Cdn-Firearms Digest Thursday, June 24 2010 Volume 13 : Number 927 In this issue: "REVIEW: Anti-Genocide Doc ‘Screamers’ Contradicts Itself,..." Copyright Bill C-32 Puts Your Rights At Risk [*NFR*] [US] Why Guns Are Good "Calgary police raids yield 16 weapons, 104 charges against 4 men" CBC - Controversial shooting range closes [P.E.I] Re: [US] Why Guns Are Good Re: "REVIEW: Anti-Genocide Doc ‘Screamers’Contradicts_Itself,..." THE MARK: What's the Deal with Canadian Politics? - Alex Himelfarb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:15:23 -0700 (PDT) From: Bruce Mills Subject: "REVIEW: Anti-Genocide Doc ‘Screamers’ Contradicts Itself,..." Subject: "REVIEW: Anti-Genocide Doc ‘Screamers’ Contradicts Itself, Calls For End of Private Gun Ownership" http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dgifford/2010/06/23/review-anti-genocide-doc-screamers-contradicts-itself-calls-for-end-of-private-gun-ownership/ REVIEW: Anti-Genocide Doc ‘Screamers’ Contradicts Itself, Calls For End of Private Gun Ownership - - by Dan Gifford http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/author/dgifford/ Genocide is an ugly subject that needs to be shoved into every generation’s face because the deliberate extermination of some targeted group by their own government occurs somewhere in the world during every generation. What does not need to be pushed in conjunction with that awareness is the propaganda of pacifist victimhood and the exoneration by omission of the most prolific mass murderers because of an affinity for their ideologies. One spreads the false perception that resistance is futile, that none of those marked for death can or have saved themselves by fighting back. The other avoids all mention of the political dogma solely responsible for most mass murder. Screamers is a documentary that does all of the above. Film director Carla Garapedian accomplishes that while following a tour of System of a Down. It’s a rock band of Armenian descended Americans (I reject hyphenated Americanism) who use much of their music to express outrage about the 1915 massacre of more than 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks and the fact that neither today’s Turkish government or President Obama will say it was genocide. “‘Screamers is about exposing the denial of all genocide, Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, the Iraqi Kurds and the current horror in Darfur. It is about making sure the same critical message George Clooney and Don Cheadle are ’screaming’ about is heard, that these atrocities ‘never happen again,’” says Garapedian. Never happen again? Her lips to God’s ears. But genocides always happen again. And the film’s exclusion of two reasons they do started me “screaming” at Ms. Garapedian during a Director’s Guild Q&A session. First, why are the mass killings of the Nazi socialists repeatedly named, while those committed by communist socialists are ignored? Second, why is there no mention that the Armenian genocide and all the others were preceded by a lawful disarming of those to be slaughtered by their own government and that those who broke those laws fought back and often lived? The film’s Cambodia example doesn’t mention Pol “The only good bourgeois is a dead bourgeois” Pot’s Utopian Marxism motivation. Worse, Screamers says nothing at all about the estimated hundreds of millions offed by Stalin, the Jong-ils and Mao Tse Tung regimes. That’s exponentially more dead than Hitler ever wet-dreamed about. So why do the most prolific butchers in recorded human history, the communists, get a Screamers pass, I asked? That question’s point got lukewarm acknowledgment from Garapedian and maybe 30% of the Director’s Guild audience. Gloria Allred even applauded after making sure she wasn’t alone. But my second question about armed resistance turned the entire audience against me and elicited a humored dismissal from Garapedian about that being “an interesting NRA idea she had never heard before.” She would have had she properly researched the subject – or maybe she did and found it politically incorrect. Either way, the facts were published long before Screamers was filmed by George Mason University School of Law Dean Daniel D. Polsby and constitutional law attorney / criminologist Don B. Kates, Jr. in the Washington University Law Quarterly. Having systematically disarmed Armenians through a series of decrees … the Turkish army and police were able to round up and kill over one million Armenians by a combination of overt murders and forced marches over hundreds of miles without food or water. However, thousands of Armenians from Aleppo province (modern Syria), who had secreted guns, took to the hills. Having defeated the first Turkish army units sent against them, they retreated from stronger forces in good order, until they reached the sea where the British, who were at war with the Turks, evacuated them. The Armenian prelude to annihilation was not unique. “The Nazis disarmed the Jews; the Khmer Rouge disarmed the Cambodians,” notes Emory University law professor Alexander “Sasha” Volokh. One Cambodian survivor recalled Khmer Rouge soldiers told villagers “We are here now to protect you, no one has a need for a weapon anymore.” … [This all] took nine or ten days, and once the soldiers had concluded the villagers were no longer armed they dropped their pretense of friendliness.” “It is an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed … We argue a connection exists between the restrictiveness of a country’s civilian weapons policy and its liability to commit genocide upon its own people,” Polsby and Kates concluded. Like the omitted communist connection to mass carnage, that’s major stuff to be missing from a documentary about preventing genocide — too major to have been unwittingly overlooked, I suspect. Screamers is being shown to world leaders — most recently Canada’s Parliament — as part of an apparent effort to advance support for a world prohibition on private gun ownership. It’s worth noting too that the most repressive United Nations members have long wanted to ban private firearm possession so they can more safely impose totalitarian control and commit future genocides if desired. Oops, did I just expose the twisted meaning of this UN headquarters sculpture that “self-defense is a privilege that governments may choose to grant or withdraw?” The practical application of that position is this: When the police or soldiers show up and it’s obvious they intend to kill you, do you have a right to defend your life or an obligation to obey the law and die? My Director’s Guild experience indicates the correct answer is die. But that’s no surprise in a Hollywood so smitten by collectivism that Mao’s Kitchen and it’s “Red memories” of 100 million plus Red murders are considered trendy restaurant decor. Perhaps the naiveté of passivism caused Garapedian to adopt the Michael Moore documentary model of only including those facts that promote her politics. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, June 24, 2010 11:09 am From: "Christopher di Armani" Subject: Copyright Bill C-32 Puts Your Rights At Risk [*NFR*] Copyright Bill C-32 Puts Your Rights At Risk http://www.ccer.ca/ On June 2, 2010 the Government of Canada undertook an important step towards updating Canada’s copyright regime by introducing Bill C-32: the Copyright Modernization Act. Although Bill C-32 appears to be more flexible than the previous attempts at copyright reform, this bill is flawed to its core by the inclusion of strict, anti-circumvention provisions. Understandably Canadians are concerned at how easily their rights are trumped by the overriding protection for digital locks included in this legislation and it is to this effect that the CCER has updated its online letter writing tool. Bill C-32 includes provisions to address consumer activities such as format and time shifting, however these are all subject to digital locks. For example, consumers will now be permitted expressly by law to rip tracks from a CD into an MP3 and then transfer it their iPod or to make a backup copy of digital content to protect against loss or damage. However it would be illegal for a Canadian to transfer a legally obtained DVD movie onto their iPad for later viewing since all commercially available DVD movies employ digital locks and circumventing these locks is prohibited under Bill C-32. It is precisely this blanket protection for digital locks that overrides the rights of Canadian consumers and creators, including any newly granted rights provided by Bill C-32. Your MP needs to know where you stand on the issue regardless of your views and even if you have already told them before. It is essential that Canadians speak up with their concerns about Bill C-32 while it is still open to amendments. Send your letter now and share this tool with your friends, family and co-workers while we have the opportunity. - -- Yours in Liberty, Christopher di Armani christopher@diArmani.com http://www.diArmani.com Check out the latest from Katey Montague at http://www.YouTube.com/KateysFirearmsFacts ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:46:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Bruce Mills Subject: [US] Why Guns Are Good http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/23/john-stossel-guns-good-save-lives-criminals-lubys-cafeteria-texas-handgun/ Why Guns Are Good By John Stossel Published June 23, 2010 You know what the mainstream media think about guns and our freedom to carry them. Pierre Thomas of ABC: "When someone gets angry or when they snap, they are going to be able to have access to weapons." Chris Matthews of MSNBC: "I wonder if in a free society violence is always going to be a part of it if guns are available." Keith Olbermann, also of MSNBC, who usually can't be topped for absurdity: "Organizations like the NRA ... are trying to increase deaths by gun in this country." "Trying to?" Well, I admit that I bought that nonsense for years. Living in Manhattan, working at ABC, everyone agreed that guns are evil. And that the NRA is evil. (Now that the NRA has agreed to a sleazy deal with congressional Democrats on political speech censorship, maybe some of its leaders are evil, but that's for another column.) Now I know that I was totally wrong about guns. Now I know that more guns means -- hold onto your seat -- less crime. **(This will be the topic, by the way, tomorrow night on my Fox Business News show.)** How can that be, when guns kill almost 30,000 Americans a year? Because while we hear about the murders and accidents, we don't often hear about the crimes stopped because would-be victims showed a gun and scared criminals away. Those thwarted crimes and lives saved usually aren't reported to police (sometimes for fear the gun will be confiscated), and when they are reported, the media tend to ignore them. No bang, no news. This state of affairs produces a distorted public impression of guns. If you only hear about the crimes and accidents, and never about lives saved, you might think gun ownership is folly. But, hey, if guns save lives, it logically follows that gun laws cost lives. Suzanna Hupp and her parents were having lunch at Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, when a man began shooting diners with his handgun, even stopping to reload. Suzanna's parents were two of the 23 people killed. (20 more were wounded.) Suzanna owned a handgun, but because Texas law, at the time, did not permit her to carry it with her, she left it in her car. She's confident that she could have stopped the shooting spree if she had her gun. (Texas has since changed its law.) Today, 40 states issue permits to competent, law-abiding adults to carry concealed handguns (Vermont and Alaska have the most libertarian approach: no permit needed. Arizona is about to join that exclusive club.) Every time a carry law was debated, anti-gun activists predicted outbreaks of gun violence after fender-benders, card games and domestic quarrels. What happened? John Lott, in his book "More Guns, Less Crime," explains that crime fell by 10 percent in the year after the laws were passed . A reason for the drop in crime may have been that criminals suddenly worried that their next victim might be armed. Indeed, criminals in states with high civilian gun ownership were the most worried about encountering armed victims. In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries occur when residents are home. But in the United States, where many households contain guns, only 13 percent of burglaries happen when someone's at home. Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in the Heller case that Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun ownership was unconstitutional. District politicians then loosened the law but still have so many restrictions that there are no gun shops in the city and just 800 people have received permits. Nevertheless, contrary to the mayor's prediction, robbery and other violent crime are down. Because Heller applied only to Washington, that case was not the big one. "McDonald v. Chicago" is the big one, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule on that next week. Otis McDonald is a 76-year-old man who lives in a dangerous neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. He wants to buy a handgun, but Chicago forbids it. If the Supremes say McDonald has that right, then restrictive gun laws will fall throughout America. Despite my earlier bias, I now understand that striking down those laws will probably save lives. John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at; www.johnstossel.com - -or; http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:55:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Bruce Mills Subject: "Calgary police raids yield 16 weapons, 104 charges against 4 men" http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Calgary+police+raids+yield+weapons+charges+against+four/3195639/story.html Calgary police raids yield 16 weapons, 104 charges against four men By Stephane Massinon, Calgary Herald June 24, 2010 10:03 AM Plainclothes officers in the 0-100 block of Heritage Gate S.E. saw a machine gun-style firearm sale taking place. Three people were arrested and a 2004 Audi A4 was seized by police and searched. Plainclothes officers in the 0-100 block of Heritage Gate S.E. saw a machine gun-style firearm sale taking place. Three people were arrested and a 2004 Audi A4 was seized by police and searched. Photograph by: Screen grab, Google CALGARY - A police operation into an alleged weapons trafficking ring has ended with 104 charges, 16 guns seized and four people arrested. Police said that the investigation took off when plainclothes officers in the 0 - 100 block of Heritage Gate S.E. saw a machine gun-style firearm sale going on. Three people were arrested and a 2004 Audi A4 was seized by police and searched. Police say the car contained a 9mm semi-automatic machine gun and three handguns. Searches were also done on an Edgemont house and a Toyota van. In addition to the machine gun, police say they found four more handguns, flare pistols with conversion pipes to fire 12 gauge shotgun shells, a double barrel 10-gauge shotgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, ammunition and a butterfly knife. Many of the weapons' serial numbers have been tampered with, say police. Police say there is no indication the suspects are connected to street gang activity. Mikkel Rydstrom-Poulsen, 25, of Calgary, has been charged with 24 weapons-related offences, Ahmed Zaghloul 24, of Calgary, also faces 24 charges, Andrew O'Neal Cox, 30, of Calgary, has been charged with one count of trafficking in firearms and Anthony Stephan, 33, has been charged with 55 weapons-related offences including trafficking in firearms and possession of a firearm with ammunition. smassinon@theherald.canwest.com - -- Letters To The Editor E-mail: letters@theherald.canwest.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:59:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Bruce Mills Subject: CBC - Controversial shooting range closes [P.E.I] http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2010/06/24/pei-shooting-range-closes-584.html Controversial shooting range closes Last Updated: Thursday, June 24, 2010 | 8:15 AM CBC News The couple running the new Big Boot shooting range in South Granville, P.E.I. has agreed to temporarily shut down the site pending provincial approval. Angie and Charlie MacDonald had permits from the federal government, but they did not get one from the province. A permit is required if there's a change of use for the land. In this case, the MacDonalds changed the use from forested to commercial. "They have a small building on the site. I guess it's a work trailer with wheels, and they thought it was portable," said Don Walters, manager of Inspection Services for the province. "They both came into our office and made application. It's been classified as a commercial storage building." Walters said if the MacDonald's application meets all requirements, such as environmental and safety rules, it could take anywhere from two days to two weeks to be approved. He added neighbours have the right to appeal to IRAC if the permit is issued. - -- Your View E-mail http://www.cbc.ca/contact/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:31:09 -0600 From: Edward Hudson Subject: Re: [US] Why Guns Are Good On 24-Jun-10, at 11:46 AM, Bruce Mills wrote: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/23/john-stossel-guns-good-save-lives-criminals-lubys-cafeteria-texas-handgun/ > > Why Guns Are Good > > By John Stossel > Published June 23, 2010 > > You know what the mainstream media think about guns and our freedom to > carry them. > > >>>. > > > Now I know that I was totally wrong about guns. Now I know that more > guns > means -- hold onto your seat -- less crime. > > >>>>. May we one day have a article like this printed in Canada. Sincerely, Eduardo ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:19:56 -0600 From: Edward Hudson Subject: Re: "REVIEW: Anti-Genocide Doc ‘Screamers’Contradicts_Itself,..." On 24-Jun-10, at 9:15 AM, Bruce Mills wrote: > Subject: "REVIEW: Anti-Genocide Doc =91Screamers=92 Contradicts = Itself, =20 > Calls > For End of Private Gun Ownership" > > = http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dgifford/2010/06/23/review-anti-genocide-doc-screamers-contradicts-itself-calls-for-end-of-private-gun-ownership/ > > - by Dan Gifford > http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/author/dgifford/ > > Genocide is an ugly subject that needs to be shoved into every > generation=92s face because the deliberate extermination of some =20 > targeted > group by their own government occurs somewhere in the world during =20 > every > generation. >>>>>>> "Genocide is an ugly subject." In Canada we seem way too prone to talk about the "RFC" as in the =20 "Recreational Firearms Community" rather than the much more important =20= "Responsible Firearms Community". We have the Right to own firearms to protect ourselves from our =20 Government, NOT for the "recreational" use for sports shooting of hunting and =20 target shooting. Sincerely, Eduardo= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, June 24, 2010 2:47 pm From: "Dennis & Hazel Young" Subject: THE MARK: What's the Deal with Canadian Politics? - Alex Himelfarb THE MARK What's the Deal with Canadian Politics? Like an episode of Seinfeld, Canadian politics has become a show about nothing. by Alex Himelfarb, Former Clerk of the Privy Council of Canada First Posted: Jun 22 2010 07:19 AM http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1740-whats-the-deal-with-canadian-politics As the Parliamentary session winds down, it’s pretty hard to summarize – or, for that matter, see – its accomplishments. With few exceptions, the session was dominated by old or second-rate scandals, procedural wrangling, MPs’ expenses, political staffers, G8 costs, weird outbursts, and a fake lake. As Tom Flanagan refreshingly admitted, for those who want extremely limited government, there was little to complain about. This was anti-government in action. But for those who believe that we face significant challenges and that government has an important role to play in meeting those challenges, this session underscores just how skilled we are at avoiding any issue that may actually matter to our future. Much has already been written about why this happens. Some say the problem is minority politics and the perpetual campaigning that comes with it. Some say that all politics has become pathologically partisan and negative because the messaging today has to be in “sound bites” that grab our wandering attention. Some say we are the problem, our lack of leisure, our loss of trust in institutions, our loss of faith that things can be fixed by government or anybody, or simply our indifference and preoccupation with more immediate matters. A few point to the lack of civics courses and the devaluing of the arts and humanities in post secondary education. And everybody worries about the media. Perhaps part of the answer is that for reasons of history and culture, the costs of tackling big issues in Canada are just too great. We have too many totems and taboos. Take medicare, for example, truly a Canadian totem that some even say defines our identity. Medicare’s totemic status is well earned having served us exceptionally well for decades. Its history is one of vision, courage and persistence. Even if few of us could recite the principles of medicare in the Canada Health Act, we sure do recognize when their spirit is being violated (witness the backlash against “user fees”). No wonder no politician wants this debate. But the world has changed since the passage of the CHA, we have changed, medicine has changed, not to mention the looming demographic crunch. We need to reaffirm our commitment to universal access to quality care and we need to ask how this might better be achieved in this changed world. At the federal level some would prefer to leave this issue to the provinces or let the system become more private, so they say nothing. For those who prefer the “public option” and see a federal role, solutions are not easy, quick or cheap, and rather than take on a totem they too say nothing, or only what is safe. Or take multiculturalism. Canadians are rightly proud that we see immigration as a solution not a problem and that by some combination of good fortune and design, we have understood that cultural diversity is a strength, an extraordinary asset. But none of that means that we should be afraid of a discussion about how to reconcile that diversity with our common citizenship or how to ensure that the prerequisites are in place for harmony in our diversity. A discussion of mutual accommodation may well unleash some nasty bits of multicultural anxiety but it will also allow us to affirm the core values that make Canada a beacon to others – diversity and inclusion, equality of opportunity, human dignity, social responsibility, peaceful resolution of conflict and gender equality. Avoiding this debate could allow fear or anxiety to shape our policies. There are huge political risks in taking on our totems. We need to understand the graver risks in failing to do so. We seem though to have another problem. When we do take on a tough issue – tough because it is contentious or raises thorny jurisdictional issues or is just plain hard to fix – if we get it wrong, if we fail, it becomes a policy taboo for decades. It’s as if we just get one crack at it. The National Energy Program, for example, so alienated the West that today we have no energy strategy. The Green Shift put carbon pricing in “the deep freeze.” Major social issues rekindle past jurisdictional wars and failed promises. We have been afraid to talk about federalism or institutional reform since the failure of Charlottetown and Meech. So with our totems and taboos, plus maybe some indifference and a bit of anti-government ideology, our politics is mostly fake lakes. But politics can be more than that – must be. And Canadians will step up when asked. When Haiti needed money, we responded. In protest of prorogations, we took to the streets to defend democracy. In Quebec, some brave attempts have been made to rethink health care funding without resorting to user fees and to grapple with the highly divisive question of mutual accommodation, notwithstanding criticisms from the outside and some questionable policy decisions afterwards. And perhaps inspired by the recently published GPS Report, we are seeing the first stirrings of a discussion of Canada's foreign policy. We do, on occasion, engage. For the most part, however, our political leaders are not even trying to tap into or inspire these interests. A former Prime Minister once commented that there are no votes in foreign aid or culture policy but taking these issues on gives politics its highest meaning – apart from winning of course. We are seeing less of politics’ higher dimension today and, it seems, less of winning too. So what to do? First, we need to do the policy work. If government or our political institutions aren’t doing it, then interested academics, practitioners and private sector leaders have to take up the challenge – even if only to be ready for the next crisis. Just look at how quickly crises that should have added some urgency to the call for active government turned instead into an assault on just that. How did the financial meltdown become a crisis of government – a call for restraint and cuts to pay for the bailouts? Centre and centre-left politicians were afraid to interrupt the gravy train and to take on popular tax cuts in the good times. Progressive voices weren’t ready for the crisis. They need to be. How did the horror in the Gulf become another guilty verdict on government when it should have been a call for tougher regulation on how, where, and whether we drill? Too many centre and centre-left politicians were afraid to propose anything that might have cost a bit of GDP growth, not even for the short term. Instead, they were silent in the face of the erosion of environmental oversight and the increasing willingness to take environmental risks. Energy alternatives were treated as a far-off issue. They weren’t ready. As long as our leaders are unwilling to take on totems and taboos, they will continue to obfuscate the moral choices before us and make even more difficult the determination of how governments might actually rise to the challenges. It will take courage to set out these choices, and to propose complex, sometimes difficult solutions. And cynics should note that this courage is not without recent – albeit rare – precedent. There is, for instance, a ray of light just as the session ends. An all-party committee of MPs – all women, it happens – have come together to promote action on HIV-Aids and Tuberculosis in Africa in advance of the G20 and the replenishment of the Global Fund. A few Canadians with knowledge, ideas and commitment, led by Stephen Lewis, drove the issue and a few politicians took up the cause. Political parties in Canada and beyond have increasingly become machines designed to win. Democracies benefit when active citizens are working to grab their attention and to force them to address the tough policy issues. All it takes are some citizens who have done the work, a few Canadians with knowledge, passion, eloquence, and persistence - and maybe more women in politics. That’s all. THE MARK COPYRIGHT 2010 ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V13 #927 *********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca Moderator's email: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca FAQ list: http://www.canfirearms/Skeeter/Faq/cfd-faq1.html Web Site: http://www.canfirearms.ca CFDigest Archives: http://www.canfirearms.ca/archives To unsubscribe from _all_ the lists, put the next four lines in a message and mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-digest unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat unsubscribe cdn-firearms end (To subscribe, use "subscribe" instead of "unsubscribe".)