Free the Bud Light ad!

That this commercial won't air during the Super Bowl is a travesty.

Sgro v. Singh

Judy Sgro is going to sue Harjit Singh, who accuses her of influence-peddling, for defamation:

In a statement of claim filed with Ontario Superior Court and obtained by The Canadian Press, Sgro accuses Harjit Singh and the others of libel, slander and conspiracy. "The lies and the additional lies have caused Sgro enormous public embarrassment and humiliation," the 28-page statement of claim states.

"At no time did Sgro meet with Singh," her claim asserts.

The best and worst of humanity

The worst: according to the Iraqi interior minister, the "minutemen" sent a young man with Down's Syndrome to blow himself up at a polling station yesterday.

The best: after another suicide bomber (or was it the same guy?) killed five people at a Baghdad polling station, people still waited around to vote.

Why they voted

A resident of Baghdad explains why he exercised his right to vote.

Strangely, "anti-war" activists in Australia, England and the United States haven't said too much about this. Wonder why?

Hatred where the towers once stood

The Center for Religious Freedom says the Saudis are distributing xenophobic and anti-Semitic materials at mosques all over America - including one not too far from the 9/11 site:

Just three miles from the site of the World Trade Center, the government of Saudi Arabia is distributing hate materials expounding an extremist Wahhabi ideology, according to a new report by the Center for Religious Freedom.

According to the report's translation, Al-Farooq worshipers are told: "If a person said: I believe in Allah alone and confirm the truth of everything from Muhammed, except in his forbidding fornication, he becomes a disbeliever. For that, it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money."

The entire report can be found here, in PDF format.

Trial of the century decade year

Jury selection for the Michael Jackson trial starts today. Admit it, folks, you're going to end up following this circus whether you want to or not. (I've found that people who have the strongest opinions about the O.J. trial are those who found all the media attention "stupid".)

A good overview of the major players and issues can be found here.

Rwanda all over again

A UN panel has determined that the violence in Darfur is not "genocide", but "crimes against humanity with ethnic dimensions". Glad they cleared that up:

A special United Nations commission has decided that two years of violence in the western Sudan region of Darfur was not genocide but "crimes against humanity with ethnic dimensions", according to leaks of the report in the US.

The report is to be made public this week, after it goes to the Security Council. But it could set off a new dispute between the US and its key allies. In September, the State Department said the murder of tens of thousands of people in Darfur, and the forced uprooting of 1.8 million more, did constitute genocide. It spoke of a pattern of targeted violence, co-ordinated by the government and committed by state-backed militias.

Time's up, Kim

I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high, but Times reporter Michael Sheridan, visiting North Korea, found definite signs that the Stalinist dictatorship is on the verge of collapse:

In interviews for this article over many months, western policymakers, Chinese experts, North Korean exiles and human rights activists built up a picture of a tightly knit clan leadership in Pyongyang that is on the verge of collapse.

The death of Kim’s favourite mistress last summer, a security clampdown on foreign aid workers and a reported assassination attempt in Austria last November against the leader’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, have all heightened the sense of disintegration.
[...]
As we shivered in the frontier post the portraits of Kim and his late father, Kim Il-sung, stared down from the wall as if nothing had changed. But the cult of the Kim dynasty, its “perfect” theory of Juche — patriotic self-reliance — and the utopian society of which the official guides boast are visibly breaking down.

“The information blockade is like a dam and when it bursts there will be a great wave,” said Shin, the crusading pastor.

(via LGF)

There's no satisfying some people

In 1993, when Alberta privatized liquor stores, the labour unions complained that prices would increase and selection would get worse. Twelve years later, the labour unions are complaining that prices have decreased and selection has gotten better:

As the Ontario government considers a major liberalization of its liquor policies, including possibly ending its monopoly on booze sales, eyes have turned to Alberta, where liquor sales were privatized in the early 1990s.

"Alberta can clearly demonstrate - with over 12 years of experience - better pricing, better selection, better convenience, and I think the over-arching element that always puzzles everyone is that you also get better service," says John Szumas, who leads the Alberta Liquor Store Association lobby group.
[...]
Greg Flanagan, assistant dean of the University of Lethbridge's Faculty of Management at the University of Lethbridge, says a detailed study is needed to also look at the social effects of privatization.

"And so the whole point of taxing liquor - because it's cheap to make - is to keep it artifically scarce by the tax and thereby having less people using it."

Eight Million Strong

Final voter turnout in the Iraqi election: 60%.

Iraq's first democratic election in more than 50 years started with insurgent attacks and ended with an estimated eight million people rejecting calls for a boycott and casting their ballots.

U.S. President George W. Bush praised the Iraqis for "a resounding success" and "a great and historic achievement."

Let's not forgot how some people felt before this historic day.

Marching against democracy

The most disgusting photo you will see all day. Maybe all year.

The Iraqis have spoken

Fox News puts turnout at 72%. AP (headline: "Iraqi voter turnout picks up despite violence") says 57%, though I think that may have been an estimate from Iraqi officials before the polls opened. In a place where voting could get you killed, I think 57% is still pretty darn impressive.

Roger Simon live-blogged the first few hours of TV coverage.

Hummers are wimpy

Dear Santa,

Sincerely,
Bart Simpson

(via Paul Jane)

The polls open

As I write this, it's just after 5:30AM in Baghdad. The polling stations for Iraq's first free election in recent memory will open in a few hours.

There are thousands of Ba'athists and Islamofascists who want to sabotage the election, and I have no doubt we will be confronted with some absolutely horrible stories in the next 24 hours. (Even General John Abizaid admits that some suicide bombers are likely to break through security at polling stations.) But I also know the people of Iraq - even many of those who oppose the American occupation - want to live in a free, democratic country, and I think an overwhelming majority of Iraqis will exercise their new right.

Today's New York Times featured an opinion piece by Bakhtiar Dargali, an Iraqi Kurd now living in Texas, who plans to vote. His column explains what this election is all about:

In 1976, when I was 15, my older brother and I left behind our parents, four brothers, three sisters, 500 cousins and our beloved village of Dargala, in the Kurdish part of Iraq, to come to the United States. We also left behind many bad memories: of hiding out in freezing caves in the mountains to escape the Baathists' bombardment of the Kurds, of seeing our uncle's family blown up by government planes.

But then came the news that 31 marines died on Wednesday in western Iraq when their helicopter crashed as they were on what Gen. John Abizaid said was a "mission in support of the election." How can I ignore the sacrifices of these marines who died so my family can vote? The best way for me to honor their martyrdom is to vote myself.

I'm not a very religious man, but I'm praying that this election succeeds. And I'm sure you are, too.

Spector crosses the line

The feud between Kathy Shaidle and Norm Spector is heating up again in this Shotgun comments thread. Kathy is actually considering legal action against Spector for some of the assertions he's made about her writing career.

I like Spector's daily mewspaper roundups, and I always thought it was good for The Shotgun to have a fairly well-known writer affiliated with it. (Plus, on a CBC Radio appearance a couple of years ago, he got Robert Fisk to scream about how sick he is with the Israelis constantly bringing up the Holocaust.) But like Warren Kinsella, James Wolcott and other "professional" writers who sneer at the very blogging community they've decided to join, Spector thinks he's better than those of us who blog as a hobby. Accusing Kathy of lying about her resume (and blindly sticking to that assertion after it's been debunked) is bad enough. Comparing Kate Macmillan to "a teenager who keeps a diary" is the last straw.

Norm, if you think the rest of us at The Shotgun are beneath you, you don't have to keep writing for it. I'm sure the site will survive without you. If Kathy is persuaded to come back, it will prosper.

The Zionists steal all these socks you lose in the dryer, too

Anti-semitic conspirokook Joe Vialls says 250 members of the omnipotent Zionist cabal have stolen a Boeing 747 and fled to the "little-known Australian island" of Tasmania.

I was wondering why Mark Steyn hadn't updated his website in a while.

We got a deal

The provincial and federal governments have finally reached a deal on offshore oil revenues. Details are here:

This agreement provides the following benefits to Newfoundland and Labrador.

- In the second year, the transitional payment would equal one- third of the offset payments the province was entitled to the last year it received Equalization.

Sounds good to me.

Insurgents in Australia

Wahabbi Muslims instigated a riot with Iraqi Shiites voting in their country's election - in Sydney, Australia:

An Australian polling station for Iraqi exiles voting in their homeland's historic election was closed for an hour on Saturday after a riot broke out and a suspicious bag prompted a bomb scare, organizers said.

Wali said the fight broke out after the protesters took pictures of voters.

A lot of people have an interest in making sure this election fails - and unfortunately, they aren't all in Iraq.

Sumbission, Part Two

The organizers of the Rotterdam International Film Festival have pulled Theo van Gogh's Submission, Part One for safety reasons:

The Rotterdam international film festival has pulled the last contentious work by Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh at the eleventh hour, amid fears that the screening might trigger further acts of religious violence. The short film, Submission Part One, was due to form the centrepiece of a debate on freedom of speech on Sunday night. It will now not be shown.

Theo Van Gogh was fatally shot and stabbed by an Islamist militant when cycling to work in Amsterdam on November 2 last year. A note pinned to his body referred to Submission Part One as the reason for the murder.

Fuck Eric Alterman

I don't usually use the F-word in my subject line, but what else can I say about the man?

As one of Jeff Jarvis' readers notes, Jarvis is a liberal while Alterman is a leftist. There's a difference.

These people may have nukes soon

Enlightened commentators like Gwynne Dyer can't understand the fuss about Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. They're only trying to defend themselves from the warmongering Zionists, aren't they? (FARK puts it another way, with an entry titled "Israel claims Iran will have nukes in 12 months; threaten pre-emptive strike. Israel still unable to confirm if it has nukes itself".)

This is how the Iranians commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. After reading this, if you still believe it's only "fair" that the people responsible for this have their own nuclear weapons, well...what else can I possibly say to convince you otherwise?

Update: commenter "Dara" - any relation to a guy named Robert McClelland, Dara? - says the American media is just as hateful as the Iranian media, and that I should "go talk to an actual Iranian and tell me why they are more dangerous than an American." Personally, I think talking to actual Iranians - or reading their blogs - is a wonderful idea. Too bad the Iranian government insists on throwing Iranian bloggers in jail if they dare say the wrong thing. ("Yeah, but...but...Bill Maher! The Dixie Chicks!")

Actually - and, to be fair, I should have made this clearer in my original post - I think the overwhelming majority of Iranians want peace, prosperity and freedom, just like the rest of us. (Ironically, it's good lefties like "Dara" who seem to think people in the Middle East can't be trusted with democracy, if their sneering dismissal of the Iraqi elections is any indication.) I'm sure they're smart enough to see through the hatemongering propaganda their leaders feed them. My problem is with the country's Islamofascist, totalitarian, xenophobic and antisemitic government.

If "Dara" is too blinded by anti-Bush hatred to get this, well, that's her problem. Iran will be free someday, no thanks to her.

Suicide Solution

Manchester University professor Terry Eagleton is quite enthusiastic about suicide. (A Man City fan, obviously.) More specifically, he's quite enthusiastic about suicide when it involves killing lots of Jews and Yanks. Here's the quote that ensures Eagleton's inclusion among the top Fiskie nominees for 2005:

It is possible to act in a way that makes your death inevitable without actually desiring it. Those who leapt from the World Trade Centre to avoid being incinerated were not seeking death, even though there was no way they could have avoided it.

Is anyone surprised to find out this guy is a professor of "cultural theory"? (And that this was originally published in The Guardian?)

No sex, please, we're from Swaziland

King Mswati III, absolute ruler of that tiny nation in southern Africa, has banned sex.

I am not making this up.

Some 39 per cent of adult Swazis are infected with HIV/ Aids, the highest proportion in the world. King Mswati responded to the crisis in 2001 by banning virgins from having sex for five years. Any man caught deflowering a virgin would be fined one cow.

This law proved too rigorous for the king. Months later, he chose a 17-year old bride and fined himself one cow.

27.01.45

60 years ago today, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops. (For once, the phrease "liberated by Soviet troops" is not ironic.) The following article was featured at IsraPundit as part of today's BlogBurst.

With the world - especially the Middle East, but also Europe - turning against the Jews once again, we must never allow ourselves to forget where this poison leads. Never.

The Holocaust, symbolized by Auschwitz, the worst of the death camps, occurred in the wake of consistent, systematic, unrelenting anti-Jewish propaganda campaigns. As a result, the elimination of the Jews from German society was accepted as axiomatic, leaving open only two questions: when and how.

If remembering Auschwitz should teach us anything, it is that we must all support Israel and the Jewish people against the vilification and the complicity we are witnessing, knowing where it inevitably leads.

Host for Sale

After the Armstrong Williams and Maggue Gallagher controversies, you knew this was coming. (From the eBay entry, it looks like the host himself - I don't know who it is - is doing this for charity, but I'm not sure.)

When, oh when, will someone pay me to promote their policies?

Friends of Democracy

This blog, edited by Michael Totten, features ground-level reports on the Iraqi election campaign.

(via Harry's Place)

Le Pen vs. Le Pen

It's an old-fashioned Le Pen family feud:

An epic row between father and daughter - over politics, power and the Second World War - is threatening to tear apart France's far-right party, the National Front.

Although she has made no public comment on the quarrel, she has decided not to sit for the time being in the eight-person "executive bureau" which runs the National Front. She will also make no public appearances in the campaign against the proposed EU constitution.
[...]
In an interview with the far-right magazine, Rivarol, on 7 January, M. Le Pen said that the German occupation of France was "not especially inhuman". He also cast doubt on the official version of an SS massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane in central France in June 1944.

Her strategy since emerging as a modernising force in the NF two years ago has been to drag her father and other senior frontistes away from what she sees as a morbid and damaging obsession with the past. Critics say that this does not necessarily make Marine any more moderate than her father, just more attuned to the concerns of potential, young NF voters, from immigration to "globalisation".

Only in academia

...could someone like Ward Churchill find employment.

His first draft read, "I'm going to tell my Mommy on you"

Warren Kinsella's latest threatening e-mail - to Norman Spector - has to be read to be believed:

Don't write to me anymore. As of today, you - and your tenure at PMO and as ambassador - are going to be featured prominently, and regularly, on my website and elsewhere.

You want a fight, Norman? You've got one. Ask Kim Campbell and Stockwell Day how much they enjoyed being a focus of my attentions.")

Hatchet Job alert

Hey, I could be wrong. Tonight's Fifth Estate could be fair and balanced, as they say. It could happen.

The United States is in the midst of a very un-civil war. It's a war of words that's pitting conservative against liberal, that's already divided the country into red and blue. The new gladiators are commentators like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter and their forum is the television studios of networks like Fox. It's loud, it's raucous, but does it have anything to do with the truth?

"We vow to wash the streets of Baghdad with the voters' blood."

The New York Times - yes, the Times - reports that Iraqi insurgents ("Minutemen" - Michael Moore) are making graphic death threats against any Iraqi who dares to vote on January 30:

The black sedan made its way down Madaris Street, the young men inside tossing leaflets out the window.

"To those of you who think you can vote and then run away," the leaflet warned, "we will shadow you and catch you, and we will cut off your heads and the heads of your children."
[...]
On Madaris Street on Tuesday, the threatening anti-election leaflets had an uncertain effect. Residents said they did not support the guerrillas, but some said they were terrified at the violence that election day might bring.

Most of the Iraqis interviewed expressed disapproval for the insurgents. They said the men in the black sedan, for instance, had come from outside the neighborhood. And while some, like Ms. Lazem, were clearly frightened, others said they planned to vote, whatever the price. "We are not afraid of these leaflets," said Mohammed Adel, 24. "I must go to the polling center to vote. I want security and stability for my country."

Update: 31 Marines have been killed in a helicopter crash near the Jordanian border. It's not known whether the chopper was shot down of if the crash was accidental.

That was nice of them

The United Nations, an organization founded largely because of the crimes of Nazi Germany, finally held a session in memory of the Holocaust yesterday. It took 60 years. And most of the member states couldn't be bothered to show up:

Though close to 150 out of 191 member nations agreed that the UN should hold the commemoration, the hall was only half-full during the ceremony.
[...]
Jordan's U.N. ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the only Arab speaker, took advantage of the opportunity to knock Israel by mentioning "one people dominat[ing] another, deny[ing] the latter many of its most basic rights, and so, with the passage of time, also degrade[ing] it as a people."

Other speakers included U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, China's U.N. Ambassador, Italy's Senate Speaker, and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who said, "For my country, [the Holocaust] signifies the absolute moral abomination, a denial of all things civilized without precedent or parallel."

I haven't seen the list of 41 countries which didn't want to commemorate the Holocaust, though I'm pretty sure which part of the world most of them are located.

And the nominees are...

The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Ray, Sideways and Million Dollar Baby are up for Best Picture. For those of you keeping score in the cultural wars, The Passion of the Christ got three nominations (Cinematography, Makeup and Original Score) while Fahrenheit 9/11 got a big fat zero.

I don't place much faith in the Oscar selections, however. Not one nomination for Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy? Bah.

Targeting the Jews

Ultra-nationalist politicians in Russia, a country with a long, violent history of anti-Semitism, are calling for a total ban on Jewish organizations:

A group of nationalist Russian lawmakers called yesterday for a sweeping investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations and punishing officials who support them, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and saying they provoke anti-Semitism.

The prosecutor general's office could not be reached for comment on the letter, signed by lawmakers from the nationalist Rodina and Liberal Democratic parties as well as the Communist party.

With the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation fast approaching, the Jew-haters of the world are showing their true colors.

Meanwhile, a few days after I first noticed it, I'm still stunned by the "moderate" Muslim Council of Britain's refusal to attend that nation's Auschwitz commemoration ceremony. Melanie Phillips, as you might expect (and hope), absolutely savages the MCB - and the disturbing, disingenuous rationale at least one Muslim Labour MP used to argue against its boycott.

Update: according to the Jerusalem Post, the Russian lawmakers in question have retracted their statement - which, it turns out, was even more disgustingly anti-Semitic than I had thought:

The Russian nationalist lawmakers who had signed a letter calling for an investigation into all Jewish organizations in the country – accusing Jews of inciting ethnic hatred and provoking anti-Semitism – have retracted their support for the letter, sources in Russia said.
[...]
Echoing anti-Semitic tracts of the Czarist era, the letter's authors accuse Jews of working against the interests of the countries where they live and of monopolizing power worldwide. They say the United States "has become an instrument for achieving the global aims of Judaism."

Along with outlawing Jewish organizations, the lawmakers call for the prosecution of "individuals responsible for providing these groups with state and municipal property, privileges and state financing."

Do lawyers have free speech?

Jerome Kennedy, a prominent criminal defence lawyer in St. John's, is facing a disciplinary hearing for comments he made about the judicial appointment process in 2003:

Kennedy has been charged with misconduct under the code of conduct of the Law Society of Newfoundland, which regulates the legal profession.

Derek Green, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland's trial division, filed a complaint to the Law Society, which began hearings this week.
[...]
Randy Earle, the other lawyer representing Kennedy, says the complaint has raised issues of freedom of speech.

"Anyone could have made the allegation," he says. "The law society would have dealt with it in the same way and we would still be here today arguing the same issues."

This case may have implications for what I can say about the justice system on this blog, so I'm keeping an eye on it. Lawyers are officially officers of the court, and as such we cannot do or say something which would throw the system into disrepute. Did Kennedy's comments cross that line? I don't think so. Indeed, just as I have criticized the way we appoint judges to the Supreme Court of Canada, I think Kennedy made his critical remarks because he cares about the system's integrity, not because he wants to bring it down.

For the record, let me say that I think the Newfoundland justice system is perfect, and every judge before whom I've appeared has been a repository of Solomonic wisdom. Ahem.

In your face, Mr. Galloway

This extraordinary TV ad encourages Iraqis to vote on January 30.

(via Kesher Talk)

Why am I paying taxes again?

It's 4:05PM. My street still hasn't been plowed.

Update: the plow finally came around 6:15. That was nice of them.

A world of thanks, however, to the neighbour who - completely unprompted - used his snow blower to clear away what the plow left behind. I'm lucky to live in this neighbourhood.

Whose side are you on?

If George W. Bush had made a speech saying the Iraqi insurgents were fighting against democracy, people would have laughed at him for being so "simplistic", as usual. But lo and behold, Jordanian Islamofascist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (funny how no one ever savages him for interfering in another country, isn't it?) has issued a statement declaring a "fierce war on this evil principle of democracy":

A man identifying himself as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the feared leader of the al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq -- declared war on democracy on Sunday in an audiotaped statement posted on the Internet.

Fearing the loss of power in Iraq to the Shiite majority, Sunni Arab insurgents have been launching attacks to try to subvert the election.

Spin that, Mr. Fisk. William Shawcross, writing in The Guardian, rightly calls that paper's target audience on its blinkered refusal to support Iraq's shaky transition to democracy:

Tony Blair said in Baghdad in December: "On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq. Our response should be to stand alongside the democrats."

Blair is absolutely right. It is shocking that so few democratic governments support the Iraqi people. Where are French and German and Spanish protests against the terror being inflicted on voters in Iraq? And it is shocking that around the world there is not wider admiration of, assistance to and moral support (and more) for the Iraqi people. The choice is clear: movement towards democracy in Iraq or a new nihilism akin to fascism - Islamist fascism.

Who's running in Iraq, anyway? Chrenkoff has compiled a guide to the parties and candidiates.

The Blizzard of Ozz

Mike Campbell has photos from Halifax. (There's a guy walking through the snow to get his Tim Horton's coffee. Only in Canada.) It's not that bad here yet, but it's pretty messy. I don't want to find myself stuck down here until Homer comes to rescue me in Flanders' Geo Metro, so I'll probably take my work home with me for the afternoon.

VW ad explained

Snopes has an entry on that Volkswagen suicide-bomber ad. It was made by a professional ad agency, but VW says it was never meant for release.

Here we go again

No sign of this yet, but I'm expecting to have a lot of shovelling to do tomorrow morning.

(Actually, I've lost 4 pounds since the start of the year laregly because of snow clearing, so I really shouldn't complain about it.)

Monday morning update: my street still isn't plowed. But some 4x4s had gone through and made tracks, and the snow was just soft enough that my car was able to get through. So no day off for me, dang it.

Another curse broken

The Eagles are in the Super Bowl. They don't look like a team missing its best reciever, though it will certainly be a plus to get T.O. back for the final.

As for the AFC final, the Patriots are winning 24-3 at halftime. Unless the Steelers mount one of the all-time great comebacks, the Super Bowl lineup looks set.

Update: New England 41, Pittsburgh 27.

I'm rooting for Philly, but the smart money's on New England.

Old ghosts stirring, continued

It's not just in Europe. At the pro-Israel rally in Berkeley I mentioned a few days ago, pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanted, "Don't believe the news, it's controlled by the Jews."

And then there was this guy:

Johnny Carson, R.I.P.

He's dead at 79.

Carson was nearing the end of his career by the time I could stay up late enough to watch him (Tonight comes on at 1AM in Newfoundland), and while his jokes may have gotten a bit stale, his charm and charisma as a host were as strong as ever. He'll be missed.

(By the way, this adds to the sadly growing list of Simpsons guest stars who have passed away. Carson lifted a Buick over his head on Krusty the Klown's comeback special in 1993.)

The El Camino lives!

Chevy should have built something like this instead of the SSR. (Even better, as an Autoblog reader suggested, they should have brought in a Corvette-engined Holden "ute" from Down Under and rebadged it as a Chevy - though Pontiac's GTO experience probably means that'll never happen.)

Old ghosts stirring

Britain: the Muslim Council of Britain plans to boycott an upcoming Holocaust rememberance ceremony, because it's not going to deal with the Palestinian "holocaust":

British Muslims are to boycott this week’s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz because they claim it is not racially inclusive and does not commemorate the victims of the Palestinian conflict.

“We wrote to the Home Office three or four weeks ago. We said the issue of the Holocaust is not really the concern. But we have now expressed our unwillingness to attend the ceremony because it excludes ongoing genocide and human rights abuses around the world and in the occupied territories of Palestine,” he said.

France: as many as 15% of schoolteachers have experienced problems teaching children about the Holocaust, primarily because many Muslim students are unwilling to listen to stories about Jewish suffering:

"Filthy Jew!" schoolchildren howl at a classmate. "Jews only want money and power," they tell their teachers. "Death to the Jews" graffiti appear on school walls outside Paris and other French cities.

"It works with those who are ready to listen," said Iannis Roder, a history teacher in the tough northern suburbs of Paris. "But it doesn't work with those who won't listen. They have their minds made up."
[...]
Both Roder and Claude Singer, head of Holocaust education projects at the Jewish Contemporary Documentation Centre (CDJC), underlined that most schools had no problem teaching about the Holocaust and most pupils learned the lesson being put across.

"In general, I think that Shoah education is going well. It's certainly much better than before," Roder said.

Germany: in the land where it all started, a majority of people are "sick" of being reminded of the Holocaust - and also believe the Israelis are conducting their own "war of extermination" against the Palestinians:

Some 62% of the 3,000 people questioned by researchers from the University of Bielefeld agreed they were “sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews”.

Most said they wished to consign their country’s Nazi past to the history books. Well over half also thought there were too many foreigners living in Germany.
[...]
Political analysts believe the findings reflect a growing feeling among younger Germans that they have atoned sufficiently for their grandparents’ crimes and now have the right to bury the past. Their attitude has been fuelled in part by books and documentaries showing the destruction caused by Allied second world war bombing raids.

The poll also highlights anti-Israeli feeling in Germany. More than two-thirds said they believed that Israel was waging “a war of extermination” against the Palestinians.

Two German political parties, the DVU and NPD, are capitalizing on such sentiment, its members even walking out of a state assembly when it held a moment of silence for victims of the Holocaust:

January 27 marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz by Allied forces. To commemorate the event, ceremonies will be held throughout Europe, Israel and the US. In New York on Monday, the United Nations, for the first time in its history, will pay tribute to the millions of people who suffered in the Holocaust.

Cornelius Weiss, senior parliamentarian and fraction leader for the Social Democrats (SPD), said the proposal was unacceptable. “We must never forget the hell of Dresden, but neither must we forget how we got to that point,” he told the parliamentarians and listed such historical factors as Adolf Hitler seizing power in 1933, the Holocaust, concentration camps and the German bombing of British cities.

The two parties, which have done disturbingly well in the former East Germany, plan to join forces for the upcoming national elections.

The 7th outpost of tyranny

Johann Hari calls George W. Bush's inauguration speech "a sugar-coated lie", and repeats the most common argument leftist argument against the Bush Administration: that it does support tyrannical governments when they support American interests. There's certainly some truth to this argument, though if the Americans did make moves against the likes of Egypt or Uzbekistan, you can be sure the left would sneer at the Yanks for not doing anything about some other dictatorship. The Americans toppled the Taliban and Saddam, supported democracy movements in Ukraine and Georgia, and oversaw an election (albeit a deeply, deeply flawed one) for the Palestinian Authority during Bush's first term in office - not a bad start, really.

Still, Hari does bring up one massive blind spot for America's would-be democratizers: a certain Middle Eastern kingdom with two holy cities and lots of oil.

Does Bush condemn the Saud Crime Family who oversee public beheadings and commit "widespread torture with complete impunity", according to Amnesty? Not exactly. The award-winning journalist Craig Unger has shown that the House of Bush and the House of Saud have been intimate friends for over 30 years, enjoying luxury holidays and deeply intertwined business relationships. The Saudi "royals" have donated an amazing $1.4bn to the Bush family and their (mostly failed) business projects over the years. Far from urging democracy upon his petroleum-soaked buddies, Bush lauds them as "loyal allies" and "friends of America".

I haven't read Unger's book and can't vouch for its accuracy, but even Bush's biggest supporters must concede that the war on terror is not complete until something is done about a Saudi government that funds its militant, anti-Western, antidemocratic version of Islam all over the world. The six nations deemed "outposts of tyranny" by Condi Rice certainly deserve the designation, but there's no reason Saudi Arabia shouldn't be added to the list. (Not to mention China and Russia, but now I'm really dreaming.)

By the way, I generally respect Hari's views even when I don't agree with them. But I'm going to diplomatically let his phrase, "neoconservative semi-democracy is somewhat better than, say, Saddam's Baathism" pass without comment.

Another roundup

The latest Blogging Tories roundup has been posted here.

"Small but Tough"

This "ad" for the Volkswagen Polo (a little hatchback I really wish VW sold over here) is a hoax, but it's still pretty darn funny. I can see how some would be offended by it, but I never have a problem with having a laugh at a (would-be) suicide murderer's expense.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Building the next generation of illiterates

Hey, I'm not an educational expert, so what do I know? But I can't see any possible good coming from this:

All 12-year-olds at a comprehensive will be told today that homework is being scrapped because teachers have better things to do than mark it.

He will tell them that, to make their schooling more "relevant to life in the 21st century", they are to be given responsibility for "managing their own learning".

This is in Britain, but like all spectacularly bad educational ideas, you know it's coming here eventually.

Too good to be true?

Moorewatch says yesterday's Michael Moore's bodyguard/illegal weapon story may not be true after all.

To paraphrase Glenn, if only the real Michael Moore was as willing to correct his mistakes.

"Unbelievable!" ...how much I hate this guy

I was looking for the right words to describe Danny, the would-be "musician" with the Mr. Furley wardrobe on The Apprentice, but this comment in the Television Without Pity forums nails it:

Besides the annoying guitar and the folk-singing, he was just so calculated, like someone your high school guidance counselor would send in to teach you sex ed or drug use prevention or something in this "really rad" way.

Dyer defends the mullahs

Nothing, not even a driveway full of snow, can ruin my morning like finding a column by this guy in my local paper:

There seems to be hardly anyone in the mainstream US media who is willing to question the assumption that Iranian nuclear weapons would be, say, ten times more dangerous than Chinese nuclear weapons. Yet China is a totalitarian communist dictatorship while Iran is a partially democratic country struggling, so far unsuccessfully, to rid itself of the clique of deeply conservative mullahs who have dominated defence and foreign policy (together with much else) since 1979. Why is Iran seen as such a threat?
[...]
Iran is not a “crazy state”. In the 25 years that the mullahs have been in power, they have not attacked any neighbouring state. When Iraq invaded Iran in the 1980s (with American encouragement and support), they fought a bitter eight-year war to repel the invasion but accepted a negotiated peace that simply restored the status quo.

Iran's nuclear programme is not about the United States, and the notion that the Iranian government would give terrorists nuclear weapons to attack American targets is just paranoid fantasy. Besides, Iran doesn't have any nuclear weapons yet, and if it sticks to the agreement it negotiated with the European contact group (Britain, France and Germany) late last year, it may never have them.

Among other terrorist acts, Iran has been linked to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Argentina, which killed over 80 people. Either Dyer doesn't know about this, considers it a Mossad hoax, or doesn't consider it "terrorism" because Jews - sorry, "Zionists" - were the target.

Update: an overview of Iran's terror sponsorship can be found here.

Update II: the spin from the rabidly anti-American German weekly Der Spiegel: Iranians value their "independence" more than freedom, and are therefore united against American meddling. Expect a lot more articles like this in the coming months.

Update III: I would be worried about this, but Dyer tells me Iran is not a "crazy state", so never mind.

It's back already?

The Apprentice 3 starts tonight. I'm glad it's back, of course, but the second season ended just a few weeks ago. Haven't the producers learned anything from the way ABC beat Who Wants to be a Millionaire? into the ground? I would have waited until May or October.

If Donald Trump and Mark Burnett ran the NFL, they'd have a Super Bowl every week. (Speaking of reality television, if I ever see anything that makes me laugh harder than the "Proud Mary" montage on last night's American Idol, I'll probably need medical attention.)

Spongebob's secret agenda

This is the kind of story that makes writers for The Onion throw up their hands and say, "I can't compete with this!"

Inauguration Day

Bush's speech is here. Some will find this rhetoric stirring, while others will find it "simplistic" or something. You know who you are.

The money quote:

We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.

We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. America's belief in human dignity will guide our policies, yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators; they are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.

I wish the left would try to make the Bush Administration live up to these words, not sneer at them.

Update: for another view of the Inauguration, click here.

Question of the Day

Where are the "human shields" now?

The irony Gods are working overtime today, Part II

Margaret Wente mentioned Mary Walsh as one of the Newfoundlanders she "really liked" in that column. That enraged the normally mild-mannered and even-tempered Walsh, who deemed the article insulting to Newfoundlanders, dismissed Wente as a radical right-winger and said (I'm paraphrasing here) "I'm angry that she likes my work. I wish she'd written, 'and I can't stand that old bag Mary Walsh'."

A week later, Walsh's new CBC series is being denounced as, you guessed it, insulting to Newfoundlanders:

Actor and writer Mary Walsh is unapologetic to those who believe her latest CBC-TV show, Hatching, Matching & Dispatching, denigrates Newfoundlanders.

"I feel that any one of those characters could walk right off the screen and into any community in Newfoundland [and] nobody would bat an eyelash," Walsh said, defending the characters she co-created.

I haven't seen the show, and have no plans to watch it - not because it might be "insulting to Newfoundlanders", but because Mary Walsh, more than any other Canadian performer not presently appearing in McCain's commercials, has that fingernails-on-a-chalkboard effect on me.

The irony Gods are working overtime today

Michael Moore's bodyguard was arrested at JFK Airport for carrying an unlicenced gun.

Moore has obviously fallen for the media- and government-created "culture of fear" he decried in Bowling for Columbine. How sad. (By "sad", I mean, "hilarious".)

Gays need not apply

The U.S. Military needs soldiers and specialists who speak Arabic, for obvious reasons. But according to Richard Cohen, they've fired 20 such personnel since 1998 because, in Cohen's words, they were "caught being gay". (via Harry's Place)

As much as I despise the ANSWER Stalinists or the pro-Islamofascist IndyMidiots, I'll say this for them: they might be totalitarian traitors, but nothing they've done to hamper the war on terror has been as effective as the dismissal of desperately needed military personnel because of their sexual preference. (Yeah, they haven't had the power to really do much, but the point remains.)

(Meanwhile, up here, the political party to which I pay membership dues plans to start running anti-gay-marriage advertisements in ethnic newspapers. I'm not going to leave the Conservative Party just because of my feelings on one issue, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it, either.)

Adrienne Clarkson's priorities

If the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario or Quebec had died, does anyone think Queen Adrienne would have skipped their funerals for a vacation in Paris?

(via Steve Martinovich at The Shotgun)

Iraqi election signs

Iraq the Model has posted several pictures. (They're all photoshopped by the CIA and Mossad agents running the blog, I guess.)

I can understand why people opposed the war in Iraq, and I can understand (and, often, agree with) people who criticize the Americans' handling of the postwar occupation. But for the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone who purports to be a democrat would want this election to fail.

(By the way, if you haven't already found it, Ali - formerly of Iraq the Model - has started a spin-off blog, Free Iraqi.)

Same old Nation

The Nation magazine spent the 20th century making excuses for the Soviet Union. They seem determined to spend the 21st century making excuses for Vladmir Putin, whose government looks more and more "Soviet" by the day.

Some people are just determined not to learn from their mistakes, aren't they?

Putting Newfoundland in its place

Yes, I criticized Danny Williams for taking down the Canadian flag, and only yesterday I said the reaction to Margaret Wente's "welfare ghetto" column had gotten out of hand. But that doesn't mean Newfoundlanders have no real grievances about the way we've been treated by the federal government, and the Churchill Falls fiasco is the biggest grievance of all.

It's often said that Newfoundlanders have no one to blame but themselves for Churchill Falls, because the Joey Smallwood government entered into a bad deal. You don't have to do much to convince me of Smallwood's economic illiteracy - indeed, many of our economic problems, especially our crippling reliance on statism and social programs, can be laid at his feet - but the fact is, Newfoundland had little choice in the matter. The federal government could have allowed a "corridor" through Quebec so Newfoundland could send its power to the American market, but for political reasons it chose not to. This editorial in The Globe and Mail, of all places, tells the disgusting story:

The federal government had the constitutional power to force a corridor through Quebec, as it had forced the laying of oil and gas pipelines from Alberta through Saskatchewan and Manitoba to Ontario. It had only to declare the project in the national interest, negotiate the route and compensate Quebeckers for expropriated land. But "only" is a loaded word. For one thing, the electricity would be going to the United States, not to other Canadians. For another, in the Quebec of the 1960s, separatist sentiment was stirring. Terrorists were planting bombs in mailboxes.

Newfoundland stood to receive millions of dollars from the deal, which helped Mr. Smallwood persuade the Newfoundland legislature to ratify the deal signed by the private developer Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corp. But Hydro-Québec has been able to resell the power for hundreds of millions a year, which has rightly stuck in Newfoundland's craw. A bad deal became awful when oil prices and inflation rose sharply and Hydro-Québec reaped the windfall as electricity prices climbed.
[...]
The fortune Quebec has received from the exploitation of a resource in Labrador can be counted as money leaving Newfoundland and going to the rest of Canada. However, it cannot be counted as money that Newfoundland would otherwise have received. The Quebec political reality is that Jean Lesage wasn't going to allow a corridor. The Newfoundland political reality is that Joey Smallwood, clinging to his dream, was not prepared to walk away from a bad deal, and saddled Newfoundland with a 65-year mistake. The Canadian political reality is that Lester Pearson, keen not to alienate Quebec, chose Quebec's side over Newfoundland's economic aspirations. And if Mr. Smallwood had not chosen Canada, he would have been no better off. [emphasis added]

The Globe editorialists actually spin this as an argument that Newfoundland would have been no better off had it not joined Canada, since an independent Newfoundland would have had even less luck in getting a power corridor. They may have a point, though whoever the Prime Minister of Newfoundland would have been at the time, he almost certainly would have been more competent than Smallwood. But the point remains: Newfoundland and Labrador had its best chance to escape the "welfare ghetto", and Ottawa blocked the gate.

Newfoundlanders didn't narrowly vote to jojn Canada so it could be a second-class province, but that's what happened, at least in this case. And we won't get over it any time soon.

Out of hiding

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch MP who wrote Theo van Gogh's Submission based on her own experiences, has re-taken her Parliamentary seat for the first time since van Gogh was murdered:

A leading Dutch Muslim politician, who received death threats after criticising Islamic attitudes to women, took her seat in parliament again yesterday after more than two months in hiding.

"For the past 75 days I could not be here. I could not go to Theo van Gogh's funeral. Theo and I shared the threat from radical Muslims. I thought long and hard about Submission. Theo and I spoke about the dangers involved." She added: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going on."

A new low for Stern

Check out how the German newsmagazine presents a story on Condoleeza Rice. Is this what people like Heather Mallick mean when they talk about how the European media is so "sophisticated"? (via Andrew Sullivan)

Ann Coulter is a kook, but she absolutely nails the way "progressives" treat Condi Rice:

"...And it is I think curious, the issue Democrats have with blacks: They do not attack Spanish conservatives the way they attack black conservatives. With black conservatives, Democrats immediately go to the old racist stereotypes. It’s instantly that ‘they’re incompetent, they’re stupid.’ Look at the attacks on Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice. They try to refuse to recognize her. They’re specifically engaging in racist attacks on her: ‘Oh yeah, not up to the job. She’s not competent. She’s a dummy.’ Bush, they tell us, is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. He is the puppet and the puppet master is Dick Cheney, or it’s Donald Rumsfeld and he’s just being run around by these wily neocons. But when it comes to Condoleezza Rice, she’s the puppet of the dumb guy—that’s how dumb she is."

The witch is dead

Jonathan has been eliminated, the sun is shining, and all is right with the world.

Our species' capacity for self-delusion is limitless, as evidenced by Jonathan and Victoria's official website. ("I do not abuse Victoria,
what you see is a heightened version of stress and obsession mixed with medication for a sickness called Sarcoidosis.")

Toronto Blog Bash '05

Details here. I will be there, provided my plane gets in on time. (I'm flying CanJet, a good Atlantic Canadian airline that has never let me down, so I should be okay.)

Blood libel in Berkeley

This past weekend, a pro-Israeli rally in Berkeley was, not surprisingly, met by pro-Palestinian counter-demonstrators. Photos and video clips are featured here, and this is the most disturbing:

The "blood libel", about Jews allegedly killing non-Jewish children to harvest their blood, has been updated. Now, many in the Middle East believe Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian children to harvest their organs. The Iranians even made a TV mini-series about it. (Of course, the old blood libel is still believed, as well.)

A poor child in Berkeley was drafted, presumably by his parents, to spread that blood libel, and the "progressives" who organized the counter-demonstration didn't understand it or were willing to tolerate it.

Or maybe they believed it, too.

Get a grip, Newfoundland

Much of Margaret Wente's column about Newfoundlanders is certainly debatable, but the hysterical overreaction down here has been something to behold. An acquaintance of mine has a column in this morning's Western Star, one of several articles or letters I've seen explaining that Wente probably can't help trafficking in stereotypes, because she's an ignorant Yank:

It is Ms. Wente's uninformed, ignorant and negative type of journalism that betrays her American heritage and has accelerated the worldwide image of the "ugly American".

He goes on to say columns like this are what led to the rise of the FLQ bombing campaign in 1960s Quebec. Seriously.

I'm probably a hypocrite for saying this, considering how the writing of Heather Mallick or Robert Fisk can throw me into a blind rage, but it's a friggin' 750-word newspaper column, people. Get a hold of yourselves. The point made below by Mark Steyn - "no matter how big an idiot someone is, he can never compete with the political class's response to his idiocy" - still holds.

In defence of Harry

As with every other Mark Steyn article, his column about the Prince Harry fiasco is a must-read:

It's a good rule of thumb that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, he can never compete with the political class's response to his idiocy. Thus, whatever feelings of unease I might have had about Prince Hitler were swept away the moment the rent-a-quote humbugs started lining up to denounce him.
[...]
The French sports minister suggested the "scandal" would undermine Britain's bid to host the Olympics. Londoners should be so lucky.

But, if I understand the concern of the sporting world correctly, being a totalitarian state that's killed millions is no obstacle to hosting the Olympics, but going to a costume party wearing the uniform of a defunct totalitarian state that's no longer around to kill millions is completely unacceptable.

Mark the calendar

New episodes of Family Guy premiere on May 1.

Same old communists

Former Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, who tried to stop the Tiananmen Square massacre and spent years under house arrest as a result, died earlier this week. Government censors went into top gear:

All day long, the words of grief poured into Chinese cyberspace. Then, almost instantly, they disappeared, killed by Communist censors.

The death of former Communist chief Zhao Ziyang has triggered a wave of mourning from those who recalled his pro-democracy sympathies during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. It has also triggered a massive state campaign to suppress and censor the grief.
[...]
Police and paramilitary agents were reinforced all over Beijing yesterday, as the government moved to crush any hint of sympathy for the former Communist leader. Extra police units were stationed on Tiananmen Square, on the street outside Mr. Zhao's home and at the homes of leading dissidents.

On prominent Chinese websites yesterday, dozens of people posted their condolences, often with deep anger or grief. Several mourners described him as the "conscience" of the Chinese masses. Each comment was deleted within a few minutes or even seconds.

I'm currently reading Fan Shen's extraordinary book Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard, which describes the soul-crushing totalitarianism of Mao's "Cultural Revolution". (A full review is coming soon.) The Chinese communists have allowed major changes to the economy since Mao died, but the political culture has barely changed at all.

Never forget 1989. Never let them forget it.

Update: Zhao's Daily Telegraph obituary is here. It makes for depressing reading.

As a matter of fact, it is borderline hysteria

In 1999, the Fox network had no problem with a naked butt appearing on Family Guy. In 2004, the exact same butt has to be pixelated, just in case the FCC acts up again:

Fox says it covered up the naked rear end of a cartoon character recently because of nervousness over what the Federal Communications Commission will find objectionable.

"It's certainly confusing when you have to do something like that," Berman said. "I wouldn't say it was borderline hysteria. It's just that we were trying to find our way and do what's responsible."

At times like this, I almost think the blue-staters have a point.

(via FARK)

American troops in Iran?

That's what Seymour Hersh says in his latest New Yorker article:

The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.

The White House said Iran is a concern and a threat that needs to be taken seriously. But it disputed the report by Hersh, who last year exposed the extent of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

I guess this is supposed to be a big scoop, but I already assumed the Americans were carrying out missions in Iran. Not only that, I'd be worried if they weren't.

My kingdom for a snow blower

We're getting absolutely nailed with a blizzard right now. It didn't start snowing heavily until mid-morning, so I didn't have to get up early to shovel out before I went to work - but it's going to be really bad tomorrow morning. (I really need some kind of Rube Goldberg contraption which would flip the bed over when it's time to get up.)

I'd like to go out there now and get the shovelling over with, but the blowing snow would make it pointless. Have I told you how much I hate winter?

Homer goes to Winnipeg

When The Simpsons had an episode partially set in Canada a few years ago, it was a pretty big deal. Last night's episode, in which Homer and Grandpa started smuggling prescription drugs from Manitoba, didn't get nearly as much attention, probably because we were so disappointed the last time. (After all the hype, they spent less than ten minutes up here.)

Both shows had their moments ("Welcome to Winnipeg: we were born here, what's your excuse?"), but neither came close to the Australia or Japan episodes - or South Park's "Christmas in Canada".

Size does matter

Airbus, the European aerospace consortium, will officially roll out the world's largest passenger jet tomorrow. Most A380s will hold 550 passengers, but it can be configured to hold - get this - 840. (By way of comparison, the venerable Boeing 747 can hold 416.)

This IHT article explains the contrasting visions of Airbus and Boeing, with the U.S. firm betting on its smaller, more comfortable 7E7 Dreamliner. It's a lot like what we saw in the late 1960s, with the roles reversed - Boeing bet the farm on the gigantic 747, while the Europeans concentrated on speed and prestige with the Concorde. And we all know who won that one. The 7E7 will almost certainly be a fine aircraft, but I think I speak for everyone when I say I'd gladly give up comfort and seating space in exchange for a cheaper fare.

The A380 will allow airlines to carry more people on a single trip, thereby reducing the cost of travel - just like the 747 did in the early 1970s. And as airlines give up their old Jumbo Jets for new "SuperJumbos", low-cost budget airlines will likely snap them up - making long-distance travel even more efficient and competitive.

Right now, if you keep your eyes open for seat sales, you can fly from Newfoundland to the U.K. for around $500. Give it another decade, and the fare will probably be half of that. I can't wait.

Update: more here.

Malibu Stacy's dream car

This is wrong in so many ways.

Who killed the Armanious family?

After the murder of Theo van Gogh, I feared it was only a matter of time before something similar happened in North America. A disturbing case in New Jersey suggests that a man and his family might - might - have been killed because he insulted the Islamic faith:

Authorities are exploring whether a religious argument in an Internet chat room led to the slaughter of a Coptic Christian couple and their two daughters in their Jersey City home, relatives of the slain family said yesterday.

"We are continuing the investigation, making inquiries on several theories, and will not comment further," Gregory said.

Kathy Shaidle has more, including links to stories in the New York Post (which plays up the Muslim-Copt angle) and Newsday (which says a "former tenant" is suspected).

Update: the New York Daily News says the family was robbed when the murders were committed - but police haven't ruled out the religious angle, either.

Update II: Jeremy Lott: "if we tweaked the situation a bit -- say Egyptian Muslim immigrants were murdered and rabid Presbyterians were suspects -- it's hard to imagine law enforcement would be campaigning so vigorously against drawing conclusions, or that the press would by and large go along with that suggestion."

Update III: this (via LGF) is interesting:

ABC News has learned that the slain family's cousin has been a translator working for the prosecution in the trial of Lynne Stewart. She is the radical lawyer accused of smuggling messages from imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, to terrorist cell members and associates.

I know we shouldn't jump to conclusions about this kind of thing. (Daniel Pipes has never been allowed to forget his comments just after the Oklahoma City bombing, which he said - not without reason, to be honest - seemed like the work of Islamic extremists.) But it's getting harder to believe this was just a robbery.

When will I learn?

Someday, I'll come to my senses and stop picking the Colts to beat New England. (Amazing fact: Tom Brady has never lost a playoff game - and considering how much luck the Steelers needed to beat the Jets yesterday, I wouldn't bet on Brady getting that first loss next weekend, either.)

Peyton Manning has many, many years left. But is anyone else starting to fear that Manning, like Dan Marino, ain't never going to get that Super Bowl ring?

Ban homosexuality: Bishop

Am I misinterpreting the content of a latter issued by Fred Henry, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Calgary? Judge for yourself:

The government must suppress homosexuality and other behaviour deemed to hurt the family, Calgary's Catholic bishop says.

The letter was read to Catholics in southern Alberta on Sunday.

The complete letter is reprinted here. (Henry says "more than 95% of adult Canadian gays have chosen to ignore their new legal right" to get married. You mean 5% have already gotten married?) Freedom is not absolute, of course, but the worst atrocities in history have been carried out when authorities decided to "curtail" activities "in the interest of the common good."

I do not believe Bishop Henry, or any other religious leader, should be forced to conduct a gay marriage if he believes it to be contrary to the tenets of his faith. (Indeed, one point on which I do agree with gay marriage opponents is their fear that, eventually, the government will find a way to force churches into accepting it, or else.) But this kind of rhetoric seems like something you'd read on the MEMRI site.

Ramsey crosses the line

If there was ever any doubt that Ramsey Clark had sold his soul, this should settle the issue once and for all. I cannot fault Clark merely for taking on Saddam's legal defence (although he is affiliated with the Stalinist Workers World Party, which would gladly take away our right to a legal defence), but how can we just shrug off this kind of rhetoric?

One of America's most renowned human rights lawyers has astonished even close friends and supporters by taking on Saddam Hussein as a client and describing the former Iraqi dictator as "reserved, quiet, thoughtful and dignified".

Mr Clark spoke about his client, who faces trial in an Iraqi court for war crimes, after returning to the US from Jordan, where he met other members of his legal team for the first time. He provoked a furore by declaring that Saddam had been subjected to "savage" treatment by his American captors and comparing it with the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. "Demonisation is the most dangerous form of prejudice," he said. "Once you call anything evil, it's easy to justify anything you might do to harm that evil. Evil has no rights, it has no human dignity, it has to be destroyed. That's how you get your Fallujahs, your Abu Ghraibs, your shock-and-awes."
[...]
He said he was shocked by the "savage presentation" of Saddam after US forces found him hiding in a hole in the ground. The former Iraqi leader was "dishevelled, with his mouth open, people probing his mouth", Mr Clark told the New York Observer. "This is hardly the road to peace if you want respect for human dignity."

Mr Clark wrote to Saddam and Iraq's former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, offering to represent them "because I thought it was essential that they have independent contact immediately to assure their proper treatment". He said the former Iraqi president was a decisive, knowledgeable person and his lawyers' lack of access to him was a major violation.

Singh's dubious past

Harjit Singh, who says former Immigration Minister Judy Sgro promised him asylum in exchange for work on her re-election campaign (most notably, providing free pizza), has quite a few skeletons in his own closet:

Harjit Singh, the man who yesterday toppled a federal cabinet minister with allegations of political favouritism and abuse of power, took part in a $1 million credit card scam with his three children, a court ruled last year.

And he now faces another civil suit for non-payment of a $57,000 legal bill launched against him by the lawyer who defended him.
[...]
But court documents, detailed immigration records and interviews with those who know him portray a man who is a sophisticated fraudster, churchgoing Mennonite, deeply depressed widower and father fighting desperately to keep his family together in Canada.

The judge ruled: "These defendants agreed to work together in a common cause and, towards that end, one or more of them from time to time, with confederates as required, engaged in one or more of the three parts of the fraudulent scheme in order to advance their common cause."

Bob also notes that Singh has a criminal record in India - and has spent 16 years filing frivolous appeals to immigration authorities so he can stay in Canada. Were it not for the Romanian-stripper stuff, I'd probably say this would be enough to give Sgro the benefit of the doubt.

Ted Rall syndrome

Is there some kind of medical condition which makes left-wing "alternative" cartoonists self-righteous, obnoxious, whiny little wankers?

Said wanker is a big fan of Oliver Willis, whose response to racist hate mail recieved by Michelle Malkin is, basically, "the bitch deserved it because she's taking money from rich white guys." (Mind telling us who's funding "Media Matters for America", Ollie?)

The unluckiest man in America

Missing what would have been the game-winning field goal: that's every kicker's worst nightmare. Now imagine missing two chances at scoring the winning field goal, and you'll have some idea how Doug Brien feels.

The Jets got the ball first in overtime but couldn't score, so the loss can't be completely blamed on Brien. But unless he kicks the Super Bowl-winner next year, this will haunt him for the rest of his life. (As if all of this wasn't bad enough, the poor guy plays in New York. God only knows what the back page of tomorrow's Post will say.)

Acceptable totalitarianism

Arthur Chrenkoff on the Prince Harry fiasco:

Imagine if prince Harry came dressed up in a fur coat with a hammer and sickle armband. No one would bat an eyelid, a few people might chuckle and comment how cute he looks, and the only reason why the story would make it into the media would be if PETA protested the prince wearing fur. Imagine for that matter if Harry wore a Che Guevara or a Mao t-shirt. As John Lennon said, it's easy if you try.

Hence we live in the world where we all know that Nazism was evil, but we also "know" that communism (or better still, Stalinism, because we wouldn't want to admit that the system was murderous both before and after Uncle Joe was in power) was merely misguided, an essentially good and decent idea whose implementation was marred by inevitable errors and excesses.

In every part of the world except one, it's impossible to imagine Hitler and Nazism being defended in a major newspaper. But the Sydney Morning Herald couldn't bear to run an anti-communist article without a pro-Marxist "response" the next day. In 2005.

Update: David Janes' "revisionist" history of Nazi Germany is meant to be satire, but I'm sure there's a small, expensive liberal-arts college in New England where this is actually being taught.

Where shows go to die

The Fox network is going to show remaining episodes of its cancelled reality shows on the internet:

All eight episodes of 'Playing It Straight', including the five unaired installments, will be available for $1.99 a pop, or $9.99 for the whole season, at Fox.com starting Monday.

In a lesser test of audience endurance, Fox will give away the final five episodes of the failed reality spoof 'My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss' on its Website. Those shows, which may be posted within the next two weeks, will be able to be viewed for free.

People look at me funny when I say this, but My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss was an absolutely brilliant spoof of the business world, The Apprentice and the reality genre itself. (On The Apprentice, the leader of the losing team is eligible for firing. On Obnoxious Boss, the team leader remains immune, since in the "real" business world the underlings usually take the fall.) I would have expected that one to be pay-per-view instead of Playing it Straight (which, needless to say, I avoided).

Even the lowest-rated show on network television still attracts millions of viewers, so this might be a great idea to recover some of the money lost in developing a failed series. If Drew Carey's Green Screen Show doesn't return from "hiatus", I'd certainly pay a few bucks to watch the remaining episodes.

A worthy winner

LGF readers have chosen the latest Idiotarian of the Year. I'd have given it to George Galloway, but I can't say the winner doesn't deserve it.

Fox reviewed

Kathy Shaidle, at her revived Recovering Liberal blog, gets it right. It's great seeing all these commentators whose blogs and columns I've been reading for years (Brit Hume had Power Line's John Hinderacker on to discuss RatherGate last week) - but Gawd, these graphics and sound effects sure are tacky. (I'll say this for BBC World - it might be as biased as Fox News, in its own way, but it's what a news channel should look and sound like.)

I have seen enough of Fox News to say the argument that they don't air "opposing views" is complete, utter nonsense. The very first guest I saw on The O'Reilly Factor was Phil freaking Donahue, and I've seen plenty of other leftists and Democrats interviewed on the network. I'm not saying they get an easy time from the likes of O'Reilly (who is even more obnoxious than I thought, though I'll still take him over Larry King), but they do get their chance to speak out.

"The Trouble With Harry"

Melanie Phillips lets loose:

I find the outrage being expressed in Britain and Europe quite sickening in its hypocrisy. Anti-Jewish prejudice is rampant; newspaper columnists, MPs and TV presenters chatter about the global Jewish conspiracy; the Jewish state is defamed daily and Israelis compared to Nazis; anti-Israel boycotts are organised by academics; a lionised literary critic calls for Israeli settlers to be shot and writes about the 'Zionist SS'; and yet all this passes virtually without comment, indeed is even endorsed by a large section of the population, but when silly, spoilt Prince Harry puts on a swastika armband as a joke suddenly everybody starts screaming about Auschwitz and ignoring the suffering of the Jews and gross disrespect to the war dead and so forth.

Which all goes to underline the point that people are very keen to stand up for the Jews as long as they are safely dead and a tragic chapter in history over which to wax indignant. It's the live Jews they can't stand.

It's over for Sgro

The Immigration Minister is about to resign:

Federal Immigration Minister Judy Sgro will step down today following allegations she promised a Brampton man asylum in Canada in exchange for assisting in her election campaign.

Last night, federal sources confirmed that Sgro, 60, already at the centre of an ethics investigation over her conduct as immigration minister, would be leaving cabinet until she can clear her name.
[...]
Singh, who is facing deportation next Thursday pending a last-minute hearing, says in his affidavit that he approached Sgro last year to assist him with immigration problems he and his family were having.

Balaican's husband has told the Star that people with immigration problems flocked to Sgro's campaign office during the election.

Update: Bob Tarantino's message to the Liberals: "Ferchrissakes, can't you guys at least engage in impropriety for something worthwhile? Like, I don't know, cash payments ending with lots of zeros? Private islands in the Caribbean? Castles in small European countries? Hell, small European countries? Instead, you throw it all away for a couple of boxes of pizza and a couple of shmucks who will hammer some signs into lawns? Y'all suck."

Buying bloggers

Today's Wall Street Journal has a story about the Howard Dean campaign making payments to left-wing bloggers, most notably Markos Zuniga:

Howard Dean's presidential campaign hired two Internet political "bloggers" as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide.

Ms. Teachout's posting shook the confidence of many people in the blogosphere, as many bloggers like to call the online community. Bloggers have been quick to criticize the unspoken biases of mainstream media, and they helped expose the questionable documents used by CBS News in a report about President Bush's National Guard experience.

No one realistically expects blogs to be unbiased - indeed, the best bloggers are quite open about their political leanings, in contrast to mainstream media figures who pretend they're completely impartial. But a blog is only as reliable as the person writing it, and if you're recieving money from a politician or a business, it should be disclosed.

Aside from my BlogAds and Google ads, the only time I've been contacted by a business or politician was when someone from CTV NewsNet asked me to support their application to amend their broadcasting licence. I wasn't paid, and I wrote about it here.

Heil Harry

I don't think Prince Harry should be barred from Sandhurst for this, as some have suggested, but I hope his studies include a lot of WW2 history.

Maybe he's following in his Great-Great-Uncle's footsteps.

Hypocrisy, thy nickname is Kos

"Until names are named, we can assume every conservative pundit is on the White House's payola rolls."

- Markos "Daily Kos" Zuniga, Jan. 10

"On [Howard] Dean’s campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean. We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients."

- Zonkette, Jan. 10

InstaPundit has a link to Kos' 2003 disclosure post, in which he calls his role "technical, not message or strategy". I dunno, it sounds like "message" to me.

This doesn't stink as much as the Armstrong Williams fiasco, since Dean is not the sitting President (think God) and Kos did at least disclose some involvement with the campaign. But the hypocrisy is really quite stunning. And hilarious.

(For the record, no politician has ever offered me money to write nice things about them. I shill for the Conservatives voluntarily.)

Update: Yes, that should be "thank God", not "think God."

Glenn has much, much more on this, including Kos' response.

The case against postponing the elections

Tom Friedman says the Iraqi elections should go ahead, as scheduled, on January 30:

Their [supporters of postponement] main argument is that an Iraqi election that ensconces the Shiite majority in power, without any participation of the Sunni minority, will sow the seeds of civil war.

By boycotting the elections, not only will they lose their unfair share of the old Iraq, they will also have failed to claim even their fair share of the new Iraq. The moderate argument among the Sunnis can prevail only when the tactics of their extremists have proved utterly bankrupt.

Also in today's NY Times: a report on Iraqi election workers, whose courage cannot be praised highly enough.

Syria's friends

The New York Sun reports that Syria is trying to acquire ground-to-ground and shoulder-fired missiles from Russia:

A diplomatic crisis is brewing over Russia's potential sale of advanced missiles to Syria, a sworn enemy of Israel accused of supporting Hezbollah and Palestinian Arab terrorists.

Israel's Channel Two TV reported yesterday that Russia plans to sell arms to Syria, including shoulder-fired missiles, which could threaten Israeli aircraft. In a separate report, the Russian newspaper Kommersant said the sale would include Iskander-E ground-to-ground missiles, which would give Syria the capability to strike almost anywhere in Israel.
[...]
Defense experts in Russia were skeptical about the deal going through.

Of perhaps even more concern to Israel would be the acquisition by Syria of Iskander-E missile complexes. The Iskander, mounted on truck launchers and also known as the SS-26, is an updated version of the Soviet-era Scud missile used by Iraq against Israel during the Gulf War. The missile, which reportedly can overcome existing air defense systems, can destroy targets up to 175 miles away. If Iskanders were deployed, for example, near the demarcation line in the Golan Heights area, almost all of Israel's territory, including the Dimona nuclear center in the Negev desert, would be at risk. Each missile has two 1,055-pound warheads and can hit targets with an accuracy of 20 yards.

The search ends

The Iraq Survey Group, charged with finding Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, has ended its search with little fanfare.

In a strange way (and I can understand if you interpret this as wishful thinking on my part) I think this unsuccessful search proves that the Bush Administration wasn't lying on the WMD issue. It would have been easy - as more than a few leftists suggested when the war started - to create a "stockpile" of weapons which could have been used to vindicate the pre-war intelligence, but the administration allowed the search to continue for almost two years, at a time when American forces in Iraq are, in many cases, notoriously undermanned and underequipped. I think George W. Bush was just as shocked by the lack of WMDs as I was.

As I've said from the start, I think Saddam Hussein's sheer ruthlessness and support for terrorism (yes, I do think funding Palestinian suicide bombers counts as "support for terrorism") justified an invasion to oust his regime. If democracy takes root in Iraq and spreads throughout the region, it will have been worth it. But the damage to America's credibility is immense, to say the least, and I'm continually disappointed by the Bush Administration's refusal to admit its mistakes. This was an intelligence failure as great, if not greater than 9/11, but precious few heads have rolled. I'm not saying everyone at the CIA should have been fired en masse, but has anyone taken responsibility for this?

Defending the Nazis - again

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who got 19% of the vote in the last French Presidential election, says the Nazi occupation of France wasn't so bad:

France threatened on Wednesday to take legal action against far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for saying the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two had not been "particularly inhumane."

The Justice Ministry called for a preliminary police inquiry to determine whether Le Pen's comments broke the law.
[...]
Le Pen, who in 1987 dismissed the Holocaust as a "detail" of history, alarmed Europe in 2002 by reaching the second round of France's presidential election on an anti-immigrant and anti-Europe platform.

During the Nazi German occupation of France from 1940 until 1944, about 76,000 Jews were deported. Only some 2,500 returned.

I have a fundamental problem with prosecuting anyone, even a troglodyte like Jean-Marie Le Pen, merely for expressing an opinion. On the contrary, I'm kind of glad when people like this say what they're really thinking - because then we know who must be kept out of power at all costs.

Inside the Kabbalah kult

This BBC investigation into the Kabbalah Centre - the celebrity cult linked to mental and philosophical giants like Madonna, Britney Spears and David Beckham - sounds pretty damning:

A senior figure in the controversial Kabbalah Centre - the sect championed by stars including Madonna and Demi Moore - seems likely to spark a storm of protest by saying Jews killed in the Holocaust brought their downfall upon themselves.

Talking about the wartime massacre of the Jews, Mr Yardeni said: "Just to tell you another thing about the six million Jews that were killed in the Holocaust: the question was that the Light was blocked. They didn't use Kabbalah."

Once this gets out, I guess it'll be back to good ol' Scientology for the Hollywood set.

(via Relapsed Catholic)

Time to renew the domain name

I don't want this to happen.

Ralph's big risk

Pretty much every other country on earth, except for North Korea and Cuba, allows for some mix of private and public delivery of health care services. Sadly, the only politician in Canada who seems to realize this - and has the courage to say it - is Ralph Klein:

More private health care would be a good thing for his province, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein says.

Speaking to reporters after a speech to the Canadian Club, the premier said people being able to spend their own money on health is "not evil." [How un-Canadian can you get? - ed.]
[...]
Klein said Alberta will look at "the best approaches we can find" in other countries such as Sweden, France, England, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland, which have parallel public and private systems. It will also give local health authorities more freedom in coming forward with more innovative programs, including privatization.

The premier had few specifics on some of the more controversial aspects of changes discussed in Alberta under his tenure, such as deductibles people would have to pay before the public system covered costs and medical savings accounts tallying patients' expenses. Such things would only be implemented after a full consultation with Albertans, he said.

Klein specifically rejects the costly American model, but you know that isn't going to stop Shirley Douglas from squawking about the "Americanization" of Canadian health care. As with many issues in Canada, that may be enough to shut down debate altogether.

Lysiane Gagnon, no neo-conservative, had a great column on this subject the other day. How bad have things gotten, when the French are more open to private-sector health-care delivery than Canada?

Why, London, Why?

Why did one of the world's greatest cities make this conspirozoid dhimmi its mayor?

Update: more here.

I hate winter

At least, on days like this, I hate winter. (When I'm skiing I don't mind it so much.) Is there a more depressing feeling in the world than finding out you have to shovel out the driveway as soon as you get up, so you can get to work on time?

Update: stop bragging!

"PC" stands for "Pathetic Coots"

For some reason I can't help thinking about these old Japanese soldiers who spent 40 years in the jungle, refusing to believe World War II was over:

They have been declared politically dead by many. But some old Progressive Conservative party members are refusing to be buried.

Their Progressive Canadian Party chose Tuesday - Tory granddaddy Sir John A. Macdonald's birthday - to announce a national fund-raising drive to battle that "western separatist" Stephen Harper. "There were people who would have voted Progressive Conservative but they were denied that democratic right in the last election," said former federal cabinet minister Sinclair Stevens.

But "it took an election process that makes the first vote in the Ukraine look like a model of democracy," she said.

That "western separatist" slur is a nice touch, coming from people who let this guy hold important federal cabinet posts back when they were running the country.

Losers.

The first big photoshop hoax of 2005

Several people have e-mailed me this. Stand by for the inevitable Tourist Guy version.

Why network news is obsolete

Roger Simon, commenting on the Rathergate mess, compares network-news anchormen to the extinct wooly mammoth:

The whole Rather brouhaha underlines the obvious truth what useless behemoths Anchormen are in the modern world. Could anyone explain why these windbags are needed, why anyone should "anchor" the news for us, why when there is trouble in the world we should pay the slightest attention to some blow-dried narcissist in a safari jacket who is jetted (undoubtedly first class) into an area where he has often never been and rarely knows much about?

Well, I think a television news program, by definition, needs someone to host and read the minor stories for which the network didn't bother sending out a reporter. No, the dinosaurs here are network news programs, not the people who anchor them.

When television first became popular, long before cable, it was understood that the airwaves were public property, and that TV networks had a duty to devote some of their programming time to news and information. That's where the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight came from (not to mention CBC's The National and the CTV news show, the name of which I've forgotten, since it doesn't come on until after midnight in Newfoundland).

Until 1980 or so, if you wanted to watch news on television, these were your only choices. Now, in 2004, I have seven all-news channels available on my satellite dish (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, BBC World, CBC Newsworld, CTV NewsNet and CNN Headline News), two channels devoted to business news (CNBC and ROB-TV), and several more networks devoted to documentaries. Even if you have basic cable, you can still get CNN and the Canadian news channels. The point is, there's a lot of choice out there now, and anyone who wants to watch the news no longer has to wait until Dan Rather comes on at 8:00PM Eastern.

ABC used to have a program called Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoon, showing highlights from sporting events - some well-known, some obscure - from all over the world. It filled a niche until ESPN became popular, after which it was allowed to fade away (as did a similar show on CBC, Sportsweekend, when TSN became popular). Today, there are few sports you can't find somewhere on cable, and Wide World of Sports simply became obsolete. Network news is obsolete for the same reason.

This should not be interpreted as saying I want the major networks to abandon news; as often as we bitch about them, I'm a firm believer that you can never have too many media sources, and I do not want to see any news source disappear, with the possible exception of Salon. There are still a few people out there without cable, and local news still has a place on network affiliates (although some larger cities now have their own all-news channels, like Toronto's Pulse24).

But network news is no longer essential - and sooner or later, the networks are going to start asking themselves why they're spending so much money on something which isn't essential. In fact, they're probably asking it already.

Correction: the CBS Evening News actually comes on at 6:30 Eastern. 8:00, of course, is the Newfoundland time.

The Wente backlash

This morning's Western Star has a long story about Newfoundland celebrities offended by Margaret Wente's "welfare ghetto" column. Actor Kevin Noble, best known for playing Joey Smallwood on stage, said this:

Noble said Wente's comments bordered on racism and said similar criticism would never be tolerated by other groups.

"If that were written about Southern Baptists or African Americans, it would never have passed the editorial board," he said.

Noble doesn't read Heather Mallick very often, does he?

Blogging Tories roundup

The first of what I hope will become a regular feature, at Political Staples.

A new beginning for Israel and Palestine

I'm skeptical of Mahmoud Abbas, to say the least, but Bob Tarantino notes some reasons to be optimistic about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Did they get hacked again?

Anyone know why LGF has been down all day?

Update: on a similar note, has Andrew Coyne given up this blogging thing for good?

The Maple Leaf is back

Danny Williams has, wisely, declared victory and returned the Canadian flag to provincial government buildings:

Canadian flags went up again at provincial government buildings in Newfoundland and Labrador Monday, after Premier Danny Williams ended his pointed protest of how offshore oil revenue talks are going.

Williams said he's made his point – that Ottawa has been treating his province badly – and gotten the attention of the rest of Canada.

Williams likely realized he was not going to get another meeting with federal officials until the flag was returned, so he came up with the "we've made our point" thing as a way to save face. Negotiations should resume shortly.

Saturn rising

Hard to believe the same company that designed the (ugh) Ion created this:

I want one. Saturn's other car at the Detroit show, the Aura, looks pretty impressive, too. (I hope it's better than the Pontiac G6, which I was unfortunate enough to test-drive over the Christmas break.)

Heads roll at CBS

Three CBS executives and a producer have been fired because of Rathergate. (The network's official report can be found here, in PDF format.)

In other media news: if you can't stand the thought of Fox News being easily accessible where your children can find it, and if you're too friggin' stupid to figure out the "favorite channels" feature on your remote control, your prayers have been answered. (Can't this technology be used to block something truly harmful, like Robitussin commericals?)

Million dollar hands and a ten cent brain

If the NFL were a high school, Terrell Owens would be the class clown, while Randy Moss would be the overgrown, sweaty lout who laughs uproariously at his lewd comments to the girls.

(I have to admit, when Moss "mooned" the crowd after scoring a TD yesterday, I did laugh - not in a "that's funny" manner, but in a "can you believe this guy?" manner.)

Newfoundland's case

John Crosbie had a column in yesterday's Toronto Sun explaining why Newfoundlander's feel so aggrieved about the offshore oil dispute. Anyone following this controversy should check it out.

Meanwhile, increasingly cranky historian Michael Bliss had a piece in this weekend's National Post saying we bums should be encouraged to leave Canada. Rarely have I been so happy to find a column locked away behind a subscriber wall.

Abbas' peace plan

More evidence of Mahmoud Abbas' "moderation":

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said today that he wants to shield Palestinian militants from Israel and indicated he has no plans to crack down on gunmen after upcoming presidential elections.
Abbas, speaking to The Associated Press, defended a series of recent public appearances with gunmen, saying the Palestinian leadership has a responsibility to protect its people.

Abbas also said that Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which is being planned without any Palestinian input, is "unacceptable" and he demanded a resumption of peace talks.

Someone once said the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Truer words were never spoken - they've been given chance after chance to get their own state, but as long as Israel is allowed to exist it's never good enough.

When the Israelis finally withdraw from Gaza, the Palestinians will have a chance to show whether they are willing and able to create a peaceful, functioning state. They will not take it - and the world will keep making excuses for them.

Update: exit polls - and we all know how reliable they are - give Abbas 66-70% of the vote.

Blasphemy in the UK

As far as I know, no British Christians have attacked the theater showing Jerry Springer: The Opera (not yet, anyway), but they are planning to press blasphemy charges against the BBC for televising it:

More than 1.7 million viewers watched the controversial broadcast of Jerry Springer - The Opera on BBC Two on Saturday.

Blasphemy laws were last successfully used in 1977 when Mary Whitehouse brought a case against the Gay News for publishing a poem about a Roman centurion fantasising about gay sex with Jesus.

No word on whether any British cabinet ministers will say this is "a sign of a lively flourishing cultural life." (By the way, it's telling that Springer - a show I really wanted to see when I was in London last year, but never had the chance - originates in Britain instead of the US, probably because The Jerry Springer Show confirms the Brits' worst stereotypes about the Yanks.)

Update: more here.

Quote of the Day

"[Noam] Chomsky is like a Michael Moore who's been taught to shave and eat with utensils."

- Discoshaman

Puts The Swan into perspective, doesn't it?

The world's most insane government has launched a campaign against short haircuts:

North Korea has launched an intensive media assault on its latest arch enemy - the wrong haircut.

While the campaign has been carried out primarily on television, reports have appeared in North Korean press and radio, urging tidy hairstyles and proper attire.
[...]
A second, and unprecedented, TV series this winter showed hidden-camera style video of "long-haired" men in various locations throughout Pyongyang.

Television newsreels such as "Employees of Pyongyang Textile Plant keep their hairstyle and dressing neat and tidy" and "Hairdressers at Ch'anggwangwo'n manage men's hair according to the demands of the military-first era" have also aired.

The bright side: every dollar they put into hunting down bad haircuts is a dollar they can't put into their nuclear program.

(via Blogcritics)

Putin is not our ally

I've written on several occasions about my mixed feelings toward Russian President Vladmir Putin, who has done much to stabilize and improve his country's economy but has also shown disturbing anti-democratic tendencies. My feelings are no longer mixed, and this Weekly Standard article by Anders Aslund (subscribers only) helps to explain why:

For four years, starting with his election in 2000, Putin seemed to have nothing but good fortune. Russia saw substantial and far-reaching reforms, including radical tax reform with a flat income tax of 13 percent, the legalization of private ownership of land, judicial reform, labor market reform, and pension reform. The economy boomed, growing 6.5 percent a year. Abroad, Putin pursued a realist policy, trying to be useful to others, like the United States, while safeguarding Russia's national interests.

In hindsight, Putin's concentration of power appears both systematic and deliberate. First, he subdued the media. Then he took out the oligarchs, of whom Khodorkovsky was the third to be eliminated. Then, partly by manipulating the electoral process, he finagled the removal or marginalization of the admittedly corrupt regional governors. With the economy booming and the president's control of the bureaucracy and the media firm, his United Russia party won a two-thirds majority in the Russian State Duma in December 2003. Then in March 2004, Putin himself was reelected with over 70 percent of the votes. These elections were deemed free but not fair. Russia's repression may not be severe, but it is effective. Potential opposition figures are coopted or marginalized rather than arrested.
[...]
This analysis of the weakness of the Putin regime has serious implications for U.S. policy toward Russia. First, realistically, the regime will probably end rather soon. Second, especially on the security side, with so poorly informed and ineffective a leader, Russia can perform few services useful to the United States. Third, Putin showed himself in Ukraine to be both antidemocratic and anti-American, leaving little common ground with the United States. Fourth, Putin has demonstrated a rare inability to learn from his mistakes. The only good news is that Russia is too weak to be a threat.

Ironically, Putin is forcing U.S. policy toward Russia to come full circle, back to where it was in the late Soviet period. Once again, the United States must manage the decline of a mildly authoritarian regime armed with nuclear weapons. It should be possible to do this without causing any great harm, but we should harbor no illusion that this colossus with feet of clay will stand up and fight with us in the war on terror.

Stupidity is limitless

On Thursday, Chrenkoff posted a list of the twelve stupidest tsunami-related quotes. Since then, he found 14 more.

I could spend hours wondering how some of these people are intelligent enough to inhale and exhale, much less operate a computer keyboard.

Update: here's another one.

Letting 'em have it

This, my American friends, is how you respond when some Euro-snob sneers at your President's "stupidity".

(via Sasha Castel)

Day of mourning

In Canada, today is an official Day of Mourning for the tsunami victims.

If you haven't already made a donation to the aid effort, go here.

Newdow's at it again

Michael Newdow, the guy who sued to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, has commenced legal action to prevent George W. Bush from swearing the oath of office on the Bible:

The California lawyer who tried to have the phrase "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance now wants to legally prevent President Bush from placing his hand on a Bible while being sworn in at his inauguration.

Michael Newdow, an atheist doctor and lawyer from Sacramento, has filed a complaint and a motion for preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to remove prayer and all "Christian religious acts" from the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Mr. Newdow, 50, asserts that the presence of Christian ministers who pray publicly at the inauguration, Christian songs and the swearing of the oath of office while a president places a hand on the Bible violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Such practices turn people "into second-class citizens and create division on the basis of religion," he said yesterday.

"It is an offense of the highest magnitude that the leader of our nation — while swearing to uphold the Constitution — publicly violates that very document upon taking his oath of office," Mr. Newdow wrote in his Dec. 17 filing. "The demands of strict scrutiny have not been met, and defendants must be enjoined from their planned religious activities."

The Constitution does not require the new president to place his hand on a Bible while repeating the oath. The tradition has been kept since George Washington — with the exception of Theodore Roosevelt, who did not use a Bible when he took the oath after President William McKinley's 1901 assassination.

It is presumed that a religious person is going to tell the truth if he swears on his faith, and that's why we allow people to swear on the Bible (or another holy book) before they testify in court. I'd expect nothing less at a Presidential inauguration - no one should be forced to swear an oath on a book in which he does not believe, but an oath means that much less if a religious believer is not promising to live up to the tenets of his faith. If the President-elect believes in the Bible, the Koran or Dianetics, it should be used for the oath of office.

Newdow may have a point about the overt Christian symbolism used in the inauguration festivities, but I doubt even most atheists are so hypersensitive that they can't handle an oath on the Bible. At least, I hope not.

Did they teach that in journalism school?

A CBC reporter has been fired for sending a contaminated box of chocolates to a political activist:

The CBC was within its rights in 2003 to fire a reporter who anonymously sent a box of chocolates contaminated with raw chicken and dirt to a B.C. health-care lobbyist, a judge has ruled.

The ruling overturns an aritrator's decision to suspend rather than fire radio reporter Bob Keating. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marion Allan said the credibility of the CBC and the reporter had been "seriously undermined" by the Keating's actions.
[...]
Keating broadcast a story in 2000 about a health-care lobby group called Save Our Services abandoning a lawsuit against the provincial government.

That evening, however, he had a pang of conscience and told his wife what he had done. They decided they should tell the Hamiltons, reaching Hamilton's wife on Jan. 31.

If the people at CBC Watch get any contaminated chocolates in the mail, I guess we'll know where they came from.

(On a more conciliatory note, I'm sure even the most rabid CBC haters will join me in wishing Wendy Mesley, Canada's original news babe, the best of luck in her battle with cancer.)

The Lost Kennedy

JFK's sister Rosemary Kennedy, lobotomized and locked in an institution for most of her life, has passed away at age 86.

Update: the Associated Press treated this story with the kind of class and dignity you'll never find on blogs:

(Screenshot via FARK.com. Some news sites, but not all, have changed the headline.)

Abbas is not the answer

Charles Krauthammer, one of the few commentators willing to admit that the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas is just another Arafat:

What of Abbas' vaunted opposition to violence? On Jan. 2 he tells Hamas terrorists firing rockets that maim and kill Jewish villagers within Israel, ``This is not the time for this kind of act.'' This is an interesting ``renunciation'' of terrorism: Not today, boys; perhaps later, when the time is right. Which was exactly Arafat's utilitarian approach to terrorism throughout the Oslo decade.

But we do know this. In Abbas' first moment of real leadership, his long-anticipated emergence from the shadow of Arafat, he chooses to literally hoist the flag of the terrorist al-Aqsa Brigades.

Conflict of interest

Whether you support or oppose "No Child left Behind", this sets a disturbing precedent:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."

How much would they have had to pay him if he didn't believe in it?

Wente vs. Newfoundland

Here it is, the column that has Newfoundlanders screaming for blood again. Margaret Wente, normally one of this country's finest writers, thinks Danny and the Newfies are getting kind of uppity, and says Ontarians are fed up with subsidizing rural Newfoundland:

I like Newfoundlanders. I really do. But their sense of victimhood is unmatched. And their flag protest isn't winning them much sympathy on this side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In fact, the sensation on this side is of a deep and painful bite to the hand that feeds. Mr. Williams reminds me of a deadbeat brother-in-law who's hit you up for money a few times too often. He's been sleeping on your couch for years, and now he's got the nerve to complain that it's too lumpy.
[...]
Over the years, those of us not blessed to be born on the Rock have sent countless cakes its way in the form of equalization payments, pogey, and various hare-brained make-work schemes. (Who can ever forget the hydroponic cucumber farm?) In return, the surly islanders have blamed us for everything from the disappearance of the cod stocks to the destruction of the family unit, because if people had to work more than 10 weeks before they could collect EI, they might have to move away.

Newfoundland's population has dwindled to something less than that of Scarborough, Ont. Because of stupendous political malfeasance, it is at least $11-billion in debt. But it still has seven federal seats. And so we send more money so that people can stay in the scenic villages where they were born, even though the fish are gone and there's no more work and never will be, unless they can steal some telemarketing from Bangalore. Rural Newfoundland (along with our great land north of 60) is probably the most vast and scenic welfare ghetto in the world.

Ouch. Wente probably can't help being so condescending (she does write for The Globe and Mail, after all), and the comment about how Newfoundlanders "might have to move away" if they can't get EI is a cheap shot - thousands of Newfoundlanders do work in Alberta and Ontario, spending eight months of the year thousands of miles away to make something of themselves. Yes, Newfoundland recieves millions of dollars per year in federal largesse, and it has to end sometime - which is why Danny Williams is fighting for Newfoundland to gain control of its offshore oil revenues, just as if our oil was on land. Personally, I look forward to the day when Newfoundland has to start paying transfer payments to the mainland.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I think Wente's condescening, insulting column actually has a couple of good points.

We Newfoundlanders do have a finely tuned sense of victimhood. This morning, CBC Radio played a recording of a debate between Wente and John Crosbie on last night's Canada Now, and I cringed to hear Crosbie - an intelligent, passionate advocate for Newfoundland and Canada - describe Wente's attitude as "racism". We are a proud people, but we are definitely not a race, and calling criticism "racism" is the kind of political correctness at which Crosbie would normally (and rightly) sneer. Yes, we've been screwed by Ottawa many times, but any student of Newfoundland and Labrador's post-Confederation economic policies would tell you, we've done a pretty good job of screwing ourselves, too. (I'm reading Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson right now. The book - a refutation of persistent economic fallacies - could have been specifically written about this province.)

And unfortunately, while most Newfoundlanders want to work, the welfare state has indeed created a disturbingly large class who feel they don't have to do so, since Ottawa will take care of them. In much of the province, you can get EI for the rest of the year after working for only ten weeks, and it's downright embarassing to see the provincial government organizing worthless "make-work" projects to pay people for ten weeks so Ottawa will take care of the other 42. (EI is a federal program, while social assistance - "welfare", in other words - is provincial.) Employment Insurance was meant to tide people if they lost their jobs. In much of Newfoundland, it has indeed become a way of life, and eventually something has to give.

I'm with Danny on the offshore oil issue (even though I do not support his taking down the Canadian flag), and we shouldn't let cheap shots and condescension go unanswered. But I hope we're strong enough to be introspective and accept serious criticism, too.

Update: as if to prove Wente's point, someone sent an e-mail to my local CBC Radio station saying her column is a hate crime and that Ottawa has committed "cultural genocide" against Newfoundlanders. Get a f**king grip, people.

Ramsey for the defence

Ramsey Clark has decided to maintain his perfect track record of defending genocidal tyrants, and has joined Saddam's defence team. A genuinely honest and thoughtful antiwar leftist, Marc Cooper, is pissed:

I wrote two years ago —as an opponent of the war in Iraq -- that the liberal and democratic left was making a monstrous mistake in ceding the leadership of the anti-war movement to this wacky fringe who, indeed, supported not only Saddam but also Slobodan Milosevic as well as that nice family that runs North Korea. I predicted, as if it was any effort to do so, that a movement with these dimwits anywhere near its leadership was doomed.

Keep telling yourself, it doesn’t matter.

We're number 16!

The Heritage Foundation's latest Index of Economic Freedom is out. Everyone's talking about America's fall from the top 10 this year, but the big shocker for me is finding "socialist" Sweden is right behind them in 14th. Does Jack Layton know about this?

You will not be at all surprised to find out who came last. As for Canada, much as I complain about the interventionist state, 16th out of 155 ain't bad. (The entire report can be downloaded here, in PDF format.)

A short history of flag flaps

Danny Williams is not the first Canadian politician to use the Maple Leaf as a policial prop, and he probably won't be the last.

Nothing like good satire

The latest Onion features an absolutely brilliant parody of mushy-headed liberalism - a column by "Decca Aitkenhead" (where do they come up with these crazy names?) saying Jamaican homophobia is all whitey's fault, no one has the right to criticize it, and that "fair trade" is needed to end it.

Actually, it's not a parody, and instead of The Onion, it's in an even less credible news source.

(via Melanie Phillips)

Classy

The lone protestor at Tinanmen Square, standing in front of a line of tanks and stopping them in their tracks, used to be a symbol of freedom, defiance and courage. Now it's fodder for a fast-food commercial. (For a chain whose mission statement is "to glorify God," of all things.)

(via Michelle Malkin)

She is joking, right?

Ann Coulter: "I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning."

Best acronym ever

A Japanese newspaper says North Korea is selling weapons to an Islamofascist terror group in the Philippines. I should be concerned, but I'm too busy laughing at their name:

A newspaper report in Japan suggests North Korea has been selling weapons to Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an Islamic extremist group in the Philippines.

The Passion, Iranian-style

More holiday viewing on Iranian television, courtesy of MEMRI.

Signs of hope

Andrew Sullivan posts an e-mail message from The Trouble With Islam author Irshad Manji, who says many of her fellow Muslims are taking her call for reform seriously.

Who knows how many Muslims believe in freedom, individualism and tolerance, but feel too cowed by their radical bretheren to speak out?

Least surprising firing ever

Dennis Erickson is out as coach of the 49ers. Why they fired Mooch and hired this guy is one of the great mysteries of the age.

Commie chic in Newfoundland

"Free Newfoundland", "Newfoundland Liberation Army" and "Republic of Newfoundland" T-shirts have been popular down here for years, and sales have increased even more since the offshore oil dispute heated up. I have an old "Republic of Newfoundland" shirt home somewhere, even though I'm a monarchist. As for the others, there are quite a few Eastern Europeans in St. John's who defected when Gander airport was an Eastern-bloc refueling stop, and I have to wonder what they think when they see people wearing this logo all over town:

Yes, I know most of the people who wear this aren't really Communists, and that it's meant to be ironic or something. But this kind of thing - not to mention the now-ubiquitous Che T-shirts - gives the symbols of that bloody totalitarianism a respectability they deserve no more than the swastika.

A hundred million people were killed, and millions more enslaved and oppressed, by the system that logo represents. Too bad most of us think it's some kind of "liberation" symbol.

Schuey steps up

Michael Schumacher has reportedly donated ten million dollars to tsunami relief efforts.

As I noted the other day, that's the same amount as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and more than any Canadian province. Good on him.

You knew it was coming

Yes, folks, you-know-who orchestrated the Asian tsunami.

It must be nice, in a way, to live in a world where everything - natural disasters, wars, plane crashes, Desperate Housewives being pre-empted - is caused by Israeli "micro-nukes".

Update: the newest conspiracy theory, according to University of Ottawa professor (and prominent 9/11 conspirozoid) Michel Chossudovsky: the U.S. knew about the tidal wave but did not warn any of the afflicted countries because...well, they're Americans, right? They're just naturally eeeeeevil, like the Jews.

(via Best of the Web)

Barbarians inside the gates

Just a day after the governor of Baghdad was murdered, and a suicide bomber blew up a tanker truck on the perimeter of the "Green Zone", another car bomb has killed ten Iraqi police recruits.

The growing consensus is that the elections, scheduled for later this month, should be postponed. I have a feeling that if they're not held as planned on Jan. 30, they'll never be held.

Quebec's priorities

Quebec has a chronic nursing shortage, but the language police has nonetheless ordered the firing of two veteran nurses at an English-language hospital because they failed a written French test.

It might be "un-Canadian" to point this out, but if you need something as oppressive as a "language police" to make sure the demon English isn't infecting your little French utopia, that's a sign you've already lost the battle. If the Brits had set up a government agency to make sure other tongues weren't "corrupting" the English language, would it be so dominant today?

Vive le Terre-Neuve libre

The Calgary Sun's Paul Jackson supports Danny Williams' decision to remove the Canadian flag from Newfoundland and Labrador government buildings, and says Newfoundland may leave Canada before Quebec does.

I wouldn't bet on it. If we didn't leave in the early 1980s, when Newfoundland was denied jurisdiction over offshore oil, control of its fishery and re-opening of the Chruchill Falls contract, we'll never leave. Still, even though I think Williams' move is counterproductive and petty, you can't deny this kind of thing has worked very well for Quebec over the years. (Robert Bourassa, allegedly a federalist premier, removed the Canadian flag from Quebec's provincial legislature - sorry, "National Assembly".)

In Putin's pocket

Jake Rudnitsky, a columnist for the almost-certain-to-be-shut-down-soon Moscow alternative paper The eXile, thrashes Western leftists so blinded by anti-Bush hatred that they believe Ukraine's Orange Revolution is an Anglo-American plot. In particular, he notes that The Guardian's Jonathan Steele has been treated very, very well by the Kremlin:

They'd have it that US putschists rather than massive electoral fraud and state corruption inspired Ukraine's protests. Most of these reports have one thing in common -- they're all within a couple of degrees of separation from the Guardian and Jonathan Steele, probably the single most corrupt Western journalist writing about this region today.

Taking money or favors to write articles is pretty much the bukkake shot of journalism. It is the most debasing thing a journo can do. And Steele, the Guardian's senior foreign correspondent, wasn't content just having several splashes drip down his face; he did it for cheap.

Steele has gone on at least two 5-star Kremlin-sponsored junkets in the last four months, and not surprisingly, he is also taking the Kremlin's line. Yet he keeps getting printed in the Guardian and in The Nation. His first junket was the Valdai Discussion Group in early September, in which several journalists and Russia experts were invited by the state-owned RIA-Novosti news agency to a plush conference that featured meetings with Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Ivan Ivanov. Steele, who at the time was criticized by Evgenia Albats in Yezhenedelny Zhurnal, defended himself on Johnson's Russia List by writing, "There is no blanket ban [on accepting paid trips at the Guardian]. If they provide unique access which would not otherwise be attainable, they are acceptable -- provided the invitation is acknowledged at some point in the material which arises from it."

Pavlovsky probably picked Steele because he's an old school America basher. His pet issue these days is dismantling NATO and creating a pan-European force in its place. Pavlovsky must have calculated that Steele already had an anti-American disposition that only needed a little coddling at the Premier Palace Hotel to toe his line. Not surprisingly, Steele's articles, "Where the cold war never died," "Ukraine's postmodern coup d'etat," and, in The Nation, "Ukraine's Untold Story," completely parrot his sugar daddy. One indication that Pavlovsky was pleased with his investment in Steele was that gazeta.ru, a site linked to the spin doctor, published an article summing up Steele's writings that gleefully led, "The Western media's views of the political crisis in Ukraine have become less single-minded." Steele's articles have been quoted repeatedly on Russian TV as proof that the Orange Revolution is little more than an American coup d'etat, that the events in Ukraine were illegal and the result of a vast anti-Russian conspiracy. These same reports give little mention the massive falsification that caused the protests in the first place, or the hundreds of millions that the Kremlin poured into Yanukovich's campaign. Steele's article, not surprisingly, also downplays the electoral fraud in favor of evil American conspiracies.

(via Le Sabot Post-Moderne, found via InstaPundit)

Robbery at Old Trafford

I think we'll be seeing video replay in English football very, very soon.

Update: Stephen Pollard, an actual Spurs fan, is taking this about as well as you'd expect.

Abbas and Arafat are the same, the only difference is the name

Mohammed Abbas is co-opting Palestinian terror groups, calling Israel the "Zionist enemy" and assuring Palestinian "refugees" (most of whom have never set foot said Zionist enemy) that they have a "right of return" to Israel.

Michael Totten gets Abbas exactly right, but a few of his readers say he's just pandering to the extremists whose support he needs. (Also to spare his own life, although Hamas still considers Abbas too moderate.) Even if this is the case, what does it say about what Palestinian society has become, and what the inevitable Palestinian state will actually be like?

Update: Clifford May: "A moderate understands that it’s wrong to murder other people’s children. A pragmatist says, 'Well, there’s not much point in murdering other people’s children if it doesn’t get us what we want.'"

Unfortunately, there are plenty of pragmatic Palestinian leaders.

Britain's death toll

- 40 Britons are confirmed dead in the tsunami, and the British government says another 159 are unaccounted for. Like Paul Martin, Tony Blair is being criticized for not cutting short his holiday when news of the disaster came out.

- President Bush has asked Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush to lead disaster fundraising efforts. Most people would see this as a bipartisan effort to increase aid to a part of the world that needs it. To The Independent, of course, it's another opportunity to sneer at an American attempt to improve its image. (Check out that headline.)

- many, if not most, of the dead in southeast Asia are Muslims. The Great Satan, despite the sniping of mental midgets like Independent writers, has taken the lead in relief efforts. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran, by contrast, have barely opened their wallets:

Take, for instance, Saudi Arabia ($10 million), Kuwait ($2 million), and Iran ($627,000). This, for their Muslim brothers and sisters? These are countries for whom wealth flows from the very earth which killed so many. The Saudi princes do not work or create. They shop and harvest. And yet here they stand again--they and the rest of the Middle East--sitting on their hands and expecting the rest of the world to take care of their Islamic brothers. How much is Islamic solidarity worth for Iran? About 16,000 barrels of oil.

Remember that, when it counted, it was Japan, America, Britain, Sweden, Canada, Denmark, Australia, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, and the rest of the West--not to mention the Far East--which opened its arms to help the millions of people--including millions of Muslims--who were struck by this terrible disaster.

Saudi Arabia's donation is equal to that of its tiny neighbour, Qatar, which has a population of less than 750,000.

Update: Kuwait, perhaps in response to criticism from its own citizens, has increased its pledge to $10M. The United Arab Emirates will donate $20M.

The most disgusting people in America

If there must be tidal waves and other natural disasters, why can't they hit 3701 SW 12th Street, Topeka, Kansas?

Better late than never

Canada is finally sending members of the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) to Southeast Asia. Bruce Rolston explains the policy decisions which have prevented us from sending the DART team earlier. Politics aside, I'm sure every Canadian joins me in wishing the team - and other Canadian aid workers in that blighted region - the best of luck.

The Martin government has also announced it will double its aid to the region (to $80 million) and several other moves, including a change to tax rules allowing Canadians to claim donations made before Jan. 11 on their 2004 tax return. As of Sunday, Canadian citizens had given $36 million, and charities have been overwhelmed by the response. (One guy pledged half a million dollars to CARE Canada.) Ontario and Alberta are chipping in $5 million each. The government of Newfoundland and Labrador has donated $100,000.

Canadians can donate through several organizations, including the Canadian Red Cross, CARE, Oxfam and World Vision. Every little bit counts.

Update: NBC and its cable networks will air a three-hour telethon for disaster relief on Jan. 15.

Update II: a reader chides me for not pointing out that British Columbia has pledged $8 million, and asks why I didn't mention it. Simple: I didn't know.

So far, Saskatchewan has pledged $1 million. Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have all pledged $100,000 apiece, and tiny Prince Edward Island is giving $20,000.

The Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2004

John Hawkins has compiled a long list. His blog might be called "Right Wing News", but even he couldn't leave out Alan Keyes.

Here's a few I would have included:

"That people feel this passionately about theatres is a good sign for our cultural life. It is a sign of a lively flourishing cultural life." - British "race equality" minister Fiona Mactaggart, after violent demonstrations shut down a play considered blasphemous by Sikhs.

"Foreign journalists seemed much more excited about Mr Arafat's fate than anyone in Ramallah... [W]here were the people, I wondered, the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the frantic expressions of concern? ...when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry... without warning." - BBC reporter Barbara Plett, in Yasser Arafat's final days.

"The MR posting brings up questions about the Iraqi brothers who run the IraqTheModel site. It points out that the views of the brothers are celebrated in the right-leaning weblogging world of the US, even though opinion polling shows that their views are far out of the mainstream of Iraqi opinion. It notes that their choice of internet service provider, in Abilene, Texas, is rather suspicious, and wonders whether they are getting some extra support from certain quarters." - Juan Cole decides pro-American Iraqi bloggers must be on the CIA payroll, since everyone knows brown people can't possibly have opinions of their own.

"I'm no friend of the Syrian regime, but Syrian troops in Lebanon maintain stability and protect the country from Israel. Lebanon is an Arab country with a border with the Zionist state and that is a very dangerous place." - George Galloway

"Ironically, bloggers mostly feed off the work of professional journalists who do the legwork. But, like parasites too stupid to realize they are killing off their hosts, the pajamahadeen don't get it every time they dig more dirt for our mass grave." - Antonia Zerbisias

"Indeed, this writer believes Arafat may have been murdered by an untraceable toxin." - Eric Margolis

"So without fear of further disturbing already ravaged public sensitivities, applaud Theo van Gogh's death as the marvellous piece of theatre it was." - alleged alti-censorship activist Rohan Jayasekera.

"I'd like to say that according to my recent experience, relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders." - Presbyterian Church Elder Ronald Stone, after meeting with members of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"...if the right whingers want to cross the line between disagreement and defamation, they will be on the receiving end of a 2x4 across the back of the head. ...I say it's time to take out that 2x4 and start cracking some heads open until the right learns that disagreements can be had without defaming your opponent. The right whingers need to learn civility, even if it has to be beaten into their heads." - peace activist Rubert McClelland

"...9/11? That was his. Osama bin Laden and his fellow Afghan "freedom fighters" got their funding, and nasty weapons, from Reagan. Anyway, I'm sure he's turning crispy brown right about now." - Ted Rall (on Reagan, not Osama)

"[Saddam] Hussein is much smarter, funnier and more erudite than Bush. When Saddam pointed out that Bush was the real criminal, who could argue? He even managed to defend the invasion of Kuwait! So why not swap them out? We get Saddam Hussein as our president; the Iraqis get Bush. Consider the benefits: we get gargantuan statues and a leader capable of using language--think how fast he'll solve the Palestinian issue!" - Rall, again

"Deciding exactly who is a neocon is difficult since some neocons reject the term while others embrace it. Some shape policy from within the White House, while others are more peripheral, exacting influence indirectly as journalists, academics and think tank policy wonks. What they all share is the view that the US is a benevolent hyper power that must protect itself by reshaping the rest of the world into its morally superior image. And half of the them are Jewish." - Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn

"...the government will not tolerate statements that create dissonance in our society and disrespect for others." - Jean Augustine, Canadian Minister of State for Multiculturalism

"Maybe Jews don't issue fatwas." - British editorial cartoonist Tim Benson, when asked why anti-Sharon cartoons are more common than anti-Arafat ones.

And the obnoxious quote of the year, if not the decade:

"I just took a can of spraypaint and wrote that message ["Fuck the Jews"] on the side of a building (not owned by Jews). Have I committed an act of antisemitism and if so why? Answers of "yes, just because it is" are not acceptable. Can anyone answer this question or has everyone been so conditioned to accept, without explanation as to why, that whatever you're told is antisemitic must be antisemitic." - the one and only Rubert.

The Missing

Five Canadians have been killed by the Southeast Asian tsunami, and approximately 150 are missing. The Toronto Star has compiled a partial list of names.

Update: between 4,000 and 5,000 Americans are still unaccounted for. 15 are confirmed dead.

2005

Happy New Year to all my readers. Weren't we promised flying cars by now?

My New Year's Resolution, for the 15th year in a row, is to lose weight. I did not get off to a good start, trying one of these McDonald's "Deli" sandwiches while driving across Newfoundland today. (Like most McDonald's food, the sandwich wasn't bad, just kinda bland and certainly done much better elsewhere.)