Free Republic

Banning handguns is all the rage. Mayor David Miller's push for a national ban has been joined by other Canadian big-city mayors. Yet, dissatisfied with progress at the national level, Miller successfully asked city council this week to approve measures to further discourage gun ownership in Toronto, such as shutting down city-owned gun ranges. While it may seem obvious to many people that banning handguns will save lives and cut crime, the experience in the United States suggests differently. Two major U. S. cities -- Washington, D.C., and Chicago --have tried banning handguns. (The U. S. Supreme Court is soon...

MONTREAL -In a way, Stephane Dion's leadership problems began on Day One, in December, 2006, when 82% of the delegates to the Liberal convention voted for someone else on the first ballot. When Dion stormed from third place to overtake Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, there were at least two other guys who thought they should have won. Actually three, counting Gerard Kennedy, who would have been third rather than fourth if a handful of his delegates hadn't parked with Martha Hall Findlay on the first ballot to reward her for an outstanding speech. In that sense, Dion wasn't even...

This Labour Day, I thought about the working class, the masses. No, honestly, I did. Okay, I was on the beach, but the folks around me lying on the sand had jobs they'll be getting back to this morning. They worked. They would be classed as workers. But they're not a homogeneous "working class," they're not conscripts in Karl Marx's "masses." The transformation of Labour Day, from a celebration of workers' solidarity to a cook-out, is the perfect precis of the history of Anglo-American capitalism. If you want to see what "the masses" are meant to look like, buy a...

My friend, noted Quebec academic and author Pierre Lemieux, submitted his firearms licence-renewal application directly to the Prime Minister's office this week. "Mr. Prime Minister," he wrote in a covering letter enclosing his Form 979, "I would like to suggest that you should enforce your own "laws" yourself. You will note that, as a proud descendant of the disobedient French Canadian coureurs de bois, I have not answered one of the form's indiscreet and obscene questions. I answered that my love affairs are none of your business." (Form 979 asks, among other things, about recently ended romantic relationships.) Atta boy,...

Nobody would trust terrorists in any other situation, but we journalists are such compassionate humanitarians that our brains freeze and our skepticism dissolves when Hezbollah utters two words, "innocent civilians." We believe them because on the ground in Lebanon we have no one else to believe. Of course, they can deal in fiction, lacking free and inquisitive reporters of their own. Nevertheless, nearly every journalist in the world seems willing to repeat Hezbollah figures on civilians killed by Israeli bombs, now one of the big issues of the crisis. But are the numbers accurate? How many of those "civilians" were...

He is found at the very, very end, these days, with little fanfare or triumphalism. If you blinked, in fact, you'd miss Him. But He is there, just the same, and -- to some people in the news media -- it is a very big deal, indeed. God, that is. At the conclusion of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's March 28 speech to the Conservative Party's national caucus, and his March 13 speech to our troops in Afghanistan, God is acknowledged, and His assistance is sought. "God bless Canada," said the Prime Minister on both of those occasions. And Mr. Harper...

Totalitarian movements have always featured the same myth: There is a people of God, and they have been afflicted by pollutants from within their society as well as cosmic forces from abroad. Then good people rise up in an act of rebellion and wipe out the evil influences. Essentially, it is the story of the apocalypse from the Book of Revelation. The pattern played out with Lenin and Stalin in Soviet Russia, with Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain and Hitler in Germany. The people of God were called the proletariat if you were a Bolshevik or a Stalinist. Or...

Canada's government run news organization, CBC news, had a story this morning about a fight between Reuters and the National Post, one of Canada's largest newspapers.

Israel's most urgent strategic need today is the completion of a comprehensive security fence along the edge of the West Bank. At home, failure to understand this vital effort is extraordinarily foolish. Abroad, those opposing this project are denying Israel the most elementary right of defence for its citizens while ensuring that the current conflict will be longer and bloodier. Controversies about the precise route of the fence are a needless distraction from this urgent task. Protect Israel's own territory now and deal with other areas later. The current, more limited, plan for the fence's route would affect a very...

News emerged on Friday that Paul Martin has asked United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to visit Canada. Mr. Annan, who met with the Prime Minister at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has agreed to address our Parliament in March. The subject of his presentation will be -- what else? -- the importance of the United Nations as an international organization. Mr. Martin is no doubt pleased with himself for scoring this coup. But rather than simply basking in the Secretary-General's Parliamentary bromides, we suggest the PM capitalize on the opportunity to convey to Mr. Annan the urgency of...

Israel's Ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, is in hot water with the Swedish Foreign Ministry in frigid Stockholm. While attending an art exhibition intended to complement an upcoming government-sponsored conference on "Preventing Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities," the ambassador unplugged three spotlights illuminating an exhibit entitled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth." Pictured in a small ship floating in a pool full of blood-coloured water, is a homicidal Snow White, not out of Hans Christian Anderson, but an Islamic Jihad homicide bomber who mass-murdered 22 Israeli Jews and Arabs at a Haifa cafe last October. Hanadi Jaradat is shown "with...

Our greatest responsibility is the active defence of the American people. Twenty-eight months have passed since September the 11th, 2001 -- over two years without an attack on American soil -- and it is tempting to believe that the danger is behind us. That hope is understandable, comforting -- and false. -- George W. Bush, State of the Union, Jan. 20, 2004 - - - The war on terrorism has been more successful than any of us dared imagine. Iraq is free. Afghanistan is freeish. Saddam is in jail. Osama bin Laden is in hiding. Two-thirds of al-Qaeda's known leadership...

All sensible husbands will agree with me when I say that it is very important to beat one's wife. They will therefore share my sympathy with Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, the preacher who was given a 15-month prison sentence in Spain last week for writing a book offering tips on wife-beating, the Muslim way. In Women in Islam, published three years ago, Mr. Mustafa recommends a three-stage approach to keeping the little woman in order: first, give her verbal warnings; next, if she still refuses to mend her ways, subject her to a period of sexual abstinence; finally, if even stage...

Israel is often excoriated by foreign governments and humanitarian NGOs for its use of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza -- particularly as they affect women, children and the elderly. But as Wednesday's suicide bombing shows, such security measures are necessary: Every Palestinian is now a potential bomber Indeed, the circumstances of this latest attack show terrorist groups are actively exploiting Israeli efforts to provide Palestinian travellers with humane treatment. The killer was Reem Al-Reyashi, a 22-year-old Gaza mother of two who had previously declared her desire to become "the first woman to carry out a martyr...

Canada is about to grit its teeth and begin discussions on a U.S. plan to create a missile defence grid covering North America. The plan to build one or two sites comprising long-range surface-to-air anti-ballistic missiles and radars was conceived in the 1990s by the Clinton administration, albeit at the behest of a Republican-controlled Congress. The justification was, and is, ostensibly, to defend the continental United States (and Canada) from missiles fired by "rogue" states which cannot be deterred from gross misbehaviour by America's nuclear arsenal. The countries most often cited as potential threats to the United States include North...

Canada is about to grit its teeth and begin discussions on a U.S. plan to create a missile defence grid covering North America. The plan to build one or two sites comprising long-range surface-to-air anti-ballistic missiles and radars was conceived in the 1990s by the Clinton administration, albeit at the behest of a Republican-controlled Congress. The justification was, and is, ostensibly, to defend the continental United States (and Canada) from missiles fired by "rogue" states which cannot be deterred from gross misbehaviour by America's nuclear arsenal. The countries most often cited as potential threats to the United States include North...

Last month, The New York Times published an interview with Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian dictator was on his best behaviour, asking the United States to revive peace talks between Syria and Israel, and even suggesting that his nation could have normal relations with the Jewish state. He also insisted that his intelligence agencies were working with the CIA to thwart terrorist attacks, pledged his support for democracy in Iraq and said Damascus does not give weapons or money to the terrorist group Hezbollah. That's the kind of message Mr. Assad knows the West wants to hear. Since the toppling of...

If you want to know what's really at the heart of the Palestinian conflict with Israel, don't ask the politicians or the diplomats. Go to the new experts: Palestinian children. Unlike the rest of the world, they've been paying close attention to what their leaders and educators have been teaching them -- and they're ready to sign their lessons in blood. Children interviewed on PA TV in recent weeks have stated clearly and without reservation that Israel has no right to exist, and that their goals -- for which they're willing to sacrifice their lives -- are Israel's destruction and...

When Afghans hear good news, they fire their guns in the air. And this is precisely what many Afghans have been doing over the past week to celebrate the approval of a new draft constitution by the Loya Jirga, a high assembly of tribal chiefs, religious leaders and other notables who have always been called to lead the nation out of a tight spot. The latest session of the Loya Jirga lasted 22 days, not the 10 initially planned, and produced more drama than expected. But the assembly, which ended its latest session on the weekend, has done its job:...

As we recover from New Year festivities, the customary thing for a columnist to do is to quote Robert Burns. Since my topic today is U.S. foreign policy, however, I will omit Auld Lang Syne and cite his even more apposite lines: "The best-laid plans of mice and men Gang oft agley." (i.e., often go wrong.) This is not a reference to Iraq where, despite the formidable problems of establishing a sustainable democracy in the teeth of terrorist resistance, the United States and its allies seem to be gradually getting the upper hand. Nor to the "Bush doctrine" of preventive...

American presidential campaigns seem to go on forever. It seems like years, not months, that the nine Democratic contenders have been racing for the nomination. I have some liberal, anti-Bush sparring partners, passionate news and blogosphere junkies whose e-mails keep me abreast of the Left's self-deluding fantasies of success for the Democrats in 2004. Last month one was gloating because Al Franken's anti-Republican Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell Them, had become a best-seller. This was apparently a sign that in 2004 Bush would be swept from office by irate Americans fed up with the "fascist" policies of his...

The advocates of Political Correctness enjoyed another great year in 2003. The spoilsports at the Canadian Passport office, for instance, decreed that there was to be no more smiling on passport photos. Then the Defence Department threatened to jail married soldiers in Afghanistan who dare to kiss their own spouses or even hold hands, let alone have sex. Not to be beaten to the PC punch, the federal Fisheries Department posted a $100,000 civil service job in B.C. open to non-whites only. In the eyes of Ottawa, some Canadians are a heck of a lot more equal than others. And...

Having lost the battle to block the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, war opponents are now demanding that Americans accelerate the transfer of power to Iraqi civilians. Yet, since the capture of Saddam Hussein earlier this month, many of these same voices have been insisting that international, not Iraqi, courts be given the task of trying the former dictator for his numberless crimes. Iraqi jurists aren't ready for such a complex case, the critics argue. Instead, they want the job handled by legal carpetbaggers from The Hague. In the case of many war opponents, the reconciling principle takes the form of...

'He is almost in from the cold." This is how British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described the latest position of the Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Straw described Gaddafi as "a statesman" and "a man we could do business with." An hour earlier, British Prime Minister Tony Blair had telephoned the Colonel in Tripoli to relay similar sentiments. Unusual words of praise also came from President George W. Bush. But why this sudden warmth for a man who was described as a terrorist mastermind only a week ago? What is it that caused this strangest of political epiphanies? The answer...

Never has so many congratulations been offered through such painfully gritted teeth. European leaders, Democratic politicians and media Big Feet all felt compelled to celebrate the capture of Saddam Hussein. After all, as the guardians of the moral conscience of mankind they are supposed to disapprove of dictatorship, torture and mass murder even more than most people. But since welcoming the downfall of Saddam also meant giving aid and comfort to U.S. President George Bush, that took all the fun out of it. Listening to European politicians as they followed up their praise for the skill and bravery of the...

BAGHAD - Acting on a tip, soldiers of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division descended on a hole near a house on the outskirts of Tikrit Sunday, where they discovered President George W. Bush's re-election. "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him for four more years," a beaming Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, announced at a press conference. Soldiers uncovered Bush's re-election hiding six feet below ground in a six-by-eight-foot hovel that was covered by a rug and a Styrofoam lid. To avoid skepticism among Iraqis and Americans, the U.S. military said it confirmed the second term's identity by...

It was bound to happen: a virtual Middle East peace accord in a world of virtual reality. The so-called Geneva Accord, signed last week by Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister, and Yasser Abd-Rabbo, a former aide to Yasser Arafat, has met with a mixture of childlike enthusiasm by some and wizened cynicism by others. Jimmy Carter has rushed to endorse the accord with one of his trademark Colgate smiles. The accord has also won some me-tooist support from a Kofi Annan looking for a side-stool for his United Nations. Colin Powell has been tempted into entertaining the architects...

For years, our Liberal government has sat on its hands as the federal Auditor-General, the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, the Conference of Defence Associations, Jane's Defence Weekly and the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century have all warned that our desperately underfunded military is headed toward irrelevance. This week, a new report came out with a similarly bleak message. But is anyone in Ottawa listening? In Canada Without Armed Forces?, Queen's University professor Douglas Bland and his co-authors warn that in every category -- equipment, personnel and logistical support -- the Canadian Forces are...

If Canadians needed further proof that their country has lost control of its borders, it was provided by Immigration Minister Denis Coderre's announcement of plans to permit illegal aliens to be granted work permits and apply for permanent resident status. Of course, the Minister was quick to point out that his amnesty was not a "general amnesty for all illegal immigrants." Presumably it will be a selective process with the mandatory "humanitarian component." The Minister also assured us that criminals and security risks would not be accepted. After all, said the Minister, "We must send a message that illegal activities...

Eventually somebody is going to have to stand up and formally declare the Kyoto Protocol to be dead. Now might be the time, since it's best to clean these global policy carcasses off the scene before rigor mortis sets in. Yesterday, for the umpteenth time in two months, a Russian official announced his government isn't prepared to ratify the 10-year-old United Nations plan to control the world's weather by controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Speaking in Moscow just as another UN climate change extravaganza was starting up in Milan, Andrei Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin's economic advisor, said Kyoto is inconsistent with...

Every time the Canada Firearms Centre is in the news, its credibility diminishes. Whether it is an exposé of bureaucratic incompetence at managing the computer system leading to the permanent extinction of the records of thousands of registered guns or the sending of an angry letter to a dead man, rebuking him for failing to register hunting rifles that had long been sold by his family, nearly every story about this billion-dollar fiasco provides another reason to scrap the entire project. The latest stories concern a typical administrative cover-up and an even more typical administrative screw-up. In response to the...

It is generally hard to find anything good to say about Bashar Assad. But the Syrian dictator surprised us over the weekend when he handed Turkey 22 Islamists suspected of involvement in the horrific Istanbul synagogue bombings of Nov. 15. Might this gesture reflect a newfound understanding of Syria's position in the world? Syria is bordered by Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. Two of those five -- Israel and Turkey -- are Western-friendly democracies; Iraq will soon be a third; and Jordan is leaning in the same direction. The despotic Baathist ideology Syria shared with Saddamite Iraq has been...

Recently, the final report of the Minister of National Defence's monitoring committee was released with little notice from the public or the press. The report's chief focus was the current status of Land Force Reserve Restructure -- the military's term for the rejuvenation of Canada's army reserves. The Committee's overall findings ought to have been disturbing to any Canadian concerned about the state of the army reserves. Canada and other Western industrialized nations need well-trained and ready-to-go reserves -- part-time citizen-soldiers to augment the regular forces. In the United States, Britain and Australia, the extensive deployment of regular forces in...

WASHINGTON - With a presidential election less than one year away, pollsters and political analysts say the U.S. electorate is more polarized than it has been since the Vietnam War. For millions of Americans, George W. Bush is the wedge. "I never thought I would see this happen, but within the Democratic Party and among many, many, many Democrats in this country, there is the same hatred for President Bush that you saw among conservatives and Republicans toward president Clinton during his administration," says Charlie Cook, editor of the Washington-based Cook Political Report. Time magazine this week declared Bush the...

Garry Breitkreuz, the Saskatchewan MP and Canadian Alliance firearms critic, says the federal gun registry will burst through the $1-billion expenditure barrier by 2004, rather than 2005, as once predicted. We see no reason to doubt him. Mr. Breitkreuz has been riding the gun registry file hard from the outset. And despite Liberal efforts to play shell games with the program's soaring costs, he's almost never been wrong. The polite, balding, 58-year-old former school teacher from Yorkton, Sask., has filed more than 400 Access to Information requests concerning the registry's inner workings. That may seem like obsessive behaviour. But sadly,...

No, this was not the way that Recep Tayyip Erdogan imagined the first anniversary of his party's historic electoral victory. Earlier this year, at a meeting with a group of journalists in Switzerland, the Turkish Prime Minister spoke of his hopes for "a year of positive change" in a country thirsting for reform. The idea, he explained, was to "speed up the process of restoring the armed forces to their proper role" and taking "the last big steps" towards Turkey's membership in the European Union while the economy, in the doldrums for a decade, would start showing signs of a...

Walter Duranty, famous 70 years ago as a distinguished reporter for The New York Times, has slowly turned into a symbol of the wilfully deceptive reporting on the Soviet Union that misled the West about the nature of Stalinism for many years. This week Duranty appeared in the news again when the Pulitzer Prize board announced its decision not to strip him posthumously of the award he won in 1932 for persistently dishonest reporting from Moscow. Duranty served as Moscow correspondent from 1921 to 1934, wrote several books on Soviet politics and won an admiring public in America. Meanwhile, he...

Like bureaucrats everywhere, the people running the UN believe above all in the growth of their power. This winter, undeterred by their failures in peacekeeping, AIDS prevention and women's rights, they are focusing on a new target of opportunity: the Internet. The rest of us may consider the Internet one of the great inventions of modern times, but it affronts the rigid conservatives staffing the UN. They are astonished that no one planned this global enterprise, and they can hardly believe that no one runs it. They yearn to regulate it, and they are working hard, at great expense, to...

TORONTO - These have been 10 glorious days for Canadian socialism. In Ontario, they pulled off the trifecta: endless Liberals in Ottawa; Liberals at Queen's Park; NDP at City Hall. "The socialist Utopia has arrived!" -- as my anarcho party-boy Mr. Toronto ex-boyfriend wrote, or something like that (the message makes me so cross I can't read it again). There is simply going to be no one left to blame, though head offices had better watch out. Anti-corporate sentiment in downtown Toronto is so coruscating one would not wonder if the Royal Bank picked up her gleaming gold skirts, (crinkling...

The best line from the speech George W. Bush delivered in London on Wednesday was just nine words long. Referring to the throngs of British protesters railing against the U.S. President and the war he'd started in Iraq, Mr. Bush noted that Britain's "tradition of free speech, exercised with enthusiasm, is alive and well here in London." After the laughter subsided, he added: "They now have that right in Baghdad as well." It was the perfect segue: at once deflating the political tension surrounding his controversial trip, granting a polite nod to the protesters, and presenting listeners with the irrefutable...

Horrific. Murderous. Repugnant. There are only so many adjectives journalists can invoke to describe terrorist attacks against innocent civilians. We have used them all up several times over. But still, the human bombs keep coming, their brains addled by a militant distortion of Islam. Yesterday's atrocities took place in Istanbul, which had been victimized just days earlier by deadly truck-bomb attacks against a pair of local synagogues. This time, the targets were the U.K. consulate and the British HSBC Bank. At least 27 people died, including British Consul-General Roger Short. The attack coincided with George W. Bush's trip to London,...

Yesterday's multiple bombings in Istanbul -- along with last weekend's two suicide attacks on synagogues in the city -- reflect the reality that Turkey is on the frontline in the war against terror. Though Thursday's attacks were directed against the British Consulate and the London-based HSBC banking group, the real target was Turkey itself -- its fragile democracy and strategic relationships with the West. Presuming the two sets of attacks are linked then the most important issue to address is why Turkey and why now? Here Turkey's close relationship with Israel may very well have played a role. Since the...

There's a tug-of-war going on for the soul of Europe. The opposing teams are France-Germany on one side and most of the European Union on the other. At least, that's the potential line-up: The EU will soon grow from 15 countries to 25, and some haven't quite made up their minds which side to join. Not surprisingly, they would prefer to join the winning side. Russia, for instance, spent the past few years alternately ringing alarm bells about Franco-German ambitions for dominance -- and then supporting the same, especially against the United States. To assure the triumph of their vision,...

On Saturday, suicide bombers detonated pickup trucks full of explosives outside two Istanbul synagogues, killing at least 22 people and wounding more than 300. It was the sort of atrocious, senseless crime that has come to be the calling card of militant Islam. For all the Muslim world's accusations against the United States and Israel, no one has done more to debase and defame the religion of Muhammad than the murderers who blow themselves up in its name. As for the many Jews who died in this attack, their only crime was belonging to the one religion on which the...

WASHINGTON - If there's one thing U.S. Democrats hate more than losing, it's losing big. For every fond recollection of Bill Clinton's winning ways, there is the sour memory of a Walter Mondale. Or a George McGovern. Or a Michael Dukakis. All were men whose presidential candidacy seemed like a good idea at the time, but who were beaten so badly they have become cautionary tales, metaphors for Democratic futility. Enter Howard Dean. According to conventional wisdom in Washington, the former Vermont governor has become the prohibitive favourite to win the Democratic presidential nomination and challenge George W. Bush in...

The security situation in Iraq continues to worsen. At least 26 people were killed in a car bombing outside an Italian military compound in the southern city of Nasiriyah yesterday. Following that, U.S. forces dropped bombs on a base in southern Baghdad where they believe terrorist attacks are being launched from. Various ideas are floating around about how best to turn this grim reality around. A leaked CIA report shows that trust in the U.S. occupation is continually deteriorating and close to reaching a turning point. The forces of freedom must act quickly. Some have speculated that the solution is...

Sunday's decision by the Israeli cabinet to vote in favour of a prisoner trade that will see scores of terrorists released from its jails in exchange for the safe return of an Israeli businessman kidnapped by Hezbollah, and the bodies of three dead Israeli soldiers, must have been an extremely difficult one to take. It may come as a surprise to hear that Israel -- which is famed for its tough stance against terrorists -- is willing to enter into such a deal that is likely to have strong ramifications for the long-term war against terror. On a human level...

It seems improbable that the murder by a car bomber of at least 13 Arab expatriate workers and five children at the predominately Muslim al-Muhaya residential compound in Riyadh over the weekend will be the turning point in the war on terrorism that some intelligence experts claim. Islamic extremists are too entrenched for that. Even though an array of moderate Arab leaders did quickly -- and sincerely -- condemn the attack, the jihadis who carried it out have far too much fanatical support on the so-called Arab street and Arab presidential palaces for this incident to mark the beginning of...

Fewer than two years after its liberation from the Taliban, Afghanistan is debating a new constitution for its future. The draft, prepared by an all-party committee, is expected to come into force next year after being amended and approved through a process of popular consultations. Those who opposed the liberation of Afghanistan (largely because America played the central role in achieving it) have already dismissed the draft constitution as either irrelevant or as bad as what the Taliban had on offer. For their part, those who wished to see the back of the Taliban, virtually at any cost, have rushed...

Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, says Russia will not join in the international effort in Iraq. This is not so much of a surprise as it is a disappointment. Mr. Putin is hiding under the cover of the United Nations to justify his decision, claiming that the UN is not playing a big enough role in the post-war occupation. The UN must be more involved in "directly managing the political situation" in Iraq, he said. It speaks volumes that at the very time that the United States -- a supplier of billions of dollars in foreign aid to Russia --...