Civic Election Blogging

And thus ends an interesting month or two in local politics. It was actually, on the night, a bit anti-climactic here - every single incumbent got in, most of them handily. And, while the turnout was still low, it was (a lot) better than last time.

In the end, the right choice was made, at least as far as the mayoral race was concerned. Mandel may not be perfect, but he's better than the other guys, good Lord. He campaigned basically by not making mistakes, and by not getting that grumpy, even as his character, morals, business connections, leadership ability, and general decency were hammered away at by a consortium of shrill, petulant, passive-aggressive, dirty-tricks-playing whiners (yeah, Envision Edmonton, I'm talking about you), a mob whose repeated accusations of undemocratic behaviour were made all the more galling by the fact that they couldn't and didn't recognize democracy when it rose up and repeatedly bit them in the ass.¹ In facing them down, Mandel never stooped to the level that, y'know, I just did.

And so congratulations to Mr. Mandel! The next three years should be good ones for Edmonton.

¹Perhaps I am hard on Envision Edmonton. However, I remember overhearing a conversation one evening at the pub involving an EE volunteer, someone who'd been working fairly hard on their petition drive. That conversation dealt, in part, with Steven Mandel, and featured repeated uses of the word "Jew-boy." Now, I do not for a moment assert that Envision Edmonton is an anti-semitic organization, but one can occasionally be judged by the company one keeps.

Couple of Pics

So, some time ago I promised you Saskatoon pics, so here you are! If you can't tell, I'd been playing with the "panorama" feature on the camera again.

Here's a look at the Saskatoon skyline from the place we were inhabiting for the weekend:

On the way back home, we made a quick stop at a little site about which I will write more later, and I took these photos there. And there you basically have eastern Alberta.

As always, click to make big!

Breaking: Blind Squirrel Finds Acorn!

Ok, maybe not really "breaking," so much, since this story is a few days old, but to make an 8-years-long story short, Alberta finally got around to putting the grizzly bear on the Threatened List. Now we wait to see if the gov will in fact follow through, and start taking the necessary steps (restricting access, etc.) to actually protect the grizzly population. At least, in the meatime, the bears can't be hunted.

Ever Get The Feeling That The Assholes Are In Charge?

* Reads newspaper *

Hmm, so, let's see, what's up in the world these days? Well, everything seems to be going swimmingly in regards to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Why, the next attempt to contain the leak will probably only INCREASE the rate of flow from it by 20%!!!!!!!! Sucks to be you, things that live in, on, or by the Gulf! Fortunately, the head cheese of British Petroleum says that things aren't that bad at all, and we should all just settle down and not pay any attention to those horrible sciencey people, with their science and everything. Next up - hurricane season!

And... look over here! An attempt to lessen, in some minor and perhaps symbolic way, the suffering of the city of Gaza has been met with lethal force, thus providing the extremist wings of both sides of the Israel-Palestine debate with a prime chance to get up and scream at each other. At press time, Gaza itself remained more-or-less screwed.

On the local front, someone took it upon him/her/itself this past weekend to wander down to the zoo and wipe out the guinea pigs. "Why?" you ask? Nobody knows. However, I feel strongly that The Stealthy Dachshund's response has much merit to it.

Nothing for it, I guess, but to run a nice picture of a tulip, taken by me. Click to embiggen, as always!

Paging Mr. Darrow!

Homo Erectus: Not Welcome in Alberta

Ok, maybe that's a bit of an over-reaction, but still...

Alberta passes law allowing parents to pull kids out of class
Written notice required when sex, sexual orientation, religion are covered

Alberta legislators passed legislation early Tuesday that will give parents the option of pulling their children out of class when lessons on sex, religion or sexual orientation are being taught.

And at first glance, it doesn't sound too bad. No sane person would argue that parents shouldn't be informed about the curriculum, nor even that they shouldn't have some say in it. This is not an issue (the old straw man that is the idea of "sexual orientation being taught in school" is far too tedious to address here). The issues, and indeed the screaming bloody problems with the bill, begin with this statement from Premier Stelmach (despite political disagreements, I've never particularly had a bone to pick with Stelmach, and I've been reliably informed that he's an intelligent and pleasant man in person. The whole Bill 44 controversy is exposing a side of him that's, well, not very edifying):

If [Bill 44 is] passed, parents will be able to pull their children from lessons on evolution, Stelmach confirmed.

Ah. Well, this is a problem. For you see, Bill 44 is not a mere tweak to the School Act. It is a piece of human rights legislation (more on this in a moment). Therefore, if you, as a teacher, bring up evolutionary biology to your class without having informed the parents, then you have violated the parents' human rights as much as if you'd fired them from their jobs because you didn't like their skin colour (significantly, exposing a child to ignorance by dragging him or her out of science class because of his or her parents' personal beliefs is not held to be a violation of the child's human rights...).

The government's reaction, when this problem was pointed out to them, was to haul out the world's teeniest band-aid and slap it over the offending section of the act. Classroom discussions that occur spontaneously, outside of the actual curriculum, were exempted from the bill. This, of course, will in no way prevent people from complaining about spontaneously-raised topics which are offensive to them, and thus putting the teachers through the hell of dealing with being accused of human rights violations. As for the rest of it, the government rather huffily denied that the parents' rights clause could ever possibly cause any trouble for teachers whatsoever:

"The intention of this bill was never to have undue fear, undue duress put upon any members of the teaching profession," [increasingly surly and petulant Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett] said Monday.

Mr. Blackett's statement is what we refer to as "a lie." The entire, deliberate, intended reason for enacting the "parents' rights" section of Bill 44 is to instill fear in teachers and to place them under duress. Bill 44's primary purpose is to write sexual orientation into Alberta's human rights legislation, the government having been ordered to do so by the Supreme Court. And so, having lost gays as a legal target for petty thuggery, the troglodytes of the religious right have been given teachers as a replacement. It is every bit as simple, and as shameful, as that. And you had better believe that said troglodytes are drooling with the anticipation of being allowed to make mischief against a group they have always viewed with contempt and fear:

Brian Rushfeldt, co-founder of the Calgary-based Canada Family Action Coalition, thinks the proposed human rights provision can be more widely interpreted.

“It’s up to the parent to make (the legislation) as broad or as narrow as they want,” said Rushfeldt, who welcomed the proposed changes.

And there you have it. At this point, anything that is taught in a classroom is fair game. Want to talk about the fellow whose skull is portrayed above? Well, that's evolution, which, as we have seen, counts as religion, so you'd better make sure that everybody's been told you're going to do it. A class unit on ancient Greece? You can be accused of teaching polytheism. You just know that somebody will use this bill to start beaking off about the contents of school libraries; after all, library time is part of the curriculum, is it not? And don't get me started about classtime spent on math! As we all know, math textbooks destroy values and cause drug use.

Anyway, it's not a good day for Alberta. And I'd feel better about it if I weren't fairly sure that our federal government approves deeply of all this.

De Stultitiis

Well now...

The Government of Alberta recently embarked upon the project of finding a new slogan for the province. It duly settled upon "Alberta: Freedom to create. Spirit to achieve," which is probably decent enough as provincial slogans go, since it creates warm cuddly feelings without conveying any information whatsoever beyond the name of the place. This slogan has duly been plastered all over pictures of charming-looking scenery, such as this one (click it to see larger version):



Lovely, no? The problem, of course, is that the scenery in that picture isn't in Alberta. Nor is it in Canada. In fact, it's not even on this particular continent. In fact, that's the coast of the North Sea, in Northumberland, England. It's not far from Bamburgh Castle, as shown on the map below.



Now, what makes this particularly funny is that the government PR types, when queried about this little problem, chose not to simply say "Oops, our bad." Instead, they trotted out the "I meant to do that" defense. From Paula Simon's column about it in the Edmonton Journal:

"'This slide represents Albertans' concern for the future of the world,' Olga Guthrie, manager of the brand initiative for Alberta's public affairs bureau, wrote..."

and later:

"'There's no attempt to make people think that this is Alberta,' says Tom Olsen, the premier's director of media relations. 'There's no attempt to mislead. That picture just fit the mood and tone of what we were trying to do.'"

Yeesh. Yeah, slapping the province's shiny new slogan onto a picture of some countryside has no chance at all of making the casual viewer believe that it's a picture of Alberta. I say again, "Yeesh."

However, it occurs to me that we could have some fun with this. So, kiddies, get out your crayons, and let's make some Alberta tourism posters! Like this one, which subtly reminds the viewer of the vastness of the Alberta prairie:



Or how about this one, which takes us a bit further afield?:



Or this?:



So go to it, and have fun!

UPDATE: The Alberta government has now in fact issued a straightforward apology for the mix-up.

Now then, turning our attention to a much more malignant and serious bit of stupidity. Warning!: This next section deals with a Michael Coren column! Once you've read it, you won't be able to un-read it. For those of you unfamiliar with Michael Coren, he's a columnist for the Sun Media chain, and also hosts some sort of talk show. In terms of his political beliefs, he resides within easy hailing distance of the folks who get together every April 20th to sing the "Horst-Wessel-Lied." Prior to what we're about to examine, my "favourite" Michael Coren piece was the one in which he pitched a whiny, passive-aggressive, fit because the Muslims portrayed in Little Mosque on the Prairie weren't murderous enough for him.

We're a bit late to the dance with this one, as it's already been pounded on here, here, and here, to name but three examples. Anyway, here's what Mr. Coren vomited forth in his Sun column last Saturday, about the death due to enemy action in Afghanistan of Trooper Karine Blais, 12e Régiment Blindé du Canada (Coren's words are in italics, with my comments in normal script):

So Canada sacrifices another victim on the altar of equality.

Last week a young girl dressed up as a soldier died in the increasingly futile and pointless war in Afghanistan. She was 21 years old, had been in the country for two weeks on her first tour of duty and probably weighed a little over 100 pounds.

"Dressed up as a soldier," hmmm? Methinks, after that crack, that Mr. Coren should keep his head up the next time he's in Valcartier.

Please know that I mean no disrespect to Karine Blais or to her family and I grieve for her and them. But what on earth was she doing in such a place and in such a job?

What she was doing was serving her country. And the notion that Coren "mean[s] no disrespect" is, as we say, stercus equinum. The entire thesis and purpose of this column is explicit disrespect for Trooper Blais, and every other female Canadian soldier.

Look at the photograph of this beautiful girl. Look at the innocence, the gentleness, the grace. All of them precious aspects to the human character. So when I say that she was "dressed up as a soldier" I mean it as a compliment. I've known soldiers all of my life and I have an invincible respect for them. I've seen their courage, integrity and sheer decency.

And with that we pass through some sort of event horizon of assholery. Having sneered about "a young girl dressed up as a soldier," Coren now tries to cover his rear end by claiming that he meant it in a good way.

I've also seen their capacity for controlled and righteous violence, which is absolutely essential for any fighting man. Yes, man. Because there are few if any women who have the skills required to serve as a front-line combat trooper.

This is true, but only because there are very few people of any gender who have the skills required for combat.

Yes, yes, yes, I know it's fundamentally anti-Canadian to say this but I'd prefer to articulate the views of the silent majority than hide behind some modernist fetish that places more importance on the myth of absolute equality than the safety of a girl who should be laughing with college friends rather than fighting theocratic madmen.

For those of us familiar with Coren' oeuvre, the thought of him calling anybody a "theocratic madman" is more than just a little bit ironic. Oh, and if you believe for one second that Michael Coren thinks women should have the right to attend college, then I've got a stretch of North Sea coast in Alberta that I'd like to sell you.

Can we really imagine for a moment that if a group of Taliban tribesmen rushed a trench or an encampment this poor young woman could fight them off, could deal with the thrusts of their long knives and heavy clubs? Do we seriously think that the men in the unit would not risk their own lives to protect a pretty young girl who was inevitably being beaten to the ground by salivating killers?

This is the stupidest paragraph in the entire column, and that's saying something. First of all, yes, the men, and women, of the unit would certainly come to the aid of one of their own, male or female, who was in difficulty. They would do this thing because they are soldiers. Secondly, I do rather think that Trooper Blais could have dealt with knife- and/or club-wielding attackers (salivating or otherwise), probably by using one of these:



That is a C7A1 Assault Rifle. It is capable of emptying a 30-round magazine in a little over two seconds, and is going to represent a serious obstacle for anyone who attacks the wielder with medieval weaponry, whether or not said wielder is female. What killed Trooper Blais (and has, I believe, accounted for the majority of the Canadian casualties in Afghanistan) was a roadside bomb, and those don't generally discriminate on the basis of gender.

The very reason we have various weight categories for all forms of organized fighting is that whatever the training, a pugilist's weight and muscle bulk give an advantage to the heavier combatant.

Once again, NATO forces in Afghanistan have guns. So do the Taliban. If you're strong enough to pick a gun up and point it somebody, then it doesn't matter if you're Charles Atlas. And why is Coren so obsessed with the idea that the fighting in Afghanistan is mostly hand-to-hand? Does he think this is a repeat of the Third Crusade? On second thought, don't answer that...

More than this, even contrived cultural denial should not prevent us from admitting that the death of a daughter or a wife is different from that of a son or a husband. Women nurture, give birth, care in a way that is unique. Quite simply, they are different from men.

And here we have the ago-old little paternalistic argument against women taking part in such strenuous pursuits as soldiering, policing, fire-fighting, sports, and voting. It's an argument that is still sadly trotted out by people like Michael Coren and, well, the Taliban.

If captured, of course, such a woman would be repeatedly raped. And tortured. Again, I'm not meant to say this. Not Canadian, not CBC, not Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Not the sort of thing we're supposed to feel, so we pretend that men and women in the army, police and fire service are given the same tests and have to fulfil the same requirements. Yet truth still breaks through.

Yes. And the truth that has broken out of this situation is this: Trooper Karine Blais, a competent, brave, qualified, and capable soldier, died in the service of her country. Period. I'm not going to get into debate about the worthiness or lack thereof of the Afghanistan mission here, as I think it's a moot point for the purpose of dissecting Coren's column. And, by the way, it wouldn't be a Michael Coren column without some gratuitous sniping at the CBC.

We rightly condemn Islamic extremists in Afghanistan because they treat women so badly. Then we allow one of our own to give her life so that we can congratulate ourselves on how liberal and egalitarian we are, lie about how gender difference don't [sic] matter and then encourage our generals and politicians to obscure the truth on television about soldiers and causes.

What hypocrites we have become. Poor, poor Karine -- this is not the way it should have been.

You and your country deserved better.

And, in closing, Coren turns the "Sanctimony" knob up to 11. He really is a world-class twerp.

Our deepest sincere condolences to the family and friends of Trooper Blais, and of the other 116 Canadians who have died in Afghanistan to date.