Articles in Newsletter – July 29, 2011:
(1) What Did The Norwegian Murderer Think?
(2) The 5 Big Lies Told About
(3) Response from Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff.
(4) Congressman Peter King Continues Radicalization Hearings.
(5) Letter to The Tennessean re
(6) The Launching of a new Canadian Magazine, “The Canadian Observer”.
What Did the Norwegian Murderer Think?
by Phyllis Chesler Israel National News July 25, 2011
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/1022/norwegian-murderer
The author strongly condemns the murder, but challenges the grieving Norwegian government and intelligentsia to do something effective about their own failed multi-cultural policies.
I condemn mass murder and the slaughter of unarmed civilian innocents.
Therefore, I condemn the shocking Norwegian-on-Norwegian, infidel-on-infidel, mainly Caucasian-on-Caucasian massacres carried out by Anders Behring Breivik—just as I have condemned the mass murders of Jewish, Israeli, Hindu, European, and American civilians carried out by Muslim Islamist terrorists.
Please note: Breivik may have feared and despised the refusal of first, second, and third generation Muslim-Norwegian immigrants to become Europeans, to embrace Enlightenment values—but he killed the children of those Norwegians who, in his opinion, were enabling Muslims to set up separatist and hostile enclaves in Norway.
Will this terrify the multi-culturalists as much as Islamism has? Will Breivik’s dastardly, dreadful action lead to policies which will finally begin to deal with issues such as female genital mutilation, polygamy, forced marriage, and honor killings on Norwegian soil? His constitutes only one terrorist attack and perhaps the first of its kind.
We must remember that in the name of Islam, Muslim Islamists have perpetrated thousands of terrorist attacks, both on their own people and on civilian infidels.
My esteemed colleague, Barry Rubin, writes that "There have been over 10,000 Islamist terrorist attacks, many of them against Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and others. The number of such attacks against Muslims in the West or indeed in the world is perhaps one percent of that number."
Also, historically, in the name of Islam, jihadists have colonized vast territories in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and
Nevertheless, Western political leaders, the media, and the professoriate have focused only on Western imperialism, racism, and historical slavery and have absolutely refused to focus on Muslim imperialism, racism and historical and contemporary slavery.
Meanwhile, the steady penetration of Islamic gender and religious apartheid continues apace in the West, especially in Europe, including in
The left-leaning multi-culturalists and "progressives" in Norway have refused to help endangered Muslim girls and women in their midst; the Norwegian government has refused to limit forced marriages to illiterate home country cousins, nor have they effectively intervened in matters of domestic violence when the perpetrator was Muslim as was his victims.
The fearless Hege Storhaug, has written an excellent book, now (2011) in English, on this very subject. It is titled "But The Greatest of These is Freedom. The Consequences of Immigration in
The kinds of leftists and multi-culturalists whose children Breivik fiendishly chose to massacre, are the kinds of leftists who persuaded the Norwegian government to stop funding this excellent website. They were accused of being…"Islamophobic." Storhaug and Karlsson are feminists, the sane kind. They want to extend the rights of freedom to every citizen of Europe and
Storhaug paints a bleak but accurate picture.
The majority of Muslim immigrants to
"In a typical classroom, a grand total of five Norwegian pupils may be expected to do the job of integrating no fewer than fifteen immigrant children – a virtually impossible task. Many grandchildren of immigrants start their first day of school without the slightest knowledge of the Norwegian language or Norwegian culture."
Native Norwegians have learned to live cautiously. Gay couples dare not hold hands in public in parts of
In Storhaug’s view, "marriage is at the heart of the immigration policy challenge, because marriage is the main route to
"a high rate of deformities among newborn babies of Pakistanis. The Pakistani population accounts for 3.4 percent of the country’s births, but fully 30 percent of the birth defects among newborns occur in children of parents with Pakistani origins."
Honor killings of Muslim girls and women are epidemic in
Storhaug describes the customarily heartless way in which Muslim Pakistani women are treated by their families. For example:
"Mina was…given a ‘choice’ among three cousins was pressured to choose a particular one – the one who had the weakest position on the marriage market, because he hadn’t been to school and was darker than most people in a region where dark skin is equated with low status and ugliness. This young man, according to Ahmed, was the one who most desperately needed a visa to the West. In the end, therefore, he was the one who got Mina – a human being reduced to the status of a living visa."
Storhaug analyzes the normalized paranoia that characterizes many Pakistani Muslim families. There is no privacy—privacy, which might lead to forbidden thoughts or acts, is viewed suspiciously. The slightest disobedience might lead to a beating or an honor killing.
Storhaug cites a similar problem in
"Historically, this is the first time that Denmark has experienced a wave of immigration by people who are explicitly antagonistic to Danish values and norms…all earlier immigrant groups…right up to the mid 1970s, had adjusted quickly to Danish norms and values. This included Dutch farmers in the 1500s, French Huguenots in the 1600s, Swedish and Polish workers in the 1800s, Jewish refugees from
According to Storhaug, "government officials who are supposed to help immigrant women enter the work force have instead formed an ‘unholy alliance’ with those women’s husbands. The husbands want the women to stay home, keep house, and raise children; and the employment counselors don’t want to harass the women by trying to push them into jobs, since their chances of finding employment are poor anyway. So instead they arrange for the women to take hobby-like courses in subjects like food preparation and needlework. Far from bringing them closer to the work force, these courses ensure that they won’t neglect their domestic duties. The government, in short, has made a compromise; it keeps Muslim women busy within their husbands’ strict boundaries and ignores their need to develop into skilled workers – and active citizens."
Storhaug, like myself and a handful of other feminists, are all haunted by the Western feminist silence about Islamic gender apartheid in the West. She explains that silence succinctly and accurately.
"The feminists are obsessed with their own ethnic Norwegian causes: longer maternity leave, shorter work days for the same pay – in short, everything that can give them a better life, materially and socially. At the same time, many of the classical feminists appear to be old socialists blinded by the multicultural dream – a dream, alas, that has led them to accept the oppression of women in sizable segments of the population."
Some radical Islamists and their enablers are now blaming the Israeli Mossad for Breivik’s actions. Others are blaming the anti-jihadist websites and thinkers whom Breivik apparently read. Will they now blame those feminists who have exposed the penetration of Islamic gender and religious apartheid into the West, especially into
Allow me to repeat myself: I condemn the mass murder of innocent and unarmed civilians no matter what the cause.
But I hereby challenge the grieving Norwegian government and intelligentsia to do something effective about their own failed multi-cultural policies and not use the tragic event as yet another opportunity to silence legitimate discourse and dissent.
The 5 Biggest Lies Told about Oslo Shooter Anders Breivik
The discussion about the
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-5-biggest-lies-told-about-oslo-shooter-anders-breivik/
5. We Can Blame Breivik’s Violence on Being Abandoned by His Father.
Many male children survive being abandoned by their fathers very well. Some do not.
But there is something else they share. When both men were one-year-olds, their biological fathers left. In Assange’s case, he had a stepfather until he was eight years old, followed by a second stepfather. When he was eleven years old, Assange and his half-brother began living in hiding and on the run with their biological mother. This lasted for five years as part of a custody battle.
In Breivik’s case, his father, Jens Breivik, an elite Norwegian diplomat (!!!), left when he was one year old. He rarely saw Anders, and when Anders thereafter tried to meet with him, his biological father rebuffed him.
One really cannot diagnose from afar and yet some (not all) father-wounded sons, which is something I wrote about in my book About Men, scapegoat women because they are angry at the fathers who have abandoned them. Assange has been accused of being sexually violent towards women. Some father-wounded sons are close to their mothers (as Breivik clearly may be), but inside they are at war with themselves. They struggle with repressed homosexual desire which is really a desire to be close to a loving and protective father and to be a “man.” Some father-wounded sons may also super-identify with concepts of collective male strength, e.g., with Knights Templar, etc. precisely because they have no strong identification with their own fathers.
Breivik is overly concerned with “masculinity,” with what he views negatively as the feminist influence — even takeover — of
4. Breivik Is Crazy.
Men kill, men steal, men torture, men concoct evil plots — men run concentration camps — and, at the same time, seem perfectly “normal,” “ordinary.” They are logical, lucid, functional, and, in the case of certain Nazis, also love music, their families, their pets. Men — women too, but in different ways — who commit cruel and evil deeds are nevertheless members of the human race. Animals do not behave this way.
Breivik got up every day, washed, ate, got dressed, and “went to work.” For years, he worked as an equity trader, as the director of a software company, and as a farmer. His real “work” consisted of planning this massacre. He saved money. He read books and articles. He wrote a (partly plagiarized) manifesto that is rather well written.
Unlike the Unabomber, Breivik was not a loner. He got out. He socialized. True, he still lived at home with his mother…
Breivik knew and probably still knows right from wrong. He knew that he was making a political statement, a horrendously bloody political statement, one that in his view was meant to save
As a former forensic psychologist and as someone who has been consulted by lawyers over the years many times, in my expert opinion (one rendered from afar), Breivik is more than sane enough to stand trial. He is also a violent, evil, sociopathic man. Men who rape their children, men who beat their wives, rapists in general, tend to pass most mental health tests and are spookily indistinguishable from the rest of the population.
Breivik does not hear voices, he has not repeatedly attempted suicide, he is not unwashed, unshaven; he probably eats. Just today, his lawyer said that Breivik takes drugs to “stay strong, efficient, and awake.” If these drugs include amphetamines and steroids, they could certainly put him at a dangerous remove from caring about the consequences of his actions.
However, as a writer, an intellectual, a human rights activist, a feminist, as a human being — and as one of the many anti-jihadist writers whose work Breivik cites, I cannot fathom how someone can spend a single second, no less 90 minutes, calmly and coolly shooting unarmed teenagers down or blowing government officials and innocent civilians sky high. And this is precisely what Breivik did.
3. Breivik’s Zionism Is Fused with Fascism, Proving that for Today’s Neo-Nazis the Muslims Are “the new Jews.”
According to The Daily Beast, Breivik is a typical neo-Nazi who, rather strangely, paradoxically, is also a Zionist. By definition, neo-Nazis and other fascists are not Zionists. In The Daily Beast’s opinion, “Islamophobia” is what currently unites European fascists/neo-Nazis and their allegedly “Nazi” leaning Israeli counterparts. However,
I have written many articles and a book, The New Anti-Semitism, which explain that Zionism does not equal racism; rather, today, anti-Zionism equals racism. Zionism is the liberation movement of a persecuted and oppressed people who are currently being demonized for daring to exist and to defend themselves.
Of course, The Daily Beast found a Jewish author to pen this claptrap, someone who just happens to have written a book about right-wing Christianity. Such ideologues are the first to condemn Judaism and Christianity as misogynist — but give a real Hail Mary pass to Islam.
The Israeli Mossad is not behind Breivik’s dastardly attacks, nor were they behind 9/11. Ironically, the Norwegian teenagers were being indoctrinated into anti-Israel activism on their idyllic island. There are many photos which show them holding banners saying, “Boycott
However, this is standard fare all over the world today, and the Mossad is not gunning people down over it.
2. Right-Wing Massacres Are the Same as Islamist Jihadic Massacres.
From the moment news of this horrendous tragedy was known, everyone briefly assumed that jihadists had attacked
On the one hand, we have the oft-trotted out Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber (who killed three people over a period of twenty years and whose manifesto Breivik partly copied); Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma; Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslims at prayer in the hotly disputed Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron; and now Breivik.
Kaczynski was not religious, nor was McVeigh and nor is Breivik.
Two high-profile school massacres (Columbine and Virginia Tech) were committed by bullied oddballs and by a raving schizophrenic. The 1989
And then we have Islamic or Islamist jihad which has launched more than ten thousand, probably at least fifteen thousand terrorist attacks against other Muslims, and against infidels (Christians, Jews, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Buddhists) — especially against innocent and unarmed Israeli civilians. According to my esteemed colleague Barry Rubin, “The number of such attacks against Muslims in the West or indeed in the world is perhaps one percent of that number.”
Also, historically, in the name of Islam, jihadists have colonized vast territories in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and
Nevertheless, Western political leaders, the media, and the professoriate have focused only on Western imperialism, racism, and historical slavery and have absolutely refused to focus on Muslim imperialism, racism, and historical and contemporary slavery.
Meanwhile, the steady penetration of Islamic gender and religious apartheid continues apace in the West, especially in Europe, including in
Comparing the four or five attacks launched by evil, paranoid, insane, or isolated individuals with the jihadists of 9/11, 3/11 (Madrid), 7/7 (London), 11/26 (Mumbai), the kidnapping of American embassy personnel in Khomeini’s Teheran or the jihadic attacks against American embassies abroad long before 9/11, plus the thousands of unsuccessful and hundreds of successful suicide terrorist attempts against Israeli civilians in the last decade — an assault which continues to this day — is illogical and unacceptable. We all stand in long lines at airports and remove our shoes. We are subjected to intense body searches. This is all due to the global threat of jihadic violence against the world’s unarmed civilians.
How quickly we forget.
1. The Anti-Jihad Bloggers and Intellectuals Are Responsible.
The Norwegian government’s refusal to deal with the reality of hostile, separatist, un-assimilated, and violent Muslim enclaves in its midst is what finally forced Breivik’s hand. The proof is that Breivik did not murder Muslims. His was a mainly Caucasian-on-Caucasian, infidel-on-infidel, Norwegian-on-Norwegian massacre. Breivik turned on what he viewed as a fifth column, the Norwegian elite. They had the power to insist that Muslim immigrants speak Norwegian and embrace European Enlightenment values. They refused to do so. His message to
Writers work with words; killers write in blood. Breivik could have read all our anti-jihadic work. Like the Dutchman, Geert Wilders, he could have run for public office or launched an educational campaign. True, he would have had to live with being demonized as a racist and criminally sued; ironically, Breivik’s violent approach has led to a similar outcome. Breivik could have made a film about the normalized violence against Muslim-European girls and women at the hands of their families or about the honor killing of Muslim-Norwegian women— but Breivik might have risked the Dutchman Theo van Gogh’s fate and been butchered by an Islamist. Breivik could have penned some fairly innocuous “Mohammed” cartoons, as the Swede Lars Vilks did — but he would have had to live in hiding and with round the clock security. Or, like Lars Langballe, a Danish parliamentarian, he could have spoken his truth and been prosecuted for “hate speech,” just as Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was in
There are other ways to “run with” the anti-jihadic expose of how Islamic gender and religious apartheid has penetrated
Response from our recent speaker, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, one of the people referred to in Breivik’s Manifesto:
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms the terror attacks that took place in
I very much regret that this psychopathic killer believed he had to make reference to my beliefs in his 1,500-page manifesto. I can hardly defend myself against such wrongful exploitation, but those who know me and hear what I say in my public appearances know very well that I reject any form of violence.
However, if well-founded criticism is blamed for those attacks, aren’t the critics of Olof Palme to blame for his murder?
Did Mahatma Gandhi’s critics kill him, or did the killer himself bear individual responsibility?
Were the critics of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy to blame for the murder of the crown prince, and consequently responsible for the outbreak of World War I?
I am a woman of words, and I have nothing to do with violence, which I categorically reject. In addition, I reject all worldviews that justify the use of violence. In this rejection, I do not care whether the ideology commands its power with the help of guns or swords.”
Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, MA
In spite of the above horrific attack in
King Opens Third Committee on Homeland Security Hearing on Radicalization, Focusing on al Shabaab
Washington, D.C. (Wednesday, July 27, 2011) – This morning, U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, convenes the hearing entitled “Al Shabaab: Recruitment and Radicalization within the Muslim American Community and the Threat to the Homeland.” The prepared opening statement of Chairman King follows:
“Good morning. Today, we hold the third in a series of hearings on radicalization in the Muslim-American community.
Our focus is the result of a lengthy investigation the Committee has conducted into the threat the U.S. homeland faces from al-Shabaab, the Somalia affiliate of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and Anwar al-Aulaqi’s al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
The Committee has been briefed by intelligence agencies and we have interviewed dozens of experts on al-Shabaab.
I welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses. They have some of the most extensive insights into the problems uncovered by our Committee’s investigation and we are grateful they are sharing their knowledge.
You will hear how al-Shabaab, who bin Laden called “One of the most important armies” of Islam, is engaged in an ongoing, successful effort to recruit and radicalize dozens of Muslim-American jihadis, who pose a direct threat to the
Some argue that al-Shabaab is only a Somali problem, and that the group will never strike outside of the Horn of
That kind of thinking is a glaring example of what the 9/11 Commission called a failure of imagination.
With al-Shabaab’s large cadre of American jihadis and unquestionable ties to al-Qaeda, particularly its alliance with AQAP, we must face the reality that al-Shabaab is a growing threat to our homeland.
Our investigation into this threat has led to alarming findings: Notably, that al-Shabaab has successfully recruited and radicalized more than 40 Muslim-Americans and 20 Canadians, who have joined the terror group inside
Of those, at least 15 Americans and 3 Canadians are believed to have been killed fighting with al-Shabaab, the Committee has learned.
Not al-Qaeda, nor any of its other affiliates, have come close to drawing so many Muslim-Americans and Westerners to jihad.
Three Muslim-Americans became suicide bombers, such as Shirwa Ahmed from
There also are radicalized converts like al-Shabaab commander Omar Hammami who was raised a Baptist in
Three American al-Shabaab fighters have been arrested after returning home and one was collared in the
Other radicalized Muslims have been arrested in the
But as many as two-dozen Muslim-Americans with al-Shabaab — who in many cases were trained by top al-Qaeda leaders — remain unaccounted for.
The Committee found that al-Shabaab-related federal prosecutions for funding, recruiting and attempting to join al-Shabaab are the largest number and most significant upward trend in homegrown terror cases filed by the Justice Department over the past two years.
At least 38 cases have been unsealed since 2009 in
Al-Shabaab is recruiting inside American mosques in Somali communities like Minneapolis and San Diego, according to the Justice Department.
This month, an al-Shabaab recruiter pleaded guilty to recruiting a large group of Muslims in
One Minnesotan recruited was suicide bomber Shirwa Ahmed whose 2008 attack in northern
Another would-be bomber from
When one cleric spoke out against al-Shabaab inside the
For those still skeptical that there are still jihadi sympathizers inside that community, it’s worth mentioning that the Committee learned of the mosque assault when an audiotape of the incident was posted on overseas jihadi Internet forums before authorities in
There is an enormous amount of travel by Somali-Americans between
They fear an al-Shabaab fighter operating under law enforcement’s radar – someone l
ike a Zazi, a Shahzad, an Abdulmutallab – may attempt an attack here.
It is deeply troubling that from the very beginning, the Muslim-Americans in
Al-Shabaab operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was charged this month for doing weapons deals and explosives training with AQAP in Yemen, and to, “Provide AQAP with material support including… personnel.”
Al-Shabaab has long harbored top al-Qaeda leaders, such as the mastermind of the 1998
Al-Shabaab has paraded in
Finally, an al-Shabaab bombing in neighboring Uganda one year ago that targeted Westerners killed 74 people including one American.
President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has said the Administration remains, quote, “Vigilant that al-Shabaab may expand its focus from fighting to control
That convinced me of the necessity to launch a careful examination of that threat.
Dozens of experts the Committee interviewed agreed this threat is real, and that al-Shabaab leaders’ public calls for attacks against
With a large group of Muslim-Americans willing to die as “martyrs,” and a strong operational partnership with al-Qaeda leaders in
We look forwarding to hearing more about the rising al-Shabaab threat from our exceptional witnesses, as well as the Minority’s distinguished witness.
Finally, I note that certain elements of the politically correct media—most egregiously the vacuous ideologues at the New York Times—are shamelessly attempting to exploit the horrific tragedy in
If they had even a semblance of intellectual honesty the Times and the others would know and admit that there is no equivalency in the threat to our homeland from a deranged gunman and the international terror apparatus of al-Qaeda and its affiliates who are recruiting people in this country and have murdered thousands of Americans in their jihad attacks.
Let me make this clear to the New York Times and their acolytes in the politically correct, moral equivalency media–I will not back down from holding these hearings. I will continue to hold these hearings so long as I am the Chairman of this Committee.
Apart from all the strategic and moral reasons why these hearings are vital to our security, they are liberating and empowering to the many Muslim-Americans who have been intimidated by leaders in their own communities and are now able to come forward.
I also owe it to all the friends, neighbors, and constituents I lost on September 11th. I will not back down.”
Source: ACT! For
A letter written to The Tennessean in response to Bob Smietana’s article on the ACT! for
Islamic ideology threatens
BY VIJAY KUMAR
PUBLISHED IN THE TENNESSEAN JULY 18TH
Bob Smietana misses the entire point in his July 10 article, "Anti-Islam group finds fertile ground in
The Quran is a political document that is diametrically opposed to the U.S. Constitution. The Quran is written into the political constitutions of every Islamic nation in the world as controlling law, usually to the exclusion of other law. Even the constitution of
Some of our laws that "contradict the established provisions of Islam" include such annoyances – under Islamic dogma – as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury and separation of church and state.
Yet, Smietana brands anyone who would point out such rational and incontrovertible facts as "anti-Islam." He made an issue of the fact that Bill French, aka Bill Warner, founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, "doesn’t speak Arabic." Bob didn’t mention, though, that 90 percent of the Muslim world doesn’t speak Arabic, either. Most of the imams or Muslim religious leaders, in
Smietana also made an issue of the fact that French has "no formal training in Islamic studies," but Bob himself has no formal training in politics, so, by his own "standards," he tries to walk where he has no place to stand, because the Quran and the Sunnah are political documents. The entire non-issue exposes the poverty of Smietana’s smears. Since when does the free exercise of speech in this nation require the blessing of academic elitists? It doesn’t take a degree in pathology to recognize death.
Even so, French has a doctoral degree in physics, so he is eminently more qualified to apply scientific methodology to an empirical analysis of the totalitarian theocracy of Islam than is Smietana.
Smietana’s tunnel vision on "local Muslims" ignores the hundreds of millions of people all over the world who have fallen victim to Islamic imperialism. Muslim masses of the world are the first victims of Islamic hegemony and bigotry. He ignores the fact that, unlike in other religions, reformation in Islam is impossible.
He ignores the fact that separation of church and state is impossible under Islamic law, and he ignores the fact that 57 Islamic nations are united under the charter of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in advocating the overthrow of
Magazine aims to renew Judeo-Christian underpinning of Canadian culture
Written by Deborah Gyapong, Canadian Catholic News Wednesday, 29 June 2011 09:17
A new culturally conservative Canadian quarterly, The Canadian Observer, has been launched by an Ottawa-based think tank.
“The culture has turned against Christians generally,” said Richard Bastien, a Catholic and retired economist who is a senior research fellow at the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies. Bastien also represents the Catholic Civil Rights League in the National Capital Region.
The centre’s president, Joseph Ben-Ami, is the magazine’s publisher.
“We are constantly being challenged by various aspects of the culture and we must respond to that challenge by showing abandoning certain beliefs and practices will lead to chaos,” said Bastien.
“What we are defending through this magazine is not just particular policies or ideas, it’s a certain understanding of civilization — Judeo-Christian civilization.”
Bastien said he hoped the magazine would provide an antidote to the “utopian ideology that crops up everywhere, including in some Christian circles.”
“The state is being vested with some of the functions that were legitimately assumed by the Church or by religious organizations in the past,” he said. “People now turn to the state to be told what is right and what is wrong. That’s dangerous.”
Bastien used the role of the family as an example.
“We are being told increasingly by the dominant culture that a society is made up of individuals and we should be concerned almost solely about individuals. The fact is the basic unit of society is the family and there’s a need for recognition of that in our laws and in our general practices.”
The magazine features articles by authors from a range of faith perspectives: Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim. In that respect, it resembles the American magazine First Things, founded by the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.
“I jokingly say that it’s a Canadian First Things-lite,” said Bastien. “But First Things is written mainly by scholars. This magazine will include contributions from scholars but it is not a magazine for scholars. It’s for the educated lay person.”
In the inaugural Spring 2011 edition, Ben-Ami writes about how the magazine Cité Libre, founded in Quebec by Pierre Trudeau and like-minded political thinkers in 1950, provided a platform “for the development and dissemination of left-wing ideas that were not in vogue at the time” but that eventually spawned the Quiet Revolution. Ben-Ami said the goal for Canadian Observer is to “provide a similar platform for the development of conservative ideas in the areas of culture, politics and public affairs.”
Bastien said the magazine will give prominence to cultural issues because culture is “the driving force behind politics.”
“Canadian Observer is pro-faith, pro-family and pro-life,” he said. “It assumes that there are objective moral standards and takes a critical view of modern liberalism, understood as the political expression of moral relativism.”
The magazine will be open to a range of political views, he said, and will focus on the renewal of Canadian values. The first issue features writing by Bastien, National Post columnist Barbara Kay, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada research and communications manager Andrea Mrozek, University of Ottawa English literature professor Dominic Manganiello and University of Western Ontario political scientist and Sun Media columnist Salim Mansur.
A free PDF copy of the magazine can be downloaded at www.canadianobservermag.ca.
NDP PARTY LEADER JACK
“Long after the political tussles of this year’s federal election have been forgotten, Jack Layton’s courage and grace in leading his party when he was suffering from cancer will be recalled, and will inspire.… In his obvious love of politics, Mr. Layton is a match for any other leader. It comes across as an expression of love of life, which is why, perhaps, Canadians feel they know Mr. Layton in a way they may not know other political leaders. And it is why his illness is a reminder that, in a democracy, what unites us is much more important than disagreements over policies.… When he said on Monday he will step aside until September, to focus on his fight [against cancer], he was like one of those hockey players, one of the very grittiest, who is knocked down and is struggling to rise, and the announcer says, ‘If he’s down, you know he’s hurting real bad.’ All Canadians stand behind him in hoping he is back in September, or at some later date, to lead his party again.…”
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