timeimmortal

…but some commenters are…crazy.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/09/11/mtl-turcotte0911.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r4:c0

Two in a row say that Jean-Claude Turcotte either should not have been given the award (if so, then so should not evry other person appointmed by that committee) or should have been stripped of it.

Another argues that human babies in the womb are not more important than born humans (they are not — all humans are of equal, high dignity) and goes on to claim that they are not as important as those killed in ‘back alley abortions’¹. The poster mentions ‘hundreds’ of such women while neglecting the fact that over 100 thousand babies are killed due to abortions. I say killed only because I wish to speak within the current legal framework, although each direct abortion is morally akin to murder, with certain mitigating factors such as compulsion lessening but not eliminating culpability. As a result, the poster is claiming that unborn babies are worth, AT MOST, 1% of a born woman. Even giving generous numbers for back alley victims — in the 10 thousand range — would yeild a value of one tenth. If one thinks an unborn child is worth, say, half as much as an adult, abortion on demand is a moral tragedy, let alone if one thinks mother and baby are of equal worth. Henry Morgentaler apparently saved countless Canadian lives (the ‘hundreds’ or even ‘thousands’ of women from back alley abortions) but since there are a finite number of women in Canada, they can be counted, as can the number of Canadians killed because of abortion (to the tune of 100 thousand unborn Canadians a year).

As to the Church wanting ‘barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen’ women, that does not follow from an apreciation for the feminine genius and for, arguably, the only thing which one sex (female) can do that the other cannot — carry children in pregnancy. (I think that everything else has at least an analogue in both sexes — competition in sports, management of organizations, contribution of gametes — and any differences are only of degree, not kind (lifting 700 pounds versus 400 pounds, for example)). Just because the Church promotes that which is unique to femininity (and to masculinity) and the particular ways in which, aside from pregnancy, one sex has greater ease or proclivity with certain aspects (say, empathy or spatial orienteering), but not the monopoly on said aspects (men can be very empathetic, women great in spatial thinking, even if women tend to have greater empathy and men spatial ability (whether they do is an empirical question which I do not have an answer for, but I am using these as illustrative exampels only)), does not mean that She wishes to determine the life course of individual people. (Holy run on sentence, batman)

That She prescribes and proscribes various actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy does circumscribe an area in which our actions can describe a moral life or not. But, I would think that the church would say that a couple comprised of a wife who was a successful lawyer, say, and a husband who was quite nurturing and worked part time in a school to help children with early literacy and was otherwise a househusband would be perfectly alright. That the woman would have to take some time off of work for children is not the Church’s fault and the Church would actually ask that her employer support her in her journey of motherhood with leave and employment guarantees. That is the way She would approach mothers-to-be, not by admonishing them to return to the kitchen and their husbands to ‘man up’ and get ‘real’ jobs. The Church supports the uses of the gifts of the husband and wife to the betterment of their family and of society, however that may come about. She simply reminds us that there are some things which nature imposes on us and which we must respect, lest we, say, birth control our fish to death by lack of reproductive ability through our abuse of our own nature and that of the rest of the world.

1. Ken adds: it should also be noted that the statistics which claim that hundreds or thousands of women died due to “back alley” abortions are patently false and that their falsehood was known even to many who propagated such nonsense:

1. Dr. Bernard Nathanson — who was one of the original leaders of the American pro-abortion movement and co-founder of N.A.R.A.L. (National Abortion Rights Action League), and who has since become pro-life — admits that he and others in the abortion rights movement intentionally fabricated the number of women who allegedly died as a result of illegal abortions.

How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always “5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.” I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the “morality” of the revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics. The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason which had to be done was permissible.

2. Dr. Nathanson’s observation is borne out in the best official statistical studies available. According to the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics, there were a mere 39 women who died from illegal abortions in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade. Dr. Andre Hellegers, the late Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Georgetown University Hospital, pointed out that there has been a steady decrease of abortion-related deaths since 1942. That year there were 1,231 deaths. Due to improved medical care and the use of penicillin, this number fell to 133 by 1968. The year before the first state-legalized abortion, 1966, there were about 120 abortion-related deaths.

This is not to minimize the undeniable fact that such deaths were significant losses to the families and loved ones of those who died. But one must be willing to admit the equally undeniable fact that if the unborn are fully human, these abortion-related maternal deaths pale in comparison to the 1.5 million preborn humans who die (on the average) every year.

Even the notion of the coat hanger-administered, “back alley” abortion is an outright falsehood: the vast majority of abortions carried out prior to Roe vs. Wade were carried out, illegally but surreptitiously, in medical offices, by doctors. But of course, we know what has been said about a lie told often enough.

Morgentaler may present himself as the saviour of women from butchers, but in fact there was no such reality in the first place.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Looks like fallout from the decision to award Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada is still floating lazily down from the sky. Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, of Montreal, returned his Order of Canada after seeing dashed his hopes that, “in light of the large number of protests, the Consultative Council for the Order of Canada would revise its decision.”

I suppose the Cardinal was justified in hoping that sanity might prevail, and that this controversial and disgusting decision might be reversed. Evidently, the Cardinal forgot that the decision was made by Canada’s “betters,” who likely viewed the explosion of protest as confirmation that they had made a good decision. Still, the Cardinal’s was a charitable assumption.

At any rate: good on him.

The Order of Canada has been hijacked by the left, in his view.

Jason Kenney, Canada’s Secretary of State for multiculturalism, says the Order of Canada has been “hijacked by a particular political faction that is not even making an effort to be neutral.”

Kenney is one of several MPs, Conservative and Liberal, who have denounced the appointment of abortionist Henry Morgentaler to the Order of Canada.

“If any good can come of this, it’s that Canadians will demand that the Order belongs to them and not to a small elite that simply reconfirms its own prejudices,” he said.

Kenney, however, does not see this award as politically partisan, noting that some Liberal MPs have also denounced the award. Manitoba NDP Premier Gary Doer has also come out against it. Liberal Leader Stephane Dion and NDP Leader Jack Layton, however, both praised it.

Prime Minister has publicly distanced himself and his government from the process.

Personally, I think the Conservatives were a bit soft in their reponse to this appointment…but at the same time, what could they do? They don’t control the selection process, after all.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

I’ve been sitting on this for about a week, as I had hoped to find the time to go through it line-by-line and see if I couldn’t verify the information herein. If true, it’s a potentially interesting analysis of the history of one Henry Morgentaler, who I understand has been in the news of late (something about a snowflake-shaped award-type bauble of some kind). But of course, that’s the first question, isn’t it?

But as I have simply not found the time to do the necessary looking, I submit the following to the near-light-speed fact-checking of the blogosphere. With that in mind, allow me to turn the blog over, for the briefest time, to Reader karol.

Did Dr. Henry Morgentaler assume identity of real survivor of Auschwitz Abraham Morgentaler???

Was Henry Morgentaler ever at Auschwitz??? If not, did he lie to us about his medical education in Germany??? Did he become an abortionist in an effort to cover up his ignorance of medicine that was showing in his general “medical” practice???? Did he become abortion activist just to save his life by staying in a spotlight just so MOSSAD would have a hard time to take him out as an imposter and a parody of real victims of Holocaust??

The “tattooed” number 95077 that Morgentaler remembers so well seems to be way too low. He allegedly arrived at Auschwitz in 1944. Henryk Mandelbaum who arrived at Auschwitz on April 10, 1944 had number 181970.

The only way Morgentaler could get away with his lie would be if Germans were to recycle their numbers. According to this link: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007056, it never happen with Jewish prisoners, and yes numbers were assigned not only in sequential but also in alphabetical order (going by last name of prisoner) in each transport that arrived.

http://www.auschwitz.org.pl/new/index.php?language=PL&tryb=szukaj_adv

Partially salvaged Auschwitz Records show 297 finds of numbers in 95xxx range. Many entries indicate that prisoner died in March or April of 1943. Some were shot dead on 19 of February of 1943, others were shot after an escape attempt on 13 February of 1943

Close numbers

Abelowicz, Chaim
ur.28.10.1910 (Słonim), numer obozowy:95043, zawód:krawiec

Pulchny, Stanislaw
ur.17.4.1915 (Głogoczów), numer obozowy:95103, zawód:rolnik

Anybody out there care to take a stab at vetting (or disproving) this information?

Update: Welcome, UnAborted readers!

Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad that the Calgary imam who filed a human rights complaint against Ezra Levant has swung his opinion ’round and set it against the HRCs, more or less.

But he still doesn’t get it entirely.

“Is it safe to say you miscalculated the public response?”

Syed:

It was not a miscalculation. I honestly believed at the time that, in Canada, if you felt offended by something that had been said about your religion or identity, this was the way you resolved the issue.

Incredible. 99% of Canadians had never even heard of the HRCs before he brought his complaint against Levant, and most still don’t know what they are. But Syed knew all about them. So where did he get this wacky idea?

Based on what I’d seen in the media and read on the internet, I thought this was a process that brought the parties together to set things right. I had seen, for example, that other groups, including members of the homosexual community, had done it.

Well, thanks again, gay activists, for your absolutely fabulous contributions to Canadian life! This is right up there with amyl nitrate and French bulldogs.

Yeah, gay activists‘ complaints against Christians who dare to publically express their Christian beliefs has brought people together all right — now more straight people hate gays than they did before! Brilliant…

And congratulations to an orthodox Muslim imam for taking a page from the gay agenda manual. I’m sure your co-religionists will be thrilled to learn who inspired you. Will Syed be the token “righteous straight dude” grand marshall at the next Pride Parade?

What a country. Syed, your Order of Canada is on its way.

…

Anyway, Syed’s newfound objections to the HRCs has more to do with this kind of elitist snobbery than with Enlightenment principles. He tells Maclean’s:

Basically, it’s a bunch of bureaucrats: some of them are lawyers, but for the most part these are people without a great deal of legal training. They have neither the ability or [sic] the means to deal with these sorts of issues.

And make no mistake — Syed wants “these issues” “dealt with”. Hooooo yeah.

I’ve never been a fan of the old saying “enemy of my enemy is my friend” — I’ve always preferred http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030929.html”>”enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy” myself — and I’m willing to grant that imam Soharwardy is a fair-weather ally at best. It’s good that he’s swung around to set his opinion against the human rights commissions, but it would seem that his transformation is only one of self-interest.

And self-interest is a fickle sail indeed with which to run any ship.

I haven’t really been commenting much on Omar Khadr, mostly because until recently there wasn’t much to comment about. Khadr, as I understand it, comes from a Canada-based family that has been investigated numerous times for ties to Islamis terrorism. In fact, aren’t some other members of the Khadr family currently incarcerated for their connections to terrorism?

Be that as it may, Omar is a dutiful son of this family, and signed on some years ago with the Taliban in Afghanistan vis-a-vis his father, who had moved to Afghanistan in 1996 and who later (in the wake of the September 11th attacks, in fact) moved into the mountains of that country, where it is thought that he closely associated himself with Osama Bin Laden (to such a degree, in fact, that the bin Laden and Khadr children were playmates).

Omar received weapons training at some point, produced videos for the Taliban, and was even photographed handling explosives for them. He looks like a fresh-faced youth, but it would seem that at every turn he has chosen to align himself with Islamic terrorists.

Khadr was captured after a firefight between Taliban militants and American soldiers worked out decidedly in favour of the Americans. The battle was fairly intense, requiring air support, and the Americans had thought that all of the Taliban fighters had been killed. Khadr, however, had survived. Confilcting reports exist, but it appears that Khadr took one last opportunity to throw a grenade at approaching U.S. troops before being subdued, mortally wounding Sergeant Christopher James Speer.

Recently, footage of Omar Khadr being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was released to the Canadian public. In it, two CSIS officers interview Khadr about his condition. He appears wounded in the video, and complains of his injuries. Information coming out of Guantanamo isn’t exactly the most reliable, but what evidence is available suggests that Khadr was tortured by U.S. interrogators at various points, using methods such as short shackling and stress positioning, as well as sleep deprivation and a few other methods.

Which, if true, is disgusting. Torture is a grave moral evil, regardless of how depraved the recipient thereof might also be. Yes, Omar Khadr seems to be neck-deep in terrorist connections, and he evidently has no small measure of blood on his hands as well. That doesn’t mean it’s right to torture him.

Now, a brief tangent. I like Matthew Good’s music, for the most part. When he wants to rock, he rocks, and then very well. And his subject matter, while often strange, tends to be a bit deeper and more thought-provoking than one might typically expect of alt-rock and post-grunge music.

That said, I don’t entirely agree with his stance on the Khadr issue:

Legally, Khadr should never have been taken to Guantanamo. International law dictates that he should have been classified a child soldier and treated as such. Instead he was shipped off to the world’s foremost black hole and has been a prisoner there ever since, subjected to God knows what. If FBI documents released this year are any indication, entirely unethical interrogation practices were certainly on the menu.

International law is actually not on the side of Omar Khadr in this matter. For the record, Khadr was 15 when the firefight in which he was captured took place. With that in mind, it should be noted that the UN convention on children’s rights stipulates that “state parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.” Of course, there are two obvious problem with applying this principle to Khadr’s situation: first, the Taliban are not a “state party”, in that they do not represent a national government but are, rather, a terrorist organization attempting to violently overthrow the government of Afghanistan. The second, of course, is Khadr’s own age at the time of his capture.

There is an optional protocol to the aforementioned UN convention which stipulates that state parties “shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons below the age of 18 do not take a direct part in hostilities and that they are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces.” Note that this does not explicitly prohibit people between the ages of 15 and 18 from voluntarily participating in hostilities. From what evidence we have available, Omar Khadr very gladly and freely participated in the cause of Islamic terrorism.

Moreover, as has been noted, the Taliban (and, by extension, al-Qaeda, which Khadr has also been associated with) are (again) not “state parties”. One could argue that this is a semantic objection, and that while the letter of the convention’s stipulations is perhaps left unsatisfied, the spirit thereof still applies. This, I think, is true. But even in that case, by the UN’s own definition a “child soldier” must be under the age of 15 years. Khadr did not meet this criteria at the time of his capture. So if one wants to appeal to UN conventions to decry Khadr’s situation, one is (sorry to say) out of luck.

Of course, the question can be raised as to whether a UN convention is really the foremost international legal authority in this matter. It might be better to look at the International Criminal Court’s statutes instead, since (unlike the UN), the ICC actually has power to prosecute “war criminals” to some degree.

With that in mind, the ICC’s Rome Statute stipulates that “conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities” is a war crime.

So here again, international law does not work out in Omar Khadr’s favour: at the time of his capture, he was (just) old enough to not be designated, under international law, as a child soldier.

Note that I’m neither agreeing with Khadr’s being incarcerated at Gitmo. Given that prisoners there are often tortured, I can’t really say that I support sending anyone there. However, I do dispute Matt Good’s appeal to international law on this matter; unfortunately, as regards young Mr. Khadr, the law is inapplicable here.

Of course, your average kill-em-all pundit thinks it all pathetic, that the video demonstrates that the CSIS agents that questioned Khadr displayed a semblance of compassion. But let’s remember one thing — they left him there. In fact, they, and the government of this country at the time, and currently, are just as complicit as those holding Khadr.

So what does that make us, exactly?

Well, it doesn’t say much about the moral fortutide of the Canadian government, admittedly. But then, neither does the fact that Henry Morgentaler is still apparently going to be receiving the Order of Canada. And unfortunately, Mr. Good is also over-simplifying matters somewhat in his statement here: it’s not as though the CSIS agents could have just escorted Mr. Khadr out of the prison at their leisure. Yes, he’s ostensibly a Canadian citizen, but he was arrested in the course of engaging in hostilities against American soldiers in Afghanistan. Under the same international law that Mr. Good erroneously appealed to earlier on, the U.S. does have a right to detain him in a facility of their choosing.

We can add to this observation the Chestertonian wisdom that to have a right is not at all the same thing as to be right in exercising it. Equally, though, Matt Good’s charge of Canadian “complicity” in the Khadr affair is off-base and incorrect; under the applicable laws, there’s actually not much the Canadian government can do. And now that Mr. Khadr is 21, the question also might be asked why anyone should feel that the Canadian government is obligated to do anything at all for an open supporter of Islamic terrorism whose own direct actions led to the death of a U.S. medic.

And in typically left-wing fashion, Mr. Good can’t resist implying that those with whom he disagrees are irrational, uncompassionate, and “back woods xenophobes”. Oh, and “Conservative mouthpieces” — leaving aside the fact that Mr. Good is himself something of a mouthpiece for Amnesty International, an organization that I (for one) no longer support because they now include abortion advocacy in their mandate.

Well, if you’re a Conservative mouthpiece from rural Saskatchewan that adorns their blog with the picture of a deal animal, it makes us noble allies in a xenophobic war against a religion of evil. If you’re a rational and compassionate human being that has the ability to view the complexities and personal history of Khadr’s situation, one that isn’t some back woods xenophobe and has grown up in a highly diverse multicultural area, it makes you sick to your stomach. If you’re a Canadian that believes that this nation is not the sort of nation that stands shoulder to shoulder with those that have been responsible for holding individuals for years only to discover that many of them are innocent (see the McClatchy reports from June), despite the fact that they’ve been denied their rights under the law and international conventions while, at the same time, those holding them profess to be globally instilling the virtues of the rule of law, then you have cause for serious concern. Because that is not what my grandfather and two of my great uncles fought to defend sixty some odd years ago, and that is certainly not the nation in which I want to die.

With respect to Mr. Good, I grew up in a fairly “diverse multicultural” environment, but this is not what makes me sick to my stomach regarding the issue of Mr. Khadr. Quite frankly, I don’t care what the colour of his skin is; I care that he chose to side with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and I care that he killed a U.S. medic with a grenade. What makes me sick to my stomach is the fact that he has been tortured, but I have no problem at all with the fact that he has been captured and incarcerated.

Were he Caucasian, I would say as much. Were he Catholic, I would say as much. Were he my own kin, I would say as much. In each case, I would say as much because I believe that people must accept the consequences of their actions, and I note that Omar Khadr’s documented actions were, at every turn, antithetical to the very principles that Mr. Good’s grandfather and two great uncles fought to defend.

I have traveled across this country almost seventy times, coast to coast, and seen more of it, and its people, than the majority of Canadians ever will. And I can honestly say, given my experiences, the acceptance, and even the participation, in such criminality is not what this country stands for.

If CSIS agents interviewed Khadr that means that our government has been complicit in condoning US detentions and all that they entail.

I agree that Canada should not be complicit in torture. But equally, I don’t think Canada should be complicit in releasing known terrorists back into the wild, so to speak. I don’t think it’s right that Omar Khadr has been tortured — that is, as I have said, a grave moral evil. But by saying that, I in no way mean to suggest that he should be released from custody.

If Canada stands for human rights, if Canada stands for freedom, and if Canada stands up for what is right, then Canada should work to ensure that known supporters and agents of terrorism are captured, tried, and incarcerated accordingly, with every bit as much vigour as she should work to oppose the use of torture against same.

In saying as much, I suppose that I do disagree, somewhat, with Small Dead Animals, the blog that Mr. Good is directing his ire against. Generally, on political matters, I agree with SDA to one degree or another, and it is one of my daily reads. But as far as I know, the operator of SDA, Kate, is not Catholic, so obviously I don’t agree with her sentiments that Omar Khadr “deserved to be dispatched then and there” (i.e. on the battlefield, by the surviving U.S. troops).