kimmy

The fact that most Canadians (or Americans, or Britons, or Australians) don't speak Arabic, combined with the fact that many Muslims are undoubtedly afraid to speak out against these clerics for fear of being ostracized by their own communities or fear of worsening the general public's view of their community, gives these rogue clerics a veil of secrecy under which to spread their views. For an example, you could look at Vancouver's Younus Kathrada, whose rants-- including the "pigs and apes" one that got him coast-to-coast press a couple of years ago-- were posted on his mosque's website, available for anybody in the world to download. But nobody in Canada actually heard about it until one of Kathrada's followers got his ass shot up waging jihad in Chechnya and mainstream media started taking some interest in Kathrada. Or, mentioned in the article, the DVDs in the mosque bookstore, or the secret video of the ranting. This stuff might be theoretically "out in the open", but in practice, it's not. Not unless somebody makes a special effort to bring it to the public's attention. -k

I greatly miss Train 48, a fantasy show that portrayed public transit commuting as a social activity. I also miss CBC's Snakes & Ladders, about a parliamentarian who cares too much. Like, that's just too funny! And Wayne & Shuster, which portrayed old-people as funny. What a nutty premise. Hey, wait a minute! I don't miss that stuff at all! -k

It's not out in the open. The general public can't just go sit in a mosque and check things out. The preaching is often in Arabic, so it's not like the general public could check things out even if they were inclined.It's not out in the open until somebody puts it out in the open it, as Channel 4 did. If it's the "out in the open" aspect that puts you at ease, then you should be thanking Channel 4, and the Guardian, and Sharkman. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? Should it only go one way?Church and state? That's a bit of a non-sequitur, isn't it? I don't understand what you're trying to say.When I said "have a lot to answer for," I meant in terms of bad publicity, not in criminal charges, if that's what you're getting at. They can say whatever they want, but people will view their statements accordingly. How am I supposed to address it? Should I tell all of the muslims I know that they had better stay in line?You personally? I don't particularly expect you personally to do anything, but I do take issue with criticizing Channel 4 for doing this investigation, and of the Guardian for reporting on it, and of Sharkman for making mention of it here.Publicizing the statements of these clerics, and voicing our opinions of it, is all that is needed. Bad publicity prompts the mainstream Muslim community to action, and vocal condemnation from the mainstream Muslim community is a far more credible response to the situation than "whitey" could muster. It's a pattern we've seen before: the mainstream Muslim community takes action *after* the public at large hears about these statements. You tire of the "boogeyman" aspect of it, and I tire of this sort of shrieking hysteria in response. "It's a witchhunt!" says the man in the article. "It's a boogeyman," says Charles. It seems to me that a key aspect of the "witchhunt" or "boogeyman" analogy is that there's no such thing as a witch or a boogeyman. Well, if radical clerics are "boogeymen" and the investigation is a "witchhunt", well Surprise! They found witches and boogeymen galore! Lots of 'em! I didn't read any mention of criminal charges in the article. If it were Canada, I'm not sure anything mentioned in the article could lead to criminal charges. But that's not really the issue. I don't advocate criminal charges against these clerics. I just advocate that they be exposed, and that their own community denounce them. That's more effective than anything the law could do. -k

Every time I read one of your messages, I'm amazed that nobody has offered you that $55,000 white collar job you think you're entitled to. -k

I don't believe in the least that the show intends it to represent all westerners. I just know that when the guy on the show says "If we don't stop 'em, soon we'll all be speaking Muslim," some cultured, urbane, Torontonian is going to say "HA! Typical Alburda dumbass!" I don't claim that's the fault of the show or its producers. It might be the fault of the Ontario public school system. Or maybe just a sign that the CBC hasn't actually done much to inform Canadians about each other, which I'd assume would be part of its mandate. -k

'nuff said. -k

I think it's an anti-fundamentalist rant, Chuck. Here in Canada, most Muslims are accepting of the fact that this is a multi-cultural society, and have no difficulties working alongside the rest of us. But there are still some who aren't. And unfortunately, some of those include Saudi-trained clerics who use their platform to spread a message that's incompatible with the values of tolerance and acceptance. If a priest of some Christian denomination, or any other faith for that matter, were caught making the sort of statements found in the Guardian article, they'd have a lot to answer for, and so I don't see why people have lowered expectations when it comes to Muslims. The proper way to respond to idiocy in our midst is not to pretend it doesn't exist, but to address it. And the proper way for Muslims to deal with this is not to deny it, but to denounce it, as Canadian Muslims did when they gave verbal beat-downs to Sheikh Younus Kathrada and El Masry, or as Australian Muslims did when they denounced that guy who compared western women to uncovered pieces of meat. -k

I recently saw a 60 Minutes piece on the Faith Based Initiatives office, in which David Kuo, a former Deputy Director of the office, contends that only a tiny fraction of the promised assistance or funding has actually been provided, and that the office itself is nothing more than a sham to get religious voters to vote Republican. Kuo in fact goes so far as to claim that Bush and his inner circle actually mock and ridicule the leadership of Christian movements behind closed doors. -k

That kind of sucks, but at least you're ok. If a concussion improves the quality of geoffrey's posts, I have a list of other members who I hope get concussions soon too. -k

A distinction without a difference (or is it the other way 'round?). isn't the redneck sterotype a mockery of redneck "culture"? I don't recall ever seeing a comic representation of "redneck culture" that didn't play on the idea that rednecks are stupid. You can certainly make fun of a culture or a sub-culture or an activity or an occupation or so-on without being demeaning to everybody who belongs to that group. Or, you can go the other way. To me, that's the distinction I'll be looking for. I don't have a problem with mocking stupid cultures or stupid people. What about a blanket depiction of people of a certain culture as stupid or ignorant? Except in that it portrays them as stupid.I don't agree at all. Of all the characters on the show, only Hank could really be considered stupid. Arguably Oscar, I suppose, although he's not so much stupid as just old. As I said before, the show makes fun of small-town life, not small-town people. Nope. All I said was saying was the character was a steroptype, but not a sterotype of all westerners. So? So this is where the argument that it's not a stereotype of all westerners starts to become blurry. Yes. That was my argument all along. How can you make a show, the entire premise of which is to present a humorous look at the clash of cultures, without resorting to sterotypes or stock characters? Does writing comedy depend on stereotypes and stock characters? Perhaps the sit-com genre does, I don't know. I'm sure, though, that most Muslims could relate some amusing stories (or incidents that could be turned into amusing stories, at least) that don't involve prairie bumpkins at all, so I don't believe that stock characters and easy stereotypes are central to the premise. You could do a fish-out-of-water culture-clash comedy set in an upscale neighborhood in Toronto if you were so inclined. -k

I will quote BD out of sequence, for the sake of a more organized response... This show would seem to prove you wrong. I'm not sure I agree with you. While some of the gags and plot elements you've mentioned will apparently poke fun at elements of Islamic culture, I haven't yet seen anything to suggest that the characters themselves will be made fun of. You could poke fun at urban hipsters' willingness to pay $5 for a fancy coffee without demeaning the intelligence of urban hipsters, or their value as human beings. You could make fun of Muslim practices without demeaning the people that follow them. But I don't think you could portray people as ignorant or stupid without being demeaning to them. That's the line that I don't want to see crossed here. And since Corner Gas keeps being mentioned here, I'll point out that Corner Gas makes fun of small town life without being demeaning to small town people. Early in the thread your argument seemed to be that it wasn't offensive, or wasn't really a stereotype, unless every single westerner on the show was portrayed as a stupid bumpkin. Now your argument seems to be more along the lines that it's a relatively harmless stereotype used for comic purposes, and stereotypes of white Christians don't carry the sort of historical baggage that stereotypes of minorities do. The question isn't "does the dumb redneck stereotype exist?" It is "does the depiction of a dumb redneck stereotype on 'Little Mosque...' constitute a 'disgusting' attack on all western Christians? Or is it simply recycling a (relatively harmless) cliche for comic purposes?" Something I feel is that to some people the prairie bumpkins they see on Little Mosque (or Corner Gas, for that matter) *do* represent western Canadians as a whole. (... much in the same way that to some people in this thread, the stereotypical effete latte-sucking snob in a turtleneck represents all Torontonians.) -k

Would Khan have crossed the floor if Dion hadn't given him the ultimatim? Personally, I thought it was neat when the Conservatives asked Khan to help them in an advisory role. I thought that extending a hand across party lines to ask for help was the sort of thing that we could use more of in our government, and I haven't heard any suggestion that Khan's enthusiasm for this advisory role is anything less than genuine. I suppose that cynics will say that luring Khan to cross the floor was the plan right from the start, but I am not yet convinced that Dion would have lost his MP if he hadn't given him an ultimatim regarding the advisory role. -k

For outdoor activity, I've never seen anything like Victoria. The enthusiasm of Victorians for outdoor activity is remarkable, and I've never been someplace where I saw so many people biking and running and rollerblading and so on. You hard-line conservatives are always the first to trash these "quality of life" surveys when they rank socialist paradises like Norway or Sweden or Canada ahead of the United States for "quality of life". And yet, first thing out of your bag when somebody questions how awesome Vancouver is? A "quality of life" survey. As always, I'm skeptical about the methodology. Did they visit the ski-hills, tourist-traps, and the nude beach, and say "wow, this place rocks!" or did they actually experience the traffic-jams, monsoons, and Indo-Canadian gangs first hand before coming to that conclusion? -k

Most Americans don't follow the CFL for the same reason that most Canadians don't follow European pro hockey leagues. Many Canadians DO follow the NFL, for the same reasons that many Canadians follow European soccer leagues, and that many Europeans follow NHL hockey. Out of curiousity, Drea, how many *Canadian* newspapers covered your special afternoon with the Grey Cup? The NFL is very popular in Canada, probably more popular than the CFL. For the same reason that NHL hockey is more popular than Pee-Wee hockey. That might not be the official name, but people will always think of it that way. (tagline: "Toronto's national newspaper!") I love the NFL, as much as I love hockey. Football is different from free-form sports like hockey, soccer, or basketball, where the play is continuous. But in those sports, even though plays don't start and stop like in football, it's often a case of "there's always something happening, but not much going on." In football, each play is a miniature battle, with many different elements at work. It blends individual athleticism and teamwork like no other sport, and has an element of strategy that surpasses all other sports (unless one considers Curling to be a sport.) No other sport relies on such detailed analysis of the opponent's strengths and weaknesses, and watching how these weaknesses are exposed or corrected in the course of a game is as interesting as the athleticism. Probably more than in any other sport, intelligence, strategy, and planning affect the outcome of a football game. -k

After Stephane Dion won the leadership, Liberal cheerleaders on this site were pointing to the polls showing Liberal gains and all but declaring the next election won already. Any suggestion that it was a short-term "bump" resulting from the convention was greeted with accusations of "desparations" and icons. Now? Looks like maybe that big lead the Liberals had right after the convention might have been a temporary "bump" after all. As for Afghanistan... I don't think a promise to withdraw after our committment expires in 2009 is exactly a Magic Bullet. 2009 seems like a long way off, and for the voter who considers our Afghanistan mission to be the key election issue, that's too long to wait. -k

Haven't you ever read a science fiction book where successive generations of clones turn into monsters because of random errors in the cloning process? I know it is science fiction but it is a mistake to assume that the cloning process does not introduce problems that would not occur with a natural clone/identical twin. As I understand it, we're not talking about clones themselves entering the food supply, but rather their offspring. Cloning is expensive and takes equipment and expertise, and would be ridiculously uneconomical compared to the "old fashioned" way of raising animals. Going to this expense just for the sake of slabbing the animal and sending the meat to Safeway would be utterly moronic. The application of cloning to our food supply would be in creating highly productive breeding-stock. A farmer who might have once said "Betsy here gives 25% more milk than any other cow in my herd. I wish I had a dozen more like her" can now get his wish. If a particularly productive cow was identified, you'd get her cloned, and probably breed her as well, to a bull whose female relatives are also noted for exceptional production. It's not clones themselves that'll be in the food supply, it's their milk or eggs. The same logic applies to meat animals. If you've got a prize bull that's exceptionally meaty in all the right places, you're not going to just send him to the sausage factory, you'll want to breed him. Instead of relying on selective breeding and luck to pass on these exceptional characteristics to the next generation, cloning would make it a sure thing. Cloning would give producers the chance to purchase proven stock. I'm sure that there are some long-term big-picture issues relating to issues like genetic diversity and so on, but if the issue is the safety of the actual food on your plate, I don't see an issue. -k

Yay! Happy New Year to everyone! I hope everyone has great happiness and success! -k

I love how PolyNewbie's (alleged) electrical engineering degree has turned into a "degree in applied physics". It has a nice symmetry with the way other Truthies' qualifications mysteriously inflate, like how Fetzer somehow morphed from a philosophy professor into a theoretical physicist. Well, here's two things we can all agree with, at least. This reminds me of the woman who bills himself as an FDA-recognized expert because she posted her goofy theory in a message on a comments-section of an FDA article. -k

Speaking of moving the goal-posts... So, are stereotypes only stereotypes if it's applied to every single member of the show? (did having a token Arab good-guy in "True Lies" invalidate criticism of the dozens of fanatical Arab terrorists in the film, for instance?) Or is it just matter of some stereotypes being "ok" and others being verbotten? You can still make fun of blondes, yokels, and white males in general, but ethnic and religious minorities aren't allowed right now. It used to be ok to pick on the fatties, but that's not ok anymore because of issues relating to body image and anorexia. But I think alcoholics are funny again, so that balances it out a little. You can make fun of black male stereotypes, but only if you're a black male. Anyway, if the Muslims on the show come across looking like Hogan's Heroes, and the white rural Canadians on the show come across looking like Schultz and Klink, then I'll be upset and I think the criticism will be well deserved. From what I've heard so far, that won't be how the show comes across, though. -k

From personal observation, this descriptions sounds remarkably similar to suburbs of Ottawa and Vancouver that I've seen as well. I spent the holidays in the Okanagan, and noticed that Kamloops and Kelowna now also have equally crappy-looking suburbs popping up around them. Y'know, Jerry, I don't think many of the people who come to Alberta looking for work in the oilfields or trades or labour jobs are the sorts who will be looking for jazz clubs or wine clubs or the opera or interpretive dance or live theatre anyway. Edmonton and Calgary do have all of those things, but as you mention, they're a small percentage of the overall picture. Here's a hint: they're a small percentage of the overall picture "back east" too. Some westerners have the notion that people "back east" are somehow more cultured or sophisticated or erudite than themselves; I've taken to thinking of this as "I Miss Trudeau Syndrome." One walks down the street in Edmonton and sees all the tradesmen with mullets and jean-jackets, and one thinks "this city is full of the most uneducated, unsophisticated people on earth," and assumes that if they were in a cosmopolitan city like Toronto or Vancouver, they'd be surrounded by cultured and urbane people like themselves. But they'd be mistaken. I've lived in Ottawa and Vancouver and Victoria as well as in Edmonton, and I've seen nothing to support the theory that folks in these places are more cultured or sophisticated or urbane than in Edmonton. Go to the opera or a jazz club in Toronto, and you'll find the same sort of person you find at the opera or a jazz-club in Edmonton: somebody whose tastes are far outside the mainstream of that city's population, and hardly representative of the populace at large. Go to a museum or an art gallery in Ottawa, and you know who you'll meet? Tourists. I visited the Museum of Civilization and the National Art Gallery and the House of Parliament when I lived there. They're certainly spectacular things to visit, and I recommend them highly. But if I wanted to find my classmates on the weekend, I'd go to the food court at the shopping mall. The slam against Alberta's climate is another one that I don't understand. Ottawa has by far the shittiest climate I've encountered. Rain, snow, sleet, freezing and thawing all winter. Shitty humidity in the summer, turning even a warm day into an intolerable, sweaty, gross sauna. It's just disgusting. I'm far happier with the occassionally uncomfortable cold in Edmonton than I was with the year-round sickening humidity in Ottawa. I found that the famously mild west-coast winters were also highly over-rated. Yes, it's comparatively warm. Unfortunately, it's also soggy, sunless, and depressing. Since I left, they've apparently added something new: monsoon season. During my visit to Okanagan country, the TV news emanating from Vancouver seemed to be non-stop coverage of the chaos being created by rainstorms and windstorms. Every day, the news hour was dominated by story after story of either the damage caused by winds and flooding during the last storm, or weather warnings and preparations for the next storm. Compared to that, I think I can live with the cold. BC's weather snobbery is becoming increasingly hard to justify. That's hilarious! But you're surely not under the impression that men attempting to use absurdly ostentatious displays of wealth or status to attract women is unique to Alberta?! -k

The difference being the LMotP character is not suppossed to represent all westerners in general, despite your protests to the contrary.Once again: what evidence do you have that the single character in question is intended to represent all western Caandians? Hi! Blonde here. I have this same argument every time I fail to laugh at somebody's hilarious dumb blonde joke. "Ok, come on. You're not *that* dumb, so obviously the jokes aren't about you." Yeah, but when I was growing up it seemed as though half the shows on TV and half the movies I saw had the same stock characters over and over... the comedies had blondes who were promiscuous bimbos, snobs, or gold-diggers; the dramas had blondes who were prostitutes, snobs, or gold diggers. At some point they realized it wasn't even necessary to have these characters talk or do anything; the audience could take one look at the character, recognize the stereotype being referenced, and say "ah, a promiscuous bimbo." I lived in Ottawa for a while and I know the stereotype of westerners that exists. Easterners say it doesn't, but it does. And CBC isn't above playing on it, either. They proved that when they did that feature for one of their news programs where a Toronto Liberal-voting woman was brought to Alberta to experience "western alienation" first hand. And while they allegedly made the effort to be even-handed, the image they portrayed for the folks back in central Canada was still carefully tailored to the stereotype. They took her to a cattle-ranch, an angry-people phone-in radio show, and country music at a pub on Whyte Ave. Huh? Come on, nobody goes to a Whyte Ave pub and finds country music unless they looked pretty hard for it. As Ricki points out, saying "oh, this doesn't represent *all* westerners, just stupid rednecks" wouldn't fly if the discussion was about anybody else. "Oh, these characters don't represent *all* black people, just the ones that drop out of high-school, smoke pot all day, sell drugs from a beat up car, and talk like morons." or "Oh, these characters don't represent *all* muslims, just ones that run around blowing shit up, work in convenience stores, and behead their own daughters for being unchaste." If you based a programme around either of those premises, you'd have some explaining to do, regardless of the fact that you're not claiming to represent "all" or even "many" of those groups, or of the fact that some members of those groups do actually fit the stereotype. It remains to be seen whether "Little Mosque" will be as unflattering in its portrayal of rural western Canadians as people here expect. I suspect that it probably won't. I suspect that the producers and the network are somewhat inspired by the success of Corner Gas. I believe that one of the key elements that makes Corner Gas appealing is that it's never mean-spirited or unkind, and I expect that "Little Mosque" will likewise be good-natured. I might give the show a look. I doubt they actually have the courage to do anything offensive to anybody. Unfortunately, I also doubt that they have the courage to do anything that'll be either enlightening or truly funny. I expect it'll be safe, cute, and rather bland. -k

As I mentioned here, people who go to Saudi Arabia don't actually have any much religious freedom: The airline, as your article mentions, probably spared the stewardess from having her Bible seized and destroyed when she arrived in Saudi Arabia. Saudis howled in protest when there were rumors that a Quran was destroyed at Guantanimo prison ... but they don't give the same consideration to anybody else's religious books. -k

Am I the only one who giggled when they read the thread title? I mean, I know the Conservatives are "frugal" on environmental issues, but $200?! That would only buy enough bio-fuel for Laureen Harper to drive her dirt-bike for a week. -k

A small point of order, BD: This is truthy. This is a truthie. These are truthies. Gost, I don't think that anybody here actually disputes what you're saying here. Politicans and law enforcement agencies *have* exploited anxiety over terrorism to obtain powers that are contrary to our ideas of due process and personal freedom. It is perfectly legitimate to be concerned that these laws could be used for purposes for which they weren't intended, or used unjustly. I suspect that Black Dog would probably be the last person to support giving law enforcement authorities the power to suspend peoples' right to due process. But you don't have to buy into the conspiracy theory to be concerned about the Patriot Act etc. It's not accurate to suggest that people don't care about the potential for abuse in these laws just because they don't believe 9/11 was all an elaborate hoax. If anything, the 9/11 truthies are doing a disservice to their fellow Americans by taking attention away from real issues such as the Patriot Act and related issues. They actually tarnish the image of people who are trying to defend civil liberties. If someone speaks about the potential for abuses in these laws, it becomes that much easier for people to dismiss them as "one of those kooks". -k

It is going to be +5 degrees here in Edmonton on today, the official first day of winter, so I'm officially declaring Global Warming back on. It was cancelled a few weeks ago, but now it's reinstated. As I've said before, a visit to the Columbia Icefield in Alberta's mountains with somebody who remembers what it was like 30 years ago is quite persuasive. Last week I saw a TV commercial illustrating the same point, showing successive generations standing beside the signposts marking the Athabasca Glacier's location when they were young. Millions of tons of ice can't be wrong. Glaciers don't fluctuate up and down like the lines on a graph. When they advance or recede it's because of long term trends. And for the glacer to have receded so far in the past 30 years, and so much farther yet since the highway was built in the 1930s, is much harder to ignore or dispute than charts or graphs. It's happening, and it's happening here in Alberta. Whether it's man-made or natural, whether it's a one-way trip or cyclical, whether we can stop it or are powerless, is all open to debate, but there's no question that it's happening. What's your overall take on Kyoto, then? It does have make an effort to put a price-tag on producing emissions. -k