January 31, 2005
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.
"In addition to damage to her profession and career, the lies and additional lies have cause Sgro to suffer mental anguish and have as a result harmed her physical health."
The court documents concede that Singh did visit Sgro's campaign office in June last year for a meeting with her key aide, Ihor Wons, who has dropped out of sight in recent months.
Sgro, who says she has "never laid eyes on Singh," insists she was not present at the meeting in which he described his immigration problems.
"Wons did not agree, promise, or in any way suggest that he could assist Singh," the claim states.
Singh later met the MP's director of parliamentary affairs, Katherine Abbott, and gave her some papers, but again, Sgro says she was not present.
"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.
The Washington-based center is part of Freedom House, America's oldest human-rights organization. While the group typically monitors the state of religious freedom under oppressive regimes abroad, the center has just concluded a year-long study of 200 documents that it said were collected in more than a dozen mosques across America, bear the seal of the Saudi government, and spread hateful indoctrination. The group called the propaganda a violation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
According to a press release and to the center's director, Nina Shea, the 89-page report, which was issued Friday, finds that the materials incite violence, inform Muslims that it is their religious duty to hate Jews and Christians, and even give specific instructions on how properly to express that hatred to one's infidel neighbors.
The Saudi-produced and -distributed materials denounce democracy - and democratic America - as un-Islamic. Ms. Shea said the materials are directed toward recent immigrants. According to the report, Muslim newcomers are told that, while in America, they should think of themselves as operating behind enemy lines and should use their time in America either to acquire information and resources for jihad or to convert the infidels to Islam.
The literature also promotes Wahhabism, the version of Islam officially embraced by the Saudi kingdom and adhered to by several of the September 11 hijackers, as the only true Islam, and it denounces more moderate Muslims who advocate tolerance as apostates. In Saudi Arabia, Ms. Shea said, apostasy is a capital crime. "If you're a Muslim and you become an infidel," she said, "you're put to death."
According to the report, one of the strongest denunciations of so-called apostasy was issued in Brooklyn's Al-Farooq mosque, on Atlantic Avenue.
"In a book published by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and collected from the Al-Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn, New York, Saudi Arabia's official religious leader, the late Bin Baz, authorizes Muslims to kill converts to Islam who violate sexual mores on adultery and homosexuality," the report said.
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 commission, led by the Italian judge Antonio Cassese, documents breaches of international human rights law and other war crimes, and names individuals who may have acted with "genocidal intent". But it failed to find evidence that the government in Khartoum, widely accused of backing the militias, had a specific policy of exterminating a particular ethnic group, the Los Angeles Times reported.
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.
Some of those interviewed believe the “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-il, has already lost his personal authority to a clique of generals and party cadres. Without any public announcement, governments from Tokyo to Washington are preparing for a change of regime.
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.
Word has spread like wildfire of the Christian underground that helps fugitives to reach South Korea. People who lived in silent fear now dare to speak about escape. The regime has almost given up trying to stop them going, although it can savagely punish those caught and sent back.
“Everybody knows there is a way out,” said a woman, who for obvious reasons cannot be identified but who spoke in front of several witnesses.
“They know there is a Christian network to put them in contact with the underground, to break into embassies in Beijing or to get into Vietnam. They know, but you have to pay a lot of money to middlemen who have the Christian contacts.”
Her knowledge was remarkable. North Korean newspapers are stifled by state control. Televisions receive only one channel which is devoted to the Dear Leader’s deeds. Radios are fixed to a single frequency. For most citizens the internet is just a word.
Yet North Koreans confirmed that they knew that escapers to China should look for buildings displaying a Christian cross and should ask among Korean speakers for people who knew the word of Jesus.
“The information blockade is like a dam and when it bursts there will be a great wave,” said Shin, the crusading pastor.
(via LGF)
January 30, 2005
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.
In the ensuing decade, there are two unarguable facts: the number of liquor stores in the province has more than tripled and brand selection has increased exponentially.
Everything else, including the social effects and benefits to consumers and the province alike, seems still open to heated debate.
"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.
"We can only surmise that higher price equals lower consumption, lower consumption equals less problems," said Flanagan, who wrote a critical report on liquor privatization for the Parkland Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
"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.
The vote began violently as 35 people died in various attacks, but when the polls closed, Iraq's Electoral Commission said about 60 per cent of those eligible had voted.
Voters lined up at the booths, and old people were carried to the polls. Voters proudly showed off their fingers, stained with ink to prevent multiple voting.
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.
January 29, 2005
Hummers are wimpy
Dear Santa,
I promise to be good all year if you bring me one of these. And this time, I mean it.
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.
What we didn't have was any memories of seeing anyone in our family vote. Saddam Hussein's candidates always won 100 percent of the vote, but the election booths in our section of Iraq were in the form of mass graves. There was no indelible ink to prevent fraud in elections, only the indelible pain of broken dreams and the loss of loved ones since our part of Kurdistan was annexed to Iraq in the 1920's.
When I voted in this country for the first time, I thought how lucky Americans were. A vote is taken for granted here, while back in Iraq people died (and are dying now) for it. I've voted in every election here since.
And on Sunday my large family in Iraq will all vote. For my 72-year-old father and my 70-year-old mother, it will be their first time. My mother told me that she would brave the current blizzard in the mountains of Kurdistan to go vote, even though she is very ill. My father, a Kurdish freedom fighter for two decades, looks forward to voting as eagerly as a child waiting to open his Christmas gifts.
They do not want America to fail in its effort to bring democracy to Iraq. Above all, they and the seven million other Kurds want to cast a vote for a new Iraq that will be based on the principles of freedom, federalism, and the recognition that any union between the Arab majority and the Kurdish minority is voluntary.
Nonetheless, when I heard about the plans for Iraqis in the United States to vote in the national elections, my initial reaction was not to participate. Although I feel a strong tie to my homeland, I am an American citizen, and my life is here now.
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.
1. 100 per cent protection from Equalization reductions or "clawbacks" for eight years-one year longer than the life of the offset provisions of the existing Atlantic Accord-as long as the province receives Equalization payments.
2. An up-front payment of $2.0 billion to provide the province with immediate flexibility to address its unique fiscal challenges. This amount equals about three-quarters of the agreed-upon estimate of potential benefits from this agreement between now and 2012. This payment will serve as a pre-payment of the new 100 per cent protection.
3. The existing offset provisions of the Atlantic Accord will be retained unaltered.
4. In addition, this agreement provides for a further eight-year extension as long as the province receives Equalization in 2010-11 or 2011-12, and that its per capita debt servicing costs have not become lower than that of at least four other provinces.
5. During the second eight-year period, if the province no longer qualifies for Equalization, it will receive transitional payments for two years:
- In the first year, the transitional payment would equal two- thirds of the offset payments it received the previous year.
- 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.
Bernie Hogan, the head of Australia's overseas voting program, said the riot erupted when a group of around 20 protesters started yelling insults at voters leaving the polling center in a Sydney neighborhood dominated by Iraqi Shiites.
Hogan said the protesters were holding up the same black flag with white lettering that has appeared as a backdrop in videos released by Iraqi insurgents featuring foreign hostages begging for their lives.
Thair Wali, an Iraqi adviser for the International Organization for Migration, said the protesters' flag and Arabic slogans identified them as Wahabis, followers of an austere brand of Sunni Islam practiced mostly in Saudi Arabia.
Wahabis are suspected of having influence over militants waging a 17-month insurgency in Iraq.
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.
January 28, 2005
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.
Submission Part One is a ten-minute film about a Muslim woman forced into an arranged marriage where she is beaten by her husband, raped by her uncle and finally accused of adultery. Explaining the decision to withdraw it, the film's producer Gijs van de Westelaken said: "We do not want to take any chance of endangering anyone else who participated in the film."
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.
January 27, 2005
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.
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.
As Germany expanded its domination and occupation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, the Low Countries, Yugoslavia, Poland, parts of the USSR, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Italy and others countries, the way was open for Hitler to realize his well-publicized plan of destroying the Jewish people.
After experimentation, the use of Zyklon B on unsuspecting victim was adopted by the Nazis as the means of choice, and Auschwitz was selected as the main factory of death (more accurately, one should refer to the “Auschwitz-Birkenau complex”). The green light for mass annihilation was given at the Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942.
The Wannsee Conference formalized "the final solution" - the plan to transport Europe's Jews to eastern labour and death camps. Ever efficient and bureaucratic, the Nazi kept a record of the meeting, which were discovered in 1947 in the files of the German Foreign Office. The record represents a summary made by Adolf Eichmann at the time, even though they are sometime referred to as "minutes".
Several of the Conference participants survived the war to be convicted at Nuremberg. One notorious participant, Adolf Eichmann, was tried and convicted in Jerusalem, and executed in 1962 in Ramlah prison.
The mass gassings of Europe's took place in Auschwitz between 1942 and the end of 1944, when the Nazis retreated before the advancing Red Army. Jews were transported to Auschwitz from all over Nazi-occupied or Nazi-dominated Europe and most were slaughtered in Auschwitz upon arrival, sometimes as many as 12,000 in one day. Some victims were selected for slave labour or “medical” experimentation before they were murdered or allowed to die. All were subject to brutal treatment.
In all, between three and four million people, mostly Jews, but also Poles and Red Army POWs, were slaughtered in Auschwitz alone (though some authors put the number at 1.3 million). Other death camps were located at Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec (Belzek), Majdanek and Treblinka. Adding the toll of these and other camps, as well as the mass executions and the starvation im the Ghettos, six million Jews, men, women, the elderly and children lost their lives as a consequence of the Nazi atrocities.
Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, sixty years ago, after most of the prisoners were forced into a Death March westwards. The Red Army found in Auschwitz about 7,600 survivors, but not all could be saved.
For a long time, the Allies were well aware of the mass murder, but deliberately refused to bomb the camp or the railways leading to it. Ironically, during the Polish uprising, the Allies had no hesitation in flying aid to Warsaw, sometimes flying right over Auschwitz.
There are troubling parallels between the systematic vilification of Jews before the Holocaust and the current vilification of the Jewish people and Israel. Suffice it to note the annual flood of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN; or the public opinion polls taken in Europe, which single out Israel as a danger to world peace; or the divestment campaigns being waged in the US against Israel; or the attempts to delegitimize Israel’s very existence. The complicity of the Allies in WW II is mirrored by the support the PLO has been receiving from Europe, China and Russia to this very day.
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.
Marine Le Pen, 35, once seen as a possible future leader in succession to her father, Jean-Marie, 76, has distanced herself from the party machine in protest against comments made by M. Le Pen defending German behaviour in France in 1940-44.
Mme Le Pen, who has led a drive to "de-demonise" and modernise the party, is said to have been "furious" that he returned to old themes: minimising Nazi atrocities and defending the collaborationist Vichy regime. Her friends in the party say she feels "stabbed in the back".
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.
Friends have told the press that Marine was "furious" when she saw the magazine comments, some days before they were picked up by Le Monde. She saw her father's words as a deliberate disavowal of her work and a "stab in the back".
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".
January 26, 2005
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.
"This is a final warning to all of those who plan to participate in the election," the leaflets said. "We vow to wash the streets of Baghdad with the voters' blood."
Thus was the war over Sunday's nationwide elections crystallized in a single incident on Tuesday in Mashtal, an ethnically mixed neighborhood on the eastern edge of Baghdad, where many Iraqis say they would like to vote, and where a small, determined group of people are doing everything they can to stop them.
The leaflets, like many turning up on sidewalks and doorsteps across the capital, were chilling in their detail: they warned Iraqis to stay at least 500 yards away from voting booths, for each would be the potential target of a rocket, mortar shell or car bomb. The leaflet suggested that Iraqis stay away from their windows, too, in case of blasts.
"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.
"I want to vote," said Khalidayah Lazem, a 40-year-old Sunni, standing outside her home. "But as you can see, the situation is getting worse. We see these leaflets every day."
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.
January 25, 2005
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.
In a letter dated Jan. 13, about 20 members of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, asked Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov to investigate their claims and to launch proceedings "on the prohibition in our country of all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremist."
The letter, faxed in part to The Associated Press by the office of lawmaker Alexander Krutov, said: "The negative assessments by Russian patriots of the qualities and actions against non-Jews that are typical of Jews correspond to the truth ... The statements and publications against Jews that have incriminated patriots are self-defence, which is not always stylistically correct but is justified in essence."
The stunning call to ban all Jewish groups raised concerns of persistent anti-Semitism in Russia.
Jewish leaders have praised President Vladimir Putin's government for encouraging religious tolerance, but rights groups accuse the authorities of failing to prosecute the perpetrators of anti-Semitic and racial violence.
Russia's chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, said lawmakers were looking for support "by playing the anti-Semitic card."
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."
"It is possible to say that the entire democratic world today is under the monetary and political control of international Judaism, which high-profile bankers are openly proud of," the letter says.
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.
In a speech to a wildlife officers' conference in July 2003, Kennedy said some trial judges do not know what they are doing, and that "part of this is as a result of political appointments."
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.
As a defence, freedom of speech has limitations, but Earle says in this case, that should not matter.
"Those limitations are only those that are demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society," Earle says.
"To turn around and say that a lawyer cannot voice criticism of the system of justice would never be justifiably demonstrable in this country."
During a presentation to a Law Society panel Friday, O'Dea suggested that the society acted because of who filed the complaint, more so than the nature of the complaint itself.
"I would go so far as to say that the Law Society reacted because the complaint came from the judiciary," O'Dea said.
Speaking to reporters later, however, O'Dea would not comment further on his statement.
Stephen May, the lawyer representing the Law Society, disagrees with O'Dea's argument.
"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.
January 24, 2005
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.
"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," said the speaker. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it."
The authenticity of the tape has yet to be determined.
The speaker continued to say that the Americans are using the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections to install the Shiite majority in power, and called the candidates "demi-idols" and the people who vote for them "infidels."
He said Americans have engineered the election "to make Shiites dominate the regime in Iraq," and that four million Shiites were brought from Iran to achieve their aim of winning most of the positions.
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.
January 23, 2005
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.
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.
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has written to Charles Clarke, the home secretary, saying the body will not attend the event unless it includes the “holocaust” of the Palestinian intifada.
He said similar events held in other European countries was an “inclusive day” that commemorated deaths in Palestine, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, as well as the former Nazi death camps.
“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.
These are not scenes from the wartime Nazi occupation or a fictional France where the far-right has taken control. Outright anti-Semitism like this is a fact of life these days in the poor suburbs where much of France's Muslim minority lives.
After a slow response when this "new anti-Semitism" flared four years ago, France has made fighting prejudice against Jews into a national priority. Holocaust education in state schools now starts with pupils as young as nine years old.
But even the best plans for teaching about the Nazi massacre of Jews can fall short when confronted with an Islamic identity spreading among a minority of France's five million Muslims.
"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.
"A national survey of history and geography teachers showed that only 15 percent of them had problems teaching about the Shoah," Singer said, using the Hebrew word widely used in French for the Nazi massacre of six million Jews.
"The problem concerns not only the Shoah but anything to do with religion," he said. "Some Muslim pupils don't accept being taught about Christian religious life, which is very important to understand the Middle Ages.
"The Algerian War is difficult, too, as is slavery," he said. The French slave trade is taught in French overseas territories but not in mainland France, which prompts some black pupils here to ask why they study the Holocaust but not slavery.
"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.
“This trend began with revisionist historians telling Germans they were really the victims of the war rather than its perpetrators,” said Abraham Cooper, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
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.
In Germany, the historic moment when Soviet forces freed the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland in 1945 will be remembered throughout the country. On Friday, a week before the anniversary, the state parliament in Saxony paid tribute to the victims of the Nazis – some six million Jews – with a moment of silence.
Instead of being a solemn moment of reflection, the tribute turned into a political bashing as 12 regional lawmakers for the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) refused to participate and stormed out of the chamber.
Earlier in the week the NPD, which rocked mainstream political parties in Germany by winning a surprising 9.2 percent of the votes in last September’s state election, had filed a motion asking that the minute of silence be restricted to commemorate the victims of the Allied bombing of Dresden, Saxony’s capital, in February 1945. The parliament overwhelmingly rejected the request.
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.
January 22, 2005
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.
January 21, 2005
"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.
Dr Patrick Hazlewood, the head teacher of St John's in Marlborough, Wilts, who has already scrapped subject teaching, will not put it quite like that, of course.
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.
They backed their fellow Shiites in southern Lebanon in their long resistance to the Israeli occupation and continue to help them today — but if that is support for “terrorism”, it is only in the specific context of Arab resistance to Israeli military occupation. The only incident of international terrorism in which there was ever suspicion of Iranian involvement was the bombing of a American airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988, allegedly in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner in the Gulf by a US warship — but the Lockerbie attack was eventually pinned on Libya instead.
As for the Iranian nuclear weapons programme, which almost certainly does exist in some form or other, its goal is presumably to create a deterrent to Israel's hundreds of nuclear weapons. Since Israel has about a 40-year head-start in nuclear weapons production, Iran cannot realistically hope to achieve a first-strike capability against it, but even a few Iranian nuclear weapons that might survive to strike back would effectively remove a nuclear attack on Iran from Israel's list of options.
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.
January 20, 2005
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.
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.
Walsh – the creator of This Hour Has 22 Minutes and a star of famed comedy troupe CODCO – says she is not swayed by criticism following the show's debut on Monday.
"I have been in the business of upsetting Newfoundlanders since 1973, when we came back to the island with Cod on a Stick," she said this week, referring to CODCO's debut production.
CBC's audience relations department received more than 4,700 viewer responses to Hatching, Matching & Dispatching's nationally televised pilot and said that about 95 per cent were positive.
However, some Newfoundlanders were outraged by the program and accused it of perpetuating stereotypes.
In a feedback comment to regional news show Canada Now, which did a report on the pilot, viewer Andrew Short criticized the show's "scenic back-drop, uneducated people, alcohol abuse, poor language, lazy work-ethics and cultural ignorance."
"It was like watching Margaret Wente's letter come to life," Short said, referring to the Globe & Mail columnist's recent piece that cast the province as whining, selfish and dependent on mainland Canadians. The column drew heavy criticism from Newfoundlanders and an official response, published in the Globe, from Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams.
"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)
January 19, 2005
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.
Cabot Martin, a senior policy adviser to Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford in the 1980s, wrote in 1996 that Mr. Smallwood once told him of a fateful drive to Ottawa to ask then-prime-minister Lester Pearson to force through a Quebec corridor. Mr. Martin paraphrased Mr. Smallwood's recollection: "And before I could say a word, Mr. Pearson said, 'Joe, I know why you are here and if you ask me I'll have to say yes; otherwise we would not really have a country. But I'm asking you not to ask me because we will not be able to keep the towers up." In other words, the prime minister feared sabotage in the heated political climate of Quebec, and felt unequal to the task of protecting such a corridor militarily. Mr. Smallwood returned to Newfoundland without asking.
Hydro-Québec played hardball in negotiating its terms for buying Churchill Falls' power. In part, it was covering itself; there was talk customers might turn to nuclear power, and oil, at $2 a barrel, was a competitive alternative. But it knew that without a corridor, Newfoundland was in a tight place; unless Hydro-Québec agreed to buy the power, Americans wouldn't buy the bonds necessary to finance the project. The 40-year contract Hydro-Québec insisted on, renewable automatically for 25 years, paid Newfoundland a low price for the Churchill power. Far from being linked to inflation, the price was due to fall during the final 25 years.
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of parliament for the centre-Right VVD, or Liberal party, was working with the film-maker Theo van Gogh when he was shot dead by a Muslim fanatic on Nov 2.
She said yesterday she intended to publish a second volume of her controversial book Submission, which was the basis of the film.
She arrived at parliament in an armoured Mercedes limousine and was followed by police bodyguards to the doors of the parliamentary chamber as MPs banged their desks in support and onlookers applauded.
Later she called on mainstream Muslims to speak out against violence.
"I'm not out to offend people who hold different opinions but that's difficult to avoid sometimes because the debate over Islam concerns ancient texts and deep convictions," she said.
"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.")
January 18, 2005
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.
Chinese media outlets were ordered not to mention his death, and foreign television reports of his death were blacked out. The only official confirmation was a terse four-sentence report on the Xinhua news agency, which referred to him simply as "Comrade Zhao Ziyang" with no reference to his years as prime minister from 1980 to 1987 and party boss from 1987 to 1989.
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.
January 17, 2005
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.
The latest example of TV network self-censorship because of FCC concerns came a few weeks ago during a rerun of the "Family Guy" cartoon. Fox blurred out a character's naked butt, even though the image was seen five years ago when the episode originally aired.
"We have to be checking and second-guessing ourselves now, and that's really difficult," Fox entertainment president Gail Berman said Monday. "We have to protect our affiliates."
Fox didn't act on a complaint. But the move happened in the wake of the FCC's October vote to fine 169 Fox stations $7,000 each for airing an episode of "Married By America" that showed people licking whipped cream from strippers' bodies and a man in his underwear being spanked by strippers.
"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 article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.
Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible."
One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."
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 m