Certainly not the Conservatives or the Liberals.

A reservist serving in Afghanistan says it’s wrong that he’s facing unemployment when he returns to his home in western Newfoundland in August.

Maj. Wallace Noseworthy is asking the Newfoundland and Labrador government to protect the jobs of reservists when they leave work for military duty.

Noseworthy, now serving in Kabul, had no choice but to quit his job managing a car dealership in Stephenville after his employer did not give him a leave of absence.

So who does?

Noseworthy has been lobbying from overseas for greater job protection for reservists. There is no federal law protecting reservists’ jobs, and laws vary from province to province.

Employers in Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan are bound to hold jobs for reservists.

That would be the NDP led Manitoba and the NDP led Saskatchewan. And in Nova Scotia it wasn’t the ruling Conservatives who enacted legislation protecting reservists’ jobs. Once again it was the opposition NDP–who are on the cusp of electoral victory in the province–that pushed for this legislation.

To put our support into action, I introduced Bill 80, the Canadian Forces Reservists Protection Act last Fall. The House of Assembly approved my legislation unanimously in November. It was proclaimed, put into law this April.

This NDP bill, now Nova Scotia law, provides job protection for members of the Canadian Reserve Forces who must leave their jobs for active duty.

While the Conservatives and Liberals are content to support the troops with empty gestures like slapping decals on vehicles or donning red t-shirts, the NDP actually does something significant–like insuring reservists can serve without worrying about losing their jobs–to support the troops.

Decades of hate speech directed at gays is finally paying off for the bigoted religious right.

Mangum, who described himself as “definitely not a homosexual,” said God called on him to “carry out a code of retribution” by killing a gay man because “sexual perversion” is the “worst sin.”

Mangum believed Cummings to be gay.

“I planned on sending him to hell,” he said.

Compare two recent cases of what is considered by many people as censorship or an infringement against freedom of speech.

The first case is the complaint filed against the internet forum Free Dominion with the Human Rights Commission over hateful comments posted on their site. In this case the owners of the site were given a chance to tell their side of the story in an interview on Michael Coren’s radio show and the story has become international news. Rightwing columnists as well as both leftwing and rightwing pundits in the blogosphere have leapt to Free Dominion’s defense. A Facebook group has even sprouted up to defend Free Dominion against what is being labelled as an assault against their freedom of speech and of course the owners of Free Dominion will have a chance to present their defense in front of the Human Rights Commission before action–if required–is taken against them.

The second case involves Pakistani preacher Israr Ahmad who has been banned from further appearances on Vision TV after the station received some complaints about stuff he wrote but didn’t talk about in his earlier appearance. He won’t be interviewed by Michael Coren or any other radio station. No media columnist and few–if any at all–pundits in the blogosphere will leap to his defense. A Facebook group will not sprout up to defend his freedom of speech and in the end he won’t even have the chance to face his accusers.

The continuing growth in popularity of the Canadian Blog Awards has pretty much pushed the limit of what one person can handle. So I’m sending out this request for assistance with the 2007 Canadian Blog Awards; which will once again grow to coincide with the ongoing expansion of the Canadian blogosphere.

I’m looking for help in;

Category selection and establishing the criteria for each; particularly in the to be expanded political category.
Assessing nominated blogs to determine if they meet the overall eligibility requirements or category criteria; by far the most time consuming job.
Coding/site redesign; my hamfisted coding skills and aesthetic impairment are quickly becoming a major hinderance.
Media relations; in past years I’ve blown off every request for print, radio and television interviews.

If you’re interested send an email to mcclelland.robert@gmail.com with a few details on the type of assistance you can provide. Please note that if you become a member of the Canadian Blog Awards Committee your blog will not be eligible to participate in this year’s awards.

The Wrong Battle
I agree with what Montreal Simon says about Free Dominion and I too am wondering why so many progressives are rushing to the defense of this hate site. Freedom of speech should not be confused with freedom to promote hatred. The former is worth fighting for regardless of whether it’s someone from the left or right who is being threatened. The latter is not.

The Great Canadian DebateDebacle
I see that the match ups for round one of the Great Canadian Debacle have been set.

Must a person be in favour of the Afghan war in order to “support our troops”?

Red Tory - NO; Richard Evans - YES

Here’s some time saving advice for Red. Just go ahead and start yanking your hair out by its roots now rather than waiting until you actually encounter Richard’s imbecility.

Sweet Schadenfreude
Why yes, I am quite amused by the netkook’s troubles.

Separated At Birth?

Opposition questions PM on military spending spree
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has spent more than $20 billion so far on his military spending spree. But the Opposition is accusing Harper of an American-style defence buildup that seems “more attuned to offensive warfare” than peacekeeping.

Chavez is flush with oil money and eager to spend it on weapons
One of the most eye-popping elements of Chavismo is Venezuela’s arms purchases. Flush with oil profits, Chavez, a former army lieutenant colonel, has been buying as much shiny military hardware as possible.

Since 2005, he’s spent more than $4 billion on foreign weapons, making tiny Venezuela one of the world’s most aggressive arms purchasers. In 2006 alone, arms spending was up 13 percent, according to some estimates.

Another Public Healthcare Myth Shot Down
About those waiting times for hip replacements that have the right whingers in such a tizzy.

On the other hand, it’s true that Americans get hip replacements faster than Canadians. But there’s a funny thing about that example, used constantly as an argument for the superiority of private health insurance over a government-run system: the large majority of hip replacements in the United States are paid for by, um, Medicare.

That’s right: the hip-replacement gap is actually a comparison of two government health insurance systems. American Medicare has shorter waits than Canadian Medicare (yes, that’s what they call their system) because it has more lavish funding — end of story. The alleged virtues of private insurance have nothing to do with it.

Conservatives just don’t get it. Replacing our healthcare system with an inferior one is not the answer; fixing it is.

Another example of “It’s okay when conservatives do it”.

Calgary councillors have decided not to put “Support our Troops” decals on city vehicles after a contentious and emotional debate at city hall, prompting the businessman offering the yellow-ribbon stickers to withdraw his donation.

When Toronto city council voted on the idea of removing “Support our Troops” decals from city vehicles the right whingers howled for a week; even though councillors voted to keep them. But a day after Calgary’s decision I’ve yet to see a single one of the Blogging Whories make a peep about it.

I guess conservatives no longer support the troops.

From Free Dominion;

The Canadian Jewish Congress are just as fascist as this Nazi.

In fact, they are a worse threat to freedom than the Nazi himself.

From Small Dead Animals;

Indeed. Just think of how much Jamaican immigrants contribute to our culture and economy: monotonous, illiterate music that all sounds the same, filthy hairstyles, those little tricoloured Rasta doohickies.
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle at July 20, 2007 11:00 AM

Toronto folk love their Islander, Negro Criminals, They make the place look colorful and multicultural.

I can hear those oil pan drums pinging in the background as I write this … Ya mon … everting bees cooool doncha know! Dis Canada, free everting no jail … judges stupid, can’t make me go home neither mon hahahaha.
Posted by: John at July 20, 2007 11:01 AM

Two years later and there’s still no sign of an impending apocalypse.

Heckuva job you’re doing, Steve.

I see that Canadian Cynic has provided the outrage addicts with their latest fix. Good work, CC. Your efforts keep the right whingers glued to their keyboards so their not out roaming the streets where they’d just end up getting into trouble.

Nope.

Although the power of the Taliban has been greatly reduced in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion, slowly but surely their influence, especially in the tribal south, is returning.

• In Badakshan, all women must get permission from their husbands before being allowed to visit a doctor.

• Women teachers are regularly subjected to beatings and assaults from roaming Taliban gangs.

• Mothers who send their children to school are also targeted by the thugs, who try to intimidate them into keeping their youngsters at home.

• Forced marriages and domestic violence feature regularly in the lives of many women who live in the south and eastern provinces of the country.

• Although more women are working in the media now, they are under constant threat. Shaima Rezayee, a popular MTV-style presenter, was shot dead after receiving death threats in 2006.

Canadian soldiers are dying for a losing cause.

Oh right, some nonsense about protecting the Afghan people’s human rights from the Taliban.

Unable to scrounge together the $165 he needed to repay a loan to buy sheep, Nazir Ahmad made good on his debt by selling his 16-year-old daughter to marry the lender’s son…girls are traded like currency in Afghanistan and forced marriages are common.

Heckuva job we’re doing.

I guess it’s okay if conservatives do it.

In a news conference Wednesday morning, human rights and labour groups released an open letter to Harper asking him to raise a number of humanitarian issues when he meets with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Haitian President Rene Preval.

That would be this Albaro Uribe.

In his five years as president, Alvaro Uribe has repeatedly denied accusations that he’s been cozy with Colombia’s murderous right-wing militias, whose thousands of victims include suspected rebel sympathizers and union activists.

Yet newly uncovered video of his 2001 campaign shows him shaking hands with a militia leader who was arrested only weeks later on suspicion of involvement in multiple murders, and is now a fugitive with a price on his head. It’s the latest headache for the law-and-order president, who has seen one ally after another jailed for allegedly colluding with the outlawed militias…

Cue the outrage from the Blogging Whories on July twelfth, two thousand and never.

Update: By the way, Colombia has the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere.

Today, Colombia presents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere. For four decades, ordinary Colombians have borne the brunt of a brutal conflict involving leftwing guerrillas, rightwing paramilitary groups, and the Colombian military. Trade unionists, human rights defenders, journalists, and other vulnerable groups continue to be targeted by armed groups for their legitimate work. Thousands of child combatants fight in the ranks of guerrillas and paramilitary groups. At over 2 million, Colombia’s population of internally displaced persons is larger than Iraq’s. Extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Colombian military are on the rise.

Colombia is currently the murder capital of the world for trade unionists. Those who are not killed are often threatened, attacked or kidnapped. The government says 58 unionists were murdered in Colombia in 2006, up from 40 the year before. Labor rights groups report even higher totals: 72 killed in 2006 up from 70 the year before. These killings are not random casualties of Colombia’s conflict, as the Colombian government claims. Trade unionists are especially targeted when exercising their rights to organize and bargain collectively. Often, their killers have been paramilitaries.

The overwhelming majority of human rights abuses in Colombia are never fully investigated, prosecuted or punished.

But hey, Chavez…blah, blah, blah.

Well I see PMS just gave big oil a fat handout.

The federal government will fund the construction of six to eight new Arctic patrol ships to help reassert Canada’s sovereignty over the North, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday.

The ships will cost about $3.1 billion, with about $4.3 billion for operations and maintenance over their 25-year lifespan.

What? You don’t really believe this is about protecting Canada’s sovereignty, do you? It’s not. These ships, and the deepwater port that is to follow, are meant for no other reason than to open up the Arctic for oil and gas companies.

There is no threat to Canada’s sovereignty but there is oil and gas to be plundered if the road can be opened up for big oil. And PMS is making it clear that Canadians will be picking up the tab for that.

Barbara Kay: Let’s have no clucking of tongues about the anti-Semitism of Laurentian towns

The whole point of a neighbourhood is friendliness, trust and social interaction, as well as mutual economic support. You get none of this with Hasidic Jews. What you get is a socially separatist entity living in a voluntary ghetto in your midst, from whom you derive disproportionately modest economic benefit, and absolutely no social interaction. Hasidim don’t like others, they don’t dislike others, they are indifferent to others. Of course they have the right to live as they wish. When Hasidim form settlements in rural areas, physically detached from towns or neighbourhoods with a long-established character and mores, nobody cares. But they should understand that their presence is not, sociologically speaking, value added to a small and (in this case) struggling community. It would be hypocritical to denounce the people of St Adolphe as anti-Semites. Their reaction is natural. Indeed, if a community of Hasidic Jews set up shop in my neighbourhood, I would worry “that [they] might not integrate into the [Barbara Kay] community with the result that the property would be ghettoized.”

Radical Christianity resembles radical Islam more and more every day.

Three Burleson men who belong to a “radical Christian activist group” were in the Johnson County Jail on Friday night after a church deacon caught two of them attempting to ignite an explosive device on Independence Day at a church under construction in north Burleson, authorities said Friday.

Any bets on who will become the Osama bin Laden of Christianity?

Another Green party candidate acknowledges that the Green Party is right of centre.

I’ve struggled from time to time to come up with a short, clear, succinct way to express the idea that a Green Party government in Canada would be good for business.

As true as it might be, it is not intuitively obvious, and thus results in the common misconception that the Green Party is left wing, or that we would “ruin the economy.”

Summary of Civilian Deaths Resulting from US/NATO Military Actions in Afghanistan

Haji Nik Mohammad from Panjwaye village of Qandadahar told journalists on Oct.26, 2006:
“I prefer to join the Taliban forces because Taliban have so far killed only 2 people in my village while the collations forces killed 63 people in a single day. Now you tell me who is my real enemy, the Taliban or the foreign troops?”

Over 100 civilian casualties alleged in Farah airstrike of US-led Coalition

More than a hundred civilians were killed and wounded in an operation in the western Farah province, residents alleged on Saturday.

I wonder how many more Taliban supporters this will create.

It looks like PMS is serving up big slabs of “the other white meat” on his summer BBQ tour.

Canada’s New Government, as it likes to call itself, is doing what every other government has traditionally done when it finds itself getting beat up politically: It’s spending money…

But a CTV News analysis of spending announcements in the first two weeks of Parliament’s summer recess show that Conservative MPs were getting their names in local papers for all sorts of projects:

Ontario MP Scott Reid announced that the Royal Canadian Legion in the town of Napanee in eastern Ontario was getting $1,500 for a parade it wants to hold in September.
Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, who represents a riding on Vancouver Island, announced that his government was giving $3,500 to the Galiano Concert Society, a volunteer group that puts on music concerts in Lunn’s riding.
James Moore, a Conservative who represents a Vancouver-area riding, handed over a cheque for $5,000 to the Port Moody Heritage Society so it could put on a Canada Day event.

Check out the rest of Akin’s porkbarrel report.

Apparently Michael Coren is now booking racists as guests for his radio show that runs on CFRB.