Canucks Protest … Global Bank Tax

Canada, Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank

The Canadian government, not the American one, “will ‘resist’ a bank tax, Industry Minister Tony Clement said Tuesday as ministers fanned out across the world to raise opposition to the proposal for avoiding another financial crisis. ‘Canada is, and will remain, opposed to a tax that would penalize financial institutions that remained strong and prosperous while many of the world’s banks failed,’ Clement told a press conference with Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon.”

Clement said the bank tax would “encourage risky behavior” if it is used to create a bank bailout fund and “reward bad behavior” of those institutions responsible for the recent financial crisis in the first place.
As well, it would “unduly burden” Canadian banks and put them at a “competitive disadvantage” to other financial institutions.

As the AP reported a while back, “while the U.S. has seen 81 banks fail in 2009 alone, Canada has not experienced the failure of any major financial institution. There has been no crippling mortgage meltdown or banking crisis north of the border, where the financial sector is dominated by five large banks.”

I’ve often contended that if it cut back on its interventionist policies, Canada could become an economic giant. It has natural resources and a highly educated population. And as David Frum (another Canuck) reminds in this excellent piece (via alternativeright.com): Canada has an immigration system that doesn’t tolerate a tsunami of illegal alien illiterates, as does it adhere to a strict point system that benefits the country.

More HERE about the global regulatory regime debated by our oracular governors.

Updated: Miss Ummah America?

Aesthetics, Affirmative Action, Intelligence

I thought she was merely stupid and definitely not beautiful, but it turns out that the Miss Ummah America might be the beneficiary of a pattern of Muslim affirmative action in western beauty pageants

That might explain why these women are winners, although not one is particularly beautiful.

Rima Fakih certainly isn’t. I was struck by how conceited and stupid she was.

Conceited because during the competition she described herself as beautiful, intelligent, and a “goddess.” Modesty and a little less self-awareness and narcissism are what make a woman attractive in my old-fashioned opinion. These brazen creatures have repulsing personae.

Stupid because in her reply to that question that gets asked typically by the prototypical radical liberal gay (Oscar Nunez) or by a retarded glamor puss (Trump trophy wife), Fakih managed to promote taxpayer support for the birth-control pill (“b/c it’s expensive”), as well as claim the Pill was a “controlled substance.”

We’ll be exporting more stupidity with her as representative.

The first runner-up, Miss Oklahoma Morgan Elizabeth Woolard, sealed her fate when, in reply to one Oscar Nunez’s question about where she stood on Arizona’s SB 1070, she said she was “a huge believer in states’ rights”: “I think that’s what’s so wonderful about America, so I think it’s perfectly fine for Arizona to create that law.” “The crowd erupted in boos over the intrusion of politics,” Fox News reported.

This girl had a bit more of a brain than Carrie Prejean, that’s for sure, however, since the competition is ultimately about beauty, it should be noted that one or two real beauties were eliminated early on in the competition.

The finalists were certainly not the fairest.

Update (May 18): Myron’s favorite of 1992 has that regal look, as opposed the pole-slip-sliding appeal. There were a couple like her in the 2010 intake, but they were, obviously, dismissed in favor of the porn (and the politically correct) aesthetic.

To those who confuse cheap, sexy with beautiful: no, Rima Fakih is no beauty. She looks like porn star Kim Kardashian, who, frankly, repulses. She may be sexy in that cheap way, but in my view, the culture has adopted the male-centered porn aesthetic. So enamored are we with it, that we would not know refined beauty if we saw it. Witness the classic beauties (one in particular with green eyes and brown hair) who never made the finals in this year’s pageant. Obviously, all contestants had fabulous figures.

Devious Deployment Of The Apartheid Epithet Against Israel

Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Race, South-Africa

Larry Auster on the meaning of the devious deployment of the apartheid epithet against Israel by “paleostinian conservatives” who, arguably, once were able to see separate development in South Africa as a desperate survival strategy by a besieged minority (now being ethnically cleansed by the majority):

“It wasn’t just paleos, but mainstream conservatives, who opposed the divestment strategy against South Africa. But such is the paleocons’ hatred of the Jewish state that they now adopt as a weapon against Israel that same left-wing policy which they themselves opposed when it was used against South Africa and which by their own estimation has led to the ruin of that country. There are no words to describe adequately the sickness and evil of the anti-Israel paleocons.”

Read “The Paleostinian Conservative calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel.”

Updated: Begging For Muslim Sensitivity

IMMIGRATION, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Multiculturalism, Private Property, Religion

THE LATEST IN THE ANNALS OF DHIMMITUDE. The American Society for Muslim Advancement (very literally) plans to erect a “Mega-Mosque” at Ground Zero. They say (taqiyya anyone?) that this is a peace offering—a center intended to foster Muslim tolerance and temperance.

I agree with the apoplectic activists: this amounts to lording it over the dhimmis-in-training. It is a triumphant act of supremacy, as the erection of minarets and the mosques has been throughout the annals of Islam. This is a bitch slap to the subjugated population.

However, as much as I approve of the activists (and I do not mean to be cynical), theirs is nothing more than frenetic cry-baby Brownian motion. There is no intellectual force, much less real force, behind a demand for sensitivity from those you believe to be worse than insensitive.

Such activism reminds me of the victim impact statement in our Courts. How humiliating and futile is it to plead for contrition and kindness from entities incapable of such sentiment.

When you’re reduced to asking a cunning conqueror to be nice; you’ve been bitch slapped good. Besides, ask yourself, “Why the distrust of fellow Muslims?” The Muslims in question say they are sincere in their endeavor; why doubt them?

Activists are acting out of emotion and have failed to examine what they’re really saying and, then, say it out loud.

Restricting acquisitive property rights in a free society should never be entertained. I’ll fight you if you try! But what other course of action are these emotion-driven protests hoping for? Again: what the activists are ludicrously requesting is kindness and consideration from those they regard as conquistadors—for they refuse to go straight to the heart of the matter and address the only legitimate, if incremental, course of action:

I hope I don’t have to spell it out for you. See:

“Beck, Wilders, and His Boosters’ Blind Spot”
“Jews Jeopardized By Muslim Immigration”
“Minarets No More”

And much more (use the search facility on this site, and on IlanaMercer.com, please).

Update (May 17): Myron’s interesting comment down here seems to imply that unless the Ground-Zero controversy passes the Israel-parallels test, it is deserving of no more than a dismissive shrug. Well, I’m an American commentator, first; making sure that every American dilemma passes the fairness-to-Israel test is not the mandate I’ve accepted or will ever pursue. I’ll leave that “yente,” “boba,” neocon kvetching to others (my “Holocaustism” comment applies here).

The Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque examples Myron brings support the point of historical conquest, plonked as they were on Jewish sacred sites. But because Americans don’t know or care about them, Myron dismisses the concerns expressed by misguided, hysterical activists, to which “Begging For Muslim Sensitivity” gives voice (but slams).

Again: We disagree about the Israel Test.

Moreover, building the Mosque on the site of an Islamic victory against the West is symbolic—and a harbinger of things dhimmi to come. There is something nihilistic, atomistic, and effete in dismissing, even accepting, what I believe is a bitch slap from Islam’s messengers. It is the hallmark of the liberal, Western man. Muslims are too macho to dismiss insults and one-upmanship from “our side.”

I more than approve of Myron’s refusal to turn “the Towers into the Beit Hamikdash (Temple of Jerusalem).” It fits right in with my anti-hysteria, anti- 9/12 projects sentiments—these are designed to sustain the state of heightened emotional arousal that arose in the aftermath of 9/11.

And emotional arousal does nothing for clear thinking (although it helps in bed).