Thanks a million...

...to whoever bought me Stasiland from my Amazon wish list.

The Toronto Star's latest cause

Canada's largest newspaper says the Toronto Blue Jays are too white. They're not accusing team management of racism, they're really not, but...the team is, like, so white.

The Meatriarchy has all the details, and says he can't wait for the shocking!!! expose about the Raptors - all but one of whom are black.

Jacques hits racques bottom

Anyone see Jacques Villeneuve - 1997 F1 world champion, paid tens of millions of dollars a year, driving for a team funded with millions more in British-American Tobacco money, powered by the results of Honda's multi-billion-yen engine development program - struggling to get past the freaking Minardis at the European GP yesterday?

Many great F1 drivers - Emerson Fittipaldi, Chris Amon, Jean Alesi, Derek Warwick - have made horrible career decisions, squandering their estimable talents in inferior machinery. If it wasn't already clear that Villeneuve belongs in that class, it's beyond dispute now. What a waste.

The name has a nice ring to it

Canada's newest submarine - actually built by the British in 1992, and sold to Canada at a bargain-basement price - has been commissioned H.M.C.S. Corner Brook. I caught a glimpse of it sailing into the Bay of Islands last week.

It's a diesel-electric sub, of course. The Mulroney government mused about buying nuclear subs in the mid-'80s, but widespread public opposition (translation: a bunch of Soviet-funded "peace" groups got gullible city councils to delcare their cities "nuclear-free zones") killed it. Even if they're needed to patrol the world's longest coastline, nukes are so, so...un-Canadian.

How the "truce" will work

Meryl Yourish, who notes that nobody with a brain believes this farcical "truce" with Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Fatah will actually work (which is probably why the mainstream media is treating it like a major breakthrough), makes this prediction:

There will be some kind of terrorist attack. (Actually, I'm guessing there will be between ten and twenty per day, just as there always are.) IDF forces will try to destroy another Hamas terrorist cell. Hamas will declare that Israel has not fulfilled the terms of the hudna, and they are no longer bound by the cease fire. The EU will blame Israel for her "lack of restraint." The U.S. State Department will issue a statement saying that the Israeli actions are "not helpful."

Here's the full text of the "truce" agreements, which openly state that attacks will resume if Israel does not accede to all of the groups' demands, including the release of all Palestinian prisoners. (The Fatah statement also makes a disturbing reference to "Judeaizing measures," whatever that means.)

(via LGF)

Update: that didn't take long. Palestinian gunmen killed a Romanian worker near Jenin earlier today.

Essential viewing

This evening, A&E is showing The Nazi Officer's Wife, an extraordinary documentary about Edith Hahn Beer, an Austrian Jew who survived World War II by living as the ideal Aryan wife of a Nazi party member. (This being A&E, they'll certainly be rerunning it before long.)

The Holocaust deniers and conspiracy freaks would almost certainly dismiss the program as a slick Hollywood production designed to build sympathy for the nefarious Jooooooos, so there's no point in hoping they watch it. Instead, I wish Mikey Rivero could meet Ms. Hahn, so he can tell her to her face that she didn't really lose most of her family to the death camps.

I wish Zarko, Rivero's disciple in the Exposing the Exposer comments sections, could meet her and explain that her people must have done something to merit such prosecution, since no one hates without a good reason.

I'd love to see the slick liars at the "Institute for Historical Review" tell her "the Holocaust is getting hollower."

Ms. Hahn lives in Israel today. I'd love to see Tom Paulin tell her she should be "shot dead" for being a "settler".

And if there were any real justice in the world, these despicable, subhuman hatemongers would be exposed to even a portion of the suffering and pain this woman has experienced. I'd love to see whether they could make it.

These pathetic cowards wouldn't last five minutes.

The Comical Ali Automatic Quote Generator

Go mad!

Mikey Moore is losing it

Not that you didn't know this already. But his latest rant savages President Bush for not faking evidence of WMDs in Iraq. Or something. You figure it out.

"Stasiland"

The latest addition to my Amazon.ca wish list (ahem) is Stasiland by Australian journalist Anna Funder, who interviews former East German Stasi (secret police) informants and their victims. Charles Taylor's NotBankruptYet.com review illustrates the sheer depravity of what went on in the workers' paradise:

Funder relates the statistics: "At the end, the Stasi had 97,000 employees -- more than enough to oversee a country of seventeen million people. But it also had over 173,000 informers among the population. In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR [German Democratic Republic] there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens."

(Much-loved figure skater Katarina Witt was just one of many Stasi collaborators. And she's not exactly repentant about it.)

Funder interviews people who suffered the worst of that -- like Miriam, who put up anti-GDR placards as a schoolgirl prank (she was 16 at the time) and was then given a year and a half in prison for trying to escape. There is Frau Paul, whose son was born with severe stomach problems that threatened his life. After the Wall was laid out in barbed wire in 1961, she and her husband were denied permission to go to the West to obtain the medicine that was keeping him alive. "If your son is as sick as all that, it would be better if he [died]," the official she saw told her. The East German doctors who treated the baby were smart enough to recognize the seriousness of his condition and smuggled him into the West. Frau Paul and her husband attempted escape, were caught and given four years' hard labor. She turned down the Stasi's offer allowing her to stay with her son if she helped them kidnap the West German who was aiding refugees.

Over the past few years, Germans have been gripped by a fad called "Ostalgie", a tongue-in-cheek celebration of relics, products and music from the former DDR. People who wear Red "Young Pioneers" scarves might not want the Berlin Wall rebuilt, but you have to wonder what Frau Paul is thinking.

A shameless plea for hits

Ghost of a Flea has moved, and it's shamelessly pandering to the masses by offering hot photos of Kylie Minogue.

Works for me.

How to become a Saudi sporting superstar

Remember these Saudi and Yemeni table-tennis players who refused to play against an Israeli at the world championships? According to the Arab News, the Saudi player, Nabeel Al-Magahwi, has become a national hero.

If he hates Israel so much, you'd like an Arab player would want to face an evil Zionist at the ping-pong table, so he can have the glory of beating him. Instead, he ran away like a little girl, and his people love him for it. If there's any story which illustrates the sheer self-loathing of many Arabs, this is it.

Born in Al-Ahsa, Al-Magahwi moved to Jeddah to play for Al-Ahli club and said he never thought he would have to play against an Israeli.

“I asked the press and everyone who was following the tournament how I was supposed to face my Palestinian neighbor, whose two brothers and other relatives were killed by the Israelis,” he said.

In 1956, just after Soviet tanks crushed the uprising in Hungary, the two countries met in a water polo semi-final at the Melbourne Olympics. Instead fo walking away in protest, the furious Hungarians beat the Soviets in one of the most vicious, violent matches ever played.

That was how the Hungarians fought back. (They were not sending suicide bombers to the USSR or preaching genocide against the Russians, before or after the revolt, but that's another rant.) And now we see how the Saudis fight back. Says a lot, doesn't it?

Then again, the Hungarians were probably willing to concede that their Russian oppressors were at least human beings, while Saudis are brainwashed into believing "Jews are wickedness in its very essence."

It's bad enough that Arab athletes won't play against Israelis. It's downright disgusting that they won't let their disabled athletes play Israelis at the Special Olympics. The Special Olympians aren't intelligent enough to know the Jews are evil incarnate, I guess.

Athletic teams from Arab nations are refusing to play games against Israeli teams at the International Special Olympics in Dublin, Ireland, news agencies report.

The Irish paper Mayo News reported that the boycott is being blamed on government officials in the Arab countries, rather than the team coaches and players. Negotiations reportedly were ongoing to reach a resolution in the standoff.

(Fairness requires me to note that Israeli travel restrictions won't let a Palestinian handball player, who has Down's Syndrome, travel to Ireland for the games. Under the circumstances, there's no excuse for that, either.)

(via LGF and Zach Cohen)

We hate you! Don't leave us!

An independent poll, released just over a week ago, says Iraqis are disappointed and frustrated with their American occupiers - but less than a fifth of the population wants them to leave:

According to Iraq's first opinion poll, released [June 19]:

The survey, conducted by the independent Iraqi Institute of Strategic Studies, polled 1,100 people June 8-10 - two months after U.S.-led invaders toppled President Saddam Hussein.
[...]
The survey showed 56 percent of respondents were unhappy with U.S. efforts in the health sector and more than 50 percent faulted shortcomings in utilities such as electricity.

More than 70 percent disapproved of last month's U.S. decision to dissolve the armed forces, security agencies and the defense and information ministries, making 400,000 people jobless.

For all the bad-news stories coming out of Iraq every day, most Iraqis seem to realize that a deeply flawed American occupation is still preferable to an Islamic theocracy or a re-formed Ba'athist government. But the Americans (and British) have a lot of work to do.

Unprecedented Gall

If I wasn't reading it in a dedidedly non-hawkish newspaper like Ha'aretz, I wouldn't believe it. The Palestinian Authority is demanding more money from the United States, so they can buy off terror groups and re-arm their "security forces" - including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.

I am not making his up.

For a terrorist to cease his activity there is no need to kill him, they say. The method is to buy him off with money. In other words, the Palestinians are asking the Americans for money, and lots of it, to neutralize terrorists.

The Palestinians explained to the Americans that these are different groups in an organization that does not have a joint command.

And I'm sure there are people in the States Department who'd gladly give them the money.

(via Zach Cohen)

France is lost

Charles Johnson is rightly outraged by this JPost story, in which EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is quoted as saying there is no anti-Semitism in Europe. But he overlooks perhaps the most telling passage:

Members of the House International Relations Committee also pressed Solana to outlaw Hamas' political wing. "He really sidestepped that issue," Wexler said. France has insisted that Hamas remains a necessary player in the peace process. [emphasis added]

From the Hamas Charter:

For Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there.

Madness.

"Smugs"

Remember Richard Dawkins's suggestion that atheists start calling themselves "brights"? Angie Schulz and Andrea Harris have a better suggestion - if Dawkins's column is representative, anyway.

The forgotten refugees

A new group, co-chaired by Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, is demanding redress for the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced out of Arab countries following the creation of Israel.

Newly discovered documents show Arab states orchestrated the persecution of their Jewish citizens after the creation of Israel, then kept more than US$1-billion in property belonging to the 850,000 who left, Canadian experts said yesterday.

Canada chairs the Refugee Working Group established under the peace process launched in Madrid in 1991, but the group has never counted the displaced Jews as refugees.

Funny how the far left constantly accuses Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" despite the presence of over a million Arabs within the Jewish state (and a rapidly growing Palestinian population), but they never mention this:

In 1948, there were 856,000 Jews living in Arab countries; this number was halved within 10 years and has continued to fall, most noticeably after periods of conflict or tension between the Arab world and Israel. Today there are only 7,800 left, mainly in Morocco (5,700) and Tunisia (1,500).

Admittedly, some undoubtedly left because they wanted to live in a Jewish state. But all of them?

I'd have a lot more sympathy for the plight of Palestinian "refugees" (and I use the scare quotes because most of the so-called "refugees" have never lived in Israel) if the Arab world would show even a modicum of sympathy for what happened to their once-flourishing Jewish minorities.

Update: Meryl Yourish has more. It will not surprise you to find out that the UN has passed 101 resolutions about Palestinian refugees - 101 more than they've passed for Jewish refugees.

Comical Ali is back!

"My hair is not turning grey! I am not bald! The infidels are committing suicide at the gates of the Just For Men factory!"

Saddam's information minister has resurfaced in Baghdad, and he's giving interviews to Arabic-language television. I should hate this shill for one of the world's most murderous dictatorships, and I should be ticked at the Americans' appearent lack of interest in questioning the guy. But it's hard.

Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf - dubbed "Comical Ali" for his deadpan insistence that Iraqi forces were crushing the invading Americans - appeared in brief interviews on Al-Arabiya and Abu Dhabi TV on Thursday.
[...]
Looking thinner and greyer than three months ago during his daily press briefings, he declined to tell the Arab TV stations about the final days before Baghdad fell.

He refused to retract his wartime claims that Iraqi forces were "burning the Americans in their tanks", saying only that his reports came from "authentic sources - many authentic sources".

Quote of the Day (and maybe the entire year)

"Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy."

- John Derbyshire

The sanctions were working?

That's what Bruce Rolston and Josh Marshall are saying in response to the discovery of gas-centrifuge parts in Iraq. As Marshall notes, the scientist who led the Americans to this discovery had been ordered to keep the parts well-hidden until the UN inspectors went away, the world stopped caring, and Iraq could develop nukes in peace. The sanctions kept them from re-activating the program - even after 1998, when inspectors left the country.

That's one way of looking at it, I guess. Of course, Marshall overlooks the fact that the Americans were still keeping a very close watch on Iraq even after 1998, and that any indisputable evidence of a reactivated program would have led to a swift, definitive reaction. Only when the UN sanctions were completely lifted, and the spotlight completely removed from Iraq, would the program resume - and that opportunity never arose.

The discovery, assuming it's legitimate, is proof that Saddam never let go of his nuclear ambitions, and was simply waiting for the right moment. If he was still planning to build nuclear weapons, no matter how far down the road, he was in breach of the obligations imposed upon him after the first Gulf War. Instead of making me think the sanctions were working, this discovery simply strengthens my resolve that Saddam had to be removed.

Either way, this is not an argument we're going to see from the Bush-is-Hitler mob anytime soon. After all, they wanted the sanctions lifted without conditions, which would have given Saddam the opportunity he was waiting for. Some "peace" activists may have wanted Saddam to get the bomb (a local crank regularly writes letters to the Western Star making this argument), but most are not willing to admit it.

Qaddafi's daughter is a babe

(By children-of-dictators standards, anyway. Ever see Ceaucescu's daughter? Blech.)

Too bad Aisha al Qaddafi is as nutty as her dad:

Rumors in the Arab World say Qaddafi is grooming his daughter to succeed him, disregarding his three sons who spend most of their time on soccer and waste their money on sports teams in Italy.

It is noteworthy to mention that Aisha also led a Libyan delegation in the first air trip to Baghdad in October 2000 in a bid to break the aerial embargo imposed by the UN on Iraq since 1990. The now-toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein met her in Baghdad at that time. She was then quoted as saying, "We made the trip without permission from anybody because our visit is like moving from one room to another in the same house where no permission is needed." She added, "this visit depicts brotherhood and solidarity with the brotherly Iraqi people and salutes them for their resistance of the imperialistic and oppressive powers which ultimately will be defeated. The people of Iraq will then remain proud with their heads up."

(via Marduk)

Hey, what's Mikey Rivero writing these days?

Osama Bin Laden, is in fact a creation of U.S. and British intelligence services operating under the doctrine of Zbigniew Brzezinski, and his Trilateral Commission underling Samuel Huntington's theory of the "Clash of Civilizations."

Oh.

Mikey also mocks the Bush Administration's alleged claim that they've uncovered a nuclear centrifuge in Iraq, noting that hundreds of centrifuges are needed to make nuclear weapons. For once, he's right. Which is probably why the very CNN story to which he links (and mocks as a CNN/CIA/Zionist spin campaign) refers to the find as "parts of a gas centrifuge system" (emphasis added), features the sub-heading "U.S. officials: Find is not smoking gun," and contains the phrase "U.S. officials emphasized this was not evidence Iraq had a nuclear weapon -- but it was evidence the Iraqis concealed plans to reconstitute their nuclear program as soon as the world was no longer looking."

Frankly, you paranoid, bigoted, tinfoil-hatted freak, CNN is a hell of a lot more honest than you'll ever be.

Pilger's staggering dishonesty

You know John Pilger has gone too far when his radically anti-American "journalism" is too much even for the BBC. In this week's Spectator, BBC correspondent John Sweeney takes the Pilger Man to task for his insistence that depleted uranium has caused an "epidemic" of cancer and birth defects in Iraq - while ignoring the evidence which suggests Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons is the primary culprit:

Pilger wrote in the Daily Mirror just before the war, ‘Depleted uranium [is] a sinister component of tank shells and airborne missiles. In truth, it is a form of nuclear warfare, and all the evidence suggests that its use in the Gulf war in 1991 has caused an epidemic in southern Iraq: what the doctors there call “the Hiroshima effect”, especially among children.’ That the cancer rates from 1991 onwards are the fault of the West’s depleted-uranium weapons alone was one of Saddam’s central messages.
[...]
Hang on a minute. Cancers don’t happen overnight. They develop after a latency period of at least four years. The Iraqis reported a rash of cancers in the south from 1992 onwards. The cancers that happened in 1992 cannot, scientifically, have been caused in 1992 — or 1991 when the depleted uranium was used — but at least four years before that. ‘To say any different is ridiculous; it would deny the evidence from Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’ Dr Nick Plowman, the head of oncology at Barts, told me.

Pilger knows all about chemical weapons. He wrote in the Mirror in January, ‘I often came upon terribly deformed Vietnamese children in villages where American aircraft had sprayed a herbicide called Agent Orange. This terrible chemical weapon was dumped on almost half of South Vietnam. Today, as the poison continues to move through water and soil and food, children continue to be born without palates and chins and scrotums or are stillborn. Many have leukaemia.’ If chemical weapons cause cancers in Vietnam, why don’t they do the same in Iraq? The answer seems a simple one: chemical weapons cause cancer so long as they are dropped by the Americans.

"I accuse John Pilger of cheating the public and favouring a dictator," writes Sweeney. So do I.

Moral blindness and the Palestinian cause

Outstanding column in the Los Angeles Times by Martin Peretz, noting the complete moral blindness of "progressives" who support Palestinian terror:

Let us concede, as I do, that the Palestinians need a state. But let us also concede that, had not the Palestinians started a bloody insurrection in the midst of negotiations with Israel during the fall of 2000 and turned that into a Walpurgisnacht of unrelenting terror, they would already have a state and be on their way to as robust an independence as they could manage — contingent only on the peacefulness of their borders.

The truth is that no one who has had a real hearing among the Palestinians has ever articulated a vision of Palestine that is premised on an idea of social justice, a new relationship between the classes, among the clans and tribes, between the sexes. Believe me, Palestine will not be a democratic state because Palestine is not a democratic or tolerant society. This is in devastating contrast to the Zionist enterprise that had true ideals about how human beings and political difference were to be treated, ideals that were turned to realities.

Peretz says the Palestinians will almost certainly become disenchanted with their independent state when they get it, because it will still almost certainly be a miserable, repressive dictatorship. He's almost certainly right, but he makes one glaring oversight: even when an independent Palestine is established, the Palestinians - and their supporters - will continue to lash out at Israel, until the Jewish state is completely destroyed. And people will keep apologizing for it, babbling about the "legacy of oppression" and other nonsense.

If Israel is destroyed and the "Zionists" (read: Jews) eradicated, they will turn against the Christians. And when the Christians are gone, they'll turn against each other. When your entire culture is dominated by hatred and revenge, there's no reason to suspect it will stop when one mortal enemy is destroyed.

And no matter what happens, "progressives" will keep making excuses.

Nobody here but us unbiased journalists

After all that's been said about the lack of WMDs in Iraq, you'd think the possible discovery of nuclear materials would be a major story.

There's not a single word about it on the CBC News website.

Welcome to Bizarro World

The website for the Saudi Embassy in London features a special Q&A section explaining the Saudi concept of "human rights" to us unenlightened westerners.

Consider yourself warned.

Q: "What is the basic Saudi concept of human rights?"

A: "The Saudi Arabian Constitution specifies a number of them. Article 27 states: 'The State guarantees the rights of each citizen and his family in case of emergency, illness and disability, and in old age.' Article 28 says: 'The State provides job opportunities for whoever is capable of working.' Article 30 obliges the State 'to provide education and fight illiteracy.' Article 30 speaks about health care. Article 35 says 'no one shall be arrested, imprisoned, or have their actions restricted except in cases specified by the law.' Article 37 proclaims the sanctity of the home. Article 40 prohibits interference with telegraphic, postal services, telephone [systems] and other means of communications. In a sweeping statement Article 40 says: 'The State protects human rights in accordance with Islamic Sharia.'"

Ronald Reagan once told a group of Soviet university students that the difference between their two countries was that the Soviet constitution made the government grant certain rights to the people - while the U.S. constitution described what rights the people granted to the government.

Just a thought.

Q: "Now that you mention Islam, why is it that Saudi Arabia does not allow the followers of other religions the freedom to practice their faiths in Saudi Arabia?"

A: "British society is a secular one. A man can worship an insect for all society cares. Saudi Arabia is a religious society, a very religious society. The people believe in the Unity of God and any doctrine contrary to that is not accepted. All Saudis are Muslims, and non-Muslims who come temporarily to work in Saudi Arabia should understand this fact. In Israel you can go to jail if you start a missionary activity. [Uh-huh.] And the Vatican does not encourage the building of mosques inside it. Mecca and the surrounding land of Saudi Arabia is the holiest preserve of Islam. There should be adequate allowance made for these special cases…"

Sometimes people ask why the Saudi royal family is so backward and repressive when so many of its princes were educated in the West. My response would be that this cultural-relativist bullshit is precisely what they've learned while attending university in the West.

No "smoking gun," but it's a start

An Iraqi scientist has revealed nuclear materials he had been ordered to hide in his backyard:

An Iraqi scientist has led the CIA to nuclear materials buried in his backyard, Fox News has learned.

"A box of parts and a bunch of documents were buried under the rose bushes in his backyard," one U.S. official told Fox News.
[...]
Officials said they believe Obeidi's statements are credible, and described the recovery of the buried materials as evidence of the lengths to which Saddam Hussein was willing to go to hide and maintain his weapons of mass destruction capability. But, one official cautioned, "This is not a 'smoking gun' -- it is not evidence of an ongoing uranium enrichment program."

Maybe not, but if this report is true (and I emphasize the word if), it will prove what we all knew - that Saddam was not living up to the committments imposed upon him after the Gulf War. If they were hiding this stuff under rose bushes, God knows how long it will take to find the other stuff.

Patience, people. Patience.

Scariest mug shot ever

AAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!

Oh, what a shock

Just hours after breathless announcements of a "three-month ceasefire" allegedly agreed to by Palestinian terror groups, Hamas is already backing away:

Islamic militant groups signed an agreement to halt attacks on Israelis for three months, a senior official of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction said Wednesday — a possible breakthrough for the U.S.-backed peace plan.

However, an official of the largest militant group, Hamas, said the deal was not final.
[...]
In Gaza, local Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi said the deal was not final. "In the coming days we will have an answer, and ... Israeli terrorist actions will be taken into account when we decide," he said, apparently referring to the Israeli airstrike Wednesday in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.

Another Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, said that "this is all lies," when asked about the report of a truce deal.

I'll believe Hamas is serious about "peace" when they remove all the references to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion from their Charter. (Actually, I won't believe it, but I guess it would be a good PR move on their part.)

Update: Islamic Jihad says they haven't accepted any ceasefire, either.

A worthy cause

Have you donated to the Jake Ryan Beer Fund yet?

Psycho Prof of the Day

Just imagine where Haunani-Kay Trask, a frothing maniac who teaches at the University of Hawaii's Center for Hawaiian Studies, would be if she was a white conservative who acted like this:

In essays published by Professor Trask, she repeatedly rejects "the concept of academic freedom as a bourgeoisie white intellectual construct," some sort of racist notion she is apparently by no means bound to, despite being a member of a major department at a tax payer funded state university. For example, in 1990, a white undergraduate student named Joey Carter penned an editorial in the University of Hawaii student newspaper expressing dismay over the continued use of the word "haole" in Hawaiian society. Mr. Carter’s concerns centered around the fact that the word was becoming increasingly depreciatory, and "when spoken with bitter sarcasm and prolonged intonation" seemed to carry "some of the burning hostility of the modern use of the word 'nigger.'"

In response to the student’s letter, Professor Trask unleashed a racist, ad hominem.attack on Mr. Carter. Dismissing Mr. Carter’s concerns as "uninformed, childish moaning" (how scholarly of her), Professor Trask both acknowledges the hostility inherent to the word "haole" while refusing to stop using it, declaring that Mr. Carter’s discomfort was "too bad," because, as she informed Mr. Carter, “you are a haole and you always will be." Trask then suggested that if Mr. Carter did not like enduring racial slurs he should “return to Louisiana."
[...]
On September 5th, 2002, the Honolulu Advisor reported, "threats of violence had intimidated the director of the Academy of Lifelong Learning and frightened away the elderly students who had signed up for [Professor Kenneth] Conklin’s course on Hawaiian sovereignty." In response to this incident, Professor Trask not only expressed her outrage that a man who opposes the racist elements of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement would be allowed to speak at the Center for Hawaiian Studies but also overtly endorsed physical violence as a means by which to protect the racist agenda of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. When asked to comment on the cancellation of the class due to threats of violence, Professor Trask responded that, "it’s great that somebody came back at [Professor Conklin] and threatened him." [footnotes deleted]

(On a brighter note, the University of Hawaii is the alma mater of Carl English, who hopes to become the first Newfoundlander chosen in the NBA draft tomorrow night.)

Death in Iraq

MSNBC reports that the six British soldiers killed in Iraq yesterday were slain by "townspeople" angry about the death of four Iraqis during a demonstration earlier that day. Well, maybe. There are many Iraqis not affiliated with the old Ba'athist regime, nor Islamic fundamentalists, who want the British and Americans forced out.

But would they be likely to start shooting? If I were a betting man, I'd say the killers were Saddam loyalists and/or followers of militant Islam. Hopefully, we'll find out within the next few days.

Summit with North Korea: $100,000,000. Nobel Peace Prize: Priceless

Former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his attempts to thaw relations with North Korea, secretly arranged for $100 million dollars to be paid to the North Korean government:

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's government secretly paid communist North Korea $100 million to get Pyongyang to agree to a historic summit in 2000 that helped Mr Kim win the Nobel Peace Prize, an investigator said today.

Mr Kim has admitted approving money transfers to North Korea despite "legal problems," but has said they were for the sake of peace and that his government's decision should not be subject to review.

Between this, Jimmy Carter and Yasser Arafat, they really should change the name of the award to the "Nobel Sucking Up To Tyrants Prize". That seems to be what "peace" means to the Nobel committee.

Richard Dawkins must be a lot of fun at parties

Richard Dawkins says it's "child abuse" to call children "Christian" or "Muslim" just because it's their parents' faith, and encourages this new way to make people really, really uncomfortable at parties:

Please go out and work at raising people's consciousness over the words they use to describe children. At a dinner party, say, if ever you hear a person speak of a school for Islamic children, or Catholic children (you can read such phrases daily in newspapers), pounce: "How dare you? You would never speak of a Tory child or a New Labour child, so how could you describe a child as Catholic (Islamic, Protestant etc)?" With luck, everybody at the dinner party, next time they hear one of those offensive phrases, will flinch, or at least notice and the meme will spread.

Just as communism proved that an atheist ideology can be as murderous and intolerant as a religious theocracy, people like Dawkins prove that atheists can be as sanctimonious, self-righteous and preachy as religious people.

(via Instapundit)

"The Dumbest Secession Movement in the World"

What better way to celebrate Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, Quebec's "national" holiday, than to read Mark Steyn's 1998 column about the sheer pointlessness of Quebec separatism?

Is there anybody out there?

Not a single entry in the comments section today. Am I becoming dull and uncontroversial, or is it just a slow news day?

Why is this man still living?

The San Francisco Chronicle says Yasser Arafat is raising money from Moammar Khadafy (the Chronicle's spelling) to finance continuing terror attacks by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.

Sources close to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat say he has raised $2. 5 million from Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy to finance continued terror attacks against Israel, undermining efforts by reformist Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to achieve a cease-fire as the first step on the U.S.-backed road map toward peace.

Israeli and Palestinian officials say privately that the Arafat-Khadafy link is part of a series of secret diplomatic moves by Arafat designed to undermine Abbas, who is engaged in intensive talks with Palestinian extremists on the terms of a cease-fire.

An Israeli sniper had Arafat in his sights in 1982. If only...

(via LGF)

It gets worse and worse for Radwanski

The privacy commissioner may have resigned yesterday, but the dirt keeps on coming:

George Radwanski, the embattled privacy commissioner who resigned yesterday, was commissioned in the mid-1990s to write a report on Canadian education for the prestigious C.D. Howe Institute but failed to deliver it, senior Institute executives Jack Mintz and William Robson told the National Post.

"The Institute tried and tried to get the money back from George, but he never obliged. He did not even deign to reply to their requests," the source added. "So they just dropped the matter and let George keep the cash. The Institute was, in retrospect, in good company, because George also stiffed Revenue Canada on a half-million-buck tax bill he never paid and which Revenue Canada, on behalf of the taxpayers, forgave him the day before he became privacy commissioner."

I wish I could have my student loan debt forgiven so easily.

The coming ceasefire

Next time you read that Hamas is "on the verge of accepting a truce" with the Israelis and/or the Palestinian Authority, remember this list.

Remember this one, too.

Cuban crackdown continues

Of course, where Communism didn't end, it's business as usual:

With international pressure rising over Cuba's latest crackdown on dissidents, the country's high court upheld tough sentences against high-profile opponents of President Fidel Castro.

Among other prominent opponents of the government whose convictions were upheld Monday were economists Oscar Espinosa Chepe (20 years), Martha Beatriz Roque (20 years), Hector Palacios (25 years) and journalist Osvaldo Alfonso Valdes (18 years).
[...]
Meanwhile, Clara Chepe Nunez, the mother of Oscar Espinosa Chepe, released here a letter to UN chief Kofi Annan, personally appealing for his intervention so that her son gets treatment for a grave kidney condition in Havana.

"I ask him to appeal very urgently to the government of Cuba so that my son ... gets the treatment he needs for his cirrhosis, with full guarantees that he will live," said Chepe, aged 95, pointing out to reporters that she is "in full command of her mental faculties."

Don't hold your breath, lady.

Censorship in Russia

Vladmir Putin has ordered the closing of a TV station which satirized his government:

The Press Ministry pulled the plug on TVS on Sunday, citing the station's "financial, personnel and management crisis." But opponents of the government said the station, created last year from the remains of two other television stations that came into conflict with state-connected companies, was shut down for political reasons.

The demise of TVS came four days after the lower house of parliament passed a bill that would give the government the power to shut down any media outlet that covers an election campaign too aggressively.
[...]
The end of TVS means all the national stations - except for purely entertainment channels with no news coverage - are to some degree connected to the government. Channel One and Rossiya are state-owned, while the third station, NTV, is owned by the government-connected natural gas monopoly, Gazprom.

It's almost like Communism never ended, isn't it?

The Post is Toast

Christie Blatchford is leaving the National Post and joining the Globe and Mail. And it looks like Mark Steyn is gone, too. (He doesn't even feature a link to the Post on his website anymore.)

We can't buy the Post in Corner Brook, so I made sure to pick up the Saturday edition in St. John's this weekend. I was shocked by how skimpy the weekend Post has become. The "Review" section was barely half as large as it used to be - and, even more incredibly, there was no opinion page next to the editorials. Not one. The weekend Globe was twice as big.

I've been fanatically dedicated to the Post ever since it came out, but it looks like the end is near - perhaps before Christmas. It was fun while it lasted, guys. (And fuck you, Mr. Asper.)

Update: and now The Report - much too socially conservative for my taste, but often a much-needed voice in this country - is folding as well. Geez. At this rate, the only conservative publications left in Canada will be the Sun papers.

Hollywood in Ashcroft's Amerikkka

I saw Hulk the other night, and I thought it was excellent - probably the best comic-book movie since the original Superman in 1978. (Yes, I think the Batman films are overrated, though Tim Burton's were far, far better than Joel Schumacher's.) I'm no fan of computer-generated special effects, but I thought the big guy looked just convincing enough to make the film work.

(By comparison, I watched Die Another Day on DVD recently, and some of the computer-generated scenes - especially the "surfing" part - were just painful to watch. Memo to Hollywood: CGI is okay when used in moderation, but it never, ever looks good when you use it to animate the whole scene, including the backgrounds. Spider-Man had the same problem.)

Here's the thing: the movie has a pretty heavy anti-military theme, and the one truly unredeemable character is the corporate guy who wants to buy out Bruce Banner's research. And the heroes live in Berkeley. This is a blockbuster even Naomi Klein can love.

Of the four biggest movies released this summer, two of them feature military men as key villains. (Hulk and X-Men 2.) Finding Nemo features a gratuitous swipe at American consumerism, and if you look closely at the scene in The Matrix Reloaded where Keanu meets the creator of the Matrix, you can see Dubya's face on the monitors showing scenes of evil.

I thought dissent was being crushed in an increasingly fascist America, where artists are no longer free to express anti-Bush or anti-war views. You don't think the folks at IndyMedia or the Guardian are exaggerating or anything, do you?

Why I don't love the VW Beetle

"Who doesn't love the Beetle?" asks Tim Blair. Alas, whenever I think of the Beetle, I think about my father selling his '72 AMC Javelin SST for a Bug just after I was born. Why, Daddy? Why?!?

The greatest commercial ever made

Here it is. It was actually filmed in two takes and spliced together, but no computer-generated effects were used.

Ten bucks says the director has already been offered Kangaroo Jack II or something.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Typical LGF racism

Shame on the evil Zionazi Charles Johnson for implying that the Prime Minister of Malaysia is some kind of savage for handing out copies of The International Jew and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Everyone knows we have to look at the root causes of this cry for help, especially the Israeli occupation of Malaysian land.

What? They don't occupy any part of Malaysia? Well, maybe it's because the Malaysian-sponsored Sauber F1 team is having such a rotten year. And maybe the Jews have something to do with it. That's gotta be it.

Either way, who are we to judge?

I'm back

Here's a blogging tip: make sure you have your user name and password written down somewhere, just in case your home computer isn't working and the internet connection on your work computer is screwed up. I know this from hard experience now. (Actually, I remembered my password. It's my user name I forgot.)

The Galloway forgeries

The Christian Science Monitor admits that documents it had obtained, allegedly showing Labour MP George Galloway's close links with Saddam Hussein's regime, were forgeries.

Galloway, as you might expect, is furious. But before his supporters start crowing, they should note that the Monitor's expert, who debunked the paper's own evidence, says similar documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph look legitimate.

Nice work if you can get it

George Radwanski was hired as Federal Privacy Commissioner in 2000. In addition to his $210,000.00 annual salary and chauffeur, he's since collected $54,000.00 in rent for his apartment; $93,000.00 of weekend trips to Toronto, $290,000.00 in additional travel expenses, and $11,000.00 for dining expenses. The day before he was hired, Revenue Canada also forgave the most of the $606,947 he owed the federal treasury after declaring bankruptcy in 1999.

How do you get a great job like this? It helps to have been a "communications consultant" for Jean Chretien.

"The Mad Revisionist"

In case you're wondering what I'm doing browing around the IHR website, I found the link at this clever, wildly funny site which uses Holocaust-denial techniques to "prove" that the moon doesn't exist and that Canada was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (The 9/11 page says no Canadians were killed in the attacks, which is untrue; however, this could be an homage to conspirofreaks who say no Israelis died on 9/11, despite evidence to the contrary.)

This guy's e-mail exchange with IHR flunky Ted O'Keefe, where he asks why the neo-Nazis won't print his article denying the Irish Potato Famine, is hilarious and enlightening.

African-Americans for Hitler

The Holocaust-denying "Institute for Historical Review" held a massively attended demonstration in downtown L.A. demanding the immediate release of neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel.

They've got photos. Notice anything unusual about the second demonstrator from the right?

The Fred Phelps of Canada

The "Christian right" may not have as much power up here as it does in the United States, but that doesn't mean we don't have religious nuts of our own:

About 600 evangelical Christians gathered outside Ontario Superior Court yesterday to protest last week's Ontario Court of Appeals decision legalizing same-sex marriages.
[...]
Evangelist Ken Campbell, who came from Tumbler Ridge, B.C., closed the demonstration with a prayer full of anti-gay rhetoric, in which he referred to Toronto's annual Gay Pride parade as the ''AIDS parade.''

''We believe that SARS will cease when the AIDS parade is cancelled. Lord God have mercy on this city and upon this nation,'' he said to cheers from the crowd.

When Newfoundland held a referendum on getting rid of its denominational education system a few years ago, Campbell ran newspaper ads reading, "if you rid the schools of God, will he restore the seas of cod?" (Of course, the cod fishery collapsed when Newfoundland still had a church-controlled education system, but never mind.) Looks like he's still at it.

(via Kathy Shaidle)

An ally we don't need

Speaking of Iran: the French are undoubtedly cracking down on the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, an Iranian opposition group, to curry favor with the mullahs. But if this Federation of American Scientists briefing is any indication, we should be careful not to conclude that the MEK is in any way respectable. The guys were armed and supported by Saddam, for crying out loud.

(via Bruce Rolston)

A revolution ignored

Pejman, who has an obvious interest in the subject, wonders why anti-Islamist demonstrations in Iran are getting so little attention:

But while there has certainly been coverage of events in Iran, it has not reached the levels of attention paid to the course of the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s. Perhaps that attention will come in time, but it should be paid now. More media outlets should devote resources to cover the student protests in Iran. They should not be read about merely in Internet stories and newspapers, but should receive coverage on television in order to allow as many people as possible to learn about the potentially momentous events that are taking place there.

It is puzzling why the administration has not lent more public support to the Iranian reform movement, especially considering just how much regime and policy changes in Iran could benefit the United States, and the international community at large.
[...]
...it is vital to the war on terrorism and to the effort to combat Islamic radicalism to demonstrate Iranian-style radicalism is a failure, and its implementation leads to a failed society. Iran is the chief test case for the proposition that Islamic fundamentalism can make for good government, and that it should be adopted by nations throughout the Muslim world. We know that proposition to be false - the Iranian economy is in a shambles, the Iranian people are increasingly embittered by the way their government treats them. If the reformist movement can succeed in changing the nature of the Iranian regime and the policies it pursues, it could demonstrate to Islamic radicals throughout the world that the fundamentalist vision advanced by Khomeini is a failed one, and that it should not be pursued elsewhere.

Exactly.

Update: Cox and Forkum hit it right on the head.

Hunt the Boeing

There could be a dozen reasons why that Boeing 727 was stolen from an airport in Angola, so I'm not panicking. (And let's face it: even if someone stole the plane for use in a terror attack, presumably we'll be ready to shoot the thing down before it does any damage.) It's still a bit creepy, though.

The CIA has alerted operatives across Africa and asked countries within flying range of Angola to help in the search for the 153ft, 90-ton former passenger aircraft.

Mr Yates said the plane was at one point in the hands of a company linked to an airline that flew cargo into Afghanistan for the Taliban before the US invasion.

Jewish World Review = The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Last year, a New Jersey-based Arab newspaper serialized The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous forgery which supposedly outlines a plot by "international Jewry" to control the world. Hussein Ibish, of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, responded with one of the most misguided examples of moral equivalence I've ever seen: he said the Jewish World Review is just as bad.

I'm not making this up.

Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination committee, said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., on Monday that he did not know whether the Arab Voice was printing the Protocols, but "if it's true and if they didn't do it with a standard disclaimer, that would be very wrong and very unfortunate."

But he added that it would also be "part and parcel of a generalized trend of Arabs and pro-Israel Jews, both in Middle East and the U.S., to let their anger get the better of them and to lead them beyond anger to hatred. "If you want to find examples of this in the American Jewish press all you have to do is go to worldjewishreview.com [sic] on any day. You'll see that their bread and butter is inciting anti-Arab sentiment." He added that "every single Israeli leader has made anti-Arab comments.

"The principal tactic of both Israelis and the Palestinians has been to murder each other's civilians. So of course people of both sides are outraged. But it's not reasonable to translate that into hatred and believing in racist mythology. This is the unfortunate, usual accompaniment to bitter conflict," he said. "It's a very depressing thing on both sides of the divide."

Such is the moral universe in which Hussein Ibish resides. (In case you're wondering, there is no website called "worldjewishreview.com".)

Iraq's worst weapon of mass destruction

It's looking worse and worse for the Americans and British - not to mention commentators like myself - who thought Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat. British investigators say the trailers found in nothern Iraq, identified as mobile bioweapons laboratories by the Americans, were used to provide hydrogen for weather balloons. Ouch.

Why aren't more people outraged about this? Largely, it's because Iraq's WMD capacity might have been lower than expected (and I emphasize the word "might", since Iraq never adequately accounted for many of its biological and chemical stockpiles, and there's an awful lot of country left to search) - but the regime's capacity for pure terror was worse than even the most pessimistic observers thought. Labour MP Ann Clwyd, a longtime human rights activist who supported the war on humanitarian grounds, heard many, many horror stories in postwar Iraq:

The UN could have gone on passing resolutions and sending in inspectors and rapporteurs for the next 50 years, but in the end there was no realistic alternative to war. Those who bleat about weapons of mass destruction or question the legality of war should talk to the Iraqi people. They are irritated. They ask, “Don’t they care about us? About mass graves? About torture?” Stand at the mass grave at al-Hillah where up to 15,000 people are buried, hands tied behind their backs, bullets through their brains. Examine the pitiful possessions found so far: a watch, a faded ID card, a comb, a ring, a clump of black hair. Watch the old woman in her black chador, tattoos on her gnarled hands, looking through the plastic bags on top of unidentified, reburied bodies, for something that will help her to find her son, who disappeared in 1991.
[...]
A house in Baghdad, formerly the private home of one of Saddam’s secret police, has been taken over by those who seek to put the record straight. Outside on the banks of the Tigris, hundreds of Shia men search through the records found so far. Dusty papers and old files fill every room. In one are three computers into which 150,000 names of the dead and where they died have been logged in just two weeks. In another room is some of the torture equipment: a chiropractor’s couch wired to administer electric shocks, the weights and pulleys used to apply pain. All around are grieving relatives, women in black chadors clutching tearfully at my arm. They have waited 12 long years for news. They still wait. Saddam, like Hitler and Pol Pot, kept meticulous records of his crimes. At the same time, Baath party men are said to be buying up the files that implicate them in the crimes.

On the streets of Baghdad, WMD is not an issue. “Thanks to Bush and Blair,” they cry. I ask what would have happened if they had spoken to me like this in the past on the streets of Baghdad. One man slowly drew his hand, palm down, across his throat.

They may never find a single vial of anthrax or tub of VX nerve gas in Iraq. Paul Volfovitz (as some BBC commentators have taken to calling him) may come out and admit that the whole WMD issue was a sham, just so the Elders of Zion could control all of Iraq's oil. But I'll never believe this war wasn't justified.

Subtle satire in Qatar

Check out some cartoons from Al-Watan, a major Qatari newspaper, and remember that Qatar is one of the wealthiest, most "progressive" Arab states.

The war on Moore

The Times has a look at the growing backlash against Michael Moore and his decidedly economical attitude toward the truth.

Winston Nextel Cup Series

I'm glad the series won't be sponsored by cancer sticks anymore, but "Nextel Cup Series" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

Shaw and Stalin

A recently uncovered document shows the shocking extent to which George Bernard Shaw defended Stalin's purges and mass killing:

Shaw, who became an apologist for Stalin after being invited to visit the Soviet Union in 1931, was sent a typewritten questionnaire about one of the early show trials by the journalist Dorothy Royal.

The author of such works as Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion and Pygmalion gave brief replies, some of them handwritten, to Miss Royal's questions. It is not known whether they were subsequently published. His replies to the questionnaire, which is expected to fetch £3,000 to £4,000 at Sotheby's on July 10, provide a shocking insight into the naivety of Soviet sympathisers among the British intelligentsia.
[...]
Asked whether he believed that the revolution had "attracted degenerate types", Shaw replied: "On the contrary it has attracted superior types all the world over to an extraordinary extent wherever it has been understood."

Shaw argued that what he called "this Russian trial" had been exaggerated and he rejected suggestions that the accused had only pleaded guilty because they had been drugged or tortured.

What's the closest thing we have to George Bernard Shaw these days? Probably George Galloway.

Canada to legalize gay marriage

The federal government has decided not to appeal an Ontario court decision which ruled that Canada's refusal to recognize same-sex marriages was unconstitutional. They plan to introduce a bill to recognize such marriages.

(This, of course, is going to make kids all over the country think, "you know, bein' gay looks like an attractive lifestyle choice" and decide they're going to start being attracted to members of the same sex. Homosexual-recruitment campaigners must be giddy with anticipation.)

Ottawa says the bill will allow churches to decide which marriages they can sanctify, though I fear the first church which refuses to hold a gay wedding will find itself hauled before the courts. I support legalizing gay marriage, but I also think forcing a religion to recognize it would be a clear violation of the rights to freedom of religion and freedom of association. If your church won't marry you, you're free to go elsewhere. But the court has no business deciding what the tenets of your faith should be. (Unless your faith involves skinning cats alive, or something.)

As for the United States: Vermont already recognizes "civil unions" similar to marriage for gay couples, and I predict they'll go all the way and legalize gay marriage within 5 years. Liberal-minded states like Massachusetts and Minnesota will follow over the decade, though socially conservative states like Alabama and Utah will need a few more decades.

GM's apology

General Motors is running a new ad campaign in which they effectively admit they built lousy cars from the mid-seventies to the turn of the millenium. But their new stuff is really great, it really is! We appreciate your honesty, guys, but it can't erase bad memories of the '78 Malibu we owned for 6 months.

From what I've seen, their newer products are getting decidedly mixed reviews. The Cadillac CTS and XLR have been very well recieved, but nobody seems to like the bizarrely styled Saturn Ion. ("We waited seven years for this?" remarked Car and Driver.) Frankly, I find it hard to take GM seriously when their Civic/Corolla/Focus competitors are the unloved Ion, the hopelessly outdated Cavalier/Sunfire, and a microcar built by Daewoo. Why on earth can't General Motors, with all its resources, build a decent small car?

A Worthy Cause

This website links to an online petition demanding that Harvard return its $2.5 million donation from Holocaust denier/Jew-hater Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.

(via LGF)

It's not "McCarthyism" if a leftie does it

Yale Freshman Eliana Johnson describes a remarkable, horrifying incident at her university: Mazin Qumsiyeh, a professor of genetics at Yale Medical School, sent around a mass e-mail listing 64 students as members of a "pro-war cabal". No prizes for guessing the religion to which they all belonged.

In the past Professor Qumsiyeh has railed against the an alleged "cabal" of Jews manipulating Bush administration foreign policy: "It is now clearly evident from their own documents that those who put Israel and personal wealth ahead of U.S. public interests were first to plan this war [in Iraq] over 15 years ago." In a recent e-mail message sent over the Yale e-mail system to the members of the Yale Coalition for Peace, Professor Qumsiyeh disclosed his purported discovery that this cabal extends far beyond the Bush administration. In his e-mail message he warned that a similar cabal exists at Yale. Qumsiyeh wrote:

But the mistaken premise of Professor Qumsiyeh's message is beside the point. The message bears an ugly subtext consistent with Professor Qumsiyeh’s fevered "Jews on the brain" mania. In an article he authored for Jerusalemites.org, he labels the same men to whom he likens Yale's pro-war Jews—Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, in particular—"Israeli apologists" and "racists…whose main interest has always been a strong and domineering 'Jewish State'…"

This is happening in America. In 2003. And the people who always shriek "racism!!!" or "McCarthyism!!!" when someone looks at them funny are silent.

Those who aren't applauding, anyway.

This (snort, giggle) is not funny

Thanks to Treacher, you'll never be able to look at these Hostess Cup Cake ads from old comic books, featuring the Incredible Hulk, the same way. (This one's not for the easily offended, so consider yourself warned.)

"Right of Reply" to blogs

Looks like I'm going to have to give Mikey Rivero and Rick Salutin a "right of reply" on this webiste, at least if the Council of Europe has its way:

The all-but-final proposal draft says that Internet news organizations, individual Web sites, moderated mailing lists and even Web logs (or "blogs"), must offer a "right of reply" to those who have been criticized by a person or organization.

It's pretty zany to imagine that just about every form of online publishing, from full-time news organizations to occasional bloggers to moderated chat rooms, would be covered. But it's no accident. A January 2003 draft envisioned regulating only "professional on-line media." Two months later, a March 2003 draft dropped the word "professional" and intentionally covered all "online media" of any type.

Some people lie awake at night, worried that something out there isn't regulated yet. (via Rachel Lucas)

Update: Bill O'Reilly is ticked off about the internet too, because people say mean things about him. Awwwwww. (via Lileks)

Save the cute animals!

The Humane Society of the United States is asking tourists to boycott Canada because of the east coast seal hunt - and, of course, they're using blatantly misleading propaganda as part of the campaign:

The Humane Society of the United States is calling on Americans to boycott Canada and Canadian products to protest the annual East Coast seal hunt.

"Tell the Canadian government you won't travel to Canada until it ends this senseless and barbaric killing," the ad said.
[...]
Steve Outhouse, spokesman for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said the ad campaign is misleading at best.

The society Web page shows a doe-eyed baby harp seal, or white coat, and admonishes the killing of baby seals. But it doesn't state that it has been illegal to hunt white coats since 1987 in Canada, Outhouse said. [emphasis added]

A baby whitecoat is also the first thing you see on the society's web site (which, as you might expect, simply regurgitates propaganda from the radical International Fund for Animal Welfare). A seal isn't cute enough to be on a fundraising poster when it grows up, I guess.

What in God's name has happened to my Church?

Just read this. Maybe it's because this is the faith in which I was raised, but I'm too angry to say anything else about it.

Memo to Maureen Dowd

Next time you're going to rip off someone else's work, make sure it isn't David Frum's wife.

Child soldiers in the Congo

The Washington Post reports that children as young as seven years old are fighting in the Congolese civil war.

Retired Major-General Lewis Mackenzie, meanwhile, says the proposed UN peacekeeping force simply isn't strong enough to restore order - assuming any force can restore order in that hellhole. Many bloggers, including Glenn Reynolds, have echoed the criticism, and used it as an example of the UN's impotence and incompetence. Perhaps they're right - but I've seen very few bloggers say the Americans should do something about this. I can understand their reluctance to get involved after Somalia, but like it or not, it's hard to see how this madness can be stopped without any U.S. participation.

The Americans - and just about everyone else - were notably absent from Rwanda in 1994, and hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. History seems to be repeating itself.

Update: to be fair, Glenn links to this Peter Beinart article berating the Bush administration for its indifference to the situation in Liberia. Its mandate in that blighted country is even more feeble than the Franch mandate in the Congo.

Rivero's newest fan

In addition to Barrie Zwicker and Antonia Zerbisias, another left-wing kook is plugging whatreallyhappened.com: Australian "futurist" Richard Neville, whom you may have heard of through the much-deserved smackdowns regularly laid upon him by Tex and Tim Blair.

At least Zerbisias denounced WRH when the right-wing blogging masses pointed out the blatant anti-Semitism she was too dim to notice. What about Zwicker and Neville? Are they too stupid to realize how much Rivero hates Jews, or do they just not care? Or does WRH say what they really think, but are too cowardly to say themselves?

The standard answer from "progressives" who read sites like WRH or NaziMedia is usually along the lines of, "well, I don't agree with everything he writes, but he raises some good questions."

Bull. Fucking. Shit. These people regularly savage conservative (or insufficiently liberal) writers and publications for their alleged "racism" or "sexism", but they have no problem with a website that identifies the dark hand of the Jooooooos behind everything, just as long as the site gives voice to their pathological hatred of the United States and/or its President. And that's how the most persistent form of hatred is slowly but surely creeping back into civilized discourse.

And right-minded people, no matter where they sit on the political spectrum, should not stand for it.

"Che Trippers"

Essential reading the the New York Observer: Lawrence Osborne's scathing piece on the inexplicable lionization of the tyrannical and incompetent Che Guevara. History will let you get away with a lot if you look cool on a poster, it seems. (If only Hitler hadn't had such a goofy mustache...)

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

The Nutty Professor

Today's Bleat savages a Minnesota university professor - of course! - who says Paul Wellstone was whacked by the Bush administration. "Do you know what caused [Wellstone's plane crash]?" asks Dr. Jekyll. "If you don’t know, then how can you know that I am wrong?"

Anyone see Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space? Remeber the ending, when the Amazing Criswell asked, "can you prove it didn't happen?" That's the first thing that came to mind.

In the 1950s, these people were relegated to B-movies. Now they're teaching at universities. Go figure.

A rallying cry for the Iranian Counter-Revolution

"Azadi, Arak, Eshgh!"

Bentley 1-2 at Le Mans

The company might be owned by Volkswagen these days, but it's still a triumph for one of Britain's greatest carmakers. This was Bentley's first Le Mans win in 73 years.

Who cares about this Beckham guy?

Muammar Gaddafi's son has signed with an Italian First Division football club.

I am not making this up.

The Revolution is not being televised

Student protests against the Iranian government have continued for the sixth night in a row, and nearly 250 leading dissidents have issued a scathing condemnation of the regime:

The demonstrations began on the Tehran university campus last Tuesday, ostensibly as a protest against plans to privatise universities. But the students were soon joined by other Iranians frustrated at the slow pace of reform in their country. They clashed with gangs of vigilantes who back the ruling clerics. Scores of protesters were injured or arrested.

Emboldened by Western support, a group of 248 Iranian dissidents issued a scathing declaration yesterday, describing the mullahs’ absolute power as “heresy”. “The people have the right to fully supervise the action of their rulers and to advise and criticise them, as well as to dismiss or oust them if they are not satisfied with them,” said the declaration, which was signed by reformists, liberals, journalists and several clerics.

Why on earth isn't this all over CNN? Maybe they don't have a bureau in Tehran, but surely they could take a break from the Laci Peterson case to talk about this once in a while, right?

As for CBC Newsworld: when the mullahs are overthrown and they're dancing in the streets of Tehran, Newsworld will probably be showing a Fashion File marathon.

A wedding announcement

Now that the Ontario Court of Appeal has ordered that gay marriages be recognized, American same-sex couples are flocking north. One such couple will include Atlanta's Robert Martin and his companion - Canadian-born "Discount Blogger" Michael Demmons.

(Congratulations, Mike. As a wedding gift, I've belatedly added you to the blogroll.)

Another blog-free weekend

I still don't have my monitor back (a replacement had to be ordered from Samsung), so there won't be any posting this weekend, either. And why would you be spending time in front of your computer on a beautiful summer weekend, anyway?

See you on Monday morning.

The Iranian Counter-Revolution

The streets of Iran are blocked with students, demonstrating against their Islamofascist rulers. The BBC says they've been influenced by Iranian exile television stations broadcasting from the United States:

This week has seen several nights of protest in Iran, with students shouting slogans against both the country's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the democratically elected president, Mohammad Khatami.

"No-one likes this regime any more. If America helps us, it will happen."

Note that he didn't say, "the United Nations must do something" or "we need help from the European Union."

Professor Raymond Tanter, visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, believes calls from US officials for ordinary Iranians to begin pressing for change have had an effect:

They have been calling on people to join the demonstrations.

"B-b-but I don't understand! I thought Dubya's simplistic rhetoric was only going to make people living in the so-called "axis of evil" countries hate us even more! How can this be happening? Where's the sacred text? I must have interpreted something incorrectly!"

Some Iranian intellectuals dismiss the argument that dissident Iranian TV stations are formenting dissent. They say the toppling of the tyrant next door is responsible:

Sadeq Ziba Kalam of Tehran University adds that some people may also have been influenced by watching the Americans overthrow an unpopular regime in neighbouring Iraq.

"However, the more moderate students say no, no, no, it would be totally wrong for the Americans to attack us and not only would we not achieve anything, but we would lose a lot of what we have achieved during the past 24 years as result of the Islamic revolution."

And the glorious revolution has achieved...what, exactly?

Stupid Rick Salutin quote of the day

From today's Israel-bashing column:

I know people, many of them Jewish, who say the problem is not the occupation; it's the implacable hatred of the Palestinians or their anti-Semitism. But you can always find reason to despair. Fifteen years ago people often said Afrikaners would never yield power peacefully in South Africa. The real question is: How much do you believe "they" share with us, in ordinary human terms, such as a desire to live based on feelings other than hate and revenge? That kid who blew up the Jerusalem bus this week was 18. For whatever it's worth, the chant reported from Gaza this week was, "No to Abu Mazen's peace," not "Death to the Jews." (Though in Jerusalem, "Death to Arabs" was chanted.)

This man is so deep in denial, he can't see daylight anymore. Yes, a few hundred extreme right-wingers, denouncing Ariel Sharon as a "traitor", chanted "death to Arabs" and other bile at a rally just after the latest bombing. (Israeli police blocked them from attacking Arabs.) There are racist radicals in every society. But this doesn't even come close to the non-stop Jew-hatred that comes from even the most Palestinian institutions.

Unprecedented arrogance

Gerry Byrne and the Liberals aren't even trying to answer questions about Byrne's unusual fundraising techniques:

Liberals in the House of Commons moved Thursday to cut off Canadian Alliance questions about fundraising by Newfoundland MP Gerry Byrne three years ago.

Byrne didn't have to answer when the Speaker ruled the question out of order.

Take a moment and listen to the CBC radio report, for which a link is provided. Boudria, his voice screeching with characteristically Liberal self-righteousness, says Strahl's question "has nothing to do with government business." Of course not. It's only a freaking cabinet minister asking for donations to be sent to his house, for which no receipts were provided, so he can allegedly organize events on behalf of the federal government. No government business here. Stupid redneck!

"A fortuitious coincidence"

Here's a tidbit you won't see in any of the news stories blaming Israel's attack on Abdel-Aziz Rantisi for yesterday's suicide bombing: Arutz Sheva quotes a Hamas spokesman as admitting the bombing was planned in advance.

Both IDF and Hamas spokesmen announced this evening that the suicide bombing in Jerusalem and the IDF elimination of a car full of terrorists were unrelated to the events of the last 24 hours. The Hamas spokesman, while warning that the organization intends to take revenge for yesterday’s IDF helicopter attack on Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, admitted that his organization is incapable of organizing an attack on such short notice and called the timing "a fortuitous coincidence."

People can debate the merits of Israel's strategy in using helicopter gunships and missiles to take out Rantisi and other Hamas leaders, considering the loss of innocent life which has appearently resulted. Personally, I think they should have found another way to get the bastard. But if anyone thinks the Israelis should refrain from taking action against Hamas at all, I direct you to the group's "constitution," the Hamas covenant of 1988. Read this and tell me peace is possible - or dsesirable - with these people.

Hamas is committed to the genocidal extermination of the Israeli Jews, and the establishment of the most repressive theocracy imaginable. The group does not deserve the legitimacy of being negotiated with. Simple as that.

David Brinkley, RIP

The legendary newsman has passed away at age 82.

Update: and now several news sites (including Drudge and Fox News) say Gregory Peck has died at age 87. Geez.

Another reason to sign the "Hire Lileks!" online petition

From today's Bleat:

[Palestinians] don’t have helicopters, we're told, so they use suicide bombers. If they had helicopters, they would have strafed the bus and everyone waiting at the corner. Give them a nation where Hamas runs unchecked, and they’ll have helicopters. They won't be Apaches. The bill of sale will be calculated in Euros and the manual written in French. By then the excuse for the terror won't be oppression; it'll be "the legacy of oppression." Sometimes I swear the mainstream media won't take a look at the Palestinian's horrid death-cult subculture until we learn that a suicide bomber played "Doom" at an Internet cafe for five minutes. And then they'll blame Intel.

Private health care in BC! The sky is falling!

The Vancouver Coastal health Authority is set to begin contracting out day surgeries to private, for-profit health clinics. Brace yourselves for the massive protests and apocalyptic predictions about "two-tier" Amurrican-style health care and people dying in the streets.

What's the big deal about this? If the private sector can do the job more efficiently, what's wrong with someone making a profit from it? (Last time I looked, doctors didn't work for free.) Shhhh! It's "un-Canadian" to ask questions like that.

Ahenakew charged

Saskatchewan native leader David Ahenakew, who called Jews a "disease" and praised the Holocaust during a speech last year, has been charged with "promoting hatred" pursuant to the Criminal Code.

You all know my feelings about Mr. Ahenakew and his vile opinions. So why does this leave a bad taste in my mouth? Because he's facing criminal sanctions, including a possible jail sentence, simply for making a statement. And no matter how vile the statement, that's simply wrong. Ahenakew has lost his position with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, and his very name has become a synonym for anti-Jewish hate. He's already been punished.

Unless you're Michael Rivero, you undoubtedly considered Ahenakew's comments beyond the pale. But there are a lot of things I write on this blog, particularly in relation to the Middle East conflict and the Arab world, which some people would consider "hateful". When we see people facing criminal charges for their words, and nothing else, it should make us all worry about who can be charged next.

Ahenakew is a disgusting, hateful bigot. He's been disgraced, as he should be. But he shouldn't be treated like a criminal.

Carnage in Jerusalem

At least 15 people were killed in the latest suicide bombing. The genocidal maniacs of Hamas are praising the attacks, of course, but they've stopped short of claiming responsibility - not that this will stop a flood of news stories condemning "tit-fot-tat violence" and calling the attack "retribution" for Israel's failed attempt on the life of Abdel Aziz Rantisi. (Not one of these stories will note that Hamas has repeatedly refused to stop Jew-killin', no matter how nicely Abu Mazen asks them.)

Two civilians were killed in the botched strike against Rantisi, and no one in Israel is celebrating. Meanwhile, in response to an attack aimed squarely at Israeli civilians, it's gonna be party time in the Gaza Strip tonight.

Such is the difference between the two sides in this war.

Update: Hamas has claimed responsibility on its website. Of course, they never, ever would have done this had Israel not "provoked" the attack by going after their leader, right? Right?

Update II: Sho'nuff, CNN's report says "hopes for the peace process faltered" when Israel went after Rantisi the other day. That phrase is never used when Palestinians murder Israelis, of course. I don't recall it being used a few days before Rantisi escaped assassination, when Hamas members killed four IDF soldiers.

I'm almost too angry to speak right now.

Sully on the Ontario Court decision

The Ontario Count of Appeal has ordered that the federal definition of marriage, which specifically describes it as the union of a man and a woman, is unconsitutional because it excludes same-sex relationships. And unlike similar decisions in Quebec and B.C., which gave the federal government time to change the legislation, this decision takes effect immediately.

I've always believed that conservatives should support gay marriage. Really. If we believe the institution is something that should be protected and distinguished from common-law relationships, we should be demanding that the right be extended to homosexual couples, who by definition have to live together without getting married. (Until now, that is.) Andrew Sullivan, as you might expect, is dead on:

Pathetically, the far right are now arguing that granting equal rights to a tiny minority will "oppress" them. That's hooey. No one of any religious faith will ever have to acknowledge such civil marriages, just as Catholics don't recognize civil divorce. But are Catholics "oppressed" because the state doesn't follow their own religious interpretation of marriage laws? Of course not.
[...]
Gay marriage strengthens straight marriage; and marriage will help integrate gays into society and the family more effectively than anything else could.

Of course, this decision doesn't affect the entire nation until it is upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada (as I expect it would be) or until the change is made through federal legislation. And even then, the provinces still have jurisdiction over "solemnization of marriage," and some provinces - most notably Alberta - will likely resist any move to recognize gay marriage. (How Ottawa got control over "marriage" while the provinces got "solemnization of marriage", and the difference between the two, would require an essay on the British North America Act of 1867.) The guy who told CBC news yesterday that gay marriage is now "the law of the land" was being premature and Ontario-centric.

Schuey to retire?

Michael Schumacher's manager says his client plans to retire from F1 after the 2006 season.

I can't blame him. Barring some sort of major collapse, he should still be on top of his form by that time (he'll be 38), and won't embarass himself like so many other great racers who stayed in the game far too long. (Graham Hill, Richard Petty and AJ Foyt come to mind.)

News flash: Pinter loses mind

Harold Pinter says the Americans are worse than the Third Reich, Guantanamo Bay is a "concentration camp," and Tony Blair is a "mass murderer."

Pinter would know all about mass murderers, wouldn't he?

Update: Surprise! Pinter loves Castro, too.

Asshole.

Satire = Reality

When The Matrix Reloaded came out, people joked that Muslims would protest the film for promoting "Zionism," since the heroes live in the city of "Zion."

Pretty silly, huh?

Another day, another Liberal scandal

Gerry Byrne, Newfoundland's federal cabinet minister - and my local MP - sent out a fundraising letter asking that businesses send their donations straight to his home. He said he needed them for events related to the "Viking Millenium" celebrations in 2000 - but no one seems to have any idea what events he's talking about:

A federal cabinet minister from Newfoundland says there's nothing wrong with his fundraising campaign that asked for donations to be sent directly to his home.

Ottawa provided $3 million of that money, but Byrne says he still needed private donations to beef up the federal presence at the party.
[...]
Byrne says his letter brought in only $5,000 and he spend much more than that out of his own pocket, but admits there are no receipts for the donations or his spending.

Viking event organizers in the town of Englee, where Byrne says he spent the cash, can't recall the MP's reception.

Remember when Jean Chretien used to make a big deal about how he never had to fire a cabinet minister because of a political scandal? I haven't heard him make that speech in a while.

Harvard and the Holocaust denier

What do Harvard Divinity School and the rabidly anti-Jewish "Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up" have in common? The latter was officially founded by Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates (unelected, of course) - who also gave Harvard $2.5 million to create a professorship in Islamic studies.

Earlier this year, the dean of Harvard Divinity School (who signed a petition calling for divestment from Israel) promised to investigate the matter. The students who demanded the investigation are still waiting.

Iraq's oil industry in shambles

When people thought 170,000 irreplacable artifacts had been stolen from the Baghdad Museum, people chided the Americans for guarding Iraqi oil facilities while they let the nation's cultural heritage fall into the hands of looters. (Because the war was all about ooooooooooil, you know.)

Of course, we now know the "looting" stories were exaggerated. And, according to the New York Times, so was the second half of this leftist meme. The country's oil facilities were looted, just like everything else owned by old the Ba'athist regime:

Standing under the merciless sun outside his office, surrounded by employees shouting angrily about pay, Jabbar Ali al-Leaby, the director general of the South Oil Company, lost the little patience he had left.

It was only three hours into the workday, but Mr. Leaby's frustrations started, as they do every morning, when he arrived around 8 to the lone refurbished office in a complex of buildings so thoroughly ransacked that birds dart through the upper stories. Employees of South Oil, Iraq's leading oil producer before the war, are now idle because looting has brought most of the company to a standstill.
[...]
Looting, sabotage and the continued lack of security at oil facilities are the most recent problems the industry and its American overseers must address in order to get petroleum flowing again, especially for export.

Some Iraqis believe that the looting is deliberate sabotage by people still loyal to the Baath Party rule of Saddam Hussein. Whoever is behind the pilfering and destruction, they have compounded the problems accumulated over 12 years of United Nations sanctions. And the expertise needed to get the oil flowing again often resides with oilmen now tainted by their past association with Mr. Hussein.

This will, of course, be quickly woven into a new conspiracy theory: that the Yankees let Iraq's facilities be looted and damaged, so Bush's oil buddies can make a fortune rebuilding the industry. (Evidence: much of rebuilding work is being performed by a subsidiary of Halibuuuuuuuurton. So why didn't the Americans just make a deal with Saddam like they've done with the Saudis? Because Dubya had to avenge his father. And he's evil. And, of course, he's controlled by Jews.)

(via Drudge)

NBC brings back V

I'm no science-fiction nerd (would you believe I've never watched a full episode of the original Star Trek?), but I think this is friggin' great:

Twenty years after NBC's hit sci-fi miniseries "V" invaded the small screen, the network is bringing the aliens back with "V: The Second Generation," a three-hour TV movie from the original creator Kenneth Johnson.

The 1983 "V" (short for Visitors), which spawned a short-lived weekly series on NBC, was a sci-fi allegory of the Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930s.
[...]
The new movie, produced by Warner Bros. TV and Kenneth Johnson Prods., will take place 20 years into the future. As the alien forces are turning more and more Earth citizens into followers, the resistance suddenly gains a powerful and mysterious new ally.

This "20 years into the future" stuff is the only part that concerns me. Network television production values being what they are, the film's vision of the future is bound to look pretty cheesy. Why couldn't it be set in the present day?

I still can't wait for it, though.

Update: the Internet Movie Database says the film will be set 20 years from the date of the original series, which would just bring it up to the present day.

Rejected by the Vatican

In an extraordinary move, the Vatican has formally rejected Alfonso Gagliano as Canadian ambassador to the Holy See:

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has abandoned his plan to appoint former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano ambassador to the Vatican after the Holy See took the unusual step of rejecting him as Canada's representative.

The Vatican made clear that it would likely veto the appointment if it proceeded.
[...]
As the Star reported last month, Chrétien wanted to give the plum patronage post to Gagliano, who is currently serving as ambassador to Denmark.

The controversy was rekindled yesterday by media reports that Gagliano's son Vincenzo benefited from federal business that was given to the printing company that employed him, even though his father had insisted there was no possible conflict of interest because his son was not "involved directly or indirectly with government contracts."

(via Bourque)

Mass murder, right up to the end

Investigators say a mass grave containing over 100 bodies was very recent in origin. The bodies were either prisoners killed just before the Iraq war started, or Iraqi army deserters shot just before the fall of Baghdad:

U.S. and British forensic experts who examined an intelligence compound outside Baghdad today said the site was a mass grave that likely contained the remains of political prisoners and army deserters killed in the days or weeks before President Saddam Hussein fell from power.

Burley and a team of experts from the British-based Inforce Foundation, a nonprofit organization that investigates genocides and war crimes, visited the site today. An expert in geology, Roland Wessling, who is also an archeologist with Inforce, examined the dirt and surveyed the site, which is 20 miles south of Baghdad. Wessling said earth at the site appeared to have been disturbed recently.

Update: as our ol' buddy "smc" (who, to his credit, at least posts under what I presume to be his real name) points out in the comments section, I left out the link to this story. Here it is.

Nailbiter in NB

Was that New Brunswick election thrilling or what? Bernard Lord and the Tories hung on to win the smallest majority possible - 28 seats out of 55. Considering that they had a 29-seat majority when the writ was dropped, they just staved off the greatest electoral collapse since David Peterson's Liberals crashed and burned in the 1990 Ontario election.

Auto insurance was the big issue that nearly cost the Tories their second term, and, unfortunately, Lord seems set to cave in to insurance-industry pressure by placing a cap on personal-injury settlements. In other words, people who actually get hurt will be sacrificed, while insurers - already gouging New Brunswick drivers like mad - will find themselves relieved of having to pay out so much in settlements. And I'm sure they'll pass the savings on to the consumer, right? Right?

(Disclaimer: I represent plaintiffs in auto-accident cases, so I obviously have a vested interest in this issue.)

The Liberals and NDP, meanwhile, mused about nationalizing auto-insurance coverage, a move that would cost tens of millions of dollars better spent ensuring the province's schools don't have to use history textbooks with the USSR in them (as one young e-mail correspondent to CBC described last night). What's the solution? I'm not a big fan of government regulation in any case, but regulating rates through a Public Utilities Board, similar to the way electricity rates are set in most provinces, would probably be the least worst option. Unless you have any other ideas.

All I really need to know about the WMD issue, I learned from Prof. Reynolds

InstaPundit has an absolutely massive post on the Iraqi WMD controversy. If Saddam never had 'em, a lot of people - including the French, the Germans and the UN itself - were wrong or lying about it.

Cannibalism in the Workers' Paradise

In contrast to Vietnam, Nike and the evil multinationals have no factories in North Korea. And the Vietnamese might not be rich, but I'll bet they aren't eating wach other:

Cannibalism is increasing in North Korea following another poor harvest and a big cut in international food aid, according to refugees who have fled the stricken country.

Anyone caught selling human meat faces execution, but in a report compiled by the North Korean Refugees Assistance Fund (NKRAF), one refugee said: "Pieces of 'special' meat are displayed on straw mats for sale. People know where they came from, but they don't talk about it."

(via Tim Blair, who notes that this Telegraph story does not mention the other C-word that applies here: "communism".)

In defence of Nike's "sweatshops"

Johan Norberg, writing in The Spectator, says Nike pays its Vietnamese workers $54.00 per month. This is pitifully low by Western standards. It is a fortune in Vietnam, where workers in state-owned factories earn barely a third as much.

Needless to say, jobs at Nike factories - and those of other evil multinationals - are in hot demand among the Vietnamese. If Nike is the villain here, it's because they're dealing with a repressive communist dictatorship, not because of the working conditions. (As Norberg notes, the same activists who worshipped the Vietnamese communists 30 years ago aren't nearly as enthusiastic now that they've embraced the market economy. For that matter, I'm glad to see these people speaking out against the atrocities committed by the Chinese government - but where were they when Mao was starving and executing his people by the millions?)

Give it 10 or 15 years, and Vietnam will be where China is now. China, by that time, will be where South Korea is now. South Korea, in 15 years, will be as rich as Japan. And the anti-globalization movement will be complaining about all the pollution being caused by Vietnamese workers' new cars.

The Day the Road Map Died

Buried in this AP story about the dismantling of several (uninhabited) Israeli "outposts" in the West Bank: Abu Mazen's admission that he won't crack down on Hamas or any other Palestinian terror groups. Ever.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was struggling to implement a key obligation under the plan — reining in anti-Israeli violence. Abbas said Monday he would not use force against militant groups under any circumstances, despite their stated determination to derail the peace plan with attacks on Israelis, including two weekend shootings that killed five soldiers.

I love that word, "struggling". Abbas/Mazen admits he's not going to do anything - though a few minutes later he said "we must do our utmost to end the bloodshed" - and the AP says he's "struggling". If the Jews control the media, as I'm constantly reminded by my progressive bretheren, why the hell do they keep letting stuff like this pass through?

This charade has gone on long enough. Until the PA shows that they're willing to deal with the genocidal terror gangs they've allowed to fester under their watchful eyes, Israel should not be expected to make any more concessions. Too bad Mazen didn't admit this before Israel released convicted terrorists back into his loving arms. Because we all know he opposes the use of violence, right? Right?

(via - who else? - LGF)

Cartoon of the year

This is it. (via Smallest Minority)

MEMRI and moderates

You can always count on the invaluable MEMRI to expose the looniest, most insane, most hateful conspirozoid nonsense regularly featured in the Arab media. But they also spotlight several genuinely moderate, thoughtful Arab writers who bravely turn a critical spotlight on their own region, instead of blaming everything on the Jews. For example, their latest dispatch features the few Arab columnists who've written about the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein's regime, and the Arab world's shameful silence:

In an article titled "No One Apologizes" in the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, columnist Ahmed Al-Rab'i wrote: "Dozens of political parties and figures applauded Saddam Hussein and his regime. [They all] defended him because they considered this regime to [be] nationalistic and an enemy of Zionism, and some even used to label this regime 'democratic.' [These people] appeared on [various Arab] satellite channels and on the streets of [Arab] cities fervently defending Saddam Hussein's regime, [until the moment that the] veil was lifted from the unknown, until they saw with their own eyes the hundreds of thousands of families searching for their missing [relatives], the hundreds of secret prisons the doors of which [never] closed, and the thousands buried with their clothes in a barbaric and inhuman way."

"Is there not a single man of conscience who might be brought by these sights to... admit he was mistaken, that he was unaware of the truth, that he was a victim of the misleading [Arab] media? Is there no one who will tell the public, [the very public] he led in demonstrations defending Saddam Hussein's regime, that he was wrong? Is it not a disaster when the one who committed the crime of defending Saddam's regime and deceived the people refuses to apologize!?"
[...]
In "Saddam's Mass Graves," columnist 'Ureib Al-Rintawi wrote in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour: "With the discovery of mass graves [on the outskirts of] Basra containing... the remains of over 15,000 Iraqis, the story of Halabja seems like a minor episode in the bloody game experienced by the Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime."

"Fourth, to those still immersed in the search for the causes of the swift collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, I say: 'Do not exhaust yourselves searching for conspiracies, intrigues and betrayals. The reasons for this collapse were most shamefully exposed by the mass graves....'"

We need to see more of this. More importantly, the Arab world needs it.

No blogging this weekend

My monitor - a (Samsung-built) Samtron, purchased less than a year ago - is in the shop. At least it's under warranty.

See you Monday morning.

"It's not bragging if you can back it up."

John Hawkins has a hilarious list of Muhammad Ali quotes.

Making the Best of a bad situation

The Washington Post has a fascinating, genuinely touching profile of Pete Best, the original Beatles drummer, replaced by Ringo Starr just before the group made its first official recordings. Tortured for many years by his brush with greatness, Best is now happily married and swimming in royalties from The Beatles Anthology.

Never forget

The D-Day landings took place 59 years ago today. 21,000 Canadians - 340 of whom never returned - took part, and penetrated further into German territory than anyone else. Today, the Canadian government has opened its long-overdue memorial at Juno Beach.

Let us never, ever, forget what they did to keep us free.

Horror in Zimbabwe

Sky News has rare, smuggled video footage of the growing chaos in Zimbabwe - including an astonishing scene where a Mugabe supporter clings to the back of the photographers' truck, douses it in gasoline, and threatens to set it on fire if the footage isn't handed over.

This is either going to end like Romania circa 1989, or China circa 1989. I hope to God it's the former - though I also hope Zimbabwe's new leaders are more competent than the old commie hacks who took over from Ceausescu.

Free Aung San Suu Kyi

Andrew Sullivan fears for democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been arrested and "disappeared" by the Burmese military government:

Mitch McConnell and the irrepressible John McCain are supporting strong economic sanctions - which, in this case, would directly hurt the business cronies of the junta that control much of the economy. The president should take note and urge passage of the bill and do what he can to urge Japan in particular to halt its odious appeasement of the thugs in Rangoon. I feel particularly strongly about this, as one of the relatively few Westerners who managed to get into Burma over a decade ago just before the revolution. It was a heart-breaking visit. The decay and despair of a proud and beautiful nation were emblems to me of what dictatorship does to the human soul. When you see what this country once was, its poignant and stunning religiosity, its ethnic variety, its gentle culture, and you see how it has been trashed by careless, callous generals, you get a lesson in how destructive authoritarian politics can be.

By the way, all decent people should refuse to call the country "Myanmar" - a name foisted upon it by the late Ne Win, a mentally unbalanced socialist tyrant who used numerology to help him make decisions.

Brown Bunny-gate

Roger Ebert has more on his hilarious feud with Vincent Gallo, director of the universally despised film The Brown Bunny, who put a "curse" on Ebert's colon after the critic said it was the worst movie ever shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Ebert responds, "I am not too worried. I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny."

Republican Party supporters will be thrilled to know Gallo considers himself a GOP man:

On Monday Gallo told the New York Post's Page Six that Screen International "made up" his quotes. He added, "I'm sorry I'm not gay or Jewish, so I don't have a special interest group of journalists who support me." Such comments might seem politically incorrect, but not to Gallo, who says he is a conservative Republican, although since his film ends with a hard-core oral sex scene, he is not likely to be fielding many group bookings from the Moral Majority.

(Actually, Roger, the Moral Majority was disbanded several years ago. And frankly, these days it's the Democrats - or, more likely, the socialists - who would complain about Jews in the media. But I digress.)

Ebert also notes that the French actually found a homegrown Cannes entry which, they insist, is even worse than The Brown Bunny, and that the whole thing could be a massive publicity stunt for Gallo's film. (Think about it: what other Cannes entry have you even heard of this year?) He concludes, "It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny."

"A lie is halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on." - Winston Churchill

This cartoon is in the Western Star this morning. And Gwynne Dyer's column (no link) savages Paul Wolfowitz for his "cynical" remarks to a Vanity Fair interviewer: "...for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason."

Wolfowitz's actual remarks, of course, weren't nearly as damning. (Basically, he said there were several compelling reasons for taking down Saddam, and the WMD issue was believed to be the most compelling.) Dyer is undoubtedly familiar with the controversy over the way his remarks were taken out of context, and it looks like he just doesn't care. I guess he'll be using the even more fraudulent "Iraq sits on a sea of oil" quote next. (If he won't, some of the lefties who regularly pollute the Star's letters page will.)

Dyer also predicts another American war before the next election, "with the U.S. economy unlikely to recover dramatically in the next year." Well, you can believe Gwynne Dyer (who also predicted the battle of Baghdad would become a "Stalingrad" for the Americans, and that Ariel Sharon would use the war as an excuse to expel the Palestinians) or Alan Greenspan, who says a "fairly marked turnaround" in the sluggish U.S. economy is imminent.

Anyone want to help me start a campaign to get the Star to replace Dyer with Charles Krauthammer?

Even the Guardian has some standards

They're retracted their fraudulent "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" story.

Arab intellectuals and Israel

An excellent column in Israel's Yediot Aharonot, translated by IMRA, on the absolute refusal of Arab elites to countenance any possibility of co-existence with the Jewish state:

Throughout the Arab world the "Palestinian problem" still serves, as it did
40 years ago, as an excuse for conservatism, silencing of criticism, dictatorship, isolationism. Tyrants and religious clerics use it to tighten their holds: they are not interested in resolving the conflict, because then they would have to confront the real miseries of their citizens. Readiness to part with territories for the sake of peace has been the banner of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli intellectual community for a generation now. It played a crucial role in persuading Israeli public opinion and politicians of the authenticity and legitimacy of Palestinian aspiration for a state of their own.

The Arab poets and their colleagues urge the Palestinians in Gaza to maintain "a continuous intifada," an intifada that serves their frustrated intellectuals as a kind of spiritual elevation in which they are not required to sacrifice anything but words dripping with hate. Thus the Arab "spiritual nobles" betray first and foremost their Palestinian brethren.

I'd like to be as optimistic about the "road map" as most of the mainstream media, but until the Arabs change - and until Western liberals stop making excuses for them - nothing will really change. When the Jordanians can't even bring themselves to fly the Israeli flag alongside the flags of Jordan, the US and the PLO during the latest summit, how can we say they're serious?

Breaking News: Shakeup at the New York Times

No details yet, but CNN says NYT Executive Editor Howell Raines, and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, have resigned.

It's mainly about the Jayson Blair scandal, but I can see the Mirror front page already: "FIRED BY AMERICA FOR DISSENTING!!!"

Update: here's the Times's own story.

For all its faults (including a persistent left-wing bias, and Maureen Dowd's continued employment), the New York Times is still one of the world's great newspapers, and I hope it can leave this mess behind.

Arafat's show of good faith

How can the Middle East peace process fail when Yasser Arafat, undisputed legitimate elected leader of the Palestinian people (as we're constantly reminded), makes peaceful, conciliatory speeches like this?

"The great imperialistic Zionist conspiracy against our Arab nation and our homeland Palestine, which began with the Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, reached its accursed peak on May 15, 1948. On this accursed day, the state of Israel was established by force of arms, as [the result of] imperialistic conspiracy, on the ruins of our homeland Palestine. Our people [were] strewn from our homeland, in exile, in the diaspora, and in the refugee camps by massacres. Has the world forgotten, and [have] our people forgotten, the massacre of Deir Yassin and Qibiya and Nahalin and the other massacres in 1947, 1948, and since?"

"In 1947, the imperialistic forces that controlled the U.N. at that time forced the partition of our homeland, Palestine, into two states: one Palestinian Arab and one Israeli Jewish. But the State of Palestine did not arise, and never saw the light [of day], and [none gave even] minimal consideration to the decision of international legitimacy [i.e. the U.N.] regarding our people [and its right to] an independent state on the historic land of Palestine."
[...]
"In the cities of Palestine, in its refugee camps, in its settlements and villages, its plains, its mountains, its groves of trees, and its coasts, over 70,000 martyrs and wounded have fallen defending the homeland's freedom and independence and the places holy to Islam and Christianity. They have blessing and glory. They are among the martyrs and the saints, who are the best friends [of the martyrs] who improve [the land] with their blood for the sake of independence and freedom and the establishment of the independent State of Palestine whose capital is Jerusalem, if Allah wills it, they will 'enter the mosque as they had entered it the first time;' Allah never fails in His promise.'"
[...]
"I bless you all, and shake the hand of each one of you, every woman, elderly person, boy, or girl, and tell them: This homeland, the places holy to Christianity and Islam, Jerusalem and the other holy cities, our villages and refugee camps, are all our [responsibility]. I instruct you to protect this [responsibility] and defend it with your soul and your blood."

Why? Why is this man still alive?

Daniel Pipes is blogging

Check out the "Recommended Readings" section of his website.

Follow the paper trail

Ibrahim al-Marashi, whose report on Iraq's WMD capacity was famously plaigerized by the British government in one of its dossiers, savages the Brits for "sexing up" their reports on this issue. But he remains convinced that Iraq had a WMD program, and says "smoking gun" documents will prove it:

Over the weekend, a senior Bush Administration official admitted that American forces in Iraq had not yet had the time to process Iraqi state and security documents captured since the end of the conflict. The documentation may still be a key piece of evidence to prove whether or not Iraq was in violation of UN sanctions.

Such papers demonstrate that the Iraqis may have produced a documentary trail of its weapons production since 1991.

The Blogger ideology graph

"Right" and "left" can mean almost anything depending on who you're talking to, but c'mon...am I really one of the most conservative bloggers on the internet? I figured my position on gun control alone would put me pretty close to the center. (Or am I just reading this wrong?)

Can you spot the logical error in this sentence?

From today's National Post:

On the eve of a crucial meeting today with the Israeli Prime Minister and his Palestinian counterpart, George W. Bush yesterday extracted a pledge from Arab leaders that any aid for Palestinians will be directed to the Palestinian Authority and not extremist groups.

Here's a hint.

Can't we all just get along?

Filmmaker/Jeff Lynne lookalike Vincent Gallo, whose Brown Bunny is being called the worst movie ever shown at Cannes, is taking his bad reviews a bit too personally:

BILE-spewing filmmaker Vincent Gallo is still throwing bombs at famed movie critic Roger Ebert. PAGE SIX readers will recall that Gallo called Ebert a "fat pig" and put a curse on his colon after the reviewer wrote about his critically lambasted "Brown Bunny," and Ebert responded by telling us he's lost 30 pounds — and suggested Gallo gain 30 IQ points. Yesterday, the "Buffalo 66" actor/director called us to deliver this pleasant message: "You tell that hamhock Roger Ebert he could lose 30 pounds a day for the next four years and still be fat. As for the curse on his colon, what I actually said was that I put an unremovable black magic curse on his prostate, which will enlarge into a large cancerous ball by the fall. . . . I want to challenge that fat cow to an IQ test. I bet him $1 million dollars to take a public IQ test against me. By the way, tell him I also put a curse on [Gene] Siskel [Ebert's partner on TV's "Siskel and Ebert," who died of complications from a brain tumor in 1999]."

Ebert's response is almost enough to make me forgive him for giving Zoolander one star:

When told of Gallo's latest outburst, Ebert replied: "I wish Mr. Gallo a speedy recovery."

(via Jim Treacher)

Wolfowitz, the Wanker, and wicked dishonesty

This is getting ridiculous. Paul Wolfowitz's words are being grotesquely twisted again, this time by the Guardian, to make it look like he admitted the Iraq war was primarily about oil.

He actually said no such thing - not that this will stop the "he admitted it!!!" claims from popping up on NaziMedia sites all over the world. And this distortion was much, much more blatant than anything Vanity Fair did. The lefties always told me we shouldn't trust anything reported by the corporate media, but I don't think this is what they meant.

The Best of Daimnation! - compiled and edited by Maureen Dowd

"Another disturbing story...about the...iceberg...that...handed out...motorcycles...to...the Rolling Stones."

"Why in God's name...are...the Liberals...reviewing...the Communist Party paper?"

"It's hard to know what's more depressing...Hitler, the Holocaust or...Rob Schneider."

"Mugabe...is...an FBI undercover agent whose mission is to...decriminalize marijuana."

"The Dixie Chicks...say...HIV doesn't cause AIDS."

Islamofascists in Iraq

Another disturbing story, from The Times, about the people who want to bring Iraq back to the 7th century:

"Before, we had Saddam, now we have the imams. Saddam wouldn’t let us do things, and now the imams won’t. Where is the freedom?"

It was signed by the Hawza school of Islam, a powerful sect that runs the local al-Khardum mosque. Allaa Salim, the record shop’s owner, felt that he had little choice: "We stopped selling foreign songs, and now we just sell Islamic songs. All the music shops around here have changed," he said, also clearly frightened of the religious authorities.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Why in God's name are the Americans letting them get away with this? Don't they know what these people are doing? Are they trying to avoid being seen as "suppressing Islam"? This is madness. Even if you opposed the war, you have to admit the Americans are the only ones who can stop this. (Of course, for some people, an Islamist theocracy - or any dictatorship - is preferable to American occupation. People who shriek "end the occupation!!!" know perfectly well what will take its place.)

The campaign heats up

The St. John's Telegram (no link) reports that a Liberal candidate on the Northern Peninsula has handed out nearly $10,000.00 in provincial government cheques to community groups. The thing is, he hasn't actually been elected yet:

Ralph Payne, the Liberal candidiate for St. Barbe, presented cheques totalling nearly $10,000 on behalf of the government, according to media clippings from the Northern Peninsula.

This past May, he presented a cheque for $5,481 to the United Towns Lions Club RV Park.

The Liberals, not surprisingly, are blaming this on a "special assistant in the premier's office" who made a "judgment call" to let the candidiate hand over the money in person. Whatever, guys. During by-elections on the Northern Peninsula a couple of years ago, the provincial government gave money to a firehall in exchange for being allowed to use it as a Liberal campaign headquarters, so this sort of thing doesn't really surprise me anymore. (The Tories still won the elections, and Wally Young should easily hold the St. Barbe riding for the PCs next time around.)

By the way, this is yet another Western Newfoundland story reported by the townie Telegram instead of Corner Brook's Western Star. Go figure.

Like the New York Post, only more biased and provincial

Michael Moynihan reviews Sweden's most popular paper, Aftonbladet:

52 pages, two non-Swedish stories (the two or three truncated AFP stories don't count as "international coverage"), one Chomsky article and one healthy dose of anti-American gruel propaganda.

(When are you going to set up permalinks, Michael?)

Tex's Hondas

Tex is reviewing motorcycles on whackingday.com. Most notably, he says Honda VTEC engines don't work nearly as well on two wheels as on four.

Salam Pax in the Wanker

His first newspaper column has been published, and it's more optimistic than I expected. Things are hardly perfect, but when he writes about how happy he is to run out and buy independent newspapers, you can't help feeling that this is all going to work out in the end. (Even better, he says no one is buying the Communist Party paper, launched with much fanfare after the war ended.)

Also via InstaPundit: Ken Joseph, an Assyrian Christian minister who travelled to Iraq as a human shield but left when he saw what Saddam was doing to his people, has reported on his postwar return trip for UPI. He says Iraqis are actually quite patient with the American presence, and realize that Baghdad isn't going to turn into Paris overnight. (Insert your own joke here.) So why are so many people expressing their anger and frustration to the western media? Because Shi'ite radicals will rape and kill them if they say otherwise:

The greatest fear of the man on the street is that the Americans will tire and leave. "We pray that they stay and stay forever" is the feeling of the vast majority, but they look both ways before they say it.

This message from a Shiite Islamic organization says it all and explains in a nutshell why, though finally liberated, the Iraqi people still live in fear.

This should not be tolerated - not even if it makes the Americans look like they're "fighting Islam". Anti-American hate in most Muslim countries has already gotten as high as it can get, and it's hard to see what goodwill the Yanks can build up by letting the Islamofascists run wild.

The Stones' opening Nazis

Check out who's opening for the Rolling Stones in Hanover, Germany on August 8:

Bohse Onkelz, which means Evil Uncles, have been accused of promoting neo-Nazism with hate-filled lyrics.

He added: "They were a reaction to our life on the road. Every day we were in fights with Turkish street gangs."

And fights with Holocaust victims, too?

A Rolling Stones spokesman said: "The German promoters booked this band. They were booked because they are popular in Germany."

If the Stones had recorded a memorable album since 1978, I'd be even more upset.

(via John Hawkins)

America the hated, Israel the despised

It's hard to know what's more depressing: poll results showing overwhelming hatred toward the United States in Muslim countries, or most Muslims' desire that Israel be completely eradicated.

The poll, conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, surveyed more than 15,000 people in May. Muslim populations included were Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.

More than eight out of 10 in Turkey and Pakistan questioned since the war have a negative view of the United States, as do seven out of 10 in Lebanon and two-thirds in Morocco. The most extreme shift was seen in Indonesia, where 61 percent had a favorable opinion last summer but now only 15 percent do.
[...]
As for the crisis in the Middle East, in a wave of sentiment that bodes ill for the future of the U.S.-sponsored "road map" to peace, Muslims lined up strongly behind the opinion that "the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists."

The conviction that no way can be found for Israel and the Palestinians to coexist is strongest in Morocco (90 percent), followed by Jordan (85 percent), the Palestinian Authority (80 percent), Kuwait (72 percent), Lebanon (65 percent), Indonesia (58 percent) and Pakistan (57 percent).

There were a couple of interesting findings: 61% of respondents from Nigeria say they have a favorable impression of the U.S. - down from 77% last summer, but still a majority. Nigeria, of course, is one of the most blighted, poverty-stricken nations on earth, which should put the Americans-are-hated-because-they're-fat-and-rich argument in perspective. (Are Americans more decadent than, say, Bahrainis? Qataris? Kuwaitis?)

Also, most people in the Muslim world believe Western-style democracy can work in their countries, and that could be the key. And that's why I'm disappointed Iranians weren't surveyed. Unlike in Muslim thugocracies which are officially allied with the U.S., such as Egypt or Jordan, the people of Iran have no one but themselves to blame for the rise of their Islamic fundamentalist rulers, and that some manifestation of American power will be necessary to get rid of them. Some surveys have shown surprsing pro-American sentiment in Iran, and you'd probably see similar results in other Arab states where the people are free to choose their leaders. The more I see, the more I think it's simply not worth propping up the likes of the Saudis or Egyptians. (Sometimes I'd even go further, and think Arabs need to spend a few years living under Islamofascist dictatorship, because it's the only way they'll get the friggin' message.)

As for Israel, unfortunately, nothing less than a complete cultural shift is needed. The people of the Muslim world simply do not want a Jewish state to exist, and that should give pause to anyone who actually thinks this "road map" is going to work. I'm disappointed the pollsters didn't ask respondents for their opinions on Hitler, the Holocaust or Jews in general - chances are you would have gotten similar results in Germany, 1933.

Should we try to understand why they feel that way? Of course. But that doesn't mean we should have to accept it.

The Matrix Regurgitated

Treacher pretty much nails it. Actually, I guess I liked it better than he did, if only because of the spectacular freeway scene, but over all I found it talky, slow, confusing and simply not as much fun as the original. I'll still be there for The Matrix Revolutions this fall, but I really hope it's better than this one. As it is, I'm almost ashamed to make such a heretical statement, but I think I enjoyed The Hot Chick more.

Speaking of The Hot Chick: Roger Ebert (or maybe Gene Siskel) once said moviegoers are ready to accept the impossible but not the improbable. This film was a perfect example. I was prepared to accept a pair of cursed earrings which made Rob Schneider and a teenaged girl switch bodies. Really. I was not, however, ready to accept that the chick's mother would be so nonchalant about her daughter disappearing, or that the villians would lose the big cheerleading competition despite a markedly better routine.

(It's not even 9 AM yet, and here I am writing about plot inconsistencies in a Rob Schneider movie. I've hit rock bottom, folks.)

The price of free health care

Ten bucks says something like this will be proposed in Canada before too long:

Overweight people and heavy smokers would have to sign contracts promising to diet or give up cigarettes in return for treatment, under radical new plans being drawn up by Labour.

Written contracts would set out the patient’s responsibilities while offering them help to cut down or quit smoking, lose weight, take more exercise or eat a more nutritious diet, The Times has learnt. Those who failed to keep their side of the bargain or kept missing appointments could be denied free care.

Taliban in Pakistan

Trouble brewing in northwestern Pakistan: a provincial government is imposing a extremely strict interpretation of Islamic law, similar to the Taliban era in Afghanistan - and the Pakistani government is bending over backwards to avoid doing anything about it.

The Islamist ruling parties in Pakistan's sensitive North West Frontier Province have ordered compulsory prayers for the population and will create a Taliban-style Department of Vice and Virtue to enforce their ruling.

The move is part of a campaign by fundamentalists to turn the whole of Pakistan into a Taliban-style state and is only one of several crises that has paralysed the country and the nine-month-old civilian government.
[...]
Last Friday, the North West Frontier Province Assembly passed the Sharia (or Islamic law) bill, which would dramatically change the province's educational, judicial and financial systems and bring them in line with fundamentalist Islamic laws. The same day, MMA supporters went on a celebratory rampage in Peshawar, the province's capital, tearing down advertising hoardings showing women, destroying satellite cable television connections and attacking offices of foreign multinationals. The police stood quietly by, refusing to control the mobs.

The MMA came to power in the North West Frontier Province after October's controversial elections in which the army and ISI helped it to win a majority of seats.

Update: NRO's Andrew Stuttaford calls the Islamofascists "brownshirts". And he's exactly right. If we're going to combat this sort of thing, we have to recognize it for what it is: not "religion" or "culture," but a totalitarian political ideology like Nazism, Fascism and Communism.

How cool is this?

Thunder City, a South African company, allows people to rent supersonic jet fighters. (Decommissioned and disarmed, of course.)

I now know where the next blogger bash has to be held.

(via Wilbur Smith)

Zimbabwe shuts down

There's a massive general strike against the Mugabe regime in response to the latest crackdown.

Update: the strike has been violently suppressed by Mugabe's security forces.

M. Kahil lives...

...and he's drawing cartoons for the Chicago Tribune. Unbelievable.

(For those of you new to this site: M. Kahil draw rabidly anti-Semitic editorial cartoons for the Arab News. He passed away a couple of months ago.)

Scheer duplicity

Is Robert Scheer an FBI undercover agent whose mission is to discredit the far left? Stefan Sharkansky has the shocking evidence.

Connect the dots, people...

McKay's deal with the devil

We'd better get used to a few more decades of uninterrupted Liberal rule, because Tory leader-elect Peter McKay's deal with leftist candidiate David Orchard prevents the party from making any kind of merger or cooperation agreement with the Canadian Alliance:

Newly crowned Progressive Conservative Leader Peter MacKay spent his first day on the job yesterday fighting to heal a party torn by his decision to secure office in a controversial deal with rival David Orchard.

Mr. MacKay told party faithful that he will not abandon Tory support for the notion of free trade, despite a pact he made that calls on the party to launch a blue-ribbon review of the issue.
[...]
Mr. MacKay won the leadership in a runoff with Calgary lawyer Jim Prentice after agreeing to a deal hastily drawn in a Toronto hotel room that calls for the review and insists the Tories not seek a merger with the Canadian Alliance.

Mr. Orchard, known as a critic of free trade with the United States, also won concessions that give him a role in pushing forward agriculture and environmental policy. He will participate in appointing members of the trade-review panel, although Mr. MacKay said that he will not have the final say.

The big complaint against the PC party is that it hasn't done enough to differentiate itself from the Liberals. That may not be a problem anymore, if a cultural nationalist and trade protectionist like Orchard is going to be shaping party policy. By the time the next election comes around, the Tories could be running to the left of Paul Martin. It's like the party is sick of competing with the Canadian Alliance, and wants to start competing with the New Democrats.

I said I'd give McKay a chance to keep me within the PC fold, but he's not off to a great start.

Trouble brewing in Burma

Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, a tireless and brave campaigner for democracy, has been arrested as part of a government crackdown. ("Taken into protective custody," says the country's military rulers.)

"America Loses its Voice"

Joshua Muravchik has a depressing piece in the latest Weekly Standard about the American government's inexplicable failure to counter the insanely anti-American (and anti-Jewish) discourse in the Arab media:

Since 9/11, lacking an agency or office equipped to prosecute a war of ideas, we have been flailing. An advertising executive was brought in as an undersecretary of state for public diplomacy in order to, in Secretary Powell's words, "rebrand America," just as she had done for Uncle Ben's rice. As a start, she organized a campaign publicizing the "mosques of America," apparently to make the Muslim world aware of how many Americans practice Islam. Of course, a far greater number of Americans practice Christianity, yet it has done nothing for our standing with the French, Spaniards, and Germans.

The war of ideas, however, cannot be won by seduction. It must be primarily a work of persuasion. Of course heavy-handed propaganda is useless, and in the Cold War the Voice of America used jazz to draw listeners. But our approach today is out of balance. When Sawa was launched, the Arabic service of Voice of America was abolished, with the inexplicable result that we are today broadcasting less news, commentary, and discourse to the Arab world than at any time in memory. [emphasis added]

Madness.

No WMDs? So what?

The Telegraph's Con Coughlin says the Iraq war was justified even if no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are found:

So many of these harrowing sites have been uncovered in the two months since Saddam's overthrow that even the experts are starting to lose count of just how many atrocities were committed by the Iraqi dictator's henchmen.

Many of them, too, are unhappy with the way the Americans are handling the occupation; but they are immensely relieved that they can now express such views in public without fear of being detained and tortured by Saddam's security officials.

Questions for conspirozoids

John Hawkins has compiled a list. (Good luck getting Mikey Rivero or Barrie Zwicker to answer these, John.)

More stifling of dissent in Ashcroft's Amerikkka!!!

First the Dixie Chicks suffered a blacklisting unseen since the McCarthy era (their CD falling a couple of spots on the country charts, getting booed at the CMA awards, posing nude on the cover of Entertainment Weekly...the horror, the horror), and now another country musician is having his music pulled from radio-station playlists for political reasons. How much longer can this horror continue? Bush is worse than Hitler! Free Mumia!

Oh, wait...the song is being pulled because it's too religious. Never mind.

Daron Norwood's song, "In God We Trust," made it to some mainstream country playlists and briefly enjoyed status as the most requested song before radio executives started dropping the song because it contains the name of Jesus.

The song's lyrics begin, "Take His prayers from the schoolhouse, His name off the dollar bill. Take His name out of the pledge 'cause you don't think he's real. You got every right to be wrong, but give me my rights too. Be yourself, but leave well enough alone." Then the chorus follows, "If there's no Jesus, tell me who died for us? If there's no Father, why do I feel His love? If there's no heaven, tell me where do mamas go? It's more than just a name we choose to love. It's in God we trust."

Yeah, I know the lyrics are pretty heavy-handed, to say the least. But as the Tim Robbinses of the world keep reminding us, you're free to change the station if you don't like it. If you thought it was "censorship" to pull the Dixie Chicks' music from radio playlists, then you should be equally outraged by this. Simple as that.

You know who won't be outraged by this, though. (For that matter, I have no doubt the folks at "BaptistPress.com," who reported this story, have never refrained from campaigning against music they don't like. They should learn a lesson here, too.)

(via The Corner)

Only in Canada

The federal government is finally ready to decriminalize marijuana, but they're also planning to spend $245 million on an "educational" program asking us not to smoke the stuff. Rex Murphy has the details.

$245 million. Just under a quarter of a billion dollars. To blunt the impact of its own legislation. Directed at people who, as a rule, don't pay much attention to government-sponsored public service announcements. Remember that next time you have to wait months to get your MRI, or when our soldiers have to hitch a ride with the Yanks because we don't have proper transport aircraft.

Steyn's long-awaited return

He recounts his trip to Iraq for the Sunday Telegraph. Needless to say, it's not the same Iraq Robert Fisk visited. And I know who I'm going to believe.

Pulling a Wirdheim

Let this be a lesson to any aspiring race car drivers out there:

Den Bla Avis driver Nicholas Kiesa took a shock win in the Formula 3000 race at Monaco today (Saturday) after Bjorn Wirdheim, who had dominated the race, slowed down to celebrate his win too early and inadvertently allowed the Dane past!

Arden driver Wirdheim controlled the race for almost its entire length until his astonishing error. Coming out of the final corner, he slowed to savor the victory with his mechanics, failing to realize that he was still some 55 feet short of the finish line. His team frantically waved at him to get moving, but Kiesa was able to nip past before the line to steal his first F3000 win.