National Post Podcast: Should Canada Repatriate Omar Khadr

I'm a huge fan of podcasts, and have had trouble finding good ones in Canada. I'm not sure how I missed this up until now, but the National Post has them.

Here is a good one with Jonathan Kay, Ezra Levant and Daniel Goldbloom arguing whether Canada should make the effort to bring back Omar Khadr. I won't give away too much, but I agree with Ezra. We have a roughly a thousand Canadians trapped in foreign countries, why does this terrorist get priority? Listen here for a lively 20 minutes.

Podcasts are perfect for people looking to hear good debates, or in depth interviews, that go beyond the shallow, 30 second, sound bite barking on cable tv. I love radio as a medium, but I find regular commercial radio virtually unlistenable. Podcasts are the answer, and it's almost entirely commercial free. It's great when you're doing things in and around the house, or if you have an MP3 player, to drive to.

Here's National Post's podcast page

My personal favorites are NPR, CSPAN Book TV and ESPN.

Great Ezra Levant Interview

Ezra at his best on a CBC radio interview. If you want to understand the Canadian and Provincial Human Rights Commissions farce clearly, listen to this. Scroll to Part 2.

via: Ezra Levant

Ezra Levant Thinks Arar is a Liar

On Omar Kadr's seeing Maher Arar in Afghanistan, Ezra Levant pulls out the 2007 Western Standard piece of investigative journalism on the huge questions and inconsistencies in the Arar case.

Maher Arar was declared by the breathless mainstream media to be a saint whose lamb-like innocence was never tainted by association with terrorists.

Word comes from another media darling -- Omar Khadr -- that Arar in fact was at an Al Qaida safe house in Afghanistan on various occasions, contrary to Arar's denials of ever being in that country.

All of which vindicates one of the most important cover stories the Western Standard ever ran, entitled "What really happened to Maher Arar?" You really must read it -- you'll learn things that just haven't been reported elsewhere, ranging from that fact that Arar's purported injuries from "torture" were never examined by an independent doctor; that when he was picked up by Canadian diplomats in Syria, he showed no signs of torture whatsoever -- only signs of not having bathed. Those are just two little tid-bits. Really: read the whole thing. It's a great story, written by Kevin Steel.

The Globe and Mail Not Getting It

I can't believe the Mop and Pail, pre-internet, used to be almost my sole source of written news. Today we get a scolding not to say "separatist":

“If [the harsh rhetoric] goes on, there could be long-term consequences. If you are mainstream, to be depicted as a separatist is a source of great annoyance. But if it stops, the collective memory being what it is, people are going to go on with other things.”

It's a source of great annoyance? Am I reading this? You vote a majority to the Bloc in every election since 1993 but don't say the "s" word? Huh?

Ezra Levant has fun with it. Separatists aren't the separatist threat. People who point out they're separatist are:

The separatists are divisive by definition -- they literally want to divide Canada. Their explicit mission is to undo Canada, to remove Quebec from Confederation. And they make up a third of the coalition's manpower -- without which the coalition wouldn't have the numbers to unseat the Conservatives.

.....

But! But if you mention that, if you call separatists by their own name that is divisive! That is dangerous to national unity!

Most Hilarious "Correction"

I read Ezra Levant's site regularly. He's a free speech crusader. He battles phony politically correct censors who will tell us what we can and cannot read. Yesterday, he had a hilarious take down of J-school professor John Miller, who was on a panel with him at a free speech conference. (Here)

Today I saw the headline "Correction." I was wondering what facts he got wrong in the previous article. It ended up being a laugh-out-loud post. (Here)

I think this is delicious. For a year, "the journalism doctor" has been lecturing mere bloggers like me (and mere international best-selling authors like Mark Steyn) about not being real journalists. We aren't responsible; we're not competent; we're not professional. What a hoot to learn that he's not a doctor at all -- nor does he have a master's degree, or even a degree in journalism itself. But he's so snobby about his "craft" that he pretends to have one.

Read the whole thing.