Learn to hold your horses

Bringing youth movements to conferences isn't right for the reasons you might believe. CPAC speeches by the Young America's Foundation and the Young Americans for Freedom often give off a cocky and polarized vibe. Their members are awesome speakers, yet their confrontational rhetoric drowns the message in a tub of soundbites.

Young age is the right time to be a radical. In later years your peers would give you funny looks. Yet the overproof radicalism and bitter hormonal storms make a very bad cocktail one shouldn't serve to customers. Therefore the youth movements at conferences such as CPAC shouldn't just showcase their membership and vocal chords but listen and learn from the seasoned politicos.

Because real politics isn't a college pastime and needs professional attitudes. The two YAFs strive to provide those but nothing can substitute for some good old experience wisdom. And the older politicians should set a prime example.

After all, if you behave and speak childishly at 50, what do you expect the younger guys to take from it? Just a thought.

Is the conservative movement getting over its hangups?

Abortion, homosexuality, birthers, the lot: if there's a reason to squabble and polarize oneself, many conservatives are all too happy to tuck into the controversy smorgasbord.

Well, something's shifting. This year CPAC has its fair share of nuts (as FrumForum shows photographically) but this year also marks the presence of GOProud (a prominent gay Republican group) and a group advocating reducing abortions through more counselling and greater options for expecting mothers rather than bans. To many this sounds irrelevant.

The importance of these invitations is enormous. Liberty University Law School decided to boycott the conference because of GOProud and it caused a bit of a brouhaha. Yet CPAC standing their ground and telling its cosponsors they can't rule the conference is a massive blow to the radical wings of the movement.

For proof of the changing attitudes look no further than the main conference room. A Young Americans for Freedom speaker diverged from his rehearsed speech and openly attacked CPAC, GOProud and homosexuality. To many's surprise and my delight he was booed off the stage in disgrace.

What matters is the economy, the debt and foreign policy. It is time to put the uselessly divisive questions on the back burner and stop frightening independents with nuttery.

Andrew Breitbart speaks off-stage

Breitbart visited the bloggers lounge at CPAC and answered questions from bloggers. His reveations about ACORN were the main focus of the Q&A, but he did manage to mention how the movement needs to stop being defensive and challenge the left's values.

Conservative commentators and new media are often barred from the mainstream by established biases and choked by political correctness. When they have a story it is ostracized through every possible means. Yet despite this concrete ceiling (glass doesn't begin describing it) Americans decided ACORN corruption mattered when the story broke.

His message is simple: stay on course, stay united and get the information out. Bloggers and independent media are an essential resource for keeping an eye on the extreme manifestations of leftism, but they must hold the Right to the very same standards.

If we don't back our folk up in times of need and call crap by its name regardless of its colour we're hardly more than opportunistic partisan cheerleaders. The world has too many of those already.

The party faithful - who gives a s**t!

How callous do you have to be to screw your own party's base? Michael Gove, the UK Tories' schools wonk, has quite a few questions to answer.

The party has been parachuting candidates into safe seats to fill an internal quota for female, minority and gay MPs overriding local constituency associations. They are presented with a list of pre-approved candidates and asked to choose one, leaving any local challenger ostracised. This is grounds for a rebellion. Now we discover it's actually part of a planned cull of traditional Tories by the urban latte-sipping "I do my part to fight global warming" elite. The mastermind: Michael Gove.

The stealthy strategy to denude local party associations of their power to choose their candidates is a chilling read. Though the Daily Mail is, well, the Daily Mail, the document is very believable. It would certainly explain the latest candidate selection fiascos in Westminster North and South-West Norfolk. And it befits Gove's style. He is a member of Cameron's inside circle and a guaranteed cabinet shoo-in, but I get a bad vibe. 

I already criticized Gove in an earlier post. He has caused embarrassment to the Tory party in the islamic schools funding fiasco. If this document is indeed proven to be true, his head must roll faster than Louis XVI's. Otherwise David Cameron will have betrayed the trust of the very party that gave him the chance to become Prime Minister in 2010.

Thiessen at CPAC: telling the real facts about the CIA

How do you feel when you are unable to speak up for yourself? The CIA staff currently going through judicial hell at the hands of Barack Obama's minions are exactly in that situation. They are bound by dozens of agreements and rules that prevent them from telling the truth about their interrogation techniques.

Enter Mark Thiessen. When given access to all the first-hand information necessary to establish the truth he put it into a captivating book: "Courting Disaster". If the Democrats can let the cat out of the bag by revealing all techniques and telling lies, Thiessen churns out the facts that dismantle every myth we've been led to believe in.

His arguments defining torture (and why the CIA methods aren't that) are extremely compelling. Limits on what can be done to the prisoner, the efforts to fake the effect and feeling of what would otherwise be torture and the achievements of the CIA's counter-terrorism unit all testify to how the United States agencies have never tarnished their record.

Today the enemy knows our tricks. We have to outsource interrogation to countries which employ the darkest methods. The information flow has slowed to a trickle, all because the liberals wanted to feel good about themselves. Such folly for so little.

CPAC stands for "let's talk"

What do tea parties, the NRA, pro-life groups and Ron Paul have in common? They all come to CPAC.

Knowing that a whole movement can come together for a big conserva-fest is always heartening, as meeting and speaking are the obvious first steps to building a coalition that can win, especially in first-past-the-post systems. Unlike CNN's interpretation (conservatives agreeing with conservatives) CPAC goes well beyond the main ballroom speeches, applause and standing ovations. As with a party conference it's the fringe events and networking that count.

Which is exactly why movements that have many souls need get-togethers like CPAC desperately. How can they otherwise present a united front at election time? This year there's an even greater incentive to meet and talk: the tea partiers. This phenomenon is a gigantic pool of new voters. They are potentially Republican but will not be toyed with. CPAC and similar conferences are the ideal way for them to showcase their views and dedication without adopting a narrow party brand. What's better: a reception with a party apparatchik or talking to hundreds of ordinary people?

Politics isn't all soundbites and bigwigs. CPAC might mot set the party course, but it's sure a great indicator of where the tide is going. That, for a political party, is a very good asset.

Rights and Democracy shutters its Geneva shop for good

In what is my last post on the Rights and Democracy saga for a while, I'd like to simply say a few words now that the Geneva office has been officially shut, according to the Star.

The whole affair stinks to high heaven. Somebody burgled an office in a secure building in broad daylight. The right hand doesn't seem to know what the left hand is doing. The Government and its appointees to the Board seem to have stirred up a sh*tstorm of epic proportions.

Which brings me to my main question: why bother in the first place? It it the duty of the Canadian government to go out into the world preaching human rights and democracy through a bespoke agency paid out of the tax purse? Because I seriously never heard of the shop until the lid blew.

I don't know what the use of R&D is or was. Yet I struggle to identify an area where they have made a difference. They might have had an influence in Haiti where they have a huge office, but their Afghan office hasn't prevented the country from slipping into the tin-pot near-dictatorship category.

Don't get me wrong, we have to strive for human rights to be respected worldwide and democracy to take hold in more countries. I don't think an outlet such as R&D is the best way to achieve it. If a government has these objectives in mind, it should have the balls to speak with own mouth and act directly in its own name.

Cha-ching! The Rights and Democracy phantom office.

I'm sure Tim got a lot of heat for his article on FrumForum yesterday, showing how Rights and Democracy could have been involved in shady money transfers to organizations and projects of dubious repute.

Now it turns out they have an empty office in Geneva which is registered under a separate NGO (as per Swiss law). The organizational chart is as detached from Montreal's R&D one as South America is from Africa. The late R&D President prevented meetings between Montreal staff and the Geneva office.

The staff member at the Geneva office (homonimy permitting) used to be involved with Alternatives, a left-leaning organization and a founding member of the AlterInter network. They describe themselves as the worst kind of lefty get-together:

 

We are social and political movements struggling against neoliberalism, imperialism, social injustice and war. We are building solidarity between social movements at the local, national and international level. Our approach is both concrete (action-oriented) and intellectual (creating new paradigms). (link)

In her own words, she described her organization as such:

"We were among the first to be against globalization," says ********. "And against the Iraq war. We coordinated the Réseau québécois sur l'integration continentale, a network that regroups the majority of the NGOs of Quebec. We work with the unions, social and community groups. We have are a very important voice in Quebec."

Her association with Alternatives ended in October 2008.

New questions arise:

The name of the Geneva staffer is easily accessible, so why is she working in an empty and invisible office and living in an expensive accommodation across the border in France?

With all due respect, association with such radicals should disqualify a candidate from effectively working on the Government's payroll pushing an agenda. Why was this choice made? By whom?

How accountable is the Geneva office to Montreal's HQ?

Was the Government aware of this? If so, why was no action taken?

If just rent (pretended) and accommodation were paid, wouldn't that show nothing was being done? No expenses, no bills, no travel, nada?

Where did the Geneva office money go?

A shady death, cover-ups and lots of government money

Sherlock Holmes would be on this one in no time.

Tim Mak reveals on FrumForum how Rights and Democracy, no stranger to controversial news has been the theater of some rather disturbing events. Destinations for R&D money included organizations with ties to terrorism and the anti-Semitic bashfest called Durban 2. The organization mismanaged this way a 10 million dollar annual grant from the Canadian government. This is not peanuts!

Update: The funding apparently went to UNHCR, which is already funded by the Canadian government directly. It then found its way to Durban 2.

More unsettling, however, are the events that followed the original revelations. Government-appointed replacements on the R&D board were met by stiff internal resistance, while the president died of a heart attack shortly after a rowdy board meeting where he was confronted by evidence of funding dodgy projects. During his funeral the R&D offices were burgled with massive data loss.The Godfather would be proud!

To the deafening sound of shutting stable doors a private security firm was hired to plug some holes in what had become an institutionalized colander; not before a human resources computer was wiped clean by a professional. The whole shebang must be sealed shut and combed by the RCMP and the CSIS.

Who was on the R&D payroll who wouldn't want the name to be public?

How was a government-sponsored agency allowed to fund a boycotted conference?

Why were the beneficiaries of R&D funding not vetted?

Was the weakness of Remy Beauregard's heart known to his associates? If so, was the heated board meeting genuine or orchestrated?

What attracted the burglars to the two laptops that were stolen rather than other property?

The R&D offices are in a very secure building. Whoever burgled the property was a known face. Who?

Did anyone in Government know the extent of this fishiness?

What is being covered up?

The biggest cases always begin with something apparently small, like a theft. We haven't seen the end of it.

Thanks Tim for bringing this up!

Rubbish slips past the filter at the National Post

Ian Gentles in the NP seems to argue that banning abortion reduces maternal mortality. It is a mix of lies and bullshit. First he makes an apparently valid point about the likelihood of preterm births in post-abortion women, then suddenly shifts to maternal mortality and commends Poland and Ireland on their stats. The abortion-premature-cerebral palsy argument may hold some validity, though I'd like to review the literature on the topic.

Where Gentles bullshits us is in his argument in favour of banning abortion to decrease maternal and infant mortality. This is his passage:

Why has Poland made such strides in improving both maternal and infant health? [...]. The only change that could have produced such a dramatic improvement is the documented decline in the induced abortion rate.

Since 1989, Poland has virtually banned induced abortion. [...]. There is little evidence of a widespread resort to illegal abortion, nor have significant numbers of Polish women gone to other countries seeking abortions.

Interestingly, the only other European country where abortion is illegal -- Ireland -- also boasts very low maternal mortality. By comparison, countries where abortion is completely legal -- the United States and Poland's immediate neighbours, Russia and Hungary -- have much higher maternal and infant death rates.

This is utter hen-brained tosh with an agenda. Among the most active abortion restrictors in 2005 maternal mortality per 100,000 was 16 in Chile, 290 in Guatemala, 170 in El Salvador, 77 in Argentina. Ireland had 1, Australia has 4 and Poland 8.

Those who allow abortion posted the following in 2005: Nepal - 830, Guyana - 470, Sweden - 3, Kazakhstan - 140, Slovakia - 6, Italy - 3, Hungary - 6, et cetera.

Infant mortality rate is the same (~6.8) in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, so Gentles is lying. Slovakia has an abortion incidence (2006, per 1000 women) of 11.7, Poland 0.0 and Hungary 23.4.

Three neighbours. The one that bans abortion has no improvement in infant mortality and the highest maternal mortality of the three (8 vs 6).

Why does a conservative paper allow this rubbish while complaining about the climate change non-science? Where did that data come from? Where is the correlation, let alone causation? Where is the logic? Where is your brain?

This kind of idiocy makes my blood boil! It's the quality of healthcare that matters, stupid!

As for my sources, here:

http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=GenderStat&f=inID%3A12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AbortionLawsMap-NoLegend.png

http://www.childinfo.org/maternal_mortality_countrydata.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

Update: yes, it is old (Feb 5th). But it's so crap I had to say something.