of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published a well-known symbol of their movement: the hockey stick chart, an illustration reproduced in textbooks, media reports and the pages of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, report.

Hockey-stick chart (omitting Medieval Warm Period) as it appeared in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001 report

However, the graph showed stable temperatures over the last 1,000 years and omitted any indication of the warming period.

“But the U.N.’s official verdict that the Medieval Warm Period had not existed did not erase the countless schoolbooks, encyclopedias, and other scholarly sources that claimed it had,” Solomon wrote. “Rewriting those would take decades, time that the band members didn’t have if they were to save the globe from warming.”

Instead, the group created a website called RealClimate.org. One e-mail addressed criticism of the hockey stick graph and any suggestions that today’s temperatures were not the hottest on record.

“The idea is that we working climate scientists should have a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly ‘bombshell’ papers that are doing the rounds” in aid of “combating dis-information,” a Dec. 10, 2004, e-mail to the Climate Research Unit from Gavin Schmidt explained.

Excerpt from Gavin Schmidt’s Dec. 10, 2004, e-mail

The RealClimate.org team consisted of Schmidt, Mike Mann, Eric Steig, William Connolley, Stefan Rahmstorf, Ray Bradley, Amy Clement, Rasmus Benestad and Caspar Ammann.

Solomon revealed that Connolley, one man in the nine-member team who is a U.K. scientist, a software engineer and Green Party activist, took control of Wikipedia’s entries to see that any trace of the true climate history would be erased.
Continue Reading

Technorati Tags: Wikipedia, History of climate gets ‘erased’ online, climategate, climate change, global warming

About a month ago, a lady called me on my cell phone and asked me lots of question about the PIXELATED MAO.

The main focus she wanna get from me is “Will you consider making Baby Tees ?” , i said no, coz its not really our market “yet”…

and she really want me to do one for the kids….and she told me she is doing a press for the holiday special feature for the NATIONAL POST CANADA. She wanna do a list of 10 best selected items for the holiday which is under $20.00.

and I did made it happen at the end.

Ten gifts under $20

“Art is always a delicate gift. My sister would set fire to a Damien Hirst. On a t-shirt, however, Robert Rauschenberg’s your uncle! Tony Wong of Super-bored on 4th Avenue in Vancouver turns out this updated version of the eternal portrait of the father of Chinese communism. It makes a smashing cotton top for kidlets and the vinyl image almost serves as its own bib! Almost. Pixi-Mao also comes in adult sizes.

z $20 kid’s sizes, 1701 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver, (604) 873-2293, “

This week’s Popcorn Panel was about Tom Ford’s beautiful debut A Single Man, so naturally my chosen panelists had to be very well-dressed. Fortunately, two of the best-dressed people I know, National Post style columnist Nathalie Atkinson and playwright (and good friend) Robert Watson, graced the Popcorn Panel with their well-turned-out presence. Unfortunately, because it’s print, no one can tell what you’re wearing. So just go read the panel and imagine us as though we’ve been ripped from the pages of Vogue.

In other news, I’ve been sick all week, in the deathgrip of some terrible flu. It was thanks to the magic of Buckley’s Complete that I was able to file this panel on time, since before I took it I could barely lift my head from the pillow. Being bedridden is a good excuse to finally watch the first season of Veronica Mars, though, which makes for excellent quarantine viewing: lots of angst and melodrama. Plus, last spring I interviewed Veronica’s dad. He was a peach.

Peter Scarcella is reputed to be a long-time Mafia figure, but from prison has tried to force the Correctional Service of Canada to stop calling him a boss of a “Traditional Organized Crime Group

Peter Scarcella, imprisoned in a 2004 gangland plot that was notoriously bungled when gunmen paralyzed an innocent bystander after firing into a crowded Toronto restaurant,

Reposted from the National Post; byline credit to Gary Clement.

Who knew? Oh right… that hysterical nincompoop.

Welcome National Post readers! Come back again soon and I’ll try to find some new way of offending your delicate sensibilities.

What has our Kingdom come to when a man and members of his family are tied up by knife-wielding masked intruders and threatened with death, some of the victims escape, get help, chase the perpetrators and beat up badly one of them, only to be jailed for excessive use of force…?!?!?

This is effectively what has happened to Munir Hussain and his brother Toker who were jailed this week for 30 months and 39 months respectively. Walid Salem, the intruder they caught, suffered such injuries (including, it is claimed, a permanent brain injury) in what  was clearly a sustained attack by the Hussains that he was considered unfit to be tried on a charge of unlawful imprisonment and was merely put on a supervision order. In sentencing the Hussain brothers, Judge John Reddihough described the assault on Salem by the Hussain brothers as “a dreadful, violent attack”.

It undoubtedly was. Among the implements the Hussains and 2 other neighbours used to beat Salem were a cricket bat and a metal pole, (Reportedly the cricket bat was used to strike Salem with such force that it broke in 3!)

“This case is a tragedy for you and your families,” the judge told Munir Hussain. “Sadly, I have no doubt that my public duty requires me to impose immediate prison sentences of some length upon you. This is in order to reflect the serious consequences of your violent acts and intent and to make it absolutely clear that, whatever the circumstances, persons cannot take the law into their own hands, or carry out revenge attacks upon a person who has offended them.”

If the judge feels required by the law to pass such sentences, then the law is the proverbial ass!

Reddihough may know his law books but I suspect he’s not that familiar with human psychology.

The psychological scenario
Munir Hussain and his family returned from worship at their mosque during Ramadan. Devout Muslims, they will have been part-fasting for several days so the chemical balances – blood sugars, hormones, neurotransmitters, etc, will have been at different levels than is their norm – thus making it more likely that the Hussains would respond to trauma in an abnormal or exaggerated way.

Whether a court of law should be able to take into account the psycho-physiological effects of religious observance is a moot point. But undoubtedly the abrupt withdrawal of food over a short period of time will have affected the Hussains’ state of mind.

In their house, the Hussains found 3 masked intruders waiting for them. They were tied up, with their hands behind their backs, and forced to crawl from room to room. They were threatened with death. Shaheen Begum, Mr Husssain’s wife, told the court she feared the intruders had killed her youngest son. She said: “They were hitting my husband. When I asked them to stop or looked up they started hitting him again. They told us to lie face down and not speak, or they would kill us. It was very terrifying.”

It is rare for people in such terrifying circumstances to think coolly and rationally as Judge John Reddihough and his ‘law’ seem to expect. In most people the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, will become highly aroused, causing the hypothalamus to trigger the mechanisms which flood the body with the ‘fight or flight’ hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline. Munir Hussain was geared to action and reaction, not logical thought. Psychiatrist Dr Philip Joseph told the court Munir was normally a calm man who kept himself under control; but, on this occasion, in what defending QC Michael Wolkind called “the extreme moment of stress”, his body took the ‘fight rather than flight’ option.

This intense physiological arousal led in part to Munir Hussain freeing himself and, with the help of his brother, turning the tables on the intruders. That they then gave chase to intruder Walid Salem and assaulted him viciously is hardly surprising. It’s why soliders will carry on slaughtering the enemy when the enemy are helpless or desperately trying to surrender. They are far too caught up in the moment – amygdalas aroused – to think rationally. Many commentators – eg: Peter Foote & David Wilson (1970) have commentated on this ‘beserker rage’, originally lionised in Viking lore but still featuring in frequent accounts of battle, including those of recent US Congressional Medal of Honour winners.

Of course, what the Hussain brothers did in the end to Salem cannot be condoned. But it should be understood.

There is another factor in this tragedy; and that is the role of the RED vMEME. Doubtless, RED was behind much of the no-consequences actions of Salem and his confederates. However, there is also strong evidence this vMEME contributed to a strong and possibly overwhelming psychological impetus on Munir Hussain’s emotions and actions. According to The Times (15/12/09), Munir is reported to have felt that he was letting down his wife and children in not being able to defend them from the criminal attack of Salem and his accomplices. RED will not take such shame lying down; rather it will seek to put right the wrong of his shame in not being able to protect his family. Not only does the dominance of the RED vMEME in Munir’s selfplex at that moment in time need to  be recognised but so do the cultural memes which will have been influencing him. In Munir’s Asian/Islamic tradition – just as it was not that long ago in the European/Christian traditions – men are supposed to look after and protect their women and children. By not protecting them or being unable to protect them, they lose both self-respect and status in their community.

Walid Salem, also a Muslim and presumably familiar with the effects of Ramadan, chose to invade Munir Hussain’s house, tie up Munir and his family and subject them to death threats and other abuses. It can be argued that actions of Salem and his confederates precipitated the extreme arousal of Munir Hussain’s amygdala and the stimulation of his RED vMEME. As he was in a period of religious observance, it would be reasonable to expect Munir Hussain’s selfplex to be dominated by the decidedly more deliberate BLUE vMEME. Due to the actions of Salem and his cronies, different vMEMES were at play.

Thus, while Munir Hussain’s assault on Salem cannot be condoned, it is understandable and to some degree predictable. Thus, it can be argued Walid Salem chose knowingly to put himself in harm’s way.

A different story
Many commentators are comparing the case to that of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who, in 1999, shot dead a teenage hoodlum who had been breaking into his property and terrorising him repeatedly.

This comparison would seem to be not entirely fair. Martin’s ‘manslaughter’ of his tormentor, lying in wait with a pump action shotgun, was clearly premeditated whereas Munir Hussain’s assault on Walid Salem could be considered ‘hot pursuit’. According to early reporting of the trial in This is London (25/08/09), Salem was punched repeatedly in the face while one of his assailants demanded “Who sent you?”

It would seem that the attack on Munir and his family was not in any way random but was directed at them in a very personal way. Prosecuting QC John Prine told the court: “Whatever the motivation of the attack, it was something of a personal kind. It didn’t seem to have been done out of a desire to steal anything, rather that it was directed at the people who lived there.”

How additionally terrifying must that have been, knowing that it was you and your family specifically under attack and not knowing who was behind it! (It would appear Munir Hussain has made a powerful enemy somewhere but no evidence has come to light of him being involved in any shady dealings – business or personal. Indeed, he is regarded as a proverbial pillar of the local community and has been offered the personal support of Chief Inspector Colin Seaton of the Thames Valley Police.)

Returning to Tony Martin, it’s worth noting that his original conviction for murder was reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of suffering from Paranoid Personality Disorder – hardly surprising given the persistent abuse he had suffered! As Battered Wives Syndrome is a permissible defence for women who cold-bloodedly kill their husbands perhaps years after abusive crimes against their person, Martin’s appeal on the grounds of being in an abnormal mental state could hardly be refused.

But how can Munir Hussain’s case be compared when his assault was immediate upon a ‘very terrifying’ ordeal whereas Martin’s was cold-blooded after months of abuse? While a psychiatrist would need to confirm this, I would hazard that Munir Hussain’s assault on Salem was driven by the RED vMEME’s desire to eradicate his shame while in a state of high physiological arousal due to the life-threatening ordeal he and his family had been subjected to and the fear that they were being targeted deliberately and personally to be harmed.

The failure of the criminal justice system
Judge John Reddihough’s words appear rather mealy-mouthed when he says: “…if persons were permitted to … inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting justice take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are the hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.”

…er, excuse me: Salem gets 2 years of supervision in the community while Munir is sentenced to serve 30 months behind bars…?!?!? 

It’s fine to outlaw taking the law into your own hands if the police could be guaranteed to arrive within less than 5 minutes of an alarm being raised (thus eradicating the need for ‘hot pursuit’ by the victims) – they can’t! – and if the criminal justice system were seen to punish the criminals and compensate the victims. Unfortunately too many victims of crime are aware of police indifference to all but the most serious of crimes while the criminal justice system is in a state of near-continual reform because the last set of reforms didn’t work either!

What would today’s criminal justice system have to say if Salem and his accomplices had gone ahead with their threats and murdered Munir Hussain and his family? I doubt their shades would have been much impressed with 20 years less 10 for good behaviour. (That’s assuming, of course, that the police could have caught the murderers…!)

The kind of inverse logic of Reddihough’s court is one of the problems with cultural dominance by the GREEN vMEME which, in its drive for egalitarianism, would put the rights of the criminals on a par with the rights of the victims.

Not only is this anathema to PURPLE’s need for safety in the community and BLUE’s desire for simple black & white justice – Salem chose to commit a crime, Salem should be punished – but it goes against the 2nd Tier ‘big picture’ of what is beneficial to society.

Salem is a habitual crook, with 50 previous convictions against him, currently awaiting trial on a charge of credit card fraud. According to Razi Shah, one of Munir’s lawyers, this last crime was committed after Salem had received such supposedly debilitating injuries –  “On the one hand he was claiming that he was suffering from memory loss and brain damage and is not fit to stand trial, and on the other hand he was out committing more criminal offences — and obviously complex ones such as credit card fraud.” (Interview with National Post, 15/12/09.)

Munir Hussain is a former chairman of the Wycombe Race Equality Council; his company employs 9 other people in worthwhile esteem-enhancing occupations and generates around £2.4M taxable revenue. Now, because of Reddihough’s decision, 9 (presumably-)respectable citizens lose their jobs and may be reduced to claiming benefit while the Treasury loses the taxes to be collected from £2.4M…?!?!?

Just what kind of insane society are we living in where the just are convicted on a technicality of law and the lawbreakers get off with unmanageable supervision orders..? (How many probation officers and social workers do we have spare to follow up on this kind of nonsense…? Clearly not enough since Salem went on to commit further crime!)

Of course, Munir Hussain can’t be allowed to walk free with his head held high. But the degree of his crime should be assessed in proportion to the provocation to which he was subjected, the degree of fear he was experiencing and the consequent state of mind he was in.

As for Reddihough’s awarding of criminal convictions, let’s just hope that Salem and the legal leeches who support him don’t decide to bankrupt the Hussain brothers with claims for compensation!

Insanity mustn’t rule!
For the benefit of law-abiding citizens, the law of self-defence needs broadening. If someone chooses to put themselves in harm’s way by breaking into your house and threatening you with death, then they clearly are the stimulus for the consequences that follow.

Of course, the Hussain brothers went too far; but it was Salem’s choice to put himself in harm’s way. Of course, the Hussain brothers need to be told they did wrong; but, if Munir’s amygdala hadn’t got so aroused that he fought his way free and, with his brother’s help, turned the tables on the intruders, he and his family might now be dead.

It’s absurd for people to be refrained in defending themselves in clear and obvious life-threatening situations because they’re worried they’ll go too far. They need that amygdallic panic energy to get themselves out of the situation…and, if the criminals come off badly out of that situation, well, the criminals shouldn’t have created the situation in the first place!

Of course, householders can’t be given a charter to do whatever they like to intruders – otherwise we really would end up with the occasional burglar being maimed, tortured and/or murdered in a quite callous and cold-blooded way.

But it’s not unreasonable to allow someone to defend their family and their home…and, if your amgydala is so aroused, you go too far…. Well, the French have long recognised the concept of ‘crime passionnel’ and many American courts have waived judgment on the grounds of ‘temporary insanity’.

That, to me, would be a fair judgment on the Hussain brothers: they were in a temporarily insane state due to extreme, life-threatening provocation, terrifying abuse and fear of an unknown enemy. And, as their victim deliberately caused that provocation and was party to that abuse, he should have no recourse in either criminal or civil law.

It’s in the public interest that the Hussain brothers should have a conviction for criminal assault. It sends out a clear message: push these guys way, way too far and you might get a beserker response. (Probably some 80% of the male population would respond similarly and, if their immediate family was threatened, around 50% of females.) Who but the stupid and the criminal would want to push them that far, anyway? Treat them with respect and dignity in a fair and equitable way and you will most likely find them fine citizens and good people to do business with.

What’s not in the public interest is to send to prison a wealth-generating pillar of local society for gross but single overreaction to extreme provocation and ongoing fear – that sentence destroying his business and the livelihoods of his workers. What’s not in the public interest is to set free a habitual criminal who then goes on to commit other crimes. What’s not in the public interest is to send a message to householders throughout our Kingdom that they must pause and think coolly when confronted with extreme danger to themselves and their families.

It’s to be hoped that the court of appeal has a bigger picture view of the law that Judge John Reddihough who appears to have been dominated by his BLUE vMEME’s absolutist views on rigid application of the law. The Hussain brothers should have their sentences suspended on condition of good behaviour. As for Walid Salem, perhaps the court will subject his claims to brain injury to a much more rigid scrutiny when considering his prosecution for credit card fraud. The police should also seek medical authority to haul Salem in and carry out a proper investigation into the attack on Munir Hussain’s home.

More scary fun from the True Believers. Global Warming. Population Control and Orwell.

Two weeks before that Holiday that can not be named because it’s insensitive and politically incorrect.

“It’s a principle. It’s like gravity. it exists.”, “it’s a principle in physics”.-The Lord of Doom Al Gore on Global Warming.

Well, we have the new McCarthyism: Are you now or have you ever been a Global Warming/Climate Change Denier?

WSJ: The Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, “has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science” in the wake of a whistle-blower’s revelation of widespread misconduct by climate scientists…

London’s Times reports: John Hirst, the Met Office chief executive, and Julia Slingo, its chief scientist, wrote to 70 colleagues on Sunday asking them to sign “to defend our profession against this unprecedented attack to discredit us and the science of climate change”. They asked them to forward the petition to colleagues to generate support “for a simple statement that we . . . have the utmost confidence in the science base that underpins the evidence for global warming”.

More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the “professional integrity” of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. . . .

WSJ: The problem with the petition as a form is also a problem with the Met Office petition’s substance. The purpose of the petition is to shore up scientists’ authority by vouching for their integrity. But signing a loyalty oath under pressure from the government is itself a corrupt act. Anyone who signs this petition thereby raises doubts about his own integrity. And once again, the question arises: Why should any layman regard global warmism as credible when the “consensus” rests on political machinations, statistical tricks and efforts to suppress alternative hypotheses?

Would anyone who would sign this silly thing be credible?

Science by petition.

Can we pass around a petition to declare the earth flat?

One scientist told The Times he felt under pressure to sign. “The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming,” he said.

The concept of scientists–or journalists, or artists–signing a petition is ludicrous. The idea is that they are lending their authority to whatever cause the petition represents–but in fact they are undermining that authority, which is based on the presumption that they think for themselves.

So on the back of this, more fun news from the Copenhagen Circus:

IBD:  Calls for forced population control as a means to conquer global warming are in the news this week. We knew the Copenhagen climate conference would keep drawing out the cranks.

‘Humans are overpopulating the world,” Diane Francis, a staff writer for Canada’s National Post, said in Tuesday’s edition.

“A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.”

Zhao Baige, a member of the China delegation at Copenhagen, holds a similar view, according to a report from China Daily.

“Dealing with climate change is not simply an issue of CO2 emission reduction but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture,” Zhao, vice minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China, said from the conference.

Remember, CO2 is a toxin harmful to human life according to the EPA and it must be controlled!

So, one way to do that is to control how many people are around.

And amongst the tools in this shed is control of your birth, or prohibited lack of one, that is.

And if the government is control of Health Care, well…

“Death Panels” anyone?

Forced Sterlization. Force Abortions (Health Care anyone?).

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Impossible, you say? That must be an exaggeration or a hoax. No one in their right mind would say such things.

The EPA’s “command and control” threats. A very Maoist Science Czar, and Climategate showing scientist manipulating data for their own agenda.

To control you. To control everyone and everything you do. From the moment of birth to the moment of death.

Think I’m a little to conspiratorial:

Alternet: Half-baked Homeland Security is spending millions to develop sensors capable of detecting a
person’s level of ‘malintent’ as a counterterrorism tool.

Malintent, being detecting whether you’re in a bad mood or angry so you might be a terrorist!

Or at the very least someone who is not in tune with Big Brother.

This jewel of an idea was dream up by the Peter Principle’s star pupil, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napalitano.

This past February, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded a one-year, $2.6  million grant to the Cambridge, MA.-based Charles Stark Draper Laboratory to develop computerized sensors capable of detecting a person’s level of “malintent” — or intention to  do harm. It’s only the most recent of numerous contracts awarded to Draper and assorted  research outfits by the U.S. government over the past few years under the auspices of a
project called “Future Attribute Screening Technologies,” or FAST. It’s the next wave of  behavior surveillance from DHS and taxpayers have paid some $20 million on it so far.

It’s part of a broader “initiative to develop innovative, non-invasive technologies to screen people at security checkpoints,” according to DHS.

But how long before it comes to TV or a Mall or street or anything where a sensor can be placed?

So when you’re angry because you’re late for your flight, be zen or else you could be a terrorist and be even later.

So smile, be happy. OR ELSE!

Orwell’s 1984 excerpt:  The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Back to Population Control: Those who support population control are not enlightened thinkers, though they hold themselves to be. Quite often, “progressive” population control proponents have been racists who would use eugenics to ensure that “deficient” humans don’t dilute the gene pool.

Hitler, Mao,  Stalin, etc. Anyone?

Or maybe People who “contribute to social deterioration” as Science Czar John Holdren said in his co-authored book.

And if you’re angry, and you breathe too much CO2, and drive too big a car, and use too much electricity, or cost too much for Health Care, or have too many children…well, we’ll just have do something about you….

You say, I’m going too far?

I say, why?

If you’re a true believer in the Religion of Liberalism, and/or Global Warming, why wouldn’t you want to control everyone and everything for their own good and won’t it make you feel so much better that you are doing something to save the planet!

The ends justify the means!

I say, I probably can’t even conceive the heights of totalitarianism that the true believers could come up with.

The Chinese delegate also cited the UN’s own 2009 State of World Population report, which suggests that if the global population remains at 8 billion by the year 2050 instead of increasing to just over 9 billion, as projected, “it might result in 1 billion to 2 billion fewer tons of carbon emissions”.

Of course, the fact that somewhere in the region of twenty-five million men in China are unable to find brides because so many girls are murdered shortly after birth was somewhat glossed over by the Chinese delegate:

“I’m not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right, but I’m sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited,” she said.

And China has done it largely by education. And who’s largely in charge of the US educational system, Liberals. True Believers.

Remember this:

A suggested lesson plan that calls on students to write letters to themselves about what they can do to help President Obama following his address to students nationwide is troubling and establishes the president as a “superintendent in chief,” education experts told FOXNews.com.

Video of the students at the Burlington, N.J., school shows them singing songs seemingly overflowing with campaign slogans and praise for “Barack Hussein Obama,” repeatedly chanting the president’s name and celebrating his accomplishments, including his “great plans” to “make this country’s economy No. 1 again.”

One song that the children were taught quotes directly from the spiritual “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” though Jesus’ name is replaced with Obama’s: “He said red, yellow, black or white/All are equal in his sight. Barack Hussein Obama.”‘

Ms. Carney-Nunes , award-winning Children’s author,invited to the school to teach the children the song and about her book, “I am Barack Obama?” and we got the the “mmmmm…Barack Hussein Obama…” chant.

And so, when those of us who study history see videos like the one below, it chills us to the bone. It is decidedly reminiscent of the indoctrination techniques that took place in 1930s Germany.

Nervous yet?

“China has had the most successful family planning policy in the history of mankind in terms of quantity and with that, China has done mankind a favour,” United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative Sven Burmester said last week. —10/11/99 Agence France-Presse.

Under the Reagan Administration legislation sponsored by then-Rep. Jack Kemp (NY) and then-Sen. Bob Kasten (WI) ensured funding to the UNPFA was cut off for these very reasons. Yet is was no surprise when In 1993, the Clinton Administration dramatically revised the official interpretation of the “Kemp-Kasten amendment” in order to facilitate U.S. funding of UNFPA, thus making available $14.5 million.

The connection is an appealing one to advocates of the anthropological global warming theory because, if you believe humans are to blame for dangerous alterations in the climate, eventually the conclusion of less humans = less warming is reached.

Nervous yet?

But within them is a deep-seated loathing for their own kind because they see man as just another of Earth’s many animal species. Human life, for these people, is cheap.

Animals must be controlled. They must be trained to obey their Masters.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I’m telling you why
Big Brother is coming to town
He’s making a list
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out Who’s naughty and nice
Big Brother is coming to town
He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
O! You better watch out!
You better not cry
Better not pout
I’m telling you why
Big Brother is coming to town
Big Brother is coming to town

By Stephen Rhodes

Have you ever been in a conversation at a cocktail party and suddenly some obscure fact jumps into your head and you just blurt it out? Over a lifetime we collect information and store it in the inner recesses of our brain for instant (that fades with time) recall when required.

This weekend the National Post wrote a piece Are we expecting too much from our children at school? It seems that Ontario’s education ministry is working on a  massive overhaul of its curriculum and is debating whether the current curriculum’s colossal 3,500 “expectations” — the stuff we remember at cocktail parties 20 years later –has a place in the education system.

Some educators argue whether the sheer number of basic facts that kids are expected to learn has any application in real life, while others say it is essential to lay out expectations clearly in order to meet public demands about educational accountability. Politics, of course.

Some subjects contain upwards of 300 learning expectations in a year.

So, we cram out kids’  heads full of facts that they can get in a Google search in about 20 seconds. Technology has changed the landscape and it provides us with a tremendous opportunity to shape education to create unique thinkers.

Remember the hue and cry over introducing the calculator?

Karen Grose, a board superintendent, said that while a strong foundation of literacy and mathematics is critical to students’ success, she said the current curriculum focuses too much on filling students’ minds with disparate facts instead of teaching them to think critically.

Amanda Hardy, a Grade 8 math and drama teacher at Earnscliffe Senior Public School in Brampton says teachers are expected to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist.

“We don’t know what facts they will need for those jobs. So we’re teaching kids how to process information and recognize the value,” she said. “The person who has a great memory and all kinds of facts stored in their brain is never going to be able to compete with the person who has access to information and knows how to use it.”

Hear, hear.

It would be difficult to counter the contention that reducing what you use and reusing what you can is better for the environment than consuming and dumping more.

But the environmental and economic benefits of the third R in the environmental mantra – reduce, reuse, recycle are more questionable.

Marion Shore of the Waitaki Resource Recovery Centre reckons recycling is like aspirin for the headache of over consumption.

In talking Sense on recycling Offsetting Behaviour questions the cost of recycling.

He also quotes Kevin Libin in the National Post who finds that claims on the benefits of recycling often fail on both economic and environmental grounds.

San Francisco’s Department of Waste recently calculated it paid $4,000 a tonne to recycle plastic bags. Its resale price for the recycled product? $32. . .  “Besides the financial, the economic cost, you’ve got the environmental cost” of recycling unwanted material. “The trucks running out there, burning fuel … you have to use energy, you’ve got CO2 emissions.”

That’s why curbside recycling requires, wherever it’s implemented, millions of tax dollars to stay afloat: the inputs required are greater than the savings.. . . 

Often the effects of aggressive residential recycling programs harm environmental goals. Citywide blue box programs typically mean a whole new fleet of trucks: Calgary now has 64 more diesel-burning rigs retracing the same tracks its garbage trucks did just a few days earlier, roughly doubling carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants.

Libin gives several more examples of how the benefits of recycling don’t stack up and quotes a study which found that incinerating rubbish with energy recovery was often a better option than recycling.

The article is worth reading in full and confirms my contention that there are good reasons to reduce and reuse but there are serious questions about the benefits of recycling.

Kevin Libin, journalist at National Post, Canada’s national newspaper, gets right to the point. “…environmental groups are arguably the biggest political obstacles to (aquaculture) expansion.”

In his December 7, 2009 piece entitled “From sci-fi tech, food for the masses”, Mr. Libin makes the case for intensive food production as the best way for this planet to provide food for a projected 9 billion inhabitants.  

His point is simple; it’s better for the planet to intensify terrestrial food production and use state-of-the-art technology, thus leaving poor quality farm land as forest, mountains and rolling hills.

Will this feed the world?

 Although “greenies” would suggest that acres and acres of ”ma and pa” organic fields would be lovely, the fact is, there isn’t enough farm land in the world to supply the demand for protein.

Same goes with aquaculture.  Pound for pound, acre for acre, fish farms output more food, with fewer inputs and emissions, than land farms, without ravaging oceans or clearing land. “What most people don’t realize is that fish are so much more efficient at converting into food,” says Dr. Patrick Moore: their cold blood and not having to fight gravity makes seafood emit less than half the greenhouse gases of equivalent amounts of land-based meat.”

Alaska is a prime example of this. Back in the “good ‘ol days”, wild salmon were simply caught and consumed. But soon, demand outstripped supply. With record low catches in the 1960’s Alaska made a decision – intensify the culture of salmon – grow salmon in hatcheries and release them into the ocean to graze for food. Others parts of the world took it one step further – grow salmon in hatcheries and continue to culture them in enclosed nets in the ocean. Either way, we have effectively created efficiencies in growing salmon for human consumption.

Yes, there is a risk to this intensive production of protein, and therefore, the benefit must outweigh that risk. As Mr. Libin correctly points out, the clear benefit is leaving most of the planet alone.

Of course, a true stab at the hypocrisy of “environmental” groupies isn’t complete until Dr. David Suzuki has been challenged.

Mr. Libin writes, “David Suzuki rhapsodizes about Cuba’s “sustainable” archaic ox-ploughed farms, but that country imports 85% of its food.”

To read the entire article, click here.