Dispel the Illusion

Standard Oil was the world's first oil monopoly, and Rockefeller's greed was insatiable. Indeed, the Rockefeller family legacy is deeply entangled with the U.S.' current reliance on oil - and automobiles. Moreover, the family's "philanthropic" pursuits include a peculiar preoccupation with lowering the birth rates of the world's black and brown populations throughout the twentieth century - highlighting the absurdity of their claim to be promoting the well being of humankind.

It's about whether or not we, as a society, believe that justice should be done and should be seen to be done. It's about whether or not the prosecution has the necessary standards of morality that should come with their awesome powers ... It's about whether we believe that, in Canadian justice, the ends justify the means. It's about whether or not we can trust the people who have been given such police powers, and who want more. In the case of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the answer is no. We can't trust them.

Repeat abortions are now at record levels – in 2006, almost 60,000 were carried out on women who had previously had a termination, a rise of five per cent over two years. Some were having their fifth and even sixth abortions. Almost a third of all abortions are now carried out on women who have previously terminated a pregnancy. The figures were revealed by Anne Keen, the health minister, in a parliamentary answer.

“A Civilization of Love,” written by the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, continues to be a NY Times bestseller for the 5th week in a row ... (A) factor that seems to have boosted the book’s popularity is due to a recent shift in the view of Catholicism among those who describe themselves as practicing or non-practicing Catholics. In an interview of over 1,000 adults in the U.S., the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion found much more positive views of the Church and Pope Benedict following the Pontiff’s April visit to America.

A massive crowd of pro-life demonstrators, the majority of whom were youth, gathered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa today to issue a call to legislators and Canadians as a whole to put an end to abortion in Canada. An estimate given by a police officer to Campaign Life Coalition president Jim Hughes was that a record-breaking crowd of 8,000 people participated in this 11th annual March for Life. Several other crowd-counters came up with almost identical numbers, making the 2008 March the largest March in the history of the pro-life event.

If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she'd rake in a nifty sum of nearly $117,000 a year. That's according to a pre-Mother's Day study released Thursday by Salary.com, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm that studies workplace compensation ... This year, the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, while a working mom who also juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.

Local pro-life advocates in the Detroit area have found the bodies of babies killed in abortions and patient medical records in another Michigan abortion center's dumpster. The finding comes on the heels of one abortion facility that ran afoul of illegal dumping laws and was investigated by the state.

Employees in low-end corporate jobs now generally find themselves under constant persnickety scrutiny from the day they are hired. Before they even have a chance to prove the quality of their work, the wise manager is building a dossier on them -- even videotaping them, apparently -- solely to meet the possibility that he will need to let them go later and demonstrate reasons for doing so to a judge or tribunal.

Wheel and deal your way to a fortune even faster using debit cards instead of cash! All it takes is a card swipe for money to change hands. Now you can collect rent, buy properties and pay fines - with the touch of a button! It’s a new way to play the family classic that’s been brought up-to-date with modernized tokens ... higher property values and locations based on your favorite landmarks.

British consumers throw out a third of all food bought, worth some 10 billion pounds (12.7 million euros, 19.5 million dollars), a study showed Thursday. The average household throws food worth 420 pounds each year into the waste bin, rising to 610 pounds for those with children, said the study by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap).

She'd forgotten about the Monday-morning incident until she was called into the office Wednesday. Three managers greeted her, saying she had been caught on video, giving free food to a child. "They said, 'Remember, Monday you gave out a free Timbit,' " she said. "I had to think, then I was like, 'Oh yeah,' and I smiled because I thought I'd get a warning." Instead, she was fired for theft.

A Rockford abortuary has made the demonic side of the abortion industry readily apparent to the public by decorating its facility with a nun in a coffin, a crucified rubber chicken, and a set of sacred images arranged in a voodoo-style altar. Kevin Rilott, an Illinois pro-life activist who has often prayerfully protested in front of the Rockford Northern Illinois Women's Center (NIWC) abortuary that features the sacrilegious display, hopes that images of the offensive exhibition will expose the evil carried out at the facility.

The head of the Australian Christian Lobby group, Jim Wallace, says he is pleased the Federal Government has effectively stopped the ACT from legalising same sex ceremonies. The ACT Government has had to water down its Civil Partnerships Legislation, where couples will now be allowed to register their relationship, but any ceremony will have no recognition in law. It comes after the Federal Government refused to back down on its position on same sex ceremonies saying it will not accept legislation that mimics marriage.

It seems the British Columbia's Human Rights Commission, and possibly the federal Human Rights Commission, will proceed against Maclean's magazine for publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn's bestselling America Alone ... Comic? Not to Canada's marsupials. The bouncy creatures are hopping onto the track (to continue the race analogy for a moment.) They're jumping the fence, leaping about in the customary manner of their kind. No use saying to them: "Hey, Roos, that track is private property. Entrants must pay entry fees and post qualifying times." Or, especially: "You're trespassing on constitutionally protected turf." Duh? What's "trespassing" to kangaroos? What's "constitutional"?

Tinkering with "Our Father" has got Premier Dalton McGuinty into trouble with his mother. McGuinty said yesterday his mom, Elizabeth, is one of thousands of Ontarians concerned by his move to eliminate or scale back the recital of the Lord's Prayer in the Legislature ... "This is not an easy thing for my mother," McGuinty said of his family's Roman Catholic matriarch, who is in her late 70s.

This comes perilously close to telling people of faith what they may and may not believe. It reinforces fears expressed when same-sex couples won the right to wed that religious institutions that are morally opposed to same-sex "marriage" would be forced to perform such ceremonies. It's a slippery slope. Attorney General Chris Bentley and Premier Dalton McGuinty should rein Hall in before she tramples every right we hold dear.

The content has become diffuse, predictable, boring. In particular, with the triumph of "professional" journalism schools, and the credentialism that followed, "mainstream" journalists have come to represent a single, tedious class. Newspapers are now editorially staffed, overwhelmingly, by members of this one class, who think and sound like sociology majors, and express themselves in a jargon stream of pompous, preachy, preening, vaguely leftist and reptilian drivel.

At ports of entry across Canada, new signs should be erected: "Give us your terrorists, your hardened criminals and your human rights violators." As the Auditor-General's report on the Canada Border Services Agency suggested yesterday, this country is becoming a haven for the world's hoodlums, in the same way that Ellis Island represented salvation for Europe's tired, poor and huddled masses.

A new poll published in the United States on Wednesday claims that there are considerably less gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans than previously estimated. A Hunter College poll of 768 people who took part online found that just 2.9% identified as LGB. The gay population is normally estimated at around 5%.

Liam Watkins is 11. He was born at 24 weeks, weighing just 1lb 7oz. He lives with his mum, Wendy, 37, who works part-time for a supermarket, his father, Steve, 40, a welder, and his six-year-old sister, Becky, in Canvey Island, Essex. Wendy says: "Looking at the wonderful, perfect child that Liam is today, I can barely bring myself to remember what my 'baby' looked like when he was born at 24 weeks.

Trotting the globe on glamorous business trips, the former head of CBC stayed in the best hotels in the world where one night could cost as much as $1,000. Documents obtained through Access to Information show Robert Rabinovitch, former president and CEO of the taxpayer-funded broadcaster, enjoyed a two-night stay in London at Claridge's, among other high-priced trips. The $1,000-a-night hotel lavishes guests with luxuries such as in-room massages, chauffeur-driven cars and gourmet food.

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

"It is time to send a new signal about abortion, a less casual message, bringing Britain into line with the rest of Europe," said Ms Dorries. "With an increasing number of babies surviving at 24 weeks or below, we now have the absurd situation where doctors are battling to save premature babies in one part of the hospital and ending life in another part at exactly the same point of gestation."

Canada's Constitution should be opened to rein in the power of prime ministers who rule like monarchs surrounded by a tight circle of courtiers, a leading scholar on public administration says. Donald Savoie, a political economist at the University of Moncton, said Canada's political institutions are so broken ... "There are no effective checks and balances from cabinet, the civil service or Parliament to protect prime ministers from grabbing power and abusing it," he said. "We now need to go farther and define in law the role of prime minister, ministers and the civil service."

Every barrel of oil steamed out of the sand in Ft. McMurray is one more barrel that doesn't come from a misogynist, human rights-violating environmental basket case, usually a dictatorship, and often a sponsor of terrorism. The moral thing to do would be to pump as much oil as technologically possible from Ft. McMurray. Save the ducks? Sure. But I'd rather liberate Saudi women, save Russian democracy or stop Nigerian theft of foreign aid.

Rothkopf counts 6,000 of them - CEOs of major corporations, partners in hedge fund and private equity companies, national and religious leaders, a sprinkling of global public intellectuals, military leaders and cultural figures. They control oil, money, intellectual property, technology and the media. Rupert Murdoch is a member, so is Edward Johnson who runs Fidelity Investments, the world's largest mutual fund, as is Lakshmi Mittal who owns the world's largest steel company.

Pop star Pete Burns told of his happiness at the prospect of becoming the latest celebrity to marry his male partner. But now, just ten months after the big day, the singer has split from Michael Simpson, saying civil partnerships do not work and that he was happier being married to a woman ... He says that gay marriages do not work because men are too predatory. He also claimed there were too much "promiscuity" in the gay community for civil partnerships to thrive.

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.

The sums just don't add up. There's a world food supply crisis, the cost of a basket of groceries has shot up by between 10% and 12.5%, yet our supermarkets are recording healthy profits - Tesco's profits last year, for instance, showed a 11.8% rise. Meanwhile, farmers - the people who produce our food, say that they are being paid less than they were years ago ... Suicide among farmers is at record rates.